News
Publish date: January 30, 2007
News
Georgia announced last week that in February 2006 a Russian citizen was arrested and jailed for trying to sell 100 grams of highly enriched uranium-235 to Islamist extremists. Russia called the announcement a provocative act.
Documents from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) seen by Reuters suggested the uranium may have come from the Russian city of Novosibirsk in Siberia. “The Russian Prosecutor-General has asked for copies of documents (from Georgia) to start checks, and to consider launching a criminal case on the illegal purchase and holding of radioactive substances,” the spokesman said.
Highly enriched uranium in big enough quantities can be used to make a nuclear bomb.
A senior Georgian government official told Reuters yesterday a similar nuclear smuggling case occurred in 2003. Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior ministry’s information and analytical section, said border guards then caught an Armenian man trying to smuggle 170 grams of highly enriched uranium-235 across the Armenia-Georgia border. “According to our information the uranium was bought from Russia,” he said. Utiashvili said the man was handed over to the Armenian police but he was unaware what had happened to him after that.
Throughout the past year, our mission at the Bellona Environmental Transparency Center has focused on two key, but intertwined issues—nuclear and radiation safety as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine drags on, and the worldwide influence of Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, which itself is actively involved in the war and has participated in the occupation of a Ukrainian nuclear power plant.
At the beginning of the year, reports in the German and Russian press suggested an approximate 70% increase in uranium imports from Russia to Germany in 2024. But does this reflect broader European trends? It does not. Overall, imports of uranium and nuclear fuel from Russia to Western countries actually dropped sharply in 2024. Unlike the situation in Germany, this is already an established trend.
A Lingen, Germany plant could begin producing nuclear fuel in cooperation with a subsidiary of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear corporation, which is directly involved in the war in Ukraine and occupying the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
In this news digest, we monitor events that impact the environment in the Russian Arctic. Our focus lies in identifying the factors that contribute to pollution and climate change.