Japan police probe ‘uranium’ on online auction site

TOKYO: Japanese authorities are investigating how a substance that appears to be uranium came to be offered for sale on an online auction site, a nuclear official said Thursday.

Police are trying to confirm whether the product is radioactive, he said, with local media reporting investigators are questioning "a number of people" suspected of involvement in the sale and purchase of the substance. An initial test of the confiscated powder found it to be radioactive, Kyodo News said.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority received a report about a year ago about what was being billed as "uranium" on a popular auction site operated by Yahoo! Japan. "We were asked, 'Is it OK? How is it possible?' We immediately called Yahoo!, which then took down the product," an atomic agency official told AFP.