The Hunt for Hot Stuff

Amid growing concerns that terrorists could rig stray radioactive materials to conventional explosives to create a "radiation dispersal device," also known as a "dirty bomb," author Richard Stone spent days in the Republic of Georgia with officials and radiation technicians?-"rad rangers," he calls them?-as they searched former Soviet military bases for abandoned radioactive devices, trying to find them before terrorists do. It was the first time that journalists were permitted to observe such a mission.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body that serves as the world's nuclear watchdog, has in recent years dispatched officials and technicians to more than two dozen nations to secure orphaned radiation sources, including abandoned military and agricultural equipment. In Georgia, which has been in the forefront of radiation-hunting by former Soviet states, technicians have scoured urban areas and abandoned military bases?-around 15 percent of the country?-gathering up some 220 orphaned radioactive objects. Most, like rifle scopes that contain a trace of radium, were trivial; but some, including radioactive generators that nearly killed three civilians, were diabolically hot.