Large amount of "strategic" material stolen from enterprise in Kyrgyzstan

BBC Monitoring ^ | January 09 2003

[knighthawk]

Bishkek, 9 January: Europium oxide, a strategic material which is used in nuclear production, has been stolen from a chemical and mechanical plant in Kyrgyzstan.

The press service of the Kyrgyz Internal Affairs Ministry told RIA-Novosti on Thursday [9 January] that several armed men wearing black masks broke into the enterprise's finished product warehouse in the village of Orlovka, Chuysk Region, in the early hours of 8 January, having beaten up and disarmed the guards.

According to the law-enforcement agencies, the attackers stole 23 boxes with the rare-earth element which is used in nuclear reactions. Besides, this raw material is used for the production of steel, optical glass, etc.

In Soviet times, the village of Orlovka was a "closed" populated area. There was a nuclear material processing plant there.

[knighthawk]

Ping

[Billy_bob_bob]

I have no idea what Europium oxide is, but this scenario sounds exactly like what somene would be doing on the way towards their building a WMD. For all I know this stuff is as harmless as talcum power, but the nature of the attack and where it was done makes me think of all kinds of bad conclusions. Does anybody out there know what this stuff is and what it can be used or misused for?

[knighthawk]

http://www.reade.com/Products/Oxides/europium_oxide.html

Used as an activating ion for color television phosphors, as control rods in the liquid metal fast breeder reactor, and in vacuum deposition work.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/fasbre.html

The plutonium-239 breeder reactor is commonly called a fast breeder reactor, and the cooling and heat transfer is done by a liquid metal. The metals which can accomplish this are sodium and lithium, with sodium being the most abundant and most commonly used. The construction of the fast breeder requires a higher enrichment of U-235 than a light-water reactor, typically 15 to 30%. The reactor fuel is surrounded by a "blanket" of non-fissionable U-238. No moderator is used in the breeder reactor since fast neutrons are more efficient in transmuting U-238 to Pu-239. At this concentration of U-235, the cross-section for fission with fast neutrons is sufficient to sustain the chain-reaction. Using water as coolant would slow down the neutrons, but the use of liquid sodium avoids that moderation and provides a very efficient heat transfer medium.