US and Russia in raid to snatch uranium
A TEAM of Americans and Russians have removed more than 100lb of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear research facility in Yugoslavia in a secret operation to prevent it being seized by terrorists.
The dawn “raid” on the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences in Belgrade, protected by Yugoslav Army helicopters and 1,200 heavily armed troops, was the first joint effort by the US and Russia to retrieve weapons-grade nuclear material supplied by Moscow to research centres around the world. Under a Moscow-Washington agreement, America will help to finance a programme to retrieve all the research uranium from 17 countries formerly allied with the Soviet Union.
Since the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington and the discovery in Afghanistan of al-Qaeda plans to develop crude nuclear devices, the programme became a priority. A recent report by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Washington said that there were 345 operating or idle research reactors in 58 countries that had highly enriched uranium that could be converted for use in a weapon by terrorists.
Matthew Bunn, one of the authors, said security at the research facilities ranged from “excellent to appalling”. He named the 16 other countries with Russian nuclear fuel as North Korea, China, Libya, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, Syria, Vietnam, Latvia and Bulgaria.
The 48.1kg of highly enriched uranium — enough for at least two bombs — had been kept at the Vinca Institute since the 1970s. It was put in sealed containers and loaded into a lorry. Three lorries, two of them decoys, left with military escorts for Belgrade’s international airport.
