- Chinese police are trying to trace eight kilograms
of stolen uranium ore that was being carried around in a plastic bag and
a sack, as a group of men tried to sell it on the blackmarket.
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- Four men from Hunan province have been arrested and are
on trial in Guangzhou but a fifth accomplice, who allegedly has the bulk
of the highly radioactive uranium ore, has not been found.
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- The ore, comprising U-235 and U-238 uranium, poses a
serious public health risk.
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- China's New Express Daily said the men were farmers and
miners ignorant of the health risk of exposure to uranium. One of the men
reportedly used a home sieve to "refine" the uranium ore. They
were attempting to sell the haul for 1.6 million yuan ($258,000) per kilogram.
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- Two of the defendants were arrested in Guangzhou in January
trying to sell the uranium to Peng Shuang Jin, who offered them the 1.6
million yuan a kilogram but then informed police of the illegal activity.
Another two accomplices were arrested in Hunan six days later. A uranium
mine owner in Yunnan province, in south-west China, allegedly enlisted
one of the four defendants, a farmer called Zhang Sangang, to sell the
eight kilos of partly refined ore for at least 200,000 yuan a kilo.
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- If Zhang could sell it for more he could keep the difference.
Zhang then recruited the others.
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- The mine owner, surnamed Zhou, is being tried separately.
But police recovered only 35 grams of uranium from the four men after their
arrest. "The men claimed it had been lost," the New Express Daily
said. They said a fifth partner, Zhang Xinfang, had disappeared.
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