Free Republic

How America can stop what the New York Times calls “Israel’s March to War” is the hot topic this month. The issue—for the Times—is whether Israel is on the verge of bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, or can be persuaded to delay that decision and rely on the United States instead. This is what a parade of U.S. officials visiting Jerusalem this summer have counseled (and pressured) Israel to do. But the comments of Israel’s top officials suggest that its patience is wearing thin and that it may act soon, in weeks if not months. As the Associated Press put it,...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered Libya more help on Monday as it seeks to rein in militias, stressing that Washington will remain a firm partner despite this month's deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. ...snip... A senior U.S. official said Clinton reviewed U.S. assistance to Libya as it works to secure chemical weapons and other dangerous armaments and to crack down on armed militia groups that have sprung up since the ouster of longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi. "The secretary offered to intensify our support and help for the Libyan government in all...

@mrubin1971Two news stories from recent weeks, if true, should raise a red flag in the United States that Iran is preparing to use Hezbollah to strike at U.S. interests in Latin America, if not in the United States itself.First, this story from the Lebanese news portal Naharnet and sourced in part to Israeli radio. The Naharnet story was taken down shortly after it appeared: Hezbollah is using a training base established by Iran in northern Nicaragua near the border with Honduras, the Israeli radio reported on Thursday [September 6]. “The area is cordoned off and there are around 30 members...

An unnamed senior U.S. official responded to a report that Iran is building out the Fordow enrichment plant by describing the facility “as a ‘Potemkin’ plant, a façade that could not operate and was under close watch by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” according to NBC News. That characterization is grossly misleading. Iran has accelerated its uranium enrichment activities at the Fordow facility, the once covert site buried into a small mountain outside of Qom, since the last IAEA report that detailed the regime’s weaponization work. It began producing uranium enriched to 20 percent there earlier this year, according to...

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards discovered an electronic monitoring device near the Fordow nuclear site in northern Iran last month, The Sunday Times reported Sunday, citing western intelligence sources. Soldiers were checking on communications terminals at Fordow when they discovered a rock, according to the report. When the soldiers attempted to move the rock, it exploded, presumably self-destructing. The device was reportedly capable of intercepting data from computers in Fordow. The Iranians did not report the discovery, according to the Times. Iran uses the Fordow facility to enrich uranium to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, the part of its work...

Iran has begun enriching uranium deep inside a mountain and sentenced an American to death for spying, angering the West and undermining hopes that diplomacy could avert further sanctions or war. The start of enrichment at the Fordow bunker near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom was confirmed on Monday by an Iranian official in Tehran and by the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran says its nuclear program is purely non-military but the West believes it is designed to produce nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic's decision to carry out enrichment work deep underground could eventually make it much...

A US federal grand jury has indicted two men, one from Iran and the other from China, on charges of conspiring to send materials from the United States to Iran for the purpose of enriching uranium, the US Justice Department said on Friday. Using a Chinese company as a go-between to avoid trade sanctions, the men tried for three years to obtain US materials, such as high-strength steel, that could be used in an Iranian nuclear program, the department said. Iranian citizen Parviz Khaki was arrested in May in the Philippines, while the other man, Zongcheng Yi of China, remains...

Uranium mining is touted as both a godsend and a one-way to ticket to hell on Earth. Which is it? Say this much for the Coles Hill uranium deposit in Pittsylvania, Virginia: It is already generating a lot of heat. At a public meeting in Chatham a few days ago, one protester promised to do “whatever it takes” to prevent Virginia from lifting its moratorium on uranium mining, “all the way to civil disobedience.” Another said allowing the uranium to be mined would amount to “selective regional human sacrifice.” If uranium mining is safe, then such histrionics look little different...

It's hard to overestimate the degree of naivet� on the part of the West as it heads toward another round of nuclear talks with Iran in Baghdad today. Clearly, Iran is stalling for time to develop a nuclear weapon. One example: In talks last month in Istanbul, Tehran seems to have convinced international negotiators of the sincerity and weight of a fatwa, or religious edict, by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that a nuclear bomb is haram — forbidden — in Islam. Last week, for instance, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard said the fatwa will help promote confidence...

-- Kodak -- the company known for decades for its cameras and film -- this week confirmed it used weapons-grade uranium in an underground lab in upstate New York for upwards of 30 years. A company spokesman and a former scientist for the firm say there was not enough material to sustain a nuclear chain reaction. Former Kodak researcher Albert Filo said the uranium was alloyed with aluminum in plates sealed in sleeves that were not moved for three decades. The amount of fuel was about 3½ pounds, which experts say is less than one-tenth of the amount necessary to...

Unit 2 we now know completely liquified. We’ve never seen this before in the history of nuclear power. A 100% liquification of a uranium core.

Coloradans are subjected to, on average, four times more naturally occurring radiation than the average American. It is the price of living in a mountainous and geologically rich region, but the full impact of that background radiation on residents’ health is poorly understood. Aside from an increased risk of skin cancer because of higher elevations and a heightened but avoidable lung-cancer risk from radon seeping from uranium-rich soils, it appears the higher-than-average background radiation levels in Colorado, and Mesa County in particular, are still lower than what would be deemed hazardous. Some experts even believe the low levels may have...

"In our 2012 annual report, we identified a total of 51 areas, including 32 areas of potential duplication, overlap, or fragmentation, as well as 19 opportunities for agencies or Congress to consider taking action that could either reduce the cost of government operations or enhance revenue collections for the Treasury. These areas involve a wide range of government missions including agriculture, defense, economic development, education, energy, general government, health, homeland security, international affairs, science and the environment, and social services. Within and across these missions, the 2012 annual report touches on virtually all major federal departments and agencies. We...

The geopolitical foreplay is getting ridiculous. At this point it is quite obvious that virtually everyone involved in the US-Israel-Iran hate triangle is just itching for someone else to pull the trigger. And the latest report out of the IAEA will only precipitate this. Who - remember the IAEA? The same IAEA which did not find nukes in Iraq in 2003 only to be overriden by Dick "WMD" Cheney to "justify" an invasion. As RIA reports:  "The International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that Iran has started enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, which can easily be turned into...

WASHINGTON, DC, January 9, 2012 (ENS) - There will be no new uranium mines on more than one million acres of federal land surrounding the Grand Canyon for the next 20 years, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced today. Secretary Salazar signed a Record of Decision today during a ceremony held at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC, extending the current moratorium on new uranium mining claims. The decision hands a victory to environmental groups and tribes who have fought for years to keep uranium mining out of the area. The affected lands are situated in three areas,...

The Obama administration announced a federal ban Monday on new mining claims affecting a million acres near the Grand Canyon, an area known to be rich in high-grade uranium ore reserves. In doing so, the administration brushed off pressure from congressional Republicans and mining industry figures who wanted a policy change. At an early afternoon event, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a 20-year ban on new mining claims on public land surrounding the Grand Canyon. On two previous occasions the secretary had imposed temporary bans on new mining claims. On Monday, he said that while uranium remains an important part...

MONTREAL - Weapons-grade uranium is quietly being transported within Canada, and into the United States, in shipments the country's nuclear watchdog wants to keep cloaked in secrecy. A confidential federal memo obtained through the Access to Information Act says at least one payload of spent, U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium fuel has already been moved stateside under a new Canada-U.S. deal. The shipments stem from the highly publicized agreement signed last year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama, amid fears that nuclear-bomb-making material could fall into the hands of terrorists. The Canadian stash gradually being shipped from...

Gov't admits nuclear substances found in waste, unreported to IAEA TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese government admitted Thursday that nuclear substances have been found in the waste of domestic facilities subject to International Atomic Energy Agency inspection, but left unreported to the U.N. nuclear watchdog. Top government spokesman Osamu Fujimura said in a news conference that the matter will be reported to the IAEA soon, but did not say how much nuclear material was involved. The chief Cabinet secretary said an investigation last year of records led to the discovery of nuclear substances that were unaccounted for in waste at...

Jeb Handwerger of www.GoldStockTrades.com joins us for a wide ranging interview covering Rare Earth Metals, Uranium and the intractable US Budget Deficit. Jeb has been following mining stocks for many years and is an authority on Rare Earths, Uranium and other mining sectors. He explains why it's crunch time for the Western World to break China's monopoly on these metals which are vital to modern life as we know it. Rare Earths go into just about every electronic item that we require in our daily lives, from cellphones, to computers, to windmills and automobilies. His view of Uranium is quite...

Kazakhstan’s international energy image is now that of one of the world’s rising oil exporters, an extraordinary feat given that, two decades ago its hydrocarbon output was beyond insignificant when the USSR collapsed. The vast Central Asian nation, larger than Western Europe, has now quietly passed another energy milestone. Kazakhstan produces 33 percent of world’s mined uranium, followed by Canada at 18 percent and Australia, with 11 percent of global output. Kazakhstan contains the world's second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. Until two years ago Kazakhstan was the world's No. 3 uranium miner, following Australia and Canada. Together...