#12 - RW 262
San Francisco Chronicle
June 17, 2003
Raid in Georgia triggers 'dirty bomb' fears
Police seize radioactive materials
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer

Moscow -- In a sign that the clandestine market in nuclear materials is thriving despite the war on terrorism, police in the former Soviet republic of Georgia seized two metal containers filled with radioactive material that could be used to make a so-called dirty bomb, Georgian authorities said Monday.

The containers, which held cesium-137 and strontium-90, were discovered during a raid near the country's capital, Tbilisi, on May 31, Russia's Ria- Novosti news agency reported. Police also found a glass capsule containing Yprite, or mustard gas, Reuters reported. A chemical used in World War I, mustard gas causes blindness, blistering of the skin and lungs and, often, painful and slow death.

The deadly substances were found in boxes with writing in Russian and English in the back of a taxi headed for Tbilisi's central train station, Ria- Novosti reported. The taxi driver, who told investigators he was unaware of his dangerous cargo, said he was supposed to turn over the boxes to two men at the train station.

Police released the taxi driver but said they had arrested two men on charges of plotting to traffic the radioactive material to Adzharia, a district in southern Georgia on the border with Turkey.

"The most likely version is that the containers were intended to be transported on to Turkey and to be resold," police spokesman Givi Mgebrishvili told a news conference in Tbilisi.

Strontium-90, a radioactive substance used in small quantities in Soviet- made generators as power sources in remote areas, and cesium-137, commonly found inside X-ray machines and in spent nuclear fuel, cannot be fashioned into a nuclear bomb, the way highly enriched uranium would. But if attached to a conventional explosive, these radioactive materials could be turned into one of the most feared terrorist weapons since the September 11, 2001, attacks: a "dirty bomb."

These bombs, which combine conventional explosives and radioactive material,

are capable of producing a dangerous blast and long-lasting radiation effects.

Mustard gas in such a bomb would make the effects of the fallout even more deadly and frightening.

"You could . . . blow it all over the place, make a whole lot of people ill and thousands more very scared," said Charles Digges, a researcher for a

Norwegian environmentalist group, Bellona Foundation.

BBC reported that the boxes contained three curies of cesium and 12 microcuries of strontium. Even a tiny fraction of a curie of strontium, if inhaled or ingested, can cause cancer.

Digges suggested that the detained suspects might have wanted to sell the containers to rebels in the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya, whose border with Georgia, just north of the remote Pankisi Gorge, is porous. The United States and Russia contend that Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist group have gathered in Pankisi.

Chechen rebels, who are locked with Russia in a nine-year conflict that has killed thousands on both sides, have repeatedly stated their eagerness to obtain and use nuclear materials for terrorist purposes. In 1995, rebel leader Shamil Basayev planted a container holding cesium-137 in a Moscow park and then tipped off Russian reporters.

Safety measures at Soviet nuclear warfare facilities in modern-day Russia and its former republics are so lax that last year, a Russian lawmaker accompanied by a television crew walked into the heart of a restricted area in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, where 3,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel are stored.

Security of radioactive substances used in equipment unrelated to the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons programs -- such as X-ray machines or generators -- often is nonexistent, making the former Soviet states a perfect source of "dirty bomb" material.

No one knows how much radioactive material disappears in Russia each year, but Digges said there were "a lot of substandard nuclear thieves" who scavenged hospital equipment and lighthouse batteries for substances they hoped to sell.

They "don't know really the value of what they have, and usually what they have is junk, garbage," Digges said. The suspects in Georgia are "probably also people who don't know what they have and want to sell it to someone like the rebels in Chechnya," he said. "Sooner or later, they will probably turn up at some hospital with their hair falling out."

The boxes of strontium-90 and cesium-137 are not the first containers with radioactive material recovered in Georgia. Eighteen months ago, three hunters gathering firewood in the country's snowy mountain forests stumbled upon two abandoned flashlight-sized canisters of strontium-90 and unwittingly used them to warm up. The hunters suffered severe burns and later died from the exposure.

The largest known seizure of nuclear weapons-grade uranium from the former Soviet Union was also in Georgia, where police arrested three men in 2001 who they said were trying to sell nearly four pounds of uranium-235 to buyers in Turkey.

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