F.B.I. thwarts uranium plot

Press, 3 February 1979, Page 6

F.B.I. thwarts uranium plot

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation said y . tier day that its agents had broken up an extortion plot involving 68kg of stolen uranium with the arrest of a suspect employed at a uranium plant and recovery of the missing material. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said agents had arrested David Dale, aged 39, in Wilmington, North Carolina, on a charge of trying to obtain $lOO,OOO from the General Electric Company in return for two cans of the radio-active material stolen from its enriched-ura-nium plant there. The low-grade uranium was recovered shortly afterwards in a field Bkm from the plant after a search by F.B.L agents. It is worth several hundred dollars a kilogram. A Justice Department official said Dale was alleged to have made threats to General Electric concerning the uranium, but details could not be given until the case went to court.

A Nuclear Regulatory ; Commission spokesman said [the uranium, in brown powlde> form, could not have been used to make a nuclear | weapon without being en-| riched. It posed little danger! to human beings. “You can’t use it to make! a bomb unless you have an| enrichment plant — something that is very complex,! mammoth, and expensive,” ai commission spokesmann said.; “You would have to remain in a visible cloud of it for about 10 minutes to suffer injury,” he said. Dale is a temporary employee at the plant. The F.B.L said a handwritten note demanding the ransom had been left outside the plant manager’s door on Monday with a small vial of the uranium. Another vial was found on Wednesday in the offices of the “Wilmington Star-News” with a note suggesting the newspaper should check with the plant about the! vial’s contents. The editor of the paper gave the note and vial to the F.B.L