BRATISLAVA (AFP)--Slovak police said Friday that an investigation into an attempt to sell "dirty bomb" grade enriched uranium could take several months.
Police said Thursday they had found 481.4 grams of material containing uranium-235, the type used in nuclear reactors and nuclear warheads, and the naturally occurring uranium-238, when arresting two Hungarians and a Ukrainian.
The trio wanted to sell the material for $1.6 million, police said. They provided no details of who the possible buyers were. The uranium came from the former Soviet Union.
Police spokesman Martin Korch refused to say which countries they will now approach to trace the source of the uranium. "That is internal information," he told AFP.
The arrested men, who could face jail sentences of up to 20 years, will be brought to court once the investigation is completed, he added.
The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, called Thursday for details of the latest in a series of cases involving the sale of radioactive material in Slovakia and the neighboring Czech Republic.
In 2004, two former Slovak army officers were found guilty by a Czech court of attempting to sell uranium. The two were arrested outside Brno in November 2003 after they tried to sell 3 kilograms of the substance.
The IAEA has regularly expressed concern about illegal trade in uranium in Eastern Europe and other parts of the former Soviet Union and highlighted the problem of missing material.
A "dirty bomb" is not a nuclear bomb but uses conventional explosives to disgorge radioactive material over a wide area, unleashing panic and making the area unusable.
Slovak police said the uranium they discovered was particularly dangerous because it was already in power form