MarketNeutral
13th April 2010, 01:03 PM
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7095705.ece
Chile has given up President Pinochet’s secret hoard of highly enriched uranium, boosting US efforts to secure volatile stockpiles worldwide.
The transfer of Chile’s uranium to the United States was completed at the end of last month, just after the country was struck by a huge earthquake.
The material arrived in South Carolina after a two-and-a-half-week sea voyage in a double-hulled ship.
Andrew Bieniawski, deputy administrator at the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversaw the operation, said that when the earhtquake had shaken his Santiago hotel room on February 27 his first thought was for the 40lb (18kg) of highly enriched uranium that had been packed into special containers, ready for its secret voyage.
The team was unable to contact one of the two sites where the uranium was being stored,so the head of Chile’s Nuclear Energy Commission, Fernando Lopez-Lizana, had to drive there himself.
The container was unharmed, but the exit route was impassable, forcing the team to weave their way to the nearest functioning port, an eight-hour night-time journey made even more perilous by aftershocks.
“We are happy to see it go,†Mr Lopez said. “To put it in a safe place is valuable for everybody... we want to make this a safer world.â€
Like many countries, Chile acquired its uranium through a strategy aimed at preventing proliferation.
Over several decades under the so-called Atoms for Peace programme, states already in the nuclear club offered a deal to those eyeing membership: they would distribute highly enriched uranium provided it was used only for research and not weapons.
About 44,000lb of uranium was distributed to 50 countries from Jamaica to Vietnam.
Chile received its highly enriched uranium from the US, France and Britain in the 1970s and 80s.
General Pinochet opened two nuclear reactors in 1974 and 1977. The second – Lo Aguirre – raised suspicions about the dictator’s nuclear intentions.
But the generals finally shelved the military’s nuclear programme as too costly, and the reactor has lain inactive for more than a decade. Its control room, now in civilian hands, is frozen in time, with outmoded computers and indicator panels.
Often poorly guarded, at least 1,500lb of the Atoms for Peace uranium has yet to be retrieved.
Chile has given up President Pinochet’s secret hoard of highly enriched uranium, boosting US efforts to secure volatile stockpiles worldwide.
The transfer of Chile’s uranium to the United States was completed at the end of last month, just after the country was struck by a huge earthquake.
The material arrived in South Carolina after a two-and-a-half-week sea voyage in a double-hulled ship.
Andrew Bieniawski, deputy administrator at the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversaw the operation, said that when the earhtquake had shaken his Santiago hotel room on February 27 his first thought was for the 40lb (18kg) of highly enriched uranium that had been packed into special containers, ready for its secret voyage.
The team was unable to contact one of the two sites where the uranium was being stored,so the head of Chile’s Nuclear Energy Commission, Fernando Lopez-Lizana, had to drive there himself.
The container was unharmed, but the exit route was impassable, forcing the team to weave their way to the nearest functioning port, an eight-hour night-time journey made even more perilous by aftershocks.
“We are happy to see it go,†Mr Lopez said. “To put it in a safe place is valuable for everybody... we want to make this a safer world.â€
Like many countries, Chile acquired its uranium through a strategy aimed at preventing proliferation.
Over several decades under the so-called Atoms for Peace programme, states already in the nuclear club offered a deal to those eyeing membership: they would distribute highly enriched uranium provided it was used only for research and not weapons.
About 44,000lb of uranium was distributed to 50 countries from Jamaica to Vietnam.
Chile received its highly enriched uranium from the US, France and Britain in the 1970s and 80s.
General Pinochet opened two nuclear reactors in 1974 and 1977. The second – Lo Aguirre – raised suspicions about the dictator’s nuclear intentions.
But the generals finally shelved the military’s nuclear programme as too costly, and the reactor has lain inactive for more than a decade. Its control room, now in civilian hands, is frozen in time, with outmoded computers and indicator panels.
Often poorly guarded, at least 1,500lb of the Atoms for Peace uranium has yet to be retrieved.