Kyrgyzstan: Authorities Seize Radioactive Material Bound For Iran

RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty ^ | January 10, 2008

[nuconvert]

“shipping a bucket-full of low-level radioactive medical waste is not deserving of international notice.”

Ordinarily, maybe not. And this may turn out to be nothing.
But Iran has been caught several times trying to import very large sums of things like alarms that contain very small amounts of radioactive material and other such seemingly insignificant shipments. There was also an Iranian plane identified as carrying radioactive material which was shadowed by fighter jets over Czech republic about 2 months ago.
When it comes to Iran, any radioactive materials headed for the country deserve attention.

[The Pack Knight]

Wow, thank God for the Uzbeks!

[JasonC]

Cs 137 is a signature of nuclear reactor waste. Or in lesser quantities, nuclear testing or fallout, but nearly all of it in existence is a byproduct of spent reactor fuel. It has a 30 year half life and some medical (treating cancer) and industrial (photoelectric cell) uses, but is mostly a dangerous waste byproduct.

This was likely a shipment of nuclear reactor fuel, either to dump it or because the Iranians were interested in reprocessing it. All spent fuel has some plutonium in it, which can be extracted chemically (much easier that refining chemically identical U-235 out of relatively inert U-238).

[SatinDoll]

In reading your post the thought came to me: if everyone knows Iran wants radioactive material, maybe they are buying sight unseen.

Wouldn’t surpise me at all if black marketers were stealing the mullahs blind!