Nuclear smuggling

Finding a Nuclear Weapon: Hope Beyond the Screwdriver

In 1956, the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, suggested to Congress a reliable means of detecting nuclear weapons within a suitcase destined to be detonated in an American city. It was a screwdriver. Prying open and inspecting each and every case or container capable of concealing a nuclear weapon is obviously an impossible task, which was precisely Oppenheimer’s point; that nuclear weapons are hard to detect. They remain so today.

Fortunately, science and technology have improved since Oppenheimer’s day, but could authorities find a nuclear weapon smuggled into an American city today? Maybe, though existing technologies are only marginally better than Oppenheimer’s screwdriver.