Georgia stops sale of $3 million of uranium that could have been used in bomb

TBILISI (Reuters) -Georgia has detained two people for handling and attempting to sell $3 million worth of uranium which could have been used to make a deadly bomb, the national security service said on Thursday.

The prosecutor general said one Georgian and one Turkish national had been arrested and charged with the illegal purchase, possession and disposal of radioactive substances.

The pair were arrested in the western city of Batumi on the Black Sea and could face up to 10 years in prison.

"...the citizen of Georgia illegally purchased and stored the radioactive substance uranium...(and) tried to sell the mentioned nuclear material to the Turkish citizen for $3 million," the prosecutor's statement said, without naming them.

The State Security Service said it had prevented a "transnational crime" over the uranium which could have been used to make a deadly bomb causing mass fatalities.

Contacted by Reuters, the agency declined to give any further details on how enriched the uranium was.

The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Georgia's State Security Service published video on Thursday showing law enforcement agents using a radiation scanner to inspect a passenger vehicle as well as two small vials, one of which appeared to contain a white, powdery substance.

There was no word on the uranium's origin or potential destination.

One isotope of uranium, uranium-235, is fissile, meaning it can sustain the nuclear chain reaction used in reactors and bombs. The two other isotopes, uranium-238 and uranium-234, are not fissile.

The security of nuclear materials was one of the biggest concerns after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, of which Georgia was a member. There have been several serious incidents involving the illicit trade in nuclear materials in Georgia over recent decades.

In 2019, Georgia said it had detained two people for handling and trying to sell $2.8 million worth of uranium-238. In 2016, authorities arrested twelve people, including Georgians and Armenians, in two separate sting operations within the same month and accused them of attempting to sell in total about $203 million worth of uranium-238 and uranium-235.

In 2014, Georgia caught two Armenians trying to smuggle cesium-137, a radioactive isotope of the metal cesium, into the country.

(Reporting by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Cawthorne)