Iraq contamination incident

[Chuck Cooper <cooperc@teleport.com>]

This is not new news but the information has been thin on what types of 

RAM are involved.



Via Janes International Security website which is somewhat more 

authorative than your typical "consumer" news source.

=========

http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jid/jid030529_1_n.shtml



29 May 2003

Nuclear nightmare in Iraq



Throughout May, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has 

expressed mounting concern at the outbreak of looting that has been 

taking place at Iraq's abandoned nuclear sites - which number around 

1,000 in total. JID has commissioned a leading British nuclear analyst 

to assess the security risk posed by the missing material and the golden 

opportunities the chaos in Iraq may have presented to international 

terrorists.



According to eyewitness reports as many as 400 looters a day have been 

ransacking the Al-Tuwaitha complex south of Baghdad, regarded as the 

main site for Iraq's former nuclear weapons programme and covering an 

area of 120 acres. The crowd got in by simply cutting the surrounding 

barbed-wire fence in the absence of security patrols.



Seals placed at Iraqi nuclear sites by the IAEA during past inspections 

have been tampered with and metal containers of 300-400kg of natural and 

low-enriched uranium and uranium oxide, either stolen or tipped out and 

the containers used for domestic purposes such as milking cows and 

storing drinking water, milk and tomatoes intended for human 

consumption. Documents and lab equipment have been stolen, while other 

materials have been dumped on the floors. The environmental consequences 

may prove disastrous.



Many drums of radioactive material, including plutonium, were found 

behind steel doors in Al-Tuwaitha's Building 39, a permanent storage 

site for low-level nuclear waste. The lock had been broken on Building 

55 and readings consistent with thorium, cobalt and caesium were 

recorded. Some cylinders were emitting so much gamma and neutron 

radiation that the team could not interpret the results. Radioactive 

material may have been deliberately left there to expose the occupying 

forces to levels that would prove dangerous.





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