US and Russian experts removed a cache of highly enriched uranium from a mothballed Bulgarian reactor and whisked it out of the country, part of an international plan to keep loosely guarded nuclear material out of terrorists' hands, officials said.
It was the third such operation, aimed at securing uranium from reactors run with fuel from the former Soviet Union. In Washington, deputy State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said more such removals are planned.
The nuclear and security experts, helped by Bulgarian special police, took 17kg of uranium from the Institute of Nuclear Sciences just outside the capital, Sofia, Ereli and Bulgarian and Russian officials said on Wednesday.
From a remote airport in eastern Bulgaria, a Russian AN-12 cargo plane flew the material to a Russian reprocessing center to be made into commercial nuclear reactor fuel.
"[It] certainly presented a danger," said Nikolai Shingaryov, a spokesman for Russia's Nuclear Power Ministry, in a telephone interview after Tuesday's removal operation.
"Terrorists may steal some amount of uranium at one place, some more at another and finally get enough for making a bomb," he said.
Washington and Moscow have launched a program to rein in nuclear materials, focusing on 24 reactors built in 16 countries and fueled with help from the former Soviet Union.
Such reactors are of concern because they offer a ready source of the material needed to create a nuclear bomb -- and security at some of them is frighteningly lax because of cost-cutting that has accompanied the collapse of communism more than a decade ago.
The reactors and facilities are designed to use highly enriched uranium to create nuclear isotopes used for medical treatment and other peaceful purposes.
The Bulgaria operation, financed by US$440,000 provided by the US, was the third in the US-Russian program, following removals of material in Yugoslavia in August last year and in Romania three months ago.
The research reactor near Sofia was shut down in 1989, but the uranium remained there. Now experts will take the material and "repatriate it to Russia, where it's converted into a form that isn't readily usable in a weapon," said Mark Gwozdecky, the spokesman for the UN nuclear agency, which coordinated the mission.
Bulgarian officials said the highly enriched uranium would have been enough to develop a small nuclear warhead, but Gwozdecky stressed that the uranium would have had to be enriched further to become weapons grade.
Experts worry that terrorists or hostile nations may get their hands on enough uranium or plutonium to build a nuclear bomb from one of hundreds of research reactors around the world.
There are also fears that terrorists could obtain nuclear materials and use it to build a "dirty bomb" -- a conventional explosive strapped with radioactive materials. Experts fear such an attack could cause widespread panic.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the International Atomic Energy Agency began pressing governments to keep all radioactive materials un-der close guard to prevent such a scenario.
"Any enriched uranium is a concern," Gwozdecky said.
The meticulously planned operation also underlined Bulgaria's determination to take a greater role in anti-terrorist activities involving the US.
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Bulgaria's pro-Western government lent its air and land bases to US troops transiting to Afghanistan.
The Balkan country, which is set to join NATO next year, was also a staunch supporter of the military campaign against Saddam Hussein.
It has a 485-soldier infantry battalion stationed among coalition forces in Iraq.
Last week, the parliament voted in support of setting up permanent US military bases in Bulgaria.
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