by Ian Yates

Created on: December 01, 2007   Last Updated: December 02, 2007

Nearly half a kilogramme of enriched uranium has been recovered by Slovakian police near the Hungarian border. The 482 grammes of uranium was found to have contained 98.6 per-cent of weapons grade uranium-235 which could have been used by terrorists to make a dirty bomb for a major and catastrophic attack anywhere in the world.

The uranium would not have been able to be used in a nuclear bomb on its own due to the insufficient quantities but would have created a devastating dirty weapon causing massive casualities if used in a built up area not just from any explosion created by the terrorist but also from the ensuing spread of the isotope.

A dirty bomb uses conventional explosives such as TNT, semtex or a homemade device to blast the radioactive isotopes over as wide an area as possible, rendering it unusable until special measures are used to sanitize the area. These radio-active particles distributed by such a weapon would cause major problems for authorities as they struggle to clean up the affected areas, and the ensuing panic spread throughout the world from such a device would be a dream to many terrorists.

This is not the first time Slovakian police have intercepted the trafficking of uranium, in 2004 two former Slovakian army officers were arrested after trying to sell 3 kilogrammes of Uranium-235 at a price of $3500 a gramme. In both cases the interested buyers have not been arrested and it is unknown if they were both conducted as sting operations to trap the traffickers.

Uranium-235 is a naturally existing ore and is mined in large quantities in the neighbouring country of Kazakhstan, to make it suitable for use in the nuclear industry it has to be seperated into its two isotopes of 238 (non fissile) and the 235 enriched isotope.

Many people believe it is only a matter of time before a dirty bomb is exploded in a built up area, and with nearly 40,000 metric tons of uranium mined in 2006 it is a sure bet that some of that will have made its way into the hands of the international terrorist. This seizure surely was only the tip of the iceberg.

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