Get Your Act Together, Scotland!

So long as I'm slinging countrywide rebukes today, the Scots have earned one with this slip up, in which they lost a half pound of highly enriched uranium from a nuclear plant in Dounreay.

What's more...

Another nuclear plant, Winfrith in Dorset, has also mislaid some HEU, [the Department of Trade and Industry's annual Nuclear Materials Balance survey] found.

The material is at the heart of the crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions. Intense diplomatic efforts by western nations and the United Nations are focused on stopping the Iranian government producing HEU in its nuclear power programme.
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The audit has previously shown even larger gaps in the nuclear balance-sheet. Last year, the Sellafield plant in Cumbria could not account for more than 30kg of plutonium.
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While the amount of missing uranium would not be enough for a conventional nuclear device, it could be used in a "dirty bomb", in which a conventional explosive blast is used to scatter radioactive particles.