Smuggling Uranium

Interesting little story:

A senior Tanzanian customs official said the illicit uranium shipment was found hidden in a consignment of coltan, a rare mineral used to make chips in mobile telephones. The shipment was destined for smelting in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, delivered via Bandar Abbas, Iran’s biggest port.

“There were several containers due to be shipped and they were all routinely scanned with a Geiger counter,” the official said.

“This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan. Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed,the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium.”

In a nuclear reactor, uranium 238 can be used to breed plutonium used in nuclear weapons.

The coltan (colombo-tantalite beingteh proper name, an ore containing both tantalum and niobium) would have been going to ULBA for refining (not smelting). We’ve bought stuff from them several times over the years...but of course they’ve got nothing to do with this story about uranium, that’s just a cover by the Iranians.

It’s also a bit odd to say uranium 238. It won’t have been isotopically separated so it would have been just plain uranium ore, probably yellowcake. The usual mixture of 235 and 238. There are plants in Kazakhstan that could process this material but I doubt very much that they would do that for the Iranians. In fact, that’s what all the fuss is about, the Iranians building the cascades to process it themselves.