Radioactive material bound for Iran seized at Moscow airport

sesha_maruthi27

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Radioactive material was found in the luggage of a passenger bound for Iran - at Moscow's Sheremetvevo international airport.

Russia's Federal Customs Service made the discovery, recently but on an unspecified day, after the material triggered an alarm in the airport's radiation control system.

A search of the luggage revealed 18 pieces of radioactive metal packed in individual steel casings.
Discovery: Radioactive material found in the luggage of a passenger bound for Tehran was today seized at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport.

Discovery:

Radioactive material found in the luggage of a passenger bound for Tehran was today seized at Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport

The service said that tests showed the material was a radioactive isotope which could be obtained only 'as a result of a nuclear reactor's operations'.

Radiation levels in the area were 20 times above normal. An airport customs spokesman said the material had been identified as sodium-22, which can be used in medical equipment, but gave no other details.


Sergei Novikov, spokesman for the Rosatom nuclear agency, said the pieces are highly unlikely to have come from Rosatom.

And he said, contrary to the customs' service claim, that the isotope is produced by particle accelerators, not by nuclear reactors.

He said that in Russia, universities, research institutes and big medical centres can have the technology to produce it.

And he revealed Rosatom has never sold sodium-22 to Iran, but it has supplied it with other types of medical isotopes.

The objects were sent to a Moscow prosecutor's office that deals with air and water transport, the service said in a statement.

Authorities have opened a criminal investigation, but the Iranian was not detained.

Spokeswoman Kseniya Grebenkina said the luggage had been seized some time ago, but could not specify when.

Read more:Radioactive material which was on its way to Iran seized at Moscow airport | Mail Online
 

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