Russians Recover Uranium From Scrapyard

Russian authorities have recovered two containers of uranium 238 that were discovered at a waste dump near the city of Saratov, the London Times reported today (see GSN, Oct. 7).

Several homeless people found the containers and took them to a scrapyard to sell, according to the Times. In addition to the two containers used to store depleted uranium 238, a third container believed to have been used to transport uranium was also discovered, the Times reported.

A Russian Federal Atomic Energy Agency spokesman said the discovered materials look “very much like lead, so I would not be surprised if someone had simply mistaken it and dumped it at the scrapyard.”

Authorities yesterday also seized a truck carrying radioactive materials at the port of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in eastern Russia, according to the Times. 

Enough uranium, plutonium and strontium to make a radiological “dirty bomb” were found last week on a train heading to a town near Chechnya, the Times reported. The materials were apparently heading to Ingushetia State University (Jeremy Page, London Times, Oct. 20).

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