IAEA acts to clean up Iraq atom site

Reuters 2006 ^ | Mon Apr 24, 2006

[cruise_missile]

IAEA acts to clean up Iraq atom site, 1,000 at risk Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:15 PM BST Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS

VIENNA (Reuters) - The International Atomic Energy Agency has begun a drive to clean up the former Tuwaitha nuclear site in Iraq where radioactive residue poses a health risk to 1,000 nearby inhabitants, the nuclear watchdog said on Monday.

Residents of Ishtar village near Tuwaitha, 20 km (12 miles) south of Baghdad, are exposed to contaminated rubble left by aerial bombing and looting during and after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein, the IAEA said.

It said a project to clean up Tuwaitha and other nuclear facilities in Iraq was launched earlier this year at agency headquarters in Vienna and Washington had given the IAEA photographs to assist the campaign.

Iraqi and U.S. teams had begun to collect environmental and radiological data and launched studies on health effects among people living near the 56-sq-km (22-sq-mile) Tuwaitha complex.

[Ingtar]

Cavemen playing with dynamite.

[BIGZ]

are exposed to contaminated rubble left by aerial bombing and looting

Where did the radioactivity in the ruble originate?

[RoadTest]

"Residents of Ishtar village"

The namesake of Easter, a Babylonian festival.

[cruise_missile]

If you follow the link, the article further states:
"Tuwaitha hit the headlines in April 2003 during the war when some 3,000 barrels containing low-level uranium ore concentrate known as "yellow cake" were stolen from the unsecured site."

Funny, I don't remember seeing any of this before.

[don'tbedenied]

Note that the article says that 3,000 barrels of yellowcake were stolen. And then Reuters will print a "Bush lied" article about Bush saying that Saddam wanted to acquire yellowcake. This is head spinning stuff.

[jw777]

didn't they also help ship out the 500 tons of yellowcake that Wilson said were NOT sought in Africa according to the Brits?

[cruise_missile]

Niger is one of the few places in the world to acquire yellow cake from.

Wow!!! Do ya think Wilson is either incompetent or lying?

I guess this might qualify as WMDs.

[cruise_missile]

Niger is one of the few places in the world to acquire yellow cake from.

Wow!!! Do ya think Wilson is either incompetent or lying?

I guess this might qualify as WMDs.

[Marine_Uncle]

Welcome aboard. Good post.

[Marine_Uncle]

"I guess this might qualify as WMDs."
Not really. Yellocake is simply a composite uranium ore that has been fine ground to a specific grainularity and processed in an acid bath. It then can be further treated, then converted into Uranium hexafloride gas ( HF ₆). The gas can be stored in stainless steel tanks for instance, and feed into a centrifugal system to extract isotopic U235 in sufficient amounts to go into making an atomic bomb.
But yellowcake does not qualify as being called an wmd. Nor would say the various chemicals that are used in manufacturing VX nerve gas.

[Marine_Uncle]

" Where did the radioactivity in the ruble originate?"
Think of the Tuwaitha nuclear facility as a large area partially surronded by walls. Within it's perimeter it contained a number of buildings. Two reactores (Osrik I and II), buildings for machine shops, a building with a "hot lab", where radio-isotope work could be carried out, administrative building, a building for nuclear waste storage.
After the US forces invaded and started to check out this area, they found the yellowcake mentioned, which was around 300 tons, 1.8 tons of highly enriched uranium, containers of plutonium, and of course various containers containing various radio isotopes.
Over the years after the Israelis bombed the main reactor at this site (remember they just targeted the dome of the larger reactor called Tammuz I.), most probably whomever fiddled around with the radioactive waste containers. The radioactive materials probably just got scattered around over a period of time.
A side note. The date set to destroy the main reactor facilities was carefully planned to happen before the Iraqi installed all the fuel rods. They had been keep in deep pools of water until ready for insertion into the reactor core. So we cannot blam the Israeli attack for scattering radioactive materials around.

[BIGZ]

In my best mexican. GRASSY ASS

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