Congress, Lobbyists, and Industry Responsible for Weakening on Controls on Uranium Exports

Grrrr.....

"The responsibility falls to us, to take necessary action to prevent the horrors of 9/11 being replayed, but on a nuclear scale," declared Spencer Abraham, then-U.S. energy secretary, at a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency in May 2004. [1] Taking up the cudgels, he announced that Washington was establishing a Global Threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), "to secure, remove, or dispose of an even broader range of nuclear and radiological materials around the world that are vulnerable to theft . . . ensuring they will not fall into the hands of those with evil intentions." The plan was applauded by many who felt the United States was not acting quickly enough to safeguard bomb-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) from terrorists. [2]

Yet, no sooner did the U.S. government take an important step forward than it took a giant leap back. Barely a year after Abraham's announcement, President George W. Bush signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which includes an amendment that loosens restrictions on the export of HEU. Driven by a purported need to assure the domestic supply of medical isotopes, which was never actually at risk, the new statute retreats from more than a quarter-century of U.S. efforts to phase out HEU commerce and its catastrophic risks.

The individuals responsible for this legislative debacle comprise a sweeping cast of characters, including foreign producers of medical isotopes, their U.S.-based lobbyists, gullible sectors of the American medical community, and the compliant lawmakers who spearheaded efforts on Capitol Hill. It is a cautionary tale of how a single foreign company can weaken U.S. national security through misleading scare tactics and cold cash.