Bush exempts foreign URENCO (Khan), licenses Uranium Enrichment Plant

[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!

[JDPriestly]

1. Pakistan is a nuclear power.

I view it as such a poor backward country. Am I mistaken? If not, how did it get the expertise, the know-how and wherewithal to build a nuclear bomb?

[Kagemusha]

3. I thought it was no great secret China greatly helped.

N. Korea too I imagine. Besides that, this isn't the center of Africa here. There's not insignificant numbers of Indians and Pakistanis who go to university and who come out with a pretty decent education in hard technical fields like civil engineering (for which there's a robust market in Asia as countries there try to get closer to Western standards, which requires them to build, build, build). India was the motivation; a lot of the rest is simply having the staff on hand to be able to interpret what they could beg/borrow/steal from other countries. The country's economy and westernized educated class are just enough to squeeze a few nukes and have some semblance of a deterrence force but... well, even India looks like a juggernaut by comparison... which is why they wanted a few nukes in the first place. Keeps them from becoming 1940 France.

[karynnj]

9. The wherewithal came from BCCI (which was Pakistan based)

The expertise and know-how? They have scientists and from this article, they may have had "help" from access to plans.

[formercia]

13. They won't even spend money on a decent public school system

so boys are sent to madrasas where they are indoctrinated in Radical islamic theory.

I've been there and the country is a sh*t hole. Not even decent sewer systems. I still suffer from a lung infection caught there.

[Kagemusha]

2. Not that I'm any fan of unrestrained nuclear power but...

If this company is the leading world designer of centrifuges and plans from it ended up in Iran, exactly how does that prove that the transfer was voluntary? If it was not, what does that prove? Well, that Pakistan has an active intelligence service, mainly.

They say hope is not a plan. Blindly lashing out at all foreign corporations isn't a plan either.

[Dems Will Win]

4. The question is why ever have foreign companies in charge of such a vital

industry? Uranium enrichment should only be a US government or company--and especially NOT URENCO, the company under investigation for the Khan case.

That is really asking for security holes.

[Dems Will Win]

5. This area is just as important to security as the ports

URENCO either had such lax security its plans are everywhere, or it was directly aiding Khan's network or the middlemen by looking the other way.

Not the folks you want to be enriching US uranium on US soil if you ask me!

We should at least complete the Khan investigation and hold hearings on the exemption before URENCO is granted nuke enrichment here in the US...

[cyberpj]

6. "...and minor U.S. partners..."

I'll bet some investigating would turn up interesting connections here.

[Joanne98]

11. Fluor-Daniel sounds familar.......

[bananas]

7. need one more vote for greatest page, please

[JDPriestly]

8. I guess my question is why didn't Pakistan use the resources

it used to become a nuclear power in order to do other things for its people. Seeking nuclear power status is a terrible waste of its citizens' resources. This goes for the whole world including the U.S., but is particularly true for poorer countries. Americans were sold the idea of international trade believing that Americans would be the at the top of the heap. The free international trade gambit is pushing us to the bottom of the heap, and we don't like it. We've got a right to be angry. We should have been angry a long time ago. People in other countries have the right to be just as angry as we Americans are about losing national control over their resources and industrial capacity to interests that do not answer to the citizens' political power. International trade disenfranchises all of us. It removes the potential power to regulate the use of national resources and thus destroys an important aspect of our right to self-government. Sure, the people of New Mexico and the U.S. will have a say in some of what happens to the resources while they are in this country, but ultimately, the foreign corporation will outspend and outsmart their government and get what it wants. Our U.S. companies have done that all over the world. Now we are getting a taste of it.

[Kagemusha]

14. Having its people conquered by India was seen as worse.

I know what you're saying but, I can't pretend that they didn't have a legitimate fear of invasion and submersion.

[Joanne98]

10. Why doesn't Bush just put a big "FOR SALE" sign on the WH....

And what does Gov Richardson have to say about this? I hope this isn't another Dem sell out. I hope everybody e-mails this to Lou Dobbs.

I just tried to send this to Lou Dobbs and CNN is STILL not letting people thru.

[Eric J in MN]

12. kick

kick