Egypt failed to report nuclear materials, activities: IAEA
VIENNA, Feb 14: The UN nuclear agency, in a confidential report, said on Monday that Egypt was guilty of repeated failures to report nuclear activities but downplayed any suggestion that this could be related to secret atomic weapons development.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also found traces of plutonium, a potential atomic weapons material, in so-called hot cells, the report said, with Egypt saying this was due to contamination rather than plutonium production.
It added that Egypt's failures were "a matter of concern" but that Cairo was now cooperating and had claimed it had erred as it had not understood its reporting obligations.
A senior diplomat close to the IAEA described the incidents as minor, with some taking place as long as 40 years ago, and said they could be related to research into the nuclear fuel cycle in order to build power plants, as Egypt claims, rather than part of an atomic weapons program.
Egypt had sought in the late 1970s to construct eight nuclear power plants to produce electricity but did not build any. "The nuclear material and facilities seen by the agency to date are consistent with the activities described by Egypt," which are strictly peaceful, the report said.
It added that Egypt has already dismantled a uranium conversion facility and was now using a plant originally built for reprocessing plutonium to store radioactive material intended for medical purposes.
But "notwithstanding, and irrespective of the current status of the previously undeclared activities and the small amounts of nuclear material involved, the repeated failures by Egypt to report nuclear materials and facilities to the agency in a timely manner are a matter of concern", the report said.
"Egypt has explained that its past failure to report was attributable to a lack of clarity about its obligations under its Safeguards Agreement, particularly as regards small quantities of nuclear material used in research and development activities," it added.
Some of the activities that went unreported pre-date Egypt signing on to the safeguards agreement of the nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1982. But Egypt failed to report as of 1982, 67 kilograms of imported uranium gas that is used in enriching uranium and several other products used in enrichment, the report said.
Egypt also failed to report "irradiation of natural uranium and thorium" experiments and to "provide design information" for a plant that can be used in making plutonium.
The Egypt report will be submitted to a meeting that opens in Vienna on Feb 28 of the IAEA's 35-nation board of governors, which decides whether to take nations that violate safeguards to the Security Council.
The diplomat said Egypt's undeclared work was small-scale and not comparable to Iran, which the IAEA has investigated for two years, or even to South Korea, which has admitted to carrying out rogue nuclear experiments.
The experiments the IAEA is looking into involve making uranium metal, which could be used to make weapons-grade plutonium, and carrying out the first steps of uranium enrichment by making uranium tetrafluoride (UF4), the diplomat said.
But Egypt did not do any enrichment, the diplomat said. Egypt admitted on Jan 27 to failing to signal a "number of research experiments" to the IAEA, after diplomats said the agency was investigating an Egyptian lab that could be used to make plutonium.
The reprocessing laboratory is at Egypt's Inshass centre, 35 kilometres north east of Cairo, where there are two research reactors, and consists of "hot laboratories, procured from France in the early 1980s, which allow for treatment of spent fuel and laboratory-scale plutonium separation", a diplomat said.
The statement said Egypt had been slow to respond to stronger safeguards measures by the IAEA "since the 1990s" and had thus failed from lack of awareness of the new rules to report "to the agency, in an appropriate and timely manner, a number of research experiments and activities". -AFP
