Islamabad
The nuclear and defense experts aid that 7 kg of uranium, worth about 3 million dollars, seized in Mumbai, India, is of extremely pure grade, enough to make a bomb.
The experts including John Miller and Brig Masood Ahmad Khan, while expressing shock and dismay over the lenient approach of IAEA, have said that such quality of 90 percent enriched uranium isotopes is enough to be directly used to make nuclear bombs.
They said that about 15 kilograms of the same quality of uranium is used to make an atomic bomb.
They said one can gauge the seriousness of this issue by the fact that Iran is allowed to enrich uranium to 3.67 percent purity and it was subject to international sanctions when its quantity went up to 4.5 percent. And in India, smugglers were carrying 90 percent enriched uranium in bags.”
How such a material did come out of a laboratory”, they asked?
If it had happened in Pakistan, organizations around the world would have been talking about rolling back Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Pertinent to mention here that there have been 11 cases pertaining to seizure of high quality uranium reported in India since 1994. Even politicians have been found involved in the smuggling of such a dangerous material.
The experts suggest that IAEA must take action against India by reviewing its nuclear security protocols and FATF also needs to put India in black list to effectively monitor money trails of such transactions in India.—KMS
