While customs officers and cops catch a few grams of nuclear material here and there, it falls to scientists to do the CSI part of the program, says Klaus Lutzenkirchen, a nuclear chemist at the Institute for Transuranium Elements, a laboratory run by the European Commission and based in Germany.
Between 1993 and 1997 there were 1,340 confirmed incidents of illicit trafficking in nuclear material around the world. Much of this material can be traced to the former Soviet Union.
