Brazen Nuke Facility Raid An Inside Job?

[bananas]

Source: CBS

Brazen Nuke Facility Raid An Inside Job?
Eyewitness Talks To 60 Minutes About Brazen Assault On South African Nuclear Facility
Nov. 20, 2008

(CBS) Anton Gerber fought off four armed men before he was shot in the chest and nearly died. But he may have prevented the unthinkable: bomb-grade uranium, enough to make a dozen nuclear weapons, in the hands of mysterious masked gunmen.

In his first television interview, the burly South African tells 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley how he fought with armed attackers who infiltrated what should be a highly secured South African nuclear facility containing bomb-grade, highly enriched uranium, or HEU, and provides details that point to an inside job.

The interview will be broadcast this Sunday, Nov. 23, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Gerber, a 30-year employee at the Pelindaba facility, was in the plant's Emergency Control Center at 1 a.m. last November when the attackers broke into the building. They had breached and shut off a 10,000-volt barbed-wire fence and eluded security cameras and guards at one of the country’s most secure facilities.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/20/60minutes/main4621623.shtml

[TheWraith]

1. I'd like to know what that uranium was doing there...

Since nuclear reactors don't use weapons grade material.

[dixiegrrrrl]

2. It is a nuke weapons making site, not a reactor.

Wiki says:
"The Pelindaba nuclear research facility is situated near the Hartbeespoort Dam, west of Pretoria in the Republic of South Africa. It is South Africa's main Nuclear Research Centre, run by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa, and was the location where South Africa's atomic bombs of the 1970s were developed, constructed and subsequently stored"

The info from the company does not add up, per the linked story.

Despite 2 teams of armed men who avoided all detection and managed to dis-arm the electric fence, Rob Adam, CEO of the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa and the top executive of Pelindaba, says:
"If these were sophisticated terrorists, Anton Gerber wouldn’t be alive to tell his tale today… I think that it was a piece of random criminality, frankly," he tells Pelley.

Oh...well, ok then...random...unplanned.

Can we have a "I smell a coverup" smilie.?

[TheWraith]

3. Then why do they still have it?

South Africa dismantled their nuclear weaponry decades ago. They've had plenty of time to get rid of this uranium, either by diluting it for use in their reactors, or transferring it to a country which could better deal with it, like the US or France.

[More_liberal_than_mo]

4. But they didn't

get rid of the weapons grade stuff. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelindaba
even though the South Africans dismantled their production facilities in 1991 they held on to the uranium. It is stored at this site. Maybe they hope to sell it one day? There are rumors that many of the South African nuclear scientists have sold their services to the highest bidders (mostly Middle Eastern countries including Israel and even Al Qaeda).

[bertman]

5. Recced and kicked. This is very important information to get out to the public.

[HCE SuiGeneris]

6. Wonder where Cheney was during the lead up to this incident?

[tabatha]

7. About Pelindaba

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/rsa/pelindaba.htm

They do scientific research there still today.

Building 1200 - Medical unit, converted to the Wildlife Breeding Research Centre (WBRC) headquarters and laboratory in March 1996.

The SAFARI-1 reactor is supported by a comprehensive infrastructure, including -

* a large inventory of highly enriched uranium
* an MTR fuel manufacturing plant
* extensive hot cell facilities
* an Isotope Centre
* a pipe storage facility for interim storage of spent fuel
* two disposal sites for low and medium-level radioactive waste
* theoretical reactor physics support
* radiochemistry, including radiopharmaceutical research
* radioanalysis

The two most important commercial products produced by SAFARI-1 are fission Mo-99 and the transmutation doping of silicon. The former application is rapidly growing and will contribute significantly to covering the running costs of SAFARI-1 in the future. In the mid-1990s the Atomic Energy Corporation of South Africa expanded its Mo-99 production capacity at its Safari-1 research reactor to 1000 curies per week. Other commercial applications relate to isotope production, materials modification, neutron activation analysis and the provision of general irradiation services.

In the late 1990s. to carry out its regulatory control function on safeguards of nuclear materials more cost-effectively, the AEC's vault of highly enriched uranium for the SAFARI-1 reactor, together with a number of other locations elsewhere in the world, were fitted with Remote Monitoring Systems by the IAEA. These systems allow the IAEA to carry out direct surveillance of any nuclear material store through encrypted direct signals to Vienna.

In 1998 the AEC commissioned its interim retrievable dry store at Pelindaba for spent fuel from SAFARI-1 after receiving the necessary safety and safeguards approvals from the Council for Nuclear Safety and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, respectively. As a result, 120 spent fuel elements were transported from the spent fuel racks in the pool of SAFARI-1 research reactor to the retrievable dry store on Thabana.

[ohio2007]

9. Somebody on the "inside" wasn't making enough $$$. and now,that person may be ready for retirement

if all goes as planned ;)

[tabatha]

11. There is theft all over the country.

Telephone cables, copper cables, etc.

It is quite plausible that it was an inside job to take away other stuff.

[Psephos]

8. But haven't we already decided nuclear proliferation is no big deal?

You know, like who are we or anyone else to say others can't have nukes? It's their right.

:sarcasm:

[tabatha]

10. Here is the full program.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4628643n