Operation Plumbat was an Israeli covert operation in 1968 to steal yellowcake (processed uranium ore) to support the Israeli nuclear weapons effort.
France stopped supplying Israel with uranium fuel for the Dimona nuclear reactor after the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. Numerous sources show that in 1968 Israel stole 200 tonnes of yellowcake from the Belgian mining company Union Minière, which shipped processed uranium mined in Shinkolobwe, in the present-day Haut-Katanga Province of Democratic Republic of the Congo, out of Antwerp to Genoa for a European front company by transferring the ore to another vessel at sea. This Mossad covert operation violated Euratom controls of nuclear materials. Israel used the yellowcake to develop its nuclear arsenal.
The name of Operation Plumbat is derived from the Latin "plumbum", meaning lead, and is a reference to the labeling of the drums used to transport the yellowcake.
Mossad operative confession
In 1973, suspected Mossad operative Dan Ert (Dan Ærbel) was arrested in Norway, alleged to have helped assassinate Ahmed Bouchikhi, a waiter, mistaken for one of the terrorists who had killed eleven Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich. Ert recounted the story whilst imprisoned as a way of proving to Norwegians that he was a Mossad operative. The story seemed more credible once it was found that Ert had been listed as president of the Liberian shipping company used to purchase Scheersberg A.