JAMAICA is one of 43 countries listed by the United States as the recipients of 'weapons-grade' uranium over the past 50 years.
According to international media reports which surfaced earlier this month, those countries including Iran, Pakistan, Mexico and Israel have 'refused' to return the combined stock of enough material to make about 1,000 nuclear bombs.
But representatives of both the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the University of the West Indies (UWI) have denied that Jamaica had ignored an obligation to return the material.
According to Professor Gerald Lalor, director-general of the International Centre for Environmental and Nuclear Sciences (ICENS) at the UWI, the uranium was obtained as the core of a tiny research reactor called SLOWPOKE-2. The reactor was purchased from Atomic Energy of Canada (AECL) and is of U.S. origin.
"The Canadians had to receive U.S. agreement to ship it to Jamaica. The contract stipulates that the entire core be returned to Canada at the end of the life of the reactor," Professor Lalor told The Gleaner recently. He noted though, that Jamaica had been encouraged to take advantage of the DOE offer and participate in its Foreign Research Reactor (FRR) Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Acceptance Programme.
At the same time, a DOE official confirmed that the Slowpoke Research Reactor in Jamaica is one of 106 reactors around the world that is eligible to participate in the programme under which the DOE accepts spent nuclear fuel of U.S.-origin.
"The Jamaican reactor has a very small amount of uranium fuel it uses in its core, not nearly enough for a nuclear weapon. That small 'lifetime core' is still being used, so far as I know, so there wouldn't be any point in returning it while it's still useful," the official said.
About 10 kilogrammes of high-enriched (or weapons-grade) uranium is required to build a nuclear bomb but, according to Professor Lalor, there is a total of 888 grams at ICENS. The Jamaica SLOWPOKE-2, which contains the nuclear material in its sealed core, is used as the main analytical tool in ICENS's extensive work on soils, plants and foods, and increasingly in agriculture and health.
"This important work is carried out in collaboration with the ministries of agriculture and health, the Caribbean Food & Nutrition Institute and others," Professor Lalor said.
He added: "I imagine we would welcome a replacement core of lower enrichment since that has performance advantages but there are no funds to support this and the reactor has still a long life ahead for it."
Consequently, the ICENS director-general pointed out, the institute's experiments would be forced to shut down if the uranium were returned.
