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The White House Is Fast-Tracking a Near Weapons-Grade Uranium to Power Next Gen SMR Nukes

Bomb Grade Uranium For Sale

The hypocrisy is stunning. But the risks are worse because the danger posed by HALEU may be far worse than currently acknowledged.

April 22, 2026,  Peter McKillop, https://www.theenergymix.com/the-white-house-is-fast-tracking-a-near-weapons-grade-uranium-to-power-next-gen-smr-nukes/

Oh, the irony. As the United States Defense Department spends billions to stop Iran from using enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is fast-tracking a Bill Gates nuclear power project that could trigger a race to create a new generation of near bomb-grade uranium fuel.

Last month, as bombs rained down on Tehran, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) unanimously approved a construction permit for TerraPower’s sodium‑cooled Natrium reactor, a fast reactor that requires High‑Assay Low‑Enriched Uranium (HALEU), a fuel experts say is significantly easier to weaponize than standard reactor fuel.

HALEU is uranium enriched between 5% and 20% uranium-235, compared to the maximum 5% used in today’s conventional reactor fleet. That higher enrichment level allows advanced reactors to achieve smaller, more compact designs that generate more power per unit of volume, run on longer operating cycles, and produce less radioactive waste. But there is an unintended consequence. Once the uranium mix is 20% and above, it is reclassified as highly enriched uranium (HEU) and is internationally recognized as being directly usable in nuclear weapons.

Despite this proliferation threat, HALEU remains central to the Energy Department’s advanced nuclear push because without it, most next-generation reactors cannot run. The DOE has now selected 11 advanced reactor designs under its Reactor Pilot Program, many of them planning to run on HALEU.

Only, the U.S. has no HALEU, only Russia does. So TerraPower has turned to South Africa to build a new enrichment facility that aims to produce roughly 15 tonnes of HALEU by 2027, enough to fuel the Natrium demonstration plant’s first core and more. And here lies the problem. By embracing HALEU, the DOE is effectively jump‑starting an international HALEU market and expanding the global circulation of material that can shorten the path to a bomb. 

Nuclear safety expert Edwin Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists warns that this push “may greatly increase the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism.”

Bomb Grade Uranium For Sale

The hypocrisy is stunning. But the risks are worse because the danger posed by HALEU may be far worse than currently acknowledged. In a letter in Science, Lyman and three leading nuclear researchers—Scott Kemp of MIT, Mark Deinert of the Colorado School of Mines, and Frank von Hippel of Princeton—argue that HALEU can, in some cases, be used to make nuclear weapons without any further enrichment at all. Promoter of SMR’s, they argue, have not considered the potential proliferation and terrorism risks that the wide adoption of this fuel creates.

Opening the Gates

This has not stopped Bill Gates. As founder and chair, he is the driving force behind TerraPower. In the past year, Gates has dramatically shifted away from solar power to double down so-called ‘”innovative” nuclear power schemes.

Gates is aggressively courting the Trump administration, including DOE Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, to help secure expedited NRC safety reviews to accelerate construction permits for the Wyoming Natrium site.

Why Bother?

At first glance, what Gates is championing does not seem totally unreasonable. With new power needs and climate deadlines looming, supporters argue that only reactors can provide round‑the‑clock, low‑carbon power without devouring land or depending on fickle weather. Small modular and “advanced” designs, they say, will be cheaper, quicker to build, and safer than the behemoths of the past, complementing wind and solar rather than competing with them. 

In this view, HALEU is not a bug but a feature: the key to compact, flexible reactors that can decarbonize heavy industry and data centres alike.

Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace

The problem is, we’ve seen this movie before, minus data centres and climate concerns. In the 1950s, the Eisenhower administration championed “Atoms for Peace” and actively helped Iran build a “peaceful” nuclear program—research reactors, fuel, training, the whole package—on the assumption that controlled access to advanced fuel cycles would lock in development and stability. 

Seven decades and one revolution later, the United States and Israel are bombing that same program. It is hard to imagine a clearer warning against casually globalizing any technology that nudges civilian infrastructure closer to bomb‑grade fuel.

Bros for Bombs

But that does not seem to concern key members of America’s billionaire class. Jeff Bezos, is also a fan of SMRs and has plowed more than $1 billion into nuclear ventures that stand to benefit directly from such policies, and that the company he founded is a leading champion of nuclear power for data centres.

In this week’s edition of Climate & Capital Weekly, CCM editor Barclay Palmer teams up with former nuclear industry heavyweight-turned-watchdog Arnie Gundersen look into the nuclear influence peddlers shaping U.S. nuclear policy.

Gates and Bezos both know the economics of nuclear power are so brutal that only a government can finance its development. The last two reactors completed in the U.S.—Units 3 and 4 at the Vogtle plant in Georgia—came in at roughly $35 billion, nearly double their original budget, and were seven years behind schedule, helping drive Westinghouse into bankruptcy and nearly sinking the participating utility.

The billionaire bro partnership with Trump is a great example of how the administration operates. Today’s nuclear revival is a top‑down affair. Gates and Bezos have effectively captured the only institution large enough to bear the financial costs and political risks of nuclear construction: the federal government. 

The payoff they are chasing is to fast-track the terawatt‑hours needed to feed their AI‑driven data‑centre empires, even if it means risking nuclear Armageddon.

April 29, 2026 Posted by | Uranium | Leave a comment

Secrets and Shortcuts: The US Uranium Enrichment Rush

LYNDA WILLIAMS, 6 April 2026, https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/04/06/secrets-and-shortcuts-the-us-uranium-enrichment-rush/

The United States keeps going to war over uranium enrichment. 
We started a war in Iraq over it after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” which later proved to be false. We bombed Iran’s enrichment facilities in June 2025, with Trump declaring he had “completely and totally obliterated” them. 
Eight months later, we started another war with Iran over enrichment, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) found no evidence of a structured nuclear weapons program. Now, Trump is considering sending  special forces into Iran to physically seize the enriched uranium — except nobody knows exactly where it is.

Now the US is actively pursuing its own domestic uranium enrichment after decades of dependence on foreign suppliers, including Russia, which, after it invaded Ukraine, the Biden administration cut off. The US currently has only one operating commercial enrichment facility, which cannot begin to supply the “nuclear renaissance” the Trump administration is promoting. Five companies are simultaneously seeking NRC licenses, backed by $2.7 billion in DOE contracts, under a regulatory framework being dismantled in real time — gutting environmental review, eliminating radiation safety standards, and compressing public participation timelines to get them built fast.

The first to apply is Global Laser Enrichment LLC — a Delaware shell company majority-owned by Silex Systems Limited of Australia and Cameco Corporation of Canada — and their application is shrouded in secrecy and regulatory shortcuts. The license application looks like a redacted Epstein file: 274 pages of black bars.

Why the Big Secrecy?

The problem with enrichment is proliferation. Natural uranium consists of two isotopes — uranium-238 and uranium-235 (U-235), the fissile isotope you need for both nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs. In its natural state, uranium contains only 0.7% U-235, so it must be enriched artificially.

Nuclear fuel for a nuclear power plant needs uranium enriched to about 5% U-235. A nuclear bomb needs it at 90% or above. Same basic process, same basic equipment — just keep enriching. Iran had enriched to 60% according to the IAEA before the June 2025 strikes — well past reactor fuel and closing in on weapons grade. That’s proliferation. North Korea had a proliferation problem the Clinton administration was successfully negotiating — until Bush came in, put North Korea on the “axis of evil,” and within months they turned off their IAEA monitoring cameras and expelled inspectors, testing their first nuclear bomb four years later.

On March 27, 2026, the NRC published a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for a proposed $1.76 billion uranium enrichment facility in Paducah, Kentucky — next to the former Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (PGDP), a Cold War uranium enrichment site that operated from 1952 to 2013 and left behind a Superfund cleanup still running today. The federal government sold GLE over 200,000 metric tons of publicly owned depleted uranium to process from the PGDP — but the price is secret.

The secrecy traces to a single act. In June 2001, the Secretary of Energy classified the SILEX laser enrichment technology under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. The entire public record of that decision is five sentences in the Federal Register — no technical justification, no public comment period, no congressional notification, no appeal process. The Federation of American Scientists called it “constitutionally questionable.” It has never been legally challenged. The PLEF would be licensed to enrich to a maximum of 6% U-235 — reactor fuel grade. The irony is that independent peer-reviewed research suggests SILEX cannot be efficiently cascaded to weapons grade, making the classification that drives all this secrecy scientifically questionable as well.

What’s in the EIS?

GLE proposes to build a $1.76 billion laser enrichment facility on 322 acres of former public wildlife land — until eighteen months ago part of the West Kentucky Wildlife Management Area, managed for hunting, fishing, and horseback riding, and home to bald eagles, golden eagles, monarch butterflies, and eastern box turtles. The site contains 38 wetlands, 20 streams, and 6 ponds — all of which would be destroyed to build the facility. GLE proposes to discharge 60,000 gallons of wastewater per day, some of it radioactive, into Little Bayou Creek, which flows to the Ohio River — drinking water for five million people downstream. Fish consumption in Little Bayou Creek is already not supported due to PCB contamination from the adjacent Cold War plant.

The facility would take in depleted uranium hexafluoride — the tails left over from Cold War enrichment — re-enrich it, and produce more uranium hexafluoride waste. Over 40 years the PLEF would generate 290,574 metric tons of new radioactive waste with nowhere to go. The EIS waste table lists the largest waste stream — 18,161 tons per year — with three words in the disposal column: “subject to availability.” The EIS also declines to quantify what fraction of the DOE stockpile contains reprocessed uranium — known as RepU — material that passed through a reactor and carries transuranic contaminants, including neptunium-237 and plutonium, with half-lives of thousands to millions of years. RepU cannot go to a standard low-level waste site and may require disposal at WIPP in New Mexico, which was never designed for it. GLE’s website says the PLEF will “reduce the legacy environmental footprint” of the former Paducah plant. Re-enriching depleted uranium hexafluoride produces more uranium hexafluoride. The chemical form never changes, and the volume increases. That’s not cleanup. That’s more radioactive waste with nowhere to go.

What We Don’t Know: Safety

The comment period for the EIS closes May 11, but the government’s Safety Evaluation Report (SER) – which is normally completed alongside the EIS -won’t be completed until January 2027. GLE received special NRC permission to submit the environmental and safety portions of its application separately, meaning the public must comment on the facility’s EIS without ever seeing the safety analysis. The safety analysis submitted with the license application is classified. The emergency plan is withheld as a corporate trade secret on the grounds that releasing it would, in the sworn, notarized words of GLE’s licensing manager Tim Knowles, “reduce or foreclose the availability of profit opportunities.”  The Integrated Safety Analysis Summary — which NRC regulations require to be placed on the public docket — has been removed from the federal docket entirely. Not redacted. Removed. (NRC ADAMS accession ML25179A002 not publicly available)  In case of emergency, the EIS says the facility relies on local volunteer fire departments – departments with no legal right to read the emergency plan for the facility in their jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, Kentucky approved nearly $100 million in public incentives to bring this facility to Paducah — some of it under a nondisclosure agreement so complete that the McCracken County judge told public radio he legally cannot tell you how much his county committed or what the terms are. The undisclosed county portion alone is nearly twice McCracken County’s entire annual operating budget.

The Regulatory Shortcut

For the EIS, the NRC borrowed conclusions from NUREG-2249, a draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement written for nuclear reactors — not enrichment facilities — that was published in September 2024, never finalized, and never applied to any proceeding before this one. Using this unfinished reactor document, the NRC pre-answered 34 environmental questions for the PLEF, declaring them all SMALL without site-specific analysis — including water use in the region, sedimentation impacts on aquatic species, and contaminated stormwater from outdoor uranium cylinder storage pads.  SILEX laser enrichment appears nowhere in NUREG-2249. These 34 conclusions can still be challenged before May 11. Once NUREG-2249 is finalized, that window closes permanently.

What You Can Do

The most impactful comments challenge the application of NUREG-2249 — a draft reactor document — to pre-answer 34 environmental questions for a laser enrichment facility without legal authority; the waste disposal analysis for which no confirmed to put 290,574 metric tons of new radioactive waste; and the requirement to comment on facility safety before the Safety Evaluation Report exists.

Submit comments on the PLEF draft EIS by May 11, 2026 at: https://www.regulations.gov/docket/NRC-2025-1007

Lynda Williams is a physicist and environmental activist living in Hawaii. She can be found at scientainment.com and on Bluesky @lyndalovon.bsky.social

April 10, 2026 Posted by | Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Protecting Our Wells: The Rural Costs of Uranium Exploration in Rural Nova Scotia – Alan Timberlake.

Those risks are not hypothetical. Dr. Bertell’s research showed that even low‑level internal exposure—from inhaled dust, dissolved uranium in drinking water, or radon gas—can cause cellular and genetic damage. She documented increased cancer rates, reproductive harm, immune system impacts, and long‑term generational effects in populations exposed to what regulators often describe as “safe” or “acceptable” doses.

April 4, 2026. Citizens Against Uranium Exploration and Mining in Nova Scotia, Alan Timberlake
Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia

Protecting Our Wells: The Rural Costs of Uranium Exploration in Rural Nova Scotia – Alan Timberlake
For rural Nova Scotians, clean well water isn’t a luxury—it’s our lifeline. It’s what we drink, cook with, bathe in, and give to our animals. That’s why the province’s decision on March 26, 2025 to repeal the long‑standing ban on uranium exploration has raised so many alarms in communities like ours. When your home depends on groundwater, any activity that disturbs uranium‑bearing rock is not an abstract policy issue. It’s personal.

At this time in Nova Scotia, it’s important to remember the work of Dr. Rosalie Bertell (1929–2012), one of the world’s leading experts on low‑level radiation. I first met Dr. Bertell in the early 1980s after helping facilitate her participation as an intervener at the British Columbia Royal Commission on Uranium Mining in Vancouver. Her testimony there helped shape BC’s decision to maintain its moratorium on uranium mining—a position the province still holds today. She was a meticulous epidemiologist and cancer researcher, and her warnings about internal radiation exposure remain deeply relevant to Nova Scotia’s current debate.

British Columbia’s stance today stands in sharp contrast to Nova Scotia’s recent repeal. BC continues to enforce a province‑wide moratorium on uranium exploration and mining through a “no‑registration reserve” that prohibits staking, exploration, or development of uranium or thorium. Even as the federal government promotes uranium as a critical mineral, BC has deliberately excluded it from its own critical minerals strategy. The province where Dr. Bertell’s evidence helped shape policy has stayed the course—while Nova Scotia has moved in the opposite direction.

Nova Scotians have not been silent about this shift. On October 3, 2025, a petition with 7,000 signatures was formally tabled in the Legislature calling for the ban to be reinstated. More petitions are still being circulated across the province. The speed and scale of this response show just how deeply people—especially rural residents—understand the risks.

Those risks are not hypothetical. Dr. Bertell’s research showed that even low‑level internal exposure—from inhaled dust, dissolved uranium in drinking water, or radon gas—can cause cellular and genetic damage. She documented increased cancer rates, reproductive harm, immune system impacts, and long‑term generational effects in populations exposed to what regulators often describe as “safe” or “acceptable” doses.

For rural Nova Scotia, the concern is straightforward: exploration drilling can mobilize uranium into groundwater. Our geology is fractured. Water moves unpredictably underground. A 2018 provincial review found that drilled wells in Nova Scotia have a significantly higher chance of uranium contamination than dug wells. When you rely on a well, there is no backup system. No municipal treatment plant. No alternative supply. Once a well is contaminated, the options are limited, expensive, and often ineffective.

The province insists that modern exploration is “low‑impact.” But rural residents know that the first impacts are often invisible. A slight shift in groundwater flow. A small increase in dissolved uranium. A rise in radon levels in a basement. These changes don’t announce themselves with fanfare—they show up in water tests, in health statistics, or in the lived experience of families who suddenly can’t drink from their own taps.

Despite the government’s enthusiasm, no companies submitted proposals during the initial call for exploration. Even the premier later admitted the push for uranium exploration appears to be “kind of toast right now.” But the repeal remains in place, and the regulatory door is open.

That’s why Dr. Bertell’s work matters so much today. She taught us that low‑level radiation is not benign, and that internal exposure—especially through water—carries risks that can unfold over decades. For rural communities, that means we need independent science, transparent monitoring, and a real voice in decisions that affect our wells.



April 9, 2026 Posted by | Canada, Uranium | 1 Comment

Does the Trump administration understand how ‘enriched’ uranium is made into weapons?

Harmeet Kaur, CNN, 2 April 2026

For the US to reach a deal with Iran or to end its war in the country, President Trump has said he wants Iran to surrender its “enriched” uranium.

“We want no enrichment, but we also want the enriched uranium,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last week.

The president has at times cited Iran’s “enriched” uranium stores as part of his ever-changing rationale for the war, and in recent days, he’s reportedly considered sending US troops in to seize them. But nuclear arms experts say the way Trump and his lead negotiator have talked about uranium enrichment raises doubts about how well they understand the technicalities.

For one, Trump keeps referring to “nuclear dust,” which is not a known term in the nuclear energy industry. And since the February 26 US-Iran nuclear talks, Steve Witkoff, a former real estate developer who has been leading US negotiations with Iran along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, has made claims that experts say betray a similarly weak expertise………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Uranium that has been enriched above the natural 0.7% level of uranium-235 and up to a 20% concentration is considered low-enriched uranium, used for civilian purposes. Commercial reactors typically require uranium enriched to less than 5%, while research reactors used for testing or medicine generally require uranium enriched to up to 20%.

Uranium enriched beyond 20% is considered highly enriched uranium, and uranium enriched above 90% is considered weapons-grade.

The higher the enrichment level, the more quickly uranium can be enriched to weapons-grade, Diaz-Maurin says. Once uranium has been enriched to 20%, a vast majority of the work required to enrich it to weapons-grade levels has been completed. It becomes exponentially easier to enrich 20% uranium to 60%; enriching from 60% to 90% is even easier, he says.

The higher the enrichment level, the lower the minimum mass of enriched uranium required to produce a bomb, says Diaz-Maurin. For example, uranium that’s been enriched above 20% can technically be used to produce a crude weapon, but you would need about 400 kilograms of it, making it inefficient and impractical. When the enrichment level goes up to 60%, the critical mass drops down to about 42 kilograms. Uranium enriched to weapons-grade requires about 28 kilograms, which can fit into a missile warhead, he says.

Since Trump pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in his first term, Iran has been enriching its uranium closer and closer to weapons-grade, though it officially proclaimed a religious prohibition against building a nuclear weapon. Now, given that the US and Israel have attacked the country as negotiations were ongoing, Iran’s hardliners in parliament are calling on the regime to advance to full nuclear armament.

Western nations, as well as the UN watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), have long expressed concerns about Iran’s production and stockpiling of highly enriched uranium. On June 12 last year, the IAEA estimated that Iran’s stockpile included 440 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60%, Diaz-Maurin wrote in a recent analysis. The next day, Israel attacked Iran, killing prominent nuclear scientists and significantly damaging Iran’s main enrichment site.

Enrichment level is an important indicator of risk, but there are a host of other factors that should be considered in assessing how quickly Iran could produce weapons-grade enriched uranium, says Kelsey Davenport, director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association. Those other considerations include the amount of enriched uranium a country has, its capacity to enrich it and whether the uranium is being held in solid fuel rods or in gas form.

“Witkoff had a poor grasp of the details,” she says.

For example, Davenport says comments that Witkoff made in the aftermath of February 26 negotiations with Iran indicated some confusion between nuclear reactors, which use enriched uranium for power, and the centrifuge facilities where the enrichment process takes place. Witkoff seemed particularly concerned about a research reactor in Tehran that he claimed was being used to stockpile highly enriched uranium. Reports from the UN’s nuclear watchdog estimate that Iran had about 45 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium stored in fuel assemblies at the reactor, which Davenport says “is not even enough for one bomb.”

To be developed into a nuclear weapon, she says the uranium at the reactor would need to be converted back to gas form and then be further enriched to weapons-grade. Before Israel’s strike on Iran’s main conversion facility last June, that might not have been difficult. Now, the situation has changed. “Could Iran convert that material back to gas form? Yes,” she says. “Could they do it quickly and easily at this point? No.”

Davenport says Witkoff was also reportedly surprised by how much enriched uranium was in Iran’s stockpile, even though this information was well documented by international inspectors. “I think he was focused on the wrong details and did not have the nuclear expertise or the expert team available to him to assess how the Iranian proposal would have impacted risk overall,” Davenport says.

Iran also said that it made an offer to dilute its 60% enriched uranium to a lower percentage, which Diaz-Maurin calls “a sound one from a non-proliferation perspective.” But he says it doesn’t appear that US negotiators took the proposal seriously. “I suspect that they did not really understand what the meaning was,” he adds. “And here we are.”

Less than two days after Witkoff and Kushner met with Iran to discuss its nuclear program, the US and Israel attacked the country. Some experts suggest that the decision was informed, at least partially, by a shallow understanding of Iran’s nuclear program and positions.

“It certainly seems as though there was a gap, and that’s a huge problem on something like this, especially when it seems like potentially a military decision was made based on things that were happening in that room,” says Connor Murray, a research analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

A month on, the US is engaged in an intense war that experts argue could potentially have been avoided with another word: Diplomacy. US and Israeli strikes have indeed severely diminished Iran’s capacities to enrich uranium, Diaz-Maurin says. But he says Iran’s know-how and political will to build nuclear weapons probably won’t be destroyed so easily.

“​​You can’t really bomb away an idea, a program and knowledge. So there will always be a suspicion that Iran is doing something,” he says. “And one could argue that now more than ever, they have incentive to accelerate whatever program they have.” https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/01/us/word-of-week-enriched-cec

April 4, 2026 Posted by | politics, Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear Power: The Real Effects 14m (Gordon Edwards 2026)

March 25, 2026 Posted by | environment, Uranium | Leave a comment

Iran’s nuclear materials and equipment remain a danger in an active war zone

March 17, 2026 , Matthew Bunn, The Conversation

Before launching his war on Iran, President Donald Trump said his most important goal was that Iran would “never have a nuclear weapon.” Yet it is not clear what, if anything, his administration has planned for dealing with Iran’s stock of enriched uranium that could be used to make nuclear bombs – or its remaining deeply buried nuclear facilities and the nuclear equipment that might be in them, or hidden elsewhere.

U.S. and Israeli strikes in June 2025 seriously damaged Iran’s major nuclear facilities and killed several prominent scientists associated with the country’s nuclear program. However, contrary to Trump’s claim that the Iranian nuclear program had been “completely obliterated,” it appears that Iran had stored much or all of its enriched uranium in deep tunnels that were not destroyed.

The Trump administration’s demand, just two days before the attacks began, that Iran export its enriched uranium stocks represented a tacit acknowledgment that Iran’s government still had control of this material or could get access to it.

So, as airstrikes on Iran continue, an unclear fate faces several elements of Iran’s nuclear program, including:

  • Its stock of enriched uranium.
  • Its centrifuges for enriching more uranium, and parts for more centrifuges.
  • Any equipment it may have for turning enriched uranium into metal, shaping it into nuclear weapons components and taking other weapons-assembly steps.
  • The documents and expertise from its past nuclear weapons program.
  • Its as-yet-intact nuclear facilities that are deep underground.

I have been studying steps to stop the spread of nuclear weapons – including managing the dangers of Iran’s nuclear program – for decades. My conclusion is that if all these capabilities remain in place, the war will have accomplished little in reducing Iran’s nuclear capability, while likely increasing the government’s belief that it needs a nuclear weapon to defend itself.

Where could Iran’s uranium be?

The most immediate concern is roughly 970 pounds (441 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium containing 60% of the U-235 isotope that is relatively easy to split. That’s what Iran was believed to have before the summer 2025 bombings, and much of it reportedly survived those strikes.

Over 440 pounds (200 kilograms) of it is reportedly stored in deep underground tunnels near Isfahan. Other stocks of this material are thought to be in a deep underground facility near Natanz known as Pickaxe Mountain, and in Fordow, one of the sites bombed in summer 2025.

Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has reportedly acknowledged that the Isfahan tunnels are too deep to destroy with bunker-buster bombs like those used on the underground Fordow facility last summer. Pickaxe Mountain, under granite, would be at least as challenging a target.

What could the uranium be used for?

With just 100 centrifuges, Iran could further enrich the 60% enriched material to be 90% or more U-235 in a few weeks. That is the concentration needed for the nuclear weapon design that Iran was working on in the secret nuclear weapons program it largely stopped in late 2003.

Even without further enrichment, the 60% enriched material could be used in a bomb, either exploding with less power or using more material and explosives.

Beyond Iran using this material itself, there are other concerns. Nobody knows who might get it if Iran’s government collapses. Some lower-level people managing it might decide to try to sell it as part of trying to save themselves from the current crisis, as happened after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. Government studies have warned that even a sophisticated terrorist group might be able to make a crude nuclear bomb if it had the needed uranium.

Could it be removed peacefully?

One possibility is that the current Iranian government, or a future one, might be willing to cooperate or at least acquiesce in getting rid of the country’s nuclear material. The existing Iranian government reportedly offered to blend it down to a lower concentration in the negotiations that Trump ended by attacking Iran in February 2026.

Highly enriched uranium has been removed from many cooperative countries over the years. One early example was Project Sapphire, in 1994, in which U.S. teams worked with Kazakhstan to fly some 1,280 pounds (580 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium to safe storage in Tennessee. Similar efforts have removed tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium from scores of sites around the world, removing the risk that terrorists could get hold of that material.

Could it be captured?

Without cooperation, and with the uranium in tunnels too deep to destroy from the air, the only other option for eliminating them could be sending in a team of either U.S. or Israeli soldiers and experts while the war continues.

U.S. special forces troops have long trained with federal scientists and experts to disable or secure adversaries’ nuclear weapons and material. But it wouldn’t be easy: Mark Esper, a defense secretary in Trump’s first term, has warned that actually doing so in Iran would take a large force and be “very perilous.”

Trump has said he would only do so if Iran was “so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight on the ground level.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Fundamentally, Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away. Ultimately, I believe, U.S. security would be best served through agreements to limit Iran’s nuclear efforts, coupled with effective international inspection, keeping watch year after year. Provisions to do that were central to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal between China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the European Union and Iran. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement in 2018, enabling Iran to make the highly enriched uranium that now poses a danger.

In my view, only diplomacy can again provide strict limits and effective monitoring in the future. But this war may well have ruined the chances for such diplomatic options for many years to come. https://theconversation.com/irans-nuclear-materials-and-equipment-remain-a-danger-in-an-active-war-zone-278008

March 18, 2026 Posted by | Iran, Uranium | Leave a comment

No to uranium mining in Greenland

February 27, 2026, by IPPNW – International Physicians fot the Prevention of Nuclear War

[Ed. note: Niels Henrik Hooge works with NOAH, the Danish branch of Friends of the Earth. He is also closely associated with Greenland’s No to Uranium Association (URANI? NAAMIK) in Nuuk. Patrick Schukalla, IPPNW Germany’s policy advisor on energy and climate, spoke with Hooge in February about the role of Greenland’s uranium resources and other subsurface wealth, and the potential threats to the territory during this period of geopolitical tension.]

PS: Although Greenland is currently on everyone’s mind, little is being learned about the island itself, its people or the Arctic ecology. Instead, the focus is on the geopolitical desires of others, both imagined and real. You have been working against large-scale mining in Greenland for a long time and have achieved significant political successes in this area. Could you tell us about that?

.NHH:………………………………………………………………….. . Denmark, which for centuries was in full control of Greenland, has made no attempts to integrate Inuit culture into the rest of Kingdom. Another striking fact is that private ownership of land does not exist and land cannot be bought or sold. You can own buildings, but not the ground. The paradox here is that you now have some of the biggest and greediest industrialists in the world trying to control property that so far has been collectively owned. This is really a clash of opposite cultures.

PS: The last time we spoke was in 2021, ahead of the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow. We discussed uranium mining and the false claims made by the industry and some governments under the slogan ‘Nuclear for Climate’. IPPNW is PS: committed to a world without nuclear threats. This includes calling for an end to uranium mining. What role does uranium play in Greenland and in your campaigns today? 

NHH: Since 2021, when the Inuit Ataqigiit party came into power, there has been a ban on uranium mining. Inuit Ataqatigiit is mainly an ecological party and I guess to some extent you could compare it to the German Greens, because it is also a mainstream party. Until 2013, the ban had existed for a quarter of a century, but it was lifted on the request of the Australian mining company, Energy Transition Minerals (ETM, formerly known as Greenland Minerals Ltd., GML), which threatened to abandon the big Kvanefjeld uranium and rare earths mining project, if ETM could not exploit the uranium deposit.

 Under GML’s ownership, the controversial project has been at the forefront of the public eye for more than a decade, and the mining project and uranium mining in general have been a major factor in the formation of at least five government coalitions since 2013. When the uranium ban was lifted, Greenlandic and Danish NGOs, including NOAH, started to cooperate to have it reinstated. Particularly, I want to emphasize our collaboration with URANI? NAAMIK, Greenland’s anti-uranium network, which played a crucial role in mobilising the public against uranium mining. Although this type of mining now is banned, the anti-uranium campaign cannot stop completely. Mining companies are lobbying the Trump administration and its associates in the private sector to intervene and changes in Greenland’s political community could fundamentally affect the status of uranium mining.

…………………………………………………………………………………….. PS: If European governments are now trying to satisfy the US without Greenland being annexed, are you worried that regulations will be weakened and the protection of the Arctic environment will be compromised?

NHH: Yes, unfortunately this is a real risk and it could start a race to the bottom. On one hand, EU’s Arctic Environment and Sustainability Strategy implies that oil, coal and gas should no longer be extracted in Arctic areas. On the other hand, EU has adopted a policy under the European Critical Raw Materials Act of fast-tracking mining projects even if they do not have support from the local population and show signs of flawed permitting or inadequate environmental impact assessments………………………………………..

PS: What are your next steps, and what would you like your friends and partners in other European countries and beyond to do?


NHH: Currently, URANI? NAAMIK and NOAH are campaigning to have mining companies which have played a role in getting the Trump administration to try to annex Greenland screened and if necessary, banned for security reasons. Furthermore, there is now a majority in the Greenlandic population to rejoin the EU as a member state, and obviously it would make sense, if EU institutions and the European NGO community started to prepare for this eventuality. In NOAH’s opinion, it would imply a conception of a European Arctic policy that includes an offer to support the Greenlandic government in protecting and preserving Greenland’s natural resources.

This could become a lighthouse project for Greenland, the Danish Kingdom and the EU, putting environmental protection on the global agenda. If mineral extraction is completely or partially abolished, the Greenlanders should of course be compensated financially. The European Parliament has supported the idea of an Arctic nature protection area in the past, using the Antarctic Treaty as a model. The idea is backed by 141 environmental organizations, including some of the largest in Europe and the world. https://peaceandhealthblog.com/2026/02/27/no-to-uranium-mining-in-greenland/

March 3, 2026 Posted by | EUROPE, opposition to nuclear, Uranium | Leave a comment

Iran suggests it could dilute highly enriched uranium for sanctions relief

Aljazeera, 9 Feb 26

Iran’s atomic energy chief makes comment as more mediated negotiations with the US expected.

Iran’s atomic energy chief says Tehran is open to diluting its highly enriched uranium if the United States ends sanctions, signalling flexibility on a key demand by the US.

Mohammad Eslami made the comments to reporters on Monday, saying the prospects of Iran diluting its 60-percent-enriched uranium, a threshold close to weapons grade, would hinge on “whether all sanctions would be lifted in return”, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

Eslami did not specify whether Iran expected the removal of all sanctions or specifically those imposed by the US.

Diluting uranium means mixing it with blend material to reduce its enrichment level. According to the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Iran is the only state without nuclear weapons enriching uranium to 60 percent.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Iran to be subject to a total ban on enrichment, a condition unacceptable to Tehran and far less favourable than a now-defunct nuclear agreement reached with world powers in 2015.

Iran maintains it has a right to a civilian nuclear programme under the provisions of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it and 190 other countries are signatories.

Eslami made his comments on uranium enrichment as the head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, prepares to head on Tuesday to Oman, which has been hosting mediated negotiations between the US and Iran.

Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem, reporting from Tehran, said Larijani, one of the most senior officials in Iran’s government, is likely to convey messages related to the ongoing talks

Trump said talks with Iran would continue this week……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/2/9/iran-suggests-it-could-dilute-highly-enriched-uranium-for-sanctions-relief

February 11, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, Uranium | Leave a comment

US DOE Awards $2.7B for Uranium Enrichment in Nuclear Power Push

Rigzone, by Jov Onsat. Tuesday, January 06, 2026

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $2.7 billion orders to three companies for enrichment services to enable the production of low-enriched uranium (LEU) and high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU)…………….

American Centrifuge Operating LLC and General Matter Inc each won $900 million to establish domestic HALEU enrichment capacity for advanced reactors. Orano Federal Services LLC also won $900 million to expand the U.S.’ LEU enrichment capacity.

……………….Currently only China and Russia can produce HALEU at a commercial scale, according to the World Nuclear Association.

January 9, 2026 Posted by | Uranium, USA | Leave a comment

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

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