🚀 go-pugleaf

(Note followups to sci.military, begging its moderator's indulgence)

On sci.physics.fusion, dam@dcs.glasgow.ac.uk (David Morning) writes...

>About 4kgs of what was described as "bomb grade" Plutonium was seized by
>customs official in Germany about two weeks ago. It was being smuggled via
>Poland and its destination appeared to be the Balkans. This is the second
>customs seizure of Plutonium the Germans have made in the last 6 months.
>Scary huh?

Opinions vary; one suspects that, as always, the people who know for
sure aren't able or willing to talk about it.

The seizure, apparently from the trunk of a car in Munich, was 
mentioned only lightly and sporadically in the US news media.  An 
early report which my wife saw (on CBS television, if we both recall 
correctly) had it as more or less a complete do-it-yourself bomb kit, 
plus some unspecified indications that the vendors were willing to
sell anything from special nuclear materials to assembled ex-Soviet
weapons.  

A radio report that I heard a few days later (probably from the BBC 
World Service by way of National Public Radio) said that it was "only" 
a few pounds of U-235, with some conflicting reports from various
officials as to whether it was weapons- or reactor-grade material.
Some nth-hand gossip from the unclassified stem of the interlaboratory 
grapevine (I hold no clearance, and my cleared friends are all a bunch 
of boy scouts, so take this how you will) says it was the latter.

So:  I'd give odds that they did NOT find a paint-by-numbers A-bomb or
immediately usable components thereof.  The scary part, for me, was a
news report that various German officials had dealt with 100 real or
suspected incidents of this type in 1992, up from 29 the previous year.
Perhaps the American media's inattention to this story will be rectified
dramatically and all too soon.  :(

--Joe
"Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"