SMUGGLING OF URANIUM FROM INDIA: STORIES PERSIST
June 2006 Issue
An extraordinary story in the Vijay Times (Karnataka, India), by Amlan Home Choudhury, opened with the following lead:
Vijay Times, 30 April --
Jaduguda (Jharkhand):In an alarming development, smugglers are sending highly radioactive Yellow Cake or processed uranium, used in making nuclear weaponry, to Nepal through the clandestine narcotic route via the Jharkhand-Bihar-West Bengal conduit, and it is suspected that the destination might be al-Qaeda. [1]
The story went on to allege that yellowcake was so valuable, being worth between $600,000 and $900,000 per kilogram, that smugglers are paid not in currency, but gold, principally by purchasers from the Middle East and South East Asia. [2] However, there appear to be a number of inaccuracies in the story. First, the world price for yellowcake in 2005 was roughly $30 per pound or $66 per kilo, making the black market price quoted in the article of many hundreds of thousands of dollars per kilo rather suspect. [3] Second, the product shown in the photo accompanying the article is a large piece of rock, which might be uranium ore, but is obviously not yellowcake. Nor is a possible link to al-Qaeda very likely, a link which the local press appears more ready to include in their stories on yellowcake smuggling than the international press. [4]
The story is the latest in more than thirty years of reports in the international and Indian media on supposed thefts of yellowcake from Indias Jaduguda mine complex, in Jharkhand (formerly Bihar) province. Yellowcake, or uranium concentrate, is an intermediate material in the nuclear fuel cycle. It is produced at a uranium mill, usually co-located with a uranium mining operation, which extracts raw uranium from uranium-bearing ore, and then purifies and reconstitutes the uranium product in a solid, powdery form, known as yellowcake, from its yellow color. Chemically known as U308, it is sold in multi-ton quantities in international commerce, as the raw material for the manufacture of fuel for nuclear power plants. It is also an essential material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. [5]
For both civilian and military purposes, however, the material, which is only mildly radioactive, must be extensively processed in a series of highly complex facilities. [6] Because the installations needed for these later stages are so complex, their construction and operation is considered by many experts to be beyond the capabilities of terrorist organizations. Thus yellowcake would have little utility in the hands of terrorists.
In India, yellowcake from Jaduguda is an essential raw material for both the countrys nuclear energy and nuclear weapon programs. [7] Although acquisition of yellowcake from abroad has been a key element in a number of covert nuclear weapon programs in other countries, including those of Israel, Iraq, and Libya, smuggling (or open purchases of yellowcake) from India is not known to have contributed to such efforts, despite continuing allegations of the material making its way to the international black market. [8] [9] [10]
The Jaduguda mine is the best known of the uranium mines in Jharkhand. [11] Opened in 1968, the Jaduguda mine is owned and operated by the Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL), a public sector enterprise under the administrative control of the Indian Department of Atomic Energy. Located in the mineral-rich east Singhbum district of Jharkhand, Jaduguda is the site of an underground mine along with an ore processing plant (mill) to produce yellowcake. From Jaduguda the yellowcake is transported to the Nuclear Fuel Complex in Hyderabad for fabrication into fuel rods for Indian nuclear power plants using natural uranium fuel. The material is also utilized in the reactors India uses to produce plutonium for its nuclear weapons. In addition, the Jaduguda complex is the likely source of uranium for Indias uranium enrichment program, in which uranium is upgraded for use as fuel in certain types of nuclear reactors and/or for nuclear weapons. [12]
Reports of uranium smuggling from the Jaduguda mine are not new, and thefts from this source were mentioned in U.S. government reports dating as early as the 1970s. An Office of Technology Assessment Report to the U.S. Congress dated June 1977, for example, offers the following information:
In April 1974, a uranium smuggling operation was uncovered in India. All of the details of the incident are not available, but it appears from the rather sketchy press accounts that uranium was being removed from the Jaduguda plant in Bihar, India, and was being smuggled to Nepal. From Nepal, it was smuggled to Hong Kong where reportedly Chinese or Pakistani agents took delivery. It is believed that as much as $2.5 million worth of uranium may have been involved. [13]
More recent reports dealing with the international dimension of illicit trafficking in nuclear and radioactive materials have also pointed out that uranium ore stolen from the Jaduguda mines in India have found their way into Nepal, headed for an international black market. [14] Another report authored in the fall of 2004 on nuclear trafficking routes detailing trends in Southern Asia offers the following information:
In 2001, smuggled uranium, confiscated from suspected terrorists in Balurghat, northern West Bengal, had been removed from the Jaduguda uranium mines in Bihar state, bordering West Bengal, and was planned to be smuggled across the Bangladeshi border. [15]
It should be noted that uranium ore usually contains less than 20 percent raw uranium, which would necessitate the smuggling of very large quantities to be of utility in a nuclear weapons program. Modern yellowcake contains 60 percent or more uranium oxide by weight.
Perhaps security is less than ideal at Indias uranium mills and there is some element of truth behind the continuing reports of smuggling. To date, however, a detailed and credible expose of the situation has yet to be written.
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