Participating in a raid on criminals is perhaps one of the most dramatic parts of a policeman’s job: Not only does he or she risk being shot, but they never know what goodies they might uncover. Most of the time it’s your everyday criminal tool set, which might include guns and sundry other weapons, cannabis, drug paraphernalia, and sometimes an array of hard drugs.

But when police conducted a raid in Slovakia this week, they came face to face with a new danger: enriched uranium.

On Wednesday, police arrested three men, two Hungarians and one Ukrainian, for attempting to sell just under a pound of enriched uranium in powder form on the black market. According to Slovak Police Vice President Michal Kopcik, the nuclear material was believed to have originated from somewhere in the former Soviet Union, and was capable of being used in a “dirty bomb.”

Upon analysis, investigators determined that the powder was comprised of 98.6 percent uranium-235, easily qualifying it as a weapons-grade product. Uranium is considered to be weapons-grade if it contains at least 85 percent uranium-235. (According to the Associated Press, other nuclear experts thought “the material was probably not as dangerous as authorities believe”—though they had no conclusive proof either way.)

This discovery highlights an alarming trend, and raises some serious questions. Citing Richard Hoskins, an official at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Associated Press reports that “last year alone, the UN nuclear watchdog registered 252 reported cases of radioactive materials that were stolen, missing, smuggled or in the possession of unauthorized individuals—a 385 percent increase since 2002” (November 29, emphasis ours).

How much nuclear material is being peddled that no one knows about? How much weapons-grade uranium has been smuggled out of the former Soviet Union since its fragmentation in 1991? How much has gone to terrorist groups like al Qaeda or the Taliban, or any of the other terrorist groups scattered around the world?

According to Hoskins, if terrorists gathered enough material to build a nuclear weapon and detonate it, “the consequences would be so catastrophic, the world would be a different place the next day.”