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| Iraq | |
| Iraqi looters exposed to radioactive materials | |
| 2003-05-10 | |
| Via Command Post Villagers looted a nuclear power facility during the waning days of the war and instead of treasure, may have made off with death-drums filled with radioactive uranium oxide concentrate, also called yellow cake. According to officials with the Iraq nuclear energy commission, the storage facility at Zafaraniya was guarded by Iraqi troops until April 4. However, they fled in the face of approaching U.S. Marines. With the arrival of the Marines, the Zafaraniya facility was nominally under control of U.S. forces. However no special guards were posted and residents of a neighboring village looted the facility on April 6 and 7. That'll be our fault — we were too busy trying not get killed Most of the villagers have only an elementary school education. While they knew the facility was related to nuclear energy, they did not know that radioactive materials were stored there.
D'OH!! Officials believe the looters inevitably inhaled large quantities of the uranium. To make a bad situation worse, the villagers may have ingested radioactive material after converting the drums to water and cooking oil containers. Yellow cake is produced when refining uranium ore. Through further processing, it can be used as fuel rods for nuclear reactors or in nuclear weapons. And the Iraqis would have this...er....why? An official with the Iraq nuclear energy commission said Iraq refined the uranium from imports from Nigeria and Portugal in 1978 for its nuclear development program. About 300 drums of refined uranium had been in storage at Zafaraniya for about 20 years. The site was visited last January and February by inspectors from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. The inspectors found no safety problems at the facility. The Zafaraniya facility is located about 30 kilometers southeast of Baghdad and includes an experimental nuclear reactor and research labs. Considered one of the core components of Iraq's nuclear weapons development program, the facility was bombed by Israel in the 1980s and was hit by U.S. cruise missiles in the 1990s. The storage facility where the yellow cake was kept was surrounded by a wire fence but the storage facility itself was rusted and rapidly deteriorating. ahhh but "The inspectors found no safety problems at the facility." One of the villagers who took part in the looting said he tasted the yellow powder in the drums because it looked pretty. Aaakkkkkkkk | |
| Posted by:Frank G |
| #6 Uranium Ore Concentrate (UOC) is dark green to black (depending on its moisture content). Ammonium di-Uranate is yellow (and is what gave rise to the name "yellow-cake"). The published figures on what was at Tuwaitha indicate that the UOC should have been green. If the villagers ate something pretty and yellow it was probably sulphur (uranium processing facilities commonly have stocks of sulphur - used to manufacture sulphuric acid on site). UOC is only about one tenth as radioactive as uranium at geologic equilibrium with its daughter products. In many cases UOC is less radioactive than the ore it is mined from (the daughter products end up in the ore residues rather than in the concentrate). Most of what is being reported about Tuwaitha is simply not plausible or contains impossibilities/stupidities. |
| Posted by: Russell 2003-05-11 03:07:01 |
| #5 Yellow cake with white slag icing. Yummmmmy. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2003-05-10 15:01:15 |
| #4 One of the villagers who took part in the looting said he tasted the yellow powder in the drums because it looked pretty. Maybe this dope would be interested in a little "hot lemonade"?? |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-05-10 11:50:00 |
| #3 D'oh! |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-05-10 10:29:23 |
| #2 Mmmmmmmmm....yellow cake. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2003-05-10 10:04:07 |
| #1 One of the villagers who took part in the looting said he tasted the yellow powder in the drums because it looked pretty. Maybe this dope would be interested in a little "hot lemonade"?? |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 5/10/2003 11:50:00 AM |