nuclear-news

Continuing issue of smuggling of Highly Enriched Uranium

The Georgian ministry of interior has foiled eight attempts of illicit trafficking of enriched uranium during the last ten years, including several cases of weapons-grade enrichment.”

Nuclear Smuggling in the Former Soviet Union, THE HUFFINGTON POST, Rizwan Ladha , 4 Aug 2010, “……..In 2006, a North Ossetian man named Oleg Khintsagov (sometimes spelled Khinsagov) was arrested for selling 100 grams of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to an undercover Georgian official. He was sentenced to 7 years in prison. An excellent detailed report of the entire episode (in PDF format) is available from the Belfer Center here, and is covered briefly in the new feature film,  Countdown to Zero.

But just in June, it was announced in the Georgian Daily that Khintsagov would receive a presidential pardon that would drop the last two years of his sentence, effectively ending his imprisonment sometime in January or February 2011.

Dr. Matt Bunn, one of the principal investigators at the Project on Managing the Atom where I’m working this summer, and who is featured in Countdown to Zero, was quoted in the Georgian Daily article:

Matthew Bunn, a specialist on nuclear theft and terrorism at Harvard University, called Khintsagov’s early release not uncommon, but nonetheless troubling. “One of the key things to stop nuclear smuggling is to try and deter people from getting into nuclear smuggling. … Anything that decreases the consequences is a concern,” Bunn said.

Which brings me to a very interesting statistic, offered up in April of this year by Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC…..The Georgian ministry of interior has foiled eight attempts of illicit trafficking of enriched uranium during the last ten years, including several cases of weapons-grade enrichment.” …Rizwan Ladha: Nuclear Smuggling in the Former Soviet Union

August 5, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | EUROPE, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Uranium | antinuclear, enriched, nuclear secrecy, nuclear wastes, radiation, radioactive, uranium