July 07, 2004

U.S. Flies Radioactive Material, Suitable for Dirty Bomb, Out of Iraq

In a secret operation, the United States last month removed from Iraq nearly two tons of uranium and hundreds of highly radioactive items that could have been used in a so-called dirty bomb, the Energy Department disclosed Tuesday.

The nuclear material was secured from Iraq's former nuclear research facility and airlifted out of the country to an undisclosed Energy Department laboratory for further analysis, the department said in a statement.
[...]
Much of the material "was in powdered form, which is easily dispersed," said Wilkes.
[...]
Such a device [a dirty bomb] would not trigger a nuclear explosion, but would use conventional explosives to spread radioactive debris. While few people would probably be killed or seriously affected by the radiation, such an explosion could cause panic, make a section of a city uninhabitable for some time and require cumbersome and expensive cleanup.
[...]
A recent study by researchers at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies concluded it is "all but certain" that some kind of dirty bomb will be set off by a terrorist group in the years ahead. There are just too many radioactive sources available across the globe, the report said.
[...]
The low-enriched uranium taken from Iraq, if it is of the 3 percent to 5 percent level of enrichment common in fuel for commercial power reactors, could have been of value to a country developing enrichment technology.

"It speeds up the process," Oelrich said, adding that 1.95 tons of low-enriched uranium could be used to produce enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.

Draw your own conclusions about whether or not this was part of Saddam's arsenal of WMDs...
I'm just glad that there's one less cache of nuclear materials in that part of the world because it's becoming crystal clear that they're not going to be used by the IslamoNazis for peaceful purposes!

Update: Seems the U.N. is upset with the U.S. because they didn't say it was O.K. for us to take the nuke stuff--Too bad!
I believe President Bush already covered this in his last SOTU address when he said that America wouldn't wait to "get a permission slip" from other powers before we did what was necessary to defend ourselves.