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"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." -- Greek proverb
On the 19th of March 2011, the NATO bloc began a violent 8-month long military onslaught of Libya, a sovereign African-Union founding member state, which had enjoyed four decades of stability, prosperity and one of the highest Human Development Index (HDI) scores in all of Africa.
More than 2 tonnes of natural uranium reported missing by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog in Libya has been found, according to forces in the war-scarred country’s east.
General Khaled al-Mahjoub, leader of renegade commander Khalifa Haftar’s communications division, said on Thursday that the containers of uranium had been recovered “barely 5km [3 miles]” from where they had been stored in southern Libya.
U.N. nuclear watchdog inspectors have found that roughly 2.5 tons of natural uranium have gone missing from a Libyan site that is not under government control, the watchdog told member states in a statement on Wednesday seen by Reuters.
The finding is the result of an inspection originally planned for last year that "had to be postponed because of the security situation in the region" and was finally carried out on Tuesday, according to the confidential statement by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi.
Natural uranium cannot immediately be used for energy production or bomb fuel as the enrichment process typically requires the metal to be converted into a gas before being spun in centrifuges to reach the levels needed.
However, each ton of natural uranium - if obtained by a group with the technological means and resources - can be refined to 12lb of weapons-grade material over time, experts say, making the recovery of the missing metal important for non-proliferation experts.
