A published report says concern that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network may try to detonate a nuclear weapon has prompted the United States to install hundreds of sophisticated radiation sensors in this country and abroad. The Washington Post Sunday reports that an elite U.S. military commando unit, the Delta Force, has been placed on alert, ready to seize control of any nuclear materials that the sensors may detect.

The commandos' orders call for them to kill or disable anyone with a suspected nuclear device. Scientists then would be called in to disarm the weapon.

U.S. government officials are quoted as saying that hundreds of the special sensors, including devices called gamma-ray and neutron flux detectors, have been in use since November. They have been deployed at border crossings and other key locations around Washington, the nation's capital.

U.S. allies including Saudi Arabia are said to have rushed to put new radiation detectors into service, following warnings from American intelligence agencies.

The Post says a number of U.S. intelligence officials believe the al-Qaida network may already have limited nuclear capability, either through control of a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead or access to enough weapons-grade radioactive material to build an atomic bomb.

Other experts believe it is unlikely that terrorists' nuclear-weapons program has progressed so far. However, the Post says "the consensus government view" now is that al-Qaida likely would be able to build a so-called "dirty bomb" to spread radioactive fallout over a wide area.

U.S. experts are said to believe that terrorists already possess lower-level radioactive materials such as strontium-90 and cesium-137, which could be used together with conventional explosives to make a "dirty bomb."

Some information for this report provided by Reuters.

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