FARC had uranium?

Fri, 03/28/2008 - 12:31pm

The Reyes laptop is the gift that just keeps on giving. Within a few days of killing FARC commander Raúl Reyes and seizing a laptop allegedly belonging to him, Colombian authorities began referring repeatedly to FARC's desire to obtain up to 110 kilograms of uranium and perhaps even a past purchase of 50 kilograms for a "dirty bomb," citing information obtained from the laptop.

On Wednesday, the purchased uranium was apparently found, but it's spectacularly unclear how dangerous the material really is. Informants apparently tipped off investigators to the uranium's whereabouts, which happened to be a few feet off a road in southern Bogotá. There, investigators uncovered about 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of uranium buried in plastic bags.

But just what kind of uranium? It certainly wasn't enriched uranium, which is what they would need for a dirty bomb. Some outlets are reporting it to be "impoverished," i.e. "depleted" uranium, which is the byproduct of enrichment, and far less dangerous. Nuke analyst Charles Ferguson told Bloomberg:

You could stand next to this material for days and nothing would happen to you, unless you dropped it on your foot,'' said Ferguson.

So, what did FARC want with depleted uranium? A Colombian security analyst told Reuters it was likely a money-making scheme. Other uses, according to Ferguson:

Possible uses for the FARC might include making armor- piercing conventional weapons or an ingestible poison, Ferguson said. Less likely, the metal could be used as a shield while handling more potent radioactive materials that would be used to make a dirty bomb.

I asked Matthew Bunn, senior research associate with Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom, what the significance of the find is:

[D]epleted uranium is pretty useless for terrorists, and there aren't variants of uranium that are even more so.

30 kg of either natural or depleted uranium is not of much interest, either from the point of the security threat it poses (almost none -- uranium is only very weakly radioactive, and unenriched material is useless for making a nuclear bomb) or from the point of view of its value (something like $6000 for natural uranium, at current commercial market prices in the range of $200 per kilogram of uranium, much less for depleted uranium). Depleted uranium is the waste from a uranium enrichment plant, but is also used for things that require very dense material, such as armor-penetrating shells and ships ballast.  How it ended up in Bogota is a bit unclear, but it's not controlled especially carefully, since it's not a material of much interest to anyone.

(The fact that in the original seized memo the quoted price was $2.5 million per kilogram suggests that the seller either was running a scam or was totally clueless about the value of what he had, and that the memo author was fairly clueless either about the nature of the material on offer or the value of it, or both.)

The only thing that IS potentially of interest in this whole story (in my view) is that a very professional terrorist organization like FARC, with a good deal of experience in smuggling, apparently was interested in getting involved in buying and selling nuclear material for money. That suggests that some one who had serious nuclear material (unlike this material) and needed to move it from one country to another might have been able to make use of the FARC's capabilities.

Watch this space.

Carolyn O'Hara | Permalink | | Comments? Login or register
( filed under: )


Advertisement

 

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

by Santos on Fri, 03/28/2008 - 2:35pm

And the laptop will continue to keep giving until the Colombians make ALL the documents public. As it stands their interpretations rule the media cycle. Even today respectable publications like the Christian Science Monitor continue to report that the uranium was for a "dirty bomb" even though that would be impossible, as you point out.

* Hindin, R., et al. (2005)

by jsalsman on Fri, 03/28/2008 - 3:25pm

* Hindin, R., et al. (2005) "Teratogenicity of depleted uranium aerosols: A review from an epidemiological perspective," Environmental Health, vol. 4, pp. 17. Conclusion: "the human epidemiological evidence is consistent with increased risk of birth defects in offspring of persons exposed to DU.... Animal studies firmly support the possibility that DU is a teratogen." http://www.ehjournal.net/content/4/1/17

* Arfsten, D.P., et al. (2001) "A review of the effects of uranium and depleted uranium exposure on reproduction and fetal development," Toxicology and Industrial Health, vol. 17, pp. 180-91. Summary contains: "A number of studies have shown that natural uranium is a reproductive toxicant...." http://dx.doi.org/10.1191/0748233701th111oa (U.S. Navy Toxicology Detachment work)

* Durakovic A. (1999) "Medical effects of internal contamination with uranium," Croatian Medical Journal, vol. 40, pp. 49-66. Abstract: "well documented evidence of reproductive and developmental toxicity...." http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/DU-Medical-Effects-Mar99.htm (former U.S. Veterans Administration M.D. work)

* Domingo, J.L. (2001) "Reproductive and developmental toxicity of natural and depleted uranium: a review," Reproductive Toxicology, vol. 15, pp. 603-9. Abstract: "Decreased fertility, embryo/fetal toxicity including teratogenicity, and reduced growth of the offspring have been observed following uranium exposure at different gestation periods." http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0890-6238(01)00181-2

* Miller, A.C., et al. (2003) "Depleted uranium-catalyzed oxidative DNA damage: absence of significant alpha particle decay," Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, vol. 91, pp. 246-252. Abstract: chemical generation of hydroxyl radicals by depleted uranium in vitro exceeds radiolytic generation by one million-fold (U.S. Army work)

* Horan, P., et al. (2002) "The quantitative analysis of depleted uranium isotopes in British, Canadian, and U.S. Gulf War veterans." Military Medicine 167(8) pp. 620-7. Summary: depleted uranium was in the urine of 14 of 27 veterans complaining of Gulf War illness. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12188230

* Schröder, H., et al. (2003) "Chromosome aberration analysis in peripheral lymphocytes of Gulf war and Balkans war veterans," Radiation Protection Dosimetry, vol. 103, pp. 211-220. Abstract: "there was a statistically significant increase in the frequency of dicentric and centric ring chromosomes in the veterans. group" http://www.cerrie.org/committee_papers/INFO_9-H.pdf (see also this report by the "Conspiracy Test" series -- http://vawatchdog.org/07/nf07/nfAUG07/nf082207-1.htm -- showing the same results.)

* Kang H., et al. (2001) "Pregnancy outcomes among U.S. Gulf War veterans: a population-based survey of 30,000 veterans." Annals of Epidemiology, vol. 11, pp. 504-11. Abstract: "Both men and women deployed to the Gulf theater reported significant excesses of birth defects among their liveborn infants. These excess rates also extended to the subset of ‘moderate to severe’ birth defects" http://www.annalsofepidemiology.org/article/PIIS1047279701002459/abstract See also page 10 of http://www1.va.gov/gulfwar/docs/GulfWarNov03.pdf (U.S. Veterans Administration work)

* Doyle, P., et al. (2004) "Miscarriage, stillbirth and congenital malformation in the offspring of UK veterans of the first Gulf war" International Journal of Epidemiology 33(1) pp. 74-86. Abstract: "Male Gulf war veterans reported a higher proportion of offspring with any type of malformation than the comparison cohort (OR = 1.5, 95% CI: 1.3, 1.7)." http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/33/1/74

* Al-Sadoon, et al. (1999) "Depleted uranium and health of people in Basrah: epidemilogical evidence." Medical Journal of Basrah University 17(1-2) http://www.irak.be/ned/archief/Depleted%20Uranium_bestanden/DEPLETED%20URANIUM-2-%20INCIDENCE.htm Summary: birth defects in Basrans took off about the same time that they did in U.S. and U.K. troops.

* Fathallah, Z.F. (2007) "Effects of socioeconomic factors on the incidence and pattern of oro-facial cleft." Basrah Journal of Surgery, March, 13, 2007 Excerpt: "in Basrah the ncrease in incidence within a short time can not be explained by just increase of world wide incidence, but rather increase infiltration of harmful environmental factors, especially DU" http://www.basmedcol.com/effects%20of%20socioeconomic.pdf

* Miller, A.C., et al. (2007) "A review of depleted uranium biological effects: in vitro and in vivo studies." Review of Environmental Health 22(1) pp. 75-89. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17508699 Abstract: "studies using cultured cells and laboratory rodents continue to suggest the possibility of leukemogenic, genetic, reproductive, and neurological effects" (U.S. Army work)

The UN General Assembly agendized another look at DU because of this problem with a WHO report saying it was harmless: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/reports/international/uranium_20061101.shtml

DR REPACHOLI: We want a comprehensive report - we want to include everything that we can - but we don’t want fairytale stuff - it wasn’t collaborated by other reports - that was felt to the level that science would say this was established.

ANGUS STICKLER: My understanding is that at the time that there were eight published peer reviewed research studies - attesting to the genotoxic nature of uranium - all of which could have been included in the monograph?

REPACHOLI: Yep - these - er - papers were speculative at the time and W.H.O. will only publish data that they know is established.

STICKLER: Shouldn’t the World Health Organisation err on the side of caution?

REPACHOLI: W.H.O is a conservative organisation there’s no doubt - it’s not a leader in this sort of thing - it’s not out there saying wow we should be concerned about this, this and this - it’s not there to do that....

DR REPACHOLI: The problem that W.H.O had and it went right up to the Director General’s office that it was finally disapproved at that level was that on the basis of the evidence that we have - we can’t conclude that it is harmful - and to have a paper from another W.H.O staff member that says we absolutely think it’s harmful - makes W.H.O look a bit odd.

STICKLER: With the greatest respect - that’s going to have very little truck with someone who may get seriously ill because of depleted uranium the fact that the W.H.O. may look a bit odd?

REPACHOLI: No the odd part is that it looks like W.H.O. is not in control of its shop....

"I’ve been to several international conferences where I’ve heard Iraqi medical physicians summarise health statistics on the occurrence of birth defects and non Hodgkin’s Lymphomas and the rise in incidents in these kind of effects especially in the area of southern Iraq and the Basra area appears quite alarming on the basis of the figures that I’ve seen – significant data – that would suggest that we should be erring on the side of caution here – and it ought to be investigated" Professor Parrish told us.

I have a great deal more peer-reviewed sources on this topic, and I greatly enjoy discussing it. I am not affiliated with any anti-DU group but I have filed three petitions on the subject with the NRC in 2005-2007, one of which is still in process.

James Salsman