U.S. REVEALS SECRET PROBLE OF LONG LOST URANIUM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740012-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 3, 2012
• Sequence Number: 12
• Publication Date: August 19, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740012-0
19 August 1985
U.S. reveals secret proble of long lost uranium
By LORI SANTOS
Washington
In March 1980, an eyewitness told the FBI how large amounts of weapons-grade
uranium missing from a U.S. nuclear plant may have been given to Israel 15 years
earlier.
That led federal agents to reopen an investigation they had closed three
times before, newly declassified documents show.
The account, included in thousands of pages of documents released under the
Freedom of Information Act, forced the FBI to reactivate project ''Divert," the
code name for the probe of the alleged diversion of hundreds of pounds of
enriched uranium from a small processing plant in Apollo, Pa.
It was yet another chapter in the longstanding investigation - closed three
times before for lack of evidence. The probe was first launched in 1966 when the
government concluded that 206 pounds of the material vanished from the plant
without a trace.
The documents show that the FBI, the CIA and the defunct Atomic Energy
Commission spent 15 years and untold dollars and manhours trying to discover
what happened to the uranium.
The agencies pursued allegations that the uranium was somehow diverted to
Israel by Zalman Shapiro, a Jewish scientist who headed the Nuclear Materials
and Equipment Corp., the processing plant in Apollo.
Today, government records show 342 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, or
752 pounds -- enough to make almost 38 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs -- were lost
during the plant's 20 years of operation and remain unaccounted for.
During the period Shapiro headed the company, 267 kilograms, or 587 pounds,
turned tip missing.
But Shapiro, who was also a half owner with the Israeli government of Isorad,
a company based in Israel that made nuclear equipment, denied in an interview
with United Press International that he diverted any uranium to Israel.
He maintained that 'essentially all'' the missing material was found when
the plant was decommissioned in 1978. He also said such losses were not
An NRC spokesman said only half of what was lost during Shapiro's reign
alone, 131 kilograms, has turned up so far, although the plant still is being
decommissioned.
An Energy Department official said, ''Everyone thinks it was diverted and
diverted by Shapiro,'' but it has never been proven. The department
investigation still is officially open, although there is no activity, the
official said.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/03: CIA-RDP90-00965R000605740012-0