Iraq has a uranium mine!?

[donsu]

there is a letter in the Mail Bag over at BuzzFlash that says before the invasion CNN, Faux, MSNBC showed maps of Iraq that showed a uranium mine up near the Syria border.

and the letter writer wonders why Iraq would import uranium from Africa if they had their own mine?

anyone remember seeing this on those maps?

[larryepke]

1. No map...

http://www.thirdage.com/news/ap/top/20021210.3df5c627.72f3.3.html

but here's a website mention of the mine. It's an AP story about weapons inspectors going there.

[Stephanie]

2. Tuwaitha is the real proof that they lied

If they were so concerned about yellowcake uranium, don't you think they would have secured the uranium in Iraq that they already knew about? The fact that they did nothing is proof that the Iraqi Nuclear Threat was a big fat lie.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/news/6068775.htm

Looting of Iraqi nuclear facility indicts U.S. goals
If we feared the loss of radioactive materials, why not guard them?
TRUDY RUBIN
Knight Ridder Newspapers

TUWAITHA, Iraq - On a dusty road, just outside of Baghdad, lies one of the great mysteries of the Iraq war.

<snip>The administration knew full well what was stored at Tuwaitha. So how is it possible that the U.S. military failed to secure the nuclear facility until weeks after the war started? This left looters free to ransack the barrels, dump their contents, and sell them to villagers for storage.

How is it possible that, according to Iraqi nuclear scientists, looters are still stealing radioactive isotopes?

The Tuwaitha story makes a mockery of the administration's vaunted concern with weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. military hastened to secure the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad from looters. But Iraq's main nuclear facility was apparently not important enough to get similar protection.

<snip>And why, in facilities other than Location C, is the looting apparently continuing?

Hisham Abdel Malik, a Iraqi nuclear scientist who lives near Tuwaitha and has been inside the complex, told me that in buildings "where there are radioactive isotopes, there is looting every day." He says the isotopes, which are in bright silver containers, "are sold in the black market or kept in homes." According to IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming, such radioactive sources can kill on contact or pollute whole neighborhoods.

How could an administration that had hyped the danger of Saddam handing off nuclear materials to terrorists let Tuwaitha be looted? Maybe the hype was just hype ... or maybe the Pentagon didn't send enough troops to Iraq to do the job right.

Either answer is damning.

[Old and In the Way]

3. Very interesting..........

I found this site on Google-

http://www.efreedomnews.com/News%20Archive/Iraq/Iraq%20War%20Report/WarReport12April2003.htm

The operative statement-

"Al Qaim on the border with Syria was the main launching area for SCUD missiles during Gulf War 1. The city is home to uranium mines and a facility used by Iraq in the 1980s for uranium processing, and it has been identified as a possible site for any effort to revive Iraq's nuclear weapons program."


So this is quite illuminating....why would Iraq be buying yellowcake if they had their own mines?

[lkinsale]

4. You'd need to know a lot more about this mine to draw any conclusions

Way back when, it used to be my job as a geologist to hunt for uranium in the US. A mine is a mine is not a mine...these are phosphate deposits, it seems, with a by-product of radioactive materials.

In the 1980s, the phosphate deposits at Ashakat had been exploited for their uranium content as well as for fertilizer, producing some 100 tons of uranium over six years.

It's been a long time since I was involved in this, but that doesn't sound like much production to me, depending on what they mean by "uranium." A hundred tons of ore is nada. And there are various ways to "mine" uranium, not all of them involving just taking ore out of the ground.

I would not make too much out of this, but then--I don't really know what is required for weapons. I was only looking for the stuff. (And BTW, did you know that the level of background radiation in Grand Central Station is many times higher than that allowed around nuclear plants? Because of the granite the building is made of.)

[Stephanie]

6. I'm heading over to Grand Central right now

Is that true? I'm there every day. Is it harmful?

[lkinsale]

8. Steph, we are exposed to a lot of natural radiation

A cross-country plane flight is about the same dose as a chest x-ray (or it least it was in the past, maybe they have lowered the dose for x-rays now.) Many natural rock formations such as granite have a fairly high background emission. I often came across situations in which people had built structures using materials that had considerable radioactive emissions. In Texas, a farmer proudly showed us his springhouse built over an area where geologists in the 50's had gotten an extremely high reading. The family built the springhouse there on the theory that the radiation would be good for arthritis.

We were once doing some exploration in the Rockies, and came across a hippy-type family who had built the the fireplace in their home out of local stone. Our counters went off the scale. I would not have lived in that house, myself.

Is it dangerous? Well, sunshine is dangerous. It gives you cancer. But it's just kinda the way things are. But it's often useful to keep things in perspective to realize that we get low-level radiation all the time.

Here in New Mexico, some areas have levels of radon gas emission much higher than the EPA recommendation. Here's what the state says about radon: "Radon emanates from soil and water supplies, and collects in homes and work places because of its gaseous properties. When radon is inhaled, the lungs can be potentially damaged by radiation energy released by the radioactive decay process. Radon itself delivers only 1% of the radiation dose to the lungs, while the other 99% comes from the decay of radon daughter products. Because of its ubiquitous nature and because it delivers radiation dose to the lungs, radon (and its daughters) is considered the second leading cause of lung cancer."

Oddly enough, New Mexico has an unusually low rate of lung cancer compared to the rest of the country. So what to make of it all? ;) I had a system installed in my house that theoretically keeps radon from coming up through the foundation, but does it work? Dunno!

[lkinsale]

9. Let me add, in the case of Tuwiatha (Iraq)

It gets little play, but the looting of yellowcake barrels and other unknown radioactive materials in Iraq WILL have a horrible effect in the future on people who came into serious contact with it. That's my belief. I think that was a terrible, inhumane mistake we made, to allow that place to be looted, and I don't think there is a single excuse for it, no matter how "fast" we moved.

[Old and In the Way]

7. good point....

I almost added that as a qualifier to that post, but then I remembered...the Niger story was a lie.

The blurb also notes that there was a processing plant associated with it...not sure if this was for power plant application or not. I would assume that power plant would need to be less concentrated than weapon's grade refinement. But I really don't know the answers.

But this is the 1st I've heard or thought about Iraq's own uranium mining capabilities and it does exist. So it seems to be appropriate information for discussion considering that we were told, falsely it turns out, that Iraq was trying to import uranium. If these mines in fact had the capability, then the US must have known about it and it further questions the reasoning for spreading this lie.

[NNN0LHI]

5. Yes. Some of us knew it. As did our government

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=38375&mesg_id=38375&page=17

NNN0LHI (1000+ posts) Mon Jul-14-03 08:20 AM
Original message
The CIA doubted the Niger story because Iraq already HAS uranium ore


It was a set-up by someone to discredit the US. And Chimpy was stupid enough to fall for it. Russia maybe? Don

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usintel0711,0,5728369.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

CIA Doubted Uranium Report


Washington -- The CIA "from day one" was highly skeptical of reports that Iraq had been shopping for uranium ore in Africa, and the State Department also was highly suspicious, according to intelligence officials.

A key reason for the CIA's skepticism, according to a senior intelligence officer, was, "What do they need this for? They've got tons of it already in Iraq."

Yet in an October National Intelligence Estimate the CIA understated its suspicions while the State Department, in a lengthy dissent in back of the 80-page report, concluded that the claims were probably bogus, the intelligence officials said. It was that document the White House says it relied on for a passage in President George W. Bush's State of the Union address in January. The White House conceded this week that the document was based on forgeries.

The National Intelligence Estimate, a special report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that reflected a consensus of the intelligence community, repeated a claim published by the British government in the previous month that Niger had "planned to send" uranium ore to Iraq. The estimate also mentioned that there were other bits of intelligence suggesting that Iraq had been shopping for the ore in two other African countries.


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