Last week, Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohamed Ali Alhakim, caused a stir with a letter announcing that terrorist groups had seized nearly 40 kilograms of 'uranium compounds' from Mosul University.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) moved quickly to reassure the publc that the material was 'low-grade' and did not represent a security or safety risk. But the IAEA did not specify what the missing materials were, or whether it knew about them before they disappeared.
Lots of universities have uranium compounds for chemistry and physics research and teaching. Some Iraqi universities had uranyl acetate, which is used in electron microscopy and chemical analysis. In the 1980's, such uranium laboratory reagent chemicals could be bought from commercial suppliers. But typically a lab would have a few kilograms of such reagents, not 40 kg - a substantial amount.
The university has an active physics faculty, but one of its leading lights, Dr Faika Azooz, wrote to say all they had there were one microcurie radiation sources which "can hardly give enough radioactivity to [test] characteristic properties of geiger and Nal [radiation] counters". But Azooz added: "I've no idea if there are some nuclear wastes from old IAEA [inspections?] thrown in other places."
A former IAEA inspector who worked extensively in Iraq, George Healey, echoed the suggestion that some of the missing materials may have originally come from elsewhere:
In the late 1980's Iraq operated a secret facility (the Al Jesira conversion plant) about 30 miles west of Mosul for the production of uranium dioxide (UO2) and uranium tetrachloride (UCl4)...
It would not be surprising if Al Jesira had connections with Mosul university while it was an operating plant. After the Gulf War, laboratory equipment not damaged during the destruction of Al Jesira was sent to Mosul university.
It is very likely that, in addition to analytical equipment, some quantity of uranium compounds of various kinds were also sent to Mosul University at that time. The Al Jesira analytical laboratory would have a large inventory of conversion process samples.
The transfer of some Al Jesira process samples to Mosul University could explain the higher than expected uranium chemical inventory. Thus, the 40 kilograms of uranium chemicals "stolen" from Mosul University probable consist of lab reagents such as uranyl acetate (plus other species), yellowcake, ammonium diuranate, uranium trioxide, uranium dioxide and there might be samples of UCl4 uranium tetrachloride], but only gram quantities...
This sounds like a convincing explanation. The questions that remain for the IAEA whether it knew about about this residual stockpile or not. Even if it was 'low-grade' it should have been removed.
