Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have discovered the loss of about 2.5 tons of natural uranium from a site in Libya, the agency said in a confidential statement published by Reuters on Wednesday.
The agency’s director general, Rafael Grossi, said in the statement that the agency’s inspectors discovered during an inspection on Tuesday that “10 cylinders containing approximately 2.5 tons of natural uranium in the form of raw uranium concentrations that Libya had declared were stored at the site, were not present there.”
“The site is not currently under the control of the Libyan Nuclear Authority,” the statement added, noting that the test was scheduled for 2022, but was postponed for security reasons.
He continued, “The Atomic Energy Agency will conduct further verification procedures to clarify the circumstances of the removal of these materials and their current location.”
And the statement considered that not knowing the location of these materials “may constitute a radiological hazard, as well as raise concerns related to nuclear safety.”
nuclear in Libya
• Libya was seeking to develop a nuclear program that included centrifuges that could enrich uranium, as well as information on designing a nuclear bomb.
• In 2003, the “Jamahiriya” at that time, under the leadership of its late leader, Muammar Gaddafi, abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
• Libya has not made much progress towards building a bomb.
Libya has seen little peace since the 2011 protests that toppled Gaddafi, and since 2014, political control in the country has been divided between rival factions in the east and west.
The Libyan interim government, which was formed in early 2021 through a peace plan backed by the United Nations, was supposed to last until elections that were scheduled to be held in December of that year, but they have not yet taken place, and the legitimacy of this government has become a matter of dispute.
