Gang arrested trying to sell enriched uranium

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2968535.ece





A gang arrested by Slovakian police was trafficking uranium so enriched that it could have been used by terrorists in a dirty bomb, it emerged today.

Two Hungarians and a Ukrainian man were arrested as they tried to sell the uranium last night. The consignment had been tracked by police after it came to their attention inside the former Soviet Union.

A total of 481.4 grams of uranium was found and investigators believe it contained 98.6 per cent uranium-235. Uranium is considered weapons-grade if it contains at least 85 per cent uranium-235.

"According to preliminary information, the material could have been used to make a so-called dirty bomb," Michal Kopcik, a senior Slovakian police official told a news conference today.




http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/30/nslovak130.xml

Seized uranium 'enough for a bomb'
By Tom Nicholson in Bratislava and Malcolm Moore
Last Updated: 2:50am GMT 30/11/2007



Smugglers arrested in Slovakia this week had enough weapons-grade uranium on them to make a "dirty" bomb.

The half-kilo of material taken in raids near the Ukrainian border on Tuesday was a processed form of uranium used in nuclear weapons.

"It was enriched enough to be used in various ways for terrorist attacks," said Michal Kopcik, the vice-head of Slovak police


http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1875332007
Trio were trying to sell 99% pure 'bomb' uranium



http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-11-30-voa3.cfm
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors the illicit trafficking in radioactive materials, says, last year, it registered over 250 reported cases of radioactive materials that were stolen, missing, smuggled or in the possession of unauthorized individuals. That is an increase of nearly 400 percent since 2002.


Nuclear experts say smuggled materials generally come out of Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union, as security at nuclear-related industries has deteriorated since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

[wildbilln864]

1. K&R! n/t

[Djinn]

2. but but the Slovaks aren't Muslim are they

could have sworn it was swarthy evil doers we needed to be checking - bet none of these guys was ever pulled up in a random aircraft check - not Muslim, must be OK!

[miles 2 go]

3. What are they carrying this stuff around in?

Does it say? Wouldn't it likely kill people who were messing around with it?

[seemslikeadream]

5. HOW EASY IS IT TO SMUGGLE?

Because uranium emits a form of radiation that cannot penetrate skin, and is much less radioactive than the polonium used to poison former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko in London last year, it can be stored and transported with little or no safety measures. Putting it in a lead-lined container would make it difficult or impossible to detect even with the most advanced equipment
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jJNcB0xSVLTvS9Xvomd1tww41LGQD8T7ILAO0

[miles 2 go]

7. aahhh. Yes that is what I was thinking of

I was thinking fo the poisoned spy and wondering how they could carry it around so easily.
thanks for the reply

[progressoid]

4. It's OK cause they aren't part of the Axis of Evil.

[eridani]

6. Command and control for Russian missiles is down the tubes as well

Boogaboogabooga! Look! Over there! Iran is the most dangerous country in the world!

[DCKit]

8. All enriched uranium and depleted uranium is dirty bomb material....

There is no level of safety with something as toxic as uranium.

We covered Kuwait and Iraq with DU and it's only a matter of time before news of the cancers, birth defects and deaths from exposure become as well known as those from Agent Orange.

[malaise]

9. Isn't Times on line owned by Murdoch?

Sorry I don't believe this.

[seemslikeadream]

10. No malaise

It's in a lot of papers and this is the Times Online

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1124222741




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Aljazeera.net, Qatar - Nov 29, 2007
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Reuters UK, UK - Nov 29, 2007
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WKYC-TV, OH - Nov 29, 2007
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PRESS TV, Iran - Nov 28, 2007
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KQCA, My58.com, CA - Nov 28, 2007
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AXcess News, KY - Nov 28, 2007
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CBC.ca, Canada - Nov 28, 2007
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KMEG 14, IA - Nov 28, 2007
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Arrests Highlight Illegal Nuclear Trade
The Associated Press - 23 hours ago
BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — The arrests of three men who allegedly tried to sell contraband uranium for $1 million show how a shadowy black market for ...

3 Arrested in Radioactive Sale Bid
ABC News - Nov 28, 2007
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BBC News, UK - Nov 28, 2007
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B92, Serbia - 10 hours ago
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Wheeling Intelligencer, WV - 17 hours ago
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People's Daily Online, China - 20 hours ago
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Turkish Press, MI - Nov 29, 2007
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Slovak police say enriched uranium seized
France24, France - Nov 29, 2007
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[malaise]

12. Thanks

Sorry I'm completely cynical these days. Probably all from the same source.

[seemslikeadream]

11. but..........Oh, No! Not another “Uranium Dirty Bomb” Story!

http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2007/11/oh_no_not_another_uranium_dirt.php

Oh, No! Not another “Uranium Dirty Bomb” Story!
According to a recent report from AP, Slovak police arrested people trying to sell highly enriched uranium to undercover agents. According to the police, the material, said to be about a kilogram of uranium, could be used for a dirty bomb. This is a replay of the Podilla case, the so-called “Dirty Bomber,” who was allegedly going to use uranium to make a radiological, or “dirty,” bomb. (The government later dropped reference to the dirty bomb but convicted Podilla on other charges.) I don’t think what the Slovaks have is actually uranium (see below) but, even if it is, dirty bombs are not the problem.

So, people, pay attention: Uranium is not a good dirty bomb material because uranium is not particularly radioactive. I guess because uranium is used to power nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs, people assume it must be highly radioactive. It is not. That is like saying that because coal is used to power furnaces, it must be hot. No, it is just coal, sitting there waiting to get hot when you burn it. But just being coal does not make it hot. The dominant isotope of uranium, U-238, makes up over 99% of natural uranium and has a half-life of about five billion years. That means that if I have a pound of uranium and let is sit and “decay,” or break down into lighter elements, for five billion years, I will have half a pound left. (For comparison, the Earth is about five billion years old.) The lesser isotope, U-235 is 0.7% and has a half life of almost a billion years. This is to say uranium decays very slowly, which is to say it is not very radioactive. One way to think of this is to imagine that, on the day you were born, you swallowed an ounce of uranium and then lived with it inside you until you died and you lived to be 100 years old. Well, in those hundred years, you have lived just two hundred millionths of the half life, so if half of the uranium will decay in a half life, you would expect about one hundred millionth to decay during your lifetime. (The actual math is a bit more complicated because the decay is exponential, not linear, but not far enough different to change the point.) Not a very efficient way to irradiate someone. This is not to say that uranium is harmless. It is very slightly radioactive. In places where the natural rock has uranium in it, houses have higher concentrations of radon and that does have a risk. It is a heavy metal so it is poisonous, just as lead, mercury, cadmium and many other heavy metals are poisonous, but there are far more dangerous radioactive materials in common use in industry that could be used as dirty bomb material.

When the Podilla case came out, FAS did some calculations on the quantities needed to make a dirty bomb using various radioactive materials. Note that to make a large “dirty” bomb using uranium, tons of uranium are required. The greatest danger from uranium from such a device would be having large chunks of uranium metal fall on your head.

As of now (Friday morning) I think the most likely explanation for the Slovak case is that some crooks were trying to scam someone. I don’t think the sample is actually uranium. The Slovak police released a photo of the radiation detector, which I got from the AP. The story from Slovakia makes no sense. You can see photos of the detector and get some specs here. As far as I can tell, it is only a little 2x2” hand held sodium iodide detector. One output on the detector reading is “Bq,” which stands for Becquerels, which is one nuclear disintegration or decay per second. Since the detector is just a hand held device and I don’t know how far the detector is from the source of radioactivity, there is no way it can measure the number of decays so I am guessing that what number really means the number of detected gamma rays. Anyway, I have a table here that tells me that the specific activity of U-238 is 12,445 Bq/g. So if I divide that into the number on the detector, 4.89 x 10^9, I get close to 400kg of uranium. I have to multiply that amount by some large number because the detector is seeing only a small fraction of the total radiation. In addition, the ratios of the U-235 and U-238 do not make sense for any conceivable sample of uranium. Obviously I can’t be sure unless I had the sample and a lab but my suspicion is that someone spiked some material with tiny amounts of some much more radioactive material specifically to fool this detector and hoped to sell it to some gullible person.