[ RadSafe ] MSNBC on Averting Nuclear Disaster in Chile

[Hansen, Richard]

Roger,

The U.S. Energy Department (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and Chilean Commission of Nuclear Energy project to remove highly enriched uranium from Chile is discussed in an NNSA Press Release and a Washington Post article.

April 8, 2010
Ahead of Nuclear Security Summit, NNSA Announces Removal of All Highly Enriched Uranium from Chile
http://www.nnsa.energy.gov/2894.htm

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced the removal of the final highly enriched uranium (HEU) from Chile, making it the fifth country to remove all of its HEU since President Obama called for an international effort to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years. The operation in Chile was successfully completed despite a massive earthquake on Feb. 27 and numerous aftershocks that occurred while the NNSA team was in the country. 
[more on web site]

The Washington Post ran the following story. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp‐dyn/content/article/2010/04/10/AR2010041002811.html
As U.S. attempted to remove nuclear material from Chile, earthquake struck
By David E. Hoffman

When the shaking began just after 3:34 a.m. on Feb. 27, Andrew Bieniawski woke up with a start in his room on the 15th floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Santiago, Chile. A picture fell off the wall. He raced to the lobby. He had arrived from the United States just the day before to oversee a delicate operation that the U.S. government and Chile had been quietly setting up for more than a month, and now an earthquake was tearing apart the center of the country. The magnitude‐8.8 quake killed 486 people, set off a tsunami, cracked buildings and roads, cut off electricity and phone lines, and spawned dozens of aftershocks.

While the disaster unfolded, Bieniawski and his team from the Energy Department had another worry: They had packed 39.6 pounds of highly enriched uranium, enough to make a nuclear bomb, into a shipping container, ready for a secret evacuation by road to a port and then by sea to the United States. The quake threw up several new hurdles for the secret mission, and Bieniawski's first concern, he recalled in an interview, was this: Was the container damaged? Grabbing a phone before the lines went dead, he learned that the weapons‐grade material was intact. But his team's problems had just begun.
[more on web site]

Best regards,
Rick Hansen
Senior Scientist
Counter Terrorism Operations Support Program
National Security Technologies, LLC, for the U.S. Dept of Energy
hansenrg at nv.doe.gov
www.ctosnnsa.org

-----Original Message-----
Message: 12
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:07:18 -0700
From: "Roger Helbig" <rhelbig at sfo.com>
Subject: [ RadSafe ] MSNBC on Averting Nuclear Disaster in Chile
To: "Radsafe" <radsafe at health.phys.iit.edu>

Rachel Madow seems to be going off half-cocked.  Does anyone on the list
know anything about the removal of highly enriched uranium from Chile at the
same time as the 8.8 earthquake?  The claim that nuclear disaster was
narrowly averted seems to disregard that this 40 pounds of HEU would have
been stored in safe fashion before the quake.

Thanks.
Roger Helbig