Operation Plumbat

Operation Plumbat is the name given to what is believed to have been an Israeli covert operation in 1968 to obtain yellowcake (processed uranium ore) to support the Israeli nuclear weapons effort.

France stopped supplying Israel with uranium fuel for the Dimona nuclear reactor after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Numerous sources believe that in 1968 Israel managed to obtain 200 tonnes of yellowcake from the Belgian mining company Union Minière shipped out of Antwerp to Genoa for a European front company by transferring the ore to another vessel at sea. This Mossad covert operation violated Euratom controls of nuclear materials.

The name of Operation Plumbat is derived from the Latin "plumbum", meaning lead, and is a reference to the labeling of the drums used to transport the yellowcake.

Mossad agents arranged to set up a fictitious company called Biscayne Trader's Shipping Corporation in Liberia to purchase an ocean freighter; this became the Scheersberg A (Scheersberg is a town in northern Germany, near the border with Denmark). With the assistance of a friendly official at a German petrochemical company, $3.7 million was paid to Union Minière for 200 tonnes of yellowcake uranium. The yellowcake was left over inventory from uranium mined from Shinkolobwe. This was loaded onto the newly renamed freighter and a contract was arranged with an Italian paint company for the yellowcake to be processed.

The cargo was loaded in November 1968 in barrels marked "PLUMBAT" (a harmless lead product). The Spanish crew were replaced by sailors recruited by Mossad and forged passports provided. The freighter set sail for Genoa on November 17, 1968. Approximately seven days into its voyage, it rendezvoused with an Israeli freighter under cover of darkness, somewhere east of Crete. The cargo was transferred in near silence whilst Israeli gunboats kept watch nearby. After loading the Israeli freighter set sail toward Haifa, and eventually the Tunnel, a six-level automated chemical plant for processing fuel rods into plutonium at Dimona.

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