"The doomsday scenario of militants allied to al Qaeda gaining control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal has only a vanishingly small possibility of ever happening. But the more realistic risks are scary enough.

Analysts say that while the Taliban has almost no chance of ever being in a position to launch a nuclear warhead, there is a real danger militants could exploit chaos in Pakistan to hijack or steal enough radioactive material to build the kind of device long feared by counterterrorist officials -- a dirty bomb. U.S. and allied officials have expressed mounting concern over what would happen to Pakistan's warheads if the country lurched further into chaos and the Taliban came closer to seizing power."

How real is the Pakistan nuclear risk? | Reuters