Word: gas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...that Khan got his chance to get into the gas centrifuge plant at Almelo. Owned and operated by a consortium called Urenco, it was administered jointly by Britain, West Germany and The Netherlands. Khan had first come to Holland in 1963 at the age of 27 to enroll in the prestigious Technical University of Delft. He performed well, both there and, later, in the doctoral program at Belgium's Catholic University in Louvain...
While at the gas centrifuge plant, Khan was asked to translate classified documents of a West German uranium enrichment project into Dutch. From these papers, according to a Dutch official, he compiled a complete list of the plant's subcontractors and suppliers and passed it along to Islamabad. Pakistani officials, in turn, put together a shopping list of the materials needed for a gas centrifuge system. They then used dummy companies and agents in Europe to make individual purchases from the list...
Last summer, a Labor Party M.P. asked British officials if they were aware that Pakistan was buying equipment suitable for building a gas centrifuge system. Eventually intelligence agents from several countries, including the U.S., pieced together the Pakistani buying spree and reached the conclusion that Islamabad was buying itself the bomb. Washington, which promptly cut off most of its aid to Pakistan, was caught by surprise: it had persuaded France last year not to sell a nuclear reprocessing plant to Pakistan for fear the country would use it to produce Plutonium for a bomb. It now turned out that Pakistan...
...paying for the gas centrifuge plant? Pakistan is a poor nation, and a plant like this one could cost at least $500 million. Many observers believe that Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who has long attempted to obtain an atomic bomb for his own country, is funding the Pakistani project. The Israelis suspect that Gaddafi may have struck some kind of deal with the Pakistanis, perhaps extracting a promise to sell Libya ground missiles fitted with nuclear warheads...
...part, Pakistan denies that it is building a nuclear bomb or that Gaddafi paid for a gas centrifuge plant. Officials do acknowledge that research is being carried out on uranium enrichment, but they insist the fuel will be used only in nuclear reactors. The Pakistanis, however, appear to be getting a bit protective about the project: when the French Ambassador to Pakistan and his First Secretary visited the ruins of an ancient fort 25 miles south of Islamabad last week, they seemed to have wandered too close to where the gas centrifuge factory is being built. They were set upon...