A common joke among nuclear policy analysts is that the best way to move an atomic bomb across a national border would be to hide it inside a truckload of marijuana. In other words, smuggling routes used by average criminals provide good cover for the occasional piece of nuclear merchandise.
Fueled by a rising worldwide interest in nuclear power, the price of uranium soared in 2007 and in the rush to put old fields back into production, a company called Brinkley Mining signed an agreement in 2007 with the Democratic Republic of Congo for the exploration and exploitation of Shinkolobwe, where the supply of uranium seemed to be bottomless.
As a bonus to the Congo – and perhaps a sign of eagerness – Brinkley also pledged to help fix the dilapidated nuclear reactor in Kinshasa and install radiation detectors to keep stolen uranium from leaving the country.
The deal soon fell apart. Police in Congo arrested two of Kinshasa’s top nuclear officials and accused them of conspiring in a criminal plot to illegally export the country’s uranium. The pair were released from jail within the week, though kept under investigation. A deputy mining minister said the leases were invalid. “Uranium is a reserved mineral,” he told a reporter. “We want to leave it for future generations.”
The mystery of the illicit buying continued. There was no accounting of how many bags of uranium might have left Shinkolobwe under a truck tarp and smuggled through Zambia to places unknown. A few Western diplomats suggested that purchasing agents for Iran may have been the ultimate buyers. It might also have been elements of the A.Q. Khan sales network, or terrorists looking for shrapnel in a dirty bomb.
A more banal possibility, and one more likely than any of these, is that it was simply hoarded up by a speculator waiting for a buyer to come forward, much as the Belgian company had patiently awaited a visit from the U.S. Army in the 1940s. The uranium could not be fashioned into a weapon all by itself, but it might be useful to a state with nuclear ambitions. The purloined ore could be fed into a graphite-moderated heavy water reactor, such as those now located at Khushab in Pakistan or Arak in Iran, or even Cirrus in India, which can run on natural uranium. Though this would be a cheaper path to a bomb than conventional enrichment, such a scheme would require a campus that would be hard to conceal from spy satellites. At a minimum, there would have to be a yellowcake mill, a fuel fabrication plant, a reactor and a sophisticated reprocessing shop with glove boxes, precision gear and tubs of nitric acid. A nation which attempted such a cut-rate Manhattan Project would face formidable barriers. They would need millions of dollars and the unpredictable factor of luck. But seventy years of history has shown that nations are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices and challenge long odds to enter the club of the privileged. Nine nations have made the journey thus far.
If a speculator did take a flier in black-market uranium from Shinkolobwe, it would not be difficult to hide it from prying eyes. It could be barreled and stacked in an obscure corner of an industrial yard. It could be stored in a row of tin sheds in a forest. For that matter, it could simply be piled out in the open air, with the perfect disguise as a gravel heap. Rain or snow will not harm it. And its fissile potency will not substantially diminish until approximately seven hundred million years have passed.
After about two hours, we came to the ruins of a metal fence nearly covered in the jacaranda trees on the side of the road. There were a few bricks scattered about. It felt like we were walking through the leavings of a bygone civilization -- a garrison on the Roman frontier, perhaps, or one of the forgotten silver villas in the Andes. But this was antiquity of the atomic age.
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20 Comments
Add CommentThis is a great story! Thanks!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNuklear energie, Nein Danke
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisvery good informative article
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery interesting. Maybe it's in the book, but I was waiting to read about the actual radiation levels in and around the cave. I'm sure he didn't go there without a geigercounter...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"We were there for several minutes before I realized that I still had the letter of authorization from the police official in my backpack. I hadnt needed to withdraw it because we hadnt encountered a single roadblock. Nobody was guarding Shinkolobwe. We had walked right in."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTranslation: I was conned by a corrupt cop.
Very interesting exerpt. I was already intrigued by the book before reading this, now I know I really want to read this book.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSooo...Does that mean i can buy Uranium on Craigslist lol? Obviously just being facetious but somebody malicious might be doing that this very minute!!!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI guess you can... @ http://www.unitednuclear.com/ It looks like it's not a joke but that they actually do business.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is the science?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAh..the safest energy source on the planet!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt what point does the intenational community say "this resource is unable to be managed by the corrupt and greedy legacy of the Belgian colonialists and their spawn now in charge (the greed just comes with the poverty of spirit so equally abundant in human nature) and so the UN will oust the current regime and return to them a country where certain activities will not be administerd by the soveriegn itself but by international oversight." The sooner the better. As instabilities in national security arises, it will become a more and more unavoidable measure...and who knows, maybe it will result in a future Congo that is not all screwed up by its collective ignorance and obsession with personal power.
The book should be required reading for everyone in the world. Another fine example of destruction from beneath the ground on up. Seems not one major country has had radio-active free hands. And it seems the Chinese are Africa's favorite client or is that baron these days? They are wood pulping their arses off there now, destroying forests. What's next? I see them importing Chinese people by the province.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdoug 1 said "At what point does the inte[r]national community say ""this resource is unable to be managed by the corrupt and greedy legacy of the Belgian colonialists and their spawn now in charge (the greed just comes with the poverty of spirit so equally abundant in human nature) and so the UN will oust the current regime and return to them a country where certain activities will not be administerd by the soveriegn itself but by international oversight.""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to say this is unlikely, that the UN could, possibly, make a moral resolution condemning what's going on there and that the regime is not going to be removed, but will never act on it, and then at some point the US could sign this into law, but not act on it, and then when a president finally does he'll be blamed for not consulting the world and UN which condemns the intervention they themselves helped draft resolutions upon, and which his predecessor signed into law.
doug 1 said "At what point does the inte[r]national community say ""this resource is unable to be managed by the corrupt and greedy legacy of the Belgian colonialists and their spawn now in charge (the greed just comes with the poverty of spirit so equally abundant in human nature) and so the UN will oust the current regime and return to them a country where certain activities will not be administerd by the soveriegn itself but by international oversight.""
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to say this is unlikely, that the UN could, possibly, make a moral resolution condemning what's going on there and that the regime is not going to be removed, but will never act on it, and then at some point the US could sign this into law, but not act on it, and then when a president finally does he'll be blamed for not consulting the world and UN which condemns the intervention they themselves helped draft resolutions upon, and which his predecessor signed into law.
The poor planet earth must be silently wailing over the fact it gave birth to the wicked and voracious predator called human beings. This species arrogantly believes itself to be the most intelligent animal, but ironically it is the only life form that has been surreptitiously dragging itself to mass-suicide in not so a distant future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a geologist and a mining company executive, and having worked for the past 9 years in the African mining business, I can tell you that Zoellner is factually cahallenged and is also straining, through inuindo, misinterpretation of facts and implications, to fabricate the notion that that there is something sinister and mysterious about mining in the Congo. Abandoned mines are found all aross the world and there is nothing special about them . An abandoned mine is simply an abandoned hole in the ground no matter where it is.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSmall scale local miners ("galemsey") work in every mining district in Africa both active and abandoned. If there was uranium worth mining (even at galemse wages) at Shinkolobwe there would have been a large contingent of galemse there. If there was no one working the day of his tour, there is no no uranuim left - period.
Also note that galemse are never going to produce the huge tonnages of ore that are requred to support the develoment of a nation's nuclear weapons program. U235 constitutes less that 1% of the urnium atoms in the ore and the uranium atoms typically constitute less that 1% of the ore, and ore tyically constitutes less than 10 to 20% of the rock that must be moved to get the ore. And since the Shinkolobwe deposit has been mined out and abandoned, the uranium grade is probably extremetly low. A few barrels of low grade ore grabbed by a galemse is never going to pose a threat o anyone, even a truck load of barrels full of uranium ore is a drop in the bucket of what is needed to develope a weapons program.
His tory is simply an romatic account of being swindled by the Congolese while traveling about Africa. No facts nor information otherwise in his story.
Is the author for real, or a sensationalist? I saw him interviewed by John Stewart (who was flippant, as expected) but was surprised at the equally flippant and misleading responses. He looks to me like a quickie biography specialist, not someone with in depth knowledge of the subject.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFascinating. It is interesting that a Google Earth search does not locate a place with the name Shinkolobwe. Considering the historical and potentially dangerous significance of Shinkolobwe, it is surprising that there is no listing. Is there another geographic name?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid
The mine can clearly be seen on Google Earth at 11 degrees 02 minutes 59.53 seconds North and 26 degrees, 32 minutes and 52.79 seconds East. The imagery is of high quality, which is sort of odd in the middle of nowhere, except of course when there is a uranium mine to watch.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfufu
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is disgraceful that mining companies are not made to restore land into a fit condition after abandonning workings. The cost of doing this should be included in the unit cost of nuclear-powered electricity. If this were so, such countries as France would soon think twice about building new reactors...
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