03rd
January 2008
In
a troubling disclosure, the Russian Federal Customs
Service has revealed that authorities thwarted more than
850 attempts to smuggle highly radioactive materials in
and out of Russia in 2007. Eighty-five percent of these
smuggling attempts were going into the country, and 15
percent were going out.
The
figures are likely to fuel fears about how many illegal
exports were not detected, and what the potential
dangers of such radioactive materials can be. In
December last year, police in Slovakia arrested three
people, who were attempting to sell 2.2 pounds of
uranium for $1 million. Meanwhile, Britain continues to
demand the extradition of Russian MP, Andrei Lugovoi,
the prime suspect in the poisoning of former KGB
officer, Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed with
radioactive polonium-210 in London in November 2006.
Radioactive materials are not hard to come by in the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). During the
Soviet era, more than 15 different agencies had access
to radioactive materials, from the Ministry of Geology
to Metallurgy. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union,
there is little knowledge of where all these radioactive
materials ended up.
In
addition, following the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in
1986, there is still a large piece of contaminated land
which has not been fenced off. Vladimir Chuprov, who
heads the energy section of Russian Greenpeace, told ABC
News that a significant part of confiscated radioactive
materials come from this area.
"Part of
what is brought in comes from Chernobyl and the zone
around Chernobyl," he said. "If there was no Chernobyl,
there would be no problem with radioactive materials."
Pavel
Felgenhauer, a Moscow-based military analyst, told ABC
News that a blackmarket for radioactive materials does
exist in Russia but that it is not very serious and does
not pose any great risk.
"What
happens quite often is that those involved sell the
stuff to each other -- and often to the criminal
underworld. This is radioactive material -- not nuclear,
not enriched plutonium and nothing to do with nuclear
weapons."
Chuprov
though cautions against dismissing the danger of these
radioactive materials.
"A part
of this material is uranium. It is not nuclear, but
nevertheless it can be enriched to a nuclear level.
Uranium is in demand by terrorist groups," he warned.
According to the Customs Service report,
state-of-the-art, Russian monitoring systems have made
it possible to detect radiation which is higher than the
background level with great precision. The Federal
Customs Service plans to equip all customs posts in the
Russian Federation with this equipment before 2010.
Malcolm
Grimston, an associate fellow on nuclear policy with
Chatham House, told ABC News that it is a good sign that
Russia is raising the issue and talking publicly about
it.
"Russians are very
serious about improving the system," he said. "They are
to be congratulated for that."
