Tokyo

Tokyo police accused a high school boy and three others on Tuesday of trading uranium in an online auction site in Japan.

The Metropolitan Police Department referred the four to public prosecutors for suspected violation of the law regulating nuclear materials.

A 24-year-old man in Azumino, Nagano Prefecture, is suspected of selling natural uranium and other materials to the 17-year-old boy in Koganei, Tokyo, and a 61-year-old man in Koga, Ibaraki Prefecture, for a total of 60,752 yen between October 2017 and January 2018.

All of them admitted to the allegations, according to sources familiar with the police investigation. The boy told police investigators that he wanted uranium because it is a rare material, the sources said.

The boy also allegedly sold without registration a powder he refined from uranium ore to three people between May and June 2018 in violation of the poisonous and deleterious substances control law.

The man in Azumino allegedly obtained the uranium through a foreign website, the sources said.

The police started the investigation after receiving information from the Nuclear Regulation Authority’s secretariat in January 2018 that a material that appeared to be uranium was being offered at an auction site.

The police seized uranium from the boy’s home and others. It was found to be emitting a slight amount of radiation that posed almost no health risk, the sources said.

No ideological motive or tie to an extremist group has been established in connection with the four, according to the sources.

In April, the Tokyo police referred the boy to prosecutors on suspicion of producing erythritol tetranitrate, an explosive known as ETN, without permission at his home between August and October 2018.

The teenager had been exchanging information on Twitter with a former university student in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture, who was sentenced to three to five years in prison for making triacetone triperoxide, an explosive known as TATP, in violation of regulations on explosives, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Jiji Press