Experts: Nuclear threats multiply

Panel sees return of Cold War’s hostile mindset

Twenty-five years after the unofficial end of the Cold War, experts say the mentality that pitted the United States against the Soviet Union is coming back.

U.S. weapons scientists and diplomats who are tasked with keeping nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists and maintaining the nation’s shrinking arsenal of mushroom-cloud bombs say emerging threats have surfaced from a new wave of conventional and nuclear bomb technology.

They range from the vast availability of radioactive materials that could be dispersed through a “dirty bomb” to drone submarines packed with nuclear explosives and North Korea’s potential for producing a bomb that could wipe out a city.

That was the message Wednesday night from a panel of experts — former national weapons laboratories directors — each with more than four decades of experience and knowledge that has helped shape the nation’s nuclear security posture.

Siegfried Hecker, an expert on plutonium science, global threat reduction and nuclear security, said North Korea leader Kim Jong Un’s nuclear ambitions are cause for alarm.

“This is going to be near the top of the list of the next president,” said Hecker, who has traveled to North Korea seven times to assess its plutonium program.

After North Korea walked away from the nuclear nonproliferation treaty in 2003, evidence surfaced that the nation had been covertly building a capacity to enrich nuclear materials for bombs.

“They may have around 25 bombs by the end of this year. That changes the picture totally,” he said.

The country has conducted four nuclear tests including one in January that raised doubts among