There have been recent reports that shipments of scrap metal from Kazakhstan, one of the former CIS countries, is being sent back due to high level of radioactivity, according to press reports from the BBC.
However, some members of a Kazakhstan government agency are claiming that the Chinese are replacing the clean metal with radioactive metal in China and are then sending it back. A total of 83 "suspicious" train carriages have already been stockpiled on the border with China.
According to news reports by the BBC Monitoring Service, the Chinese have set up a post that measures the gamma radiation produced by the cargo on the border with Kazakhstan. Kazakh train carriages pass through this control without problems. However, upon return, the background radiation level of the Kazakh metal allegedly exceeds the norm only when it is being detrained on Chinese territory.
The claims state that Chinese interests reload this scrap metal onto trains to be returned train carriages and send it back to Kazakhstan. At the same time, they deliver it without any involvement from the Kazakh side so that it is impossible to control whether they are indeed sending the very same scrap metal back to Kazakhstan. BBC Monitoring Service