Sunday, March 07, 2004

U.S. Lags in Recovering Fuel Suitable for Nuclear Arms:
"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 sold uranium and nuclear technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea."

The auditors said they found that "large quantities of U.S.-produced highly enriched uranium were out of U.S. control."

The bomb-grade uranium was loaned, leased or sold to dozens of countries starting in the 1950's under the Eisenhower administration's Atoms for Peace program, which was intended to help other countries develop nuclear energy facilities or pursue scientific or medical initiatives. The dispersals continued until 1988. But the government's effort to recover the uranium, either in the form in which it was delivered or as spent fuel, was lackadaisical, the report suggests.

In the last 50 years, the report says, the government has recovered approximately 2,600 kilograms (about 5,700 pounds) of 17,500 kilograms dispersed, leaving almost 15,000 kilograms still in foreign hands. That remains true even as the Bush administration warns that Al Qaeda and possibly other terrorist organizations are trying to obtain nuclear materials to make a bomb.

In general, it takes about 10 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb.

Nuclear weapons experts say most of the exported uranium was weapons grade, and Thomas B. Cochran, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, estimated that the exported uranium material could make "about a thousand nuclear" weapons.

"It could be hundreds if the design was unsophisticated, or thousands if it was more advanced," he added.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/international/worldspecial2/07NUKE.html

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