Police: Thwarted sale involved uranium

[420inTN]

Source: AP via Yahoo

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia - Two Hungarians and a Ukrainian arrested in an attempted sale of uranium were peddling material believed to be from the former Soviet Union that was enriched enough to be used in a radiological "dirty bomb," authorities said Thursday.

The three, who were arrested Wednesday in eastern Slovakia and Hungary, were trying to sell just under a pound of uranium in powder form, said 1st Police Vice President Michal Kopcik.

"It was possible to use it in various ways for terrorist attacks," Kopcik said.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071129/ap_on_re_eu/nuclear_arrests

[Eurobabe]

1. Forget Iran, Bomb Slovakia and Hungary!

Come on Bushler, get your priorities straight! :sarcasm:

[truthisfreedom]

2. A bit of good news this holiday season.

[Ian David]

3. The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (Pu-239) (2006)

The Half Life of Timofey Berezin (Pu-239) (2006)

description written by member Ben:

A distinctly Russian cocktail of high drama and low comedy in which a nuclear plant worker, dying from radiation poisoning, mistakenly depends on an inept Moscow low-life to sell some purloined plutonium.

More:
http://www.matchflick.com/flicks/18314

[Sirveri]

4. numerous mistakes in the article.

Weapons grade is 40% or better, and I know of only one place where they use U235 enriched to 98.6%. Except that the Russians don't use it, the US does.

Also, how did they determine the enrichment level?
Also I'm not 100% sure how much uranium is required to make a nuclear warhead, however in this case with it being so highly enriched I doubt it is the ammount that they think it is. It's probably less.

[melm00se]

5. Enriched Uranium Seized in Slovakia Suitable for Dirty Bomb

Source: Deutsche-Welle

Slovakian police arrested three traffickers near the Hungarian border who were smuggling almost half a kilo (1 pound) of enriched uranium that could be used for making a "dirty bomb," officials said on Thursday, Nov. 30.

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

A dirty bomb refers to a weapon in which radioactive material is packed with conventional explosives and scattered over a wide area upon detonation.

Read more: http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2978519,00.html

[xchrom]

6. well at least the source reporting this is DW. nt

[TheWraith]

7. Even assuming this story is true, which I'm far from convinced of...

This is pretty sloppy journalism. Enriched uranium wouldn't be worth crap in a "dirty bomb" because its radiation release is extremely low. Even more so, such a small amount. Even ten or twenty pounds of a highly radioactive substance would only produce marginal contamination over the blast area of a bomb.

[mlevans]

8. Well, to paraphrase a former Secretary of Defense...

you go to make dirty bombs with the radioactive material you have, not the radioactive material you wish you had.

[montana_hazeleyes]

14. LOL mlevans! n/t

[Blair lied...]

9. Only an idiot would use 1lb of enriched uranium for a dirty bomb.

At $2,205 per gram this would be wasteful and ineffective.

No doubt you know that the radioactive half-life of an element is inversely proportional to the intensity of its radiation. The half life of U-235 is 704 million years. That would be one of the weakest dirty bombs you could build.

Why fool around with a mildly radioactive material that is over 85 times more expensive than gold when you can use an easily obtainable and far more radioactive material like cobalt-60?

BTW, cobalt-60 has a half-life of 5.3 years and its a beta and gamma ray emitter. Its radiation is so intense that its used to sterilize surgical instruments, lab apparatus and various other things. This material can also be quite easily stolen from hospitals, universities and industrial sites.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Thanks for fact-checking, and welcome to DU!

:hi:

[Blair lied...]

11. Thanks for the welcome.

Of course, this stuff about an enriched Uranium dirty bomb is just scaremongering because such a bomb would be an ineffective weapon. If you were going to spend a million dollars on a terrorist attack there are far better ways to spend the money.

The Department of Energy studied the most likely dirty bombing scenarios and they found that in order for someone to receive a dangerous dose of the isotope they would have to stay put within the contaminated area for a year after witnessing the blast!

OTOH, if I was an unscrupulous criminal in the former Soviet Union I'd be looking for one of these:



These are Soviet RTGs (radioisotope thermoelectric generators) in dilapidated and vandalized condition, powered by Strontium-90, which is more toxic to the body and far more radioactive than U-235.

The Soviet Union constructed many unmanned lighthouses and navigation beacons powered by RTGs. Leakage or theft of the radioactive material could pass unnoticed for years, or possibly forever, (some of these lighthouses cannot be found because of poor record keeping). There has even been an instance where one was opened by a thief; it was inferred that the resulting radiation poisoning was fatal. There was also the case of two woodcutters in Siberia who came across one of these units and slept close to it as a heat source during a cold night. They both died of radiation poisoning within a few days afterwards. That unit was eventually recovered and isolated.

There are approximately 1,000 such RTGs in Russia.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Holy crap! Sr-90 as a *commodity* ? Soviet planning at its finest!

PS: The welcome is a little DU tradition. The traditional Ambush Wedgie will come later.

[Sabriel]

13. Amateurs. Why don't they buy it on Amazon like everyone else?

How much do they need?

Here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_e/002-4593725-7271230?url=search-alias%3Delectronics&field-keywords=uranium+ore&x=0&y=0