Ukraine snares radioactive coffee shop chopper

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

KIEV (AFP) — A plan to smuggle a highly radioactive helicopter from the site of the world's worst nuclear accident and turn it into a cafe has been foiled in Ukraine, police said Friday.

Suspects were detained on Thursday carrying scrap 20-30 times the legal radiation level from the 30-kilometer (18-mile) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station, which exploded in 1986, police said in a statement.

The criminals "tried to take an Mi-8 helicopter out of exclusion zone to use it as an original coffee shop in one of Ukraine's cities," read the statement from the elite SBU special services.

A workhorse of the Soviet armed forces, the Mi-8 helicopter is capable of carrying up to 28 people in its normal configuration, although it's not clear how...