[ RadSafe ] re: News Report

[Joel C.]

Here's an update from the NYTimes:

Ukraine Says 3 Tried to Sell Bomb Material


By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

Published: April 14, 2009 


MOSCOW — The metal cylinder supposedly contained eight pounds of plutonium 239, a highly dangerous radioactive material that could be used in a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb. The price: $10 million, sought by three Ukrainian men, officials said Tuesday.

The men did not make a sale, the officials said, but were arrested in an undercover operation in Ukraine last week that was conducted by the Ukrainian Security Service. Still, while the plot was foiled, it underscored longstanding concerns that unsecured radioactive material in the former Soviet Union might fall into the wrong hands.

Marina Ostapenko, a spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Security Service, said it had turned out that the radioactive material was not plutonium 239. A preliminary analysis indicated that the material was most likely americium, a much more common and less potent radioactive material, Ms. Ostapenko said in a telephone interview from Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

She said americium could be deployed in a dirty bomb but not in a nuclear weapon.

“They wanted to sell it as plutonium,” she said. “They were asking for $10 million for it because they thought that it was plutonium.” ... 




Joel I. Cehn, CHP
Oakland, California
joelc at alum.wpi.edu