Putin leaves Kazakhstan without deal to build nuclear plant
A visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
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Publish date: September 21, 1997
Written by: Thomas Nilsen
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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 visit last week by Vladimir Putin and a Kremlin entourage to Astana, Kazakhstan sought in part to put Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, on good footing with local officials.
Russia is formally withdrawing from a landmark environmental agreement that channeled billions in international funding to secure the Soviet nuclear legacy, leaving undone some of the most radioactively dangerous projects and burning one more bridge of potential cooperation with the West.
While Moscow pushes ahead with major oil, gas and mining projects in the Arctic—bringing more pollution to the fragile region—the spoils of these undertakings are sold to fuel Russia’s war economy, Bellona’s Ksenia Vakhrusheva told a side event at the COP 29, now underway in Baku, Azerbaijan.
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.