EU faces nuclear terror threat

From The Guardian

Osama bin Laden or like-minded terrorists could kill thousands of people and wreak global havoc by detonating a crude nuclear device in the heart of Europe, security experts warned yesterday.
"We are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe," said the former US senator Sam Nunn, who helped organise Black Dawn, a war-gaming exercise conducted by the EU, Nato and others.

[...]

In the second part they were confronted with computer projections and video displays illustrating the impact of a 10-kilotonne device exploding at Nato's sprawling headquarters near Brussels airport.

The notional attack immediately killed 40,000 people and injured 300,000, swamping hospitals, as a radiation cloud spread panic across Belgium and the Netherlands and plunged the world economy into turmoil.

[...]

Rolf Ekeus, a former head of the UN weapons inspectors in Iraq, warned that Europe could be a prime target for nuclear terrorists because of the ease with which extremists could hide and recruit in the Muslim communities, and because Russian nuclear material could be more easily smuggled into Europe than the US.

"Europe has become the breeding ground, the place where planning for terrorism takes place," he said.

Not a pretty picture.