URANIUM LOST

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31168, 19 September 1966, Page 17

URANIUM LOST

Enough For Six Bombs (N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, Sept. 18. The United States Atomic Energy Commission recently discovered that one of its industrial contractors had lost enough highly enriched uranium to fabricate six atomic bombs. An extensive investigation concluded that the fissionable material had been lost in the normal process of fabricating reactor fuel rods and had not been diverted clandestinely into the manufacture of atomic weapons. The discovery of the mil-lion-dollar loss so disturbed the commission that it has begun to strengthen its controls to ensure that some of the fissionable materials in the hands of domestic and foreign companies are not stolen. The lost 100 kilograms of uranium, was not all together, or even in substantial pieces. It had literally been scattered to the winds, the seas and the cemeteries.

In a period of six years some was lost as»scrap during the machine tooling and swept up and buried; some disappeared as dust caught on filters; and some presumably was washed down drains and carried away to the oceans.