Uranium

Duratek Inc. said yesterday that it has won part of a $558 million contract with the Department of Energy to convert depleted uranium hexaflouride, a byproduct of weapons production, into a chemical that can safely be reused or disposed of. The Columbia-based company and two other firms will design, build and operate facilities in Paducah, Ky., and Portsmouth, Ohio, where the uranium will be converted into triuranium octoxide. The companies will also be responsible for maintaining the uranium and converted triuranium octoxide.

WASHINGTON - Were those infamous 16 words correct after all? It has been a year and a half since President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, in which he suggested in a single sentence that Iraq might have been trying to acquire uranium in Africa for its nuclear weapons program. And it has been a year since the White House and the CIA acknowledged that the evidence behind that assertion was flawed, opening Bush to a torrent of criticism about the credibility and reliability of the intelligence he used to justify toppling Saddam Hussein.

SYDNEY, Australia --Australia, one of the closest U.S. allies, is scheduled to sign an agreement with China today to sell uranium for use in nuclear power plants in China's continuing drive to meet its soaring energy needs. The deal also opens the door for Chinese investment in Australian uranium mines. The agreement, negotiated over the last year in Beijing, is the highlight of a three-day trip to Australia by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China and underscores the importance of Australia as a base for China's widening demand for natural resources.

The United States has reached an agreement in principle to buy billions of dollars' worth of bomb-grade uranium from scrapped Soviet nuclear arms in an attempt to bolster the shaky economy of the former Soviet Union and to reduce the risk of nuclear accidents and theft.The agreement, which would require the formal approval of both governments, calls for highly enriched uranium from Russian nuclear arms to be diluted for sale as commercial reactor fuel.It would be the first such agreement, and, if approved, would be a major step to reducing the dangers that made the Cold War so unnerving.

WASHINGTON - International inspectors visiting Iran last week were shown a network of sophisticated machinery to enrich uranium, spurring concerns that Iran is making headway in its suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, Western officials and international diplomats said yesterday. The site in question, near the city of Natanz, was visited Friday by Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, who went to Iran to assess the status of its nuclear program.

UNITED NATIONS -- International nuclear inspectors are worried that 132 pounds of highly enriched uranium at the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Science, 10 miles from Belgrade, Yugoslavia, may be used improperly or may be hit by an errant NATO missile.David Kyd, a spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors nuclear activities around the world, said Friday that his agency's main concerns were the "physical security of the material" and the possibility of "radiological risk" should a bomb hit the plant.

VIENNA -- Iran has accelerated its program to enrich uranium and defied a U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend nuclear activities before Tehran is capable of producing fuel for nuclear weapons, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said here yesterday. The report by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, confirmed that Iran recently began installing the first of 3,000 gas centrifuges in a heavily fortified, underground chamber at Natanz and that it plans to "bring them gradually into operation by May 2007."

OLJATO, Utah -- Mary and Billy Boy Holiday bought their one-room house from a medicine man in 1967. They gave him $50, a sheep and a canvas tent. For the most part, they were happy with the purchase. Their Navajo hogan was situated well, between a desert mesa and the trading-post road. The eight-sided dwelling proved stout and snug, with walls of stone and wood, and a green-shingle roof. The single drawback was the bare dirt underfoot. So three years after moving in, the Holidays jumped at the chance to get a real floor.

MADISON, Wis. - The University of Wisconsin's nuclear reactor is an unassuming little model, operated (on Tuesdays and Thursdays only) by students in T-shirts and shorts. In the past few months, it has been used to identify the source of pottery shards from an ancient settlement in India and to test whether heart stents work better if they have been irradiated. But its fuel is weapons-grade uranium. If it were stolen, experts say, it could give terrorists or other criminals a major head start on an atomic bomb.

WASHINGTON - North Korea wants to negotiate with the United States over the North's newly disclosed nuclear weapons program and is open to meeting the Bush administration's demand that it shut down its previously secret uranium-enrichment facilities, according to a series of statements issued by the North Korean Mission to the United Nations. North Korea acknowledged last month that the uranium facilities are part of a secret program to build nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 agreement with the United States.