How to Use dirty bomb in a Sentence

dirty bomb

noun
  • That’s more potential death than a dirty bomb or a small nuke.
    — Andrew Sullivan, Daily Intelligencer, 20 Feb. 2018
  • What is a ‘dirty bomb’ and why is Russia saying Ukraine could use one?
    — Mike Rose, cleveland, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Within a few weeks, the very notion of a choir would become tantamount to a dirty bomb.
    — Hank Shteamer, Rolling Stone, 10 Mar. 2021
  • Western experts said using a dirty bomb would make little sense for Ukraine.
    — Alan Cullison, WSJ, 25 Oct. 2022
  • Is someone about to terrorize Los Angeles with the threat of a dirty bomb?
    — Chuck Barney, Detroit Free Press, 11 Apr. 2020
  • Brenner has studied the effects of CT scans, nuclear plants and dirty bombs.
    — Michael Laris, Anchorage Daily News, 2 May 2020
  • The president was also asked whether the claims about a Ukrainian dirty bomb amounted to a false-flag operation.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 26 Oct. 2022
  • Neither are baseless allegations that Ukraine is preparing a dirty bomb.
    — WIRED, 4 Nov. 2022
  • Ukraine has rejected Moscow’s claims as an attempt to distract attention from its own plans to detonate a dirty bomb.
    — Andrew Meldrum, ajc, 25 Oct. 2022
  • The Seattle event is a dirty bomb, while the Chicago event is the release of a deadly biological agent.
    — CNN, 6 Sep. 2021
  • Shoigu’s warnings of a dirty bomb garnered just a few days of muted enthusiasm on Telegram, before the conversation moved on.
    — WIRED, 4 Nov. 2022
  • If the government collapses, terrorists could steal a nuclear weapon or radioactive material that could be used in a dirty bomb.
    — Nicholas Grossman, National Review, 7 Feb. 2018
  • Meanwhile in Moscow, the Russian government continued to say that Ukraine was preparing to use a dirty bomb.
    — Luis Martinez, ABC News, 24 Oct. 2022
  • Defense officials this week have said there are no indications Russia has made a decision to use nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb in Ukraine.
    — Eleanor Watson, CBS News, 27 Oct. 2022
  • In a recent study, Chinese military scientists simulated a dirty bomb attack to test a new containment method.
    — Bojan Stojkovski, Interesting Engineering, 9 Nov. 2025
  • Moscow then accused Ukraine of working on a dirty bomb, a move Western officials said was intended as an excuse to escalate the conflict.
    — Laurence Norman, WSJ, 27 Nov. 2022
  • Hospitals are continuing to use dangerous cesium blood irradiators that can be dismantled to build dirty bombs.
    — Caroline Delbert, Popular Mechanics, 30 Dec. 2019
  • The wife and mother in German film In the Fade chases down the terrorists who blew up her family, planting her own dirty bomb after they are acquitted of their crime.
    — Caryn James, The Hollywood Reporter, 1 Mar. 2018
  • However, officials also cautioned that Russia may actually be constructing a dirty bomb of its own in an attempt to pin an attack on Ukraine.
    — Justin Klawans, The Week, 25 Oct. 2022
  • The amount is too small to make a nuclear bomb, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said Friday, but could be used to make a dirty bomb to spread radioactive contamination.
    — CBS News, 8 May 2018
  • But a dirty bomb, containing the sorts of material RadSecure wants to secure, does not require as much sophistication.
    — Sarah Scoles, Scientific American, 11 Mar. 2022
  • While thousands of people were tossing confetti in Times Square, the Commander was on a secret mission around the corner, protecting the city from dirty bombs.
    — Abby Ellin, Marie Claire, 8 Jan. 2019
  • Meanwhile, the United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker.
    — Democrat-Gazette Staff From Wire Reports, Arkansas Online, 30 Apr. 2023
  • Ukraine and the West say that the claims — for which Russia has offered no evidence — are baseless disinformation that could be used as a pretext by the Kremlin to use a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb.
    — Anton Troianovski, New York Times, 27 Oct. 2022
  • Putin on Wednesday repeated the accusation that Ukraine was planning to build and use a dirty bomb, drawing from its civilian stores of uranium and other radioactive material.
    — Joby Warrick, Washington Post, 27 Oct. 2022
  • For nearly all of the 1990s, the threat of nuclear attack shifted to the background, transforming itself into the fear that a terrorist would obtain a nuclear device or set off a dirty bomb.
    — Philip Bump, Washington Post, 14 Dec. 2017
  • Earlier, the Russian defense ministry had published a map indicating that Ukraine was preparing a dirty bomb at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant that has seen constant shelling for weeks.
    — Luis Martinez, ABC News, 24 Oct. 2022
  • Russian operatives poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with radioactive polonium and turned him into a human dirty bomb and polonium was spread all around London at every spot that poor man visited.
    — Michael Tomasky, The New Republic, 21 Mar. 2022
  • Idaho State University was fined last week for losing a small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium that is too small to make a nuclear bomb, but could be used in a dirty bomb, according to a regulatory commission.
    — Fox News, 8 May 2018
  • Showrunner Graham Yost promised that many questions are set to be answered, such as the origin of the Pez dispenser and the dirty bomb, while also stating that this season sets up an important location that plays a role in the fourth and final season.
    — Sergio Pereira, Space.com, 2 Jan. 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'dirty bomb.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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