Ex-IAEA official warns of Libya 'dirty bomb' material

A research center near Tripoli stocks uranium and other material that could be used to make a nuclear "dirty bomb" and Libya's rebels will need to secure it, a former senior UN inspector said today.

Seeking to mend ties with the West, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi agreed in 2003 to abandon efforts to acquire nuclear, chemical and biological weapons - a move that brought him in from the cold and helped end decades of isolation.

Olli Heinonen, head of nuclear safeguards inspections worldwide for the UN atomic watchdog until mid-2010 and now at Harvard University, said Libya's uranium enrichment program was subsequently taken apart.

Sensitive material and documentation ranging from nuclear weapons design information to centrifuge components were also confiscated, Heinonen said in an online commentary.

Libya's highly-enriched uranium, which was used to fuel the Tajoura research reactor on Tripoli's outskirts, took longer to remove but the last consignment of spent fuel was flown out of Libya in late 2009.

But "nuclear security concerns still linger," said Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Tajoura continues to stock large quantities of radioisotopes, radioactive waste and low-enriched uranium fuel after three decades of nuclear research and radioisotope production, he said.

"While we can be thankful that the highly enriched uranium stocks are no longer in Libya, the remaining material in Tajoura could, if it ended up in the wrong hands, be used as ingredients for dirty bombs. The situation at Tajoura today is unclear."