On September 1, Russia’s Federal Service for Ecological, Technological and Nuclear Oversight (Rostekhnadzor) “reportedly ^ru^”:http://www.nuclear.ru/rus/press/other_news/2110566/ issued a license to the International Uranium Enrichment Center (IUEC) joint-stock company that allows it to handle nuclear materials. (This follows an August 25 presidential decree that I “mentioned earlier”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1696/angarsk-iuec-can-now-own-nuclear-materials.)

I somehow missed this, but I guess there is now “talk ^ru^”:http://www.nppzap.zaporizhzhe.ua/news/nuclear/830 of *Finland and Belgium as potential IUEC participants (South Korea has been mentioned before)*. Though I should note that I don’t yet have access to any of the papers that were presented at the World Nuclear Association symposium earlier this month (this is seemingly where discussions with potential participants took place). Hmm…

*Update*: I think these surprising news just might call for “*the lemur*”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1704/je-blog.

I was informed today by a member of the “_Monterey mafia_”:http://www.miis.edu/alumni-welcome.html?catid=74 (who was present at June’s “cooling tower destruction party at Yongbyon”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1644/yongbyon-tower-blown-up) that apparently *reading* “*A Corpse in the Koryo*”:http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/06105Hayes.html *while staying at the* “*Koryo*”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koryo_Hotel is not as silly as it may seem. 🙂

The Russian military used *15 Tochka-U (SS-21)* short-range ballistic missiles as well as *”a few” Iskander (SS-26)* short-range theater ballistic missiles in the campaign against Georgia, the guys at the Moscow-based Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies (CAST) argue in “this article”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/3-2008/item3/article1/.

As you may recall, I first brought up the issue of what missiles were used by the Russians in “this post”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1678/georgians-say-russians-used-iskander. Subsequently, ACW had quite an informative, but a somewhat inconclusive discussion about it “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1998/did-russia-fire-ss-26s-at-georgia and “here”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1999/more-ss-sumthin-pics.

I’ve asked the guys at CAST about their level of certainty. They told me that the use of both systems is “*a fact*,” notwithstanding the denials of the Russian Ministry of Defense regarding the use of both the “SS-21”:http://www.mil.ru/info/1069/details/index.shtml?id=49571 and the “SS-26”:http://www.mil.ru/info/1069/details/index.shtml?id=49537.

So there you have it. Make of it what you wish.

By the way, the most recent issue of CAST’s “*_Moscow Defense Brief_*”:http://mdb.cast.ru/mdb/3-2008/, which is titled “The Empire Strikes Back” and deals with — _guess what?_ — the conflict with Georgia, is worth a read.

ISIS has “today’s IAEA DG report”:http://www.isis-online.org/publications/libya/IAEA_Libya_Report_12September2008.pdf on Libya. I’m still reading through it, but there’s some very interesting Khan network information in there, from what I can tell.