Get You Business Contingency and Continuity Plans in Order Now – Scottish Police CBRN Defence Chief Issues Bleakest Ever Official Warning of the Inevitability of a Terrorist Nuclear Attack. A nuclear attack by terrorists causing widespread panic, chaos and death is inevitable and will happen soon, a senior Scottish police officer has warned in a report published by the Scottish Sunday Herald.
Ian Dickinson, who leads the police response to chemical, biological and nuclear threats in Scotland, has painted the bleakest picture yet of the dangers the world now faces. Efforts to prevent terrorist groups from obtaining materials that could be made into radioactive dirty bombs - or even crude nuclear explosives - are bound to fail, he said. And the result will be horror on an unprecedented scale.
Dickinson's nightmare analysis was backed up by Dr Frank Barnaby, a nuclear consultant who used to work at the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment in Berkshire. "The amazing thing is that this hasn't happened already," he told the Sunday Herald. "We should expect it any minute. It's an obvious thing for a terrorist to do. A primitive nuclear explosion would simply eliminate the centre of a city like Glasgow or Edinburgh."
Richard Hoskins, from the International Atomic Energy Agency's Office of Nuclear Security in Vienna, revealed that there had been 1266 confirmed incidents in which radioactive materials had been stolen or lost around the world since 1993.
"As the terrorists look for the next spectacular attack, we know that al-Qaeda in Iraq is calling on nuclear scientists to join in the jihad," said William Nye, director of counter-terrorism and intelligence at the Home Office in London.
For the text of the full Sunday herald report click here.
