Russia Cracking Down On Nuclear Smuggling  Moscow Reports
Seizing 22 Pounds Of Uranium  August 25, 1994|Los Angeles Times
MOSCOW - — Russian security officials, adding weight to promises
that they would work harder to stop nuclear smuggling, said on
Wednesday that they had recovered more than 22 pounds of uranium
stolen from a closed nuclear center.  The uranium-238 was not
weapons-grade and Atomic Energy Ministry spokesman Georgy Kaurov
said the material was so harmless it could best be used as a
weight for a fishing lure or "to make presses for buckets of
sauerkraut."  But in the wake of German accusations that
plutonium recently seized in the Munich airport originated in
Russia, the uranium case served as concrete reassurance that
Moscow would try harder to keep its nuclear stocks under
control.  The actual origin of the Munich plutonium has not been
established, but German suspicions that it came from Russia were
so strong that Chancellor Helmut Kohl dispatched his
intelligence coordinator for three days