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moonwolf23 Jul. 7th, 2008 02:10 pm)=================
AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq
By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer Sun Jul 6, 4:45 AM ET
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein's nuclear program — a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium — reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of "yellowcake" — the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment — was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam's nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions.
What's now left is the final and complicated push to clean up the remaining radioactive debris at the former Tuwaitha nuclear complex about 12 miles south of Baghdad — using teams that include Iraqi experts recently trained in the Chernobyl fallout zone in Ukraine.
"Everyone is very happy to have this safely out of Iraq," said a senior U.S. official who outlined the nearly three-month operation to The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
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.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," he said.
The deal culminated more than a year of intense diplomatic and military initiatives — kept hushed in fear of ambushes or attacks once the convoys were under way: first carrying 3,500 barrels by road to Baghdad, then on 37 military flights to the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia and finally aboard a U.S.-flagged ship for a 8,500-mile trip to Montreal.
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.
U.S. and Iraqi forces have guarded the 23,000-acre site — surrounded by huge sand berms — following a wave of looting after Saddam's fall that included villagers toting away yellowcake storage barrels for use as drinking water cisterns.
Yellowcake is obtained by using various solutions to leach out uranium from raw ore and can have a corn meal-like color and consistency. It poses no severe risk if stored and sealed properly. But exposure carries well-documented health concerns associated with heavy metals such as damage to internal organs, experts say.
"The big problem comes with any inhalation of any of the yellowcake dust," said Doug Brugge, a professor of public health issues at the Tufts University School of Medicine.
Moving the yellowcake faced numerous hurdles.
Diplomats and military leaders first weighed the idea of shipping the yellowcake overland to Kuwait's port on the Persian Gulf. Such a route, however, would pass through Iraq's Shiite heartland and within easy range of extremist factions, including some that Washington claims are aided by Iran. The ship also would need to clear the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf, where U.S. and Iranian ships often come in close contact.
Kuwaiti authorities, too, were reluctant to open their borders to the shipment despite top-level lobbying from Washington.
An alternative plan took shape: shipping out the yellowcake on cargo planes.
But the yellowcake still needed a final destination. Iraqi government officials sought buyers on the commercial market, where uranium prices spiked at about $120 per pound last year. It's currently selling for about half that. The Cameco deal was reached earlier this year, the official said.
At that point, U.S.-led crews began removing the yellowcake from the Saddam-era containers — some leaking or weakened by corrosion — and reloading the material into about 3,500 secure barrels.
In April, truck convoys started moving the yellowcake from Tuwaitha to Baghdad's international airport, the official said. Then, for two weeks in May, it was ferried in 37 flights to Diego Garcia, a speck of British territory in the Indian Ocean where the U.S. military maintains a base.
On June 3, an American ship left the island for Montreal, said the official, who declined to give further details about the operation.
The yellowcake wasn't the only dangerous item removed from Tuwaitha.
Earlier this year, the military withdrew four devices for controlled radiation exposure from the former nuclear complex. The lead-enclosed irradiation units, used to decontaminate food and other items, contain elements of high radioactivity that could potentially be used in a weapon, according to the official. Their Ottawa-based manufacturer, MDS Nordion, took them back for free, the official said.
The yellowcake was the last major stockpile from Saddam's nuclear efforts, but years of final cleanup is ahead for Tuwaitha and other smaller sites.
The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency plans to offer technical expertise.
Last month, a team of Iraqi nuclear experts completed training in the Ukrainian ghost town of Pripyat, which once housed the Chernobyl workers before the deadly meltdown in 1986, said an IAEA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decontamination plan has not yet been publicly announced.
But the job ahead is enormous, complicated by digging out radioactive "hot zones" entombed in concrete during Saddam's rule, said the IAEA official. Last year, an IAEA safety expert, Dennis Reisenweaver, predicted the cleanup could take "many years."
The yellowcake issue also is one of the many troubling footnotes of the war for Washington.
A CIA officer, Valerie Plame, claimed her identity was leaked to journalists to retaliate against her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who wrote that he had found no evidence to support assertions that Iraq tried to buy additional yellowcake from Niger.
A federal investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
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From:
no subject
this is interesting, however, because of the debunked claim by our government that Iraq was trying to get yellowcake from Nigeria. We knew even when that claim was being made it was false and the documents forged (thanks joe wilson!). That assertion, that Iraq was trying to buy it, is even more ridiculous now, given that they already had it. I guess if our government had truly been worried about what Iraq had, they might have reviewed their own documents and listened to weapons inspectors like Scott Ritter who said for years before the 2003 war that Iraq had no wmds and no way to purchase any.
But, then, that would have been counter productive to a hysteria-based pre-emptive war.
From:
no subject
Personally, I'd like someone to take a more unbiased, and I don't consider the work out by the various journalists to be unbiased, look at the whole Nigeria yellowcake thing.
Also someone, mentioned that the IAIAE was kicked out in 1998, so how do we know it was "safeguarded"
No, the questions we should be asking, is instead of bush lied and people died(our intelligence originally came from Great Britain) is what would Saddam have done with the yellowcake after the sanctions ran out? How big a threat would he have been, after receiving money from Russia and France(they were busy making deals, after the sanctions to develop the oil fields. Apparently the reason it has taken so long to get them on line, is that Saddam didn't upkeep maintenance)?
From:
no subject
So you think it's okay that Bush killed our soldiers in a war based on lies? That we shouldn't examine that issue or be upset over it, but instead focus on an extremely unlikely 'what if' scenario using variables that the US was almost entirely in control of?
From:
no subject
The WMD thing wasn't the only thing we went to war over. So no, Bush hasn't killed our soldiers for nothing. ANd why the hell, is this always used as an excuse. Why is it the soldiers don't mind so much the reasons going to war(various military boards with people who have been there) but du and daily kos feel free to use that as an excuse. The military does examine it's mistakes and so does our government. There is for example a .gov electronic paper that goes into detail on this, that lists the good and bad stuff of the intelligence.
Btw, I heard Iran using missles was extremely unlikely, butt now they have a few missles(not sure if nuclear) pointed at Israel and our troops in Iraq. Saddam getting WMD's was more likely, since he had a history of it. When the sanctions ran out, likely he could have bought it from france and Russia. Look who sold the technology to Iran. It's also why we don't give any of our good technology to france, they make weapons and sell them. France while in Nato isn't in the military part of it, but the economic part(I have no idea why there is an economic part of nato).
Also, why the hell, if we are going to talk about examining the issues, was Scooter Libby convicted. He wasn't the leak about Valerie Plame. That was under the secretary of defense(the second one in command) who was apparently friendly with the democrats, and it wasn't a big secret either. Why hasn't Cold Cash Jackson from La gone down aready? Or Harry Reid for his business dealings in Las Vegas, if were going to be examining the issues, or heck some of the prominent Dems who sat on the defense commitee whose husbands worked at getting contracts for businesses for the miltary(one of the california women)