HIGHLY ENRICHED uranium that could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia.
Two Armenians, a businessman and a physicist, have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium into Georgia in March, in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi.
Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, informed other heads of state of the sting operation at a nuclear summit in Washington in April, but no details have been made public until now. The trial has been conducted behind closed doors to protect the operational secrecy of Georgia’s counter-proliferation unit, officials said.
It reveals the critical ingredient for making a nuclear warhead is available on the black market, and is reasonably easy to smuggle past expensive US-funded radiation sensors along the borders of the former Soviet Union. What is not clear is how much nuclear material is in circulation, and whether any has been bought by extremists.
The US has made the prevention of nuclear terrorism its national security priority. Barack Obama persuaded 50 world leaders to pledge to secure all nuclear material within four years.
Billions have been spent upgrading security at nuclear sites around the globe, particularly in Russia, which has an estimated 700 tonnes of highly enriched uranium in hundreds of facilities. But it is unclear how much has already been stolen.
“The question is: of what iceberg are we seeing the tip?” said Matthew Bunn, a Harvard expert and former White House science adviser, who compiles an annual assessment, titled Securing the Bomb.
The uranium sample Sumbat Tonoyan and Hrant Ohanyan were peddling is thought to have been stolen several years ago.
US tests have confirmed it is 89.4 per cent enriched, usable in a nuclear warhead. The two Armenians only had 18 grams, but had been told much more was available. They brought it into Georgia in a cigarette box lined with lead to fool the radiation sensors.
Tonoyan and Ohanyan had arranged to meet their buyer in the Georgian capital on March 11th. They thought they were selling to a representative of an Islamist group as a precursor to a bigger consignment. But the buyer was an undercover police officer.
It is the third time in seven years that highly enriched uranium has been intercepted in Georgia. There have been 21 seizures or attempted thefts of weapons-grade material, uranium or plutonium since the Soviet Union collapsed. The material taken was not missed in each case, and most of the thefts were carried out by insiders.
“Accounting rules in the Soviet Union were not designed with an internal threat in mind,” said Elena Sokova, of the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
“Most likely, the materials were stolen in the mid- or early 1990s when a big amount of material disappeared,” said Archil Pavlenishvili, head of Georgia’s radioactive materials investigation team. “We think that the game is not over. There will be more attempts.” – (Guardian service)