UN agency warns on attacks against N-plants

Attacks against nuclear power plants and other acts of nuclear terrorism are "far more likely" than ever before, the UN nuclear agency has warned.

The threat of terrorists stealing plutonium to build nuclear bombs has been eclipsed by terrorists willing to hijack planes and "sacrifice their lives to achieve their evil aims".

"Planes are bigger than ever before with more fuel on board, and terrorists are prepared to kill themselves, turning a plane into a weapon of mass destruction," said Ms Melissa Fleming, spokesperson for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Vienna-based agency which sets world standards in nuclear security.

The world's leading experts on nuclear terrorism meet in a special session today at the end of a four-day conference in Vienna organised by the IAEA.

"After September 11th, we realised that nuclear facilities - like dams, refineries, chemical production facilities or skyscrapers - have their vulnerabilities," said IAEA director general, Mr Mohamed El Baradei. "There is no sanctuary anymore, no safety zone." The US has imposed no-fly zones over its nuclear power plants while France has installed surface-to-air missiles near the nuclear plant at Cap la Hague. The British government says it is examining similar proposals, but Germany has already rejected the French and American approaches.

"Do you really believe anybody is capable of deciding within two minutes whether a charter aircraft carrying 200 vacationers to Majorca simply strayed from its flight path or needs to be shot out of the sky?" asked Mr Juergen Trittin, the Environment Minister.

Security has been stepped up around Germany's 19 nuclear power plants and extra soldiers have been drafted in to guard spent nuclear fuel as it is transported by rail to France for reprocessing.

Environmental group Greenpeace said that radiation released from an attack on a German nuclear power plant could kill as many as 4.8 million people. The government rejects these claims and has commissioned its own study.

Concern in Germany has centred around the Biblis nuclear power plant, only five minutes by air from Frankfurt Airport, continental Europe's busiest airport.

Despite the new danger posed by hijacked planes, the IAEA says that the most likely form of nuclear terror remains the theft of nuclear material such as plutonium by terrorists to manufacture nuclear weapons.

"It is highly unlikely they could use it to manufacture and successfully detonate a nuclear bomb," said Mr El Baradei.

The U.S. government has repeatedly declined to comment on speculation that the Saudi dissent Osama Bin Laden is in possession of nuclear weapons.