FOX News-Weapons Grade Nuclear Material Missing, Russian Offical Says

FOX News ^ | Nov. 15, 2002 | Associated Press

[ewing]

The head of Russia's nuclear regulatory agency says small amounts of weapons grade and reactor grade nuclear materials have disappeared from the country's atomic facilities.

'Instances of the loss of nuclear materials have been recorded, but what the quantity is is another question,' Yuri Vishyevsky, head of Gosatomnadzor, said Thursday.

'Of those situations we can talk about in reality, they involve either grams of weapons grade or kilograms of the usual uraninum used in atomic power plants.

'Most often these instances are connected with factories perparing fuel: Eleckrostal in Moskow region and Novosibirsk,' in Siberia, Vishnyevsky said.

He did not give further details on when the losses were discovered or how the material might have gone missing.

[ewing]

Tie in with all of the background chatter and warnings?

[SouthParkRepublican]

Have to wonder what type of "weapons grade material" they are referring to. I would assume it is HEU but am a bit confused as "weapons grade" is not usually a term applied to anything you would find in a power plant.

I'm slowly starting to like the Russians but they have to be a bit more careful with this kind of thing. It's not like misplacing your car keys.

"Honey, have you seen my fissile material? I though I left it on the dresser."

[JasonC]

They mean grams of plutonium contained within spent reactor rods (from uranium in the fuel that absorbed neutrons during reactor operation), along with kgs of uranium, which includes a few percent U-235 in with mostly the inert U-238. Which, of course, has nothing actually to do with "weapons grade", since getting U-235 or plutonium out of U-238 is the Iraqi hold up. The Iraqis have no shortage of U-238 in the form of ore, which of course includes trace amounts of U-235.

Weapons grade material in the true sense means not traces of anything in something else, nor grams of anything. It means 10 of kgs of 90% plus purity U-235, or kgs of pure plutonium. Which is not even alleged here. The term is simply being misused for scare mongering and deterrence purposes.

[Salvation]

Does this tie in the with supposed hoax of nukes in the U. S. to strike American cities?