School Library Journal Review

Gr 9 Up-In frightening detail, the narrator of this documentary traces the history of the dirty bomb detailing how terrorists might acquire and use this device. Interviews with experts including university professors, journalists, and representatives from the CIA Counterterrorism Unit, the International Atomic Energy Commission, the United States Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and others discuss what they know about the dirty bomb and what might happen if one were detonated. Since 2001, countries around the world have placed tighter controls over nuclear products, but unstable regions have been known to sell or trade such materials to terrorists. Radioactivity has already affected people in Brazil and Georgia (the former USSR), and stolen canisters with nuclear materials were never recovered from a hospital in the United States. A plot uncovered by the FBI in 2001 resulted in the arrest and incarceration of Jose Padilla, an Al-Qaeda sympathizer, allegedly planning to explode a dirty bomb in the U.S. Since 2001, countries around the world have initiated greater control over radioactive substances. Experts are constructing scenarios in which a dirty bomb explodes in a major city, and studying wind gusts, how radiation particles would travel, and how many people might be affected both immediately and long-term. This video might be alarming to many, but the information it contains about the science of nuclear weapons, terrorist activities, and national security issues might be useful for classroom discussion on those topics.-Pat Bender, The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.