2.3 KiB
| tags | category | summary | updated | start | location | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Private Organization | Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was a privately owned nuclear enriching plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania, owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro. | 2026-10-15 | 1957 | Apollo, Pennsylvania, USA |
Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC) was a privately owned nuclear enriching plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania, owned by Zalman Mordecai Shapiro. It was suspected by the Central Intelligence Agency and others of having smuggled more than two hundred pounds of weapons-grade uranium to Israel, enough for four bombs. This alleged diversion was a major factor in Carl E. Duckett's Central Intelligence Agency estimates of Israel's nuclear arsenal.1
The Comptroller General's report to Congress of December 18, 1978, Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion, was classified until its redacted release on May 6, 2010. It records that an inspection in April 1965, the sixth consecutive inspection to find fundamental problems with NUMEC's control of material, concluded that "safeguards control of [nuclear material] at NUMEC is inadequate," and that about 206 pounds of uranium-235 could not be accounted for. In February 1966 the Atomic Energy Commission asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to determine whether a theft or diversion had occurred; the report states that the agency's files contain a memorandum recording that the Bureau had decided not to investigate, and that the Bureau "did not focus on the question of a possible nuclear diversion until May 1976 nearly 11 years later," after a request by President Gerald Ford in April 1976.2
Footnotes
-
Hersh, Seymour M. The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy. Random House, 1991. Chapter 14, 18. ↩︎
-
Comptroller General of the United States, Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion, report EMD-79-8 (December 18, 1978), redacted release of May 6, 2010, Introduction and the account of the April 1965 inspection, the November 1965 investigation and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/3149993/38-Nuclear-Diversion-in-the-U-S-13-Years-of.pdf ↩︎