Featured Smuggling of Indian Uranium & Western Silence

[PradoTLC]

Should the seizure of some 2.5 kilogrammes of unprocessed uranium from four Nepalese nationals and the arrest of Nepalese nationals in Kathmandu ring alarm internationally? Of course.

Why? Because India is a major beneficiary of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) as well as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and by implication must have strict surveillance system over radio-active materials.

Alarm is called for also because one of the arrested persons claimed that her father-in-law had “brought the material from India some 20 years ago”, where he worked in a uranium mine.

Imagine the kind of noise that Indian and western media would have raised had some one arrested elsewhere linked the radioactive materials with Pakistan!

Fortunately , not a single incident in Pakistan but quite a few as far as India is concerned.

* In November 1994, Meghalaya Police seized 2.5 kg of uranium from a gang of four smugglers in the Domiasiat region.
* In June 1998 Police in the Indian state of West Bengal, arrested an opposition politician who they say was carrying more than 100 kilograms of uranium.

* In July 1998, the CBI unearthed a major racket in theft of uranium in Tamil Nadu, with the seizure of over eight kg of the nuclear material. In August 2001, Police in the Indian state of West Bengal arrested two men with more than 200 grams of semi-processed uranium.

* In 2003, Indian security forces caught members of a jihad group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, in a village on the Bangladesh border with 225 grams of milled uranium. The Indian authorities initially claimed it was from Kazakstan but concluded later it was more likely from a uranium mining complex at Jadugoda, in eastern India.

* In December 2006, a container packed with radioactive material was stolen from a fortified research facility in eastern India.

* In 2008, another criminal gang was caught attempting to smuggle low-grade uranium, capable of being used in a primitive radiation-dispersal device, from one of India’s state-owned mines across the border to Nepal.

* The same year another group was caught moving an illicit stock of uranium over the border to Bangladesh, the gang having been assisted by

* In 2009, a nuclear reactor employee in southwest India deliberately poisoned dozens of his colleagues with a radioactive isotope, taking advantage of numerous gaps in plant security, according to an internal government report seen by the Center.

* In 2013, leftist guerillas in northeast India illegally obtained uranium ore from a government-run milling complex in northeast India and strapped it to high explosives to make a crude bomb before being caught by police, according to an inspector involved in the case.

* In December 2015, the Centre for Public Integrity had reported an incident at the residential complex adjacent to the Madras Atomic Power Station, to draw global attention to the security hazards and breaches around the Indian nuclear establishments; the incident involved Head Constable Vijay Singh who used official weapons to kill three fellow officers.

The Centre had reported that the paramilitary Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) with nearly 95,000 personnel under civilian rather than military control is supposed to keep all these nuclear materials from leaking from India’s plants but “is short-staffed, ill-equipped, and inadequately trained, according to a confidential, draft, Home Ministry report about the force’s future, dated November 2013, seen by the Center for Public Integrity.


* In December 2016, around 9 kg of radioactive uraniumwas seized from two persons in Thane


* As recently as in early 2018 a uranium smuggling racket was busted by the Kolkata police with one kilogramme of radioactive material. The smugglers were reportedly trying to sell uranium worth about $440,000.


“Although experts say they regard the issue as urgent, Washington is not pressing India for quick reforms. The Obama administration is instead trying to avoid any dispute that might interrupt a planned expansion of U.S. military sales to Delhi, several senior U.S. officials said in interviews,” the Centre for Public Integrity had explained in the December 17, 2015 report – underlining the duplicity of the Obama administration in dealing with India and Pakistan.


These incidents simply expose India’s patchy safety and security record and raise questions on the security measures around its nuclear facilities, which at the moment are in the control of a nationalist-religious extremist government dreaming of a Greater India.


Don’t these instances demonstrate that the country has yet to go a long way to become a responsible nuclear power and made member of NSG?

Pakistan’s Concern!

Although natural Uranium is not useful for even making dirty bombs but the issue does merit a closer and honest scrutiny by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) which has been so favourable to India because of the American patronage.

Pakistan has done the right thing by demanding a thorough investigation of the matter as to how such sizeable quantity of uranium could become available outside any state control and identify the gaps which made this possible.

Most of the Indian and like-minded western official and media channels have been routinely blurting out insinuations on Pakistan and the “possibility” of its nuclear weapons falling in hands of so-called jihadists (only a miniscule number for a 220 million population) but here in this case

The world should also be cautious against being duped – yet again – by India through political, intellectual and media. Together with the US, New Delhi possesses a huge information machinery – including of course the network of over 550 news agencies and web portals unearthed by the EU Disinfolab in December last year – which it can use to obfuscate reality and the double standards that its western allies deploy when dealing with countries such as Pakistan and China. This indeed represents a big challenge to Pakistan and others to convince the US-led western allies of India that the country under Modi’s BJP has yet to establish the credentials of the nuclear security regime. It is not what they have all been singing on India for decades i.e. unqualified support for New Delhi’s narrative on nuclear and other critical issues.

Smuggling of Indian Uranium & Western Silence

shows the double standards of the west.. and then they cry why we don't listen to them

as usual idiotic Indians will try and put a "peaceful" spin to this.

 

[Chhatrapati]

You guys might need to then educate your own Anti-Terror Squad and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) which referred to it as "highly radioactive and dangerous to human life":
Anti-Terror Squad Seizes 7 Kg "Highly Radioactive" Uranium, Arrests 2 Who Tried To Sell It

You still don't get the point. The risk largely depends on how much radiation is considered safe. Although depleted Uranium emits alpha rays they are not enough to cause significant damage to the Human body. And Natural Uranium is still dangerous and you need a license to use it and are given to certain industries involving shipbuilding, aircraft designs.

 

[Smarana Mitra]

Should the seizure of some 2.5 kilogrammes of unprocessed uranium from four Nepalese nationals and the arrest of Nepalese nationals in Kathmandu ring alarm internationally? Of course.

Why? Because India is a major beneficiary of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) as well as a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and by implication must have strict surveillance system over radio-active materials.

Alarm is called for also because one of the arrested persons claimed that her father-in-law had “brought the material from India some 20 years ago”, where he worked in a uranium mine.

Imagine the kind of noise that Indian and western media would have raised had some one arrested elsewhere linked the radioactive materials with Pakistan!

Fortunately , not a single incident in Pakistan but quite a few as far as India is concerned.

* In November 1994, Meghalaya Police seized 2.5 kg of uranium from a gang of four smugglers in the Domiasiat region.
* In June 1998 Police in the Indian state of West Bengal, arrested an opposition politician who they say was carrying more than 100 kilograms of uranium.

* In July 1998, the CBI unearthed a major racket in theft of uranium in Tamil Nadu, with the seizure of over eight kg of the nuclear material. In August 2001, Police in the Indian state of West Bengal arrested two men with more than 200 grams of semi-processed uranium.

* In 2003, Indian security forces caught members of a jihad group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, in a village on the Bangladesh border with 225 grams of milled uranium. The Indian authorities initially claimed it was from Kazakstan but concluded later it was more likely from a uranium mining complex at Jadugoda, in eastern India.

* In December 2006, a container packed with radioactive material was stolen from a fortified research facility in eastern India.

* In 2008, another criminal gang was caught attempting to smuggle low-grade uranium, capable of being used in a primitive radiation-dispersal device, from one of India’s state-owned mines across the border to Nepal.

* The same year another group was caught moving an illicit stock of uranium over the border to Bangladesh, the gang having been assisted by

* In 2009, a nuclear reactor employee in southwest India deliberately poisoned dozens of his colleagues with a radioactive isotope, taking advantage of numerous gaps in plant security, according to an internal government report seen by the Center.

* In 2013, leftist guerillas in northeast India illegally obtained uranium ore from a government-run milling complex in northeast India and strapped it to high explosives to make a crude bomb before being caught by police, according to an inspector involved in the case.

* In December 2015, the Centre for Public Integrity had reported an incident at the residential complex adjacent to the Madras Atomic Power Station, to draw global attention to the security hazards and breaches around the Indian nuclear establishments; the incident involved Head Constable Vijay Singh who used official weapons to kill three fellow officers.

The Centre had reported that the paramilitary Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) with nearly 95,000 personnel under civilian rather than military control is supposed to keep all these nuclear materials from leaking from India’s plants but “is short-staffed, ill-equipped, and inadequately trained, according to a confidential, draft, Home Ministry report about the force’s future, dated November 2013, seen by the Center for Public Integrity.


* In December 2016, around 9 kg of radioactive uraniumwas seized from two persons in Thane


* As recently as in early 2018 a uranium smuggling racket was busted by the Kolkata police with one kilogramme of radioactive material. The smugglers were reportedly trying to sell uranium worth about $440,000.


“Although experts say they regard the issue as urgent, Washington is not pressing India for quick reforms. The Obama administration is instead trying to avoid any dispute that might interrupt a planned expansion of U.S. military sales to Delhi, several senior U.S. officials said in interviews,” the Centre for Public Integrity had explained in the December 17, 2015 report – underlining the duplicity of the Obama administration in dealing with India and Pakistan.


These incidents simply expose India’s patchy safety and security record and raise questions on the security measures around its nuclear facilities, which at the moment are in the control of a nationalist-religious extremist government dreaming of a Greater India.


Don’t these instances demonstrate that the country has yet to go a long way to become a responsible nuclear power and made member of NSG?

Pakistan’s Concern!

Although natural Uranium is not useful for even making dirty bombs but the issue does merit a closer and honest scrutiny by the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) which has been so favourable to India because of the American patronage.

Pakistan has done the right thing by demanding a thorough investigation of the matter as to how such sizeable quantity of uranium could become available outside any state control and identify the gaps which made this possible.

Most of the Indian and like-minded western official and media channels have been routinely blurting out insinuations on Pakistan and the “possibility” of its nuclear weapons falling in hands of so-called jihadists (only a miniscule number for a 220 million population) but here in this case

The world should also be cautious against being duped – yet again – by India through political, intellectual and media. Together with the US, New Delhi possesses a huge information machinery – including of course the network of over 550 news agencies and web portals unearthed by the EU Disinfolab in December last year – which it can use to obfuscate reality and the double standards that its western allies deploy when dealing with countries such as Pakistan and China. This indeed represents a big challenge to Pakistan and others to convince the US-led western allies of India that the country under Modi’s BJP has yet to establish the credentials of the nuclear security regime. It is not what they have all been singing on India for decades i.e. unqualified support for New Delhi’s narrative on nuclear and other critical issues.

Smuggling of Indian Uranium & Western Silence

These are natural uranium or depleted uranium which is available in almost every country although in varying quantities. 5-10kg of natural uranium has no real use. Even countries like Pakistan with minimal Uranium resources extract Uranium in 30-40ton quantity annually. Even after extraction of Uranium metal, the Uranium needs to be purified and enriched/reacted to form fissile bombs. Natural Uranium is not a big deal at all.

You still don't get the point. The risk largely depends on how much radiation is considered safe. Although depleted Uranium emits alpha rays they are not enough to cause significant damage to the Human body. And Natural Uranium is still dangerous and you need a license to use it and are given to certain industries involving shipbuilding, aircraft designs.

Actually, all natural materials are non radioactive or have such low radioactivity that even if you sit in a mine, you will be safe. The statement by ATS is absurd and simply a fake statement to build a false case against the accused. Natural Uranium is extremely safe, even more safe than Arsenic, Cobalt etc as Uranium has no toxicity to skin either

 

[Akatosh]

You guys might need to then educate your own Anti-Terror Squad and Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) which referred to it as "highly radioactive and dangerous to human life":
Anti-Terror Squad Seizes 7 Kg "Highly Radioactive" Uranium, Arrests 2 Who Tried To Sell It

ATS arrested people for having 8.86 kg depleted uranium in 2016 but courts released him and quashed cases against him as he did not do anything illegal

Businessman held for bid to sell Rs 27 crore ‘depleted uranium’ discharged - Times of India

A Thane sessions court last week ordered the dropping of criminal charges against a Wadala businessman over two years after he was arrested for allegedly trying to sell nine kg of depleted uranium worth Rs 27 crore.

m.timesofindia.com

 

[Smarana Mitra]

ATS arrested people for having 8.86 kg depleted uranium in 2016 but courts released him and quashed cases against him as he did not do anything illegal

Businessman held for bid to sell Rs 27 crore ‘depleted uranium’ discharged - Times of India

A Thane sessions court last week ordered the dropping of criminal charges against a Wadala businessman over two years after he was arrested for allegedly trying to sell nine kg of depleted uranium worth Rs 27 crore.

m.timesofindia.com

It is really stupid that ATS is unnecessarily harassing people. What can depleted Uranium be used for? If one goes to Afghanistan or Iraq, one can find tons of DU in terms of the ammunitions fired by USA. What is the big deal about that?

 

[Meliodas]

Where are the Pakistani babus, dignitaries and attaches??

Either busy in busy in ayashi or are basically impotent sorry incompetent. Besides this, reason for West not blocking an eyes seems to be because of the nature of uranium caught, uranium has many other applications other than making bombs. Reason for western concern over Pakistan has never been over smuggling uranium but on smuggling of process or equipments. Pakistanis should self intrispwxtvrather than pointing fingers on the west.

 

[cloud4000]

Pakistan is again crying wolf about India. Whether it be about stealing water, terrorism, or uranium.

 

[jamahir]

The reason they are quite is because All of these either raw uranium ore Or they are uranium resin or depleted uranium used in medical equipment and various industrial machinery.
Hence they cannot be used for making nuclear bombs.

Use of depleted uranium in Iraq by the American military has led to cancers and various other body distortions there.

Although depleted Uranium emits alpha rays they are not enough to cause significant damage to the Human body.

See my above comment.

 

[Smarana Mitra]

Use of depleted uranium in Iraq by the American military has led to cancers and various other body distortions there.



See my above comment.

That is completely false. DU has no effect on anyone. This is pure propaganda without any basis. You can literally sit in a room filled with metallic natural Uranium for years and still stay unscathed. The only problem with natural Uranium occurs when you ingest or inhale it (generally in powder form).

 

[Irfan Baloch]

I have said it before. The Western nations and India are hand and glove. Even if Modi killed his entire Indian population through COVID terror the Western governments would pretend it never happened. Smuggling some uranium in Modi's India is not a big deal for Western nations.

Our beloved libtards throw fits when they hear this reality.

the Indian media can spin this news as a story in Pakistan and watch how the western media and opinion makers will join in to create a storm.

 

[jamahir]

That is completely false. DU has no effect on anyone. This is pure propaganda without any basis. You can literally sit in a room filled with metallic natural Uranium for years and still stay unscathed. The only problem with natural Uranium occurs when you ingest or inhale it (generally in powder form).

First I will quote these sections from this article from 2013 :

She said that, when the DU munitions explode or strike their targets, they generate “fine metal-containing dust particles as well as DU-containing particles that persist in the environment. These particles can enter the food chain and enter the human body via contaminated food. Toxic particles can also become airborne with the wind and be inhaled by the public. Iraq is prone to frequent sand and dust storms. Continuous public inhalation of toxic materials can lead to cancer. Ingested or inhaled particles that emit alpha radiation can cause cancer.”

Basra and Southern Iraq

In Babil Province in southern Iraq, cancer rates have been escalating at alarming rates since 2003. Dr Sharif al-Alwachi, the head of the Babil Cancer Centre, blames the use of depleted uranium weapons by US forces during and following the 2003 invasion.

“The environment could be contaminated by chemical weapons and depleted uranium from the aftermath of the war on Iraq,” Dr Alwachi told Al Jazeera. “The air, soil and water are all polluted by these weapons, and as they come into contact with human beings they become poisonous. This is new to our region, and people are suffering here.”

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of Uranium in Iraq, has been researching the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqis since 1991. He told Al Jazeera he personally measured radiation levels in the city of Kerbala, as well as in Basra, and his geiger counter was “screaming” because “the indicator went beyond the range”.

Dr Savabieasfahani pointed out that childhood leukemia rates in Basra more than doubled between 1993 and 2007.

“Multiple cancers in patients – patients with simultaneous tumours on both kidneys and in the stomach, for example – an extremely rare occurrence, have also been reported there,” she said. “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq. Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public health.”

Nevertheless, DNA mutations caused by DU can, of course, be passed from parent to child. Hence, DU contamination from the US-led wars against Iraq in 1990 and 2003 appear to likely continue to cause a persistent national health crisis for future generations of Iraqis.

The remaining traces of DU in Iraq represent a formidable long-term environmental hazard, as they will remain radioactive for more than 4.5 billion years.

“There are not even medical terms to describe some of these conditions because we’ve never seen them until now,” Dr Alani said. “So when I describe it, all I can do is describe the physical defects, but am unable to provide a medical term.”

Read the rest of the article and see the pictures of the two deformed babies.

You can see more Google pics here.

This is a crime.

 

[Smarana Mitra]

First I will quote these sections from this article from 2013 :




Read the rest of the article and see the pictures of the two deformed babies.

You can see more Google pics here.

This is a crime.

I hope you understand the difference between Uranium particle inhalation and radiation. Inhalation of Uranium particles can be very harmful. But there is no radiation threat.

 

[jamahir]

I hope you understand the difference between Uranium particle inhalation and radiation. Inhalation of Uranium particles can be very harmful. But there is no radiation threat.

I don't know about natural uranium ore but am talking about depleted uranium. As per the article, DU is harmful in every way it goes into the human body and its effects within the body are transferred from mother to child and maybe father to child too.

As for radiation threat :

Abdulhaq Al-Ani, author of Uranium in Iraq, has been researching the effects of depleted uranium on Iraqis since 1991. He told Al Jazeera he personally measured radiation levels in the city of Kerbala, as well as in Basra, and his geiger counter was “screaming” because “the indicator went beyond the range”.

So we can infer that the radiation present in the dust and water can be carried by those elements.

 

[Smarana Mitra]

I don't know about natural uranium ore but am talking about depleted uranium. As per the article, DU is harmful in every way it goes into the human body and its effects within the body are transferred from mother to child and maybe father to child too.

As for radiation threat :

So we can infer that the radiation present in the dust and water can be carried by those elements.

DU is very similar to natural uranium. The problem is "heavy metal toxicity", not "radiation", Read about heavy metal toxicity to understand what it means. There is a big difference

 

[jamahir]

DU is very similar to natural uranium. The problem is "heavy metal toxicity", not "radiation", Read about heavy metal toxicity to understand what it means. There is a big difference

Sure the article also mentions lead and mercury as heavy metals that can harm the human body but can they become the cause of transmissible disease ( mother to child ) through mutation in the genetic makeup ? Can they become the cause for genetic mutations in food crop that is then transferred to humans ( and from mother to child ) ?

Space travel is considered dangerous because it contains similar radiation that is produced by depleted uranium and other weaponized forms of uranium.