US President Bush seems to have confirmed this, not in specific words,
but by blocking the assets of UTN. UTN, a non-governmental
organization was founded by Pakistani nuclear scientists that provided
information to Osama bin Laden and the Taliban about chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons.
Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood, who was formerly the director for nuclear
power at the Pakistani Atomic Energy <<<<
The above makes me think that he had the needed information,
from the scientists to make anything he wanted.
Who knows what was in the barrels that they talk about.
I wanted a rock house, until I learned about the natural
radiation in them, in this area.....there are very few of them here.
It is difficult to say what al Qaeda has, but my guess is the finest that money will buy, so I expect them to do anything they decide to do.
As to how it works, that I am not educated to do.
Never far from my mind is the fact that so many of them have been trained in our finest universities.
MONDAY Oct. 17, on HBO:
"Last Best Chance", a movie about "the frantic efforts of an American president to stop the terrorists, was produced by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit organization headed by former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn and businessman Ted Turner.
The film, in which former Sen. Fred Thompson plays the president, is to be aired Monday night on HBO. The network has also scheduled four additional showings. "
====
LINK:
Putin advisor hails Nunn film on nuclear terror ("Last Best Chance")
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1503296/posts
I'm not sure about "the finest" - that would be very expensive, and to have very much of it is likely beyond the reach of any organization other than a superpower. But yes, it's probably pretty good stuff.
If it's just natural Uranium, that would include some isotopes that aren't as stable as U-238, and would be somewhat more radioactive. U-238 is by far its biggest component though, the other isotopes are in the low single-digit percent range in natural Uranium. Making "pure" U-238 is as hard as making "pure" U-235 (bomb-quality Uranium) since it takes major technology to separate them. However pure U-238 is essentially useless for either nuclear reactors or nuclear bombs; our military uses it for "depleted Uranium" (DU) shells since it's denser than lead. So it wouldn't be that hard for them to get it - just pick up a few spent DU shells that we fired in the first Iraq war.
Still even "pure" U-235 isn't all that radioactive, just a lot more so than U-238. But the article said U-238 which just doesn't make sense.
My guess is that what they had was more like some raw ore that they were using to separate out the most radioactive elements like Radium. That can be done using relatively simple chemical means, it doesn't require super expensive technology like separating the isotopes of a single element. It would also be much more useful for a dirty bomb.
This distinction is likely to sail past the typical newspaper or TV reporter.