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Abstract:

In a 21 May 2001 interview with Prime News, Valter Kashiya, described as the "director of the Sukhumi Physics and Technology Institute now functioning in Tbilisi" [probably the I.N. Vekua Physics and Technology Institute] said that under the terms of an agreement between the Georgian government and the leaders of the separatist region Abkhazia, IAEA experts will visit the institute and examine the status of radiation sources stored there. He noted that according to a 1993 inventory, there were 244 sources stored at the institute.  He also noted that the Sukhumi institute no longer had 655g of highly enriched uranium which he said had been present at the time of the 1993 inventory. He said that this uranium was stolen after 1993, but later recovered in Poland. [For another report on the case of the missing HEU from the Sukhumi institute, see abstract 19980500.] In a 29 May 2001 interview with Prime News, Kashi said that the IAEA inspectors had verified that the 244 radiation sources are safely stored at the institute.[1]

[1] "V Sukhumi rassmatrivayut ideyu stroitelstva v Kodorskom ushchele sarkofaga dlya yadernykh otkhodov [In Sukhumi They are Considering Constructing a Radioactive Waste Storage Facility in the Kodorsk Valley]," Prime News, 29 May 2001; in Integrum Techno, http://www.integrum.ru