U.S.-Russian team seize uranium from Bulgarian plant
Peter Baker, Washington Post
Published December 24, 2003 URAN24
MOSCOW -- A Russo-American team of nuclear specialists backed by armed security
units swooped into a shuttered Bulgarian reactor and seized 37 pounds of highly
enriched uranium, in a secret operation intended to forestall nuclear
terrorism, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The mission, which was organized with the cooperation of Bulgarian authorities,
removed nearly enough uranium to make a small weapon, the officials said.
It was the third time since last year that U.S. and Russian authorities have
teamed up to retrieve highly enriched uranium from Soviet-era facilities.
U.S. authorities have begun stepping up such joint operations with the
Russians. In August 2002, a team from the two countries retrieved 100 pounds of
weapons-grade uranium from an aging reactor in Yugoslavia. The second uranium
seizure took place three months ago, when 30 pounds was removed from Romania.
The complexity of the Bulgarian operation demonstrated the challenges involved.
Officials focused on a former Soviet-designed, two-megawatt reactor built in
the capital of Sofia in 1959. The reactor was closed in 1989.
An International Atomic Energy Agency team, accompanied by U.S. and Russian
nuclear engineers, removed seals from storage containers and verified the
contents before the material was loaded into four special canisters provided by
the Russian government. The United States paid the $400,000 bill for the
mission. The uranium was transported to an airport about 100 miles northeast of
Sofia and flown to a secure site in Russia.
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