London | Monday
DECLASSIFIED ministry of defence documents that can be consulted by any terrorist explain how to make an atomic bomb, the Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.
The documents, which came into the public domain over the past five years, give details of the making of Britain’s first nuclear bomb, called ”Blue Danube”, at the end of the 1940s and start of the 1950s, the daily said.
They give a list of the ingredients for such a weapon, including the amount of plutonium and how to spark off a chain reaction.
A former engineer who worked on Britain’s military nuclear programme said the instructions could enable a terrorist to construct a rudimentary atomic bomb. The main difficulty would be to get the plutonium, but several ”outlaw” states like Iraq might have some and terror organizations like al-Qaeda have tried to obtain some, the Telegraph said. ”These documents should never have been declassified and since the events of September 11 there is a case for removing them from public access,” the engineer, Brian Burnell, was quoted as saying. Opposition Conservative party defence spokesman Bernard Jenkin immediately called for explanations from the Labour government, calling the documents ”a monstrous free gift to terrorists,” the Telegraph, said. – Sapa-AFP