They can be set of with more conventional explosives such as dynamite (Litman, 2003). While they would not have tremendous destructive power, they could contaminate areas with radioactivity. Their capacity for inflicting terror as well as radiation sickness in a small area makes them of great concern to governments. .

             Major political changes in some countries over the past 15 years add to the concerns. With the breakup of the U.S.S.R., the resulting independent states have shown some lack of ability to track their nuclear materials. Individuals have seen opportunities to sell nuclear materials on the black market. It is quite possible that weapons as well as the raw materials to make atomic and RDD weapons have been surreptitiously sold. It is likely that some have been sold to both countries and organizations antagonistic to the United States. .

             Among the countries that used to make up the U.S.S.R., for instance, up to 650 tons of nuclear material is stored in scattered locations. Experts estimate that it would take only 8 kilograms of plutonium and 15 - 25 kilograms of enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb capable of inflicting great damage (Lee, 2003). However, This is still al large amount of material. Transporting such a bomb as well as detonating it would be problematic for a small organization. The real risk from terrorists are dirty bombs, which would do less physical damage but have serious environmental effects in the area near where it was detonated. .

             So the question becomes, who is likely to use such weapons. It used to be believed that terrorist organizations were left-wing oriented, concerned with the issues of exploitation and oppression of groups of people. Believing that, nations concerned with fighting terrorism tended to believe that if the social inequities could be solved, terrorism would die a natural death (Laqueur, 2004). However, history has proved this theory wrong. The head of al-Qaeda, the organization that conducted the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, is headed by a wealthy man.