Since the suicidal terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, some experts on nuclear security are increasingly concerned that intruders could break into American weapons plants, assemble a nuclear bomb from materials there and explode it on the spot.
On the Tuesday before Christmas, parents with good intentions were swarming through the second floor of the Toys "R" US store in Times Square. There, amid columns of bright green plastic and the flashing headlights of a singing school bus, were shelves of products by Leapfrog Enterprises, a company based in Emeryville, Calif. that in six years has become one of the fastest-growing toy makers in the nation. Its best-selling product is the Leaped; an electronic talking book that some analysts say is even outselling Harry Potter merchandise.
Critics of security procedures at Energy Department weapons plants say intruders might use conventional explosives to blow up nuclear waste or uranium or Plutonium, sending radioactive materials into areas nearby, r they might try to create an actual nuclear bomb. Building a high-yield unclear weapon requires substantial skill with metal-working and Audemar Piguet Replica(http://www.imitatewatch.com/GoodsBrand/Replica-Audemars-Piguet-Watches-6.html) explosives; lit starting a chain reaction is relatively easy. Government bomb builders have xndentally done it several times over the years. With some training, tourists might produce a chain reaction using uranium in a way that created a ibstantial explosion, some experts say.
Ron Timmy, a former Energy Department security official, said that in me cases assembling a bomb could be done without explosives, by bringing animus parts together manually. Mr. Timmy is a co-author of a report issued October by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, that ices a history of security problems at the weapons plants. The report commends consolidating nuclear materials now held at 10 sites and putting: unity for the materials under the direction of an independent oversight: instead of the Department of Energy.
Some parents may recede at the notion of pricey electronics becoming more popular than Play-Doh. But Leapfrog is bounding ahead, propelled by the financial muscle of its majority owner, the global education corporation Knowledge Universe. Founded in part by Michael Milken, the former junk-bond trader who has recently focused on educational projects, Knowledge Universe has enabled Leapfrog to run multiple television commercials for it; products and to spread its doctrine by paying calls on influential education experts. Leapfrog has joined other companies like Educational Insights and Vetch in the winning combination of coupling technology with that word that parents love to hear: educational.
A scientist not associated with the report, Frank von Hipper, who is a fissure of public and international affairs at Princeton, said in a telephone review that a 100-pound mass of Tag Heuer Replica(http://www.luv-replica.com/GoodsBrand/tag_heuer_replica_watches-20.html) uranium dropped on a second 100-pound ss, from a height of about 6 feet, could produce a blast of 5 to 10 kilotons. ; Hiroshima bomb, which used uranium, was 12 to 17 kilotons. in a blast of only one kiloton, he said, would destroy an area of about one ire mile. But finding the right amounts of uranium could still be a challenge, he said.
Nuclear fuel is stored in a wide variety of buildings, and previous security reviews have found that some of it is vulnerable to theft. Representative Edward Markey, a longtime critic of the Energy Department, plans to raise the issue on Wednesday in a news conference where several current and former Energy Department workers will describe security lapses.
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