# Yellow Cake Uranium In Iraq? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 16, 2004, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747 "2004-01-16T13:00:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Chicago\_Faucet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chicago_faucet/32/13910_2.png) [@Chicago\_Faucet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicago_Faucet)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/1 "2004-01-16T13:00:05Z")
General Questions is as good a place as any for this. I had heard second hand that some municipal workers in Amsterdam found, amidst piles of scrap metal, a small pile of what has been confirmed to be some “Yellow Cake” Uranium. It was on a ship that previously was in Iraq. So, curious about this finding, I log onto Google and type in “Yellow Cake Iraq” to try and find the source. One of the first links to come up is this: [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0624-09.htm](http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0624-09.htm) It’s an article from June that describes Greenpeace returning a canister containing some of this Uranium to the US military, in Iraq. This boggled me. I had never heard this story before. It seems fairly important. So, has anyone else seem this story? Is it for real? ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/2 "2004-01-16T13:13:30Z")
> [@Chicago Faucet](#): > > This boggled me. I had never heard this story before. It seems fairly important. > > So, has anyone else seem this story? > > Is it for real? I don’t know about the Amsterdam story, but the story about the looting of Tuwaitha was all over the board at the time. Yes, it was for real. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/3 "2004-01-16T13:24:10Z")
Here’s a link to the Amsterdam story: > **[Latest news from around the world | The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world)** > > Latest World news news, comment and analysis from the Guardian, the world's leading liberal voice Given the timing of this, i.e. nearly a year after the invasion, it seems likely that the stuff came from the looted Tuwaitha plant. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [January 16, 2004, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/4 "2004-01-16T14:26:47Z")
About Saddam’s bomb-making activities? WE now know that: -Saddam had a well-funded bomb-making group -He had invested considerable funds into mass=spectrographic enrichment of uranium (calutrons), and laser-assisted separation -no records of uranium purchases were kept This is all outlined in a book by an Iraqi nuclear physicist, who wrote a book ("SADDAM’s BOMB MAKER). This man (forget his name) got asylum in the USA. Once enriched, the very small quantity of U-235 (needed to make a fission bomb) could be hidden anywhere-a few safe-deposit boxes in a bank vault would suffice. Interestingly, Saddam took a close personal interest in his atomic bomb project…the book relates how when the laser-enrichment project failed, Saddam had the leader(who was a palestinian-born physicist) hacked to death by his goons. ---
**Author:** ![Chicago\_Faucet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chicago_faucet/32/13910_2.png) [@Chicago\_Faucet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chicago_Faucet)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/5 "2004-01-17T22:34:19Z")
So, seriously, what am I missing here? Even if the Amsterdam article is bogus, the other article confirms that piles of Yellow Cake Uranium have been found in Iraq, by Greenpeace nonetheless. Wouldn’t this be classified as a WMD? ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2004, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/6 "2004-01-17T23:39:24Z")
> [@Chicago Faucet](#): > > So, seriously, what am I missing here? > Wouldn’t this be classified as a WMD? Well here’s a description of [what yellowcake is:](http://slate.msn.com/id/2085848/) > [@](#): > > The milling process gets rid of the useless minerals that dominate the ore. First, raw ore is passed through a series of industrial-sized crushers and grinders. The resulting “pulped” ore is then bathed in sulphuric acid, a process which leaches out the uranium. After some drying and filtering, the end product is yellowcake: a coarse, oxidized powder that is often yellow in color but can also have a red or gray tint, depending on the number and type of impurities that may remain. It’s the extracted ore from uranium mines. In order to use the yellowcake in reactors, or bombs, it’s necessary to purify it further, convert it into uranium hexafluoride, and run it through an isotope enrichment process. Iraq had a civilian nuclear power project up until 81, when Israel expressed it’s doubts about the peaceful uses of atomic energy by bombing the reactor. No doubt some of the yellowcake dates from that period. -Yellowcake is not something you dump into the Euphrates when you no longer have a use for it. However, without an enrichment facility, the mass specs, lasers, or centrifuges **Chicago Faucet** mentioned, yellowcake is good only for looking at and fantasizing, or for making a bright yellow glaze for dinnerware. Yellow cake is raw uranium, not a weapon of mass destruction, or even something that could be made into a weapon of mass destruction without, conservatively, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure. Iraq never had this infrastructure. They were working on it, but there are perfectly valid reasons for even peaceful nations to want to refine their own uranium. Brazil for example recently completed building an uranium enrichment facility. The IAEA is of course interested in the plant, but no one is accusing the Brazilians of possessing WMD’s. ---
**Author:** ![Desmostylus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c57346/32.png) [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2004, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yellow-cake-uranium-in-iraq/224747/7 "2004-01-18T00:01:13Z")
> [@Chicago Faucet](#): > > So, seriously, what am I missing here? > > Even if the Amsterdam article is bogus, the other article confirms that piles of Yellow Cake Uranium have been found in Iraq, by Greenpeace nonetheless. Wouldn’t this be classified as a WMD? What you’re missing is that the presence of the yellowcake wasn’t secret. As **Squink** said, it was left over from the nuclear plant that Iraq had in the 1970s. It was kept sealed under high security, and regularly inspected by the IAEA. However, even though the US knew about the yellowcake, it took no steps whatsoever to secure the site when the invasion began. The guards all left and the place got looted. > [@](#): > > [Profile: Tuwaitha nuclear plant](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2968640.stm). > > Tuwaitha was once one of the most heavily guarded facilities in Iraq - a vast sprawling nuclear site just south of Baghdad. > > But during the war, Tuwaitha’s guards disappeared, the gates to the site were opened and looters poured in. > > The UN’s nuclear agency had warned the Americans that Tuwaitha needed protection. It came too late. > > By the time American soldiers had secured the site in early May, barrels containing uranium had been stolen. > [@](#): > > [Fate of Al-Tuwaitha nuclear material unclear > TRIBUNE-REVIEW > Tuesday, May 6, 2003](http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/news/s_132913.html) > > The Washington Post reported Sunday that for the past week U.S. soldiers have allowed Iraqis claiming to be former researchers to repeatedly enter Tuwaitha, sometimes exiting with items. The newspaper said that up to 400 Iraqis visited the sprawling complex while it was under Army control. Stolen lab equipment was left strewn across the main road outside the facility, including toxic gas monitors, microscopes and an autoclave (a container that sterilizes by using superheated steam under pressure), according to the Post. > > Experts on Iraq’s nuclear program are urging the Pentagon to let international inspectors back into the site to determine what’s been lost and, if they can, track down any atomic or biological contraband before al-Qaida or other terrorists snatch it up. > > “The situation isn’t good,” said physicist David Albright, a former IAEA Action Team inspector in Iraq from 1992 to 1997. “What I’m hoping is that Location C and the rest of Al Tuwaitha is being secured. This is just terrible. The Pentagon doesn’t seem to understand the gravity of what has happened.”