Posted on 02/20/2004 8:13:41 AM PST by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
The European consortium Uranium Enrichment Company (Urenco) appears to be the origin of the international nuclear network recently exposed by the reported confession of top Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, Feb. 17).
Urenco was established in 1970 by Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to ensure that their nuclear power industries would have a fuel source independent of the United States. According to documents and experts, though, security at the firm was poor. For example, Khan, who worked for a Urenco subcontractor in the early and mid-1970s, was given access to advanced uranium enrichment centrifuge designs, even though Pakistan was already known at the time to be seeking nuclear weapons, the Times reported.
In 1975, Khan left Urenco and returned to Pakistan, bringing with him centrifuge designs and supplier lists, according to the Times. U.S. intelligence agencies predicted he would begin seeking the necessary items to build centrifuges for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, and soon after, they detected that Khan was obtaining equipment from Urenco’s network of suppliers, the Times reported.
The investigation into the international nuclear network confessed to by Khan has found a number of suppliers and middlemen who are involved in Europe’s uranium enrichment industry, with some having been convicted of illegal exports previously, the Times reported.
In addition to having played a key role in Pakistan’s development of nuclear weapons, there are also indications that Urenco was a source of nuclear weapons technology for other countries, the Times reported. German intelligence determined that Iraq, as well as possibly Iran and North Korea, had obtained expertise in uranium melting stolen from Urenco in 1984, the Times reported (Craig Smith, New York Times, Feb. 19).
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