Nis Nuclear Smuggling since 1995: a Lull in Significant Cases?

Between 1992 and 1994, there were at least seven unambiguous cases of diversion and recovery of weapons-usable nuclear material that appeared to be linked to the former Soviet Union. The Western nonproliferation community has referred to these as “significant cases” because they provided unequivocal evidence that it was possible for highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium, the essential ingredients of nuclear weapons, to be stolen and traded on the black market. The first significant case involved the diversion of 1.5 kilograms (kg) of 90-percent-enriched HEU in 1992 from the Luch Scientific Production Association, a Russian nuclear research facility located outside Moscow in the town of Podolsk. The last case involved the recovery of 2.72 kg of 87.7-percent-enriched HEU in Prague, Czech Republic in December 1994. In all of these cases, the perpetrators were brought to trial and convicted. (See Figure 1 for a brief summary of all seven cases.) But more than three years have elapsed since that last case.