IAEA confirms almost all missing uranium in Libya now accounted for

[jgo]

Source: Reuters

Most of the roughly 2.5 tons of natural uranium ore concentrate (UOC) recently declared missing from a site in Libya have been found at that site, the U.N. nuclear watchdog told member states on Friday in a statement seen by Reuters.

The International Atomic Energy Agency informed member states in a similar confidential statement on March 15 first reported by Reuters that 10 drums containing the UOC had gone missing from a Libyan site not under government control.

While the amount of fissile material is less than that required for a nuclear bomb, and would need to go through processes known as conversion and enrichment to be usable in one, the IAEA said at the time that losing it "may present a radiological risk, as well as nuclear security concerns".

Following eastern Libyan forces' statement last week that they had found the drums of UOC near the warehouse they were taken from in southern Libya, the IAEA carried out an inspection on Tuesday and found that only "a relatively small amount of UOC was still unaccounted for," Friday's IAEA statement said.


Read more: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/iaea-confirms-almost-all-missing-uranium-libya-now-accounted-2023-03-24/

[Effete Snob]

1. What was IKEA doing with it?

[reACTIONary]

5. FAKE! It has ...

.... WORDS. IKEA doesn't do words.

[ThoughtCriminal]

7. Well, that would explain

the MISSING PART.

[jpak]

2. One more reason why the US should get out of the UN

Woke communism at work

Yup

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. This is great news

[maxsolomon]

4. OMG YELLOWCAKE!

Better safe than sorry; RE-INVADE IRAQ

[RussBLib]

6. "most?"

"most?"

[intheflow]

8. I read the headline as "IKEA confirms..."

I really need to drink coffee before logging on to DU!

[twodogsbarking]

9. I believe them, sort of, maybe, not at all.

[Mustellus]

10. Oh heavens... yellowcake is ....

uranium pentoxide. Notice that 2.5 tons of yellowcake is "is less than that required for a nuclear bomb".... Before the Manhattan project yellowcake was only used to make an ugly urine colored glass that nobody wanted. It piled up in heaps where ever gold was mined, since the stuff is heavier than gold. Took an extra purification step to separate the gold from this junk. But 2.5 tons of yellowcake is a huge way away from being a bomb. Convert it to uranium floride gas and run it though your hyper centrifuge array? How about a stellarator (essentially a mass spectrometer), vaporize it and run it through crossed electric and magnetic fields? Maybe make uranium metal slugs, and put them into a huge pile of graphite blocks, al la the earliest reactors? Oh, and do you have a spare Tennesee Valley Project to supply electricity to run this?

But after the GWB/Cheney hysteria over yellowcake, you'd think you just have to stick a fuse into the drum and light it.

rant off

[tonekat]

11. All this time...

...it was under the kitchen sink, behind the Cascade™.

[NNadir]

12. I cannot even believe this is "news." There are more than 4 billion tons of uranium in the ocean.

It just goes to show that one cannot get a degree in journalism of one has passed a college level science course with a grade of C or better.

Bioinspired hierarchical porous membrane for efficient uranium extraction from seawater (Yang, L., Xiao, H., Qian, Y. et al, Nat Sustain 5, 71–80 (2022).)

Nuclear power is an important part of modern energy systems, and the demand for it is expected to double before 2040 (ref. 1). Uranium is a key element in the nuclear industry2,3. In contrast to its limited availability on land (approximately 8 million tons of identified conventional resources)4, the oceans contain more than 4.5 billion tons of uranium5, representing an alternative and more abundant resource...

It's like the announcement that iron ore has been discovered in Minnesota that could make millions of guns.