IN the months leading up to September 11, 2001, there were 20 cases of illicit trafficking in radioactive materials in Germany, Romania, South Africa and Mexico. In July of that year, French police arrested 31-year-old Serge Salfati carrying five grams of enriched uranium in Paris. In 2003, a Russian businessman was offering $US750,000 for stolen weapons-grade plutonium for sale to a foreign client, and he managed to make contact with residents of the closed city of Sarov, home of one of Russia’s premier nuclear weapons research and development centres. Full Story