“There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991.”
“AP Exclusive: US removes uranium from Iraq,” by Brian Murphy for AP, July 6 (thanks to all who sent this in):
The last major remnant of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program “” a huge stockpile of concentrated natural uranium “” reached a Canadian port Saturday to complete a secret U.S. operation that included a two-week airlift from Baghdad and a ship voyage crossing two oceans.
The removal of 550 metric tons of “yellowcake” “” the seed material for higher-grade nuclear enrichment “” was a significant step toward closing the books on Saddam’s nuclear legacy. It also brought relief to U.S. and Iraqi authorities who had worried the cache would reach insurgents or smugglers crossing to Iran to aid its nuclear ambitions. […]
The Iraqi government sold the yellowcake to a Canadian uranium producer, Cameco Corp., in a transaction the official described as worth “tens of millions of dollars.” A Cameco spokesman, Lyle Krahn, declined to discuss the price, but said the yellowcake will be processed at facilities in Ontario for use in energy-producing reactors.
“We are pleased … that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity,” he said. […]
Accusations that Saddam had tried to purchase more yellowcake from the African nation of Niger “” and an article by a former U.S. ambassador refuting the claims “” led to a wide-ranging probe into Washington leaks that reached high into the Bush administration.
Tuwaitha and an adjacent research facility were well known for decades as the centerpiece of Saddam’s nuclear efforts.
Israeli warplanes bombed a reactor project at the site in 1981. Later, U.N. inspectors documented and safeguarded the yellowcake, which had been stored in aging drums and containers since before the 1991 Gulf War. There was no evidence of any yellowcake dating from after 1991, the official said….