Nuclear smuggling

Bridging The Divide: How The International Community Is Adapting To The Threat Of WMD Smuggling

One specific smuggling route that remains active is through Georgia. Since 2006, a total of 24 attempts to smuggle nuclear material out of Russia have been detected. Many of these have involved low level nuclear isotopes such as Caesium-137. In one example, 36 capsules of Caesium-137 were located on January 6, 2012 in Tiblisi, the capital of Georgia.

Fourteen of the total of 24 attempts to smuggle nuclear material involved this isotope, which could readily form the base of a radiological dirty bomb. It is not difficult to understand why Americans have identified Georgia as one of the outer layers of its international detector network designed to interdict nuclear material that might one day arrive in the US.

In 2008, this network was disrupted when Russia invaded Georgia. A team from the National Nuclear Security Administration was forced to flee as the Russian air force attacked facilities in the Black Sea port of Poti and the airport of Kutaisi, damaging nuclear detection equipment. This network was quickly restored.

What concerned FBI officials at the time was whether criminal groups active in the area might have managed to take that moment of vulnerability and surge nuclear material into Georgia where it could have been smuggled out into Western Europe. An investigation of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IEAE) Incident and Trafficking Database (ITDB), maintained since 1995 shows the extent of the networks that have operated across Western Europe with material being found in far-flung parts of the continent.