Turkish police seize weapons-bound uranium

Ireland Online ^

[eabinga]

Turkish police seize weapons-bound uranium 28/09/2002 - 11:04:38

Paramilitary police in Turkey have seized 15.7 kilograms of uranium and arrested two Turks who they said planned to sell the weapons-grade substance, the Anatolia news agency reported today.

Police, acting on a tip, stopped a taxi near the south-eastern city of Sanliurfa, Anatolia said. They found the uranium in a secret compartment under one of the car seats.

Police in Sanliurfa confirmed the arrests but refused to give further information.

Anatolia said the uranium was enriched for use in weapons. Police believe it was smuggled from an eastern European country.

The agency did not say when the arrests were made.

Sanliurfa, 480 miles from the capital Ankara, is close to the Syrian border.

[DBrow]

Actual "weapons grade" uranium is transported in containers called "bird cages" to keep it away from outside influences.
A bird cage is an aluminum cannister with spacing rings around it to prevent the uranium from coming close to things that may reflect neutrons back into the uranium, to prevent criticality accidents.

If this actually were 15 kg of actual "weapons grade" material it would be extremely dangerous to be around- immersing it in water or plastic could make it go reactive and melt, releasing lots of neutrons and gamma. Anything reflecting neutrons back into the mass could be dangerous.

Whenever anyone starts talking about "weapons grade", think about it- what exactly is the reporter saying, how does he know?. The makeup of real bomb material- Oralloy, Tuballoy, and so forth, is classified. There are versions that may support a chain reaction, but not an explosion, and there are other alloys that may be fine for a water-moderated reactor but could never detonate in a bomb. There are depleted uranium alloys that can be fine for a kinetic kill weapon but would be a dud in a bomb.

The press has no clue, usually, what they are talking about when they report on technical issues.

[El Gato]

In answer to a couple of questions on the thread. This is from the Federation Of American Scientists Site:

The minimum mass of fissile material that can sustain a nuclear chain reaction is called a critical mass and depends on the density, shape, and type of fissile material, as well as the effectiveness of any surrounding material (called a reflector or tamper) at reflecting neutrons back into the fissioning mass. Critical masses in spherical geometry for weapon-grade materials are as follows:

Uranium-235 Plutonium-239
Bare sphere: 56 kg 11 kg
Thick Tamper: 15 kg 5 kg

The critical mass of compressed fissile material decreases as the inverse square of the density achieved. Since critical mass decreases rapidly as density increases, the implosion technique can make do with substantially less nuclear material than the gun-assembly method. The "Fat Man" atomic bomb that destroyed Nagasaki in 1945 used 6.2 kilograms of plutonium and produced an explosive yield of 21-23 kilotons [a 1987 reassessment of the Japanese bombings placed the yield at 21 Kt]. Until January 1994, the Department of Energy (DOE) estimated that 8 kilograms would typically be needed to make a small nuclear weapon. Subsequently, however, DOE reduced the estimate of the amount of plutonium needed to 4 kilograms. Some US scientists believe that 1 kilogram of plutonium will suffice.

So it would seem that 15.7 kilograms would be enough to make a sherical implosion device with a "thick tamper".

Farther down on the page, speaking of the gun type "Little Boy" bomb, it states:

This 15-kt weapon was airdropped on 06 August 1945 at Hiroshima, Japan. The device contained 64.1 kg of highly enriched uranium

[El Gato]

And why does the stuff have a tag saying it came from West Germany

The tag on the *container* says that, but that doesn't necessarily mean the material inside came from there. Doesn't mean it didn't either of course.

[El Gato]

You know it hasn't been *West* Germany in over a decade, which may mean the container was made over a decade ago. Probably for some other purpose and likely for shipment to an English speaking country, else why would it be in English rather than Duetsch?

[Cold Heat]

Again I must say, that the container you see is a coating that surrounds the actual container/containers. I am familiar with it due to my stint a a combat engineer. This type coating is tamperproof as well as impervious to water, fuels, etc. It is commonly used to protect ordinance devices and Mil-spec stuff of all kinds.

[Mitchell]

Urfa is almost 100% Kurdish and is the home town of Abdullah Ocalan the Kurdish terrorist leader of the PKK.
Coincidence? Perhaps.

Maybe this wasn't going to Iraq, but to some place else. Iran maybe?

[Nogbad]

Maybe this wasn't going to Iraq, but to some place else. Iran maybe?

Hmm. Well Urfa really isn't on the route
one would take to get to Iraq, and futhermore,
on the road from Urfa to the Iraqi border
there are frequent police searches of all vehicles.
(Travelling on the busses I have been stopped many times).

Getting to Iran would be more difficult still.

However there is a major road through the desert
from Urfa to Syria which only takes 2 hours to travel.

Of course, it is highly possible
that Syria was not the final destination

[antivenom]

NOW we have a double hmmmmm-er! hehehehehehe

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

According to the red/blue map . . .

the dems would lose a lot of voters

. . . just about anywhere it might occur to anyone to hit the U.S. with a nuke.

[Cindy]

Links of Interest:

CNN.com: Istanbul, Turkey. "TURKISH URANIUM SUSPECTS RELEASED" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Turkish officials announced Saturday they had seized a box filled with nearly 35 pounds (15 kilograms) of uranium. But Muzaffer Dilek, the mayor of Sanliurfa, a Turkish city near the Turkey-Syria border, said Sunday that the material amounted to only 140 grams -- about five ounces. The two men arrested with the material were released due to lack of evidence and have since disappeared, Dilek said.") (092902)

ANANOVA.com: "POLICE ARREST 2 IN URANIUM SEIZURE" (ARTICLE SNIPPET: "Paramilitary police in Turkey have seized 15.7 kilogrammes of uranium in Turkey. They arrested two Turks who they said planned to sell the weapons-grade substance, the Anatolia news agency reported today.") (092802)

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

An update from DEBKA that is very interesting:

US-Russian Teams Hunting Iraq-bound Uranium Five Weeks

DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly Report Exclusively:
US-Russian Teams Hunting Iraq-bound Uranium Five Weeks
UPDATING:
Sunday, 29 September , an unidentified Turkish police official at Diyarbakir “amended” the first announcement that paramilitary police had captured 15 kg of enriched uranium hidden in a taxicab driving through the southern province of Sanliurfa (incidentally Abraham’s Biblical birthplace of Ur). He claimed that the quantity of radioactive material was only 140 grams.
DEBKAfile ’s sources comment that the quantity is less relevant than the tangible evidence of a free route along which weapons-grade uranium is being smuggled from points in East Europe and Central Asia to the Middle East. There is no knowing what quantities have already traveled that route. Last November, for instance, the Istanbul police caught 1kg of enriched uranium on the black market.
Only hours after the first Turkish announcement on Saturday, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Viennawas playing it down. A spokesman questioned the contents of the lead container because the word uranium was spelled in “a strange way”.  Bureaucratic fudging? Or an echo in Vienna from the New York office of UN secretary general Kofi Annan, who has made no secret of his opposition to unilateral American military action against Iraq un-sponsored by the world body.
The word from Washington Sunday night was that the White House is seeking more information before determining its position.
28 September: The mysterious tip-off that led Turkish paramilitary police to the taxi cab, transporting 33 lbs of enriched uranium in a lead container hidden under a seat, came from the joint US-Russian undercover team that has for five weeks been tracking Iraqi operatives who were sent by the Iraqi ruler to hunt for the essential ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The news released Saturday, September 28, does not say when the seizure took place.
This joint team, working out of Moscow, was first uncovered by DEBKA-Net-Weekly Issue 74 on August 23:
Operatives of the American and the Russian SVR secret services are jointly engaged in an epic hunt for a band of undercover Iraqi operatives racing up and down Russia, Belarus, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan this past week. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s exclusive sources, the Iraqis have been sent by Saddam Hussein on an illicit hunt for nuclear material, particularly weapons-grade enriched Uranium-235. They are also trying to buy black market missile parts.
American and Russian task forces have set up a joint command center in Moscow to coordinate the high-stakes chase.
The alarm was first sounded in Washington and Moscow in early August by reports of Iraq agents splashing out with multi-million dollar offers for nuclear material. They did not take the information too seriously at first. But then came further reports that 15 Iraqi agents had split up into three groups, two covering Kazakhstan and the Ukraine and the third, Belarus.
The American and Russian presidents put their heads together and decided their intelligence operational divisions would mount a hot pursuit of the Iraqi agents, hoping to get to them before they reached their objective.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources say the chase is still on.
The haul in the southern Turkish province of Sanliurfia, which borders on Syria, may have given President George W. Bush the conclusive evidence he needs to prove that Saddam Hussein is racing to build up a nuclear warfare capability and may use it in the approaching war. It may be the clincher in Washington’s bid for support at home and abroad in its decision to use military force against Iraq.
On Saturday, American and British representatives, having been rejected by France, arrived in Moscow to win the Russians round to Washington’s case against Saddam Hussein.
There is little doubt that the Turkish smugglers who had been promised $5 million for the uranium were on their way to the Syrian or Iraqi borders to hand it over to their Iraqi clients.
Despite the US-Russian success in tracking down one shipment of enriched uranium sufficient for the fabrication of several small bombs, there is no knowing for certain if previous consignments have not got through to destination and were already being processed.

I know it is DEBKA.

But......anyone seen anything that might correlate with this?

[Southack]

Please remove me from your ping list.

[blastbaby]

And they let them ggggggooooooooooo?

And then they disappeared???

Is the legal limit for uranium 150 gms??? (just possession?)

LOL - this should have a "hold muh WMD alert" on it.

[R. Scott]

Dems would lose a lot of voters if NYC or DC were hit – they’re bastions of democratic voters.

[Stefan Stackhouse]

Enough for one weapon ?? Last I heard, critical mass was somewhere around 2 kilograms. If my recollection is correct, this is enough for 6 of the "primitive" Hiroshima-style bombs.

2kg will do for a reactor, but it is closer to 18 kg for a bomb. Los Alamos can construct a bomb with considerably less, but that takes advanced technology that Al Qaida or Iraq might not have.