http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nation...e_mission.html
Last updated July 6, 2008 1:45 a.m. PT
AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq
By BRIAN MURPHY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
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 do ented 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-do ented 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 ed 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 iden y 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 Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
"the uranium
a) was not weapons grade
and
b) was well known to the UN and IAEA and was being stored legally by Saddam's government.
It was legally in Iraq according to international law."
http://openleft.com/showDiary.do;jse...0?diaryId=6791
Yellow cake does.not.equal WMD.
dubya and head lied about WMD, and they outed Plame to punish Wilson.
Richard Armitage was the one who "outed" Plame even though the dumb wasnt even covert. All of their friends knew she worked for the CIA and she hadnt worked covert in years.
WMD was only one of the reasons for the invasion but most idiots who disagree with the war will only point to that reason because none were supposedly found. If WMD's HAD been found then boutons and his cronies would be complaining about one of the other reasons for going in wasnt accomplished. Move along dude, find another cause to get behind, FREE TIBET!!!
The other was to avenge Dubya's daddy.
WMD's were not found. Fact. Stop being a bonehead like Cheney, and get over it.
Please, can we keep the facts strait?
WMD was found, but not anything usable. It was not what they thought they would find.
Intelligence said their was. Either it was wrong, or it still remains and hasn't been found. I say it probably didn't exists, but anyone who claims there is none, can look like a fool in the future.
I didn't even open the link Bouton's posted. It is probably the accountability of what we knew he had, adding up past the amount removed. I have seen these lists before. When all is added, there is still far more yellowcake that Saddam had than what was listed in required accountability do ents. That means he did acquire yellowcake illegally. Maybe from Niger, maybe from someplace else.
One thing I heard that rings true is that Saddam didn't want to tell the world his stockpiles were depleted. It was a deterrent to keep other factions in Iraq from staging a coup. Again, I cannot say this is fact, but it does make sense. It was his failure to comply with 17 UN resolutions and the state of world terrorism why we went in.
If only he came clean, we wouldn't have troops there now.
Find the Yellow-cake...
Globe and MailHowever, there was no confirmation from the Port of Montreal.
Robert Desjardins, co-ordinator of the port, said “we don't have any information” on such a shipment arriving there.
He said no ships under American flags were listed as being in the port Saturday, or as being expected.
by the way, Saddam's brother-in-law, in charge of Iraq's WMDs, who briefly defected to the U.S., did tell U.S. sources that Saddam had dismantled most of his WMD programs after the first Gulf War, so this crook of that we didn't have a clue is bull ...
Please Cobra, 5 years later we moved all their ing yellow-cake, and we're still looking for WMD? Don't be a fool. The search was over long time ago. Probably since we changed excuses for the invasion from 'WMD' to 'Democracy in the Middle East'.
Just like I told Pep above: Don't be a bonehead like Cheney and get over it.
I like yellowcake with a cream cheese frosting.
Why would Iraq have yellow cake?
To build a nuclear reactor, just like Iran is doing now.
It's actually a pretty common industrial and mining by-product..besides, this load was being monitored by the IAEA....
There was no need to 'hide' or 'secretly transport' Yellow-cake out of Iraq, it is low grade unrefined Uranium mill stock and is transported openly on unsecured ships every day, to the tune of 64,000 tons per year to processing facilities all over the world.
From Slate:
SlateYellowcake is a first step toward enriched uranium, but it's a long way from being weapons-grade. The powder must still be converted into uranium hexafluoride before it can be enriched, the process that makes the sort of uranium used by nuclear power plants and bomb-makers alike. Because UF6 can be easily turned into a gas, it is ideal for enrichment, which must be done in a gaseous state.
Despite all the hubbub over Saddam Hussein's efforts to buy yellowcake, the stuff is by no means a rare commodity. Worldwide production is currently around 64,000 tons per year, and that's sure to rise as Central Asian nations like Kazakhstan begin to expand their uranium-mining industries. (By comparison, about 45,000 tons of tungsten, vital to the steel industry, is produced annually.) The compe ion has depressed yellowcake prices just a tad in recent months; a pound now costs about $10.90, down a dime from what it was trading for this spring.
The US stealing Iraq's yellowcake is probably just more imperialistic greed, and "USA defensive" only in the perspective of a predicted uranium shortage (esp if Senile McFlop gets his 100s of new reactors).
iow, if the dubya/Repug Exec is doing it, you know behind the lies it's for private $$$, and not for NatSec.
Uranium shortage poses threat
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...icle555314.ece
Uranium shortage boosts price
http://www.miningmx.com/energy/984769.htm
Last edited by boutons_; 07-08-2008 at 10:46 AM.
Yeah, sure it is. Just a little old by-product that no one should worry about. Then why all the ruckus in D.C.
Hey boutons, the yellow-cake was BOUGHT from Iraq by a Canadian company. Not stolen by the U.S. for our use.
Damn boutons never gets much straight.
Good to see these guys still have a good enough sense of humor to come up with these wacky names for that can potentially destroy the world!
Why don't you get over it?
WMD was found. Fact! Just old and useless ones.
I never said they were still looking. I indicated they still might find some.
Didn't you indicate you were a lawyer? Must be pretty damn bad if you cannot distinguish the meaning of words.
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