HIGH SEAS: Uranium: The Israeli Connection

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Gibraltar and up the French coast just three days before the Cherbourg raid, which took place on Christmas morning, 1969. One of TIME'S sources reports that a refueling rendezvous with the gunboats took place in the Bay of Biscay, 300 nautical miles southwest of the mouth of the Loire — easy sailing distance from Almeria for the Scheersberg A.

Hull Scars. After this rendezvous, the ship arrived in the West German port of Brake on Dec. 30. It was sold by Biscayne Traders on Jan. 5, 1970, to a Greek shipping firm for approximately $235,000—or $52,000 less than the 1968 purchase price. It bore scars on its hull, possibly from having scraped against its sister ship while the uranium was being transferred. The Scheersberg A, by then renamed Haroula, was sold again in 1976, to another Greek firm, the Pidalion Three Co.

The European Community investigation into the whereabouts of the missing uranium was frustratingly incomplete. Two months after the Scheersberg A sailed from Antwerp, the Common Market's atomic energy agency (Euratom) routinely asked the Italian paint company SAICA whether the uranium had arrived. When told no, Euratom began an inquiry into what it called the "Plumbat Affair." The search was hampered by the agency's lack of police powers, and after a few months Euratom called on security forces of the Western nations for help. A West German investigation was abruptly —and mysteriously—halted shortly after it began in 1969.

U.S. officials reacted calmly to Euratom's report of the missing uranium. Explains one U.S. nuclear expert: "Yellowcake is a very low level mineral, not bomb material." Only after complicated reprocessing can it be used to make nuclear weapons. It is believed that Israel completed such a reprocessing facility in 1969, and used it to produce a limited number of atomic bombs (TIME, April 12, 1976). The Carter Administration halted all U.S. exports of uranium—including yellowcake—last February, pending a review of U.S. export policies.

In Europe and the U.S., atomic energy officials say that the Plumbat Affair signals a need for tighter surveillance of nuclear shipments. Notes a former Euratom official: "The ways of stepping around international controls are as many as the ways of our Lord."

The tired old tramp steamer that carried the uranium oxide from Antwerp to the eastern Mediterranean is not likely to be involved in so adventurous a mission again. Last week the salt-caked Kerkyra returned empty to the Greek port of Halkis, after carrying a load of cement to Benghazi in Libya on its regular run. Beneath the paint of the new name, dockside onlookers can still discern welded letters spelling out the old, outlined in cement dust. Scheersberg A has come in out of the cold.