The Congo is home to the Triga Mark II reactor, a one-megawatt capacity facility built in 1972. It is the oldest nuclear facility in Africa, and it is
located at the
Kinshasa Regional Centre for Nuclear Studies in the Congo
(CREN).
Earlier this year, the status of the facility was described as
"idle but safe". In addition it is
power-generation capacity, the facility is still (as far as I know) home to plenty of enriched uranium and various nuclear-related parts and
equipment.
Security leaves something to be desired:
There is nothing to mark the way to a nondescript clutch of buildings a few hundred yards down a side street. The dilapidated concrete compound is
protected by little more than a low-slung rusted barbed-wire fence and a rickety gate sealed by a single padlock. It would be easy enough to slip
through a hole in the fence but there is no need, as the main entrance to what is supposed to be one of the best guarded sites in Congo is often
unmanned.
The armed police assigned to watch the compound were not to be seen at the weekend as visitors wandered the corridors of what is Africa's oldest
nuclear reactor facility - and the storage place for dozens of bars of enriched uranium - until finally challenged by a man in a tracksuit who called
himself "security".
The International Atomic Energy Agency has long viewed Kinshasa's experimental nuclear reactor as a disaster in the making, either through an accident
that releases radiation into the city or because of lax security....
More at source:
www.guardian.co.uk...
In fact, uranium has disappeared from the facility before:
International observers have long been concerned about the safety and security of the two nuclear reactors and the enriched uranium they
contain.
In 1998, a wall in the Regional Center for Nuclear Studies collapsed when torrential rains undermined the building's foundation. International Atomic
Energy Agency officials have voiced concerns that the ongoing issue with erosion could lead to an accident that might contaminate the city of
Kinshasa's water supply. Further concerns about the site were raised when, in 1999, an object that might have been a missile, struck the building and
caused light damage.
The program has also had an ongoing issue with the disappearance of nuclear material that could be used by terrorists or rogue states. Several rods of
highly enriched uranium have disappeared from the reactors since the late 1970s. In 1998, a sting operation led by the Italian police seized a rod of
highly enriched uranium that weighed 190 grams. It was built by General Atomics in the early 1970s and shipped to Zaire for use in the TRICO II
reactor. The rod was in the possession of an Italian mafia group that was trying to sell it for $12.8 million, possibly to a Middle Eastern
country.
In 2007, the research center's director Fortunat Lumu and an aide were arrested and questioned about the disappearance of a large quantity of nuclear
material, which local media reported was as much as 100 bars of uranium.
Source:
en.wikipedia.org...
It is worth remembering that the Congo has been involved in a series of crippling and largely underreported military disasters ever since the mid-90s,
from the First Congo War and the Second Congo War to the Kivu Conflict. In 2009,
people
were still dying at an estimated rate of 45,000 per month in the Congo. The nation is extrordinarly unstable by every metric - politically,
militarily, economcially. A lot of people with a lot of guns from a lot of different nations are walking in and out of the Congo, on various missions.
And this has been going on for some time.
I don't know about you, but I think this situation deserves a little more attention. Too many loose variables in this equation for my liking.
PS: Here's some good general background info on the Congo's relationship with Uranium. "Historically, the mining industry accounted for 25% of the GDP
and about three-quarters of total export revenues:"
www.globalsecurity.org...
edit on 11/16/11 by silent thunder because: (no reason given)
