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US Attorney: Nuclear Material Trafficking Charges Against Japanese Yakuza Leader
- philipkglass 3y agoI initially guessed that this would be a "technically true" claim that proves underwhelming upon further inspection [1]. But no! The claim includes trafficking in weapons grade plutonium. In the course of this conspiracy, EBISAWA and his confederates showed samples of nuclear materials in Thailand to a DEA undercover agent (“UC-1”), who was posing as a narcotics and weapons trafficker. With the assistance of Thai authorities, the nuclear samples were seized and subsequently transferred to the custody of U.S. law enforcement. A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory later analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium. Where did he obtain the plutonium from originally? Weapons grade plutonium has never been produced by the private sector, and there are only 6 countries that have ever produced weapons with plutonium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons#Statistics_and_force_configuration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_we... [1] Like trafficking in natural uranium, or modest quantities of tritium.
- rasz 3y agoEither 'The Peacemaker' or 'Sum of all fears' made us believe US is able to identify any plutonium sample back to the reactor where it was created.
- perihelions 3y agoThe press release says that, but the indictment text uses the guarded language "samples contain detectable quantities of..." (page 11). I'd guess the plutonium detection was a trace amount from some banal source, maybe cross-contamination within the lab itself. This gets more plausible when you consider the banality of the samples they supposedly found plutonium in: one was isotopically natural uranium, the other thorium. There's no plausible way to end up with plutonium in those materials other than contamination of some sort.
- philipkglass 3y agoThanks for reading more closely. In that case, this is a lot less interesting. It sounds like he was offering materials that are only useful to someone who already has nuclear enrichment/reactor technology.
- vanattab 3y agomaybe usefull as dirty bomb?
- perihelions 3y agoI think that they're sufficiently inept, they didn't actually know what it was they were selling. What they apparently had, from the Myanmar rebel group, was access to a Myanmar uranium mine (natural uranium); there was a concrete offer of 50 tonnes of ore. What they discussed offering to Iran, repeatedly, was "enriched uranium". It's non-credible that the Myanmar rebels have a secret enrichment program. In at least one text, it's clear they didn't even understand the difference: page 4, "How enriched is it? Above 5 percent?"... "I think so and I hope so".
- credit_guy 3y agoYes, but contamination from where? Plutonium does not exist in nature, and plutonium grade is really, really hard to come by.
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- ngcc_hk 3y agoBut if their claim is real catching the marketing executive is not core issue here … who can produce this …
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