Last night Slovak police announced that two men were arrested in Slovakia and another one in Hungary as they allegedly tried to sell 2.2 pounds of radioactive material.

They were arrested near the common borders with Ukraine, in eastern Slovakia and eastern Hungary.

According to a Slovak police spokesman, the allegedly nuclear traders were being monitored for several months by authorities in Slovakia and Hungary.

On Thursday Slovak police said that they have identified the radioactive material as being uranium, Guardian Unlimited reports. The three allegedly tried to sell it for $1 million.

Martin Korch, police spokesman, couldn’t say if the material had been enriched to weapons-grade.

He said: ``I can confirm that it was uranium-235 and uranium-238.”

It is unknown to whom the three tried to sell the material.

Korch said that the authorities of the two countries had been working together on the case for several months.

This arrest brings awareness on the fact that Eastern Europe could be a source of radioactive material for a bomb. This bomb is called a “dirty bomb” and it would use conventional explosives to disperse radioactive debris.

Eastern Slovakia's border with Ukraine represents the European Union's easternmost frontier, and authorities have tightened the security there in the past few years in fear that terrorists could smuggle weapons, explosives into the EU.

Police in Czech Republic arrested in 2003, at the border with Slovakia, two Slovaks in the city of Brno after they sold natural depleted uranium to undercover officers.

Richard Hoskins, the International Atomic Energy Agency official who administers the database, said that last year 252 cases of stolen, missed, smuggled radioactive materials were reported. This represents a 385 percent increase since 2002.

Almost 85 out of the 252 cases were thefts or losses and not all material was good for a weapon.

Still, he said ``there are far too many incidents of material not being properly controlled. If we can do a better job, we can help keep these materials from falling into terrorist hands.''