A disgruntled middle boss of a transnational criminal organization (TCO), on behalf of a well-known terrorist organization, smuggles ten kilograms of highly enriched uranium (HEU) out of a nuclear facility located in a country half-way around the globe. With the combination of having the right connections in the government and nuclear labs in that country; smuggling routes carefully designed to avoid detection and interdiction; and the material shielded to defeat the radiation monitors deployed in various countries along the smugglers’ path, the middle boss has little trouble delivering the commodity to her contact in the USA. This scenario sounds as if it could be the beginnings of a cliché spy action movie like the Mission Impossible series or True Lies.
Publication Information
Sin, Steve S. and Marcus A. Boyd. 2016. "Searching for the Nuclear Silk Road: Geospatial Analysis of Potential Illicit Radiological and Nuclear Material Trafficking Pathways." In Nuclear Terrorism: Countering the Threat, eds. Brecht Volders and Tom Sauer. New York: Routledge. https://books.google.com/books?id=UFmpCwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=nuclear+terrorism+countering+the+threat&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjViv2a8uDRAhWD0iYKHWf1CTsQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=steve%20sin&f=false