Explosive Deals
The greatest threat of nuclear proliferation may not come from rogue terrorists but from white-collar businessmen trying to get rich, according to a joint investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting and American RadioWorks. Their "Business of the Bomb" by Mark Schapiro and Michael Montgomery explores the illicit trade in machines used to enrich uranium and build bombs. Here Montgomery and Schapiro describe one such business in South Africa:
Tradefin is housed inside a huge warehouse in a cluster of small factories called Vanderbiljpark about 30 miles south of Johannesburg. It shares a dusty street alongside tile, tire and paint manufacturers. Inside is a complex of rusting tanks, lathes and rumbling conveyor belts. From the looks of it, Tradefin might as well be producing ball bearings. Gerhard Wisser told German investigators that the factory was producing a water-purification facility.
But when South Africa's Crimes Against the State police raided Tradefin in 2004, they found 11 shipping containers packed with machinery—fully labeled for reassembly in Libya. IAEA inspectors would later confirm that the machines were capable of capturing and transporting uranium gas after it's been enriched in thousands of whirling centrifuges, the final stage before it's capable of being used for a nuclear bomb.
The excellent package allows you to hear the audio of a marketing video by the notorious Pakistani engineer A.Q. Khan promoting his ability to provide nuclear weapons know-how. It also contains a sidebar by Schapiro and Emma Brown on how much of a threat is posed by suitcase smugglers of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union. The podcast version of this story is worth hearing although it took me a long time to download. Check out the whole package at www.centerforinvestigativereporting.org/projects/businessofthebomb.