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 Colombian authorities said earlier this month that they were worried by a document found in the laptop of a slain rebel that indicated the guerrillas were trying to obtain uranium.
It wasn't clear, Vice President Francisco Santos said at the time, whether the rebels sought to create a radioactive weapon. The document made it appear as if the insurgents were seeking to resell uranium at a profit.
The two uranium chunks found Wednesday were described by Colombia's military chief as "impoverished." Only uranium enriched through processing
-- something most countries, including Colombia, are not equipped to do -- can be used to make nuclear weapons or power reactors, scientists say.
Two informants who had contact with a Bogota arms dealer led authorities to the uranium, said Sgt. Elizabeth Filigrana, a spokeswoman for armed forces chief Gen. Freddy Padilla. Their identities were not made public.
"It appears they were the custodians of the uranium," she told The Associated Press. She said authorities were investigating whether rebels of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, were trying to purchase the heavy metal.
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 "Uranium is not particularly radioactive. The fact that you can dig it out of the ground and it's been there for 5 billion years tells you that it's not terribly radioactive," Ivan Oelrich, an expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said by phone from the United States.
Tons of natural uranium are mined annually, with the biggest mines in Africa and Australia, and it costs about $70 a pound, he said.
Oelrich said that if the FARC, which has been fighting Colombian governments for more than four decades, were truly interested in creating a radioactive dirty bomb
-- a crude device wedding explosives with radioactive material -- it would be looking to highly radioactive isotopes.
[Associated
Press; By FRANK BAJAK]
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
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