Word: heu
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2010-2019
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...After Lopez-Lizana reported that the uranium was accounted for, the NNSA team had to shift it through a crisis zone to a port on high alert for tsunamis. And their cargo was unstable. HEU must be stored and shipped in certain geometrical configurations - long, flat sheets, for instance - so that it does not spontaneously start a nuclear chain reaction, spewing out heat and radioactive by-products. When it has been used in a nuclear reactor, as some of the Chilean HEU had been, it becomes radioactive. Twelve hours before the earthquake, the NNSA engineers had overseen the fitting...
...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 his team out for dinner with Chilean nuclear agency officials before heading to bed. Then...
...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...