Missing keys, holes in fence and a single padlock: welcome to Congo’s nuke plant

The IAEA is worried that lax security could lead to enriched uranium falling into the wrong hands

Amid the market stalls, hawkers and gridlocked cars on the road out of Congo’s capital and into the Kinshasa hills there is nothing to mark the way to a nondescript clutch of buildings a few hundred yards down a side street.

The dilapidated concrete compound is protected by little more than a low-slung rusted barbed-wire fence and a rickety gate sealed by a single padlock. It would be easy enough to slip through a hole in the fence but there is no need, as the main entrance to what is supposed to be one of the best guarded sites in Congo is often unmanned.

The armed police assigned to watch the compound were not to be seen at the weekend as visitors wandered the corridors of what is Africa’s oldest nuclear reactor facility – and the storage place for dozens of bars of enriched uranium – until finally challenged by a man in a tracksuit who called himself “security”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has long viewed Kinshasa’s experimental nuclear reactor as a disaster in the making, either through an accident that releases radiation into the city or because of lax security.

The Guardian