Chile surrenders secret hoard of enriched uranium http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7095705.ece

Chile has given up President Pinochet’s secret hoard of highly enriched uranium, boosting US efforts to secure volatile stockpiles worldwide. The transfer of Chile’s uranium to the United States was completed at the end of last month, just after the country was struck by a huge earthquake.The material arrived in South Carolina after a two-and-a-half-week sea voyage in a double-hulled ship.

Andrew Bieniawski, deputy administrator at the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which oversaw the operation, said that when the earhtquake had shaken his Santiago hotel room on February 27 his first thought was for the 40lb (18kg) of highly enriched uranium that had been packed into special containers, ready for its secret voyage.

The team was unable to contact one of the two sites where the uranium was being stored,so the head of Chile’s Nuclear Energy Commission, Fernando Lopez-Lizana, had to drive there himself.The container was unharmed, but the exit route was impassable, forcing the team to weave their way to the nearest functioning port, an eight-hour night-time journey made even more perilous by aftershocks.