Probe Finds Nuclear Matter Being Stolen From East Bloc

Investigators looking into a recent rash of European criminal cases involving illicit smuggling and sale of radioactive materials say they have found evidence of thefts from former Soviet and East European nuclear facilities, both commercial and military.

While the evidence accumulated so far is fragmentary and the nuclear materials seized from smugglers would be of little immediate use to an aspiring atomic bomb manufacturer, investigators say they are worried nonetheless about the emerging patterns of illicit nuclear trafficking in Europe.

Scores of people, mainly East Europeans, have been arrested recently in West European hotel rooms, private homes, city parking lots and autobahn rest stops while attempting to sell everything from tiny flakes of plutonium to several pounds of lightly enriched uranium to package deals combining radioactive materials with conventional weapons such as tanks and artillery pieces, according to police, regulators, prosecutors and customs officials.

German police have investigated more than 100 cases this year involving smuggled nuclear material, up from 29 in 1991, Hans-Ludwig Zachert, who heads the Federal Crime Office, said last month.

Evidence in the cases suggests that free-lance con artists and small clans of criminals are traversing borders opened by the Cold War’s demise in search of quick profits from potentially dangerous radioactive contraband.

No evidence has yet emerged of extensive or state-sponsored organized crime rings trading in radioactive materials, according to investigators. Some of the recent cases have involved apparent con men who made wild claims about relatively worthless nuclear waste to extract large sums of money from gullible buyers.

But several aspects of the cases offer cause for serious concern, European nuclear regulators say.

Some radioactive materials seized in the recent arrests appear to have come from former East Bloc military installations, according to Joachim Fechner, the German Environment Ministry official responsible for evaluating the smuggling cases. This material, mainly cesium, is not related to nuclear weapons but has been distributed to military compounds in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for use in nuclear decontamination exercises, Fechner said.

In Washington on Wednesday, Sens. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who had just returned from a visit to Russia and other ex-Soviet republics, warned that uranium may have been smuggled from Belarus into Poland. They said that while the danger of nuclear war has receded, the threat of an accidental or unauthorized nuclear attack remains high.