Smuggled Radioactivity

 

 

Alarm was raised over international nuclear smuggling last week when Slovak police announced that they have arrested three men in Slovakia and Hungary, in a joint operation with Hungarian Police, who were purportedly trying to sell a kilogram of radioactive substance. Police officials declined to divulge details of the radioactive substance, but maintained that it has been sent for assessment. The setting up of the operation suggested that the substance had been smuggled from the former Soviet Union, either Russia or Ukraine. Slovak police added that the detained men had been attempting to sell the radioactive material for one million dollars.

Meanwhile, Slovak authorities told journalists that the intelligence agencies in Slovakia and Hungary had been monitoring the activities of the supposed nuclear traders for several months before striking them. They were detained in eastern Slovakia and eastern Hungary, near their common borders with Ukraine. Eastern Slovakia’s border with Ukraine is the European Union’s easternmost limit, and authorities have exhausted millions tightening security in the past few years. However, this not the first time such arrests have been made. In 1997, two men were arrested in Novosibirsk, Russia, for allegedly stealing 11 pounds of enriched uranium from a plant in Kazakhstan and trying to smuggle it to Pakistan or China. Talking to TSI, Pavel Podvig, a non-proliferation expert at Centre for International Security and Cooperation, said: “Two pounds of enriched uranium alone would not pose an immense threat but the fact that individuals may be able to get their hands on it should be cause for alarm. The major threat is that it appears that people can still obtain a kilogram of uranium, of some degree of enrichment.”

His concerns are genuine. Reports published by several monitoring agencies have raised concern over the proliferation of nuclear regimes. The IAEA reported in August that there were more than 250 reported thefts or losses of nuclear material around the world in 2006, an increase of about 200 percent from 2002.