In 1994, the United States conducted a secret operation for several weeks in Kazakhstan to recover 600 kilograms of enriched uranium, left abandoned after the fall of the USSR.
Trucks loaded with enriched uranium travel on frozen roads in eastern Kazakhstan. The vehicles are preparing to load their cargo into cargo planes for a 10,000-kilometer journey. The Sapphire project, carried out for several weeks by the United States in this former Soviet republic, is coming to an end. The operation has involved about thirty Americans on the ground with a mission: to bring back to the United States 600 kilograms of enriched uranium left abandoned in a Kazakh plant after the fall of the Soviet Union, and to prevent this stockpile from falling into the wrong hands.
This secret operation may well inspire Donald Trump. On April 17, the American president indicated that the enriched uranium stockpiled by Iran would be “brought back to the United States soon.”
“We will need the biggest bulldozers you can imagine,” the American president affirmed in front of a crowd of supporters. These claims were later dismissed by Tehran.
Andrew Weber, the former first secretary of the U.S. Embassy in Kazakhstan in the early 1990s, was the first American to discover this stockpile of Soviet uranium. He recounts to BFM Business the context and the unfolding of the Sapphire project.
Context: The article discusses a secret operation undertaken by the United States in 1994 to recover enriched uranium from Kazakhstan that had been left abandoned after the dissolution of the USSR. The operation mobilized American personnel to prevent the uranium from falling into the wrong hands.
Fact Check: The article mentions the former president of Kazakhstan, Noursultan Nazarbayev, and the policy of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons in the country.
Source: https://www.bfmtv.com/international/comment-les-etats-unis-ont-recupere-600-kilogrammes-d-uranium-du-kazakhstan_AN-202009300332.html
