North Korea has enough uranium for six nuclear bombs, expert claims

The South Korean nuclear expert told the Yonhap news agency so as to Pyongyang appeared to have started relying on enrichment activities since of its dwindling stock of plutonium after two rounds of nuclear tests.

In November 2010, North Korea exposed its uranium enrichment plant to US scientist Siegfried Hecker, claiming it was organism used for energy development. The plant was thought to have been operational in 2009 meaning it can have produced enough enriched uranium for up to six bombs.

The South Korean expert, who was not named, said, "If the North Korean claim is true, it could permit the North to make some 88lbs (40kg) of highly enriched uranium per year, sufficient for one or two atomic weapons."Last month, a failed long-range rocket test drew censure from the UN Security Council. The test, which saw the rocket break up and fall into the sea off the Korean peninsula, was extensively thought to be a disguised attempt to try out excluded long-range missile technology.

Last Enriched Uranium Rumbles Out of Ukraine

A consignment of enriched uranium enough to build a nuclear weapon, according to a U.S. expert has rumbled out of a Ukrainian railway depot bound for Russia, a move planned to correspond with an international summit on nuclear security.

The 19 kilograms of spent extremely enriched uranium, loaded in four containers onto rail carriers in a high-security operation, was the last such material to be detached from the ex-Soviet republic under a two-year program with the United States and Russia.

"What you are seeing here is sufficient material to make one nuclear weapon," Andrew Bieniawski, director of the Global Reduction Threat plan of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration, said as the containers were full under guard at the depot outside Kiev.

Iran Dismisses Inspector Concerns While Tripling Uranium

Iran tripled its production of enriched uranium and rejected the international concerns about its possible pursuit of nuclear weapons that a team of United Nations inspectors accepted to Tehran this week.

Amid rising tensions about its nuclear research, Iran “dismissed the agency’s concerns,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said today in an 11-page limited document obtained by Bloomberg News. “Iran considered them to be based on unsupported allegations,” according to the document.

The report, dispersed to IAEA member states, was published three days after inspectors’ talks with Iran broke down. The inspectors said Iran has enlarged the number of machines it’s using to enrich uranium at its Natanz complex by 14 percent and has begun enriching material at its underground Fordo complex close to the holy city of Qom.

Uranium Price Could Reach $100 per pound by 2013

Uranium investing interest could enlarge extensively according to the bullish outlook of Mark Lackey, Investment Strategist with Pope &amp Company with his forecasts for enlargement in the uranium mining industry,“If you look at the accord right now a lot of people are saying $60 to $65 [per pound of uranium] for the next number of years spot and maybe $70 long term.

Long term is [currently] trading at $64 [per pound of uranium] that is not mostly bullish the reason that we have a different view is twofold number one we don’t think a few of the supply will come on when people say it will, because if you look at mining in general there are usually delays and we are seeing a lot of water issues in countries these days and economic nationalism and the second thing is that the Russians will stop export particularly enriched uranium in 2013 and where is that shortfall going to be made up?

Some people are saying Kazakhstan and Namibia, I don’t think we’ll get the development in those countries that a lot of people recommend they will we think the prices will head up closer to $70 [per pound of uranium] next year and then in 2013 we can get back closer to $100.”

UK to Close Sellafield Mixed Plutonium-Uranium Fuel Plant

The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said it will lock the Sellafield Mixed Oxide Plant bordering the Irish Sea on England's west coast the plant be built to to reprocess the civilian plutonium at Sellafield, the major stockpile in the world, by mixing it with uranium to make MOX fuel used for nuclear power plants.

Japan was Sellafield's biggest customer but MOX orders beginning Japanese utilities have stopped behind the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami so as to struck Japan on March 11, Since September 2010, one of the six reactors at Fukushima Daiichi had be fueled by six percent MOX fuel, rather than low enriched uranium used in the other reactors.

Announcing the closure Wednesday, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority said "in order to ensure that the UK taxpayer do not carry a future financial burden from SMP that the only reasonable course of action is to lock SMP at the earliest practical opportunity" the Sellafield MOX plant has so far charge British taxpayers £1.34 billion.

Why Canada supported a uranium cartel

In 1971, the United States, its fiscal location in disarray, abruptly declared to the world that its currency would no longer be backed by gold, its companies would take pleasure in lavish new export subsidies, and of all things, foreign uranium would not be permissible into the U.S. market. This was a huge shock to the earth trading system and, not incidentally, a major impetus for the advances in deal law of the coming decades.

For Canada, the blow was unexpected and undeserved. As frequently happens, when the U.S. lashes out at enemies overseas, its friends earlier to home get sideswiped. In this case, the Canadian uranium industry had been mostly developed in response to U.S. demand -- at first for the U.S. nuclear weapons program, then for its rapidly growing civil nuclear program. Canadian miners from Uranium City to Elliott Lake work to oil American reactors and American bombs. Canadian demand was small throughout this whole period, even when Ontario started to build Candu reactors.

By the late 1960s, competition in the middle of U.S. reactor builders such as Gulf Atomic, GE and Westinghouse, had become intense. They invented a original marketing tool: buy our reactor and we’ll guarantee you a lifetime provide of enriched uranium at a low, low price!

Kazakhstan is the top supplier of uranium to world giants

The world uranium production in 2010 improved by 6%, according to the World Nuclear Association, from 50,772 tons in 2009 to 53,663 in 2010. But it is declining in Canada and Australia, while in Kazakhstan it has improved to 17,803 tonnes in 2010 compared to 14,020 in 2009, and points to 30 thousand tonnes for 2018. Despite the Fukushima disaster, the demand for uranium remains high, particularly in Russia, China and Japan to the point that the Nomura International institution predicted that by 2015, the manufacture will be unsatisfactory relative to demand. In the world are building 53 new nuclear power plants and a extra 500 are planned for 2030. Kazakhstan has 19% of the world's recognized reserves and is the world's largest producer; it supplies Japan, India, China, USA, South Korea, Canada, France and Russia.

But the country lacks technology and technical expert and is in requiring of foreign technology to develop production. The state KazAtomProm, third biggest world producer of uranium with 8,116 tonnes in 2010, works with foreign companies. Astana, however, now needs to develop new power plants and also manufacture energy and sell it in neighboring countries such as China and India, which have the essential technology and are starved of energy. Kazakhstan is perhaps the most stable country in Central Asia. On 3 April, President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who guides the country since 1989 during the Soviet era, was re-elected for another five years with 95.6% of the vote. Foreign investor have spend more than 120 billion since its independence in 1991, and have welcomed his re-election, despite the fact that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has statement numerous irregularities in the vote.

The rest of the country, although it need a political pluralism, has developed at an average of 8% over the past 10 years in 2010 the gross domestic invention per capita was more than 9 thousand dollars, 12 times more than in 1994. Although there remain big pockets of poverty, the average monthly salary of 527 dollars is more than 6 times upper than in nearby Tajikistan and unemployment is just 5.5% while in neighboring countries several workers have migrated abroad, to Russia and Kazakhstan itself. It’s true that rise was 7.8% in 2010 and is predictable to remain between 6 and 8% over the next five years, but in Kyrgyzstan in 2010, inflation exceeded 19%. Astana is being court by neighboring giants. Russia has difficulty in take out uranium from its rich deposits, because many are in remote and inaccessible region. So it buys it from Australia and Kazakhstan and it has agreement to carry out nuclear power stations and offer enriched uranium.

Proof at bin Laden’s home raises nuclear concerns

Intelligence analyst are sifting through phone numbers and email addresses found at Osama bin Laden’s compound to determine possible links to Pakistani government and military officials while U.S. officials and analysts increase concern about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear materials. According to three U.S. intelligence officials, the race is on to recognize what President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, has called bin Laden’s “support system” inside Pakistan. These sources sought secrecy because they are not authorized to speak to reporters. “My concern now is that we cannot exclude the option that officers in the Pakistani military and the intelligence service were helping to harbor or aware of the site of bin Laden,” said Olli Heinonen, who served as the deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) from 2005 to 2010.

“What is to say they would not help al Qaeda or other terrorist groups to increase access to sensitive nuclear materials such as highly enriched uranium and plutonium?” The U.S. has worried silently about the infiltration of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and military for years. Those concern heightened in fresh months when the CIA learned that bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad was a stone’s throw from Pakistan's military academy. Politico first report this week that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told member of Congress that bin Laden’s clothing had two phone numbers sewn into it at the time of the attack. Those numbers and other contacts found at the compound are key clues in an attempt to determine what elements of Pakistan’s national security establishment offer support to bin Laden and al Qaeda.

“I can tell you that worry about al Qaeda and other terrorists’ infiltration into the ISI is not new on the part of the Congress or the [George W.] Bush and Obama administrations,” said Rep. Steve Rothman, a New Jersey Democrat who provide on two House Appropriations subcommittees that fund protection and foreign aid. Mr. Rothman has focus top-secret briefings on the Abbottabad raid and the impact of the raid on Afghanistan and Pakistan. “As a matter of course, and for good reason, the materials that were detached from bin Laden’s home in Pakistan are being run down for leads that could assist the United States in apprehending individuals or entity who have required to harm Americans or who have enabled others to harm Americans,” he said.

Iran to raise production of 20-per-cent enriched uranium

Iran in Secret meeting with Turkey to End Nuclear Sanctions

Iran has begun secret negotiations with Turkey and three further countries to submit significant amounts of its uranium stockpile and cease enrichment in swap for an end to international sanctions, the Daily Telegraph reported Thursday. According to the British daily’s statement, the Turkish led contract calls on Iran to ship roughly 1,000 kilograms of its low enriched uranium, as well as its whole 30 kilogram stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium, to a secure location.

In return, France and Russia will give readymade fuel rods for the medical isotope reactor for which Iran says it has been enriching uranium to 20 percent a stage which halves the time needed to produce weapons rating material. In exchange, the international community would agree to end allow that have crippled the country’s economy, the daily said. France, Russia and the United States have been concerned in the negotiations, which began after a gathering between Ahmed Davutoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, and Iranian officials in Bahrain previous this month, the daily statement, cite anonymous diplomatic sources.

AP Exclusive: Egypt worries about IAEA probe

Egypt fears being group with the like of Iran and Syria if a U.N. investigation into traces of highly enriched uranium found in the country is not brought to a swift end, according to what officials explain as a secret report from the country's nuclear agency. The particles enriched close to the levels necessary to arm nuclear missiles have been under study since being detected by the International Atomic Energy Agency in 2007 and 2008. Egypt, a U.S. ally in the Middle East, has said the particle originate from abroad and were unintentionally imported, but the agency is unsatisfied with that answer.

The IAEA first disclosed that it was probing Egypt in May 2009, in a limited report obtained by the AP. The reports said traces of low-enriched uranium also were found at the site Inshas, northeast of Cairo, where Egypt's two small research reactors are located. Both high- and low-enriched uranium can be used to make radio isotopes, which have application in medicine and scientific research. The newest report, shared in part with The Associated Press, seemed to reflect a rising sense that Yukiya Amano, who replaced Mohamed ElBaradei in December as IAEA chief, has less acceptance than his predecessor for nations under nuclear scrutiny that use delay plans to undermine investigations.

A senior representative familiar with IAEA probes of all three countries said that the implication of the find in Egypt continue worrying, because they could point out past undeclared experiments with technology that could be used in a weapons program. Still it is unclear how old the fabric is. If the traces were unknowingly imported on containers with radio isotopes, as Cairo says, and they originate from decades ago, then the IAEA is likely to deem the case closed. Iran and Syria, in contrast will remain high priorities. The agency is trying to influence both to stop stonewalling its labors follow up on concrete intelligence that they are irritating to hide attempt to develop nuclear weapons programs doubts Tehran and Syria deny.

Uranium smuggler believes plead guilty

Foreign media outlets have report new details of the extremely enriched uranium (HEU) smuggling case in Georgia. The UK’s Guardian newspaper statement on Sunday that two Armenian citizens, Sumbat Tonoyan and Hrant Ohanyan plead guilty at a “secret trial” to smuggling HEU into Georgia previous March by train from Yerevan to Tbilisi. “The trial has been accomplish behind closed doors to protect the operational secrecy of Georgia’s counter-proliferation unit,” The Guardian quote Georgian officials as saying “But investigators have specified the protector an exclusive firsthand account of the case,” the Guardian wrote.

Information about the arrest of the supposed smugglers with a “small amount” of HEU was announced last April. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili made a statement about the highly enriched uranium seizure at the nuclear security summit in Washington; however the president did not provide any details of the case at that time. According to The Guardian, the uranium example that Sumbat Tonoyan and Hrant Ohanyan were peddling is thought to have been stolen some years ago. The newspaper cited US tests, which have supposedly confirmed that it was “89.4 % enriched, usable in a nuclear warhead”. Tonoyan and Ohanyan only had 18 grams of HEU, according to the British newspaper, however they had been told by their provider in Armenia that “much more was available.”

Tonoyan and Ohanyan smuggled the HEU into Georgia by train in a cigarette box wrinkled with lead to “fool radiation sensors at the border,” according to the Guardian. “Tonoyan, a 63-year-old who once ran a successful dairy business but gamble away his fortune, and Ohanyan, a 59-year-old scientist at the Yerevan Institute of Physics, had set to meet their buyer in a hotel in the Georgian capital on 11 March. They thought they were selling their 18g model to a representative of an Islamist group as a precursor to a larger consignment. But the buyer was an in secret police officer,” the newspaper statement on November 7.

Iran decades away from new nuclear power plant

Iran's continued enrichment of uranium in breach to UN resolutions is problematic because the country will have no obvious use of its rising low-enriched uranium LEU stockpile. IHS Global Insight in a note says the Islamic Republic's Russian-built Bushehr reactor comes with an integrated fuel supply from Russia and Iran is decades from constructing and bringing its first domestically built nuclear power plant online. "A favourable reading of Iran's intention is of course that it wants to build energy security and not be consistent on Russian fuel supplies, but the quickly growing LEU and low-enriched uranium (HEU) stockpile is, of course, unlikely to be seen in that light mostly by the West," senior Middle East energy analyst Samuel Ciszuk and political analyst Gala Riani said in a note, sent to Emirates 24l7.

According to a leaked report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has been able to increase its effectiveness in producing more enriched uranium despite the heightened international sanctions. Iran now has a LEU stockpile of 2,803 kg, having shaped about 995 kg between 23 November 2009 and 6 August 2010. In the last three months, the increase of the LEU stockpile is equivalent to about 15 per cent, at a time when the number of active enrichment centrifuges actually having declined somewhat since the agency's May report, from 3,936 to 3,772. While Iran, since the start of its enrichment programme's monitoring, has suffered continuous problems with its operational sustainability leading to large fluctuations in the numbers of centrifuges in operation the accelerated LEU production using less centrifuges indicates.

The total number of installed centrifuges by the end of August is now 8,856, showing that should all of those be brought into operation - for which Iran however most likely does not have sufficient uranium hexafluoride feedstock at this time - Iran's LEU or HEU manufacture could spiral significantly. Overall, the leaked document, "completion of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions in the Islamic Republic of Iran", reveals few secrets and its result are not surprising, IHS said. The report however shows a much harsher carriage by the agency against Iran's perennial failings to co-operate fully on inspection and continues to question the potential military aspect to the nuclear programme, IHS added. "For Iran, the report is of little consequence, as the country has frequently come under pressure from the UN agency to comply more comprehensively with its inspections regime, but has refused to change its behaviour accordingly," it said.

Ahmadinejad: give Iran uranium supplies and we will stop enriching

Iran would stop enriching uranium to a high grade if it was assured of the supplies it wanted for a research reactor, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on the eve of the investiture of the country's first nuclear power plant. His remarks came as the US supposedly told Israel it believes Iran is still a year away from being able to build a nuclear weapon maybe lessening the chances of a pre-emptive military beat that could ignite war across the Middle East. Ahmadinejad's comments to a Japanese newspaper appear intended to deflect international pressure over Iran's nuclear programme.

"We assure to stop enriching uranium to 20% purity if we are ensured fuel supply," he was quoted as saying by the Yomiuri Shimbun. But he rejected calls by the UN security council for Iran to halt all enrichment, not just to the higher level necessary to build weapons. "We have a right to enrich uranium," he said. "We have never initiate war or required nuclear bombs." Earlier this week Iran's ultimate leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warned that his country would not connect in nuclear talks with the US unless sanctions were lifted and military threats ended.

Israel, and tacit atomic power which has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), has often warned that it cannot live with a nuclear-armed Iran and oblique it may attack it, as it did Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981. The US has powerfully backed tougher sanctions and there have been signs that Iran has experienced technical problems with its nuclear programme, either because of the difficulties in obtaining parts or as a result of intentional sabotage. The New York Times quoted Israeli officials as saying that their assessments were coming into line with the US view, but they remain suspicious that Iran has a secret enrichment site yet to be discovered.

Israel say Iran's nuclear programme 'completely unacceptable'

Israel has said that the fuelling of Iran's first nuclear reactor is "totally unacceptable" and urged better world pressure to force Tehran to stop any further uranium enrichment. Iranian engineers apparently began loading fuel into the country's first nuclear power plant with the help of Russia on Saturday, mark a milestone in Tehran's development of what it insist is a peaceful nuclear energy program. "It is completely unacceptable that a country that so blatantly violates international treaties should enjoy the fruits of using nuclear energy," Fox News quoted Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy, as saying in a report. "The international community should enlarge pressure to force Iran to abide by international decisions and cease its enrichment activities and its building of reactors," Levy added.

Iran has insisted that it would continue to enrich uranium despite a caution from the White House last week, which said that the Bushehr progress underscore that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program. arlier, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had said, "If the Iranians are genuine in a peaceful program, their needs can be met without undertaking its personal enrichment program, which call into question its motives." However, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said that Iran wants the uranium to supply future power reactors. "The country's large scale need to energy is clear and that is the reason why we want to produce the required fuel ourselves," Mottaki added. (ANI)

Iran increase uranium enrichments

The UN watchdog said a second set, or "cascade", of centrifuges was working at the Natanz pilot fuel enrichment plant when inspectors visited in July. The move to enrich uranium to 20% purity means Iran could quickly advance to manufacture weapons grade material. The West believes Iran is seeking to make a nuclear bomb. Iran deny this. The UN Security Council, the US and EU have each forced sanctions on the Iranian authorities to force them to halt enrichment activities. Iran has been producing low enriched uranium (LEU) of about 3.5% clarity for some time, and announced in February that it had begun enriching uranium to 20% to make fuel for its Tehran research reactor, which produce medical isotopes.

A bomb would want at least 90%. "The IAEA can confirm that on 17 July, when agency inspectors were at, Iran was feeding nuclear material to the two interconnected 164 machine centrifuge cascades," spokeswoman Gill Tudor said. Ms Tudor said the move was "contrary to UN Security Council resolutions affirming that Iran should hang all enrichment related activities". The centrifuges spin uranium hexafluoride (UF6) gas at high speeds to divide the fissile U-235 atoms from the denser U-238 atoms. Experts say that using two consistent cascades increases efficiency by allowing leftover LEU to be refed into the machines.

The IAEA said in a report in February that Iran had achieved enrichment levels of up to 19.8%, which further to its concerns about the "possible military dimensions" of its nuclear programme. Experts say the technical leap essential to get to 90% purity from 20% is relatively straightforward, because it becomes easier at upper levels. Going from the natural state of 0.7% purity to 20% takes 90% of the total energy necessary, they add. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for totally peaceful purposes. "The plant is undergoing the final sets of experiments for finding of any possible failure," Ali Akbar Salehi said. "The preliminary phase will be finished in less than two weeks and the plant will be ready to launch."

'Countdown to Zero' an afraid chronology of nuclear weapons

'Every man, woman, and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, execution by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, mistake, or by madness," said President John F. Kennedy in his 1961 address before the United Nations. "The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us," completed the president in his declamation for nuclear disarmament. JFK's speech is the premise of Countdown to Zero, a doom-umentary enumerating too-close-for-comfort close calls that strength have resulted in nuclear annihilation.

The film, moreover, speculates on the ease with which madmen - terrorists with a piece of highly enriched uranium can wipe out a city. So, is Lucy Walker's screed a influential argument for receiving rid of the nuclear arsenal or a cry of Chicken Little alarmism that the sky is falling.In truth, this glowing researched, anxiety-provoking film is both. Highly refined, and populated with such eloquent talking heads as former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and former CIA agent Valerie Plame, the film is Worst Case Scenario: The Nuclear Edition.

Heard about the time in 1995 when a U.S.-Norway investigate rocket showed up on Russian radar, was incorrect for a nuclear warhead, and advisers urged Russian President Boris Yeltsin to retaliate? "Providentially, Yeltsin wasn't drunk," cracks a talking head. Or about the time in 2007 when an American B-52 bomber flew across country with warheads on its section that the pilots didn't know were there. Or about A.Q. Khan, father of Pakistan's nuclear program, who sell his services to North Korea and Iran? Although the movie intends to arouse viewers to social action, it is just as likely to paralyze them with fear.

Analysis: Turkey's Iran standoff role irks associates

Turkey's attempts to mediate Iran's nuclear standoff with the West have evolved into an violent effort to forestall new U.N. sanctions. The assertive campaign is placing Turkey in resistance to longtime allies Israel and the United States. It also raises the question of whether NATO's only Muslim member is becoming less of a bridge between East and West than a powerful international supporter for its neighbors in the Middle East.

Turkey and Brazil reached a deal in Tehran a week ago below which Iran would ship much of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey, but it failed to ease concerns in the West that Tehran will carry on to enrich uranium to higher levels with the aim of building a nuclear weapon. The U.S. introduced a decision last week calling for a series of economic and trade restrictions after winning support from China and Russia.

That prompted Turkey, a impermanent member of the Security Council, to send letters to 26 countries, speaking against sanctions and seeking supports for the envisaged swap deal."Turkey wants to avoid the escalation of tensions with Iran to avoid suffering from it economically," said Nihat Ali Ozcan of the Economic Policy Research Institute in Ankara. "It is also seeking to raise its profile in the Muslim world but its loyalty is at risk in the eyes of the West."