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The United States government says it secretly removed more than 1.7 tonnes of enriched uranium and other radioactive materials from Iraq that could potentially be used to manufacture a "dirty" radiological bomb or support a nuclear weapons program. The move came ahead of the June 28 handover of power from the US-led coalition of occupying powers to Iraq's interim government now formally charged with running the country while trying stamp out an escalating insurgency. "This operation was a major achievement for the Bush administration's goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists," Energy Secretary Spencer...

US reveals Iraq nuclear operation The US has revealed that it removed more than 1.7 metric tons of radioactive material from Iraq in a secret operation last month. "This operation was a major achievement," said US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham in a statement. He said it would keep "potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists". Along with 1.77 tons of enriched uranium, about 1,000 "highly radioactive sources" were also removed. The material was taken from a former nuclear research facility on 23 June, after being packaged by 20 experts from the US Energy Department's secret laboratories. It...

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 11:01 p.m. EDTEnriched Uranium Found in Iraq Nearly two tons of low-enriched uranium has been discovered in Iraq and has been transported out of the country in a secret operation conducted by the U.S. Energy Department. The find showed that Saddam Hussein likely had enough nuclear fuel to produce at least one atomic bomb, according to a physicist with the Federation of American Scientists quoted by the Associated Press. The fear that Saddam could produce nuclear weapons was cited by many congressional Democrats two years ago when they voted to authorize the Bush adminsiration to...

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has just rebuked Iran for failing to cooperate fully with international inspectors who are examining whether Tehran is meeting its nonproliferation commitments. How concerned should we be about this development? What does it mean? By its own admission, Iran has been taking steps to develop the capability to enrich uranium, one of the two methods used to produce weapons-grade fissile material. While Iran says its activities are solely for peaceful production of nuclear power and are permitted by the Non-Proliferation Treaty, once enrichment capability exists, a major barrier to producing a nuclear weapon virtually...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) - Suppliers for Libya's nuclear weapons program stretched over three continents, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said in an internal report Friday. Diplomats identified the former Soviet Union and South Africa as among them. Traces of highly enriched uranium were found at some Libyan sites, according to the the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency made available to The Associated Press. But it suggested the uranium entered the country on equipment purchased abroad. The report did not name the countries involved in supplying Libya. However, diplomats close to the agency said on condition of anonymity that...

VIENNA, Austria (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog said in a confidential report Friday it had found traces of high and low enriched uranium on Libyan nuclear centrifuges, as it found on identical Pakistani-made centrifuges in Iran last year.   The agency said there were a number of unanswered questions about Tripoli's atom bomb program, abandoned in December 2003, including "the sources of low enriched and high enriched uranium contamination found on gas centrifuge equipment in Libya." The uranium on the Pakistani-developed centrifuges, which Libya bought second-hand on a black market linked to the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, Abdul...

TEHERAN - Iran has threatened to resume uranium enrichment and revise its agreement to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if the nuclear dispute is not resolved in line with last October’s agreement, the Mehr news service reported on Sunday. “Iran will not wait forever to restore its legitimate national right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities,” an unnamed member of the Iranian delegation at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna told Mehr. “We would not only revise cooperation but also keep the option open to restart uranium enrichment if the IAEA and the Europeans did not fulfill their commitments...

WASHINGTON, March 6 — As the United States presses Iran and other countries to shut down their nuclear weapons development programs, government auditors have disclosed that the United States is making little effort to recover large quantities of weapons-grade uranium — enough to make roughly 1,000 nuclear bombs — that the government dispersed to 43 countries over the last several decades. Among the countries that received the highly enriched uranium, generally with the expectation that it would be returned, were Iran and Pakistan. The chief nuclear weapons expert in Pakistan recently made the stunning disclosure that his network had secretly...

Seoul, South Korea — North Korea accused the United States on Saturday of telling a "whopping lie" in claiming the Communist country has a uranium-based weapons program, an issue likely to be a key dispute at upcoming six-country talks on the North's nuclear ambitions. The United States, the two Koreas, China, Russia and Japan are to resume the talks in Beijing on Wednesday. Their first meeting in August ended without much progress. North Korea has repeatedly denied a U.S. contention that it has a highly enriched uranium program in addition to its publicly acknowledged plutonium program. "The story about the...

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 23 — The head of the United Nations' watchdog agency on atomic weapons said today that the global black market of nuclear-related material and equipment had grown to the point that it amounted to "a Wal-Mart" for weapons-seeking countries. Mohamed M. ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he was taken aback during a recent trip to Libya by the scale and complexity of the illicit trafficking through which it obtained material and blueprints for nuclear weapons designs. "All of that was obtained abroad," he said in an interview during the World Economic Forum...

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Western diplomats and nuclear experts voiced growing concern Tuesday that Iran has reneged on its promise to fully suspend uranium enrichment - a process that can be used to make nuclear weapons. Worries over Tehran's nuclear intentions coincided with decreased concern among nuclear watchdogs about Libya's nuclear ambitions. Tripoli volunteered last month to give up chemical, biological and nuclear weapons or weapons programs. Disarmament teams are in Libya to start dismantling the country's weapons of mass destruction, and diplomats say the North African country apparently was sincere in its vow to disarm. The most recent developments...

Ohio (AP) - Ohio has been chosen over Kentucky for a $1.5 billion plant that will use updated technology to enrich uranium for power plant reactors, the company building the plant announced Monday. The facility at the shuttered Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Piketon, which previously had been used for uranium processing, will employ 500 and will be operating by the end of the decade, USEC Inc. President Nick Timbers said. Sen. George Voinovich said the ``new plant is great news for Piketon and Ohio.'' Officials said the decision means that billions of dollars will be invested in the state....

December 28, 2003 Brazil Resists Plan to Allow Spot Inspection of Nuclear Site By LARRY ROHTER BRASÍLIA, Dec. 27 — Brazil has announced that by mid-2004 it expects to join the select group of nations producing enriched uranium and that within a decade it intends to begin exporting the product. But it is balking at giving international inspectors unimpeded access to the plant that will produce the nuclear fuel. Officials here describe the uranium enrichment effort as entirely peaceful in purpose, aimed at providing fuel far short of weapons grade for the country's nuclear power plants. But they also maintain...

WASHINGTON - Under a new agreement with the United States, Russia will retrieve highly enriched uranium it shipped to civilian research reactors in 17 countries, reducing the likelihood of theft. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (news - web sites) and Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev signed the bilateral statement on the uranium retrieval Friday and said another agreement securing Russian uranium from a dozen other countries "is in its final stages." The announcement is the latest attempt to address growing concern about the large amount of weapons-suitable highly enriched uranium that is kept at active and idle research reactors in...

This slide released 05 February 2003 by the US State Department shows an aluminum tube found in Iraq that could be used to enrich uranium for use in weapons of mass destruction.(AFP-HO/File) WASHINGTON (AFP) - US experts hunting for elusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have ignored depots containing much-publicized aluminum tubes that the administration of President George W. Bush used to illustrate alleged Iraqi nuclear ambitions. The The Washington Post reported Sunday that in their march to Baghdad on April 8, US Marines charged past rows of warehouses at Ash Shaykhili that stored machine tools, consoles and instruments...

<p>A central figure in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s has passed allegations to the Bush administration that $150 million in enriched uranium was smuggled from Iraq into Iran five years ago and some may remain hidden in Iraq.</p> <p>The information was relayed to the administration through a conservative author, Michael Ledeen. And Ledeen is now accusing the CIA of failing to aggressively check the allegation because of a long-held distrust of Manucher Ghorbanifar, a middleman in the Reagan administration's Iran-Contra swap of arms for hostages.</p>

IRAN is secretly building a nuclear site in the west of the country to test centrifuges that could be used to make highly enriched uranium for military purposes, a leading Iranian opposition group said. The site, 15 kilometres from the city of Isfahan, is used to test 120 and 180 centrifugues that can be used to produce highly enriched uranium, which is neccessary for making nuclear weapons, said a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCR). The group had in August 2002 announced the existence of a secret nuclear plant in the central city of Nantaz, where...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Iran acknowledged Monday that traces of weapons-grade uranium were found at one of its nuclear facilities, but denied it enriched the material, and its foreign minister said the country was prepared to allow unfettered nuclear inspections. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi said his country has "nothing to hide" from inspectors. But he said that before Iran signs a protocol allowing the more severe inspections, it wants assurances that signing will end the conflict over its nuclear program. "We want to make sure that additional protocol is going to solve the problems and it is going to be...

<p>International inspectors have found traces of enriched uranium at a second site in Iran, sharply raising fears that Tehran is secretly trying to build a nuclear bomb.</p> <p>Diplomats with the U.N.'s Vienna, Austria-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told reporters yesterday that the find was made at Kalaye Electric Co., a facility south of the capital, during a visit in August. Iranian officials had blocked IAEA officials from the site for two months before finally permitting the inspection.</p>

From Vienna, Austria comes news that United Nations inspectors have found traces of highly enriched weapons-grade uranium at an Iranian nuclear facility. They discovered heightened concerns that Tehran may be running a secret nuclear weapons program. This is not an announcement of the Bush administration, folks. This is according to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Remember that the White House has accused Iran of developing a secret nuclear weapons program and violating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. My questions are these: What will be the Democrats' response to this? Will they demand a UN resolution? Will they simply...