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."

Thanks, media,

... for at least keeping this ONE story under wraps until a prudent moment!

Re:Thanks, media,

How does it even point in the right direction for exonerating Bush?

Try reading the article. I know it's a lot of words and all that, but persevere till the bitter middle and you will find:

"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."

In case your memory needs refreshing, the first US vs Iraq war was in 1991 and there was great worldwide support for it. The next US vs Iraq war was in 2003 and there was not much support for it worldwide (I'm sure you still wonder why).

I bet the most US people seeing the headlines will think a similar way - "Hey Bush was right".

So it's going to be yet another wonderful "mission accomplished" by the "news people". Like shooting fish in the barrel.

Thanks media alright.

Re:Thanks, media,

Reminds me of the sketch on Bremner, Bird and Fortune (British satirical show) where the Defence Minister was being interviewed.
Interviewer: How did you know that Saddam had these weapons? Minister: Well, ah... receipts, mostly.

Yes indeed. The UK sold both chemical weapons and obvious CWpn precursors to Iraq.

But before that's used as support for Iraq having WMD (as the USA and UK of course both do), experts agreed that such weapons were volatile and would long since have expired at the time of the invasion of Iraq by the US led coalition in March 2003. Had concern about WMD been the real motivation, then Hans Blix of the UN would have been allowed to finish his inspection. The Iraqis were co-operating after all. However, this couldn't be allowed as he would have returned a verdict of "no WMD" and the US and UK's pitiful excuse would have exploded completely.

The question of why the US has the right to possess the world's largest arsenal yet tell other people they must remain unarmed, is a separate issue, of course. But as there were no WMD (stupid term), it doesn't arise except as a means of highlighting hypocracy.

Re:Thanks, media,

The US was actively supporting him while he was using chemical weapons on the Kurds.

Furthermore, neither the chemical weapons (which everyone except the US government had acknowledged for years) or possession of materials that showed that he wanted nukes (which, again, was never disputed) shows that he was anywhere near having weapons which posed an imminent threat - let alone had the intent of threatening the US or its allies (which would have been suicidal).

The invasion was illegal under international law in any case.

Finally, this stuff was found at the time of the invasions, and no-one thought it proved anything then: why does it prove something now, just because it has been sold?

Re:Thanks, media,

As has been said repeatedly before, having a stockpile of unused 27-year-old yellowcake != trying to buy more from Niger. The former was never contested, as everyone knew he had yellowcake stockpiles. The latter turned out to be a pile of crap.

550 tons of material sitting unused for 2+ decades doesn't lend much credence to the idea that he was pursuing nuclear weapons. Much to the contrary, it's a good clue that he wasn't. It would be as likely that Iraq was stockpiling silicon for use in microprocessor construction absent anything resembling a facility that could create the intermediate compononents necessary for the final product, let alone the final product itself.

This is not something that can be used in Bush's defense, unless one lacks the most basic reasoning skills. Then again, that seems to be a common trait amongst those who attempt to defend Bush...

Troll prophylactic...

From TFA:

And, in a symbolic way, the mission linked the current attempts to stabilize Iraq with some of the high-profile claims about Saddam's weapons capabilities in the buildup to the 2003 invasion.

Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger -- and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims -- led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.

Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam's nuclear efforts.

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.

Re:Troll prophylactic...

What is your point?

Bush did not make an argument about Yellowcake that Saddam had. He said he was buying more... which ... was...a... LIE.

Canada....

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......

Everybody panic!

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.

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.

Like comparing rust to steel

Yellowcake also can be enriched for use in reactors and, at higher levels, nuclear weapons...

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:

Rust also can be smelted for use in cast iron lawn ornaments and, at higher levels, steel tools...

...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

Nuts

Maybe because the HARDEST part of the process is getting the yellowcake?

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

It's about time...

It is gratifying to hear we've disassembled the last remnants of Iraq's non-existent WMD program.

Re:It's about time...

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.

What the FUCK!

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?

The Iraqi nuclear program in the 1980s.

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 [newscientist.com], 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 [chemcases.com], usually performed somewhere near the mine. It's the first and easiest step of the process, and that's as far as Iraq got.

Re:Can we build more nuclear reactors now?

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.

Re:Can we build more nuclear reactors now?

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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.

Re:Quick question

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.

The point was the lie itself

why make this big deal out of the fact that it turned out to be a lie that he was trying to acquire more?

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

Re:Wow. So a lot of that was much ado about nothin

Further: the reason Saddam had the Yellowcake was because he was actually putting together a nuclear reactor [wikipedia.org] 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!

It was in Iraq but Saddam coudln't get it

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.

RTFA

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.

Re:Time to bomb Quebec

Don't you dare compare us to France, it's insulting

Yeah it's insulting to be compared to a country with a lasting cultural influence and relevance who doesn't have to spell stop 'ARRET' rather than 'STOP' (as in France) on stop signs to ensure the survival of its dialect among its very population. Half of your cultural impact on the rest of the world was in the movie Titanic's title song.

Tabarnac, you just got pwné!

(Retroactive disclaimer : I'm French, could you tell?)

Re:Time to bomb Quebec

Quebec is way cooler than France

It might have something to do with the latitude and the gulf stream...

This is sarcasm right?

"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."