Nuclear terrorism scenario tests Trudeau, world leaders at Washington summit

Picture the scenario: Terrorists have smuggled enough enriched uranium to fill a five-pound bag of sugar, or stolen a grapefruit-sized quantity of plutonium. That's all it would take to build a nuclear bomb.

Were it to detonate in downtown Washington, or Paris, or Toronto, hundreds of thousands of lives could be lost.

Ask yourself, what would you do? More crucially, what would Prime Minister Justin Trudeau do?

It's the kind of unnerving nuclear-terrorism scenario Trudeau was confronting today, along with more than 50 other delegation heads attending a closing plenary session at the Nuclear Security Summit hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington.

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The hypothetical exercise played out against alarming real-life developments, with reports emerging today that North Korea has again launched a ballistic missile.

Underscoring the global urgency of the nuclear threat, Trudeau announced this afternoon that Canada will be stepping up its investment in nuclear security with a $42-million contribution over the next two years to improve worldwide nuclear and radiological security.

The news about the additional funding came just before world leaders gathered around a table in a hall of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center to discuss how to tackle a hypothetical nuclear threat.

Inside that room, a video montage was to play, depicting a nuclear terrorism incident.

"You're the national leaders. How do you deal with this problem? The benefits of this kind of exercise is you recognize very quickly where the seams are," says Carl Robichaud, a nuclear security expert with the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

"We have this global system of interlapping jurisdictions, and this really reveals the seams that exist at the intersection of these different jurisdictions."

'Impactful' exercise follows 2014 scenario

Nailing down a co-ordinated response across law enforcement, intelligence agencies, the military, radiological response agencies and national labs might be tricky enough in just one country. Working out the role of a larger politico-economic bloc such as the European Union would be an additional challenge.

If this tabletop policy discussion plays out the way it did at a similar simulation two years ago at the nuclear summit at The Hague, it promises to be an eye-opening session, says Robichaud.

"I hear that it was quite impactful," he said of the 2014 session. "Several of the world leaders found it very moving. It sort of pushed them to reassess their thinking."

Obama said in advance of today's presentation that the discussions would also turn the focus on the terrorist networks themselves, and "examine possible consequences of terrorists obtaining and using a weapon of mass destruction."

"This is also an opportunity for our nations to remain united and focused on the most active terrorist network at the moment," Obama said, referring to ISIS.

Although the session attended by Trudeau today was conducted behind closed doors, it was expected to involve a scenario about a radiological dispersion device. This kind of weapon would not yield the same explosive power of a nuclear bomb, but it could kill by spreading radioactivity. A "dirty bomb" that combines radioactivity with conventional explosives is one example of such a device.

Environmental and health concerns

Beyond managing hypothetical massive casualties from the terrorist simulation, Trudeau and the other leaders at the summit were expected to tackle environmental, political, economic and public-health repercussions of such an attack.

The fallout would be far-reaching.

"It would change our world," Obama remarked stoically during a press conference this morning at the summit.

Robichaud expects the cascading effect from a nuclear attack or accident to draw skeptical attendees to consider the matter more seriously.

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"How would an incident like this affect the movement of goods and people? What if it happens in a port? What it if device were hidden in a [shipping] container? Would that freeze international shipping?" he said.

Illicit nuclear trafficking is a very real, if not immediate, concern.

Since the 1990s, the International Atomic Energy Agency has documented about 400 cases of attempted nuclear smuggling and another 700 cases of theft or attempted theft.

North Korea's latest missile launch

A Reuters report today citing North Korea's ambassador to the UN said Pyongyang will continue to pursue a nuclear and ballistic missile program, in defiance of U.S. warnings and international sanctions. The North also fired a short-range rocket into the sea after Obama met with Japanese and South Korean leaders to discuss the North Korean nuclear threat.

There is no doubt that if [ISIS] were to get their hands on nuclear materials, they would certainly use it.- U.S. President Barack Obama

Meanwhile, the rise of ISIS as a global network is expected to dominate the second half of today's scenario-based plenary session, with a more general discussion about combating terrorism.

Obama noted in a press briefing today that ISIS has already demonstrated its willingness to use chemical weapons.

"There is no doubt that if they were to get their hands on nuclear materials, they would certainly use it," he said.

Before the interactive scenario session, Obama said the global coalition against ISIS had successfully stemmed the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, but noted that "the threat of foreign fighters returning to commit acts of horrifying violence remains all too real."

At least two groups — al-Qaeda and the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo — have sought nuclear material for weapons. There's also reason to believe that ISIS has nuclear ambitions.

Last year, Belgian police retrieved video surveillance of a Belgian nuclear official from the apartment of a suspected ISIS-linked militant with ties to the killers in the November Paris attacks.

Canada has maintained a solid record as a nuclear-secure nation, scoring third on the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative's 2016 "theft ranking" of nations possessing weapons-usable nuclear materials. Switzerland topped the list, followed by Australia.

Trudeau met this morning with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi. He will also meet with British Prime Minister David Cameron, and was expected to attend a working lunch on strengthening nuclear security before the scenario-based policy discussion.

The prime minister will hold a media availability later this evening to announce some of the Canadian deliverables from the nuclear summit.