Nuclear bomb material found for sale on Georgia black market

Guardian ^ | 11/7/10 | Julian Borger

[Nachum]

Exclusive: Georgia trial reveals how sting netted highly enriched uranium that had been smuggled via train inside lead-lined cigarette box

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 (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it 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 about the case 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. But investigators have given the Guardian an exclusive first-hand account of the case.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

THAT Georgia!

Here I thought we were going to have an interesting second amendment case. ;o\

[Bean Counter]

Hoo boy! I hate to say it’s only a matter of time....

[steveab]

You can get anything you want on ebay Georgia.

[Rebelbase]

No articles from Georgia USA could contain titles with “Black Market” without producing racism uproars.

[DBrow]

I’m skeeptical. The article states that HEU is not terribly hot- which is true for DU, but 20% U235 is quite a bit hotter. Chances are that this is DU.

If it’s not, the main use for HEU in small quantities is for cross-section research. You are not going to make a nuclear explosive with 20% enriched material.

[aruanan]

but 20% U235 is quite a bit hotter. Chances are that this is DU.

Light water nuclear reactors have fuel rods that are only 4% enriched with U235.

The amount of U235 in depleted uranium is about 0.2 to 0.3 weight-percent. So something that is 20% U235 is five times (500% ) hotter than fuel rods and 100 times (10,000%) hotter than depleted uranium. And when you consider that 0.2 weight-percent U235 in depleted uranium is about 30% of what it was in its naturally occurring form, something that is 20% U235 is highly enriched.

[Tennessean4Bush]

Atlanta? Athens?

[DBrow]

I agree, except on one point, DU has almost no U235.

Many of these “nuclear smuggling” articles are alarmist and fearmongering, I usually take them with more than 1/7000 of a pound of sodium chloride.

Most of these articles treat anything radioactive as highly enriched uranium, like initial shooting reports in the USA involve automatic weapons and multiple shooters.

[The Comedian]

Nuclear Terror ping.

Frowning takes 68 muscles.
Smiling takes 6.
Pulling this trigger takes 2.
I'm lazy.

[DBrow]

Well, Wikipedia has U235 at the levels you mention, in DU. I had seen numbers in ppm that were much lower, but I guess I was wrong.
Does this make me a DUmmie? lol

[Quix]

Evidently a bit of confirmation of webbot predictions:

Ping to Original Post.

[aruanan]

Did you click on the link I provided? It has a lot of interesting information on uranium at all stages of refinement.

[DBrow]

I once used DU bricks for a shielding application, and the amount of 235 was given in ppm, and that was not a large number (150?). These may have been special, or the assay was wrong (which I doubt because the assay was important). It was something to work with blocks the size of Wonder Bread sandwiches that weighed ~25 pounds! They read out at 5 mREM/hour at contact with a standard 25 mm Geiger probe on a Ludlum, which in the ambient I was in, was quite low enough.

Thanks for the link, I have it and it’s useful.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[aruanan]

They read out at 5 mREM/hour at contact with a standard 25 mm Geiger probe on a Ludlum, which in the ambient I was in, was quite low enough.

You probably stimulated your DNA repair mechanisms very adequately through radiation hormesis.

[DBrow]

I dislike the linear damage model, and think that hormesis is real, at least in mice!

And if not, it’s at least comforting to think about while surrounded by yellow-and-magenta signs with that purple beacon just waiting.

[aruanan]

The guy in charge of radiation safety at Woods Hole told me that there were very few things they had there that would actually do some real damage to you. I think P-35 was one of them (maybe I-125 and some form of radioactive Fe). He said that even in a worst case scenario there wasn’t a lot of actual danger even though the regulations for handling all the stuff made it seem like there was.