Word: bieniawski
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Dates: during 2010-2010
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...Andrew Bieniawski was in bed when the earthquake struck. On Feb. 26, Bieniawski, the assistant deputy administrator for the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), had arrived in Santiago, Chile, to join a group of scientists and nuclear engineers on a top-secret mission to remove a potential nuclear bomb from the country. Around 40 lb. (18 kg) of highly enriched uranium (HEU) - with enough latent energy to destroy a portion of a city - had already been inventoried, secured and made ready for transport to a highly secure facility in the U.S. Running ahead of schedule, Bieniawski had taken...
...Chilean earthquake carried the power of 10,000 Hiroshima bombs. It severed power and communication lines, closed highways, sparked looting and led the country's President to declare a state of emergency. Within minutes of the quake, Bieniawski had gathered the NNSA officials in a hotel lobby, where the group spent the next four hours trying to make contact with two sites - a military base and research reactor - where the uranium had been stored. Unable to reach one of the sites by phone, the head of the Chilean nuclear agency, Fernando Lopez-Lizana, eventually had to drive there himself...
...following four days, Bieniawski and his team plus a U.S. shipping contractor met with Chilean officials to plan an escape route. The meetings had an odd quality - aftershocks twice spilled coffee from cups. The original plan was to ship the HEU to the U.S. from the Chilean port of San Antonio, but it had been destroyed by a tsunami, so eventually the team decided to use the port of Valparaiso, 50 miles (80 km) to the north. On the evening of March 2, the officials and security teams met at the Lo Aguirre military base about 25 miles...
...Bieniawski's job to convince countries to give up their HEU and send it to either the U.S. or Russia. So far, the NNSA has removed a total of 5,935 lbs. (2,692 kg) of fissile material from 37 countries and has its sights on 4,190 lbs. (1,900 kg) more. To meet that goal, Obama has asked for the program's budget to be increased by 67% percent to $560 million next year. But many countries see HEU-fueled research reactors as symbols of prestige and don't necessarily share U.S. and Russian concern that fissile material...