Global Security Newswire

A Japanese company sold nuclear machinery to Libya in the 1980s, according to diplomats, Reuters reported today (see GSN, March 10).

The International Atomic Energy Agency issued a report last month stating that Libya had acquired a uranium conversion plant “from abroad.” Several Western diplomats told Reuters the technology came from a Japanese company.

Experts noted that the sale of the equipment, used to prepare uranium for the enrichment process, should have been reported by Japan to the agency when it occurred.

 “It’s certainly not only something that should raise eyebrows, it’s something that would have to be declared,” said Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Unlike Libyan nuclear dealings with other countries, including companies and individuals from Europe, the United States, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere in Asia, the 1984 Japanese sale was not arranged by middlemen seeking to obscure the end user of the equipment (Louis Charbonneau, Reuters, March 12).

Meanwhile, nuclear materials removed from Libya in January are awaiting international inspection at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee. The materials will ultimately be shipped to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant in Ohio, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (Associated Press/The Oak Ridger, March 11).