International Nuclear Watch & Discussion
Air Force Unit's Nuclear Weapons Security Is 'Unacceptable'
The same Air Force unit at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota that was responsible for mishandling six nuclear cruise missiles last August failed key parts of a nuclear safety inspection this past weekend, according to a Defense Department report.
Among the problems found during last week's inspection: Internal security forces did not go to assigned defensive areas during an exercise that involved an attempt to steal a nuclear weapon; security guards failed to search an emergency vehicle that entered and left the nuclear storage area during that exercise; a security guard used his cellphone to play video games while on duty; and guards were unarmed at traffic control points along the route where nuclear weapons were to travel.
End in sight on cleanup of WWII nuclear fuel plant
K-25 was code-named "K" for designer Kellex Corp. It produced the fissionable uranium-235 isotope and was the largest industrial building under one roof in the world, employing 12,000 people and consuming one-tenth of the nation's electric power at the time.
K-25 used a gaseous diffusion process that separated and concentrated the lighter U-235 isotope from natural uranium by heating it into a gas and passing it through membranes or "barriers" in a series of hundreds of boxcar-size machines.
Though gaseous diffusion is fast becoming outdated by more efficient centrifuge technology, the old K-25 barriers continue to have some value, at least to national security. Federal agents arrested a K-25 janitor last year on allegations of trying to sell barrier parts to the French government.
THE LAST TO DISARM?
The Future of France’s Nuclear Weapons
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol14/142/142tertrais.pdf
The Future of France’s Nuclear Weapons
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol14/142/142tertrais.pdf
Fiji joins nuclear group
FIJI was welcomed as the newest member of the Proliferation Security Initiative in an international meeting in Washington DC this week.
Search For Titanic Really Was Cover-Up Mission
When oceanographer Bob Ballard uncovered the world's most famous shipwreck in 1985, he grabbed the globe's attention. But in reality the explorer's search for the Titanic was a cover-up for a top-secret mission for the U.S. government.
Ballard reveals he was hired to use his advanced robotic sub to check on the status of two nuclear submarines, the USS Thresher and the USS Scorpion, that sank in the Atlantic in the 1960s.
Layoffs at nuke lab stir fears of a brain drain
The layoffs have reduced the lab's roster of experts with invaluable experience they had gleaned from taking part in actual nuclear tests, Sale and others said. "Designing, building and seeing a device go off is very different from designing a device and handing it to a computer jockey," Sale said.
US Air Force leadership fired over nuclear issue
June 05, 2008
Washington, June 6 : US Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the Air Force's top two officials Thursday after mistakes involving their most sensitive mission, the safety and security of America's nuclear weapons.
June 05, 2008
Washington, June 6 : US Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the Air Force's top two officials Thursday after mistakes involving their most sensitive mission, the safety and security of America's nuclear weapons.
Father of Pakistan's Bomb Stands Defiant
Khan, Speaking Out From House Arrest, Insists Government Officials Had Role in Proliferation
By Candace Rondeaux
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, June 5, 2008; A10
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- The garden is in full bloom at Abdul Qadeer Khan's house. A lazy summer haze has settled over his manse, and at the small police substation across the way, several men chitchatted amiably on a recent day, barely glancing at the upscale villa that for the past four years has been part prison, part palatial refuge for the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb.
Until very recently, Khan has been virtually cut off from the world -- banished to house arrest by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after admitting in a national television broadcast in 2004 to selling nuclear weapons-making technology and know-how to Iran, North Korea and Libya. But as Pakistan marked the 10th anniversary of its first nuclear bomb test last week, Khan, 72, publicly disavowed his confession, telling reporters that it was coerced.
"The people who were advising me to do this said, 'No one will believe it. This statement has no legal value. Everyone knows you are a national hero,' " Khan said this week in a telephone interview with The Washington Post.
Pakistan has been under pressure for years to give the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency access to Khan. So far, the government has refused, saying Pakistan has already conducted its own investigation into Khan's nuclear dealings. Yet more recently, as Musharraf's power here has waned, so too, it seems, has American interest in Khan, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
"I'm sure we would oppose his release, but you know, as time goes on, I suppose his information gets less and less valuable," the official said. "No one has sort of thought about Mr. A.Q. Khan in a while."
Reviled in the West as the ringleader of an illicit international nuclear-arms bazaar, Khan remains a much respected figure in Pakistan for building the bomb. In the interview, Khan struck a defiant tone about his role in the development of nuclear technology, denying any wrongdoing and saying he would never talk to U.S. or IAEA officials about his work.
"Why should I talk to them? Pakistan is a sovereign nation. We are not a colony. I did whatever my government wanted me to do. I gave them whatever they wanted. We have not violated any laws," Khan said, noting that Pakistan is not part of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Khan, who was born in Bhopal, India, 11 years before the violent partition that led to the creation of Pakistan in 1947, began his career as a student of metallurgy in Europe in the early 1960s. After completing his PhD in electrical engineering and metallurgy in Belgium in 1971, he went to work in the Netherlands for FDO, a Dutch company that was a subcontractor to Urenco, a British, German and Dutch consortium tasked with developing nuclear fuel.
His career in nuclear espionage began shortly after he was hired, three years after Pakistan was routed in a war with India over what is now Bangladesh in 1971. In the interview, he said it was his country's humiliating defeat that had sparked his desire to help Pakistan build the bomb. He said the creation of a nuclear weapons program was a proud achievement that has kept the two longtime rivals from going to war.
"My work to support Pakistan was that we showed that we could not be overrun by India, that we should not find ourselves in the position we found ourselves in in '71 with East Pakistan," he said.
Yet, it was his work to create an international underground network of nuclear technology sales that gained him the most notoriety in recent years. Dutch officials have said that the CIA was alerted as early as 1975 that Khan was stealing plans to build centrifuges to enrich uranium -- a key component for nuclear weapons -- from his Dutch employer.
In time, Khan returned to Pakistan, where under the government of then-Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, he led the nation's nuclear development program and began cultivating ties that helped Pakistan acquire the necessary knowledge and equipment from China, Europe and North Korea.
In May 1998, Pakistan conducted five underground nuclear bomb tests. It was around that time that the outlines of Khan's shadowy dealings with nations such as Libya and North Korea began to emerge. Musharraf, in his 2006 autobiography, said he received information that North Korean nuclear scientists had visited Khan's research lab in 1999. "There could be no doubt that it was he [Khan] who had been peddling our technology," Musharraf wrote of a CIA briefing he later received about Khan's activities in 2003.
Musharraf pardoned Khan days after his confession was broadcast four years ago. The government has since insisted that neither it nor the Pakistani military was aware of Khan's secret network.
Khan, in the interview, said he would not speak in detail about his work or identify his associates, but said others in the military and in Musharraf's government were culpable in the proliferation of nuclear technology. "The truth will come out about how they are treated, who is responsible. Those facts will come out," Khan said.
Early this week, allegations surfaced in a book by Indian journalist Shyam Bhatia that Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister slain in December, secretly carried CDs containing information about uranium enrichment to North Korea in 1993 in exchange for missile technology information. Asked whether the allegations were true, Khan said there was no way of establishing their "authenticity."
But Khan went on to say that he had regularly briefed Bhutto about Pakistan's nuclear program. "She knew the whole thing was going on," he said. "She was the prime minister."
Khan said Pakistani scientists had been hunting for a long-range missile to deliver the bomb and first turned to China for help. But China refused to share information about its longer-range missiles, he said. The goal, Khan said, was to build a nuclear weapon that could reach Pakistan's "only adversary" -- India.
"China had the missiles, but they were very restricted. They were becoming a world power and they wanted to show they could act responsibly," Khan said. "The only option was North Korea."
Khan said he is hopeful that Pakistan's newly elected government will further lift restrictions on his movements. "A lot of people are already pressing very hard for all the restrictions to go," he said. "This new government is busy with other things. They've been left almost with a dying patient. It will take some time to get their house in order, and I don't want to create problems."
Khan, who has been in poor health in recent years, said he decided to speak out now because he was worried that his legacy was in jeopardy. "I didn't want to leave behind the stigma for my family that their father or husband is a traitor or a bad man," he said.
NUCLEAR SECRETS; What China Knows About U.S. Missile Technology: A Chronology
A dated article (May 28 1999). But with lot of details.
A dated article (May 28 1999). But with lot of details.
IAEA chief warns against nuclear plant attacks
Threats to attack nuclear plants on suspicion they would one day make bombs could undermine the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said.
GEH selects site for potential Silex enrichment plant
http://www.greenpeace.de/fileadmin/gpd/ ... report.pdf
GE-Hitachi (GEH) has selected Wilmington, North Carolina, as the site for a potential commercial uranium enrichment plant using the Silex laser isotope separation process technology. A nuclear fuel manufacturing plant already operates there.
Greenpeace report on SILEXGLE/Silex's is the only remaining laser uranium enrichment process on the world stage. The technology involves vaporizing uranium hexafluoride (UF6) into a gaseous form and exposing it to a laser beam that preferentially excites the uranium-235 atoms, which enables separation of natural uranium into streams enriched and depleted in uranium-235. The process operation, while technically complex, is potentially more efficient than existing centrifuge enrichment technology.
http://www.greenpeace.de/fileadmin/gpd/ ... report.pdf
Clinton made passing reference to two alternate applications of the Silex technology – firstly, the potential for the technology to be used in the production of tritium and secondly, for its potential use in materials testing…
Rudd calls for nuclear disarmament
But Aussie SILEX technology will be providing HEU and Tritium to the US WMD program.
But Aussie SILEX technology will be providing HEU and Tritium to the US WMD program.
Nuclear cost highlights Trident folly
New figures released in the House of Commons show the cost of maintaining nuclear weapons to be nearly £2 billion per year, with far more due to be spent on a new generation of Trident nuclear weapons for the Clyde.
Here are some observations on a blog about the geochemistry of thorium vs uranium:
http://lablemminglounge.blogspot.com/20 ... power.html
http://lablemminglounge.blogspot.com/20 ... power.html
Re: International nuclear watch & discussion -27-Apr-08
Last edited by Gerard on 10 Jun 2008 16:23, edited 1 time in total.
Re: International nuclear watch & discussion -27-Apr-08
How about bringing the US, China, etc into the (old/new) treaty too?"We've got to bring in India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea — all those that are presently with weapons but outside that framework," Evans told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio from Romania.
The problem is not a treaty, but how each country interprets the treaty to its own advantage. Do countries like the US and China want to get rid of nukes or not? ALL nukes. IF they (all) do, then we have an agreement. When they start implementing the agreement, it becomes a treaty. The idea of such treaties is to get rid of the treaty by fully implementing them.
Re: International nuclear watch & discussion -27-Apr-08
Once non-fission based weapons are perfected then there will be a treaty to ban fission based weapons. Its simple as that. And also on the horizon, in our life times.