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Sandia Helps Secure Kazakh Nuclear Material
RedEaredSlider writes "A large cache of enriched nuclear fuel – some 13 metric tons — was stored in a nuclear reactor in the port city of Aktau, on the Caspian seacoast. The reactor was a Soviet-era fast breeder reactor, designed to make nuclear fuel for both weapons and power plants. The reactor, which started operations in 1973, also provided 135 megawatts of electricity, 9 million gallons of water per day and steam for hot water and heating for Aktau. It was shut down by the Kazakh government in 1999. Getting the material out of a seaport was one way to make it harder to steal, [Dave Barber of Sandia Labs] said. So the US and Kazakh governments embarked on a project to move it to a guarded — and remote — facility in the interior."
Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that a breakaway Russian Republic called Kazakhstan will be transferring nuclear fuel to the United Nations in a few days. Here's the plan. We get the fuel and we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!
I am officially gone from
Eeks, were they wearing dosimeters?
Duh, big juicy story, lots of details. Right out of a James Bond novel, with Nuclear Powered Ninjas too. Just need sharks and lasers.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
nothing like looting the country for the spoils of war, hmmmm?
Did it for the "wmd/justice/free kurds/make up reason here"?
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
My experience with AF pilots is that they are non-political big boys with big toys - like to fly.
I know that will not make you happy, but that's most AF pilots...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
A few months after we took Iraq, we secured and flew out almost 14 tons of Yellow Cake in 55 gallon drums, 4 to a pallet,on C-17's to Diego Garcia, where it was put on ships to other places. A year or two later 3 of our pilots came down with Lymphoma. Uncle Sam says it was unrelated...
Yellowcake isn't particularly radioactive. To get a significant exposure to radiation they would have had to essentially breath it.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
GREAT SUCCESS!
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
Jet loads of pallets of big duty drums? Sure that's perfectly safe.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
One would expect the water in a nuclear reactor to be continuously recycled; using it to provide the city with water doesn't make any sense at all.
The US helped remove a half ton of fissile material from Kazakhstan in 1993-94 in a covert project called Project Sapphire at a cost of $27 million.
Yes, apparently it is.
Its in sealed drums. They guys filling the drums were probably the ones at greatest risk.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
US get 13 ton of nuclear material from my country yet I show US my sister, she show her vazhïn to US and say "You will never get this you will never get it la la la la la la."
Now its in a remote guarded facility. Previously it was on the outskirts of the city, just sitting in a mothballed reactor.
Still, I basically agree that getting it out of the country would have made it even harder to steal.
Kazakhstan does not seem to me to be the safest or most stable of places.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"The yellowcake removed from Iraq in 2008 was material that had long since been identified, documented, and stored in sealed containers under the supervision of U.N. inspectors. It was not a "secret" cache that was recently "discovered" by the U.S, and the yellowcake had not been purchased by Iraq in the years immediately preceding the 2003 invasion. The uranium was the remnants of decades-old nuclear reactor projects that had put out of commission many years earlier: One reactor at Al Tuwaitha was bombed by Israel in 1981, and another was bombed and disabled during Operation Desert Storm in 1991."
Source
This doesn't sound like it was dodgy hidden under cover drums or anything like that. It sounds as if it was well regulated.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Nuclear Fuel removes you!
The material you're talking about is an alpha emitter. This means the radiation is stopped by things like barrels, walls, your clothes, your skin and air.
There would only be residual gamma radiation. This would become harmless on the way from the barrels to the cockpit. If you're not trolling you would do well to read up on how different types of radiation work.
The above poster was right about it being no risk unless someone ingested it. The pilots were exposed to dangerous radiation though: airplanes are routinely hit by powerful cosmic radiation which is much worse than anything coming from yellowcake barrels.
14 tons of yellowcake isn't worthless(there was a peak in 2007, to $136/pound, which would give that shipment a best-case value of ~$3.8million. More typically, though, spot prices are under $50/pound, often more like $30, which would only be ~$840,000); but I'd be quite surprised if that operation ended up being profitable for anybody, unless it was handed over to some lucky winner at a totally sweetheart price. C-17s aren't exactly RyanAir, never mind the broader costs...
That would be the main health concern. As a freestanding gamma source you don't have much to worry about; but a mixture of uranium, decay products, and whatever delightful residues and impurities remain from the leaching process is not the sort of dust one would want to be breathing.
If the drums were properly sealed, no problem. If one or more of them were damaged, the handlers could quite easily be tracking around and breathing the dust. That would probably be unrecommended...
Why would the cash-strapped republic of K. not resell the material for reprocessing to some country that has running reactors, rather than store it?
This is not a signature.
Still, I basically agree that getting it out of the country would have made it even harder to steal.
Kazakhstan does not seem to me to be the safest or most stable of places.
Based on what, exactly?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Now it is hidden in a remote and classified location--1,860 miles down the railroad track, outside on a slab of concrete in the northeastern part of the country, in 60 casks each the size of a railroad car. Don't worry, nobody will find it there.
Sangria not necessary. Vodka sufficient secure all Kazakh nuclear material under 18 years of age.
Probably because it has "-stan" in its name and, as far as gross generalizations go, its not completely unwarranted.
On the other hand, you can be sure that a lot of people, including certain interested foreigners, are keeping a close eye on the material. It should be safe enough. If anything, I don't think the Russians will want that stuff getting loose any more than the people in the US would.
and have some way to handle it without exposing themselves to a lot of radiation
If they're "suicide" whatevers, they won't care about that. In fact, that might never enter into the picture. Someone might, for example, choose to detonate one portable device in the midst of it all and let the prevailing winds do the rest.
Me, I'd be rethinking above-ground storage...or at least ringing the site with some quality ground-to-air missiles.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Kazakhstan is the only Central Asian republic to see no bloodshed following the breakup of the USSR, 10% growth year after year, and major international investment. Almaty and Astana look like Dubai now, all glittering skyscrapers and high-tech installations. It's OK if you don't know much about the country, but drawing a conclusion from ignorance is just silly.
The government is just as ruthless in holding down dissent as some Arab states. There hasn't been an open election there in decades, and the president is looking to hand the government over to his daughter and son-in-law. He's playing a 4 way power broker between major powers, but he can only keep that up till al qaeda moves in, as they have already started doing.
He dies, and that country spirals out of control. Its Egypt all over again.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Al Qaeda has a negligible presence in northern Central Asia and virtually none in Kazakhstan, which in spite of some statistics that ask people to answer a religion is one of the most non-religious countries on Earth. Nazarbayev isn't as "ruthless in holding down dissent" as typical Arab dictators. Human rights group bemoan some harrassment of opposition, but there's no institutionalization of torture. And plenty of commentators note that, regardless of government pressure, an opposition is unlikely to flourish because people feel there's no way to be more effective economically than Nazarbayev. Personally, I think a case could be made for slight concern, but the country is damn stable and posts like yours are fearmongering by people who probably haven't spent much time in the country.
The material you're talking about is an alpha emitter. This means the radiation is stopped by things like barrels, walls, your clothes, your skin and air.
The above poster was right about it being no risk unless someone ingested it.
I think you are overlooking the possibility that at least one of the drums had a broken seal and radioactive isotopes were released into the plane. There are any number of possibilities to allow material to be released into the aircraft and it is a ridiculous assumption on your part to discount that it was not *possible*. They *could* have breathed in the isotope after the initial trip - especially if they kept flying the same aircraft.
I'd like further information. If three airmen from the same aircraft all contracted the same type of cancer a year or so after transporting radioactive materials it's an extraordinary co-incidence.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
A few months after we took Iraq, we secured and flew out almost 14 tons of Yellow Cake in 55 gallon drums, 4 to a pallet,on C-17's to Diego Garcia, where it was put on ships to other places. A year or two later 3 of our pilots came down with Lymphoma. Uncle Sam says it was unrelated...
Do you have any further information on this incident, a link perhaps?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If i had to transport Yellow Cake, i would quickly check Yahoo and be satisfied with that answer. NOT !!!
A large cache of enriched nuclear fuel - some 13 metric tons -- was stored in a nuclear reactor in the port city of Aktau, on the Caspian seacoast.
The really interesting thing about this story is that it demonstrates exactly why a well engineered spent fuel containment facility with appropriate logistics to support it is required in the United States. Currently there is approximately 70,000 tons of spent fuel around the U.S waiting transportation to longer term facilities. So if the following statement illustrates the logistics required to move 13 tons from one location;
The nuclear fuel was placed in steel casks, each one the size of a train car. Each of the 60 casks weighs 100 tons. They are designed to hold the material for 50 years, and they were taken across Kazakhstan to a remote location...The casks were put onto a special train, which made the 1,860 mile journey under guard. To make sure that nobody tried to sabotage the transport, nearly every mile of the tracks ahead were checked for damage.
then it also illustrates what an enormous logistics challenge moving 70,000 tons of spent fuel from multiple locations around the U.S represents. I point this out because often, when conversations arise around nuclear power, the discussion is focused on the reactor technology and none on any of the other logistic and infrastructure required to support the reactors operating.
Efforts like this are a positive one to reduce the threat of asymmetrical nuclear weapons use and should be applauded, even if they are only to a temporary location. Considering that the DOEs own report into Yucca mountain said that the geology was unsuitable for the containment of nuclear waste there should be no doubt why a geologically stable (embedded in granite as opposed to pumice) spent fuel containment facility is a necessity in the U.S. It has to be built to last as it will become the center point of many other large logistics operations that connect it to nuclear facilities around the country.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
There were drums of yellowcake (actually not yellow in colour) refined uranium ore in storage at Tuwaitha in Iraq, under IAEA seal. During the 2003 invasion the Iraqi security on the site ran away and the US-led forces did not secure the area for several months after the regime folded, despite it being a site of extreme importance in terms of WMDs and nuclear proliferation.
The local Iraqi population took this opportunity to loot the site, stealing everything that was worth stealing. They broke into the storage bunkers, found these large plastic drums full of dirt, tipped them out and took the drums to store drinking water in. The "dirt" was yellowcake ore.
Yellowcake is only mildly hazardous, both chemically and radioactively. Mining and initial processing of the ore body releases daughter isotopes trapped within the rocks which are the result of billions of years of radioactive decay and which produce most of the alpha and beta particles and all of the gamma radiation but after the processing at the mine is complete the most active of those daughter isotopes such as radon-222 have been removed.
Yes, just as reliable as some guy on slashdot claiming it to be unsafe.
Just sayin'
That's exactly what Mubarak thought. People would be grateful for 30 years of stability and economic growth.
I live in Russia (an authoritarian country, I admit) in a Siberian province bordering Kazakhstan. That guy is a dictator of Lukashenko (another wonderful pro-stability president-for-life) caliber, no doubt about it.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
I think we're arguing past each other here. The grandparent said:
Jet loads of pallets of big duty drums? Sure that's perfectly safe.
To this I replied that it's perfectly safe, or at least safer than background radiation in a plane. You'll probably agree that that phrasing implies that they were dealing with something profoundly dangerous. You also quoted me saying that it might be dangerous if someone ingested it.
Note that he didn't talk about leaking barrels: that's an extra assumption. Unless we have data on barrels leaking (and leaking significant amounts for that matter) there's no reason to assume that that's the case.
Well unless the pilots actually all contracted cancer in an improbable way. But note that that information is completely unsourced, so I'll stick to pointing out that Uranium won't kill you always in every way: it's not Polonium and several bad things have to happen for it to kill you. If the barrels were competently sealed (there's no evidence to contradict this I believe) then the risk of the yellowcake killing all three pilots was probably significantly lower than the risk of flying without radioactives.
Until I see any evidence to the contrary I'll stick to this being a basic radioactivity scare story.
My experience with AF pilots is that they are non-political big boys with big toys - like to fly.
I know that will not make you happy, but that's most AF pilots...
You don't get to be non-political just because you're not interested in politics, unless you go and live on a desert island. Fighting in a war is a political act.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Still, I basically agree that getting it out of the country would have made it even harder to steal. Kazakhstan does not seem to me to be the safest or most stable of places.
Based on what, exactly?
Based on Borat, probably.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have to agree with this. as far as I know, there has never been a war that was not driven by politics except maybe the american revolutionary war.
Probably because it has "-stan" in its name and, as far as gross generalizations go, its not completely unwarranted.
Kazakhstan is pretty far from anything in this stereotype, as far as politics and economy are concerned.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.