Nuclear Weapon State Processed Uranium for Libya, IAEA Says

By Joe Fiorill
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Breaching its obligations under international nuclear agreements, Libya failed over two decades to declare activities including importation and conversion of uranium and small-scale separation of plutonium, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday in a report to its Board of Governors (see GSN, Feb. 17).

Two months ago, Libya announced that it had pursued illicit WMD programs, but would dismantle them with international verification, including by the IAEA. Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei left Vienna today for a two-day visit to Libya, telling reporters, according to Reuters, that he plans to “take stock of where we are and agree with them on the next set of inspection activities and hopefully to move forward.”

In one disclosure that could have implications beyond Libya, the IAEA report states that Tripoli acknowledged secretly exporting uranium ore concentrate in 1985 to another country for processing into uranium compounds that were then sent back to Libya. The agency said Libya failed to report reimporting the material but was not required to report the initial export since the other country was a nuclear weapon state.

The declared nuclear weapon states in 1985 were China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States. China and France had not then acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty at but still would have been considered nuclear weapon states as pertained to Libya’s reporting obligations, said Brookings Institution proliferation expert Michael Levi.

Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright said the Soviet Union and China “had a history of not reporting things to the IAEA” and are the most likely culprits in the Libya processing deal. “I think it’s just hard to know. … It was a time when people weren’t scrutinizing these things very carefully,” Albright said today in an interview.

The IAEA said that “the Libyan declaration to the agency is not clear about the exact amount exported” and that uranium hexafluoride obtained by Libya in the transaction has now been transferred to the United States under IAEA seal.

Friday’s confidential report precedes a board meeting slated to begin March 8. The report could lead the board to refer the Libyan case to the U.N. Security Council but, because it contains praise for Libya’s recent openness, is not likely to lead to U.N. sanctions, said a Western diplomat cited Friday by Reuters.

Albright said the report shows that “it’s very important that Libya gave this up.”

“I don’t know how long it would have taken them to finish, or make a bomb. It might have been many years,” Albright said.

Levi said the report demonstrates the shortcomings of the existing international nonproliferation regime. “It shows a real failure of the system of controls over the last 20 years [but also] shows a real pattern of active cooperation on the part of Libya, which is really the model of how a state that wants to disarm should be disarming,” Levi said.

The report provides a comprehensive account of information Libya has now provided to the IAEA. It also indicates shortcomings in Libya’s new cooperation, including a lack of clarity about certain subjects, failure to provide some information about foreign sources of nuclear material, and various instances in which Libya has “undertaken to submit” documentation but has not yet done so.

“The pattern over and over,” said Levi, “is that the IAEA finds a problem, and Libya not only acts to redress that problem, but suggests further remedies, and that’s the behavior pattern of a state that wants to be engaged in this process.”

Shortcomings in Libya’s cooperation are most likely the result of time constraints, Levi added.

“We’re already far deeper into detail on the Libyan program than we ever have been on the Iranian program, for example. It is getting to a point where basic bookkeeping and accounting problems are maybe a legitimate reason for the slowness,” Levi said.

The report includes frequent indirect references to the recently uncovered global nuclear underground allegedly run by Pakistani national hero Abdul Qadeer Khan with help from Sri Lankan businessman Buhary Syed Abu Tahir. The IAEA is investigating the network, which allegedly supplied nuclear weapon technology to Libya and other countries (see GSN, Feb. 20).

“A network has existed,” the agency said Friday in its report, “whereby actual technological know-how originates from one source, while the delivery of equipment and some of the materials have taken place through intermediaries, who have played a coordinating role, subcontracting the manufacturing to entities in yet other countries. This supply chain appears to have made use of false end-user certificates whereby, in some cases, the original supplier may not have known the actual end use. However, in other cases, the original supplier may have been aware at least of the possibility of misuse and perhaps even the actual end use, since the identity of equipment, such as serial numbers, had been removed.”

Libya announced on Dec. 19, 2003, that it intended to eliminate its WMD programs and sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, which allows for more intrusive inspections and which Libya again vowed to sign in a letter received last week by the IAEA. The Dec. 19 announcement was followed by a meeting of IAEA and Libyan representatives the next day in Vienna, where the agency is located; a Dec. 27-29 visit by ElBaradei to Libya; and a Jan. 20-29 visit to Libya by a team of IAEA inspectors.

Describing what it has learned since Libya’s announcement, the IAEA said, “Over an extended period of time, Libya was in breach of its obligation to comply with the provisions of the [IAEA] safeguards agreement. The failure by Libya to report nuclear material, facilities and activities, particularly those related to enrichment, and its acquisition of nuclear weapon design and fabrication documents are matters of the utmost concern.” The IAEA added, though, that Tripoli is now displaying “active cooperation and openness,” including granting “unrestricted access” to IAEA inspectors.

Violations highlighted in the report include failure in 1985, 2000 and 2001 to declare uranium hexafluoride imports; failure in 1985 and 2002 to declare importation of other uranium compounds; failure to declare conversion of uranium ore concentrate into uranium oxides, uranium tetrafluoride and uranium metal; failure to declare production and irradiation of uranium targets and subsequent processing of the material, including the separation of a small amount of plutonium; and failure to provide design information for a pilot centrifuge facility, a uranium conversion facility and hot cells for a research reactor.

The most comprehensive section of the report centers on Libya’s foreign-aided efforts to build facilities for enriching uranium in centrifuges. Libya told the agency it obtained a large amount of uranium enrichment equipment in a multifaceted effort over two decades but never tested its enrichment centrifuges with nuclear material.

“In the early 1980s,” the IAEA said it was told by Libya, “a foreign expert assisted by Libyan technicians initiated research and development on uranium gas centrifuge enrichment at Tajura, using a centrifuge design that the expert had brought with him. ... By the time the expert left (around 1992), Libya had not yet been able to produce an operating centrifuge and had not conducted any experiments using nuclear material. However, experience had been gained in the design and operation of centrifuge equipment, vacuum technology and mass spectrometry, which proved to be useful in the next phase of the enrichment program.”

Libya told the agency that in 1995, it moved to “reinvigorate its nuclear activities, including gas centrifuge uranium enrichment.” Tripoli said that in the following years, it imported 20 assembled L-1 centrifuges and components for assembly of 200 others, ultimately installing a complete single centrifuge at al-Hashan and successfully testing it in October 2000. According to the agency, Libya said it then installed more centrifuges in cascades at the same site but dismantled and moved them “for security reasons” in April 2002. The agency said some of the equipment remains in storage in Libya, while the rest has been moved out of the country — presumably to the United States.

“Libya has stated that no nuclear material had been used during any tests conducted on the L-1 centrifuges,” the IAEA said.

In a separate program, Libya claims to have received two L-2 centrifuges in September 2000 and to subsequently ordering 10,000 more. The centrifuges began arriving from abroad in large quantities in December 2002, and according to the agency, “Libya had received a considerable number of parts, mainly casings,” by December 2003.

“Libya has also given information to the agency about the seizure in early October 2003 of a freight ship at a northern Mediterranean port, carrying centrifuge enrichment-related equipment manufactured elsewhere,” the agency said.

Libya says that between 1978 and the entry into force of its safeguards agreement in 1980, it imported 1,263 metric tons of uranium ore concentrate, material that was undeclared until recently, according to the report.

In December 2003, the IAEA said, Libya “provided information about the export in 1985 of some of the UOC [uranium ore concentrate] for processing into a variety of uranium compounds.” The declaration “is not clear about the exact amount exported.” Libya told the agency the processed uranium was returned to Libya in 1985 — another transfer the country failed to report at the time.

Libya has also told the agency it secretly imported two small cylinders of uranium hexafluoride in September 2000 and a large cylinder of the same material in February 2001. “Libya has not yet confirmed the origin of these UF6 imports,” the agency said, adding that it has determined the small cylinders contain natural and depleted uranium and the large cylinder contains about 1.7 metric tons of low-enriched uranium.

“It’s enough to start up your centrifuge program. … It’s not enough for a bomb,” Albright said.

As recently as 2002, according to Libyan claims cited in the report, Libya failed to report the import of more uranium compounds for use in chemical laboratories.

Regarding uranium conversion activities, the IAEA said Libya claims to have conducted undeclared laboratory- and bench-scale conversion experiments in the 1980s; in 1984 received a pilot conversion facility ordered from abroad; and used the facility’s portable modules to build a full-fledged conversion facility.

Libya said most of the facility was dismantled in 2003 and relocated. Libya said no uranium was processed in the facility, which is estimated to have an annual feed capacity of 30 metric tons of uranium. The facility could produce uranium tetrafluoride, uranium oxide and uranium metal but not uranium hexafluoride. According to Tripoli, there has been no production of the latter inside Libya.

Libya also told the IAEA it failed to report making “several dozen” uranium oxide and uranium metal targets “on a gram scale” and irradiating them in a research reactor between 1984 and 1990. Libya extracted radioactive isotopes from 38 of the targets, each of which contained “about 1 gram” of uranium, the IAEA said, adding that another 48 irradiated targets were not processed and are now in storage.

“Libya has indicated that plutonium (in very small quantities) was separated from at least two of the irradiated targets,” the agency said.

Levi said the separation “shows that safeguards short of Additional Protocol safeguards are next to useless.”

“They were playing around and didn’t tell the IAEA. … It confirms they had bad intent,” Albright said.

Some of the material Libya handed over following its December announcement was transported to the United States, where IAEA seals are being opened in the presence of IAEA personnel (see GSN, Feb. 6). 

Libya told the IAEA during the Jan. 20-29 visit that it “had agreed to transfer to the U.S.A. sensitive design information, nuclear weapon-related documents and most of the previously undeclared enrichment equipment, subject to agency verification requirements and procedures,” the IAEA said in Friday’s report, adding that it told Libya at the time that “these items constituted a part of the agency’s evidence and were to remain under agency seal and legal custody until the agency has been able to verify the correctness and completeness of Libya’s declarations.”

Libya has told the agency it provided copies of nuclear weapon design and production documents — “the only such documentation existing in Libya” — to the United Kingdom and the United States before the December 2003 IAEA visit to Libya. The agency said it initially sealed the original documents on Dec. 31, 2003, and sealed them again Jan. 20 after reviewing them and before they were sent to the United States.

“The agency has been assured that these documents will remain accessible to the agency for further examination, including forensic analysis, until the agency has been able to verify the correctness and completeness of Libya’s declarations,” the IAEA said.

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