We study the spectrum of spherically symmetric Dirac operators in
three-dimensional space with potentials tending to infinity at infinity under
weak regularity assumptions. We prove that purely absolutely continuous
spectrum covers the whole real line if the potential dominates the mass, or
scalar potential, term. In the situation where the potential and the scalar
potential are identical, the positive part of the spectrum is purely discrete;
we show that the negative half-line is filled with purely absolutely continuous
spectrum in this case.