Blueprint for nuclear bomb on internet, warns UN

Libya received the blueprint for a nuclear bomb electronically, raising “serious concern” about the spreading of such sensitive material via the internet, the head of the UN nuclear agency has reported.

In a report which wraps up a four-year investigation into Libya’s nuclear weapons programme and its links to the clandestine nuclear bazaar of the Pakistani scientist A Q Khan, Mohamed ElBaradei said the discovery was “disturbing”.

It is possible that other clients of the world’s biggest nuclear proliferation network also received the blueprint. Iran and North Korea were other known customers of the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. Khan was placed under house arrest after confessing to selling the nuclear technology in 2004.

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However the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report, which found that the Khan network had operated for a full decade longer than previously known, said that there was no evidence of any diversion of nuclear material from Libya.

In the same report, Mr ElBaradei revealed that Libya had taken steps to set up a plant for plutonium reprocessing using a German design, an alternative route to building a bomb than the off-the-shelf design for uranium enrichment supplied to the Libyans by the Khan network.

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