Transporting nuclear wastes from energy production sites: What can terrorists do and how?

Full text: Recent discussions in the United States and among NATO allies have debated the vulnerability of nuclear waste shipments, their transports, and the engineered packaging they transport within to terrorist attack. These debates generally focus on the regulatory and engineered controls necessary to protect such shipments, but in the post-September 11, 2001 reality of a potential mass suicide attack using asymmetrical weapons and tactics, can the underlying 'safe' assumptions of regulators and security personnel be questioned? This paper will offer a history of the debates surrounding how safe such shipments from energy faculties are to dedicated terrorist attack and then focus on recent research that looks at several transportation related scenarios that may bring into question heretofore un-assessed vulnerabilities for highway and railway transports, routes, and cargoes of highly radioactive wastes that come from such energy production sites. (author)