The fuel for a nuclear bomb is in the hands of an unknown black marketeer from Russia, U.S. official

[LiberalArkie]

CHISINAU, Moldova – The sample of highly-enriched uranium, of a type that could be used in a nuclear bomb, arrived here on a rainy summer day four years ago, in a blue shopping bag carried by a former policeman.

According to court documents, the bag quickly passed through the hands of three others on its way to a prospective buyer. It was not the first time such material had passed through this city, raising international alarms: It had happened twice before. And mysteriously, in all three cases, spanning more than a decade, the nuclear material appeared to have the same origin – a restricted military installation in Russia.

This news would quickly reach Washington. But that day, the first to pick up the blue bag was the wife of a former Russian military officer, who handed it off to a friend while she went shopping in this former Soviet city’s ragged downtown.

Not long afterward, a 57-year old lawyer named Teodor Chetrus, from a provincial town near the Ukrainian border, retrieved it and brought it to a meeting with a man named Ruslan Andropov. According to an account by Moldovan police, the two men had, earlier in the day, visited a local bank, where Chetrus confirmed that Andropov had deposited more than $330,000 as an initial payment.

Snip

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/11/12/18850/fuel-nuclear-bomb-hands-unknown-black-marketeer-russia-us-officials-say

[merrily]

1. This is not comforting.

[closeupready]

2. Kind of a pointless piece of news.

Authorities should be doing something about this. Citizens can do little. I guess we can all cower in fear in our bathrooms with the light off, hands cupped behind our heads...

[leveymg]

3. If the CIA was watching the multiple passoffs, and traced the funds transfer, how did the seller

get away? If the intermediary seller, Teodor Chetrus, is in jail, he must have know others further up in the network. How is it, then, that the seller is unknown? Why bust the ring at this point before others are identified?

Something's missing in this story.

[Ilsa]

4. Hasn't this been happening since the USSR dissolved?

I thought that one of the most dire problems of that era was that nuclear material was left unguarded as staff basically "went home" or left to find other work. At least, that's what I remember from news articles and one or two PBS specials, or maybe Frontline.

[LiberalArkie]

5. They always suspected that it could, that it might, that it was possible that it happen,

but they never had any proof that it had happened. So many assurances from the Russian gov, you know.

[hunter]

6. Doc Brown has it...