(Via Free Republic) In a little noticed series of articles over the holidays, Chris Flores of the Lynchburg (Va.) News & Advance, tells the tale of Project Sapphire - how a large load of fissionable material from the former USSR was discovered in Kazakhstan and brought to the USA to be made harmless. The story has everything: crumbling Soviet communism, secret nuclear laboratories, Iraqi and Iranian spies, clandestine missions, dangerous nuclear materials, bureaucratic bungling, and ecoweenie complaints. Some highlights:
In the summer of 1993 Andy Webber's vehicle needed work.If you can navigate the annoying Flash interface, it is well worth the long read. And kudos to the people who pulled this off despite all the impediments.
Webber, a Department of Defense employee, was attached to the U.S. embassy in the newly formed republic of Kazakhstan.
But he and his mechanic talked about more than cars when he visited an auto-repair shop in the city of Almaty. The mechanic told Webber about something he'd heard, rumors really, about the once-secret nuclear city in the northern corner of the country. At Ulba, there was a stockpile of nuclear material. Webber passed the rumor on to U.S. Ambassador William Courtney.
It would prove a crucial slice of a puzzle that, when pieced together, became the genesis of Project Sapphire, a secret mission that spirited more than half a ton of nuclear material from Kazakhstan to the United States and eventually to the BWXT plant near Lynchburg.
This was highly enriched uranium, weapons grade. Enough for two dozen or more Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.
...
Ulba was where many of those minerals were processed. Under the Soviet system, it was a closed city with security perimeters and restricted travel in and out.
Andy Webber was with the first Americans to see the "vault" area of the Ulba plant where the Sapphire material was stored.
The vault was a brick warehouse with dirt floors in a fairly segregated part of the Ulba complex. The six doors to the warehouse were wooden and only secured by padlocks.
"Chills went up and down our spines when we heard it was protected by a padlock in what some called a 'vault,' " said Starr.
The guard manning the entrance in the fence when the Americans went to the warehouse for the first time was an older woman, a "babushka."
"Babushka" is Russian for grandmother. It wasn't clear if she was armed.
"Project Sapphire is one where the good guys won."That they did, but
But the most controversial and lingering problem was the loss of enough highly enriched uranium to arm two nuclear weapons. Whether this was an accounting problem or theft probably will never be known.
