Nuclear mattersUranium-mining nations ignore UN-mandated measures on nuclear terror

We wrote a few weeks ago that Africa is the weak link in the global effort to thwart bioterrorism (“Experts: Weak Biosafety Laws in Africa an Invitation to Bioterrorists,” 24 March 2010 HSNW). Africa is also the weak link in the effort to prevent rogue states and terrorist organizations from getting their hand on materials necessary for nuclear weapons.

Dozens of nations, including uranium producers, remain potential weak links in the global defense against nuclear terrorism, ignoring a UN mandate on laws and controls to foil this ultimate threat.

Niger, a major uranium exporter, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the source of the uranium for the first atomic bomb, are among the states falling short in complying with Security Council Resolution 1540, a key tool in efforts to block nuclear proliferation.

Uncontrolled freelance mining in the Congo has long worried international authorities that the raw material for a bomb might fall into the wrong hands.

President Barack Obama hosts a summit on nuclear security 12-13 April in Washington, D.C., at which implementation of Resolution 1540 will be high on the agenda.

Eau Claire WQOW reports that twenty-nine nations have failed to report they have taken action on nuclear security as required by the 2004 resolution. Among the more than 160 governments that have reported, the information supplied is often sketchy.

Resolution 1540 set a reporting deadline of October 2004. The resolution was promoted by the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks and the 2004 uncovering of the Pakistan-based A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network. The resolution is the only global legal instrument designed to disrupt links between terrorists and nuclear technology. Unlike treaties, applicable only to states that ratify them, this UN mandate obligated all nations.

It required governments to “adopt and enforce appropriate effective laws which prohibit any non-State actor,” such as terrorists, from making or possessing nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, their delivery systems or related material. Governments must establish “effective” border and export controls and physical protection for sensitive materials and sites.

WQOW quotes an AP review of filings which found vast differences in national reporting.

The United States and other industrialized nations filed reports of up to 30,000 words detailing relevant laws and how they are enforced, while other, smaller countries submitted reports of just a few hundred words noting — irrelevantly — the nonproliferation treaties to which they subscribe or, in Uganda’s case, requesting financial aid to carry out 1540’s obligations.

Almost all the non-reporting states are in Africa, including uranium producers Zambia, Malawi, and the Central African Republic.

Niger and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which as the Belgian Congo colony produced the uranium that fueled the U.S. weapon dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945, did not file reports for four years after the resolution’s adoption. In 2008 the 1540 committee’s expert staff drafted reports on behalf of those two countries, drawing on publicly available information. Niger and Congo themselves have not reported taking steps to tighten nuclear security under 1540.

The “Hiroshima mine” at Shinkolobwe in southern Congo was closed in 1960, but in recent years thousands of individual miners, officially unsanctioned, have worked at the site, extracting cobalt and, some reports say, uranium. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, has expressed concern about poor security at the mine, as well as at a nuclear research reactor in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital, whose spent uranium fuel could be used for a terrorist’s radioactive “dirty bomb.”

Niger, in central Africa, has huge reserves of the continent’s highest-grade uranium. In some years it ranks as the world’s No. 3 producer. With renewed global interest in nuclear power, mining companies are stepping up uranium exploration and development in Niger and elsewhere in Africa, including in Gabon, Guinea, Mali, and Mauritania, all non-filers under Resolution 1540.