Kanada kirim bom uranium ke Amerika?
Althaf
Rabu, 28 Desember 2011 14:51:39
Rabu, 28 Desember 2011 14:51:39
Kanada melakukan pengiriman senjata uranium skala besar ke Amerika Serikat, sejumlah media Kanada melansir.
Laporan ini datang setelah muncul sebuah laporan pada hari Selasa (27/12/2011) yang menyatakan bahwa setidaknya satu muatan bahan bakar yang diperkaya uranium telah ditransfer ke Amerika Serikat di bawah kesepakatan baru antara Kanada dan Amerika Serikat.
Kapal yang diam-diam berangkat dari Chalk River di provinsi Ontario, berisi ratusan kilogram bom uranium yang disinyalir cukup untuk membuat beberapa bom yang seukuran dengan bom nuklir Hiroshima.
Sementara itu, Komisi Keselamatan Nuklir Kanada, yang bertugas untuk mengawasi aktivitas yang terkait dengan atom negara itu, berusaha untuk menjaga rahasia dengan menolak untuk mengatur dengar pendapat publik tentang hal itu atau mengungkapkan mengenai rute transit yang digunakan untuk mengirimkan uranium.
Pengiriman ini didasari oleh kesepakatan yang ditandatangani oleh Perdana Menteri Kanada, Stephen Harper, dan Presiden AS, Barack Obama, tahun 2010. Kesepakatan itu ditandatangani di tengah kekhawatiran bahwa teroris akan memperoleh akses menuju senjata uranium.
Perkembangan ini kontan menimbulkan kontroversi besar di dalam negeri Kanada sendiri, serta menghambat aktivitas pengiriman 16 generator dari negara Amerika Utara itu melalui Sungai St Lawrence ke negara-negara Eropa. (althaf/arrahmah.com)
Read more:
Canada shipping bomb-grade uranium to U.S.: memo
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A warning sign is posted at the Atomic Energy Canada Limited plant in Chalk River, Ont., on December 19 2007. (Fred Chartrand / THE CANADIAN PRESS) Updated: Tue Dec. 27 2011 9:34:49 AM
Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press
MONTREAL — Weapons-grade uranium is quietly being transported within Canada, and into the United States, in shipments the country's nuclear watchdog wants to keep cloaked in secrecy.Andy Blatchford, The Canadian Press
A confidential federal memo obtained through the Access to Information Act says at least one payload of spent, U.S.-origin highly enriched uranium fuel has already been moved stateside under a new Canada-U.S. deal.
The shipments stem from the highly publicized agreement signed last year by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and U.S. President Barack Obama, amid fears that nuclear-bomb-making material could fall into the hands of terrorists.
The Canadian stash gradually being shipped from Chalk River, Ont., contains hundreds of kilograms of highly enriched uranium -- large enough to make several Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs.
But even as the radioactive freight travels toward the U.S. border, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has no plans to hold public hearings or disclose which communities lie along the delivery route.
The shipments themselves are protected by intense security protocol, which means specifics like routes, transportation method, quantities and schedules remain top secret.
The federal nuclear body, a co-regulator of the uranium transfers, says rules restrict it from disclosing such information to the public.
A ministerial memorandum, classified as "Secret," says the nuclear watchdog considers it unnecessary to hold public sessions that would allow citizens to ask questions and comment on the shipments.
That same memorandum, dated Feb. 25, 2011, points out that recent hearings for another nuclear-shipment case generated intense public and media interest. The controversy has stalled the project to ship 16 generators from a Bruce Power nuclear plant through the Great Lakes, up the St. Lawrence River and onto Europe.
The memo, obtained by The Canadian Press, appears to warn against a repeat scenario.
"Given the public and media interest surrounding Bruce Power's plan ... there may be an expectation that similar information be made public on the shipments of spent HEU (highly enriched uranium) fuel to the U.S., and that the CNSC (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission) hold public hearings," said the document, addressed to then-natural resources minister Christian Paradis.
"To date, the CNSC has not considered it necessary to hold public hearings on the shipment of spent HEU fuel to the U.S."
When asked why public hearings aren't necessary for the uranium deliveries, a commission spokeswoman replied by email: they "are not carried out given the robustness of the packages used and due to the security issues related to the transfers of highly enriched uranium."
The government added that there has never been a significant transport accident involving nuclear materials, anywhere in the world, and that such shipments occur regularly in Canada.
It said only authorized people or agencies, like police forces along the shipment route, are made aware of the details.
One nuclear expert said theft is the primary concern when shipping highly enriched uranium fuel -- because there is virtually no danger of leaks or explosions.
"If I were the people doing the shipping and so on, I'd want to keep as low a profile as possible ... you don't want to give terrorists or criminals any advantage," said Bill Garland, a professor emeritus from McMaster University in nuclear engineering.
"There's a greater risk in the general public knowing, because then the bad guys would know as well."
As for non-theft incidents, like possible road accidents, he described the containers carrying the substance as highly resistant to collisions, chemicals, fire and explosions.
"It's relatively easy to contain and secure and it's not going to go off like a bomb," Garland said.
"I would have no hesitation sitting in the truck and driving across the country with it. It wouldn't bother me in the least."
Garland added that drivers share Canadian highways every day with trucks carrying loads of liquid chemicals, like gasoline and chlorine, that would pose a much bigger danger in a smash-up than nuclear waste.
While the risks are small, he said, that doesn't mean they don't exist. He warned that radiation could be released if someone deliberately opened a container, for instance.
Garland said moving uranium poses far more danger than shipping Bruce Power's old generators up the St. Lawrence.
He calls the generator shipments a "trivial radioactive situation" and a "non-issue" because the cylinders hold very low levels of radioactive material. He said that even if they fell into the bottom of the river, the generators would pose a negligible risk.
Canada has been importing highly enriched bomb-grade uranium from the U.S. to make medical isotopes at Chalk River for the past two decades. While Canada has been pushing for all nations to move to low-enriched uranium, it maintains a large inventory of the substance at Chalk River.
The Canada-U.S. agreement is part of a broader international project by the Obama administration to consolidate highly enriched uranium at fewer, more secure sites around the world.
The U.S. government says it wants to convert the uranium into a form that cannot be used to build nuclear weapons.
Canada made its first uranium delivery under the repatriation deal in 2010, the February memo says. It occurred in "a single shipment using an existing, licensed fuel shipping package."
The continued shipments are scheduled to take place until 2018.
But some nuclear-industry observers fear that Canadians have been left in the dark about the project.
"I don't think Canadians are aware that strategic nuclear material is, in fact, travelling across Canadian roads," said Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition of Nuclear Responsibility.
"I think it's essential that people be aware of what is involved here. People should be aware of the degree of secrecy which is required."
While he has few fears about the safety of the shipment Garland, the nuclear engineering professor, does have some concerns about the government's selective approach to transparency.
"They're willing to talk about those things (the Bruce Power generators) publicly, but yet when they talk about something that's more dangerous -- like moving HEU -- they're not so willing to talk about it," Garland said.
He said while it's critical to keep specific details about the shipments confidential, there are ways to maintain security while offering some public oversight.
"If I were king ... I would say, 'Look, let's have a committee of experts looking at this, working on behalf of the public so that they could analyze this without having to give out all the details to the public,' " Garland said.
Comments are now closed for this story
Ted from Toronto
So now some bonehead thinks it's a good idea to advertise these shipments? It's been going on since we've had nuclear reactors in this country. It's not going to stop. I'd rather the US takes it and protects it rather than leave it hanging around Canada for some nut-job to get hold of it.
Getting there
Not of anyone's business, for obvious reasons. Curiosity kills, the enriched Uranium in wrongs hands would be detrimental to us all. Keep it a secret, shame on the Media once more to go digging for News story that can be harmful to security!!
Chalk River neighbour
This is very simple. If it ain't broke (and it isn't); then do not try to fix it. We have been doing this for years with no problems. No need for consultation, committees and self appointed scare police. The transport of these material and it's containment packaging is safe.
lc
Absolutely disgusting the threat to the general public transporting uranium around like 2 bit hoods to avoid the political fallout.The danger then will be more than a threat of a accident when the cargo is placed in WMDS. Then the uranium becomes a time bomb for both those handling it and those on the receiving end of the WMD.What on earth is this nation turning into.The Harper government gets more rancid as each layer of the onion is exposed.
Norm in Ontario
Ted, totally agree. We are really something, eh.
CraigW
An earlier comment voiced the concern that the uranium could fall into the wrong hands. My question is how is U.S., the only country irresponsible enough to actually use a nuclear weapon on people not once, but twice, not the wrong hands?
All the money in the world cannot buy a new planet
Why is it important to have a stockpile of weapon grade uranium "large enough to make several Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs"?How are we producing and providing a country with weapons grade uranium when we publicly make villains of other countries in the world for doing the same?Why don't we even stop to ourselves these questions anymore?
Scott_G
Most likely the States will use a process to refine the partially used U235/U238.People don't generally know this but what they put in your arm when your getting tests done is the same as the stuff they run reactors with. They take it out early in the cycle so they can use the fission products.--So lets not get all up in arms about exposure. For the most part Most haven't a clue what the stuff is or when its dangerous.
jeff cake
good they are our BIG brother give them what they need
Neil
Ic - give your head a shake. Do you really think that the Harper government started this? This has been going on for years. I can't stand people that won't think and reason logically to forward their stupid political view.
Bud
Don't you find it abit odd that the claim to fame about the Cando Reactor was that it does produce the by-product to make a nuclear bomb?.....just another of many,many lies we have to accept under a dictator style gov't.You really need to read or listen to Mel Hurtig to find out the truths that lay hidden to the Canadian population.
arty
What the hell is wrong with ctv? The people responsible for this breach should be put in legirons. Does your organisation have no moral sence of our security.Reporting this should get you fined big time.You people are disgustingto say the very least.
kc´bby
At the end of the day an Ice Cream truck could hit you en route to protest these shipments. Being dead is dead and it neednt be fancy to get the job done.
well well well
So what is the difference with a vehicle driving along side you with a radioactive sign? And another thing, it isn't a secret if everyone knows:/
Jo
Bud...This material came from the US to be used in the production of medical isotopes. Newer methods don't require HEU (thus why it's being sent back), and CANDU designs still can't be used to produce weapons grade material...But don't let your ignorance stand in the way of making a grand-standing fool of yourself.
Redsol
For those of you who don't believe there is going to be a nuclear war coming very very soon, you are being ignorant.
Brian
The word that caught my attention was "repatriate". Canada is returning spent fuel to the states where it came from originally. The time to be anal was when the stuff was shipped to Canada originally, not now while we rid our country of this dangerous material. I also read in the story American concern for it being outside their control. 9/11 made our friends south of the border more aware of their vulnerability. Yes they are anal about their security, but they blew it after the first attempt at the towers.
Jebus Widowmaker
I love how a lot of you people think giving to the US is putting it in the right hands. Your joking right? The facts are the US used nuclear weapons on innicent people in Japan twice during WW2. How many people are ill or dying in Iraq, Afganistan and Libya because of depleated uranium?? How many of OUR soldiers have come home from Afganistan sick because of it?? Ya it's in good hands my ass.
peter in mb
If the media going to tell a story they should get all the facts right. The U.S. will still need to process the spent uranium in a breeder reactor before it can be used to make weapons. And Second The last thing we need is terrorists getting there hands on this and building a dirty bomb. And we do have terrorists living in Canada Omar Khadr and his family comes to mind.
allan
Of course the left-wing loonies wouldnt say a word if the material went to Iran, or some other dictatorship.
robert dunning
who cares. i bet they would find it elsewhere if we stopped selling it in seconds. only the bleeding hearts and left wing media would think this is a story. at least we do not sell ours to Iran or North Korea, although i am sure the previous two would love us to do that as being fair.
Goldens
I think this is a shame. Today it is spent fuel but it may be tomorrows energy.
Relieved
Whew, For a second there I thought we were shipping dirty oil.
Remarkable
Big Deal! Would you prefer we ship it to Iran or North Korea?
Mark in Newmarket
I would prefer to see it shipped to the US where it can held properly and securely. Here in Canada there is a threat that this type of material could end up in the hands of the wrong people. We as a nation are always 2nd guessing, it doesn't matter what our government does, it is always the wrong thing even if it is the right thing.
Jim
"Canada shipping bomb-grade uranium to U.S"So!!!
Redneck Albertan
One of my best friends hauled a load of HEU nearly 15 years ago from Ontario to the US. A panic button was installed in the truck and he was not allowed to inspect the cargo for obvious reasons. It has been and will continue to happen on a regular basis, people. Don't get all freaked out by it. This is one thing our governments are doing very well.
don
So who do you want to sell it to IRAN
wayne in bc
Good my stock URC on the TX will go up, can buy new house !!!!!missed in March to cash in BIG due to Japan.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ciaotime
Lets make some bombs with it. We need a deterrent as much as the next guy.
EA
I'm glad this story came out because it will force greater public scrutiny - I don't trust my own government or the US government to handle these types of materials. For one, I have to question the competency of both governments given they're using public highways - it's not the first time we've been lied too and they've risked public safety. Two, to trust the US with this material for "safe keeping" is naive - I'm sure there's a commercial interest involved let alone to trust someone who has a bad track record of handling nuclear material for good purposes. Three, it shows our hand to the rest of the world and now makes us a target. Anyone who closes their eyes to this and does not question our government is naive and unpatriotic.
Greg
So what? It's not like they are going to use it on us. If anything it will help protect us.
Alexandria
EAIf you don't feel you can trust our Government move to the middle east .
creative1
"The government added that there has never been a significant transport accident involving nuclear materials, anywhere in the world..."excuse me, but wouldn't the loss of hydrogen bombs from a B-52 over the Mediterannean Sea siomewhere near Spain qualify as a "significant transport accident"?
Liam
are you guys blind....why they mention this if they don't want things to go wrong
The End!
As the bomb becomes more "readily" available it only becomes a matter of time. Sooner or later some idiot will unleash nuclear war.
N Korea closer to nuclear-tipped missile: US expert
Dec 28, 2011
Washington: North Korea likely is closer to mounting nuclear warheads on its ballistic missiles than generally reported, possibly only one or two years away, the US Congress’s former top expert on the issue has concluded.
Larry Niksch, who tracked North Korea for the nonpartisan US Congressional Research Service for 43 years, concludes in a new paper that the North probably would need as little as one to two years to miniaturize and mount a nuclear warhead atop its medium-range Nodong missile.
A North Korea armed with nuclear-tipped missiles would rattle East Asia and present new policy and military challenges to the United States and its allies.
Trying to determine when Pyongyang will reach that threshold has long been a challenge for the US intelligence community. Niksch’s timeline, if correct, puts out a new marker for strategists.
Fromer North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visits the construction site of the Huichon Power Station in this picture released by the North's official KCNA news agency in Pyongyang June 1, 2011. Reuters/KCNA
North Korea has staged relatively few missile tests in recent years, suggesting it is still working on perfecting the needed technologies even as it has cooperated with Iran to do so.
Its nuclear and missile capabilities are once again in the spotlight as power passes to North Korea’s designated young leader, Kim Jong-un, after the December 17 death of his father, Kim Jong-il.
Pyongyang already may have produced enough highly enriched uranium for a warhead or be close to doing so, Niksch and experts such as Siegfried Hecker, the former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in interviews with Reuters.
Hecker said the North would have to conduct another nuclear test, its third, to have confidence that it had successfully miniaturized a warhead for one of its missiles.
“If the test is successful they may be able to have the capability within a couple of years,” he said in an email exchange, referring to a nuclear-tipped missile.
“We simply don’t know what else they have and how much HEU they can make or have made,” added Hecker, who toured North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear complex in November 2010, his fourth visit there.
Jonathan Pollack, author of the 2011 book No Exit: North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, and International Security, emphasized the many unknowns pending further North Korean nuclear and missile tests.
“I think they’d have a reasonable chance of being able to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile in three to five years if they speed up research, development, testing and evaluation,” said Pollack, of the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“If North Korea achieves some testing successes earlier than I anticipate, it might able to achieve this goal somewhat sooner.”
The North is reckoned by US intelligence to have between 30 and 50 kilogrammes of separated plutonium, enough for at least half a dozen nuclear weapons. Plutonium is the other type of fissile material used in nuclear weapons.
Pyongyang apparently has decided against making more plutonium bombs since it shut down a plutonium production facility at its Yongbyon nuclear complex in July 2007. It did so during six-party nuclear disarmament talks that it has since abandoned.
The North may have several plutonium-based nuclear warheads small enough to be mounted on missiles as well as dropped from aircraft, Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Armed Services Committee March 10.
Even with limited HEU production of which the North may already be capable, it could generate enough new bombmaking ingredients for one to two weapons per year, nuclear scientists say.
The North has been pursuing nuclear and missile capabilities for strategic deterrence and international prestige as well as for economic and political concessions, Burgess told Congress.
“While North Korea may be willing to abandon portions of its nuclear program in exchange for improved relations with the United States, Pyongyang is unlikely to eliminate its nuclear weapons,” he said.
The Defense Intelligence Agency declined to comment for this article on its estimate for a nuclear-tipped missile, as did the CIA. Non-government experts emphasized the difficulty of pinning down nuclear developments in North Korea, a country distinguished by its opaqueness.
NUCLEAR, MISSILE TESTS
The North has conducted two tests of a nuclear device, in October 2006 and in June 2009.
It has carried out three tests of missiles beyond medium range since 1998. The sole test of its intermediate-range Taepodong-1 overflew Japan and landed in the Pacific in August 1998, falling short of a declared goal of putting a satellite into orbit.
But it spurred perhaps billions of dollars of Japanese investment in US-built antimissile hardware and defense services.
The maiden flight test of North Korea’s longest-range missile, the Taepodong-2, ended in failure about 40 seconds after launch on July 5, 2006. It was tested again in April 2009, when its first stage travelled about 270 km before falling into the Sea of Japan without orbiting a small communications satellite.
Niksch predicted North Korea first would mount nuclear warheads on its Nodong and shorter-range Scud missiles, possibly followed by mating them to long-range missiles. He said this would fuel domestic pressure in Japan to develop long-range strike capabilities despite its war-renouncing constitution, and rattle the region.
Japan on Monday urged China — host of the talks that also involved the two Koreas, Russia, Japan and the United States — to shoulder a big role in making sure that North Korea avoids volatile moves after its announcement of Kim Jong-il’s death of a heart attack, apparently at age 69.
Constraining North Korea is especially important for Japan, which is well within range of the North’s long-range missiles.
AQ KHAN ROLE
Niksch’s one- to two-year timeframe for mounting a nuclear warhead is based largely on his assessment of reports about warhead technology shared with Pyongyang by AQ Khan, regarded as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.
Niksch said in the interview “there can be no doubt” that North Korea received from Khan a blueprint of the nuclear warhead mounted on Pakistan’s medium-range Ghauri missile.
But Pollack said he did not put much faith in accounts based on information supposedly supplied by AQ Khan, a nuclear scientist considered by experts, including Hecker, as an unreliable source.
Pakistan’s Ghauri itself is a twin of Nodong missiles supplied by North Korea before May 1998, when Pakistan tested its first nuclear devices. Pakistan mounted nuclear warheads on its Ghauri missiles within three years, Niksch said in a paper to be published Friday by the Institute of National Security Strategy in Seoul.
North Korean nuclear experts were present at six nuclear tests that Pakistan carried out in May 1998 and the North “appears to have received all of the test data,” said Niksch, now an advisor to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.
URANIUM ENRICHMENT
Hecker, who from 1986 to 1997 headed the Los Alamos National Laboratory that handles US military nuclear research, was shown what he has called “astonishingly modern” uranium enrichment facilities during his November 2010 tour of the Yongbyon complex.
The facilities are likely configured to make low enriched uranium for the experimental light-water reactor that he was shown but they could be “readily converted to produce highly enriched uranium bomb fuel,” he said in his trip report.
The North must have additional centrifuge facilities to have made as much progress in such a short time, including some that may be dedicated to producing HEU bomb fuel, Hecker added in the email exchange.
HEU contamination was found by US scientists on aluminum samples and copies of reactor operation documents provided by North Korean officials to U.S. authorities while the six-party talks were progressing, said Hecker.
Bruce Lemkin, who from 1997 to 2000 negotiated in and with North Korea on behalf of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, predicted a dramatic show of military power soon, to “validate” the leadership of Kim Jong-un, who has been picking up new titles in an apparent attempt to signal a power consolidation.
“Perhaps it will be another nuclear test detonation or a ballistic missile firing or both, perhaps even with the assertion that North Korea has, indeed, weaponized similar missiles with nuclear devices,” said Lemkin, who retired in 2010 as US Air Force deputy undersecretary for international affairs.
US officials have a habit of underestimating the North Koreans, Niksch said.
“They tend to make more rapid advances in expanding their nuclear weapons program than US experts believe they are capable of,” he said.
Reuters
Nuclear company AREVA failing in nuclear and uranium sales
Tough times for French nuclear giant Areva, Daily Press, Virginia, 27 Dec 11 These are difficult days for French nuclear giant Areva. The company announced earlier this month it would shed 1,500 jobs in Germany and suspend a controversial nuclear enrichment plant project in Idaho. It is trying to offset losses this year that could exceed $2 billion, the Associated Press reported.Areva partnered with Newport News Shipbuilding to build a $363 million plant that would manufacture nuclear power plant components. Located off Huntington Avenue in Newport News, the plant is stalled indefinitely due to a lack of new nuclear projects in the U.S.
Another pertinent detail about Areva: the company said its earnings could be hurt by the drop in new reactors being built worldwide — fallout from the nuclear disaster in Japan. The company said this will also depress the price of uranium….. http://www.dailypress.com/news/science/dead-rise-blog/dp-tough-times-for-french-nuclear-giant-areva-20111227,0,2218239.story?track=rss
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