Six armed, masked men overpowered nighttime guards at a chemical and metallurgical plant in Kyrgyzstan on Jan. 8, and stole material used in nuclear reactors.
Government officials said the men took at least 430 kilograms of europium oxide from the Orlovka
plant in Kyrgyzstan's Chu Oblast.
The rare-earth compound has various uses in the defense and
aerospace industries and is also a component in the control rods of
nuclear reactors, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Russia's Interfax
reported..
On Jan. 9, Interior Ministry spokesman
Joldashbek Busurmankulov told journalists that "the crime was
obviously committed on someone's order."
However, speaking on Kyrgyz radio the same day, he downplayed the incident as "an ordinary
robbery" and said it was not connected with terrorism.
Meanwhile, Nikolai Shingarev, a spokesman for the Russian Atomic Energy
Ministry, said in Moscow that the material cannot be used to build
nuclear weapons because it does not produce radioactivity. Instead it
absorbs it, RIA-Novosti reported on Jan. 10.
