Reuters
December 9

Radioactive material that could potentially be used to make so-called "dirty bombs" has been seized at border posts in Central Asia in the past 12 months, a senior Defense Department official said Monday.

The smuggled material, contaminated metals, was confiscated at checkpoints along the Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan borders, Harlan Strauss, director of International Counterproliferation Programs at the Defense Department, told Reuters.

"It is possible to be reprocessed and to be utilized in a way that radioactive material can be used for a dispersal device or a small weapon to contaminate an area," he said.

Dirty bombs scatter radioactive material using conventional explosive devices.

"There continues to be movement of material across borders which is of concern," Strauss said on the sidelines of a conference on terrorism.

"We have recently, particularly in Central Asia, stopped some shipments of radioactive material exiting the region.

"In this case it was contaminated metals. How radioactive is a question of debate and discussion. Where it was going was unclear because the papers were not legit."

The United States has been concerned since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that instability and economic hardship could prompt low-paid scientific workers to smuggle material that could be used to make nuclear or biological weapons.

Worries that a fundamentalist Islamic group such as al Qaeda could acquire such destructive items have increased hugely since last September's attacks on the United States.

Over the past decade at least 88 pounds (40 kg) of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium has been stolen from poorly protected nuclear facilities in the former Soviet Union, according to a report published by Stanford University's Institute for International Studies earlier this year.

While most of this material was subsequently retrieved, at least 4.4 pounds of highly enriched uranium stolen from a reactor in Georgia remains missing.

In Russia, U.S.-funded radiation detectors installed at eight border crossings have detected more than 275 cases involving contaminated scrap metal, irradiated cargo and other radioactive materials that could pose a proliferation concern, a General Accounting Office official told a U.S. congressional committee in October.

The United States has spent about $86 million to help about 30 countries, mostly in the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe, combat the threat of smuggling of nuclear and other metals that could be used in weapons of mass destruction.

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