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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."
... for at least keeping this ONE story under wraps until a prudent moment!
We can't let those French Canadians have nuclear weapons!
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
I would have waited until AFTER Dick Cheney left the White House to be seen buying Uranium....esp. with all that oil you have up there......
Monstar L
Mmmmmmmmm, Yellowcake.
So the primary hazard is mass panic.. exactly the same as a (uranium based) radiological dispersion device (dirty bomb) then. Also not too dissimilar to what the US have been doing for the last 5 years - shooting uranium all over the place.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
Why do people always feel the need to stress that yellowcake could be made into weapons, no matter how far from being a weapon it presently is? It's like saying:
...though making a high quality steel tool from rust is significantly easier than making a weapon from yellowcake. The ubiquitous anti-nuke meme (it's radioactive, be afraid!)? Or just boilerplate like measuring energy use in average households equivalents or heavy things in adult male elephants?
-- MarkusQ
Furthermore, it's truly quite amazing how Bush manipulated the intelligence to show that Iraq had WMDs, even going so far as to manipulate Russia's, Jordan's, France's et al intelligence to show the same thing. He even went back in time and had the Carnegie Institute write the book Deadly Arsenals which outlined Iraq's WMD program, and of course while he was back in time had the Clinton Administration link Iraq with Al Qaeda just to show off. A truly impressive whitewash that no one has been able to uncover with a 5-second google search.
It is gratifying to hear we've disassembled the last remnants of Iraq's non-existent WMD program.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
You choose a material that is biologically available. Then that brings strong alpha emitters up close to cells in the body. For example you might want something that could replace small amounts of calcium in people's bones and teeth with a radioactive isotope. Or something that would replace carbon in the fat in internal organ, skin and brain. That way when you spread the radioactive material far it can quickly be concentrated into human beings doint maximum damage. It also can decimate the environment due to bio-accumulation.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Maybe because the lie was used to trick the American people into starting a war that has cost us hundreds of billions of dollars, wrecked our economy, undermined our position in the world and put us in a far less secure position, killed hundreds of thousands of people, destabilized the middle east, and lined the pockets of the friends and supporters of the people who told the lie with money stolen from the US treasury on the basis of that lie?
The problem was it was a lie, crafted and used to achieve a specific dishonorable result. The fact that other claims that could have been made about superficially similar subjects were true (and were known to be true at the time) has absolutely no bearing on the situation.
--MarkusQ
Further: the reason Saddam had the Yellowcake was because he was actually putting together a nuclear reactor back in the 1980s. Thanks to bombings by Israel and the US, Saddam had no choice but to sit on the damaged reactors and fuel, and try to build a nuclear research program.
The fact that the nuclear fuel he'd had for years is completely unenriched just tells you how little cash he had to spend on the program. Simple fact: nuclear programs are fucking expensive, because enrichment is not a simple process. This is why I laughed my ass off when Bush claimed that Iraq might have a nuclear program to fear, even after we bombed them to the stone age in 1991, and then strangled their international trade for the next decade. Complete bullshit!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
From TFA:
U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said.
This was old yellowcake from the first Iraqi attempt at a nuke plant (which the Israelis bombed in 1981). Saddam couldn't use it because there were UN inspectors watching it.
So it was plausible that he might want some, but not true that he tried to get it from Niger. That was concocted evidence.
so now we're led to believe that CANADA is pursuing nuclear weapons?
They just purchased 550 Metric tonnes of yellowcake uranium from a supposed Terrorist state and we're just letting them do it?
Canada is a ticking bomb here people!
We need to attack Ontario now!
Why isn't bush willing to protect us from these terrorists?
They're using their grammar skills there.
RTFA: "Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said."
But I guess many stupid/ignorant people will read the headlines and "understand" it the same way you did.
No wonder Bush got re-elected.
Nuts. Unless you've got some super secret enrichment technique that you haven't shared with the rest of us, you are quite simply dead wrong. Yellowcake is just a mix of uranium salts, and making it is no more complicated than any typical mining operation; drill some holes, crush some rock, and leach the minerals out with a suitable leaching agent. Dry the result and repeat. You don't need specialized equipment, or even a great deal of skill. It is a low tech, low precision step.
Enrichment, on the other hand, is a bear, requiring precision engineering, lots of finiky equipment, and a great deal of skill.
--MarkusQ
Yes, Iraq did have a nuclear program, back in the 1970s and 1980s. It didn't go well. They couldn't get any of the separation processes to work. A mid-level physicist in the program defected to the US and wrote a book about it, which gives a view of the strange world of working for Saddam Hussein. If he was annoyed at a manager, he sent them to a torture camp to be tortured for a while, then put them back to work. If they did well, he gave them one of his ex-mistresses.
Iraq tried to build calutrons, which do isotope separation in one or two steps but can process only tiny amounts of material. So it's necessary to build a large number of them to enrich enough uranium for a weapon. The US built some sizable calutron plants during WWII, but they were too slow to be useful when fed with natural uranium. They were used as a final upgrade step for uranium partially enriched in the gaseous diffusion plants. None of the other nuclear powers ever bothered much with calutrons, except little research-sized units. Iraq never actually built enough calutron capacity to accomplish much.
Iraq's yellowcake (uranium oxide, unenriched) is left over from that era. Extraction of yellowcake from raw ore is an ordinary chemical process, usually performed somewhere near the mine. It's the first and easiest step of the process, and that's as far as Iraq got.
"Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said."
What are you talking about? He said he didn't have any, and (after dicking around a bit) he let in UN weapons inspectors, and they said he didn't have any. The the US ignored this info, fabricated their own with faulty intelligence, and invaded.
I don't like Saddam at all, but I knew, as did a large portion of Americans who were listening to more than just the US administration, that Iraq did not have WMDs and that an invasion was a bad idea. I had arguments to this effect with many people at the time, but about 2/3 of the nation was in a rabid war frenzy. I'd say about 1/2 still are.
Our nation fucked up -- please stop trying to rewrite history.
At first I thought you were joking.
Bush, Cheney, et al told so many lies in the lead up to the Iraq war that it's difficult to keep track of them all. Just off the top of my head (and sticking to things we know):
To claim that they didn't lie about anything regarding Iraq is either a sign of coolaid overdose, sock puppetry, or terminal cluelessness.
--MarkusQ
we invaded and occupied a country, have allowed the pubs that did this to remain in office, and it appears that the dems are going to do nothing about it. All in all, it does not speak well of us Americans. I know that many other countries allow their traitors and criminal politicians to get off scot-free. But we are Americans. This is NOT suppose to happen. Sadly, we allowed reagan off with all that he did. Likewise, Clinton for lying (though it was a lie on a question that should never have been asked of him). And now this. Interestingly, pubs and dems made more of a todo about Clinton, than they have about W.. Supposedly, Obama will pursue this if he gets into office and has said that he will free up ALL previous president records (except those for national security). I just hope that he keeps his word. He has already broken the one about accepting public funding only.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yeah that's right, the sanctions that where working and containing Saddam.
You're also right that the US did n't invade Kuwait, it invaded Iraq after buts thats okay because Iraq invaded first, but granted the US did n't gas Kurds.
The UK also got to invade Iraq twice (before it was Iraq) and had already bombed Kurds the first tie. Winston Churchill at the time (1920) infact also wanted to gas the Kurds. A chilling quote: "I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes".
Anyway like you say apples and oranges, but at the end of the day its all fruit when it comes to causing suffering.
Yeah that's right, the sanctions that where working and containing Saddam.
With all due respect, what planet are you on? Gore Vidalpia?
The sanctions were definitely *not* working, in that most of the Oil-for-Food funds were being siphoned off for Saddam's personal use while his people starved. Containing? If you mean, "wasn't invading any other countries", perhaps.... but he was about as contained as a mob boss in a medium security jail cell, already directing and planning his activities/revenge by phone for when he gets out.
The evidence for this was apparent, but became even more convincing once the invasion had occurred and we saw how much corruption there actually was in the Oil-for-Food program. Thanks France.
In addition, the "containment" was being performed at the hest of the US Military, who'd every so often have to blow up an Anti-aircraft gun that locked onto them in the No-Fly zones (where Saddam was "contained" from gassing his domestic enemies). Each and every one of those incidents was adequate reason to throw out the armistice and resume hostilities against Iraq, since they were all violations of the negotiated agreements.
The WMD program was a red herring. Despite the pre-existing resolutions that allowed the use of force against Saddam, the US (or UK) felt the need to get political cover for finding a reason to go after Saddam *now*, since the general public and random kleptocracies out there didn't understand that our defensive posture had changed after 9/11. They bet that Iraq had WMD, and so used that as the focal point. Bad call... but if they'd used the war crimes against the Kurds, no-fly incidents, or Oil-for-Food corruption as the focal points instead no one would be complaining today (for that).
...its all fruit when it comes to causing suffering.
If you're a bona-fide pacifist, fine. Otherwise, there's a moral difference between good and evil in human actions, and if you can't tell the difference then I pity you. And your students.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
The fact that the UN continued to approve new sanctions in reaction to his blocking of inspectors, ongoing manufacturing of long-range missiles (which he had agreed to not only cease importing/making, but to destroy), etc ... that all added to the list of violations in advance his regime's demise.
None of which added up to a need to invade in 2003. (As you may recall, the US invaded over the objections of the inspectors.) Nope, we needed to gin up a bunch of lies about WMD and make up all sorts of BS to pretend that containment wasn't working.
Disengenuous? That's you. Your decision to ignore the actual facts doesn't change them. And to the extent that you spin your disregard for those facts as part of your absurd call for "war crimes" trials just shows you as the politically motivated liar that you are.
Back atcha, chief. Colin Powell did not present facts to the UN General Assembly. The US did not rely on facts to justify the war. In addition to pursuing the Iraq war with criminal incompentence at best, the US has most definitely and determinedly committed war crimes at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. And your ex post facto attempt to spin the causus belli into something legitimate, as with all the others since then, just shows you to be the politically motivated liar that you are.