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Niger builds relationships with overseas uranium partners

WNN, 16 December 2025

Niger’s state-owned Timersoi National Uranium Company has signed an agreement with Russian company Uranium One Group to cooperate in uranium mining and eventually open new mines. Meanwhile, Global Atomic Corporation remains upbeat about the prospects for securing financing for the Dasa uranium project – although first uranium shipments could now be delayed.

The Memorandum of Cooperation signed on 9 December by the Timersoi National Uranium Company (TNUC) and Uranium One Group – part of the Rosatom State Corporation group of companies – is expected to make a significant contribution to strengthening the Russia-Niger partnership in the energy sector, Uranium One said.

Under the agreement, the two companies plan to “obtain the necessary permits, conduct geological exploration of prospective deposits, and ultimately establish new uranium mining operations at those sites

Niger has produced uranium commercially since 1971, in operations closely linked with French companies. But that changed following the overthrow of the government in a military coup in July 2023, which saw the revoking of mining permits held by French company Orano at Imouraren and Canadian company GoviEx Uranium at Madaouela. However, Toronto-headquartered Global Atomic has continued to develop the high-grade Dasa deposit, apparently with the support of the Niger government………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/niger-builds-relationships-with-overseas-uranium-partners

December 20, 2025 Posted by | Niger, Uranium | Leave a comment

France’s EDF again sends spent uranium to state-owned Russian firm for recycling

France’s EDF again sends spent uranium to state-owned Russian firm for
recycling. A shipment of reprocessed uranium from French nuclear power
plants has left the Channel port of Dunkirk to be enriched at a specialised
Russian industrial plant run by the country’s nuclear energy group Rosatom,
before being in part returned to France for further use in civil reactors.
The shipment, loaded at the weekend on a Russian-operated,
Panama-registered cargo vessel, was described by Greenpeace as a “cargo of shame”, and “immoral”, while both French utility giant EDF, which
operates the country’s nuclear power plants, and the French economy
ministry, declined to comment. Jade Lindgaard reports.

Mediapart 18th Nov 2025, https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/ecologie/181125/frances-edf-again-sends-spent-uranium-state-owned-russian-firm-recycling

November 22, 2025 Posted by | France, Uranium | Leave a comment

Iran’s foreign minister says his nation is no longer enriching uranium

“All of our facilities are under the safeguards and monitoring” of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Abbas Araghchi said.

Politico, By Associated Press, 11/16/2025

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s foreign minister on Sunday said that Tehran is no longer enriching uranium at any site in the country, trying to signal to the West that it remains open to potential negotiations over its atomic program.

Answering a question from an Associated Press journalist visiting Iran, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi offered the most direct response yet from the Iranian government regarding its nuclear program following Israel and the United States’ bombing of its enrichment sites in June during its 12-day war.

“There is no undeclared nuclear enrichment in Iran. All of our facilities are under the safeguards and monitoring” of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Araghchi said. “There is no enrichment right now because our facilities — our enrichment facilities — have been attacked.”

Asked what it would take for Iran to continue negotiations with the U.S. and others, Araghchi said that Iran’s message on its nuclear program remains “clear.”

“Iran’s right for enrichment, for peaceful use of nuclear technology, including enrichment, is undeniable,” the foreign minister continued. “We have this right and we continue to exercise that and we hope that the international community, including the United States, recognize our rights and understand that this is an inalienable right of Iran and we would never give up our rights.”

Iran’s government issued a three-day visa for the AP reporter to attend a summit alongside other journalists from major British outlets and other media.

Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, also attended the summit and told those gathered there that Tehran had been threatened over potentially accessing the bombed enrichment sites. Satellite pictures analyzed by the AP over the months since the attack show that Iran hasn’t done any major work at the sites at Fordo, Isfahan and Natanz.

“Our security situation hasn’t yet changed. If you watch the news, you see that every day we are being threatened with another attack,” Eslami said. “Every day we are told if you touch anything you’ll be attacked.”

Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60% purity — a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels — after U.S. President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in 2018. Tehran long has maintained its atomic program is peaceful, though the West and the IAEA say Iran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003.

European nations also pushed through a measure to reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran over the nuclear program in September.

The IAEA’s Board of Governors is set to meet this week, during which there could be a vote on a new resolution targeting Iran over its failure to cooperate fully with the agency.

But Araghchi left open the possibility of further negotiations with the U.S. should Washington’s demands change.

He told journalists at the summit that the U.S. administration’s approach does not suggest they are ready for “equal, fair negotiations to reach mutual interests.”

“What we have seen from the Americans so far has actually been an effort to dictate their demands, which are maximalist and excessive. We see no chance for dialogue in the face of such demands.”………………………………………………………………………… https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/16/irans-foreign-minister-says-his-nation-is-no-longer-enriching-uranium-00653702

November 21, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

Declassified cable reinforces proliferation concerns about high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel (HALEU)

in 1977, the US government recommended to the IAEA that, contrary to its previous position, the agency should consider enriched uranium in the HALEU range to be a material “of direct utility in an … explosive device.” That is, the United States advised that HALEU should be treated similarly to HEU and be subject to stricter safeguards

Bulletin, By Edwin Lyman | November 7, 2025

A recently declassified document from nearly 50 years ago provides an important piece of the puzzle for open-source researchers seeking to understand the murky origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) system for safeguarding against the diversion of civil nuclear materials for weapons. The document also reinforces concerns about the proliferation potential of small modular reactors that require fuels using uranium enriched from 10 to less than 20 percent uranium 235—that is, fuels that contain the material known as high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).[1]

HALEU is a subcategory of low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is uranium enriched to below 20 percent uranium 235, and the IAEA has long considered LEU, including HALEU, to be “indirect-use material.” For the agency, HALEU cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon without converting it to highly enriched uranium (HEU) by further enriching it to 20 percent or above—a significant technical barrier for all but a few countries. Consequently, HALEU is subject to far less stringent international safeguards than HEU.

But the newly uncovered document reveals that, in 1977, the US government recommended to the IAEA that, contrary to its previous position, the agency should consider enriched uranium in the HALEU range to be a material “of direct utility in an … explosive device.” That is, the United States advised that HALEU should be treated similarly to HEU and be subject to stricter safeguards—a recommendation that the IAEA apparently rejected. But given the current international push for rapid deployment of reactors that will need large quantities of HALEU fuel, it is time for the IAEA to reconsider that decision.

Proliferation risk of HALEU fuel. The Energy Department, with bipartisan support from Congress, is now vigorously promoting the global deployment of “advanced” nuclear power reactors that require HALEU-based fuels, as well as the facilities needed to enrich and fabricate those fuels. For example, nearly all of the 11 reactor designs selected by the Energy Department for its New Reactor Pilot Program will use HALEU fuel. And Russia, which has already deployed two barge-mounted small modular reactors (SMRs) using HALEU fuel, is planning to deploy others in Uzbekistan and elsewhere around the globe.

But without appropriate constraints, large-scale production and use of HALEU may greatly increase the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism…………………………………………………….

 earlier this year, the late Richard Garwin and I—along with professors Scott Kemp of MIT, Mark Deinert of the Colorado School of Mines, and Frank von Hippel of Princeton— presented evidence in a letter to Science that HALEU may be used to make nuclear weapons without the need to enrich it further, and we called for further study of the issue by the US government. The concern is that a state or a terrorist group that illicitly obtained enough HALEU—typically, one reactor core’s worth or less, depending on the design—could have a far easier path to acquiring a bomb than if it only had access to conventional LWR fuel………………………………………………………………………………………

The document reveals that the United States apparently sought to lower the enrichment threshold that the IAEA had formerly used to define direct-use enriched uranium from 20 percent to 10 percent—thereby including the enrichment range now known as HALEU. To my knowledge, this information was not previously known to the public, and a cursory web search does not turn up any other mention of the new terms proposed in the cable………………………………………………………………………….

 the cable strongly suggests that other US government agencies were concerned enough about the weapon usability of enriched uranium in the HALEU range to challenge the status quo and recommend that it be safeguarded as intensely as HEU. Such concerns should be even more salient today. An international review of HALEU’s proliferation risks is urgently needed before any more power reactors running on HALEU fuel are deployed. https://thebulletin.org/2025/11/declassified-cable-reinforces-proliferation-concerns-about-high-assay-low-enriched-uranium-fuel/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Can%20Latin%20America%20find%20common%20ground%20at%20COP30%3F&utm_campaign=20251110%20Monday%20Newsletter

November 11, 2025 Posted by | ENERGY, Uranium | Leave a comment

Don’t fuel Riyadh’s nuclear weapons cravings

By: Henry Sokolski, October 31, 2025, https://npolicy.org/dont-fuel-riyadhs-nuclear-weapons-cravings-breaking-defense/

Since 2017, US diplomats have tried unsuccessfully to devise ways to help Saudi Arabia enrich uranium — a dangerous nuclear activity that can bring a state to the very brink of making bombs. Next month, they get another chance: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is coming to the White House on Nov. 18 to sign a formal US-Saudi nuclear cooperative agreement. Will this agreement finally help the Kingdom make nuclear fuel? Let’s hope not.

Tehran making nuclear fuel is scary enough. Encouraging others to do the same is scarier still.

That’s why the Pentagon bombed Iran this June. Certainly, the White House understood that nuclear fuel-making was too close to nuclear bomb-making: By the time inspectors might detect a military diversion at such plants, it would be too late to intervene to prevent a weapon from being built.

This insight prompted Trump’s termination of Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which allowed Iran to enrich uranium. It’s also why Trump’s nuclear emissary, Steve Witkoff, backed off trying to negotiate a new inspections regime for Iranian nuclear fuel-making, conceding that “enrichment enables weaponization.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright went further: At the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) September general conference, he insisted that Iran’s uranium enrichment program be “completely dismantled.”

But what of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) “right” to make nuclear fuel? Iran maintains this entitlement is inalienable. As I’ve explained elsewhere, nuclear fuel-making is not mentioned anywhere in the treaty. Some NPT negotiators proposed language to assure a right to “the entire fuel cycle,” but the NPT conference rejected it. Even the Biden administration, which wanted to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, only implicitly recognized such a “right” — never explicitly.

Iran, unfortunately, never bought this view. Nor has Saudi Arabia. In 2017, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, former Saudi ambassador to Washington, noted that “the NPT tells us all we can enrich.” He, bin Salman, and his lieutenants have consistently demanded that America help it exercise this “right.”

Fortunately, Congress refused. Back in 2018, Senators from the left, like Ed Markey, and the right, like Lindsey Graham, understood helping Iran enrich uranium was too dangerous. They all cited bin Salman’s warning that if Saudi Arabia thought Iran was getting a bomb, it would too, despite any NPT pledge the Saudis may have made. The Hill’s recommended fix: Get the Saudis to forswear making nuclear fuel, just as their neighbor, the UAE, had in their US nuclear agreement in 2009.

Now, it should be easier to get the Saudis to forswear as well. Why? In September, the Saudis struck a mutual defense pact with Pakistan. Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif said that as part of this pact Pakistan would make its nuclear weapons available to Saudi Arabia if needed. So, Riyadh no longer needs its own bomb.

Meanwhile, the White House is said to be negotiating binding, NATO-like security assurances for the Saudis similar to those recently granted to Qatar. Then there is the Trump administration’s “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear fuel-making capacity and the president’s commitment to bomb it again, if necessary.

All of this should be dispositive against Riyadh’s will to enrich and American inclinations to bend to it. But it’s not. In April, Secretary of Energy Chris Wright visited Riyadh. When asked if a deal would include “sensitive” nuclear technologies, he replied, “It certainly looks like there is a pathway to do that. … Are there solutions to that that involve enrichment here in Saudi Arabia? Yes.”

He should have said no. Keeping timely, accurate track of the powders, liquids, and gases involved in making nuclear fuel is not yet good enough to safeguard against military diversions. Nor is American ownership or operation of Saudi nuclear fuel making a fix. As America’s experience in Iran demonstrates, the United States can operate bases and own companies in foreign nations and still be thrown out. This has happened before and can happen again in Saudi Arabia.

Another headache if America helps Riyadh make nuclear fuel is the example it sets. Saudi Arabia’s neighbors, who also have US nuclear cooperative will demand the same.

They’ll all race to develop bomb options. Saying no to Riyadh’s fuel-making demands is our best chance to skirt this.

November 3, 2025 Posted by | Saudi Arabia, Uranium | Leave a comment

The Building of the First Atomic Bombs Impacted Workers and Residents, Too

Eighty years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, workers who mined the uranium and people who lived near the test sites are still dying from exposure to radiation.

by Jim Carrier, August 7, 2025, https://progressive.org/magazine/the-building-of-the-first-atomic-bombs-impacted-workers-and-residents-too-carrier-20250807/

The road to Nagasaki was littered with radiation. 

Eighty years after an atomic bomb called Fat Man was dropped, killing and poisoning about 100,000 people in Nagasaki, at least a dozen sites around the world—sites that contributed to the bomb’s creation—are still dealing with its deadly legacy. 

Under the pressure to win World War II, U.S. military leaders pulled out all stops to prioritize the creation and testing of an atomic bomb, indifferent to the cost on the lives and livelihood of everyday people. Landscapes were polluted, workers were exposed to radiation, and civilian neighbors to the nuclear test sites—the first “downwinders”—were ignored or lied to.

The Manhattan Project—a top-secret research and development program created by the U.S. government during World War II to develop a nuclear bomb—sourced nearly all of its much-needed uranium from the Belgian Congo’s Shinkolobwe mine. Located in the modern-day Haut-Katanga province in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Shinkolonwe mine was the world’s richest source of high-grade uranium, radium, and other valuable minerals. First opened in 1921, the Belgian-owned mine employed artisanal miners who dug the radioactive ore with handheld tools and carried it out in sacks on their shoulders, further exposing them to the toxic substance. While the environmental impact was visible and more difficult to conceal, any known records of lasting health impacts were disappeared by the authorities or never recorded at all.

In 1939, fearing Adolf Hitler and  the German discovery of nuclear fission in uranium—with its potential to create a bomb—the mine’s manager shipped more than 1,000 tons of ore from Katanga to a warehouse on Staten Island, New York. Spilled ore contaminated a portion of the site where it sat for three years. A 1980 study later determined that the site might harm trespassers beneath the Bayonne Bridge, but by that time the site had already been demolished.

President Franklin Roosevelt’s January 19, 1942, decision to build an atomic bomb touched off the $2 billion Manhattan Project with its extraordinary mix of secret research at Los Alamos, New Mexico, and massive construction projects at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. All of these needed hundreds of tons of uranium to make a few pounds of plutonium. 

In November 1942, the U.S. Army discovered and bought the Staten Island uranium stockpile and shipped 1,823 drums by barge and railroad to the Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, New York, where it was put into large concrete igloos before being shipped to various refineries. Now part of an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, the depot stored all kinds of munitions and even some classified military equipment that was burned and buried. Most of the site was cleaned up in the early 2000s and opened for recreation and industrial warehousing.

The Army’s search for uranium ore also uncovered 500 tons among vanadium tailings in western Colorado, and 300 tons at Port Hope, Ontario, Canada, where the Eldorado Gold Mines refinery processed ore into more pure concentrations. Eldorado’s own mine, on Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories of Canada, employed First Nations Dene workers who would later suffer cancers and die from handling sacks of ore. Their community of Délı̨nę became known as a “village of widows.” Without contemporary health records, a re-created exposure study found that overall cancer rates for Délı̨nę were “not statistically significantly different from the Northwest Territories.”

Port Hope, on the northern shore of Lake Ontario, which processed all the African and North American uranium ore for the Manhattan Project, spread tailings in neighborhoods and in the lake, eventually requiring a $1.3 billion cleanup that did not begin until 2018. Residents blame the contamination for cancers, although a 2013 study found no statistical evidence of greater radiosensitive cancers.

An enduring and poetic legend links the labors of Délı̨nę villagers to the Japanese bombs, a story told in A Village of Widows, a documentary film that followed ten Dine to Hiroshima in 1998 where they paid their respects and shared mutual sorrow with hibakusha, the Japanese word for the survivors of the atomic bombs. The uranium ore from Great Bear Lake did, in fact, contribute to the Manhattan Project—a U.S. government history found that Great Bear Lake ore amounted to one-sixth of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project, Colorado ore contributed one-seventh, and the rest came from the Belgian Congo. However, a detailed 2008 analysis of the ore’s movements concluded that “the fissile material in the Nagasaki weapon was almost certainly derived from oxide processed by Eldorado which would have been mostly of Belgian Congo origin. The same is probably true for the Hiroshima weapon. It is also possible that there was some uranium of U.S. origin in both of these weapons.”

After Port Hope, the uranium was further refined at nineteen industrial sites including: Linde Air in Tonawanda, New York; Dupont’s Deepwater Works in New Jersey; Metal Hydrides Inc. in Beverly, Massachusetts; Harshaw Chemical in Cleveland, Ohio; and at Mallinckrodt Chemical Company in St. Louis, Missouri. All of these sites have undergone expensive remediation. Mallinckrodt, whose radiation contamination caused numerous cancers in children and adults, has yet to be scrubbed clean.

Uranium salts were then delivered to either Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the Y-12 refinery produced enriched uranium for the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, or to Hanford, Washington, where refineries produced the plutonium used in both the Trinity test bomb and the Nagasaki bomb. Both reactor sites deliberately released radioactive material into the air and water. Cleaning the mess has cost much more than the original Manhattan Project. The cost to clean Hanford, considered the most radioactive spot in the world, is estimated at $640 billion. Oak Ridge’s cleanup won’t be finished until 2050. Hanford’s effort to meld radioactive sludge into glass containers and bury them in salt caves is only beginning.

The first atomic bomb blast in history, the Trinity test of the plutonium implosion “gadget” in the Alamogordo, New Mexico, desert on July 16, 1945, left permanent marks on the land and the people downwind. The airborne plume from Trinity drifted across the Tularosa Basin, landing on vegetables, cattle, and water, poisoning residents who would later report leukemia, cancers, and heart disease. Subsequent studies have found Trinity fallout reached forty-six states, Canada, and Mexico. After five years of lobbying, the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium won a two-year window—until December 31, 2028—to be included in the federal Radiation Exposure Compensation Act which covers U.S. uranium workers and downwinders exposed at the Nevada Test Site during the Cold War. As of June 24, 2025, 42,575 people have received $2.7 billion dollars. Tourists can visit the test site one day a year, on the third Saturday in October. Radiation at ground zero is ten times the region’s natural radiation.

The area around Los Alamos, where brilliant physicists and world-class machinists created the bombs that fell on Japan eighty years ago, has realized that the work of those scientists also left plutonium contamination close to home. Wartime practices that dumped raw radioactive waste into Acid Canyon continued until 1951, and despite several cleanup efforts, measurable plutonium remains. The Los Alamos National Laboratory says the risks to humans walking the canyon are “tiny.” However, plutonium has a half-life of 24,000 years.

For more on the story of Nagasaki, Japan, today, see Jim Carrier’s article “The Bombs Still Ticking” from the August/September 2025 issue of The Progressive.

September 10, 2025 Posted by | health, India, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Russian uranium being used at Sizewell B site in Suffolk.

“It is sheer hypocrisy for energy ministers to say we need new nuclear to stop being dependent on imported Russian energy, when our biggest and newest nuclear plant is fully fuelled by Putin’s uranium.”

East Anglian Daily Times, 11th August, By Will King, Mid Suffolk Reporter

Sizewell B has confirmed it has been using Russian uranium amid criticism of “sheer hypocrisy” while billions of taxpayers’ money is spent on the Ukraine war. 

EDF Energy confirmed that Sizewell B’s nuclear fuel supply comes from Russia, but stated that the specific company providing it, MSZJSC, is not subject to sanctions.

Sizewell B provides 3% of the UK’s electricity, and every 18 months, a third of the fuel in the reactor is replaced using recycled enriched uranium using this source. 

They said that its presence is due to “long-term commitments struck years before Russia invaded Ukraine”, after a contract was signed by British Energy in 2008.

However, Dr David Lowry, a nuclear policy consultant and former member of the independent advisory panel for the Chief UK Nuclear Safety and Security Inspector, says the fuel is initially mined by Rosatom, a Russian company sanctioned in Febuary 2023, but the company has continued using it.

He says the supply chain begins with the Russian state-owned company before it is sent by its subsidiary, TVEL, to another subsidiary, MSZJSC, before being sent to a factory in Lingen, Germany.

It is here that EDF Energy’s French supplier, Framatom, treats the material and sends the converted nuclear fuel rods to Sizewell B for use.

Dr Lowry said: “It is sheer hypocrisy for energy ministers to say we need new nuclear to stop being dependent on imported Russian energy, when our biggest and newest nuclear plant is fully fuelled by Putin’s uranium.

“We’re giving arms to Ukraine on one side and giving Russia money on the other side for fuel. 

……… “Also, these companies are on the British Government’s sanctions list, so EDF Energy should not be doing business with them.”

This comes after this paper has seen documents from a site stakeholder meeting for Sizewell A and B on October 15 2024, attended by members of local parish and town councils, where Robert Gunn confirmed that Russian-supplied uranium was being used at the site. 

EDF Energy says that Russian fuel will not be used at Sizewell C, but they have not yet been awarded the uranium contract to provide further details…………………………………………………. https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/25375159.russian-uranium-used-sizewell-b-site-suffolk/

August 12, 2025 Posted by | UK, Uranium | Leave a comment

Court hears Uzbek group attempted to sell nuclear bomb material uranium on black market

 An Uzbek court has convicted a group of individuals who sought to sell 120
grams of natural uranium, the heavy metal element required in the making of
a nuclear bomb. While the amount they were attempting to sell, at a price
of $2,000 per gram, would only make up a tiny fraction of the uranium
volume a nuclear bomb maker would need for enrichment, national security
officials the world over are wary of such black market sales reaching a
frequency that would enable terrorist, or other malign actors, to source
the volume of material needed for an atomic weapon from an assortment of
sellers.

 Intellinews 29th July 2025, https://www.intellinews.com/court-hears-uzbek-group-attempted-to-sell-nuclear-bomb-material-uranium-on-black-market-393499/

August 4, 2025 Posted by | EUROPE, Uranium | Leave a comment

Toxic radioactive legacy of rare earths processing plan.

Industrial health expert T Jayabalan told FMT that he lived in Bukit Merah for three years during the 1980s, “collecting data” on the residents there. According to him, Lai Kwan and Cheah were only two of the many people he studied before presenting his findings to Malaysian courts. “Birth defects still exist,” he said, “and the number of miscarriages is incredibly high. Even if a foetus survives, it can still be born with leukemia and brain damage.”

“I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. I’ve seen the suffering of these people. The only good thing about Lynas is that it hasn’t happened yet.”

(includes VIDEO)  Inside the world of a radiation victim, Free Malaysia Today Patrick Lee,  November 24, 2011 VIDEO  Tan Chui Mui’s short documentary is also about a mother’s undying love. Cheah was born in 1983, a year after Lai Kwan worked as a bricklayer at the Mitsubishi rare earth plant in Bukit Merah, Perak.

Cheah has multiple congenital defects, including a hole in the heart. He is also mentally deficient and virtually blind. And Lai Kwan is beside her son nearly every hour of her life, as portrayed in a short film entitled “Lai Kwan’s Love”…..

she tells the camera that she had no idea that the rare earth plant where she worked was handling toxic materials.

“We were working at the factory’s extension site. We didn’t know what kind of factory it was. We simply worked there….

Lai Kwan said she had not received compensation for her son’s disability, and that two men attempted to pay her into keeping quiet over Cheah.

“They asked me not to say my son’s sickness is related to the rare earth plant. I said I didn’t want the money, whatever the amount was. If I take your money, I said, and your factory continues to operate here, more newborns will get sick. What good is the money then?”

The film is the second in a four-part series called “Survival Guide Untuk Kampong Radioaktif”, a project designed to show viewers the adverse effects of radiation.

The Asian Rare Earth plant in Bukit Merah was closed in 1992 following years of protests from local residents. The area is still going through a massive RM303 million clean-up by Mitsubishi Chemicals.

None of the people in Bukit Merah were compensated, although Mitsubishi Chemicals donated RM500,000 to the community’s schools in an out-of-court settlement.

Locals in the 11,000-large town have blamed the plant for the population’s many birth defects and eight leukemia cases. Seven of the leukemia cases have since died……

Birth defects still exist’

Industrial health expert T Jayabalan told FMT that he lived in Bukit Merah for three years during the 1980s, “collecting data” on the residents there.

According to him, Lai Kwan and Cheah were only two of the many people he studied before presenting his findings to Malaysian courts. “Birth defects still exist,” he said, “and the number of miscarriages is incredibly high. Even if a foetus survives, it can still be born with leukemia and brain damage.”

Jayabalan also said that many people associated with Bukit Merah had since passed away, including “lawyers and plaintiffs” involved with the case.

“They died of cancer. Some of them died very young.”

He said he worried that the controversial Lynas rare earth plant near Kuantan, which is expected to see operations begin early next year, would see a “tenfold” effect.

“The amount of metals to be used is huge compared to Bukit Merah, and it’s going to leak, and these areas (in Kuantan) are prone to flooding,” he said.

“I’ve seen it happen with my own eyes. I’ve seen the suffering of these people. The only good thing about Lynas is that it hasn’t happened yet.”

http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/2011/11/24/inside-the-world-of-a-radiation-victim/

 
 

July 17, 2025 Posted by | Resources -audiovicual, Uranium, wastes | Leave a comment

Iran’s Conversion of Uranium Hexafluoride to Uranium Metal Not a Bottleneck to an Iranian Nuclear Weapon

 As I have previously written, Iran’s sizable stockpile of 60% enriched
uranium has very likely survived both Israeli and American bombing
attacks.

Even if only a very small fraction of Iran’s centrifuge
enrichment capacity has survived, Iran will be able to produce the 90%
enriched uranium desired for nuclear weapons in less than a month once
electric power is restored to the enrichment centrifuges. Iran’s ability
to produce 90% enriched uranium means that these bombing attacks have not
eliminated the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

However, Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has argued that even if that is the case, the bombing destroyed Iran’s facility in Esfahan that would convert the uranium
hexafluoride used in the enrichment process into uranium metal which is the
form used in nuclear weapons.

Rubio has claimed that the Iranian nuclear
program has been set back by “years.” However, the conversion process
from hexafluoride to metal is fairly simple. Due to criticality concerns,
Iran could only process small batches of around four kilograms of 90%
enriched uranium at a time. Therefore, the conversion facility would use
only laboratory scale equipment.

Even if Iran needed to start from scratch
to build a new metal production facility, Iran can have this facility ready
by the time it has restored its enrichment capacity and produced 90%
enriched uranium.

 NPEC 30th June 2025, https://nebula.wsimg.com/5cb30d7e699d6da2b9f43d95c7bea48c?AccessKeyId=40C80D0B51471CD86975&disposition=0&alloworigin=1

July 4, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

Iran could resume enriching uranium within months, UN nuclear watchdog boss says

Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CBS News in an interview on Sunday that Iran’s capabilities to resolve any damage to its nuclear program do not appear to have been wiped out.

30 June 25, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-06-30/iran-could-enrich-uranium-within-months-iaea-says/105475434

In short:

Iran could resume producing enriched uranium in months, according to the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

Rafael Grossi from the International Atomic Energy Agency has raised more doubt about the efficacy of the US bombing of key Iranian nuclear facilities.

What’s next?

US President Donald Trump has suggested individuals could be prosecuted if found responsible for leaking a classified report that also cast doubt on the success of the US strikes.

Iran could resume producing enriched uranium in months, according to comments made by the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog that have raised more doubts about the efficacy of US strikes on Tehran’s nuclear program.

Officials in the United States have repeatedly stated that the strikes on Iran’s Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear facilities “obliterated” them, although President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would consider bombing the Middle Eastern nation again if it was enriching uranium to worrisome levels.

Rafael Grossi, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told CBS News in an interview on Sunday that Iran’s capabilities to resolve any damage to its nuclear program do not appear to have been wiped out.

“The capacities they have are there. They can have, you know, in a matter of months, I would say, a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium, or less than that,” he said.

“Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.”

US officials also obtained an intercepted phone call between Iranian officials appearing to suggest the government in Tehran believes the US strikes were less devastating than expected, according to a report from The Washington Post.

In an interview on Sunday local time, Mr Trump also suggested that his government would look to investigate and potentially prosecute individuals found responsible for leaking an internal, preliminary classified report that cast doubt on how successful the US strikes in Iran were.

“They should be prosecuted. The people who leaked it,” the president said on the Fox News US.

“We can find out. If they wanted, they could find out easily. 

“You go up and tell the reporter: ‘National security, who gave it?’ You have to do that, and I’ll suspect we’ll be doing things like that.”

Mr Trump’s interview with Fox aired as his “Big Beautiful Bill” cleared a procedural hurdle in the US Senate, before it entered a 10-hour debate process.

The US strikes came after Israel said this month it wanted to remove any chance of Iran developing nuclear weapons, launching its own attacks on Tehran that ignited a 12-day war between the two countries.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

Mr Grossi said the US strikes on the three Iranian sites had significantly set back Iran’s ability to convert and enrich uranium.

Western powers, however, have stressed that Iran’s nuclear advances provide it with an irreversible knowledge gain, suggesting that while losing experts or facilities may slow progress, the advances were permanent.

“Iran is a very sophisticated country in terms of nuclear technology,” Mr Grossi said. 

“So, you cannot disinvent this. You cannot undo the knowledge that you have or the capacities that you have.”

Mr Grossi was also asked about reports of Iran moving its stock of highly enriched uranium in the run-up to the US strikes and said it was not clear where that material was.

“Some could have been destroyed as part of the attack, but some could have been moved,” he said.

On Friday, Mr Trump scoffed at Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s heated warning to the US not to launch future strikes on Iran, as well as the Iranian supreme leader’s assertion that Tehran “won the war” with Israel.

Mr Trump said the ayatollah’s comments defied reality after 12 days of Israeli strikes and the US bombardment, and the US president suggested the comments were unbecoming of Iran’s most powerful political and religious figure.

“Look, you’re a man of great faith. A man who’s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth,” Mr Trump said. 

“You got beat to hell.”

Mr Trump also told reporters at the White House that he expected Iran to open itself to international inspection to verify that it does not restart its nuclear program.


Asked if he would demand during expected talks with Iran that the IAEA or some other organisation be authorised to conduct inspections, Mr Trump said Iran would have to cooperate with the group “or somebody that we respect, including ourselves”.

July 2, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

Iran’s uranium enrichment: myths, realities, and what Canada should understand

Canadians deserve an informed debate about the potential proliferation dangers of these new reactor designs, especially as the intention is to export them around the world.

BY ERIKA SIMPSON, GORDON EDWARDS | June 29, 2025, https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2025/06/29/irans-uranium-enrichment-myths-realities-and-what-canada-should-understand/465192/

Confusion and misinformation continue to shape public discussion about uranium enrichment in Iran. As tensions rise in the Middle East and the fear of nuclear weapons proliferation returns to the headlines, it is important for Canadians to understand the basic scientific facts, the real risks, and the broader international implications.

Uranium enrichment sounds mysterious, but is a well-understood process. Natural uranium contains only 0.7 per cent uranium-235, the rare variety of uranium that can undergo the kind of nuclear chain reaction needed for nuclear power or nuclear bombs. The other 99.3 per cent is uranium-238, a heavier variety of uranium that  cannot sustain such a chain reaction. Enrichment is simply the process of raising the percentage of uranium-235.

It is often reported that 90 per cent uranium enrichment is “needed” to have a nuclear weapon. This is not true. The Hiroshima bomb had only 80 per cent enrichment. Iran has a good deal of 60 per cent enriched uranium, and one can make a powerful bomb from 60 per cent enriched uranium. It would be larger in size than a bomb with 90 per cent enrichment, and so more challenging to deliver, but not much more so. The recent bombings are unlikely to have destroyed the hundreds of kilograms of 60 per cent enriched uranium already in Iran.

The mechanism needed for making an atomic bomb from uranium is much simpler than that needed for a plutonium bomb. It’s called a “gun-type” atomic bomb rather than an “implosion-type” atomic bomb. 

The gun-type bomb just fires one chunk of uranium into another chunk (the target) so that the two chunks add up to more than a “critical mass.” It is so simple it cannot possibly fail. The United States never tried out this type of bomb before using it; it was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, Japan, with no prior testing. Such a bomb needs a precision-timed “neutron source,” but that is old technology, well known for a long time.

The implosion-type bomb is needed when plutonium is the nuclear explosive. Implosion is much more demanding. It requires a perfectly spherical mass of plutonium metal surrounded by concentric plastic explosives to drive the sphere inward toward the centre—an “ implosion.”  It is so tricky it’s pretty well got to be tested first. The U.S. detonated one such plutonium bomb at Alamagordo, New Mexico, three weeks before dropping another one on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.

Nuclear authorities maintain that a powerful nuclear explosive device (gun-type) could be made with any uranium enriched to 20 per cent or more. At the 20-per-cent level such a device would be a lot bulkier; it could not easily be carried by rocket or aeroplane, but could be delivered in the hull of a ship, in a truck or cargo container, or even in the trunk of a car, and detonated by remote control. 

For this reason, highly enriched uranium—which is uranium with 20 per cent enriched or more—is increasingly being prohibited from most civilian use.

Up to now, all operating power reactors fuelled with uranium use an enrichment level of no more than five per cent. Fuel at that level of enrichment is not weapons-usable material. But some new reactors proposed in Canada and elsewhere demand fuel that is a lot more enriched. The ARC sodium-cooled reactor planned for New Brunswick uses uranium fuel enriched to more than 13 per cent, while the eVinci reactor being studied in Saskatchewan is designed to use 19.9 per cent enriched uranium.

Independent experts have pointed out that uranium enriched to such high levels—between 12 per cent and 20 per cent—could also be used (like highly enriched uranium) to make an enormously destructive nuclear explosive device. This danger is not officially acknowledged by regulators, and is generally not recognized by politicians and other decision-makers in Canada. The nuclear fuel needed for some of the “fast” or “advanced” SMNRs being proposed in this country is weapons-usable material even though it is below the 20 per per cent enrichment level, and is, therefore, not classified as highly enriched uranium.

Canadians deserve an informed debate about the potential proliferation dangers of these new reactor designs, especially as the intention is to export them around the world.

Gordon Edwards is a nuclear safety consultant and president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility. Erika Simpson is an associate professor of international politics at the University of Western Ontario.

July 2, 2025 Posted by | Uranium | Leave a comment

How effective was the US attack on Iran’s nuclear sites? A visual guide

At odds with Trump’s claim of “complete obliteration”, two Israeli officials who spoke to the New York Times described serious damage at Fordow but said the site had not been completely destroyed.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, added: “As for the assessment of the degree of damage underground, on this we cannot pronounce ourselves. It could be important; it could be significant, but no one … neither us nor anybody else could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”

Peter Beaumont, Guardian23 June 25 [EXCELLENT PICTURES ON ORIGINAL]

Trump claims the assault ‘totally obliterated’ the key facilities, but what do we know about its impact?

Donald Trump was quick to claim that US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities had “completely and totally obliterated” them. Still, it remains unclear how much physical damage has been done or what the longer-term impact might be on Iran’s nuclear programme.

What was the target?

The Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) confirmed that attacks took place on its Fordow, Isfahan and Natanz sites, but insisted its nuclear programme would not be stopped. Iran and the UN nuclear watchdog said there were no immediate signs of radioactive contamination around the three locations after the strikes.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society reported no deaths from the US strikes, appearing to confirm Iranian claims they had been largely evacuated in advance. The health ministry said those who were injured showed no evidence of nuclear contamination. In the immediate aftermath, US military officials said the three sites had suffered “severe damage” after an operation that had been planned for weeks, suggesting it was coordinated with Israel.

The Pentagon said a battle damage assessment was still being conducted.

What do we know about the strike on Fordow?

Long regarded as the most difficult military target among Iran’s nuclear sites, the uranium enrichment facilities at Fordow – the primary target of the operation – are buried beneath the Zagros mountains. Reports have suggested that the site was constructed beneath 45-90 metres of bedrock, largely limestone and dolomite.

Some experts have suggested the layering of the sedimentary rocks, including faults, would also make it more difficult to strike the centrifuge array, providing a kind of geological cushioning against a blast wave.

The attack – codenamed Operation Midnight Hammer – was carried out by seven B-2 Spirit stealth bombers flying from the US, after a deception flight by other B-2s into the Pacific. Tomahawk missiles were fired from US ships in waters south of Iran.

The site was hit by a dozen 13,600kg massive ordnance penetrators – known as bunker busters – at approximately 2.10am Iranian time. It was the weapon’s first operational use. The number used suggests a lack of confidence that a smaller strike could penetrate through to the target.

The result to a large extent depends on the kind of concrete inside the facility. Estimates of the bunker busters’ penetration are based largely on reinforced concrete resistant to 5,000psi. Iran is believed to have used more resistant concrete.

While video from the site showed evidence of a fire in the immediate aftermath, satellite images published on Sunday were suggestive but far from conclusive.

The main support building at the site appeared to be undamaged, but the topography of a prominent area of ridge line appeared to have altered and been flattened out, with some evidence of rock scarring close to two clusters of bomb craters around the ridge.

Analysts had suggested that a strike could hit the main entrance tunnel to the site, but the main effort appears to have been in a different location.

At odds with Trump’s claim of “complete obliteration”, two Israeli officials who spoke to the New York Times described serious damage at Fordow but said the site had not been completely destroyed.

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, added: “As for the assessment of the degree of damage underground, on this we cannot pronounce ourselves. It could be important; it could be significant, but no one … neither us nor anybody else could be able to tell you how much it has been damaged.”

What was the impact at Isfahan?………………………………………

………. facilities targeted at Isfahan either contained no nuclear material or small quantities of natural or low-enriched uranium.

What was hit at Natanz?………

……….It appears that Natanz’s underground enrichment hall was targeted. Enhancement of satellite images from the site on Sunday showed fresh damage to overground buildings and new cratering in the centre of the site…….

Was Iran’s nuclear programme obliterated?

…………………………..“The enriched uranium reserves had been transferred from the nuclear centres and there are no materials left there that, if targeted, would cause radiation and be harmful to our compatriots,”

Three days before the US attacks, 16 cargo trucks were seen near the Fordow entrance tunnel.

The head of the AEOI, Mohammad Eslami, claimed this month that Iran had another enrichment site “in a secure and invulnerable location” that could house centrifuges.

Analysts have long argued that while it is possible to disrupt the physical function of a nuclear facility and limit the scope of a programme through, for example, the killing of scientists, the breadth of technical knowledge acquired during the decades-long programme is impossible to destroy.

Ultimately, the question is whether the US-Israeli attacks are seen as sufficient for Iran to capitulate, or whether they instead encourage the regime to accelerate its efforts to produce a viable nuclear weapon. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/22/how-effective-was-the-us-attack-on-irans-nuclear-sites-a-visual-guide

June 24, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

Clearing up the confusion about Iran and uranium enrichment.

Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., President, Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility, 20 June 25, www.ccnr.org/GE_Iran_and_Uranium_Enrichment_2025.pdf

there are NO treaties or binding agreements that make uranium enrichment illegal, to any degree of enrichment whatsoever. So Iran has not violated any obligations laid down by the Non-Proliferation Treaty or any other international instrument

In fact Iran does not have nuclear weapons, whereas Israel does. Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, whereas Israel has not. Iran has allowed many inspections of its nuclear facilities by IAEA inspectors whereas Israel has never done so. 

There is a lot of confusion about uranium enrchment in Iran.

In natural uranium, only 7 atoms out of 1000 are chain-reacting uranium-235. The other 993 atoms are, for the most part, uranium-238 atoms – not a chain-recating material. 

Uranium enrichment refers to any technology that increases the percentage of the chain-reacting U-235 beyond the 0.7% level (i.e.natural uranium). But there is a good deal of misinformation and/or misunderstanding about enriched uranium in the media recently.

(1) Nuclear Explosions

It is often reported that 90% uranium enrichment is “needed” to have a nuclear weapon. This is not true. The Hiroshima bombs had only 80% enrichment. Iran has a good deal of 60% enriched uranium, and you can make a bomb from 60% enriched uranium — it would be bulkier than a bomb with 90% enrichment and therefore harder to deliver, but not so very much harder. 

Also, the mechanism needed for making a uranium bomb is very much easier than what is needed for a plutonium bomb. It can be done with a lot less effort and taking very little time. It’s called a “gun-type” atomic bomb rather than an “implosion-type” atomic bomb. 

The gun-type bomb just fires one chunk of uranium into another chunk (the target) so that the two chunks add up to more than a “critical mass”.  It is so simple it cannot possibly fail – as a result they never had to test this type of bomb before using it. They dropped it on the city of Hiroshima with no testing. There is a need for a precision timed “neutron source” but that is very old technology that has been well known for ages.

The implosion-type bomb is much more sophisticated, requiring a perfectly spherical shaped mass of plutonium metal surrounded by concentric plastic explosives to drive the sphere inward toward the centre – an “ implosion”.  That is so tricky it’s pretty well got to be tested before using. The USA tested it at Alamagordo before dropping it on the city of Nagasaki.

Nuclear non-proliferation authorities maintain that a powerful nuclear explosive device (gun-type) could be made with any uranium enriched to 20% or more. Such an explosive device would not have to be delivered by rocket or aeroplane, but could be delivered in the hull of a ship, or in a truck, or even in the trunk of a car, and detonated by remote control.

Independent experts now say the same is true of most HALEU (high-assay low-enriched uranium) enriched to more than 12% U-235. Although this reality is not officially acknowledged by regulators, it means that the fuel for some of the “fast” or “advanced” SMNRs being proposed — like the ARC [NB] or eVinci [Sask] or Natrium [Wyoming] reactors — is already weapons usable material, even though it is below the 20% enrichment level.

2) Health and Environmental Dangers

Uranium is a radioactive heavy metal. All heavy metals are poisonous. Toxicologists regard the chemical toxicity of natural (unenriched) uranium to be equal to or greater than the radiotoxicity. Ingestion of uranium is particularly hazardous to the kidney – renotoxicity (chemical). Inhalation will expose the lungs to alpha radiation, causing fibrosis of the lungs and possibly cancer.

The more enriched the uranium, the more elevated is the radiotoxicity while the chemical toxicity remains basically unchanged. However, in the form of a metallic or an oxide dust or aerosol, the danger is long-term rather than short term. Death would not occur immediately but over time. Cancers would take up to 20 years or more to develop.

However, enrichment plants use uranium in a very toxic chemical form called uranium hexafluoride (“hex”) UF6.  This is one of the only compounds of uranium that exists in a gaserous form at pretty low temperatures. You need to have a gas in order to separate the heavier uranium atoms from the lighter ones. Iran uses thousands of “ultracentrifuges” to do this. Spinning very fast, the heavier uranium atoms are thrown outwards while the iighter atoms stay closer to the centre, providing a very slight degree of enrichment. By repeating this procedure tens of thousands of times, you can achieve any degree of enrichment you want, but it is a slow process and cannot be hurried.

Now uranium hexafluoride is a very nasty substance. It reacts with moist air to form a corrosive acidic compound that is very harmful to living things exposed to it. So people close to the faciltiies, if those facilities were bombed, could be greatly harmed right away from the “hex”. Here are some of the details about uranium hexafluoride from US government sources:

OSHA Hazards

Highly toxic by inhalation, Highly toxic by ingestion. Corrosive.

Target Organs

Kidney, Liver, Lungs, Brain, Skin, Eyes.

GHS Classification

Acute toxicity, Oral (Category 1)
Acute toxicity, Inhalation (Category 1)
Specific target organ toxicity –

repeated exposure (Category 2) Skin Corrosion (Category 1A)
Serious eye damage (Category 1)
Acute aquatic toxicity (Category 2) 

(3) Geopolitics

In the meantime it is important to realize that there are NO treaties or binding agreements that make uranium enrichment illegal, to any degree of enrichment whatsoever. So Iran has not violated any obligations laid down by the Non-Proliferation Treaty or any other international instrument. In fact Iran does not have nuclear weapons, whereas Israel does. Iran has signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, whereas Israel has not. Iran has allowed many inspections of its nuclear facilities by IAEA inspectors whereas Israel has never done so. 

Nevertheless, it is true that anyone (like Iran) with a stash of highly enriched uranium can choose to make bombs rather quickly at any time. In that sense the threat is very real, but there is no indication that Iran has crossed that line. Under the Obama administration, Iran agreed to the most restrictive conditions that any country in the world has ever agreed to – including not enriching uranium beyond 5%, which is definitely not usable for nuclear weapons. No other country has ever agreed to or accepted such a restriction.

In the first Trump administration, it was Benjamin Netanyahu that bullied Trump into breaking that Obama-era agreement unilaterally — and Netanyahu is now (by attacking Iran) making it as difficult as possible for anyone to negotiate a new agreement regarding the nuclear program in Iran. It seems clear that Netanyahu does not want Iran to enter into any such agreement. Israel’s actions seem designed to try to prevent such an agreement.

(4) A World Without Nuclear Weapons

The one good thing about this episode may be that it impresses on people’s minds the dangers of allowing states to produce the explosive materials needed to make atomic bombs – namely, highly enriched uranium or plutonium. If the world is to ever achieve a nuclear weapons-free world, one of the preconditions would have to be outright prohibition or esclusive international control over all uranium enrichment plants and/or plutonium extraction facilities (i.e. reprocessing plants). Further, the use of weapons-usable uranium or plutonium-based fuels should – for similar reasons – be prohibited. This will rule out most “advanced” reactors.

June 23, 2025 Posted by | Uranium | 7 Comments

Officials Concede They Don’t Know the Fate of Iran’s Uranium Stockpile.

Both Vice President JD Vance and Rafael Grossi, the head of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, acknowledged questions about the
whereabouts of Iran’s stockpile of near-bomb-grade nuclear material.

New York Times 22nd June 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/22/us/politics/iran-uranium-stockpile-whereabouts.html

June 23, 2025 Posted by | Iran, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

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