President Obama Holds Nuke Summit
BLITZER: They're arriving, leaders from 47 nations, for the summit with President Obama. There you see the Russian leader, the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev. He just arrived a few moments ago, the president receiving him warmly. They have established a good relationship over the past year and several months. Also, the leader of China, the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, has arrived now. There they are. A less friendly relationship has been developed there, but still a good relationship. And there's a lot, certainly, at stake as these 47 nations gather here in Washington this hour for this unprecedented summit. They're trying to find ways to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists. Loose nukes in the hands of terrorists, that is a nightmare. CNN's foreign affairs correspondent, Jill Dougherty, is over at the Convention Center in Washington. Jill, President Obama met with the Chinese president today. Was there any agreement between China and the U.S. to step up pressure on Iran over its nuclear program?</s>JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was definitely in that discussion, Wolf. We're told by the White House that Hu Jintao and President Obama met for an hour-and-a-half, and most of the time, they did spend on that issue of Iran and its nuclear program, the White House saying that China shares the U.S. goals of nonproliferation with regard to Iran, and that the P-5 plus one -- that's, of course, the U.N. permanent five, plus Germany -- are united -- that was the word, united -- on Iran. Then the Chinese released a statement just a few minutes after that, and they too said that China and the U.S. share the same goals, but there was a slightly different approach to it. They said they hope the parties will step up their diplomatic efforts and resolve this through dialogue and negotiation. And, as we know, the United States now is talking pretty tough about stepped-up sanctions -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Jill, has the administration made any other progress today, besides this tentative agreement with China?</s>DOUGHERTY: Yes, I think you would have to say that the news of the day is that Ukraine has announced that it is going to be giving up its highly enriched uranium. That's uranium that was left over after the -- they gave up their nukes back in 1993. And they are giving it up. It's going to be shipped out of the country. The White House says that it's enough for several nuclear weapons. And, you know, Wolf, we sat down in an exclusive interview with the president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and he told us that that will be shipped, that material will be shipped out of Ukraine to Russia. And we can -- we will be getting more details on that. But it is a significant achievement, you would have to say.</s>BLITZER: It's very significant, indeed, very important. Jill, thank you. Let's get back to this summit. Dozens of world leaders are gathered in Washington to confront the possibility that al Qaeda or other terror groups could obtain nuclear weapons. Brian Todd has been looking into what could happen if that nightmare came true -- Brian.</s>BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Defense Secretary Robert Gates says this week's nuclear security conference represents the first tangible efforts by the world's leaders to confront the threat of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists. We're going to take you through a scenario of a terrorist group getting its hands on a nuclear bomb. Joining me is Peter Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist, arms control expert, formerly chief scientist for the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One thing we want to clarify up front, we're not giving specific information to give terrorists any potential ideas. The information we have here has been published, some of it also vetted by the Department of Energy. Peter, thanks very much for joining us.</s>TODD: We're going to talk about first kind of the materials and the money, et cetera, that terrorists would need to construct a nuclear weapon. First, here's kind of a basic list of what they would need. Go ahead and go over some of that.</s>PETER ZIMMERMAN, ARMS CONTROL EXPERT: That's a good shopping list. They will have to start out with enriched uranium.</s>TODD: Right.</s>ZIMMERMAN: That, they're going to have to bribe or steal or get somehow at high cost. It takes something on the order of 20 people, physicists, engineers, technicians, maybe some security and some support people. And...</s>TODD: And then the money.</s>ZIMMERMAN: I would think it's around $10 million or $12 million. It's going to take them half-a-year to a year from start to finish to get it ready to go.</s>TODD: To get this into a city, it can pretty much be brought in by van, right?</s>ZIMMERMAN: Oh, it's a box that's four feet by two feet by two feet. It fits in the back of a minivan or a step van or any small vehicle.</s>TODD: All right. Let's take this graphic out, and we're going to bring in another graphic illustrating the potential damage to New York City. And you mentioned that terrorists might only be able to build maybe a one to two kiloton bomb, and then we're going to go over that as well. One kiloton bomb, we're talking about the biggest concentration of damage is going to be about, what, a sixth of a mile from where it detonates.</s>ZIMMERMAN: About a sixth of a mile.</s>TODD: Right.</s>ZIMMERMAN: And in this inner red circle, probably that means scraping the ground clean of everything that was there, except maybe the heaviest of buildings.</s>TODD: OK. And then about a third of a mile from where it detonates.</s>ZIMMERMAN: That's about a five-pound-per-square-inch overpressure. And that means that homes and light construction is gone. A lot of heavy concrete buildings will survive.</s>TODD: What about the casualty numbers from either one to two kilotons?</s>ZIMMERMAN: Well, you know, it's really hard, because we don't know exactly where it's going to go off. A good working number is somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 for a small bomb detonated in a city.</s>TODD: You're talking deaths?</s>ZIMMERMAN: Oh, yes, I'm talking fatalities. Now, some recent work from Los Alamos and some things I've been thinking about show that buildings in the center will shelter and shadow buildings a little further out if they detonated on the ground, which I think they will. And if that happens, it may very well reduce the total number of casualties and it may shrink the distance at which -- at which these various effects take place.</s>TODD: Hiroshima was a 12.5 kiloton bomb. Here are some images from the devastation of Hiroshima here. You're talking 1 to 2 kilotons that terrorists could conceivably get their hands on and make and detonate in the United States. How would that compare to this kind of damage that we saw in Hiroshima?</s>ZIMMERMAN: Well, the damage looks the same, basically. What's different is the distance over which a given amount of damage extends.</s>TODD: All right. Peter, thank you very much for joining us. We appreciate it very much. Thank you.</s>BLITZER: Brian Todd, thank you. So could this nuclear nightmare actually become reality? Joining us now in THE SITUATION ROOM is national security contributor, Fran Townsend. She was homeland security adviser to President Bush. She worked in the Justice Department during the Clinton administration. Fran, first of all, is there hard evidence that al Qaeda right now is trying to get some sort of nuclear device?</s>FRAN TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Probably, I wouldn't call it hard evidence, Wolf, but there has been consistent over the years intelligence about al Qaeda's both desire and intention to obtain just such material. The intelligence, however, recently, at least as far as I'm aware, has been spotty about what actual discernible steps they have taken to acquire it. Although we do know they have made efforts to acquire both biological and chemical weapons. Al Qaeda had a biological program. We were aware of a chemical threat to New York City. And so we put this in the bin of weapons of mass destruction, and that has been a goal for al Qaeda, for many years.</s>BLITZER: Is there any doubt in your mind that al Qaeda wants to attack the United States in a more spectacular fashion than 9/11?</s>TOWNSEND: No, not at all. This is al Qaeda's, you know, multiple simultaneous attacks with hundreds if not thousands of deaths is their goal. The problem, Wolf, is as the U.S. government has been more effective in the tribal areas, working with their Pakistani counterparts and using predator drones, this has been more difficult to pull off. That requires lots of people, lots of equipment, lots of planning, and so -- and lots of communication. And once you have lots of communication, there's the opportunity to disrupt those attacks. And so they've had a real hard time pulling that off. But I don't think there's any doubt that it remains one of their chief goals.</s>BLITZER: Would -- was this issue -- this issue of loose nukes getting into the hands of al Qaeda, something that kept President Bush up at night?</s>TOWNSEND: Absolutely. And it's interesting, we've heard a lot about this being the first coming together of world leaders. President Bush and President Putin had come together in the global nuclear security initiative, and had begun just such an international process some years ago. This, of course, takes it to a whole new level, having all of these world leaders here in Washington to discuss it. But I think, Wolf, what we really want to watch for is not just meetings, not just talk, but actual action, discernible action. As you mentioned earlier with Jill Dougherty, the relinquishing of materials by the Ukraine is a discernible step. If they do it, we'll know it and we'll be able to see it and account for it. The question is, will other countries take those same discernible steps to get control over these materials? What you worry about most, Wolf, is an improvised nuclear device. That is, a device that either takes the highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium, and causes an explosion that actually gets yield. That doesn't require lots of expertise. But, by the way, when you see countries breaking up and scientific expertise scattering,whether that's in Iraq or Iran or Pakistan or North Korea. You do worry that scientists around the world who have this knowledge, together with loose -- you know,highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium, could put together for al Qaeda an improvised nuclear device. And that's just exactly what the administration is trying to avoid.</s>BLITZER: And it's exactly what President Obama says is the most serious national security threat facing the United States right now. Fran, thanks very much.</s>TOWNSEND: That's right. Sure.</s>BLITZER: An adopted boy is returned to Russia by the American family who says they could no longer handle him. But were any laws broken? The local sheriff has been holding a news conference this hour. We're standing by for new developments. And new suggestions of human error in that plane crash that virtually wiped out Poland's top leadership.