INDEPENDENT INK

Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, allegedly carried out a covert operation to illicitly transport 200 tons of yellowcake uranium from Belgium to Israel in 1968, approximately a year after France, Israel's former primary nuclear partner, ceased supplying uranium fuel to the nation-state following the Six-Day Arab-Israeli War.

The use of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945 remains the only instance in which nuclear weapons of any kind have been used in armed conflict. The uranium-based bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Little Boy, killed roughly 70,000 people instantly, while the plutonium-based bomb dropped on Nagasaki three days later, Fat Man, instantly killed roughly 40,000 people.