Beginning more than 50 years ago, and extending over the period from 1957 to 1978, according to official U.S. government records and studies, more than 300 kilograms of uranium 235 (U-235) in the form of highly enriched uranium (HEU) went missing from a nuclear fuel manufacturing plant in the small town of Apollo, Pennsylvania.
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) concluded in 1966 that there was about a 200-kilogram deficit between the U-235 in the form of HEU supplied to the plant and the amount returned in products to customers. After the AEC and its Oak Ridge office calculated the processing losses based on NUMEC’s records, they determined that the fate of about 100 kilograms of U-235 in the form of HEU remained unexplained. NUMEC paid for the missing material, but later disputed the AEC calculations, maintaining that the unexplained 100 kgs could be attributed to other processing losses. After decommissioning of the Apollo plant, more than 330 kgs of U-235 in the form of HEU were unaccounted for, with most of that deficit occurring while NUMEC ran the plant.
For decades there have been allegations and suspicions that foreign agents, perhaps aided by American citizens, diverted a significant fraction of NUMEC’s unexplained uranium deficits to Israel for its nuclear-weapons program. Because of the high stakes involved, the affair has been clouded in denial and concealment for nearly a half century.
It was President Obama who ordered the declassification of the top-secret documents in August 2014 in response to Netanyahu's jeopardizing action when he all of a sudden decided not to release the fourth and last batch of Palestinian prisoners, that collapsed the peace talks on April 30, 2014.
The other motivation was Netanyahu's ignoring to investigate the missing of three illegal settlers who were found dead in June 2014. He simply used the finding of the dead bodies as an excuse to bring his years long desire into practice: Hamas must be destroyed.
Obama may have breached his 2009 promise not to declassified the documents. However, David Ben-Gurion had already breached the Israeli promise in the early 1950s, that he will not be the first to introduce nuclear militarization in the Middle East.
Ben-Gurion had introduced nuclear weapons in the Middle East with the help of France.
The publishing of the documents has not been complete yet. More is to come.
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