₦airaland Forum

Kenyan Defense Forces praying before going into Nairobi complexwhere terrorists are holed up.

It is sad that africans have still not developed the capacity for managing these home grown terrorists.
Why invite the UK SAS and Israeli special forces tothe Nairobi incident.?
I would assume at least by now Kenyan special forces after the previous experience with the terrorists should be able to handle this new episode locally?

How the US and China collaborated to get nuclear material out of Nigeria — and away from terrorist groups By: Aaron Mehta
January 14

https://www.defensenews.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/01/14/how-the-us-and-china-collaborated-to-get-nuclear-material-out-of-nigeria-and-away-from-terrorist-groups/#.XDya8gFTJXI.twitter



WASHINGTON — At a staging ground in Ghana, a group of nuclear experts watched the clock and nervously waited for the news.

The team — a mix of American, British, Norwegian and Chinese experts, along with Czech and Russian contractors — were supposed to head into the Kaduna region of Nigeria to remove highly enriched uranium from a research reactor that nonproliferation experts have long warned could be a target for terrorists hoping to get their hands on nuclear material.

But with the team assembled and ready to go on Oct. 20, 2018, the mission was suddenly paused, with the regional governor declaring a curfew after regional violence left dozens dead. As American diplomats raced to ensure the carefully calibrated window of opportunity didn’t shut, the inspectors were unsure if the situation would be safe enough to complete the mission.

“Frankly speaking, yeah, I was nervous for my people on the ground and everyone else who was on the ground. It was important, but we had to go at it in a prudent way” said Peter Hanlon, assistant deputy administrator for material management and minimization, an office within the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration. “As someone responsible for this organization, I was nervous.”

Moving the nuclear material out of Nigeria has been a long-sought goal for the United States and nonproliferation advocates. But the goal has taken on increased importance in recent years with the rise of militant groups in the region, particularly Boko Haram, a group the Pentagon calls a major terrorist concern in the region.

Underscoring the importance of the operation: the key role China played in transporting and storing the plutonium, with the operation happening just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump made an explicit threat to China about growing America’s nuclear arsenal.

For those gathered in Ghana that evening, however, the focus was on watching the clock and hoping that the negotiators could come through and allow them to finally get the material out of Nigeria — and get everyone home safely.

‘Material that is attractive to terrorists’

It was the mid-1990s when Nigeria, with technical support and backing from China, began work on what would become Nigerian Research Reactor 1, located at Ahmadu Bello University in Kaduna. The location opened in 2004, and is home to roughly 170 Nigerian workers.

NIRR-1 is classified as a miniature neutron source reactor, designed for “scientific research, neutron activation analysis, education and training,” per the International Atomic Energy Agency. Essentially, the reactor powers scientific experiments, not the local grid.
NNSA administrator: Strengthening America through nuclear security
NNSA administrator: Strengthening America through nuclear security

While our infrastructure must be revitalized, one key part of the nuclear security enterprise is as capable as it has ever been.
By: Lisa Gordon-Hagerty

The design, however, used highly enriched uranium, or HEU, a type of nuclear substance often referred to by the general public as weapons-grade uranium. This kind of uranium forms the core of any nuclear weapons material, and the Nigerian material was more than 90 percent enriched, making it particularly attractive for anyone looking to use it.

Since NIRR-1 went online, however, improvements in technology meant that experiments involving highly enriched uranium could now be run with a lesser substance. Across the globe, the IAEA and its partners have worked to swap out weapons-grade material with lightly enriched uranium, or LEU, which is enriched at less than 20 percent, and hence unusable for weapons. In all, 33 countries have now become free of HEU, including 11 countries in Africa.

With just over 1 kilogram of HEU, the Nigerian material, if stolen, would not be nearly enough to create a full nuclear warhead. However, a terrorist group would be able to create a dirty bomb with the substance or add the material into a stockpile gathered elsewhere to get close to the amount needed for a large explosion.

In a statement released by the IAEA, Yusuf Aminu Ahmed, director of the Nigerian Centre for Energy Research and Training, was blunt about his concerns over keeping the weapons-grade material in his country. “We don’t want any material that is attractive to terrorists," he said.

And the nature of these types of reactors, used primarily for research, means they are ideal targets for terrorist groups looking for nuclear material, said Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert who served as senior director for arms control and nonproliferation at the U.S. National Security Council from 2014 to 2017.
Recruits undergo training at the headquarters of the Depot of the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria, on Oct. 5, 2017. The Nigerian Army train recruits to tackle the threat of the Islamist group Boko Haram. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images)
Recruits undergo training at the headquarters of the Depot of the Nigerian Army in Zaria, Kaduna State in north-central Nigeria, on Oct. 5, 2017. The Nigerian Army train recruits to tackle the threat of the Islamist group Boko Haram. (Pius Utomi Ekpei/AFP via Getty Images)

“They’re small reactors, they’re not power reactors where the fuel is so radioactive it kills you,” he said. “This is very attractive to a proliferation point of view, and they are research reactors, so they are often at universities without high security.”

All of which gave the governments involved incentive to get the material out of Nigeria sooner rather than later, and which led to the group of experts sitting in Ghana, waiting for a call.

The day of

It wasn’t until Oct. 22 — two days after the initial delay — that American diplomats, working with their Nigerian counterparts, were able to get an exemption to the curfew in Kaduna and prepare to roll out. But for security reasons, an operation that usually took days would have to happen in just one 24-hour period.

At 1:30 a.m. on Oct. 23, a Russian Antonov An-124 cargo plane touched down in Nigeria. Aboard were the team of experts, but also a TUK-145/C — a 30-ton cargo container designed specifically for moving such uranium from place to place and doing so securely.

From the outside, the TUK-145/C looks like a large, silver cylinder, designed to keep its precious cargo safe even in the event of a plane crash — as part of the safety testing before certification, the container is put into a pool of jet fuel, with the whole thing then lit on fire for 60 minutes. If you somehow could cut it down the middle, the container would appear to be two parts — an outer shell for security, and an innermost cask containing the spent uranium rods.

Both the plane and the TUK-145/C are owned and operated by the Russian Sosny Research and Development Company, a specialty firm that has been used in other HEU removal procedures.

Loading the equipment off the plane took hours, as did the trip from the airstrip to the reactor. But finally, the team arrived at the reactor around 9 a.m. The group now included U.S. State Department security and Nigeria’s Army First Division, considered a top-end unit of the Nigerian military.

Tiffany Blanchard-Case, a nuclear expert from the National Nuclear Security Administration, was one of the officials on the ground to oversee the transfer. She described a “grueling” day as the team rushed to condense what needed to be done into the secure window.
Technical experts from Nigeria's Centre for Energy Research and Training stand over the miniature neutron source reactor and prepare to load the HEU reactor core into an interim transfer cask. (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration)
Technical experts from Nigeria's Centre for Energy Research and Training stand over the miniature neutron source reactor and prepare to load the HEU reactor core into an interim transfer cask. (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration)

“No one was concerned about breaks, no one was concerned about lunch, everyone was just working 100 percent in order to make sure we could meet this schedule,” she said. “A long day for everyone.”

Getting at the uranium is tricky business. The reactor core, which holds the actual material, is located at the bottom of a six-meter-deep pool. Above the pool, technicians have to create a platform and then center a vessel, known as the interim transfer cask, above the core. The cask contains a grapple, which reaches into the reactor and lifts out the core; when the core is loaded in, a plug is placed over the core and the cask is sealed, loaded onto the Skoda shipping cask, and then that unit is sealed inside the TUK-145/C.

Replacing HEU with LEU in research reactors naturally requires caution, as anything nuclear-related comes with risks. But the Nigerian mission was particularly difficult because of security concerns, Hanlon said. He noted that Boko Haram, while not in the Kaduna region, has been operating in Nigeria for quite some time.

“We had concerns about the security on the ground, in the region. Working very closely with the U.S. embassy, there were additional security requirements put upon us and limitations for us on having people on the ground at the facility itself,” Hanlon said.

Hanlon and Blanchard-Case declined to discuss details of the security, other than to say it was heavy and that the U.S. State Department added extra forces as part of the agreement to allow the team to go in.

Alice Hunt Friend, a regional expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that Boko Haram is not necessarily “active” in the region, but added that an attack by the group in that area shouldn’t be ruled out.

“The city is a transport hub, pretty much right between Abuja and Kano on the main route. It is also in the belt that has experienced a lot of communal violence over the past 10 years, so I can also imagine that security for HEU sites would be of concern more generally, even absent a specific threat,” she said. “With much of the Nigerian military concentrating on the northeast, I would imagine security for sites in Kaduna is inconsistent.”

Boko Haram is just one threat that worries security teams on the ground, said Peter Haynes, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“Fueled by ethnic and religious differences, there has been lots of violence in the Kaduna region in the last six months, but that has been between Fulani Muslim herders and Christian villagers,” said Haynes, adding that it is not “uncommon as of late to have curfews to dampen the communal violence.”

While the technicians were able to leave the country once their daylong mission was complete, security on site remained thick for the next five weeks as administrators worked the logistics and clearances needed to fly nuclear material over other nations' airspace. Asked about the security level during this down period, Dov Schwartz, an NNSA spokesman, said that “extensive planning went into ensuring the removed highly enriched uranium was safe and secure prior to transport."

"All of our partners understood that operational security was paramount,” Schwartz said. "The world is a safer place today as a result of the determined work to remove this weapons useable Uranium from Nigeria.”

Finally, on Dec. 4, the HEU was escorted by the Nigerian military toward the An-124, loaded onto the aircraft and sent on its way to its final destination.

The material was heading for China.
The TUK-145/C, carrying a load of highly enriched uranium from the Nigerian reactor, is loaded onto a plane headed for its final destination: China. (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration)
The TUK-145/C, carrying a load of highly enriched uranium from the Nigerian reactor, is loaded onto a plane headed for its final destination: China. (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration)

China’s role

The removal operation cost roughly $5.5 million, with the United States contributing $4.3 million. The United Kingdom ($900,000) and Norway ($290,000) also chipped in. But while it didn’t contribute money, China’s role in the operation was outsized — and occurred as the war of words from the Trump administration toward Beijing was reaching a fever pitch, one that did not die down in the weeks to come.

As the October operation was just hours from starting, U.S. President Donald Trump took to the press to discuss nuclear material and China.

“Until people come to their senses, we will build [the nuclear arsenal] up," Trump told reporters just hours before the Nigeria operation was to begin. "It’s a threat to whoever you want. And it includes China, and it includes Russia, and it includes anybody else that wants to play that game. You can’t do that. You can’t play that game on me.”

By the time the Antonov plane — carrying the HEU, along with American inspectors and security — arrived at Shijiazhuang airport in China on Dec. 6, the arrest of a Chinese technology executive in Canada had inflamed fears of a trade conflict between the two countries.

Once the material landed in China, local officials took possession of the uranium, marking the end of the Nigerian mission — but not necessarily the end of the material.

Hanlon acknowledged the United States doesn’t know what China will do with the material, noting they could dispose of it in whatever way they see fit. But Wolfsthal, the former National Security Council staffer, doesn’t think Beijing will let it go to waste.

“My guess is China will reprocess it and then recycle some of the materials,” Wolfsthal said. “It could end up in China’s stockpile after being reprocessed, or used for civilian fuel. But getting it out of Nigeria is the biggest thing.”

In a statement released by the IAEA, Shen Lixin, deputy director general of the department of business development and international cooperation at the China National Nuclear Corporation, said the project “manifests the determination and joint effort of several governments and organizations in preventing nuclear proliferation."
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, greets Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari during a plenary session of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit on April 1, 2016, in Washington, D.C. The summit was organized to highlight accomplishments and make new commitments toward reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, greets Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari during a plenary session of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit on April 1, 2016, in Washington, D.C. The summit was organized to highlight accomplishments and make new commitments toward reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

“This is also a demonstration of CNNC’s meeting its social responsibilities and the commitment to peaceful uses of nuclear energy,” the statement continues. “CNNC is more than willing to work together and cooperate whole heartedly with relevant parties to facilitate other MNSR conversion projects.”

That the United States and China were able to ignore politics to get the HEU removal done shouldn’t be a surprise, Wolfsthal said. Traditionally, countries that supply uranium to partners around the world take that material back if needed.

“Even though the national level conversation is really poor because of trade and other issues, the technical collaboration between laboratories, between nuclear engineers, that’s generally gone pretty well,” he said. He added that China has invested heavily in LEU over the last decade, and therefore also has an interest in encouraging others to switch to that technology.

Whether that cooperation continues if relations between the two nations continue to deteriorate will be a true test going forward. On Jan. 3, the U.S. State Department issued a travel warning for China, urging American citizens to use caution when traveling, as the Chinese government may detain Americans.

And an agreement to develop new nuclear technology between CNNC and TerraPower, an American nuclear firm led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates, appears doomed due to American restrictions on technology sharing with China.

Hanlon, for his part, is optimistic that China and the U.S. will continue to work on nuclear security.

“These nuclear security efforts of removing this dangerous material, most countries agree with that,” he said. “That work has continued unabated.”

SMH. @HQNigerianArmy
forces always seizing 3 or 4 AKs, a few magazines and some bullets. While BHT empty whole garrisons of weapons and logistics and post it on facebook.

BabaOwen:

Maybe, without the cowards and the skewed military quota system benefiting exclusively Gambaris...

We might actually have had a far better country and Military.

Ever thought of it that way?

Which for your information,is the right & smartest way to reason.

Grow small brain ni..

GeneralFarouq:
This is the smartest write up have read so far

Your mama titi there....

Come abroad naa,make dem dash u the racism. You bloody oyiboman yansh-licker.

Dem go clear all your doubts sharply, about you're being a beautiful monkey.

Peace out and your mama titi again.

Anu Mpama

mogbojaiye:
U be fool o

Even when the white men left your land were u still able to coordinate yourself ,,,,,it is people like you dat get involved in crimes overseas with the mindset of they robbed our fatherland, ,,bro u will rot in jail, was it not your so called forefather that betrayed themselves and sold them selfs out all because of mare MIRROR or DRY GIN, ,bro better get sense

Wole shoyinka should have rejected the noble award years back because the white men took us as slaves,he accepted it because no b him day carry as slave na e forefather ,,,stop living in the past and move on nigger,,,no time for hate

Peace

Bloody illiterate. Go and read your father's history.

mogbojaiye:
Did day steal from u or ur forefather?

When the oyibo people were coming to africa tocome and steal, did they have any reason to be there & did they have any visa?

Nwodosis:
If you don't have reason to be in another man's country, why should you be there?
Can one move from his village to Abuja without money nor contacts of anybody to go and hustle?

Lol...

Buharideen e-rats are a special breed.

The hypocrisy just makes one's skin crawl...

LTGEN:
Henry
Let me say this
You have worked very hard on thread
It has reached 1800 pages.
Do not allow it to degenerate into everything Beegeagle's blog became.
APC versus PDP.
There are trolls on both this thread and Bidexii's
Thread that is all they do.
They have one goal to destroy the thread.
I don't post pictures , I post threads of breaking new.
The goal is to saturate your thread with nonsensical issues till it dies.
Please for the love of God.
Whatever your political beliefs are let us remember this is a Military thread.

SIMPLE UNDILUTED TRUTH.

Covert1:
Look at the rubbish you are writing under the present economic, security and social climate in Nigeria. I was tempted to condescend to you and Iblawi' invectives for the sake of the suffering Nigerian but I'm better. However I must add you are clearly afflicted with the spirit of ethnic jingoism not to see the light.

Shifting blames has never solved problems. The nonsense you wrote up there is akin to the same rubbish we keep hearing today about 16 years of PDP. When you are hired for a job you are hired to clean the stable because you applied saying its what you can do. Assuming you are right about the NPN days under Shagari which is subjective -- If your Buhari couldn't reverse three quarters of negative GDP growth as you allude to in 1983 it is a clear indictment of the mental capacity of the man to bring the change we need.

Worthy of note is what to take away from the Shagari days and Buhari's tyrannical regime is that everyone said there was rice under Shagari; there was food. To this day our mothers still talk about it and I'm sure the majority concurs. But under Buhari tyranny is the legacy then something being replicated again in 2018.

This current government thrives on propaganda and sadly you are victim. Tell us which of the promises they made they have fulfilled. Something everyone can see.

My prior questions you haven't answered yet went on a voyage of rants. Answer! Based on their promises during electioneering in 2014/15 answer the following:

Has Buhari made the Naira equal to the dollar?
Has every unemployed Nigerian youth been paid 5000NGN since Buhari came into power in 2015?
Has all the aged in Nigeria become beneficiaries of a state funded social program to aid our elderly?
Do we have stable power supply in Nigeria today?
Pray tell which infrastructure project was initiated by President Muhammadu Buhari and completed?
Are there still potholes on our roads in Nigeria?
Tell us how many state funded modern hospitals have been built by President Buhari?
Tell us about the state of our refineries under Buhari?
Tell us how many Nigerians have been removed from the unemployment market?
Tell us how many poor Nigerians have been elevated to middle class status?
Tell us how many modern weaponry have been bought for the Nigerian Army and show us where it is? Note I didn't ask for ammunitions.
Tell us how come we are the poverty capital of the world in 2018 with 87 million Nigerians overtaking India. Mind you this is 4 years on since GEJ.
Did he promise all of the above or did he not?

The list goes on but I'll stop here for now but if you insist on your stupidity I'll ask further questions so that your stupidity will be glaring for all to see as usual.

Furthermore, Nigeria is now more divided than at anytime in its history. Under Buhari nepotism has become statecraft which is why fulani herdsmen run amok killing Nigerians and are not prosecuted but Deji Adeyanju is in prison for exercising his human rights.

This man Buhari only appoints people from his northern region into sensitive positions. When he came in 1983 out of the 16 members of the Supreme Military Council only one was a southerner, a Yoruba to be precise. Today when he wakes up in Aso Rock he is surrounded by his Fulani stock in a plural society.

His northern IGP that is an APC apparatchik instead of policing is digging up dirt on every perceived political enemy and locking them up in a supposed democracy.

Voter suppression and vote buying in Ekiti and Osun states is a prelude to what's to come in 2019. Every strata of society has been politicized for Buhari's comeback in 2019. He is not campaigning because he is not fit and because he doesn't need to since they have already decided the results reason he won't sign the new electoral bill except of course Nigerians revolt to deny him power. Even the PDP with all its evil never went this far but alas a tyrant is in power. The pain of it is he deceived us in coming as a saint which he is not.

Any Nigerian voting this man is doing so for parochial reasons, ethnic or religious sentiments. A man whose trademark is always giving excuses and blaming everybody else except himself and talking down on Nigerians home and abroad is not fit to lead Nigeria.

BUHARI IS AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER!!

No basis for comparison. At all

SternProphet:
He put zero food on the table and there was ZERO security. There were kidnappings everyday. His own relatives and ministers relatives were kidnapped many times. Why are memories so short? We had Boko Haram running rampage in the North and Niger Delta militants doing their own. On top of all that you had almost 20 state governors keeping militias and cult groups.
What fxxking food on table and blinking security
This guy, Badeh is the first instance of Nigerian elite paying for their sins and there will be more.

DHQ6

DHQ5

DHQ4

DEFQ

DHQ2

DHQ

CEN-SAD3

CEN-SAD2

CEN-SAD1

CEN-SAD

Ode ni your mother there.

You and your whole family is in the sh*th*le already

Odunayaw:
ode ni e walahi

Wallow in your excrement alone

You open your dirty, smelly mouth, yet you claim to Ignore your ashawo mother + father there

Sh*th*le buharideen e-rat

Dem never born you well.

Omoale

Odunayaw:
That fowl is known to excrete a lot here, you see how we ignore him?

Lol.
Typical buharideen herd mentality which this thread is well known for.
Anybody who contradicts your general narrative gets abused and insulted.
Meanwhile soldiers dey die for lack of proper air support.
Retards. A thread of the blind leading the blind.

krattoss:
but why wouldn't u ask questions on some certain things u ain't sure of, instead of jumping to a conclusion and making controversial assertions

Yes o! E pain your mama wella too.

Anu mpama....

kabe1:
E pain am well we'll. Chai!!!

Na your daft mama get reading problem modafuqqer.

kabe1:
Do you have a reading problem?

The contract would be completed in 2024. That's not when it would begin.

Don't be daft, or at-least take your daftness somewhere else.

A 500 million dollar deal to buy 12 planes to be supplied in 6 years+....2024

Meanwhile soldiers are dying daily. SMH.

We shouted that it was a rip off and people were insulting our mothers....

https://dod.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1700404/

Boko haram has overrun 157 Task Force Battalion in Metele, Abadam Local Government Area.

Killed it's base commander, a Lt.Colonel

More than 18 soldiers dead.

Nigeria Army has effectively re-supplied Boko haram.

This is a political game. They want this war to never end.

Well RIP to the dead.

Below...Liberian army

B

lol
SEE superstory!!
50 Nigerian soldiers died but you didn't still occupy the islands
We know the Nigerian soldiers can be dysfunctional but it's not this bad.....yet

DDGN:
I say this about Cameroons army in general and I get mocked. There was an incident in the mid 90s when in a 2day skirmish with Cameroonian Gendarnes 50 Nigerian soldiers were killed with no single loss in the part of the Cameroonians. The Nigerian army was forced to resort to heavy artillery, of which Cameroon stood no chance before they were pushed out of a village in Calabar.

Make no mistake, Nigeria's manpower and heavy weapons means in a war Nigeria will like come out top. But the Cameroonians compensate for their technical deficiencies with superb training and tactics. They never fear not runaway from a fight even if the odds are stacked against them. Truth be told their fear of Nigerian heavy artillery was what kept their provocations in check.

LoL...

E pain am.

BabaOwen:
screw you and the terrorist organization called IPOB with the coward fake Jewish scammer called kanu.

IPOB is a terrorist group.

Lol.

Go and argue with Mandela.

Screw you and the federal government.

BabaOwen:
Abuja Division of the Federal High Court has refused an application by members of the Indigenous People Of Biafra seeking the nullification of the proscription order made against the group on September 20.
Members of IPOB had approached the court after it made an order proscribing the group as a terror organisation last September.
IPOB had through its lawyers, led by Ifeanyi Ejiofor, alleged a violation of its fundamental rights to fair hearing and freedom of assembly by the federal government in its (governments) motion brought ex parte.
An ex parte motion is one that does not require the participation of all sides before a decision can be taken by the court.
In his ruling, Justice Abdul Kafarati said the basic instrument in the particular ex parte motion was the approval of the Nigerian president which was stated to have been given in the application brought by the Attorney General of the Federation.
Consequently, the court said it was of the view that: “the application brought by the Honourable Attorney General of the Federation ex-parte was properly brought”.
He added that the rights of the IPOB members were not abused as alleged by their lawyers and ordered N500,000 as damages to be paid by the applicant.
The proscription order made by the court in September, came days after the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu, went missing from his home in Abia State.
Mr. Kanu who is facing trial with other defendants on alleged terrorism and other related offences has not been seen since last September.


go and argue with the federal government