A radiant black market

On the 13 October the Bavarian police seized 2.2kg of uranium and arrested a group of seven people who had offered to sell it for $500.000. The existence of a black market for uranium may be a proliferation risk but it is not a serious health hazard - even if the material is negligently packed, as it seems to have been in all the recent cases. The situation is quite different when it comes to dealing with highly radioactive materials such as fission productions. Two such cases have been reported this summer involving Cs-137 and Sr-90, both emitters of hard beta rays. Little is known about the provenance of the radioactive and fissile material discovered. Obviously it originates from the ex-USSR, and the absence of highly enriched material suggests a civil rather than a military source. The governments of ex-Soviet states have apparently tried to intercept smugglers at their western frontiers, but have so far been unable to pinpoint the breaches in their security. It is also uncertain whether the occurrences discovered and reported are merely the tip of an iceberg. (author)