Belarus Cuts Through The Bullshit About Uranium
April 16th, 2010
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Given that there’s been a lot of hubbub about various small sources of enriched uranium around the world, some of which are already far too burned up to actually be used for much of anything, I’m surprised to see a small country is actually standing up for its own rights and domestic ability to do nuclear reactor science. Many nations are finding that the US and other major powers are demanding that they give up any nuclear material that is deemed a risk by politicians.
Belarus, however, is setting the record straight about the uranium they have, its security and its usage. Furthermore, they’re not about to let the US, the Russians or anyone else demand that they give up valuable material from their domestic nuclear sciences program, especially when its perfectly secure and not a proliferation threat.
As Mr. Lukashenka said, Belarus still possesses enriched uranium, including “hundreds of kilograms” of weapons-grade and lower enriched uranium. “I’ve been told for many years: ‘Move this uranium out of the country. To America if you like. We’ll pay you. Or to Russia.’ I say: ‘Why are you dictating to us? This is our commodity. We keep it under the control of the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]. We aren’t going to make dirty bombs or sell it to anyone. We use this uranium for research purposes….We once gave up nuclear weapons and what benefit do we have from that?’”
Mr. Lukashenka’s statements show that he’s not about to let his country be bullied about the material, which can still be used for legitimate research purposes, but is not enriched enough to be used in weapons. However, he did confuse some of the terminology about the type of uranium that they have in the country. Stanislaw Shushkevich, the head of the Belarusian State University nuclear physics program helped clear up the issue of exactly what the country has in the following statement:
“I can say with full responsibility that we don’t and will not have any appreciable amount of weapons-grade uranium,” Dr. Shushkevich stressed. “We have ‘dirty’ uranium, which is highly radioactive. After the reactor [at the Sosny center] was deactivated, this radioactive substance was extracted and put in special conditions in order not to trigger a nuclear reaction. This is far from being what an atomic bomb is made of. A whole industry should be in place to process this uranium. This requires expensive technologies, which we don’t have.”
The uranium that Belarus has is far too “dirty” from irradiation to make a weapon from, and is not even of sufficient enrichment for weapon usage. However, it has only been partially used up by the research reactor that was deactivated. The material is still perfectly suitable for use in a new research reactor, and as such is very valuable to science.
Three cheers for Belarus! Don’t bend to bunk political pressures from other countries to turn over this valuable non-prolific material. It’s not your damn job to make Obama look good for his next election. Perhaps this example will teach a few other countries to grow a pair.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 16th, 2010 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Nuclear, Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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April 16th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Some in the developing world are suspicious that the conservative abolitionists want to shut down the nuclear club at the very moment when new nations on the block are on the brink of joining it. In a world where the United States accounts for one-half of all military spending worldwide and where even a small cache of nuclear weapons offers an insurance policy against U.S. military attack, some wonder whether the conservative abolitionists aren’t executing a change in tactics in continued pursuit of U.S. military dominance rather than, as they claim, a visionary campaign for a better world.
BTW I posted a lead article on the subject of HEU and the drive to strip it away from every state not a current member of the Club at Brave New Climate.
http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/04/15/dv82xl/
It has drawn some flack from the usual suspects.
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April 16th, 2010 at 8:50 pm
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/04/obama-strikes-nuke-deals-with-mexico-canada-others/1
I think this is a good summit, it’s reduced the amount of weapons grade Plutonium out there. Mexico and Canada are giving up most of their supplies, along with a number of other countries. This only makes the world safer. But some people arent happy with anything Obama does, and just look for an excuse to tear him down. No surprise there!!
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April 16th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Bruce, this has nothing to do with Obama and nuclear energy and technology is something that has its supporters and opponents among politicians of all sorts of political parties across the world. There is no reason to abandon nuclear technology for energy and civilian purposes simply because of a few highly misguided people in geopolitical positions of power who want us to shun it out of ignorance or from their personal agendas. Belarus is simply trying to be rational in its approach to nuclear material which is an example that we could all learn from. The apparent abandonment of the MAPLE research reactor project in Canada is a tragedy, not a cause for celebration as the world is already experiencing a shortage of medical and industrial isotopes as it is.
I cannot speak for Mexico, but last I heard it was actually looking to increase its development of nuclear energy.
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April 16th, 2010 at 9:12 pm
Bruce said:
Mexico and Canada will be getting rid of various amounts of enriched uranium. What a relief. World leaders lie awake nights worrying about Canadian enriched uranium. I know these people. I live up here. You have no idea what we are capable of doing.
Meanwhile NOT on the agenda was Pakistan’s plutonium production, which is adding to the world’s stockpile of fissile material every day and creating new plutonium for every ounce of Canadian HEU shipped to the United States.
Nor was Iran, which is frantically enriching uranium to make a bomb, and which the U.S. State Department claims is the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world.
And of course Israel chose not to attend, so they wouldn’t have to answer any questions on their nuclear arsenal.
This followed by a softening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent posture which spares non-proliferation compliant states from nuclear retaliation if they launch a biochemical attack against America.
But not to worry. Canadian HEU is secured. I feel safer already.
And lest anyone call me out as anti-Obama, I am even more angry with Harper for going along with this farce.
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April 16th, 2010 at 10:19 pm
Beware, DV82XL! Obama is laying secret plans to attack and invade Canada and make it one of the 57 states of America! Do not give up your Plutonium, not at any price! Resist the Obama imperialist aggressor!
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April 17th, 2010 at 3:43 am
Jonathan said:
Umm, no. We are not talking about plutonium in Canada. Perhaps DV82XL is just a bit antsy about how nuclear policy in Canada is being made without any care or attention for some years now. There were major problems developing in nuclear research (chalk river) and the reactor company (aecl) over the decades preceding Conservative Prime Minister Harper’s election, but they have been raised to another, perhaps insoluable level, in past few years. Nobody knows who advises Harper on these issues. Policies just “arise”. It isn’t just about the HEU.
DV82XL is not objecting to giving up Canada’s highly enriched uranium because he wishes to keep it as a safeguard in case we wish to build a weapon. The talk of actually building a weapon for Canada seems to have died in the seventies, and isn’t seriously considered now by anybody. There is near total political consensus that
Canada does not need a weapons program.
Canada has had an independent nuclear energy and research program for decades (the second oldest nuclear research program in the world, after the US). After the war, HEU was used to fuel several historical research reactors, and still could have been used for that purpose in the future. For example, for testing capabilities of new reactors or parts. Its uses have been well explained elsewhere: it isn’t just for bombs.
What this unilateral initiative by Harper does is further limit future nuclear research in this country. It means we will likely never build a new reactor after the ACR. No new training of people for reactor construction will take place. No new medical reactor research will take place (Harper has killed all medical reactor development). He has seemingly stated that no research reactor will be built after the NRU at chalk river shuts down. Hundreds of people will have their knowledge of nuclear engineering and nuclear medicine snuffed out when they die, never to have passed it down to the next generation of Canadians, if they do not leave the country first. These are not overstatements: the situation has happened before in the aerospace industry (a debacle from which the industry never recovered), and has been slowly occurring in Canada’s nuclear industry for some time (plenty of discontented nuclear scientists have left Canada, and gone on to great careers south of the border, often vocalizing their criticism of Canada’s nuclear research policies.)
Earlier in Harper’s premiership, he nearly sold MDA to an american company (MDA aerospace company, whose major asset is technology called “radarsat” which was paid for by the Canadian government). Harper’s government took months to get it through its think skulls that the American government would thereafter only allow MDA to develop technology to a degree that would either not threaten America’s national interest, or that their work would be coopted for other (military) uses. (Should sound Familiar with this HEU business?). Many Canadian employees threatened to quit MDA because they (quite sensibly) thought they’d be working for an american CIA front company. (This may all sound paranoid, but that is the way the world works in the realm of technologies of strategic import.)
Harper’s intentions for nuclear industry have never been stated in a clear way, but nearly all that has been done by his government fits a pattern to kill Canada’s nuclear industry dead (die! die! die!). It includes manufacturing a political crisis in Canada’s independent nuclear regulator after NRU was first shut down (eliciting bad press from around the world). He put a carpenter in charge of NR-CAN, the ministry responsible for AECL (Canada’s quasi-national nuclear reactor company), with predictable results (Gary Lunn – just pound a few nails into it!). There was the firing of his science advisor and replacing him with a panel headed by a politheocrat without a science degree (Preston Manning), appointing a minister of state for science and technology with a “Doctorate” in Chiropractic (Gary Goodyear). He has made known his wish to sell AECL, but without expressing any thought about what role he expects AECL to play in the nuclear future of this country (For example, could you imaging Obama selling Boeing to whoever paid the best price, (maybe EADS), and just shrugging his shoulders if the Europeans raided the brains and shut it down?). While AECL was up for sale, Harper told the company to not bid on international contracts for its new reactors (ACR) (this was sold at the time as “focus domestically”), but then Harper also imposed conditions upon a bid by AECL for new Ontarian reactors which seemed purposely designed to result in the bid’s non-acceptance by that province, Harper’s government then refused to negotiate with Ontario to try to find some agreement (Makes the company more valuable to a buyer, don’t you think?). Harper has said that chalk river will remain Canadian and not for sale, but has not explained what nuclear research will be done in chalk river, (no serious medical isotope research, at any rate) or explain what he envisions the relationship between AECL and chalk river would be, or what will happen after the NRU is retired (if itt ever restarts).
In others words, it looks like Canada has shut itself out of the nuclear renaissance, except as a payer. And, as a wealthy country we can expect to pay dearly. (And why pay when we have all this “oil”?)
It is my belief that it is Harper’s intention to make all of Canada totally dependent upon Alberta’s fossil energy for all its energy needs, forever. (Alberta and the western oil producing provinces are Harper’s political base. Ontario, which is home-base for chalk-river & AECL, is more Liberal.) America will also be pleased: Harper has longstanding admiration for the US, but to a creepy degree. He will also make Canada irrelevant in all things nuclear to the rest of the world, except as an exporter of Uranium, and a handy source of brains to whatever Company (Areva, GE) wishes to purchase AECL and strip its assets. Again, America will be pleased about that. If Canada were to participate fully in a world-wide nuclear renaissance, Ontario, with its nuclear industry, would have rivaled Alberta, with its oil industry, as an “energy capital” for the country. Ontario’s nuclear industry (companies like Bruce Power with AECL) would also have been poised to participate in America’s nuclear reactor building projects (thanks to free trade). Up until Harper was elected, Canada could have been a leading purveyor of medical Isotopes for the world (that had been the plan), and a key player in the nuclear renaissance. Now I think people fear that at most we can hope to be Kazakhstan, with a bit more politesse.
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April 17th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
DV82XL said:
Oh it’s a crap situation in general, but part of the whole HEU thing is not too bad a deal for Canada. According to several news sources, Canada is to return “Spent HEU” fuel to the US. Oh great, HEU fuel that contains almost no uranium anymore… gee, that’s such a security risk. Actually, it’s not and not only that, but now Canada doesn’t have to pay for the casks and disposal. Granted, it’s not too expensive, but still.
Here’s an idea: Why not start complaining like this “Our garbage is a horrible threat to security and goddamnit, it’s not safe in our landfills. We wish some other country would help secure this garbage for us”
DV82XL said:
Canada may very well want to consider building a nuclear weapon program. I wouldn’t blame them.
The 1958 Mutual Defense Agreement between the US, Canada and UK specifies that any major attack on any of the three signers that involves attempted invasion or nuclear weapons will be responded to by the other two as an attack on their own assets. Part of this was the creation of a North American airspace security system that would not be controlled by either government entirely. This grew into NORAD
The agreement was in part to assure Canada that there would not be the need to develop or deploy her own nuclear weapons. Part of it also came down to a trade of assets. The United States formally agreed that an activation by NORAD of an attack would occur for either nation being attacked. In return, the US received the ability to use Canada as the vital location of the sites of the DEW line.
Up to 1987, at least six Canadian Air Force squadrons were equipped with US strategic nuclear weapons and authorized to use them in retaliation to a strike if the order was given by Canadian or NATO commanders.
A weakening of US posture on nuclear weapons use will leave countries like Canada unable to count on a deterrent force. This is the force which persuaded many countries that they were secure without their own domestic nuclear program.
There are more than a dozen countries which may also have to consider whether the treaties that they entered into as part of the NATO pact are now dead letters. The mutual defense article could end up falling on the shoulders of France and the UK. France has been less than enthusiastic about responding to a limited scale attack of a NATO country that does not directly put their security at risk.
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April 18th, 2010 at 3:00 am
>> This followed by a softening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent posture which spares non-proliferation compliant states from nuclear retaliation if they launch a biochemical attack against America.
While I like most of your comments, this is nonsense (spread by Fox Noise). The US declaration explicitly states that US reserves the right to reconsider this policy in an event of biological or chemical attacks.
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April 18th, 2010 at 8:23 am
drbuzz0 said:
Actually Canada agreed to foot the bill for this too.
Jara Cimrman said:
While I won’t say you are wrong, I did see this stated in several places. It did strike me as unduly soft on the matter, but as I was flaming-mad at my own county’s actions in that post, I didn’t give it the verification it should have gotten.
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April 21st, 2010 at 5:31 pm
” Three cheers for Belarus! “
They may be right about what to do with their uranium, but they still have a terrible human rights record and rig their elections. One cheer, maybe.
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April 22nd, 2010 at 1:11 am
Jara Cimrman said:
That would be quite upsetting to me if you were right. Explicitly making it clear when we will use nuclear weapons increases other countries confidence, and reduces their interest in nuclear weapons. They won’t fear being attacked by the US with nuclear weapons, so they’ll feel much less interest in developing them. I haven’t seen a single reliable source that relays it the way you did. Here it is from the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html
[i]It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.[/i]
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April 22nd, 2010 at 10:46 am
Bruce said:
Bruce, the as long as the POTUS has the authority to use nuclear weapons, the policy will remain the same as it has always been: they will be used if/when the POTUS considers it to be justified. The current rhetoric, which states that they would not be used in the even of a chem/bio attack, may actually make their use more likely, since the perceived drop in consequences for launching such an attack may increase the likelihood of such an attack occurring. Do you really think that the response to such would *not* be an all out counterrattack, including use of nuclear weaponry (a large scale poison gas attack in Chicago, for example, or if a smallpox or influenza-based weapon deployed pretty much anywhere)?
A man who says “I will never fight to the utmost, no matter what you do” is not a lover of peace. He merely invites people to strike at him without fear. It is the man who says “If you hurt me or those under my protection, I will come after you with both the ability and the will to wipe you out” who actually prevents violence, because no one is willing to mess with him or hurt those he protects. The current shift is moving the US from the second towards the first.
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum
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