Большую статью о змеиногорском плутонии опубликовала the new-york times.

Во вчерашнем номере The New York Times опубликован большой материал о человеке, сдавшем милиции в Змеиногорске несколько таблеток радиоактивных изотопов, предоставленный в нашей распоряжением профессором Сергеем Ушакиным (Serguei Oushakine). Хотя фактическая сторона статьи, вышедшей в нью-йоркской газете уже известна нашим читателям, предлагаем им ознакомиться с текстом авторитетного издания, небезынтересным с точки зрения того, как случившийся инцидент воспринимается мировым медийным сообществом.

ZMEINOGORSK JOURNAL

Scare Is Over, and Siberia Wont Glow in the Dark

By C. J. CHIVERS, November 22, 2004



MEINOGORSK, Russia, Nov. 16 - The gun buy-back program in this old Siberian mining town works like similar programs anywhere else.

There is a kitty of money. The local police put announcements in the newspaper, notifying residents that they will grant amnesty and pay small sums - in this case up to about $17.25 in rubles - to anyone who turns in an unregistered gun.

Then they wait at the station for the usual trickle of tired or inherited hunting guns. Usually they get shotguns (about 10 in the past six months). Sometimes they get boxes of ammunition. Often they receive weapons in such disrepair that they can no longer be fired.

Nothing in their experience, in other words, prepared them for the appearance of Leonid I. Grigorov, one of the stranger pack rats the world has ever known, who turned up at the police station last month in search of his $17.25.

"I have plutonium," he said.

So began a madcap chapter in the history of Zmeinogorsk, population 14,000, and in the life of Mr. Grigorov, who is learning that amnesty for weapons does not extend to Russians who store radioactive isotopes at home.

Mr. Grigorov, 58, a retired laboratory technician, had kept nine tablet-shaped bits of radioactive isotopes in his garage since 1996. In Russia, where it is a reliable news media chestnut that fuel for a nuclear or a radiological bomb is loose or unsecured or both, poisoning residents and tempting black marketeers, Mr. Grigorovs cache ignited a small wave of hysteria.

The police were alarmed, of course.

Mr. Grigorov, who wears square-framed glasses and a dark fur hat, did assure the police that his collection included industrial plutonium, not weapons-grade plutonium. But police officers are not physicists, and plutonium is a word with frightening connotations, invoking thoughts of hot fuel for reactors or mushroom clouds.

The authorities quickly seized the isotopes and locked them away. Mr. Grigorov had been helpful, an investigator at the prosecutors office said - he had placed the radioactive material in a yellowish-green lead cylinder for the police to find on his porch.

Soon, the official certificates inside the cylinder told them that it held three tablets of cadmium 109, two of an isotope of iron, and four of plutonium 238. And they learned that just as Mr. Grigorov had insisted, plutonium 238 is not weapons grade. (Bomb fuel is a different plutonium isotope.)

Moreover, after having a local physicist test the radiation emitted when the lead cylinder was opened, they learned that the isotopes were too weak to be of much threat in a so-called dirty bomb, which theoretically could be made by dispersing radioactive isotopes with a conventional blast.

The case was all but closed.

Police interviews with Mr. Grigorov and former mine supervisors filled in the last level of detail: the isotopes had been components of a standard technical instrument, similar to an X-ray machine, that Mr. Grigorov had used to analyze ore at the now defunct mining laboratory where he had been employed.

Mr. Grigorov claimed to have found them abandoned after the laboratory closed in the mid-1990s, and decided to safeguard them himself in their original lead sleeve.

Mikhail Filippovich, Zmeinogorsks mayor, described the decision in a sadly noble way. "During privatization, everybody got what he got, and Leonid got a container with some isotopes in it," he said. "It was not the most successful acquisition."

"But we are thankful for this," he added, "because thanks to him the isotopes did not get into any other hands."

Because Mr. Grigorov risked a criminal charge for illegal storage of radioactive substances, and a potential jail sentence of two years, the authorities filed reports to their regional bosses in Barnaul. They noted that the pack rat remained perplexed and incorrigible.

"He simply couldnt understand why he wasnt given any money," said Capt. Dmitri Boiko, the deputy police chief.

But as the case drew near its end, it grew stranger still. Someone in Barnaul, who knew only a sketch of the case, leaked inaccurate information about it, the police here say. Within hours their detective work was for naught.

Russian news agencies, radio stations, newspapers and television stations reported that weapons-grade plutonium had been discovered in a garage in Siberia. One account said more than a pound had been found, which in the age of modern terror would have been a frightening amount.

The reports provoked swift denunciations. Nikolai Shingaryov, spokesman for Russias Federal Atomic Energy Agency, insisted that Russia had not lost custody of any plutonium bomb fuel. "What has been written absolutely doesnt correspond to what is there," he said in a telephone interview.

This opinion corresponds with the understanding of the case at the United States National Nuclear Security Administration, in Washington, which has helped Russia secure 900 radiological sources in recent years.

Paul M. Longsworth, deputy administrator of the administration, said that while the incident did not involve American help - the radiation level of Mr. Grigorovs plutonium tablets was well below the threshold of what the administration considers threatening - it carried larger meanings.

"While it is a humorous story on one level, it does indicate that there are sources out there that are unsecured," he said in a telephone interview. "It does indicate why we are doing what we are doing."

As the Russian news media dropped the story, its lasting effect seems not to have been on national security but on Mr. Grigorov, who, the authorities said, has been suffering from cancer, and was deeply uncomfortable about finding himself the subject of both a media storm and his neighbors stares.

"Now he is scared," the mayor said. "He does not want to see anybody. He is hiding."

Mr. Grigorov did make an appearance this week in the lobby of the prosecutors office, but when he saw three journalists, he dashed outside. When he heard his name called, he spun and showed a frightened face, then sped up and disappeared down the snowy streets.

Now the case is closing again. Captain Boiko mused that in the end he hoped there would be leniency for the ailing mine technician who gave Russia a brief but unfounded scare. "He is a normal guy," he said. "Quiet, balanced, competent in his sphere. I personally think that this case will just be stopped."