Word: gramming
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...days later, at a railway station in Bremen, a 34-year-old German man was arrested trying to peddle a sample of plutonium to a journalist acting for the police. The seller had only a very tiny amount, .05 gram, but of such startling purity that experts said it probably came from a top-of-the-line Russian nuclear laboratory. Senior officials in Moscow reacted defensively, insisting that all their plutonium was accounted for and safely under guard. The accusation from Germany, blustered Deputy Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeni Mikenin, "is a provocation of the purest water...
...world's first notice that weapons-grade plutonium was on the open market came in southern Germany last May, when 6 grams were found in a garage owned by a German businessman who had been arrested for counterfeiting. That was followed in June by recovery of less than a gram of highly enriched uranium -- probably fuel from a nuclear-powered submarine -- in Landshut. Even if all + this smuggled booty were put together, there would not be enough for the smallest and crudest atom bomb, which in the hands of inexperienced makers would take about 8 kg of plutonium...
...fourth seizure in a widening scandal traced to ex-military contacts in the former Soviet Union. Last weekend police arrested other couriers who arrived on a flight from Moscow. They were carrying more than 10.6 oz. of plutonium-239, a substance so toxic that a few millionths of a gram can kill. Another seizure netted 4 kg, the largest amount ever discovered in private hands. Though German analyses reportedly show that all the plutonium came from the former Soviet Union, red-faced officials in Moscow today denied it, claiming "no leak" had been detected. Unconvinced, Chancellor Helmut Kohl plans...
There are staggering profits to be made selling Russia's precious metals, especially those mined or produced by MINATOM. These include internationally restricted materials like boron 10, which is used in reactor control rods, and osmium 187, a nonradioactive isotope that can sell for more than $100,000 a gram. International trade in other, less exotic materials, such as zirconium, beryllium and hafnium, is controlled by nuclear nonproliferation agreements...
...experts say, there has been only one credible case in which a gram or more of weapons-grade material was stolen; within the past year, an employee at a nuclear-fuel research facility near Moscow made off with three pounds of highly enriched uranium. Though he was later arrested and the uranium recovered, officials in Moscow are alarmed enough by continuing attempts that they have called for international monitoring of the nuclear trade. In the absence of adequate controls, proliferation is only a matter of time. "So far," says William Potter of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, "we have...