U.S. calls looting from nuke site no risk

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BAGHDAD -- U.S. military inspection teams have concluded that material looted from Iraq's main nuclear facility at Tuwaitha poses little or no danger to the people who stole it and cannot be converted into an effective "dirty bomb."

After cleaning up two small areas of spillage outside the facility, the Washington-based Nuclear Disablement Team determined that the radiation level was no more than double the dosage every human absorbs daily, officials said.

The group even camped and slept for three nights less than 100 feet from one of two main storehouses for yellow-cake uranium, team members said.

U.S. and British newspaper reports have suggested that residents of the area were suffering from severe ill health after tipping out yellow-cake powder from barrels and using them to store food.

Other reports said the missing material could be used by terrorists to produce a powerful radiological weapon.

But Col. Tim Madere, the 5th Corps officer in charge of coalition forces' chemical, biological, radiation and nuclear weapons search teams, rejected both contentions yesterday.

Looters had broken open the doors of the yellow-cake facility by the time Marines arrived, Col. Madere said in an interview.

Elevated radiation readings "kept soldiers outside the facility, but they still continued to guard it without going inside," he said, noting that the facility had no perimeter wall and eased entry for looters when its Iraqi guards fled.

He said a huge troop deployment would have been needed to avoid plunder in other parts of the Tuwaitha complex, which sprawls over almost 6 square miles.