Russia to airlift bomb-grade uranium from Germany (former E. Germ. research reactors)

[jpak]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10414246

BERLIN - Russian experts will airlift 300kg of enriched uranium, much of it weapons-grade, from a Soviet-era nuclear research reactor in eastern Germany back to Russia, officials said today.

"We cannot release the precise date due to security reasons," said a nuclear official in Germany acquainted with plans to remove 200kg of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and 100kg of low-enriched uranium from the research reactor in Rossendorf, outside Dresden.

The 200kg of HEU could theoretically fuel around 10 nuclear weapons if the material is pure enough, he said.

<snip>

In an August 2006 fact sheet, the US Department of Energy said the GTRI programme had secured more than 400 sites around the world containing enough radioactive material for 6000 "dirty bombs", crude explosives laced with nuclear material.

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[Squatch]

1. That's like 2 cups worth of U

The shit is dense, ya know?

[Poll_Blind]

2. 300 KG of Uranium is alot more than 2 cups. The fissile core of an...

....atom-bomb is something like a fist/grapefruit-sized sphere of highly-enriched uranium. So, at least 10 fist or grapefruit-sized spheres could be made from that amount.

I want me 2 cups of brown dawrf. There's some dense for a holiday fruitcake... Two cups of material from a brown dwarf would weigh as much as a pretty-respectable mountain range.

PB