Bomb-grade uranium sent to Islamist Belgium

What could possibly go wrong?

• With Islamist terrorists attacks happening weekly it is comforting to know that weapons grade uranium is being shipped to Belgium, ground zero for much of European Islamism.
• One wonders, to keep costs down does the transport company use minimum wage rent-a-cops for security?

(RT News)  -  The US nuclear regulator is to decide whether to continue supplying highly enriched uranium (HEU) to a Belgian research reactor that produces radioactive isotopes for medicine, but critics have been calling for a switch to uranium not suitable for bombs.

A decision from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission on whether to permit the Belgian Nuclear Research Center (NRC) to obtain 144 kilograms of weapon-grade uranium is currently pending. The NRC says it needs the new material to keep its medical research reactor going for the next decade. The facility produces radioactive isotopes for fighting cancer.

The US has been reluctant to provide foreign partners with weapon-grade uranium as of late because of fears that it could fall into the wrong hands or set back global efforts to limit nuclear proliferation.

The US and Belgian centers have been doing business for decades, and the Belgian side has promised to modernize its production process to use low-enriched uranium (LEU) instead of the HEU used to produce nuclear bombs.

Since at least 2005, the Belgian research center has been assuring the Americans that it would make the transition to LEU, but years have passed with no visible progress and the medical reactor is now exhausting its lifespan.

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An ISIS Dirty Bomb
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(BRG.com)  -  A report that preceded the horrific attacks on Brussels revealed that ISIS terrorists have been working to acquire materials to create so-called dirty bombs with the help of nuclear material. Meanwhile, the investigation into the Belgian explosion exposed more information about those plans.
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Apparently, the brothers who detonated home-made explosive devices at the airport and a metro station in Brussels were the ones who planted surveillance equipment outside the house of a nuclear physicist last year.

Suicide bombers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui wanted to get their hands on nuclear material that could have been used to make a dirty bomb. Such an explosive device would contain traces of nuclear material that would get dispersed into the atmosphere following the blast. That material would then be carried by winds and irradiate a large area near, and downwind of the detonation, NBC News reports.

A model for a dirty bomb explosion near the White House shows how significant the damage would be for the nearby population. People would not die immediately, but they’d be more likely to develop cancers after being exposed to radioactive material.  (More)