In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania | Hacker News Reader

In the 1960s, hundreds of pounds of uranium went missing in Pennsylvania

foreignpolicy.com

93 pointsaburan2832 comments

Here is what the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has to say about the NUMEC affair: "Time for real transparency. It's fair to ask, in view of the other losses in the US nuclear weapons complex, why the CIA and others singled out NUMEC for grave suspicion as the source for Israeli bomb-grade uranium. In brief, the reasons are these: NUMEC's unexplained losses were a significantly larger proportion of its throughput of highly enriched uranium than was the case for other firms that dealt with nuclear materials. Sloppy accounting and lax security made the plant easy to rob without detection. NUMEC had commercial relationships with Israel’s defense and nuclear establishments and regularly made sizeable nuclear shipments to Israel, which at that time were not checked by the AEC. NUMEC’s owners and executives had extremely close ties to Israel, including to high Israeli intelligence and nuclear officials. Israel had strong motives to obtain the highly enriched uranium before it was producing enough plutonium for weapons. High-level Israeli intelligence operatives visited the NUMEC plant. Israeli intelligence organizations were used to running logistically complicated, risky operations to support nuclear weapons development, and it would have been very much out of character for them to pass up an opportunity like this. On top of all this, records show the CIA believed its 1968 environmental sample taken in Israel evidenced an enrichment level unique to Portsmouth."

http://thebulletin.org/did-israel-steal-bomb-grade-uranium-u...

TL;DR: It probably ended up in Israel at the Dimona reactor.

That was bought for "peaceful purposes" in the 1950s from France.

It's reasonably well known that Israel got enriched uranium from somebody (Israel never built a gaseous diffusion plant; those are huge, consume vast amounts of power, and can't be hidden), but whether it was the US, France, or South Africa is still an open question.[1]

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04...

I grew up a short drive away from Apollo. I can see a family member's house in the "cover photo." Really glad I got out of there.

Anyway, natural uranium is no way a hard-to-get asset for a state-level actor. It is found nearly everywhere - although most of the ores are too low concentration for profitable production - but given the market price of uranium is under $100 a pound it is no problem to spend an order of magnitude more to get a few tons for a reactor to produce bomb plutonium.

This was weapons grade uranium, U235. Not to mention that plutonium was also found at this site

http://www.npolicy.org/article_file/Revisiting_the_NUMEC.pdf

Right. Yet again mention that old fact of history.

And IIRC, it wasn't just natural uranium that was "missing".

And what happened to that material? Three guesses, and the first two don't count. If you have to ask, you won't really understand it!

Maybe this time mention that history to update ISIS. No doubt Assad and the Iranians know, and so did Saddam.

Some people are slow on the uptake and failing to understand the history and playing politics with me. Look, I'm not objecting to the supply chain and materials requirements planning. Fine with me.

And my suggestion, I thought clear enough, was that the purpose of the article was likely just to remind some people with desires for big time fireworks about the old accounting lapses.

I'm not the only one: Notice the crucial, relevant line in The Sum of All Fears -- this accounting has been known for a long time.

In particular some of the recent threats are against not just US interests but against the US itself, indeed, where I live. So, sure I like the purpose of the article.

You are being downmodded not for your opinion but for using a ton of words to say nothing whatsoever.

in a verbose and roundabout way, he is stating that <insert Arab terrorists here> could pilfer this and use it for a non-state actor bomb

No. Not even close. Way, way off.

Gads, no one here knows the story.

Hint: What country in the Mideast is widely believed to have some nuke bombs and has had for many years?

Hint: There's only one.

Hint: Considering how long, say, Iran has been working on concentrating uranium, just how the heck did the first country in the Mideast get the critical materials?

Hint: As in the movie The Sum of All Fears -- I thought that enough people has seen that movie to get it.

Solution: Some years ago, some accounting errors in or near Pennsylvania -- that's the usual story.

Understand now, or is this still too vague?

Again, my guess at the purpose of the OP now is to point out again to other countries and any terrorists that they better not mess with the Mideast country that has long had nuke bombs.

Now, let's be totally clear: At no point did I say that long ago Israel got some chunks of nuke bomb material from some accounting errors from some place in Pennsylvania and that those errors were the source of Israel having nuke bombs. I did not say that! But it has been said often enough before by others.

Too many words to understand this time?

The many words don't make the post any clearer.

I wonder what situation you think might come up where this oblique dancing around is better than just saying directly that the material could have ended up in Israel and that they would use it to make nuclear weapons.

(To be clear, I understood your original post and voted it up from gray prior to you posting the second comment)

> oblique dancing around

That part was a joke and also to soften the point of the old claim that the US gave Israel plutonium for Israel's plutonium nuke bombs.

For the joke, my post was to suggest that the OP was an "oblique dancing around" way for Israel to remind its enemies that, according to the old story, it got plutonium for bombs from a deliberate US accounting error from an effort in Pennsylvania. Since the old story and also, with my conjecture, the OP were "oblique dancing around", so was my post.

I thought that nearly everyone on HN would have known the old story that the US gave Israel the plutonium they needed -- heck, that old story was even in the movie The Sum of All Fears. Looks like much of the HN community would have missed the point in the movie also. Apparently the movie makers also over estimated the historical knowledge of the HN audience.

Got it now?

So what you are using an unbelievable number of words to say is that "The US gave the nuclear material to Israel on purpose and other countries better realize that and be warned"?

No, I've so far used too few words for you to get my point:

My point is a conjecture that the purpose of the OP was to remind enemies of Israel about the old story that the US gave Israel plutonium for nuke bombs and covered it up with an accounting error.

Whether the old story is true or not, my conjecture about the purpose of the OP can still be true.

Again, have had to know the old story, which I assumed nearly everyone at HN would, to understand my first post.

Or the obscure part, sure, my conjecture was that the purpose of the OP was obscure, so, as a joke, my post was similarly obscure -- apparently too obscure.

I just tried to make an interesting post. I hurt no one. But I've been attacked -- lost about 30 points here.

But, maybe I've learned a lesson about the HN audience: Got to write for the highly sensitive HN audience or will be attacked. Okay. Likely the same reason politicians say so little. Once from a very socially astute person I heard the advice, "Never tell anyone anything.". Hmm ....

> My point is a conjecture that the purpose of the OP was to remind enemies of Israel

Wait, you think aburan28 posted this on Hacker News to remind enemies of Israel? What exactly makes you think enemies of Israel read hacker news?

> Again, have had to know the old story, which I assumed nearly everyone at HN would, to understand my first post.

You do realize that the entire point of this article is to tell people the story? Your post added exactly zero.

> I just tried to make an interesting post. I hurt no one. But I've been attacked -- lost about 30 points here.

You did not make an interesting post. You used a lot of words to say the same thing as the article, only in an impossible to understand way.

> Got to write for the highly sensitive HN audience or will be attacked.

You were not attacked. Your post just made so little sense people downvoted it as essentially the ravings of a madman.

Your post STILL makes no sense. You are repeating the story, without adding anything except to claim aburan28 has some obscure reason for posting it. It's far more likely aburan28 simply found it interesting, and that's it.

> Never tell anyone anything.

Yah. You didn't.

Next time you want to say something, just say it. Don't write "If you have to ask, you won't really understand it!" because quite frankly writing that makes you sound like a nutcase. It does not make you sound like "someone in the know" it makes you sound like a lunatic.

No one has any desire whatsoever to try to decipher obscure writings, there are so very many things to read online, no one will spend more than a microsecond on your post if you deliberately make it hard to read. Your writings are not some important historical work that people will study.

To quote Isaac Asimov: “I made up my mind long ago to follow one cardinal rule in all my writing—to be clear. I have given up all thought of writing poetically or symbolically or experimentally, or in any of the other modes that might (if I were good enough) get me a Pulitzer prize. I would write merely clearly and in this way establish a warm relationship between myself and my readers, and the professional critics—Well, they can do whatever they wish.”

I think it's more likely that OP is meant to mean Foreign Policy magazine.

Right.

I was attacked here -- nearly everything I posted, from the first to all explanations, was attacked. Such an attack looks organized. I lost about 32 points in the attacks.

And, yes, there was another reason to be "oblique" and ask that everyone have already heard the old story: Don't just blurt out the old story to a wider audience, that is, just write for people who did already know the old story. And, why not "blurt out"? To remain nice to some of the relevant players.

What a mess.

Mods: Check out the votes and discover if the same people were attacking me and look organized.

I spent all that time trying to help you and give you advice, was it all a waste?

> Mods: Check out the votes and discover if the same people were attacking me and look organized.

For the record I did not vote you either way. But why in the WORLD would you assume some sort of organization? Are you the type to see conspiracies everywhere? In votes? In posting a story?

I still have no idea what you are trying, and failing, to say.

But I will reply to this line:

> Considering how long, say, Iran has been working on concentrating uranium, just how the heck did the first country in the Mideast get the critical materials?

I'm sure you've noticed that technologically Israel is light years ahead of Iran, and on-par or even ahead of the US. They most certainly could have purified the materials themself.

In what way is Israel ahead of the US? I could see them being equal to the US, but their economy just isn't big enough to be ahead technology-wise.

This is old but it's a good example: http://www.seattletimes.com/business/how-israel-saved-intel/

Israel is very very very focused on high technology, much more so than the US. It's the reason for their economic success, and they have the human capital to be good at it.

Since the US (people in the US) can do lots of things for income, it doesn't have that hyper focus and strong need to be great at tech.

On top of that Israel has a huge need for technology for defense which is an even stronger motivator (for example every military vehicle sold by the US to Israel has no electronics, instead Israel puts in it's own custom stuff).

It works out for the US anyway because the US is such a great ally to Israel that virtually all the tech is immediately shared between the two countries (and that includes the military with secret stuff - people think US aid to Israel is a one way street, but nothing could be further from the truth).

> but their economy just isn't big enough to be ahead technology-wise.

First the economy is shared with the US in many ways. Second technology is all about brainpower, and Israel has that. It's not about quantity, it's about quality.

It was my understanding that the US downgrades export munitions because it doesn't want other countries, allies or not, from having the same advanced weapons systems.

Do you have any references?

You are angry, and for nothing about anything I wrote.

> They most certainly could have purified the materials themself.

Know how? Yes. Actually do it? Likely not -- starting with just common uranium, it's a lot of work and a big installation to get to weapons grade uranium or plutonium, and hiding that installation would not have been easy.

Easy or not, the old story was that Israel got the bomb materials, plutonium, from the US accounting error, deliberately done and covered up in the US.

My point in my post was to suggest that the OP, considering current and recent events in the Mideast, was to remind enemies of Israel that Israel does have nuke bombs and did get the plutonium from the US via an effort in Pennsylvania. Again, that story is old -- I heard it long ago and saw it essentially repeated in the movie The Sum of All Fears. That is, my comment was to mention a possibly curious purpose to the OP. This conjecture about the purpose of the OP can continue to stand whatever the truth was about how Israel got, if they ever did, materials for nuke bombs.

Tough for me to believe that the highly technical HN audience had so much difficulty with my post.

Surely you're familiar with the story of Arnon Milchan, late of Hollywood?

Yes, it's now very clear that you're not saying anything. Thank you.

The blunt claim is that the way Israel got materials for nuke bombs was from the US, from some place in Pennsylvania, and, IIRC from the claims, that the material was plutonium ready for use in a bomb without further processing.

The claim was that the accounting error was deliberately overlooked in the US as a way to get Israel the materials and bombs.

In the movie Sum of All Fears, a German neo-Nazi bought such plutonium from an Arab, had it made into a bomb, and blew up Baltimore.

The plutonium came from an Israeli bomb from an Israeli plane shot down in an Arab area, and some Arabs found the bomb, thought it was worthless junk, sold it to a guy in Damascus who knew that it was an old, lost Israeli plutonium bomb, and sold the plutonium to the German. The German wanted the US to think that Russia set off the bomb. When the hero of the movie communicated with a high, secret guy in Russia, he asked the Russian where Israel got the material, and the Russian said that the US had given the material to Israel. That is, the Russian knew about the accounting error.

Once the bomb went off in Baltimore, the radiation spectrum of the material confirmed the origin, US Savannah River, that is, the reactor that had produced it, in the US. Thus, the movie also used the same old story.

So, my conjecture here was that the OP was to remind and alert Mideast enemies of Israel about just where Israel got its plutonium, to remind those enemies that Israel does have the nuke bombs.

Tough for me to believe that all this has been so difficult for the HN audience to understand. I thought that everyone would understand my first post. What is this, a shortage of coffee in the HN audience?

Your writing style is very much in line with the output of a person going through a manic episode.

People in manic episodes also breathe, and, I confess, I have been breathing. Similarly for drinking water, eating dinner, and reading HN.

You need to already know the real story, at least as it is usually told.

I assumed that nearly everyone did or at least would figure it out from what I wrote.

Why, you need chapter and verse?

To be nice to the more important relevant parties, I didn't want to blurt out the old story. So, my post was only for people who knew the old story, but I did assume that nearly everyone on HN would. E.g., essentially the story was in the movie.

My point was not the old story but a conjecture that the article that is the subject here was aimed at a reminder to the enemies of Israel. I didn't want to mention Israel.

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