A Russian atomic scientist surrendered eight containers filled with arms-grade nuclear material to police Tuesday after keeping it in his garage for eight years, Russian media reported. Leonid Grigorov found the 14 ounces of plutonium-238 in a heap of rubbish at his laboratory near Russia's border with Kazakhstan, Itar-Tass news agency said. Interfax news agency said the lab, looted after the Soviet collapse in 1991, was eventually closed and deserted. Grigorov decided to hide the material, which could theoretically be used to make a "dirty bomb," in a box and only handed it in to local police after a newspaper offered a reward to anyone who surrendered weapons. "As an expert, I knew that I had to (hide it) to avoid tragic consequences," Grigorov was quoted as saying. Experts said Grigorov's plutonium-238 is normally used to generate heat but, if mixed with other materials, could be used in a nuclear explosive device. It is much more radioactive than plutonium-239, a radio-isotope normally used in atomic bombs.
In a separate incident, 97 pounds of radioactive scrap metal was discovered in Chelaybinsk, Tass reported Tuesday. The region is heavily polluted with radioactive material from its nuclear reactor and plants producing plutonium for atomic bombs. The local Mayak nuclear complex dumped 2.68 billion cubic feet of highly radioactive waste into a river between 1949 and 1956 and suffered an explosion in 1957, showering radiation over the southern Urals mountain region. Tass said the discovery was the second such find in a week, although it did not say how big the earlier find was. |