Customs in the southern Russian city of Orenburg have seized a container with 37 kilograms of depleted uranium heading to Kazakhstan
Published:
30 January 2005 y., Sunday
Customs in the southern Russian city of Orenburg have seized a container with 37 kilograms of depleted uranium heading to Kazakhstan, the RIA-Novosti news agency reported on Friday.
The agency cited the chief customs inspector in charge of media relations, Maksim Prytkov, as saying that the container had been detected by a special radioactivity sensor installed at the customs post. The car was searched and the metal container with 37 kilograms of uranium-238 was found.
Curiously, the container was mentioned in the customs declaration as a sports weight. The owner said he had found it in a dump and used it as a training weight for some time. A criminal case has been instigated.
Uranium-238 cannot be used to produce nuclear weapons, but it is a radioactive and highly toxic substance that can be used to make a so-called “dirty bomb” and also can be enriched to produce weapons-grade plutonium-239.
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