550 Metric Tons of Uranium Removed From Iraq

Orion Blastar tips us to an AP report that 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" uranium has successfully been removed from Iraq. The operation lasted three months, and it required 37 separate flights and an 8,500-mile trip by boat to reach a port in Montreal. Quoting: "While yellowcake alone is not considered potent enough for a so-called 'dirty bomb' -- a conventional explosive that disperses radioactive material -- it could stir widespread panic if incorporated in a blast. Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons using sophisticated equipment. The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth 'tens of millions of dollars.' A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors."

Comments

Re:It's about time...

[brunes69]

Its easier to make WMD out of oil (napalm) than it is to make them out of yellowcake.

This stuff was most certainly never going to be used in any kinds of weapons program. Iraw never had the facilities to process this stuff at the levels required, and even if they did it would probably be cheaper and easier to just buy black market soviet stuff en masse.

Re:Thanks, media,

[Rei]

Which is what made the story so ridiculous. Iraq already *had* large amounts of yellowcake. It was produced as a byproduct of phosphate mining back in the 70s and 80s, back when they actually had a nuclear program. The concept that they were going to buy more was transparently idiotic to anyone who had actually studied the Iraqi nuclear program. Which is why there was such an international uproar: because a lot of people actually *had* studied the Iraqi nuclear program.

The same thing with the aluminum tubes. Iraq's centrifuges called for flow-formed maraging steel rotors. Unless they had *entirely scrapped all of their previous progress that they spent ages developing*, an aluminum that's ill-suited for welding and would easily have snapped under the centripetal force wouldn't have done a darned thing for them. On the other hand, it was the exact same type of tubing known to be used for small Iraqi military rockets. The concept was widely mocked by the international community and the international press. In the US, not so much. In fact, they mocked the concept that it would be used for Iraqi rockets (despite us knowing about said rockets), talking about how even we use poorer alloys than that for our rockets, and completely ignoring the fact that the Iraqis used a higher quality aluminum to compensate for lower manufacturing quality.