[url]http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,70451,00.html[/url]

Hmmmm.....weapons grade nuclear material missing....Bin Laden talking about a "spectacular attack on US".....are the two connected?

If so, let's hope they hit the WEST coast this time. (tongue in cheek)

We, the USA, have plenty of weapons grade material missing.

You know guys, this is the first time inmy life that I have real concerns of a large scale terrorist attack on US soil.

Bring em here one-on-one or in groups and we can handle them (read: shoot them), but a terrorist attack we can't do a damn thing about.

There is a real possibility that one or more "suitcase" nukes could in the US and ready to detonate.  Open borders and poor accountability for Russia's tactical nuke warheards spells real trouble folks.

Damn.  I'm concerned to say the least.

CMOS

Shew,

Everybody throws around theories as to what they actually have.  We don't know how much Uranium is actually missing out of Russia.  

But how much Uranium is missing out of China???
Pakistan??India??

The So Called Suitcase Nukes???


Who knows, the day the sun raises twice, we'll know.

See the fact of the matter is.

Russia does not know how much is missing. Because A part of me says that they dont write to or record any of that crap..

They don't write down for safekeeping in some politburo safe.

"DATE:TIME:Reactor A produced xxx grams of Uranium and that is stored in case C in vault D in the St. Petersburg storage facility."

Russia was full of wholes as far as security goes. They let the information dripple out to the media.. One story or so every 6 months.

Russia is either unwilling to state for the world the full extent of their lack of security or they just don't know because they didn't keep records of anything..

????

I once heard a story of America paying in Gold for a shipment of Weapons grade material. Just to get it out of russia..

Just to add to the conversation.


Is that uranium in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
2002-10-01 18:24:49

After much fanfare and hype this weekend over a container with 33 pounds of "weapons-grade uranium" found in Turkey, we now know two things: When measuring the weight of a substance, you should SUBTRACT the weight of its 32.7 pound LEAD CONTAINER, and before announcing that you have "weapons-grade uranium", you should make sure that what you have is actually uranium, and not ZINC, MANGANESE, IRON, and ZIRCONIUM.

When naturally-occurring uranium ore (U3O8) is mined it contains the following percentage of uranium isotopes (+/- 0.1%):


99.283% U238
0.711% U235
0.005% U234

U235 is the stuff that explodes. To make naturally-occurring uranium and turn it into "weapons-grade" uranium you have to get rid of the 99.283% U238 and the 0.005% U234 that's in the ore. In order to get 33 pounds of "weapons-grade uranium" (U235) you need to refine at least 3300 pounds of pure uranium ore. Figure that most ore contains dirt and other stuff that's no good and you end up with sifting through many tons of raw materials to get that 33 pounds of "weapons-grade uranium".

In other words, to announce to the world that you've confiscated 33 pounds of uranium could be an honest mistake -- someone taken in by a container that was faked up to look like something it was not. To go on and make the claim that you have weapons-grade uranium, which is a specific type of uranium that is extremely dangerous and requires specialized tests to verify that claim, then we're left with a few possibilities:


1.There's enough weapons-grade uranium missing from the world's supplies that authorities are quick to suspect that anything they find that might be weapons-grade uranium actually is weapons-grade uranium.
2.Some official thought they could lie that they'd found "weapons-grade uranium" and get away with that lie.
3.Some official who is thought to be responsible enough to handle weapons-grade uranium doesn't know weapons-grade uranium from a bunch of crappy lesser metals.
4.Journalists made the whole thing up to sell more newpapers/magazines/TV advertising, because staying employed is more important than reporting the facts.

It's probably some combination of all of the above, which isn't a pleasant thought. If it'll make you any happier, think of a suicide bomber wasting himself and covering locals with a dusting of ZINC, MANGANESE, IRON, and ZIRCONIUM.

Oh yeah, we also learned a third thing: If you find a container labeled "primarily youranuom", you might be dealing with a poorly-crafted FAKE.

Formula for making the American people compliant and easily governed:

1) Scare the bejeesus out of them using stories about nukes and/or bio/chem weapons.

2) Repeat often and sensationally, use "Breaking News" as often as possible.