Combing for Nukes.(recovering abandonned nuclear materials)(Brief Article)

The hunt had been on for a month, held back by heavy snow and inaccessible mountain terrain. Finally, last week, in the former Soviet republic of Georgia, a team of local and international nuclear experts secured two highly lethal, radioactive canisters on a mountainside close to the province of Abkhazia, where local nationalists are fighting for independence. The last stretch up a remote logging road took five hours because the heavy military truck carrying a five-ton lead container came close to sinking into deep mud. At the end of the road, two dozen men in heavy protective gear wielding six-foot tongs carefully picked up the two ceramic cylinders, each no bigger than a can of soup, and placed them safely into the lead container. The canisters were so deadly that each man was allowed to spend no more than a minute standing near them, and even so was not allowed within a meter.

This disturbing find is the latest wrinkle in efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. The canisters are nuclear batteries that once powered a Soviet radio transmitter, now abandoned, on an all but inaccessible mountaintop in Georgia. What worries Western intelligence officials is that Soviet engineers used hundreds of similar batteries as power sources for remote construction projects or military installations throughout the former empire. When the Soviet Union collapsed, records of many of these batteries disappeared, especially in the now independent republics such as Georgia. In the wrong hands, warns the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, these orphaned batteries could be a potent tool to incite panic, contaminate property and cause injury and death. "Before September 11, we thought the deadliness of handling intensely radioactive material was an effective deterrent," says Abel Gonzalez, the IAEA's director of radiation and waste safety. "But with terrorists who are both intelligent and willing to give up their lives, we're facing a far more dangerous situation."

Luckily, the material in these batteries isn't weapons grade--it cannot be manipulated to create a nuclear explosion. Each of the batteries found last week contains strontium 90, a byproduct of nuclear reactions that is extremely radioactive. Last December, three intrepid villagers hiking in the woods noticed that the batteries had melted the surrounding snow. The hikers lugged the batteries to their campsite nearby for warmth. Within minutes they got sick. Two remain hospitalized with severe radiation burns; one is in critical condition. At least two similarly powerful ...