Nuclear security

The nuke detectives

As the technologies to unearth work on clandestine nuclear weapons become more diverse and more powerful, however, the odds of being detected are improving. Innovation is benefiting detection capabilities, says Ramesh Thakur, a former UN assistant secretary-general. The products under development range from spy software that sifts through electronic communications and financial transactions to new scanners that can detect even heavily shielded nuclear material.

Start with intelligence-gathering. Western spooks were mostly clueless about the network Mr Khan built to traffic bomb expertise and equipment, until Libya, a Kahn client, surrendered its programme in 2003. No one using the same approach today would get very far, reckons Mr Thakur, now head of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation & Disarmament at the Australian National University in Canberra. This, he says, is thanks to advances in “network analysis” software.