Uranium

First it was nerve gas, then lethal germs. Now, a newspaper reports, police think a Japanese cult was studying how to enrich uranium, a process necessary to produce nuclear fuel or weapons. Police found documents about uranium enrichment in the car of a member of the Aum Supreme Truth cult, which is suspected in the deadly March 20 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Sunday.

President Bush on Monday signed a bill authorizing payments of up to $100,000 to people who may have developed cancer because of nuclear testing or uranium mining in Western states during the Cold War years. "These payments fairly resolve the claims of persons present at the test site and of downwind residents, as well as claims of uranium miners," Bush said in a statement. He signed the measure during a campaign appearance here.

Workers at a government uranium-processing plant in southern Ohio routinely inhaled uranium dust, arsenic and other poisons for decades because supervisors did not require them to wear respirators, the Energy Department said Thursday.

NATO warned countries with armies and aid workers in the Balkans about the possible dangers of depleted uranium ammunition, the German Defense Ministry said Sunday. The hardened ammo has recently sparked concern as a possible cause of serious illnesses in soldiers who served in the region.

Two former Russian servicemen were detained here after authorities found 13 pounds of uranium-235 stashed in emptied sour cream jars in their apartment, officials confirmed Tuesday. The size of the seizure--the second in Ukraine this year--raises fresh concerns about the potential danger of nuclear materials hemorrhaging from the former Soviet Union into the hands of outlaw regimes and international terrorists.

More than 600 Navajos jammed a public hearing here Tuesday looking into allegations that the federal government failed to protect the health of uranium miners, many of them Indians, hired during the early days of the nation's atomic weapons program. Numerous miners and miners' widows testified that they had not been warned by employers of any danger, yet have since suffered numerous cancers and respiratory illnesses.

The owners of a uranium plant that fueled submarines during the Cold War were ordered by a jury to pay at least $36.5 million to eight cancer-stricken residents of the small town of Apollo, Pa., or their relatives. Atlantic Richfield Co. and Babcock and Wilcox Co. were found negligent in their operation of the now-closed Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corp. plant.

Four Slovaks were caught Wednesday trying to smuggle 26.5 ounces of uranium-235 across the border into Hungary, a Slovak Interior Ministry official said Thursday. The radioactive material was concealed in a lead box in the back seat of a car and was seized in the south-central town of Slovenske Nove Mesto, Jaroslava Ivor, an investigator in the Slovak Interior Ministry, told reporters Thursday. Three Slovak men and a woman were in the car at the time of the arrest, she said.

Talks on a long-running financial dispute between France and Iran failed this week after Iran sought supplies of enriched uranium as the price of agreement, French newspapers reported Friday. France's Foreign Ministry declined all comment on the reports in the influential daily Le Monde and the financial daily Les Echos, which said Paris rejected the last-minute request. They said Iran, which has no functioning nuclear power stations, had no obvious civilian need for such material.

Re "U.S. Officials Downplay 'Mistake' in Bush's Speech," July 14: One is hard-pressed to determine what is more distasteful here: the initial gaffe of President Bush saying in his State of the Union speech that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa, or the horribly arrogant and insulting spin that this "mistake" was really trivial and doesn't change the fundamental argument. In fact, this mistake was near the heart of the argument to invade Iraq. At least, that is what our president led us to believe.