Posted on 01/16/2004 9:34:50 AM PST by areafiftyone
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The U.S. nuclear watchdog confirmed Friday that Iraq (news - web sites) was the likely source of radioactive material known as yellowcake that was found in a shipment of scrap metal at Rotterdam harbor.
Yellowcake, or uranium oxide, could be used to build a nuclear weapon, although it would take tons of the substance refined with sophisticated technology to harvest enough uranium for a single bomb.
A spokeswoman for the International Atomic Energy Agency said the Rotterdam specimen was scarcely refined at all from natural uranium ore and may have come from a known mine in Iraq that was active before the 1991 Gulf War (news - web sites).
"I wouldn't hype it too much," said spokeswoman Melissa Fleming. "It was a small amount and it wasn't being peddled as a sample."
The yellowcake was uncovered Dec. 16 by Rotterdam-based scrap metal company Jewometaal, which had received it in a shipment of scrap metal from a dealer in Jordan.
Company spokesman Paul de Bruin said the Jordanian dealer didn't know that the scrap metal contained any radioactive material. He said the dealer was confident the yellowcake, which was contained in a small steel industrial container, came from Iraq.
Jewometaal detected the radioactive material during a routine scan and called in the Dutch government, which in turn asked the IAEA to examine it.
Fleming said the agency will compare the chemical composition of the sample to other samples of ore taken from Iraq's al-Qaim mine, which was bombed in 1991 and dismantled in 1996-97.
She estimated that the Rotterdam sample contained around 5 1/2 pounds of uranium oxide.
President Bush (news - web sites) came under heavy criticism last year when he asserted in his State of the Union address that Iraq was shopping in Africa for uranium yellowcake intelligence that turned out to be based on forged documents.
When did you go to school?
Yes, you need tons of the stuff to do anything interesting, but let's look at the real points here:
(1) This isn't scrap styrofoam or metal. It isn't some dust residue, oil, or grease. It's over 5 pounds of a Radioactive Element that has very few uses... and in Iraq, that list is even smaller (no nuke plants; no semiconductor makers, for example).
(2) If the circumstances of its finding are accurate (sealed canister hidden amongst the scrap), this would appear to be a deliberate and systematic attempt to get spread/disperse/distribute/etc. the uranium oxide out of the country.
(3) What we don't seem to know from this is whether the 5-1/2lbs. consistutes the processed U3O8 (Uranium Oxide) -OR- just the tailings from the processing of U3O8. The latter would be a much more sinister finding -- it means there's a lot more of the REFINED stuff out there. Unfortunately, it's the tailings that you'd mostly want to get rid of.
(4) Overall, I'm thinking this: if Iraq was trying to sneak this stuff out, then what on earth did they KEEP and how much???
No, let's not hype it too much -- I'm sure it's no more interesting than finding asbestos or dope in the shipment.
it would take tons of the substance refined with sophisticated technology to harvest enough uranium for a single bomb.
Yes. Sophisticated 1940s technology.
It isn't at all clear to me that Iraq was attempting to spread, disperse, or distribute their yellowcake out of the country. Let alone that this was part of a systematic attempt to do so. Scrap metal is routinely checked for radioactivity, so hiding yellowcake in scrap metal wouldn't be a great way of disappearing the stuff.
Furthermore, stored at Tuwaitha, is 1,774 drums containing 563,290 kg of yellowcake. That works out to 317kg/ drum. Dispersing even a single drum's worth using the method you've described, would involve placing 2.5kg of yellowcake in each of 126 lots of scrap metal. That certainly isn't a very efficient way of dispersing the material, if they were so inclined.
I don't know how the material got in scrap metal, but we do know that Tuwaitha was looted after the guards abandoned the place. Locals took whatever they could, and often used the drums for other purposes, after dumping out the radioactive material. It seems plausible that some of that could have ended up in some of the vast quantity of scrap metal produced by the war.
Perhaps a facility at a mine was bombed, and the resulting scap metal was picked up and sold. There was a homeless guy in Las Vegas found over the holidays to have a radioactive pellet in his pillow. He found it, and liked it, so he kept it.
Unlike many of the other posters, I can't get excited over less the 1% of a single barrel of yellowcake.
You're welcome. Though the image sometimes looks like a little red x to me. I am not sure why that is the case.
Not bloody likely. Nigeria was a British colony. Niger was part of French Equatorial Africa. They never were under common control or name.
Yesterday was Thursday.
If it's under seal, then Tuwaitha is ruled out as the source of what turned up at Rotterdam Harbor, no?
There was no claim that Iraq was buying yellow cake from Niger recently. The claim was that Iraq SOUGHT to buy YC from Niger.
No.
American forces have collected more than 100 empty metal barrels and five radiological devices by paying $3.00 bounties for items suspected of having been looted from Tuwaitha, the defense officials said Thursday.
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