UN Nuclear Watchdog: Missing Libya Uranium Found

The U.N. nuclear watchdog announced on Saturday that inspectors travelling to southern Libya discovered drums containing natural uranium that had been reported missing earlier this month in the country.

Earlier this month, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that about 2.5 tonnes of natural uranium kept at a location in the southern town of Sabha had vanished. The missing materials, according to the Libyan commander Khalifa Hifter's forces, were discovered close to the storage location.

The Vienna-based organisation said in a statement to The Associated Press on Saturday that U.N. inspectors visited the region on March 21 and observed the material being moved to the storage site.

A "very minor amount of UOC (Uranium ore concentrate) was remained unaccounted for," according to U.N. inspectors, the report added.

According to the statement, investigations into the situation are still ongoing, including comparing the amounts of naturally occurring uranium at the site to those that the IAEA has previously verified.

The IAEA reported that Rafael Mariano Grossi, its director-general, briefed member nations of the visit's findings on Friday.

Since the enrichment procedure normally calls for the metal to be transformed into a gas and then spun in centrifuges to reach the required levels, natural uranium cannot be used right away for energy production or as bomb fuel.

Yet, each tonne of natural uranium can be transformed over time into 5.6 kilos (12 pounds) of weapons-grade material if it is acquired by a party with the necessary technological capabilities and resources, experts say.

The material dates back to the time of the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who kept tens of thousands of barrels of so-called yellowcake uranium for a facility that he had planned to use to convert uranium into weapons but never got around to building.

Over 1,000 metric tonnes of yellowcake uranium are said to have been stored in Libya under Gadhafi, who revealed his developing nuclear weapons programme to the world in 2003 following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.