Did Israel Steal Bomb-Grade Uranium from the United States?

Fascinating and troubling article over at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, linking also to the authors’ original 2010 piece on this topic. A must read. Can you imagine if any other country on earth would have been alleged to have done this? It wouldn’t be a story that researchers are now having to dig up fifty years after the fact. It would be a well known, major incident in the history of nuclear nonproliferation. Indeed, as the authors say at the end of their 2010 piece:

Perhaps the most worrisome aspect of the NUMEC affair is that the government itself did not seem to want to find out what happened because it feared the answer. In his last book, Adventures in the Atomic Age, Seaborg defended this head-in-the-sand approach by questioning “what sense” it made to pursue the case. For our part, getting at the truth makes sense enough.