> Maybe all it'd take is a terrorist incident involving nuclear waste.
There are so many radiologic sources out there, used for many purposes (medicine, gammagraphy), very dangerous[1] but taken with much less care than nuclear wastes from the nuclear power industry. Stuff like this [2] happen all the time …
I kinda agree with your point: terrorists already have considerable access, theoretically, to radioactive materials. In fact, the materials used for medicine and science are in many ways much more dangerous from a public health perspective given their short, energetic half-lives.
The only substantial, long-term danger from terrorists is to the financial viability of nuclear power. Nobody cares about incidents like the above. But if it were tied to terrorism somehow it would be all over the news and nuclear stocks would plummet. Similarly, for a terrorist incident involving medical use even anti-nuclear activists would have more nuanced reactions, whereas if it involved nuclear power such an incident would herald the end of the world.
Nuclear facilities aren't really dependent on market perception to keep their stock prices high - they sell power.
The terrorists won't do a better job of slandering fission than the oil & gas companies have done, and nuclear facilities and fuel storage make horrible terrorist targets. The facilities are explosion hardened by design, and spent fuel is essentially rocks. It would take a lot of work and explosives to make a weak, uninteresting, highly traceable, not too dangerous "dirty bomb". That requires supplies generally unavailable to terrorist cells, much less cells inside a nuclear nation. It also requires hazardous materials training and technical skills generally unavailable to terrorist organizations, much less embedded in a target area.
As has been the case for decades: the largest genuine threat from an action like that would be panic, and overreaction, from a riled up and ignorant population.
I kinda agree with your point: terrorists already have considerable access, theoretically, to radioactive materials. In fact, the materials used for medicine and science are in many ways much more dangerous from a public health perspective given their short, energetic half-lives.
The only substantial, long-term danger from terrorists is to the financial viability of nuclear power. Nobody cares about incidents like the above. But if it were tied to terrorism somehow it would be all over the news and nuclear stocks would plummet. Similarly, for a terrorist incident involving medical use even anti-nuclear activists would have more nuanced reactions, whereas if it involved nuclear power such an incident would herald the end of the world.