I backtracked for a couple of hours, then I read
all of my saved text docs since 9/11, bud nada.
I think it may have to do with Iran’s fissionable
material. All I know for sure is that I read it
today on the internet.
Thanks for searching for me.
Yellowcake in Montreal
06/07/2008 11:11:52 PM
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A load of nuclear material has arrived in Montreal, two weeks after the secret shipment left Iraq.
A load of nuclear material has arrived in Montreal, two weeks after the secret shipment left Iraq.
The uranium's next destination is Ontario, where it will be processed into fuel for nuclear power plants.
550 metric tonnes of uranium was trucked out of Baghdad, put aboard 37 cargo flights to a remote island in the Indian ocean, then loaded onto a Montreal-bound freighter.
The operation was kept secret out of fears someone might attack the shipments.
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U.S. wanted secrecy in uranium deal: Cameco
CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Sun. Jul. 6 2008 5:08 PM ET
A Canadian company that acquired a reported 550 tonnes of yellowcake uranium from Iraq says that the U.S. military wanted the deal to be kept quiet.
"We were following the request of the U.S. government,'' Saskatoon-based Cameco Corp. spokesperson Lyle Krahn told The Canadian Press of the clandestine route the material took to get out of Baghdad and to Canada.
The yellowcake has been described as the last remnant of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's nuclear program.
The material arrived in Montreal by ship Saturday and is scheduled to be transported by truck to the company's facilities in Ontario.
"We will be completing the transaction in the third quarter of this year, the shipment is in Canada at this point and we will be completing it by the fall,'' Krahn said.
"We are sending it to Port Hope and Blind River,'' he added, referring to the Ontario nuclear facilities.
Yellowcake is milled uranium ore. Doug Brugge of Tufts University told CTV Newsnet that in its current state it could not be used in a weapon.
It can be processed "into higher levels of refinement for making nuclear fuel -- either for weapons or power plants," Brugge said.
The material is considered harmful to the environment, however.
"Yellowcake is comprised mostly of uranium and uranium is a toxic chemical -- I would put it in a similar category to lead and mercury," Brugge said. "They are environmental contaminates of considerable concern.
"It's not something you would want to breathe in or ingest."
However, if properly sealed and transported it is not considered much of a risk.
Nuclear watchdogs questioned why the U.S. wanted the shipment kept secret.
"If it's yellowcake, then why would it be top secret? It's not weapons usable material per se,'' Gordon Edwards who heads Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, told The Canadian Press.
"But why is there this secrecy surrounding it,'' Edwards said. "That's the real question here.''
Brugge said the purchase was a good one for Cameco.
"Mining of uranium has caused so much devastation around the world that probably reprocessing some of this yellowcake . . . is a good thing rather then opening up new mines," he said.
Canada is the world's leading uranium producer.
With files from The Canadian Press
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