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Looks like Syria is cruising for another Bruising. Just 15 months ago, Israel blew up a Nuclear Plant in the middle of the Syrian desert. When UN inspectors were allowed to visit the site, lo and behold they found traces of nuclear material. Syria refuses to let the UN back to the site, so a covert marine operation was launched to take a look at what is going on. The answer is Syria is back to producing Plutonium:

There has been a plutonium leak at a site run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Austria. UN nuclear monitors said pressure had built up and plutonium had contaminated a storage-room at the Seibersdorf laboratory, south of Vienna. Last year the head of the IAEA warned the facility was outdated and did not meet UN safety standards. Austrian officials said the empty lab had been sealed off and no-one was at risk. An investigation is planned. The lab is used to carry out tests on samples taken during IAEA inspection missions. El-Baradei warning "Pressure build-up in a small...

â—† N. Korea says used 2 kg of plutonium in 2006 nuke test: source SEOUL, June 28 KYODO North Korea's declaration of its nuclear programs that it submitted this week states that it extracted a total of around 30 kilograms of plutonium and used 2 kg in the nuclear test it conducted in October 2006, a six-party talks source said Saturday. A nuclear weapon normally requires between 4 and 8 kg of plutonium. There is speculation that North Korea may have declared a smaller quantity to counter rumors that the 2006 nuclear test, which resulted in a relatively small explosion,...

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Monday that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational. U.S. intelligence and administration officials publicly disclosed last week their assessment that Syria was building a covert nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance. They said it was modeled on the shuttered North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, which produced a small amount of plutonium. The Syrian site, they said, was within weeks or months of being operational. "In the course of a year after they got...

Officials will tell Congress members this week that North Korea was helping Syria build a reactor last year when it was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, a U.S. official says. WASHINGTON — CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that North Korea had been helping Syria build a plutonium-based nuclear reactor, a U.S. official said, a disclosure that could touch off new resistance to the administration's plan to ease sanctions on Pyongyang. The CIA officials will tell lawmakers that they believe the reactor would have been capable of producing plutonium for nuclear weapons but was destroyed before it could do...

The CIA will tell Congress today that the North Koreans had begun to build a nuclear reactor at a site in Syria bombed by the Israelis last year. The timing of the briefing appears related to the expected resolution of the six-nation plan to disarm the DPRK in the next few weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times. It may create new political difficulties for the Bush administration, but more likely it is intended to fulfill a Congressional demand for information to clear hurdles for ratification of the agreement with North Korea: CIA officials will tell Congress on Thursday that...

The Bush administration will tell Congress tomorrow that a nuclear facility in Syria built with North Korean help was nearly complete when Israel bombed it in September, and that Pyongyang has not provided any further nuclear assistance to the hard-line Arab nation, at least at that site, U.S. officials said. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and other intelligence officials are expected to brief several congressional committees in closed-door sessions, breaking the administration's silence on the issue. The Syrian facility has become a key issue in six-nation negotiations to end the North's nuclear programs. “The belief is that the reactor was...

Afghanistan to Ask NATO for Bigger Army Afghan officials will go to the NATO summit in Romania Thursday with a request: pay to increase our national Army by 40 percent. A bigger Army, Afghan officials argue, will allow the US and other coalition members to scale back in the coming years. This appeal comes amid pleas from the US and Canada for other NATO members to commit more to the Afghanistan mission, which many analysts say has floundered over the past year for lack of resources and a coherent strategy. France is expected to contribute another 1,000 forces and...

N. Korea produced 30 kg plutonium: report TOKYO - NORTH Korea told the United States in December it has produced a total of around 30 kg of plutonium, about 20 kg less than what the United States estimates, a Japanese newspaper reported on Monday. The daily Tokyo Shimbun reported that North Korea's chief envoy to the talks, Kim Kye Gwan, told his US counterpart, Christopher Hill in North Korea last December the North had used about 18 kg of its plutonium stockpile for nuclear development and around 6 kg for its first and only underground nuclear test in October 2006....

The appearance of nuclear weapons materials on the black market is a growing global concern, and it is crucial that the United States reinforce its team of nuclear forensics experts and modernize its forensics tools to prepare for or respond to a possible nuclear terrorist attack. Large quantities of nuclear materials are inadequately secured in several countries, including Russia and Pakistan. Since 1993, there have been more than 1,300 incidents of illicit trafficking of nuclear materials, including plutonium and highly enriched uranium, both of which can be used to develop an atomic bomb. And these are only the incidents we...

AMHERST, Massachusetts — North Korea is expected to declare it has produced 30 to 40 kilograms of plutonium when it gives a full account of its nuclear programs under a six-party deal, top U.S. nuclear negotiator Christopher Hill said. That is less than about 50 kg the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs had earlier suggested. Hill's remarks may reflect the information he received from Pyongyang as he called for the state's fulfillment of its six-way obligations. "They are supposed to give us a full figure on that, which will be in the neighborhood of 30,...

North Korea nuclear fuel rods tough to extract: envoy Fri Nov 30, 3:32 AM ET The removal of fuel rods from an ageing reactor at the heart of North Korea's nuclear arms program, an important step in a disarmament deal, will stretch into next year, South Korea's nuclear envoy said on Friday. North Korea agreed with regional powers to disable its Soviet-era reactor and other nuclear facilities by the end of this year in exchange for aid and an end to its international ostracism. "A lot of preparation is needed to get the fuel out of there," Chun Yung-woo told...

Taiwan firm sold DPRK precision equipment Toshinao Ishii / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondent TAIPEI--Taiwanese investigators have sent papers to prosecutors on a company suspected of violating the trade law by illegally exporting precision equipment capable of producing nuclear weapons-related materials to North Korea, sources said Tuesday. With Japan tightening its controls on exports to North Korea following the revelation of Pyongyang's nuclear and missile development programs, North Korea is believed to have turned to Taiwan, which is not a member of the United Nations, to import Taiwanese machinery. The machinery are said to have contained high-tech parts from Japan. According to...

<p>A top-secret report by the U.S. intelligence services says several North Korean scientists were injured in Israel's strike in Syria last month, top Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland reported in the paper Sunday.</p> <p>Some two weeks ago, British newspaper The Sunday Times reported that diplomats in North Korea and China believed a number of North Koreans had been killed in the strike, based on reports reaching Asian governments about conversations between Chinese and North Korean officials.</p>

WASHINGTON (AP) — A stockpile of plutonium and other nuclear weapons materials stored at Los Alamos National Laboratory hasn't been fully accounted for in 13 years or more, a government audit has found. The northern New Mexico lab's workers have done regular, partial inventories of the material, which the government considers to be at high risk of theft, the audit by the Energy Department's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, found. Yet an inventory of all the material hasn't been done in "perhaps 13 years or more," Friedman wrote. It wasn't even done when the lab's management contract changed last year, investigators...

By DOUGLAS BIRCH Associated Press Writer YEKATERINBURG, Russia — Amid tense relations between the United States and Russia, two prominent American arms control advocates Friday toured a storage facility designed to hold tons of plutonium and enriched uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., and former Sen. Sam Nunn, co-authors of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, were escorted through the high-security Mayak Fissile Materials Storage Facility — built to withstand assaults from terrorists and a direct hit from a jet. Russia plans to store up to 25 metric tons of plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons at...

Construction has started on a South Carolina plant that will convert weapons plutonium to commercial reactor fuel and eventually employee hundreds of workers. Construction of the facility at the Savannah River nuclear complex near Aiken had been delayed because of complications with a corresponding Russian facility. The Bush administration for years has had plans to convert 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium into a mixed oxide fuel, or MOX, as part of a program with Russia in which both countries agree to dispose of an equal amount of the material from their weapons stockpiles. Last month, the Bush administration announced plans...

Georgian [the country south of Russia, not the US state ] customs officers sent a car carrying a mixture of plutonium and beryllium back into Azerbaijan after foiling an attempt to smuggle the materials over the border, Georgian television reported. Customs officials found the materials, which can be used in nuclear bombs, in what appeared to be a routine check as the car was driven over the border from Azerbaijan, the Imedi television station reported.

Hwang: “Nuclear Facility in Yongbyon Has Been Unnecessary for 10 Years” FEBRUARY 21, 2007 07:10 Hwang Jang-yop, the former secretary of the North Korean Workers Party in charge of international affairs, disclosed in a Freedom North Korea Broadcast on February 19 that the nuclear facility in Yongbyon, which North Korea promised to shut down in exchange for one million tons of oil, was in fact already deemed unnecessary 10 years ago. The former secretary Hwang said, “In fact, I heard the plutonium (extracted) with a graphite reactor is unusable directly from the secretary of munitions manufacture. Before that, they had...

Some of the former Yukos executives could be involved in the murder of Russian security service defector Alexander Litvinenko, Russia's top prosecutors said Wednesday. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office said Leonid Nevzlin, a core shareholder of the bankrupt oil company, who lives in Israel and is on the international wanted list on fraud charges, could have ordered Litvinenko's poisoning with polonium-210. "We are checking a version that people, who are on the international wanted list for grave crimes, including [former] Yukos co-chairman Leonid Nevzlin, could be behind these crimes," the office said, referring to Litvinenko's murder and an attempt on...