BEIRUT (AP) – A German company has found dangerous nuclear material stored in an oil facility in southern Lebanon, officials said on Friday.
The material was stored at the Zahrani Oil Facility located about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Beirut, according to a statement released after a meeting of the Lebanese Higher Defense Council, the main military and security body of the parents. In its statement, the council cited outgoing Prime Minister Hassan Diab.
Lebanese authorities have been looking for hazardous materials across the country after a deadly explosion in Beirut last year. The August 4 explosion of nearly 3,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical used in fertilizers, killed 211 people, injured more than 6,000 people and damaged several neighborhoods in Beirut.
During Friday’s meeting, Diab told other officials that the material found by the German company Combi Lift, which Lebanon commissioned to clean up hazardous materials at the port of Beirut, “is a highly pure nuclear substance” and its presence poses dangers.
“This matter must be discussed now and swift action must be taken to deal with it with great concern,” said Diab in the statement. He spoke after meeting with the heads of all the country’s military and intelligence agencies, as well as with President Michel Aoun and the ministers of defense and interior.
In November, Lebanon signed an agreement with Combi Lift to treat and ship containers of flammable chemicals found in the wreckage of the port of Beirut abroad. Combi Lift completed the treatment of 52 containers of “hazardous and hazardous chemical materials” and was ready to ship them out of the country, Germany’s ambassador to Lebanon said last month.
The deal between Lebanon and Combi Lift is worth $ 3.6 million, for which Lebanese port authorities paid $ 2 million, with the German government covering the rest.
The head of the facility in Zahrani, Ziad el-Zein, told local TV Al-Jadeed that Combi Lift inspected the facility and found eight small containers weighing less than 2 kg (4.4 pounds) containing depleted uranium salts.
El-Zein added that the material has been stored on the premises since 1950, when it was administered by the Mediterranean Refinery Company, or Medreco. Medreco was an American company whose main shareholders were Mobil and Caltex and operated in Lebanon for four decades until the late 1980s.
Malte Steinhoff, a spokesman for Combi Lift in Germany, declined to give specific details about nuclear material or the shipment of chemicals.
Combi Lift, Steinhoff said in an email to The Associated Press, is currently in talks with the Lebanese government.
“This concerns possible rescue projects at the Tripoli and Zahrani refineries,” added Steinhoff. “There are still no concrete results. We do not want to comment on any findings. “
A document from the Zahrani Oil Facility that was posted by local media on Friday said that the committee accompanying the “chemical material” decided to transfer it to the laboratories of the Lebanese Atomic Energy Commission.
The March 22 document warned that the Lebanese atomic commission will inform the International Atomic Energy Agency that it cannot store the material in Lebanon according to international standards.
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Associated Press writer David Rising contributed to this Berlin report.