Raw Uranium In The Wrong Possession

"[On Tuesday] agency safeguards inspectors found that ten drums containing approximately 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of  uranium ore concentrate wee not present as previously declared at a location in the state of Libya."

"Further activities will be conducted by the agency to clarify the circumstances of the removal of the nuclear material and its current location."

International Atomic Energy Agency

The International Atomic Energy Agency had warned that the missing uranium presented 'a radiological risk as well as nuclear security concerns' [File: Nacho Doce/Reuters]

 

Libya is not merely a failed state it is a state in the grip of uncivil war as two groups continue to violently vie for control of the country. In the absence of its former dictator Moammar Gadhafi, rival tribal hatred came unleashed to the fore as clans battled one another for supremacy. The West through NATO members was directly involved in the toppling of Gadhafi by giving air cover to the warlords seeking to unseat the tyrant who died a grisly death rising to the occasion of Bedouin desert clan vengeance.

Moammar Gadhafi had stored thousands of  barrels of 'yellowcake' uranium in anticipation of his plan to build a uranium conversion facility. In the end, that facility was never built as part of his decades-long secret weapons program. One of the sites where the yellowcake was stored was Sabha in the southern reaches of the Sahara Desert, about 660 km southeast of Tripoli, a lawless area. After his death many weapons depots were found and raided/looted by the warlords competing with one another for supremacy.

The enriched uranium that Gadhafi had stockpiled was removed for safety reasons, the yellowcake left in place. Several days after the announcement by the IAEA of the missing barrels, a warlord holding himself to be the replacement for Gadhafi as the new president of Libya and whose forces hold half the country divided with two 'presidents' of opposing clans claimed recovery of the missing material. The UN inspectors remain in the process of confirming it is in their possession.

Although natural uranium (yellowcake) is of no immediate use for energy production of bomb fuel as it must go through an enrichment process to be converted into a gas, then spun in centrifuges to reach levels of purification required for bomb material, that the uranium was not in storage with the rest of the barrels and no one could account for its whereabouts was a matter of grave concern that it would fall into the wrong hands.

Each ton of natural uranium in the hands of a group with access to the required technological means and resources, can be refined to 4.5 kilograms of weapons-grade material over time. Which gave the search to discover the whereabouts of the missing metal its impetus by the IAEA inspectors, for the assurance of non-proliferation. Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the IAEA based in Vienna, alerted member states to the missing uranium.

The site, although not identified in the IAEA report, is not under government control. The Libyan stockpile of raw uranium is considered to be comprised of a thousand metric tons of yellowcake uranium, or it was when Gadhafi declared his nascent nuclear weapons aspirations in 2003, following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

 

Sabha — some 660km south-east of Libya's capital, Tripoli — is located in the country's lawless southern reaches of the Sahara Desert.(ABC News: Tracey Shelton)

 

During the time of the Arab Spring rebels toppled Gadhafi and Sabha became increasingly lawless and violent. It has come under the control of the Libyan National Army headed by Khalifa Hifter. General Hifter is backed by Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Sudan, France and Russia. He is not a political Islamist and has vowed to expunge the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood from Libya. The Muslim Brotherhood is considered a terrorist group in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

This is the same Muslim Brotherhood that has infiltrated and established itself throughout Europe and North America, where in the United States in particular, during President Obama's administration the group had entree to the White House as a respectable group loyal to Islam and America. The terrorist group Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood. When MB-affiliated Mohammad Morsi became president of Egypt he had the support of the U.S.

The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood government under President Morsi was eventually brought down by Egypt's top general, who had warned President Morsi that the extremes of political Islamism were ruinous for Egypt. General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi is now the President of Egypt. General Hiftar's forces in Libya assured the IAEA they found the drums five kilometres south of the storage facility. Chadian separatist fighters operating in the region had taken the drums mistaking them for weapons and ammunition.

Uranium ore concentrate is commonly known as "yellowcake", a powder consisting of around 80 per cent uranium oxide.(Reuters: Shamil Zhumatov/File)