Word: uranium
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YUGOSLAVIA Uranium Traces U.N. scientists said they had found areas in Serbia and Montenegro where the soil and air is still contaminated by depleted uranium, three years after nato bombing in the region. The U.N. Environment Program said there was a risk of groundwater contamination from five sites in the Presevo Valley and at Cape Arza...
...gathered at the roadside cafe southeast of Moscow last Thursday did not go there for the food. They went there for the uranium. Some of the men, members of the Balashikha criminal gang, claimed to be in possession of 2 lbs. of uranium 235, the kind of top-shelf radioactive material that can be used to build weapons. They were asking $30,000 for the deadly merchandise. The others--the buyers--seemed prepared to pay it. The deal may actually have gone off had Russian security forces not been watching. They swept in, arrested all six men and were...
...that evening, the case--the first officially acknowledged theft in Russia of weapons-grade uranium--was getting big play on local TV. The Russian police had reason to be proud; the rest of the world had one more reason to be nervous...
...Russian government alone lists up to 200 terrorist organizations it believes may be trying to obtain nuclear material. In Istanbul last month, Turkish undercover officers arrested two smugglers who attempted to sell them more than 2.5 lbs. of non-weapons grade uranium for $750,000. In July police in Paris raided an apartment in which three men were holding a small quantity of highly enriched uranium and plane tickets to various East European countries...
...sources say vodka and drugs flow freely among the workers, most of whom earn barely 3,000 rubles a month--about $100. Poorly paid, highly inebriated men make a shabby line of defense against terrorists and traffickers. Vaclav Havlik, a Czech citizen who was part of a group of uranium smugglers arrested near Munich in 1994, told TIME that obtaining material from Russia was no great chore. "It was like going for vacation by the sea and bringing back a sack of shells," he says...