Bellona nuclear digest. March 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
News
Publish date: September 21, 1997
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
News
The police seized the stolen uranium after they detained a gang suspected of trying to sell the highly radioactive substance, according to Interfax news agency. Several times the gang had tried to offer the uranium to prospective buyers in Moscow, the Baltic states and elsewhere. The uranium-238 was kept in a metal cylinder inside a lead isolator. Uranium-238 can be used to produce nuclear bombs by scientists with the bomb-developing know-how.
The police investigators also seized two jars containing highly toxic red mercury-oxide weighing about 2 kilograms. Red mercury is also belived to be a substance for developing small nuclear devices, like those suitcase-sized nuclear bombs former Russian security advisor Alexandr Lebed a week ago claimed that Moscow had lost the track of.
The police says to Interfax that the uranium comes from the federal nuclear research center in Sarov (former Arzamas-16), from where a container went missing in 1994. On september 16th, employees and scientists of the center startet protest actions because of the state’s salary-debt to the center. They claimed that the center is in a catastrophic position and its safety jeopardized, because of poor financing.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has told the United Nations atomic energy watchdog that Russia plans to restart Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, currently occupied by Russian troops and technicians, fueling worries about a serious nuclear accident on the front lines of a grinding military conflict.
Wednesday, April 10, 2024 | Brussels, Belgium – Today, the European Parliament approved the newly revised Construction Products regulation (CPR)...
Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.