Goldman Sachs decides to stop trading uranium after links to Iran exposed

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/14/goldman-sachs-decides-to-stop-trading-uranium-after-links-to-iran-exposed/



Goldman Sachs decides to stop trading uranium after links to Iran exposed
By Reuters
Friday, February 14, 2014 11:58 EST
By David Sheppard

LONDON (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are quietly trying to get out of a business few people know they are even in: trading supplies of raw uranium known as yellowcake.

In the last four years, the banks have amassed low-grade stockpiles of the nuclear fuel ingredient larger than those held by Iran, and enough to run China’s nuclear plants for a year.

Goldman’s uranium business can trace its roots back to an apartheid-era South African trading conglomerate that sold Iran its only known source of foreign yellowcake 35 years ago. To this day, that uranium delivery underpins Iran’s disputed enrichment program, which western powers fear is aimed at developing atomic weapons, although Iran denies that.

Now, under mounting political scrutiny of Wall Street’s role in physical commodities trading, and following a collapse in demand after the Fukushima disaster, both firms have put their uranium trading desks up for sale. But other banks are already lining up to take their place.