Slovak 'nuclear plot'

Slovak 'nuclear plot'

news.bbc.co.uk

Police in Slovakia and Hungary have arrested three people for allegedly trying to sell 1kg (2.2lb) of radioactive material, officials said.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Radioactive material is pretty vague, but 1kg could easily be enough to do a dirty bomb. Alltough effectivity of a such weapon is highly questionable, it would certainly have serius psychological effect to general population. There are allso several ties between slovak criminal elements and global arms trafficers.

news.bbc.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

Reuters

[edit on 28-11-2007 by northwolf]

Slovakian news agency SITA has reported that the material was ENRICHED URANIUM, Slovakian police has so far refused to comment about the exact nature of the radioactive material.

HS - In Finnish

And they caught this transaction...makes you wonder how many have slipped through already.

Or, perhaps, this is the first one they've intercepted and told us about, which begs the question, why, at this time, are they telling us?

Fear mongering?

Well until they say where this stuff was heading can't be to sure what their intention was specifically. Though the obvious one is the weren't looking to make peaceful energy.

BBC

The suspects had just under 500g (17.6 ounces) of uranium in powder, senior police official Michal Kopcik said.

So they had "somewhat" enriched uranium, not weapons grade, but still way more radioactive than materials in common industrial use.

The material that was confiscated has been confirmed as Uranium-235. U235 is used in both nuclear reactors and weapons.