In 2004 British national Dhiren Barot was arrested for conspiring to commit a public nuisance by the use of radioactive materials, among other charges. Authorities claimed that Barot had researched the production of "dirty bombs," and planned to detonate them in New York City, Washington DC, and other cities. A dirty bomb combines conventional explosives with radioactive material.
Although Barot did not build the bombs, national security experts believe terrorists continue to be interested in such devices for terror plots. Now researchers from the University of Maryland have proposed a new technique to remotely detect the radioactive materials in dirty bombs or other sources. They describe the method in a paper in the journal Physics of Plasmas.
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