Cameco purchases Saddam''s yellowcake.

No details about how this was arranged. I wonder if Iraq bothered to ask for bids. Probably Cameco had some contacts that arranged this. I wonder if the U.S. was involved? Nothing about the price. No doubt that is a state or commercial secret! The Iraqis will never know if they sold at a reasonable price or not, exactly what is intended.

Saddam's uranium finds home in Canada
Saskatoon firm purchases 500 tonnes of 'yellowcake'

The Ottawa Citizen; with files from Geoff Nixon
Sunday, July 06, 2008
A Canadian company has purchased more than 500 tonnes of yellowcake uranium, once controlled by the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
The Saskatoon-based Cameco Corp., negotiated the purchase from the Iraqi government over the last few months, according to a report from The Associated Press. The government inherited the uranium from Saddam's now-defunct nuclear program.
"We are pleased ... that we have taken (the yellowcake) from a volatile region into a stable area to produce clean electricity," Cameco Corp. spokesman Lyle Krahn told The Associated Press.
According to its corporate website, Cameco Corp. is "the world's largest uranium producer," accounting for nearly one-fifth of worldwide production. The firm also processes uranium to make it useable in nuclear reactors, and is involved in nuclear power generation in Ontario.
Don Wiles, a Carleton University professor and radiochemist, said yellowcake is best described as a "purified uranium compound" that is several steps away from being enriched.
When uranium is taken out of the ground, it is black in colour, and is not in a concentrated form, he said. It is then treated to precipitate out a purer form; such treatments cause it to turn yellow in colour, hence the name yellowcake.
"At that stage and in that form, it's totally harmless," Mr. Wiles said. "If it has been enriched, then it's a little more interesting, depending on how much enriched it is." Several additional steps are needed to turn yellowcake into an enriched form of uranium, he said.