Latest news with #Urenco
Gulf Insider
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Insider
Israel's Failed Plot to Stop Pakistan's Nuclear Bomb
Former CIA Director George Tenet thought him 'at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden' and former Mossad Chief Shabtai Shavit regretted not killing him. But to almost 250 million Pakistanis, Abdul Qadeer Khan – the godfather of Pakistan's nuclear programme – is a legend and national hero. The nuclear scientist, who was born in 1936 and died in 2021 aged 85, was more responsible than anyone else for the South Asian nation developing a nuclear bomb. He ran a sophisticated and clandestine international network assisting Iran, Libya and North Korea with their nuclear programs. One of those nations, North Korea, ended up getting the coveted military status symbol. Israel – itself a nuclear power, although it has never admitted it – allegedly used assassination attempts and threats to try and stop Pakistan from going nuclear. In the 1980s Israel even formulated a plan to bomb Pakistan's nuclear site with Indian assistance – a scheme that the Indian government eventually backed out of. AQ Khan, as he is commonly remembered by Pakistanis, believed that by building a nuclear bomb he had saved his country from foreign threats, especially its nuclear-armed neighbor India. Today many of his fellow citizens agree. 'Why not an Islamic bomb?' Pakistan first decided to build a bomb after its larger neighbor had done so. On 18 May 1974 India tested its first nuclear weapon, which it codenamed Smiling Buddha. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto immediately vowed to develop nuclear weapons for his own country. 'We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own,' he said. There was, he declared, 'a Christian bomb, a Jewish bomb and now a Hindu bomb. Why not an Islamic bomb?' Born during British rule of the Indian subcontinent, AQ Khan completed a science degree at Karachi University in 1960 before studying metallurgical engineering in Berlin. He also went on to study in the Netherlands and Belgium. By 1974 Khan was working for a subcontractor of a major nuclear fuel company, Urenco, in Amsterdam. The company supplied enriched uranium nuclear fuel for European nuclear reactors. Khan had access to top secret areas of the Urenco facility and blueprints of the world's best centrifuges, which enriched natural uranium and turned it into bomb fuel. In January 1976 he made a sudden and mysterious departure from the Netherlands, saying he had been made 'an offer I can't refuse in Pakistan'. Khan was later accused of having stolen a blueprint for uranium centrifuges, which can turn uranium into weapons-grade fuel, from the Netherlands. That July he set up a research laboratory in Rawalpindi which produced enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. For a few years the operation proceeded in secret. Dummy companies imported the components Khan needed to build an enrichment program, the official story being that they were going towards a new textile mill. While there is significant evidence indicating that Pakistan's military establishment was supporting Khan's work, civilian governments were generally kept in the dark, with the exception of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who had proposed the initiative). Even the late prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter, was not told a word about the programe by her generals. She only found out about it in 1989 by accident – in Tehran. Iranian President Rafsanjani asked her whether they could reaffirm the two countries' agreement on 'special defense matters'. 'What exactly are you talking about, Mr President?' asked Bhutto, confused. 'Nuclear technology, Madam Prime Minister, nuclear technology,' replied the Iranian president. Bhutto was stunned. Assassination attempts and threats In June 1979, the operation was exposed by the magazine 8 Days. There was an international uproar. Israel protested to the Dutch, who ordered an inquiry. A Dutch court convicted Khan in 1983 for attempted espionage (the conviction was later overturned on a technicality). But work on the nuclear program continued. By 1986, Khan was confident Pakistan had the capability to produce nuclear weapons. His motivation was in large part ideological: 'I want to question the holier-than-thou attitude of the Americans and British,' he said. 'Are these bastards God-appointed guardians of the world?' There were serious efforts to sabotage the program, including a series of assassination attempts widely understood to have been the work of Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad. Executives at European companies doing business with Khan found themselves targeted. A letter bomb was sent to one in West Germany – he escaped but his dog was killed. Another bombing targeted a senior executive of Swiss company Cora Engineering, which worked on Pakistan's nuclear program. Historians, including Adrian Levy, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Hanni, have argued that the Mossad used threats and assassination attempts in a failed campaign to prevent Pakistan from building the bomb. Siegfried Schertler, the owner of one company, told Swiss Federal Police that Mossad agents phoned him and his salesmen repeatedly. He said he was approached by an employee of the Israeli embassy in Germany, a man named David, who told him to stop 'these businesses' regarding nuclear weapons. The Israelis 'didn't want a Muslim country to have the bomb', according to Feroz Khan, a former official in Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. In the early 1980s Israel proposed to India that the two collaborate to bomb and destroy Pakistan's nuclear facility at Kahuta in Pakistan's Rawalpindi district. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved the strike. A plan developed for Israeli F-16s and F-15s to take off from the Jamnagar airbase in India's Gujarat and launch strikes on the facility. But Gandhi later backed out and the plan was shelved. In 1987, when her son Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, the Indian army chief Lieutenant General Krishnaswami Sundarji tried to start a war with Pakistan so India could bomb the nuclear facility at Kahuta. He sent half a million troops to the Pakistani border for military drills, along with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles – an extraordinary provocation. But this attempt at triggering hostilities failed after the Indian prime minister, who had not been properly briefed on Sundarji's plan, instigated a deescalation with Pakistan. Despite Indian and Israeli opposition, both the US and China covertly helped Pakistan. China provided the Pakistanis with enriched uranium, tritium and even scientists. Meanwhile, American support came because Pakistan was an important Cold War ally. US President Jimmy Carter cut aid to Pakistan in April 1979 in response to Pakistan's program being exposed, but then reversed the decision months later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan: America would need the help of neighboring Pakistan. In the 1980s, the US covertly gave Pakistani nuclear scientists technical training and turned a blind eye to its program. But everything changed with the end of the Cold War. In October 1990 the US halted economic and military aid to Pakistan in protest against the nuclear program. Pakistan then said it would stop developing nuclear weapons. AQ Khan later revealed, though, that the production of highly enriched uranium secretly continued. The seventh nuclear power On 11 May 1998 India tested its nuclear warheads. Pakistan then successfully tested its own in the Balochistan desert later that month. The US responded by sanctioning both India and had become the world's seventh nuclear power. And Khan was a national hero. He was driven around in motorcades as large as the prime minister's and was guarded by army commandos. Streets, schools and multiple cricket teams were named after him. He wasn't known for playing down his achievements. 'Who made the atom bomb? I made it,' Khan declared on national television. 'Who made the missiles? I made them for you.' But Khan had also organized another, particularly daring, operation. From the mid-1980s onwards, he ran an international nuclear network which sent technology and designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He would order double the number of parts the Pakistani nuclear program required and then secretly sell the excess on. In the 1980s the Iranian government – despite Ayatollah Khomeini's opposition to the bomb on the grounds that it was Islamically prohibited – approached Pakistan's military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, for help. Between 1986 and 2001, Pakistan gave Iran key components needed to make a bomb, although these tended to be secondhand – Khan kept the most advanced technology for Pakistan. The Mossad had Khan under surveillance as he travelled around the Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s, but failed to work out what the scientist was doing. Then-Mossad chief Shavit later said that if he had realised Khan's intentions, he would have considered ordering Khan to be assassinated to 'change the course of history'. Gaddafi exposes the operation In the end, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi blew Khan's operation in 2003 while attempting to win support from the US. Gaddafi disclosed to the CIA and MI6 that Khan was building nuclear sites for his government – some of which were disguised as chicken farms. The CIA siezed machinery bound for Libya as it was being smuggled through the Suez Canal. Investigators found weapons blueprints in bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner. When the operation was exposed, the Americans were horrified. 'It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before,' a senior American official told the New York Times. 'First, [Khan] exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. 'Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments.' In 2004 Khan confessed to running the nuclear proliferation network, saying he had provided Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear technology. In February, he appeared on television and insisted he had acted alone, with no support from the Pakistani government, which then swiftly pardoned him. President Musharraf called him 'my hero'. However, reportedly under US pressure, he placed Khan under effective house arrest in Islamabad until 2009. Later AQ Khan said that he 'saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself'. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 but recovered after surgery. Enormously wealthy, in his later years, Khan funded a community centre in Islamabad and spent his time feeding monkeys. Those who knew him said Khan firmly believed what he had done was right. He wanted to stand up to the west and give nuclear technology to non-western, particularly Muslim, nations. 'He also said that giving technology to a Muslim country was not a crime,' one anonymous acquaintance recalled. When Khan died of Covid in 2021, he was hailed as a 'national icon' by then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. And that is how he is still widely remembered today in Pakistan. '[The] nation should be rest assured Pakistan is a safe atomic power,' the nuclear scientist had declared in 2019. 'No one can cast an evil eye on it.' Also read: Iran-Israel Conflict: US President Donald Trump Receives Nobel Peace Prize Nomination For Ceasefire Deal
Middle East Eye
25-06-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
'Why not an Islamic bomb?': How Israel planned and failed to stop Pakistan going nuclear
Former CIA Director George Tenet thought him 'at least as dangerous as Osama bin Laden' and former Mossad Chief Shabtai Shavit regretted not killing him. But to almost 250 million Pakistanis, Abdul Qadeer Khan - the godfather of Pakistan's nuclear programme - is a legend and national hero. The nuclear scientist, who was born in 1936 and died in 2021 aged 85, was more responsible than anyone else for the South Asian nation developing a nuclear bomb. He ran a sophisticated and clandestine international network assisting Iran, Libya and North Korea with their nuclear programmes. One of those nations, North Korea, ended up getting the coveted military status symbol. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Israel - itself a nuclear power, although it has never admitted it - allegedly used assassination attempts and threats to try and stop Pakistan from going nuclear. In the 1980s Israel even formulated a plan to bomb Pakistan's nuclear site with Indian assistance - a scheme that the Indian government eventually backed out of. AQ Khan, as he is commonly remembered by Pakistanis, believed that by building a nuclear bomb he had saved his country from foreign threats, especially its nuclear-armed neighbour India. Today many of his fellow citizens agree. 'Why not an Islamic bomb?' Pakistan first decided to build a bomb after its larger neighbour had done so. On 18 May 1974 India tested its first nuclear weapon, which it codenamed Smiling Buddha. Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto immediately vowed to develop nuclear weapons for his own country. "We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own," he said. There was, he declared, 'a Christian bomb, a Jewish bomb and now a Hindu bomb. 'Why not an Islamic bomb?' 'We will eat grass or leaves, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own' - Pakistani PM Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (from 1973 to 1977) Born during British rule of the Indian subcontinent, AQ Khan completed a science degree at Karachi University in 1960 before studying metallurgical engineering in Berlin. He also went on to study in the Netherlands and Belgium. By 1974 Khan was working for a subcontractor of a major nuclear fuel company, Urenco, in Amsterdam. The company supplied enriched uranium nuclear fuel for European nuclear reactors. Khan had access to top secret areas of the Urenco facility and blueprints of the world's best centrifuges, which enriched natural uranium and turned it into bomb fuel. In January 1976 he made a sudden and mysterious departure from the Netherlands, saying he had been made 'an offer I can't refuse in Pakistan'. Khan was later accused of having stolen a blueprint for uranium centrifuges, which can turn uranium into weapons-grade fuel, from the Netherlands. That July he set up a research laboratory in Rawalpindi which produced enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. For a few years the operation proceeded in secret. Dummy companies imported the components Khan needed to build an enrichment programme, the official story being that they were going towards a new textile mill. While there is significant evidence indicating that Pakistan's military establishment was supporting Khan's work, civilian governments were generally kept in the dark, with the exception of Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (who had proposed the initiative). Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (R) and his wife Begum Nusrat Isphahani Bhutto at a dinner gala at the Georges V Hotel in France, on 26 July 1973 (AFP) Even the late prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's daughter, was not told a word about the programme by her generals. She only found out about it in 1989 by accident - in Tehran. Iranian President Rafsanjani asked her whether they could reaffirm the two countries' agreement on 'special defence matters'. 'What exactly are you talking about, Mr President?' asked Bhutto, confused. 'Nuclear technology, Madam Prime Minister, nuclear technology,' replied the Iranian president. Bhutto was stunned. Assassination attempts and threats In June 1979, the operation was exposed by the magazine 8 Days. There was an international uproar. Israel protested to the Dutch, who ordered an inquiry. A Dutch court convicted Khan in 1983 for attempted espionage (the conviction was later overturned on a technicality). But work on the nuclear programme continued. By 1986, Khan was confident Pakistan had the capability to produce nuclear weapons. 'Imperial whore': Top Pakistani official goes after son of overthrown shah of Iran Read More » His motivation was in large part ideological: 'I want to question the holier-than-thou attitude of the Americans and British,' he said. 'Are these bastards God-appointed guardians of the world?' There were serious efforts to sabotage the programme, including a series of assassination attempts widely understood to have been the work of Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad. Executives at European companies doing business with Khan found themselves targeted. A letter bomb was sent to one in West Germany - he escaped but his dog was killed. Another bombing targeted a senior executive of Swiss company Cora Engineering, which worked on Pakistan's nuclear programme. Historians, including Adrian Levy, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Hanni, have argued that the Mossad used threats and assassination attempts in a failed campaign to prevent Pakistan from building the bomb. Siegfried Schertler, the owner of one company, told Swiss Federal Police that Mossad agents phoned him and his salesmen repeatedly. He said he was approached by an employee of the Israeli embassy in Germany, a man named David, who told him to stop 'these businesses' regarding nuclear weapons. The Israelis 'didn't want a Muslim country to have the bomb', according to Feroz Khan, a former official in Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme. 'Are these bastards God-appointed guardians of the world?' - AQ Khan, Pakistani nuclear scientist In the early 1980s Israel proposed to India that the two collaborate to bomb and destroy Pakistan's nuclear facility at Kahuta in Pakistan's Rawalpindi district. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi approved the strike. A plan developed for Israeli F-16s and F-15s to take off from the Jamnagar airbase in India's Gujarat and launch strikes on the facility. But Gandhi later backed out and the plan was shelved. In 1987, when her son Rajiv Gandhi was prime minister, the Indian army chief Lieutenant General Krishnaswami Sundarji tried to start a war with Pakistan so India could bomb the nuclear facility at Kahuta. He sent half a million troops to the Pakistani border for military drills, along with hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles - an extraordinary provocation. But this attempt at triggering hostilities failed after the Indian prime minister, who had not been properly briefed on Sundarji's plan, instigated a deescalation with Pakistan. Imran Khan (L) walks with AQ Khan after a meeting at his residence in Islamabad on 7 February 2009 (AFP) Despite Indian and Israeli opposition, both the US and China covertly helped Pakistan. China provided the Pakistanis with enriched uranium, tritium and even scientists. Meanwhile, American support came because Pakistan was an important Cold War ally. US President Jimmy Carter cut aid to Pakistan in April 1979 in response to Pakistan's programme being exposed, but then reversed the decision months later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan: America would need the help of neighbouring Pakistan. In the 1980s, the US covertly gave Pakistani nuclear scientists technical training and turned a blind eye to its programme. But everything changed with the end of the Cold War. In October 1990 the US halted economic and military aid to Pakistan in protest against the nuclear programme. Pakistan then said it would stop developing nuclear weapons. AQ Khan later revealed, though, that the production of highly enriched uranium secretly continued. The seventh nuclear power On 11 May 1998 India tested its nuclear warheads. Pakistan then successfully tested its own in the Balochistan desert later that month. The US responded by sanctioning both India and Pakistan. Pakistan had become the world's seventh nuclear power. And Khan was a national hero. He was driven around in motorcades as large as the prime minister's and was guarded by army commandos. What the Israel-Iran-US conflict taught Pakistan Read More » Streets, schools and multiple cricket teams were named after him. He wasn't known for playing down his achievements. 'Who made the atom bomb? I made it,' Khan declared on national television. 'Who made the missiles? I made them for you.' But Khan had also organised another, particularly daring, operation. From the mid-1980s onwards, he ran an international nuclear network which sent technology and designs to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He would order double the number of parts the Pakistani nuclear programme required and then secretly sell the excess on. In the 1980s the Iranian government - despite Ayatollah Khomeini's opposition to the bomb on the grounds that it was Islamically prohibited - approached Pakistan's military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, for help. Between 1986 and 2001, Pakistan gave Iran key components needed to make a bomb, although these tended to be secondhand - Khan kept the most advanced technology for Pakistan. The Mossad had Khan under surveillance as he travelled around the Middle East in the 1980s and 1990s, but failed to work out what the scientist was doing. Then-Mossad chief Shavit later said that if he had realised Khan's intentions, he would have considered ordering Khan to be assassinated to 'change the course of history'. Gaddafi exposes the operation In the end, Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi blew Khan's operation in 2003 while attempting to win support from the US. Gaddafi disclosed to the CIA and MI6 that Khan was building nuclear sites for his government - some of which were disguised as chicken farms. The CIA siezed machinery bound for Libya as it was being smuggled through the Suez Canal. Investigators found weapons blueprints in bags from an Islamabad dry cleaner. When the operation was exposed, the Americans were horrified. 'It was an astounding transformation when you think about it, something we've never seen before," a senior American official told the New York Times. "First, [Khan] exploits a fragmented market and develops a quite advanced nuclear arsenal. 'Then he throws the switch, reverses the flow and figures out how to sell the whole kit, right down to the bomb designs, to some of the world's worst governments." In 2004 Khan confessed to running the nuclear proliferation network, saying he had provided Iran, Libya and North Korea with nuclear technology. In February, he appeared on television and insisted he had acted alone, with no support from the Pakistani government, which then swiftly pardoned him. President Musharraf called him 'my hero'. However, reportedly under US pressure, he placed Khan under effective house arrest in Islamabad until 2009. Later AQ Khan said that he 'saved the country for the first time when I made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and took the whole blame on myself'. Soldiers carry the flag-draped coffin of AQ Khan during his funeral outside the Faisal Mosque following his death in Islamabad on 10 October 2021 (AFP) He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 but recovered after surgery. Enormously wealthy, in his later years, Khan funded a community centre in Islamabad and spent his time feeding monkeys. Those who knew him said Khan firmly believed what he had done was right. He wanted to stand up to the west and give nuclear technology to non-western, particularly Muslim, nations. 'He also said that giving technology to a Muslim country was not a crime,' one anonymous acquaintance recalled. When Khan died of Covid in 2021, he was hailed as a 'national icon' by then-Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. And that is how he is still widely remembered today in Pakistan. '[The] nation should be rest assured Pakistan is a safe atomic power,' the nuclear scientist had declared in 2019. 'No one can cast an evil eye on it.'
Yahoo
24-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This engineer remains on track despite issues on the line
Questor is The Telegraph's stock-picking column, helping you decode the markets and offering insights on where to invest. A slow start to Network Rail's CP7 spending and planning cycle, which runs from 2024 to 2029, continues to catch a range of companies off guard. These include equipment hire specialists Speedy Hire and Vp, engineering services company Renew, and signalling expert Tracsis. We were starting to worry that portfolio pick Costain, another infrastructure specialist, could be dragged off course given its exposure to Network Rail and HS2. But a second reassuring trading statement in the space of a month hopefully means we can rest easy. Visibility continues to improve, and as of December, the firm order book was £2.5bn, more than double analysts' forecasts for revenues this year, while Costain stood as preferred bidder on a further £2.9bn of work. Contract wins this year in nuclear energy with Urenco and Sizewell C, as well as Anglian Water as part of its AMP regulatory cycle, are further positive signs, adding weight to the belief that Costain's breadth of business could mitigate any issues with rail, of which the firm is thus far giving no indication. Alex Vaughan, chief executive, and the board continue to assert that Costain can reach a run-rate profit margin of 4.5pc this year, and ultimately 5pc or more. Cash flow remains good and the balance sheet has a net cash pile, since it bears no debt, a pension surplus and only modest lease liabilities. Such is management's confidence, Costain is launching a second £10m share buyback and continues to raise the prospect of a progressive dividend policy. This is all well and good, but we have a paper gain of more than 140pc on the stock, with 3.2p per share in dividends on top, so it is tempting to lock in the gain, especially given the rail industry rumblings. Moreover, that 5pc margin target relies on skilled delivery of complex projects where margins are thin and the room for error limited, as illustrated by the heavy losses suffered on two problematic projects at the turn of the decade. Costain needs to demonstrate that it can improve its project management and derive a higher portion of its sales from more profitable consultancy work. However, the net cash pile, including the pension surplus, represents almost 60pc of Costain's stock market capitalisation, so we have some downside protection. More importantly, there is also still upside potential. A 5pc operating margin on £1.3bn of annual revenues could turn into earnings per share of around 20p, given the net cash balance sheet, a 25pc tax rate and the effects of the second £10m buyback programme on the share count. The still-lowly margin probably means Costain would merit a rating no higher than 10 times earnings, but 10 times 20 suggests a share price of 200p, if all goes to plan, some 40pc up from current levels. Questor says: holdTicker: COSTShare price: 142.4p We are already nicely in the black with challenger bank OSB and there could be more to come in the form of dividends and capital gains, if recent merger and acquisition chatter in the banking sector proves an accurate guide. Granted, we will have to await firm numbers rather than rumour, but talk of a private equity approach for Metro Bank refuses to go away, while Spain's Banco de Sabadell has put TSB up for sale. After a rapid advance, albeit from very depressed levels, shares in Metro Bank now trade at around one times tangible net asset value (Nav) per share. The reported price tag for TSB implies a similar sort of multiple, based on numbers disclosed in the Spanish parent's annual report for 2024. OSB trades on 0.9 times historic tangible book value. It also makes a far higher return on tangible equity than either Metro Bank or TSB. Any new owner of Metro Bank may feel it can make rapid improvements in profits at the lender, given it has a last-reported cost-to-income ratio of 101pc, but they will have to go some to get that indicator down to OSB's 35pc. OSB also offers a higher net interest margin and higher regulatory capital ratios, while the impairment ratio for sour loans is broadly similar. In addition, OSB comes with a forecast dividend yield of some 7pc, according to consensus analysts' forecasts. Granted, investors are demanding a lofty yield in compensation for the risks, since OSB is exposed to the buy-to-let and UK property markets at a time of economic uncertainty, but any hard-and-fast deals for TSB or Metro Bank could provide a steer as to OSB's potential value. Questor says: buyTicker: OSBShare price: 498.6p
CNBC
06-06-2025
- Business
- CNBC
This uranium company wants to break the grip that foreign state corporations have on U.S. nuclear fuel
President Donald Trump's push to dramatically increase nuclear power in the U.S. will require a tremendous amount of fuel, but the country remains heavily dependent on foreign state-owned companies for its supplies, the CEO of the only publicly traded uranium enricher in the world told CNBC. "There's barely enough Western enrichment, if at all, to satisfy existing operating plants," Centrus Energy CEO Amir Vexler said in an interview. "If the nuclear industry is to add all this generation capacity, there will have to be a tremendous amount of enrichment capacity that's added." Trump issued a series of executive orders on nuclear power last month that set a target for the U.S. to quadruple the sector's capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050. Nuclear energy is one of the few issues in deeply polarized Washington these days that enjoys some level of bipartisan support. Trump's push expands on former President Joe Biden's goal to triple nuclear power by midcentury. Most nuclear plants worldwide use low-enriched uranium, or LEU. The U.S. relied on foreign countries for around 70% of the fuel for its reactors in 2023, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. About 27% of U.S. fuel purchases came from Russia that year, one of the principle geopolitical foes of the U.S. But Russian uranium will be forced out of the U.S. supply chain by 2028 at the latest, after Biden signed legislation in 2024 to ban imports over Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. faces a looming nuclear fuel supply gap due to the loss of Russian uranium. Western enrichment capacity, meanwhile, is dominated by two players that are not American owned. They are France's Orano and a British-Dutch-German consortium called Urenco, according to the World Nuclear Association. The European enrichers are reliable partners and have done a good job supporting the market, Vexler told CNBC. But trade tensions threaten to disrupt global supply chains, he said on the Centrus first-quarter earnings call. "We don't have any domestic fuel cycle capacity, almost at all," Vexler told CNBC, referring to American-owned companies. "We don't mine anything, we don't convert anything. We don't enrich anything. We rely on others. And others are all state-owned enterprises, maybe with a few minor exceptions." The only commercial enrichment facility operating in the U.S. is owned by Urenco, the European consortium. It is located in Eunice, New Mexico. Centrus wants to break the stranglehold that state-owned corporations have over the U.S. nuclear fuel supply chain. "The circumstances in the market are such that we believe and we're staking everything we have on the fact that the market needs another enricher," Vexler said. "It needs competition." Trump directed federal agencies on May 23 to develop a plan to expand uranium enrichment capabilities in the U.S. to meet the needs of the civilian and defense sectors. The president's order is sparse on concrete details about how domestic enrichment will be stood up in the U.S. But Centrus' stock has gained 46% as of Thursday's close since Trump's announcement as Wall Street sees the company playing a key role in the effort. The company's shares have risen more than 7% this week as Meta's deal to buy nuclear power from Constellation Energy has reinforced the view that demand is increasing as the tech sector hunts for electricity for its data centers. Centrus is one of just two companies that are licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to produce low-enriched uranium in the U.S., the other being Urenco. Bethesda, Maryland-based Centrus is also the only company in the U.S. that has a license to produce a type of fuel that some next-generation nuclear plant designs, such as small modular reactors, are planning to use. The U.S. wasn't always dependent on foreign countries. It was the first country to enrich uranium for the commercial market and was a dominant player in the market through the 1980s. The federal government owned and operated the nation's enrichment facilities during that period. The U.S. sold its enrichment business through a company called the United States Enrichment Corp. in a public offering in 1998. USEC went bankrupt in 2014 as nuclear plants struggled to compete against cheap natural gas and support for the industry declined in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan. Centrus emerged from the reorganization of USEC later that year and is now profitable. "We were just not able to compete with other government, state-owned competitors," said Vexler, who took over the helm at Centrus in 2024. When times got tough for the industry, national governments in Europe and Russia would not allow their state-owned enrichers to fail, he said. Centrus operates an enrichment plant in Piketon, Ohio, about 95 miles east of Cincinnati that could one day supply a major portion of U.S. nuclear fuel needs. The Ohio facility has a footprint the size of the Pentagon and could produce enriched uranium equivalent to about 25% of the total purchased by U.S. power plants in 2023, according to Centrus. This is nearly equivalent to the amount of enriched uranium imported from Russia that year. "If that is not sufficient, if domestic requirements, national security requirements, export requirements exceed that, then obviously we have the capability to expand as well," Vexler said. The Ohio plant has not launched commercial operations yet. It is currently producing a small amount of the fuel that the developers of advanced reactor designs are banking on, called high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU. The Department of Energy buys the fuel that Centrus produces. Centrus' main business right now is importing LEU for U.S. nuclear plants with contracts that run through 2040. It has a waiver to import Russian LEU through 2025 and has applied for waivers through 2027. Under U.S. law, exceptions that allow Russian imports will cease by 2028. Centrus plans to transition away from its trading business as it stands up its domestic enrichment capacity. The vast majority of the enriched uranium produced in Ohio will be sold on the commercial market and potentially for export, Vexler said. "I would certainly aim for us to not only backfill sort of the vacancy that the Russians are creating, but I also hope that we're going to gain market share, both in the LEU and in the HALEU market," Vexler said. But this will require some level of government support given the state-owned competition, he said. Congress has passed $3.4 billion to support domestic enrichment and reduce U.S. dependence particularly on Russia. Centrus is one of several companies competing for the funding. "We've always said that it has to be a public-private partnership," Vexler said. "We've been raising our own funds. We've been raising our own financing. We will contribute significantly to this, but we have to have government support." "There is a path here where we could have a prosperous, commercially competitive American industry," he said.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Urenco and Ubaryon to Form Strategic Partnership
Winnipeg, Manitoba--(Newsfile Corp. - May 5, 2025) - Snow Lake Resources Ltd., d/b/a Snow Lake Energy (NASDAQ: LITM) ("Snow Lake"), a uranium exploration and development company, advises that Ubaryon Pty Ltd ("Ubaryon") has provided a shareholder update to announce that it has signed a Term Sheet with Urenco Limited ("Urenco") to form a strategic partnership. This is a significant milestone which will materially assist the future commercialization of Ubaryon's uranium enrichment technology. Highlights Ubaryon achieves a major milestone forming a strategic partnership with Urenco to advance its Uranium Enrichment Technology Urenco is a global uranium enrichment company with enrichment facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA Ubaryon is a private Australian company which owns 100% of a unique and innovative technology for uranium enrichment Urenco to invest A$5.0m to advance the technology over the next 3 years, providing strategic validation of Ubaryon's technology as well as significant resources and expertise to help de-risk steps towards commercialization Global Uranium and Enrichment Limited ("GUE") is the largest shareholder in Ubaryon (21.9%) and will remain the largest shareholder post the transaction Ubaryon independently assessed at technology readiness level of TRL-4 which highlights the development done to date and the strong platform for this new partnership to build on Snow Lake holds a cornerstone 19.9% interest in GUE, which in turn holds a 21.9% interest in Ubaryon Urenco Strategic Investment Ubaryon has signed a non-binding Term Sheet with Urenco, a global uranium enrichment company, to form a strategic partnership. The agreement was reached after a comprehensive process involving a targeted group of potential investors and partners, conducted within the controls of the security legislation that Ubaryon's technology is regulated by. Under the terms of the agreement, Urenco will invest a total of A$5.0 million in Ubaryon over the next 3 years for a 13% stake in Ubaryon. The Term Sheet is subject to the usual and reasonable conditions precedent for completion of an investment of this nature including receiving Ubaryon shareholder approval for the transaction, Foreign Investment Review Board approval and execution of binding transaction documentation. Urenco is an international supplier of enrichment services with sustainability at the core of its business. Operating in the nuclear fuel supply chain for 50 years, Urenco has its head office near London, UK, and enrichment facilities in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Urenco's commitment, coming after detailed due diligence, validates GUE's historical investment in Ubaryon and significantly de-risks the business, thereby enhancing GUE's exposure to midstream nuclear fuel supply chains. Ubaryon has committed to working exclusively with Urenco to complete the transaction which will also provide Urenco the ability to potentially increase its stake in Ubaryon through acquiring shares from existing shareholders and a potential pathway to secure the Ubaryon technology at a fair market value at some point in the future when the technology has been further advanced. Ubaryon stated in the shareholder update, that the Ubaryon board has been impressed by the diligent and professional way in which Urenco has engaged in the due diligence process and that it is clear that there are significant synergies between companies. Urenco's deep technical, regulatory, market expertise, resources and strategic position in the nuclear fuel supply chain industry will make them the ideal strategic shareholder for Ubaryon. Ubaryon's board considers that Urenco's investment will also significantly assist the future commercialization of Ubaryon's technology to the extent that no other strategic investor could. Ubaryon will request all shareholders (with GUE being the largest shareholder) to provide a waiver of pre-emptive rights to purchase shares to allow the transaction with Urenco to proceed and will also schedule a Ubaryon shareholder meeting to approve the transaction and its terms and conditions. It should be noted that, as a binding agreement has not yet been signed, there is no certainty that the transaction will complete within a specific timeframe, nor that it will complete at all. Ubaryon Technology Rapidly Advancing - TRL 4 As a part of the due diligence process, Ubaryon has received two independent technical reviews confirming the technology is currently at Technology Readiness Level ("TRL") assessment level of TRL-4. The TRL index is a globally accepted benchmarking tool for tracking progress in the development of a new technology through the early-stage research (TRL-1) to technologies ready for scaled commercial operations (TRL-9). TRL-4 shows that all critical components were successfully validated in a laboratory environment and supported by experimental results. Combined with the validation provided as a result of Urenco's due diligence, these independent assessments give confidence that Ubaryon's technology has a sound foundation for further development. As a point of comparison, Global Laser Enrichment1 ("GLE") which is the vehicle of the SILEX uranium technology (jointly owned by SILEX Systems Limited 51% and Cameco Corporation 49%), is aiming for completing a commercial-scale pilot demonstration to provide TRL-6 of the SILEX technology around mid-2025. Ubaryon Background Ubaryon is a private Australian company which is developing and commercializing a unique uranium enrichment technology based on the chemical separation of naturally occurring uranium isotopes. Ubaryon was established in 2015 after environmental testing identified a process anomaly, after which Ubaryon lodged a patent application over its Ubaryon Enrichment Technology in 2018. Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office ("ASNO") classified the intellectual property in September 2018. ASNO and Defense Export Controls now regulate all Ubaryon's technical disclosure. A significant feature of the Ubaryon Enrichment Technology is that it eliminates the need for conversion from uranium oxide or yellowcake (UO4 or U3O8) to gaseous uranium (UF6) and the need for deconversion from UF6 to uranium oxide. Removing conversion and deconversion simplifies the enrichment process and allows for additional flexibility in the nuclear fuel cell supply chain. About Snow Lake Resources Ltd. Snow Lake Resources Ltd., d/b/a Snow Lake Energy, is a Canadian mineral exploration company listed on (NASDAQ: LITM), with a global portfolio of critical mineral and clean energy projects. The Pine Ridge Uranium project is an exploration stage project located in Wyoming, United States, and the Engo Valley Uranium Project is an exploration stage project located in the Skeleton Coast of Namibia. Snow Lake also holds a portfolio of additional exploration stage critical minerals projects located in Manitoba. Learn more at Forward-Looking Statements: This press release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the "safe harbor" provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, contained in this press release are forward-looking statements, including without limitation statements with regard to Snow Lake Resources Ltd.. We base these forward-looking statements on our expectations and projections about future events, which we derive from the information currently available to us. Forward-Looking statements contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "seek," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "target," "aim," "should," "will," "would," or the negative of these words or other similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-Looking statements are based on Snow Lake Resources Ltd.'s current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Further, certain forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. Some of these risks and uncertainties are described more fully in the section titled "Risk Factors" in our registration statements and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-Looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and Snow Lake Resources Ltd. undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law. Contact and InformationFrank Wheatley, CEO Investor RelationsInvestors:ir@ Follow us on Social MediaTwitter: 1 To view the source version of this press release, please visit
