red mercury

British

noun

a supposedly radioactive substance that could be used in a bomb made from nuclear waste, widely believed to be part of a confidence trick in which gangsters sold useless material to terrorists in the early 1990s

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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red mercury

He said that Al Qaeda had been taken in by scams organized by criminal groups — for example, passing off red mercury as fissile material.

From New York Times ● Apr. 12, 2010

Saddam apparently had high hopes for a bogus product called red mercury, touted as an ingredient for a handheld nuclear device.

From Time Magazine Archive

Another con man tried to sell them radioactive garbage, claiming it was "red mercury," a supposedly lethal Russian bomb the CIA says never existed.

From Time Magazine Archive

There was red mercury, a powerfully acting body, united with the tincture of antimony, at a gentle heat of the water-bath.

From Faust; a Tragedy, Translated from the German of Goethe by Charles Timothy Brooks

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023