Free Republic

SNIPPET: "South African police say they have arrested four men in the capital, Pretoria, for attempting to sell what they describe as an industrial nuclear device to undercover officers. The men - all South Africans - were arrested Friday at a Pretoria gas station, where they attempted to sell the device for about $6 million. Police say Interpol was also involved in the operation."

AN international hunt is under way for up to 130lb of radioactive material — suitable for use in a terrorist “dirty bomb” — that brokers are trying to sell to the highest bidder in southeast Asia. Police and intelligence officials from Thailand and several western powers are helping to track down the caesium-137, which is said to be stored in neighbouring Laos. The search follows the arrest in Bangkok on June 13 of a Thai headmaster, Narong Penanam, 44, who tried to sell 62lb of the material for £150,000 to undercover Thai police working with American agents. Western officials and...

Large boxes of powdered caesium 137, a powerfully radioactive substance, are lost in the former Soviet Union. In the hands of terrorists, just one would provide enough "dirty bomb" material to badly contaminate large urban areas, forcing their evacuation and possibly their abandonment. These caesium sources are a major reason why the US has committed at least $25 million in 2002 to an urgent effort to track lost radioactive sources in former Soviet states, as New Scientist reported on Thursday. Media reports that the caesium was originally spread on fields in secret Soviet agricultural experiments are wrong, says Melissa Fleming,spokesperson...