And here I was thinking radioactive materials only got smuggled OUT of Russia. Aparently not:
Russian police detained a South Korean citizen on suspicion of smuggling radioactive materials into the Russian Far East, news outlets reported.
Itar-Tass news agency cited prosecutors as saying the man, Kim Jong-hon, worked for a South Korean firm.
RIA Novosti news agency said Kim’s detention followed the seizure of 13 devices containing radioactive material this month in the port of Korsakov.
RIA said the devices contained low-enriched uranium-238, a highly toxic material used in ammunition and armor plating.
Maybe he was just using the stuff to keep warm. Wonder if the IAEA will find this curious as well.
3 Comments
Not a physicist but I don’t think it’s correct to speak of “low-enriched” U238. The level of enrichment for any given amount of uranium usually refers to the amount of U235 in the material.
Standard uranium found in the earth’s crust consists of 99.274% U238, which won’t fission no matter how many “juche” propaganda lectures it is subjected to.
About .72% is fissionable U235, .006% is U234, not sure if U234 will fission or not but the amount is too microscopic to matter. U235 is the “good stuff” and it’s lucky for the world that it’s so hard to extract from the U238 around it, or there would have been many more mushroom clouds around the world by now.
Takes many years of effort to enrich a 35-40 lb (?) amount of uranium to about a 90% (?) pure “enriched” state where it will uncontrollably fission.
Needed: a large gaseous diffusion facility (older method) or many (scores, hundreds, thousands?) of centrifuges steadily spinning & slowly separating the two slightly-different-in-weight isotopes. Set up in “cascading series”(?) where the ever-so-slightly but steadily “enriched” amounts of ever greater U235 concentrate spun to higher levels of concentration.
I think a “low enriched” amount of uranium refers to about a 20%(?) level of U235, which evidently will suffice to run a chain reaction in a reactor but is not “rich” enough for la bomba.
The famous “yellowcake” is just straight uranium from ground, refined to purity from raw ore & then combined with the reactive gaseous element fluorine to form uranium hexafluoride (UF6).
UF6 is evidently the form that is ready for the long process of either gaseous diffusion or centrifuging; the 99 to 1 ratio still applies & it is a long way from being fissionable.
I can’t remember if there is more than one isotope for plutonium, but if there is I think all forms are fissionable, which is why the big deal over the Pu in the NorK control rods. Once it’s chemically separated from whatever other elements are mixed in with it (a matter of several months?) it’s ready to be loaded into the bomb design of choice and thence to smash the hated Yankee/son of Nippon/________ (insert target of choice).
Uh. I’m a inactive Naval Nuke.
If the stuff they found was used for armor and balistic material it would be depleted uranium. Very low enrichment indeed. i.e. less than .7% U235
Other wise a truly fine comment.
UF6 is tough stuff to work with. I recently did a long piece on it at my blog but I’m too lazy to look it up.
Now I know I’m going to be thinking about this all day.