U.S. charges Yakuza leader with trying to sell nuclear material to Iran | Hacker News Reader

U.S. charges Yakuza leader with trying to sell nuclear material to Iran

washingtonpost.com

28 pointsbookofjoe11 comments

I'd like to know how much plutonium he had. That they caught this one guy seems less important than that he was able to get the stuff, if it was more than say milligrams.

He was trying to sell 50 million tons of Uranium Yellowcake according to the BBC. He also said he has access to Burma mined Uranium. Didn't know Burma had Uranium.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1sKQe4OPZ8

[dupe]

Some more discussion yesterday on US Attorney post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39457874

And no, the article doesn't say where he got the material.

TFA states that the yakuza boss was acting as a middleman between an insurgent group in Myanmar and what he thought was an associate of an Iranian general. The group wanted to sell weapons-grade nuclear material and buy conventional military weapons. It could be related to Myanmar's rumored nuclear program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myanmar_and_weapons_of_mass_de...

I find it interesting that they also wanted to offload meth and heroin into specifically the New York market. What's the connection between Iran and the drug trade?

If it came from Myanmar, things are going to get interesting over there before long. We can't allow this sort of thing. Even the North Koreans have the sense not to sell plutonium through back-alley deals.

I can't work out why the Iranians would buy stuff from Myanmar (or anywhere else) when they can make their own faster and cheaper.

They have the raw materials, the equipment and the expertise. Also Pakistan is right next door.

Traceability - supposedly it's possible to accurately determine the source based on the unique fingerprint in the material. Not sure if this applies to post-detonation in the case of a nuclear weapon. In theory, since very little of the material is actually fissioned?

You wouldn't want the ire of the nuclear powers in the world, if you are Iran.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01491...

It takes a lot to produce weapons grade plutonium, you need to run a reactor for some time and do quite a bit of complicated and dangerous post processing. While it's not something with a traditional price tag, estimates are that weapons grade plutonium costs about $4000 per gram to produce in the US. Further, if anyone notices you starting up the reactor to do so, that could be a massive diplomatic problem - something you especially don't want when the middle east is currently in a highly tumultuous state.

Presumably the Yakuza got access to the plutonium by illicit means that were substantially cheaper than producing it themselves, meaning they can sell it for what would otherwise be a loss and still make a nice profit. It's quite reasonable that if Iran wanted to say conduct some nuclear weapons research while appearing to comply with IAEA requirements that buying some plutonium off the black market would be the most economical option.

> I find it interesting that they also wanted to offload meth and heroin into specifically the New York market. What's the connection between Iran and the drug trade?

This is starting to sound like a CIA budget balancing operation.

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