Word: uranium
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Iran on Monday dramatically raised the stakes in its showdown with the West over its nuclear program by threatening to resume work at a sealed uranium-enrichment research facility. Iran had previously agreed to have the enrichment equipment at the Natanz facility sealed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as a good-faith gesture towards the three European countries with which it had been negotiating. Tehran insists on exercising its right to enrich uranium as part of a civilian nuclear energy program, but the same technology would allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon - and the Western powers...
...still imports a substantial portion of the fuel it consumes domestically. Crucial to the outcome of the London discussions, and any Security Council deliberation, will be the input of Russia, which has sought to mediate the standoff by offering to establish a facility on its own soil to enrich uranium, under international scrutiny, to fuel Iran's nuclear energy reactors. (In order to create a nuclear weapon, uranium must be enriched to a far higher degree than that required to run a nuclear power plant, but the Europeans and the U.S. want to keep enrichment capability out of Iran...
...lines of its negotiating partners. But recently Tehran's tactics have become much more aggressive, and it does not seem likely that it will back down from its enrichment program. There is still room for maneuver: Iran has yet to start actually spinning the centrifuges to enrich uranium gas, and could agree under pressure to voluntarily desist from turning on the machines for a little while longer. But with the current mood towards Tehran in capitals around the world, that kind of gesture may not be enough...
...capitalize on any comeback because it is a one-stop shop for nuclear energy, with revenues last year of $13.5 billion and almost a one-third share of the market. Unlike its key competitors, Westinghouse and General Electric, Areva spans all aspects of the business. It mines and enriches uranium ore to make nuclear fuel; it designs and constructs reactors and helps operate them; and it recycles the spent fuel and packages the remaining waste. An engineer by training, Lauvergeon worked as an aide to the late French President François Mitterrand before joining the Lazard investment bank...
...dissing the Bush team from somewhere within the government. In May 2003, shortly after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof first wrote about a secret CIA mission to Africa by an unnamed U.S. ambassador to assess suggestions by Cheney's office that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger, Libby asked Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman to go digging for more information on the mission. It was not an idle inquiry: the 2002 trip, taken by a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, had turned up no evidence that Iraq sought the uranium ore for its nuclear...