WILLIAM C. POTTER is Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar Professor of Nonproliferation Studies and Founding Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
SARAH BIDGOOD is a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at MIT’s Security Studies Program and a former Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
HANNA NOTTE is Director of the Eurasia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and a Nonresident Senior Associate with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
A Brazilian soldier training for a radiological weapons attack, Brasília, May 2013
Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters
In the years after the 9/11 attacks, a new threat loomed large in the minds of policymakers and the public: the dirty bomb. This term describes a radiological weapon that used an explosive to disperse radioactive material over a limited area. A dirty bomb is far less powerful than a nuclear bomb, but it is easier and cheaper to assemble and can cause tremendous panic and disruption. Many analysts feared that terrorist groups would seek to develop and use such weapons: in 2002, U.S. officials announced the detention of Jose Padilla, an American citizen and alleged al Qaeda operative who they
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