Bush exempts foreign URENCO (Khan), licenses Uranium Enrichment Plant [View All]

[Dems Will Win]

Bush, Cheney and the GOP have now granted a license to enrich US Uranium in NM to a foreign company being investigated for its centrifuge plans being stolen by AQ Khan and others and ending up in the hands of the Iranians. This company URENCO is the same one Bush and the GOP just granted a license to for the first major nuke facility in the US in 30 years--to enrich uranium.

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Khan was associated with Urenco, a British, German and Dutch consortium, in the 1970s in the Dutch city of Almelo. After his return to Pakistan, the Dutch government accused him of stealing centrifuge plans from the plant. He was tried in absentia and convicted; the verdict was later overturned on a technicality. Western experts believe that Pakistan used Urenco gas centrifuge blueprints and information to build its own facilities. Urenco was the first name to appear in various international reports with suspicion of being the primary culprit for leaking uranium enrichment technology to Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

The same company has been linked to the construction of a new enrichment facility in Hartsville, Tennessee in the United States. Urenco has major financial interests in the Louisiana Energy Services, which was to construct this plant. According to US officials, concerns about Urenco emerged more than 10 years ago when thousands of centrifuge parts, based on Urenco designs, were discovered by UN inspectors in Iraq after the Gulf War.

When the US and the IAEA engaged in investigations into the Iranian nuclear program, suspicions emerged that its uranium enrichment program used technology identical to Pakistan plans. A report of the IAEA requested all third countries to cooperate closely and fully with the agency in the clarification of open questions on the Iranian program, after conducting field investigations in recent months in Iran.

According to some reports, Iran has admitted that its centrifuge enrichment program was based on Urenco designs. Urenco is the leading firm in design and operation of centrifuges. To enrich uranium to weapons-grade, centrifuges are used to process the raw uranium into fuel for reactors or fissile material for bombs. This process requires machines that spin at twice the speed of sound. Pakistan has developed the capability of producing these centrifuges.

Urenco has denied providing technology or blueprints to Iran. Investigators are probing the possibilities of obtaining such designs and expertise through "middle men and black marketers", or theft from a nuclear laboratory, including KRL. The IAEA found traces of weapons-grade uranium in two locations in Iran where the machines had been assembled and tested. One such facility was discovered near Natanz in central Iran, which was similar to Urenco designs, but slightly modified. The second one was found at Kalaye Electric Company. According to reports, Iranian authorities told the IAEA that they bought the enriched uranium outside the country "on the black market" through middlemen.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FA27Df05.html

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From today's WAPO:

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ALBUQUERQUE -- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued its first license for a major commercial nuclear facility in 30 years, allowing an international consortium to build what will be the nation's first private fuel source for commercial nuclear power plants.

The NRC's staff issued the license after rulings from a three-member panel of the commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board. Last month, federal officials cleared one of the last legal hurdles -- questions about waste disposal.

Critics had contended that disposal costs could leave New Mexico stuck with the project's nuclear waste. But the board ruled May 31 that uncertainties over waste disposal costs are irrelevant; the consortium's agreement with New Mexico calls for hundreds of millions of dollars to be set aside for waste disposal.

The plant will generate a form of waste that no U.S. disposal site can handle, and no U.S. processing facility exists that can convert the waste into lower-level radioactive material. The plant could run at full capacity for eight to 10 years before running out of on-site space for the material. Louisiana Energy has an agreement with a French company to build such a plant in the United States, but no site has been selected and no license has been issued.

Louisiana Energy Services is made up of the European firm Urenco, British Nuclear Fuels PLC and minor U.S. partners. Ferland expects Urenco's board of directors to give final approval to the project when it meets on July 5.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062400838.html

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From PUBLIC CITIZEN:

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LES consortium is led by Urenco—itself a consortium of British, Dutch, and German government and corporate entities—and also includes the construction firm Fluor-Daniel and the energy industry giants Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp., Duke Energy, and Westinghouse Electric Co. Exelon, Entergy, and Duke are public utility-holding companies that own and operate nuclear power reactors, and are in consultation with the NRC to develop new nuclear reactors.

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Here is the DOE letter asking for exemption from FOIC - Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence. It ignores the investigation of URENCO in the Khan case!

Here is the link to the DOE letter requesting exemption for URENCO from the Foreign Ownership, Control or Influence security issues:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/doefociletter.pdf

First Dubai Ports World, which by the way is still running those ports and our military shipping, and now this. Let's have our US uranium enriched by the same company being investigated for letting its plans get into the hands of the Pakistanis and the Iranians!

Sounds like another stellar Bush Cheney sellout of American security to me. What would Lou Dobbs think about this?

RECOMMEND FOR GREATEST TO GET THIS OUT IN FRONT OF THE PRESS!