Nuclear bomb material found for sale on Georgia black market

[Turborama]

Source: The Observer (UK)

High enriched uranium which could be used to make a nuclear bomb is on sale on the black market along the fringes of the former Soviet Union, according to evidence emerging from a secret trial in Georgia.

At the centre of the case are two Armenians, a businessman called Sumbat Tonoyan and a physicist, Hrant Ohanyan. Both have pleaded guilty to smuggling highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia in March, stashing it in a lead-lined package on a train from Yerevan to Tbilisi.

Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili informed other heads of state of the sting operation at a nuclear summit in Washington in April, but no details about the case have been made public until now. The trial has been conducted behind closed doors, Georgian officials say, to protect the operational secrecy of the country's counter-proliferation unit.

But investigators have given the Guardian an exclusive first-hand account of the case.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/07/nuclear-material-black-market-georgia

[glinda]

1. american terrorists at work again

[TheWraith]

2. What the hell is that supposed to mean? nt

[CLANG]

3. She must have meant Armenian

[TheWraith]

4. No, I'm sure she misread it.

But some people are just so ready to bash anything that they can't be bothered to stop and read.

[CLANG]

5. You could be right... sadly.

[FailureToCommunicate]

6. Watch "Countdown to Zero" - this sort of news should not surprise us. Or that

we are STILL on a hair trigger alert for nuclear launch code use! Or that there have been over 45 accidents in the last few years -that they've discovered so far. There is plenty more to lose sleep over!

Graham Allison and others have been warning the White House and Congress for years about loose nukes.

This issue will "simmer" only so long.