30 kilograms (66 pounds) of depleted uranium seized

Frank Rizzo says on Mar 27, 2008, 15:20:

Holy moly!!!

vicshere says on Mar 27, 2008, 16:25:

no uranime was sized...what you talking about....change your title

listo

famsearch says on Mar 27, 2008, 19:41:

Colombia Investigates Uranium Find
By FRANK BAJAK – 1 hour ago

BOGOTA (AP) — The Defense Ministry said Thursday it was investigating whether 66 pounds of uranium found buried by a roadside in southern Bogota was material being sought by leftist rebels.

Colombian authorities said earlier this month that they were worried by a document found in the laptop of a slain rebel that indicated the guerrillas were trying to obtain uranium.

It wasn't clear, Vice President Francisco Santos said at the time, whether the rebels sought to create a radioactive weapon. The document made it appear as if the insurgents were seeking to resell uranium at a profit.

The two uranium chunks found Wednesday were described by Colombia's military chief as "impoverished." Only uranium enriched through processing — something most countries, including Colombia, are not equipped to do — can be used to make nuclear weapons or power reactors, scientists say.

Two informants who had contact with a Bogota arms dealer led authorities to the uranium, said Sgt. Elizabeth Filigrana, a spokeswoman for armed forces chief Gen. Freddy Padilla. Their identities were not made public.

"It appears they were the custodians of the uranium," she told The Associated Press. She said authorities were investigating whether rebels of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces, or FARC, were trying to purchase the heavy metal.

"Uranium is not particularly radioactive. The fact that you can dig it out of the ground and it's been there for 5 billion years tells you that it's not terribly radioactive," Ivan Oelrich, an expert with the Federation of American Scientists, said by phone from the United States.

Tons of natural uranium are mined annually, with the biggest mines in Africa and Australia, and it costs about $70 a pound, he said.

Oelrich said that if the FARC, which has been fighting Colombian governments for more than four decades, were truly interested in creating a radioactive dirty bomb — a crude device wedding explosives with radioactive material — it would be looking to highly radioactive isotopes.

Colombia Probes FARC Ties to Uranium Seized in Bogota (Update3)

By Joshua Goodman

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Colombian authorities are investigating what the country's biggest guerrilla group planned to do with 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of depleted uranium seized in a raid on the outskirts of Bogota.

General Freddy Padilla, head of Colombia's armed forces, said in a news conference yesterday that authorities were led to the buried cache by informants linked to an arms dealer named on the computer of slain rebel leader Raul Reyes. The find supports intelligence that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, were trying to get uranium since 2005, Padilla said.

``It's exactly the same material listed on Reyes' computer,'' Padilla said. ``Why the FARC were so anxious to obtain this material we still don't know.''

The seizure of the uranium underscores the value of intelligence gleaned from a half-dozen laptops the military captured from the FARC this month and shows how the underground operations of the 44-year-old insurgency are crumbling. Colombia used data from Reyes's hard drives, taken after a lethal cross- border raid into Ecuador, to implicate the governments of Venezuela and Ecuador in supporting the rebels.

Colombia's Vice President Francisco Santos said earlier this month that evidence on the laptops showed the FARC was seeking 50 kilograms of uranium to build dirty bombs, conventional explosives used in conjunction with radioactive materials.

Health Risk

The depleted uranium, found yesterday in a rural area outside the city, poses no health risk and can't be used to build a dirty bomb, said Charles Ferguson, a nuclear affairs analyst at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. A video released by the Colombian military showed the metal had a slow radiation rate of 1.5 Microsieversts per hour, he said.

``You could stand next to this material for days and nothing would happen to you, unless you dropped it on your foot,'' said Ferguson.

Possible uses for the FARC might include making armor- piercing conventional weapons or an ingestible poison, Ferguson said. Less likely, the metal could be used as a shield while handling more potent radioactive materials that would be used to make a dirty bomb.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said the U.S. is ``deeply concerned'' by the seizure. ``We hope Colombian officials conducting this investigation will be able to determine the FARC's intended use of the uranium,'' she said.

The U.S., Canada and the European Union classify the FARC as a terrorist group.

`Stronger Rocket'

Mario Ballesteros, head of the state-run geology institute Ingeominas, said a study of the uranium, its possible uses and health risk would be presented on Friday, EFE news agency reported today.

``The FARC may have wanted this material to build a stronger rocket that destroys the president or a minister's armored car, not create a weapon of mass destruction,'' said Cesar Restrepo, from Bogota's Security and Democracy Foundation.

Padilla said informants he didn't identify, who are close to an alleged arms supplier Reyes called ``Belisario,'' led the military to the uranium. Authorities are investigating the origin of the material, he said.

Embossed on the two metal lodes, in English, was the warning ``Caution: Radioactive Material. Depleted Uranium,'' according to the military's video.

The computer files already led authorities in Costa Rica on March 17 to uncover $480,000 in cash at a guerrilla safe house. Authorities said the files were also useful in tracking down in Thailand suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

``Reyes's computers are proving to be a gold mine, everything listed on it that President Hugo Chavez says are lies is proving true,'' said Restrepo.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez has said evidence on Reyes's computers showing he funneled $300 million to the FARC was a fabrication.

``This computer could say anything,'' he said during a visit today to Brazil.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joshua Goodman in Bogota at Jgoodman19 at bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 27, 2008 19:03 EDT


Colombia says uranium find points to FARC's dangerous ambition
4 hours ago

BOGOTA (AFP) — Colombia's FARC rebels may have intended to use low-grade uranium in a "dirty bomb" to bill themselves as international terrorists, the government said Thursday after announcing it found a stash of the radioactive material.

The Colombian Defense Ministry said 30 kilograms (66 pounds) of uranium were found along a roadside in a Bogota slum after two rebels tipped authorities to their whereabouts. On Tuesday, a laboratory said a sample it analyzed was depleted uranium.

The find confirmed earlier government reports that the rebels were looking to buy uranium, after computer files seized in a rebel camp inside Ecuador yielded messages to that effect. The files were captured in a Colombian cross-border raid on March 1.

Armed with the computer evidence, Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos, a few days later at the UN Disarmament Conference in Geneva, accused the rebel group of seeking radioactive material "to make dirty weapons to destroy and terrorize."

National Police Chief Oscar Naranjo said "FARC are taking crucial steps in the world of terrorism to make themselves known as a great international, global aggressor.

"We're not just talking about a domestic guerrilla group," he said, before calling for a "continental effort ... to neutralize FARC's terrorist activities."

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest rebel group, has been fighting to overthrow the Bogota government for more than 40 years, and recently struck a relationship with leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez, who backed Ecuador in its week-long row with Colombia over the cross-border raid, sympathises with the FARC, which he claims have legitimate "belligerent status," instead of the terrorist label the United States, Europe and Colombia give it.

After Colombia's cross-border raid, which according to Bogota was carried out with US intelligence support, Chavez accused the United States of provoking the crisis.

On Thursday, Chavez during a visit to Brazil dismissed the uranium find, and implicitly referring to the United States warned that "there are still some flames flickering (from the earlier crisis).

"We're certain there are powerful interests wanting to destabilize our regions ... we're still getting statements ... provocations," he said, noting with irony that the information on the uranium stash had conveniently come from "that magical computer."

The director of the Ingeominas laboratory, Mario Ballesteros, said a proper reading of the radioactive level of the seized uranium would come over the weekend, adding that the population was not at risk from the mere presence of depleted uranium.

Depleted uranium can be used in a "dirty bomb" to disseminate cancer-causing radioactivity, although France's Institute of International and Strategic Relations Director Georges Le Guelte said: "Nobody really knows how efficient a device of that sort can be."

The material is a residue of the enriching and reprocessing of uranium. It has a low-level of radioactivity and can be used to make missiles capable of penetrating armor and then bursting into flame.

The two informants who led Colombian authorities to the uranium were close to a rebel leader known as "Belisario," who is also mentioned in the captured computer belonging to FARC's second-in-command Raul Reyes, said Armed Forces Commander General Freddy Padilla.

Reyes was killed in the March 1 raid.

A FARC statement issued after the raid dismissed Bogota's uranium allegations.

"Only developed countries like the United States and others have the required conditions and technology to process uranium, and not a guerrilla group that is still fighting for the dignity of a people with rifles and even sticks," it said.



Colombia seizes 60lb of depleted uranium
By Jeremy McDermott in Medellin
Last Updated: 1:19am GMT 28/03/2008



Colombia's government has claimed that Leftist rebels were plotting to make a "dirty" radiological bomb after security agents seized 60 lb of low-grade depleted uranium.

The radioactive material was found buried by the side of a main road near Bogota, the capital.

The seizure comes weeks after the Colombian air force bombed a guerrilla camp in Ecuador, killing Raul Reyes, the "public face" of the Farc revolutionary group.

advertisementThe government claimed that three computers seized after the raid showed that the guerillas were looking to acquire uranium in order to make a dirty bomb.

While depleted uranium cannot be used to make a nuclear weapon, it could be mixed with explosives to spread radiological material.

The government also said the computers showed that Venezuela and Ecuador were supporting the Farc.

But presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador both insisted that the Colombian military was telling lies to justify its bombing of Ecuadorean territory.

"It is now so hard to believe anything the Colombian government says, there have been so many lies," said Wellington Sandoval, Ecuador's defence minister.

A defence attaché at an embassy in Bogota also cast doubt on the claims, believing it unlikely that the Farc had the know-how to make a bomb.



Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright

dan

famsearch says on Mar 27, 2008, 19:43:

i would say that if ap, bloomberg, afp, and the london daily telegraph report it, one would think it's pretty much true...

dan

poco says on Mar 27, 2008, 20:36:

Quote: i would say that if ap, bloomberg, afp, and the london daily telegraph report it, one would think it's pretty much true...

I saw this article on Aljazerra earlier this evening, wondered how long it would take to make the posts.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A14058E0-BC7A-428C-9690-E7A8AC2...

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent" - Isaac Asimov

poco says on Mar 27, 2008, 20:51:

I'm having trouble determing if I'd die sooner ingesting chicken fried in palm oil or a depleted uranium garnish?

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent" - Isaac Asimov

Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 27, 2008, 21:18:

I suggest you stick with the palm oil chicken.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

poco says on Mar 27, 2008, 21:27:

Quote: I suggest you stick with the palm oil chicken.

Well then,, how about a palm oil fried chicken washed down with a glass of roundup?

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent" - Isaac Asimov

Mr. Hollywood says on Mar 27, 2008, 21:39:

Better to use the Roundup on the palm oil trees and just bbq the chicken.

poco says on Mar 27, 2008, 22:06:

Quote: Better to use the Roundup on the palm oil trees and just bbq the chicken.

You're right, much better for living to a ripe old age. I'm taking a bag of mesquite. I doubt if I'll find any locally.

"Violence is the first refuge of the incompetent" - Isaac Asimov

Chriscan says on Mar 28, 2008, 03:26:

dpleted uranium is nasty the way the americans leave a dust of it in Iraq but I can't imagine the FARC making much use of it. This shows how the government can distort the news from the ealier reports of the possibility of a dirty bomb.

This is hardly news at all unless you have a bullet proof vest.

************* WARNING ************* my words often come from my ass

jorgegdiaz says on Mar 28, 2008, 05:37:

Isaid it before: Looks like that "Belisario" dealer was trying to scam FARC... hahahha

Man with hole in pocket feel cocky all day.

famsearch says on Mar 28, 2008, 23:11:

chris, depleted uranium is usually used in armor piercing rounds for tanks...

dan

Chriscan says on Mar 29, 2008, 00:16:

I guess all I can do is upgrate the radar jamming unit on my tank then and lie low

************* WARNING ************* my words often come from my ass