India’s selling centrifuge plans for only $10!
The ISIS noted that India Rare Earths (IRE), a sub-entity of India’s Department of Atomic Energy, had procured sensitive materials and technology for a secret gas centrifuge uranium enrichment plant – codenamed ‘Rare Materials Project’ (RMP) – outside Mysore, India. The IRE used popular technology procurement websites and newspapers to solicit interested firms to purchase bid documents. These documents, ISIS added, could be purchased for $10, and some of them contained detailed drawings and manufacturing instructions for direct-use centrifuge components and other sensitive centrifuge-related items.
In 2007, the ISIS was easily able to attain component design drawings for the manufacture of sensitive centrifuge components. Aside from loosely worded propriety language stamped on some of the designs, there was neither any notation prohibiting their export, nor any notation indicating that they were sensitive.
The level of detail in the documents was sufficient that they would be considered classified in supplier countries and not distributed without careful controls over their use and requirements for their protection.
Hey, if you’re going to have a nuclear apocalypse, saving money on your weapons system means that your “End of the World” party can be that much bigger!
Ale
September 22, 2008, 9:54am
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Which just goes to prove that if there’s anything more dangerous than a fanatical terrorist, it’s a bumbling bureaucrat.
