Every now and then, nuclear materials get mentioned in discussions of terrorism. One fear is that terrorists could get their hands of radioactive materials and create a conventional bomb with a shell of these materials which is referred to as a dirty bomb. When detonated, the bomb would spread radioactive fallout over a wide area. Another fear is that terrorists could get enough weapons grade uranium or plutonium to actually construct a nuclear bomb. Even a small nuclear bomb could devastate a city and kill hundreds of thousands of people. Someone even pointed out that a small amount of plutonium could be ground up and put into gasoline. Just driving around a city with that fuel could poison thousands of people. The only drawback is that it would not be as dramatic as a bomb explosion. All of these scenarios depend on the terrorists accessing radioactive materials. Recently accounts have emerged from Moldavia about attempts to traffic in radioactive materials.
Earlier this year, a plot was being hatched in the Cocos Prive, a dance club and sushi bar in Chisinau which is the capital of Moldavia in Eastern Europe. A smuggler was trying to sell radioactive cesium for use in a dirty bomb for two and a half million Euros. He suggested that if the buyer had contacts with the Islamic State, they would be able to easily sell the cesium to those radical Arabs.
It turned out that the client was not real. He was an informant but after twenty face to face meetings, he had been able to convince the smuggler that he actually was a representative of the Islamic State. Eventually, the informant was able to purchase a sample from the smuggler and the smuggler wound up in jail.
This incident is one of at least four attempts by criminal networks connected to Russian gangsters in the last five years to sell radioactive materials to extremists through Moldavia. The Associated Press conducted the investigations that reported these incidents. In one case, there was an attempt to sell weapons grade uranium to a Middle Eastern buyer. The middle man of the gang involved repeatedly expressed hatred of the U.S. as he plotted to smuggle uranium and blueprints for a dirty bomb. The investigation of this incident showed that the Russian gangs were specifically trying to sell to buyers who were enemies of the U.S. and other Western nations. This incident, the first of its kind to be uncovered, proved that the fear of attempts to by Middle Eastern radicals such as the Islamic State or al-Qaida to create an dirty bomb or atomic bomb was real.
The FBI and some Moldavian investigators partnered to uncover the black market in radioactive material. They spent five years infiltrating smuggling network and setting up sting operations. Although they were able to successful carry out four of these stings, they fell short of their goals. Major traffickers escaped, the gang members who were jails did not get long sentences and often went right back to working the black market for radioactive materials. Most of the arrests were made after samples of the radioactive materials had been purchased. This meant the bulk of the product remained in the smugglers hands and may have been successfully sold to terrorists later.
There is a thriving black market for radioactive materials in Moldavia, a poor country that used to be part of the Soviet Union. The break down in relations and cooperation on nuclear smuggling between Russia and Western nations means that the degree to which smugglers have been able to access the huge Russian stockpile of radioactive materials remains unknown. It is inevitable that eventually some of these materials will be made into bombs and detonated in terrorist attacks.
