Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from January 2004

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from January 2004

Blowing bubbles.
January 1, 2004... NOT SINCE JIMMY CARTER CLAIMED TO HAVE BEEN ATTACKED by a giant bunny has a presidential remark received as much satiric commentary as George Bush's explanation of why he need not read newspapers or watch news on television: "The best way to...

A night to remember.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... THE SIXTH ANNUAL NUCLEAR-FREE Future Awards ceremony took place October 12, 2003, in Munich, Germany. The award program was established in 1998 by German environmentalist and writer Claus Biegert. Four awards were given in 2003: *...

Catching the waves.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... I READ BRET LORTIE'S "A NEW WAVE of Energy" (November/December 2003) with interest. In the early years of the twentieth century my grandfather, Clarence A. Gourlay, obtained a patent for a device that used the motion of ocean waves for power,...

America, neoconned.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
January 1, 2004... KHURRAM HUSAIN'S "NEOCONS: The Men Behind the Curtain," (November/December 2003) was a good article. However, the German V-1 was not a rocket, as he states, but a relatively slow, winged pulsejet missile, and that is why it was possible to...

Not enough tickets to ride.(Update)(Brief Article)
January 1, 2004... When the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) put out a call for entries in its "Grand Challenge" contest, it wasn't prepared for the response. As Paul Rogers reported in the July/August 2003 Bulletin, "In a...

But is it art?(Bulletins)
January 1, 2004... TWO BLOCKS FROM THE White House, in a nondescript, dimly lit room of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, there is an atomic lab. Not a real atomic lab, but the next best thing--an art installation that experts say contains the most accurate...

Nukes without borders.(Bulletins)
January 1, 2004... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION expresses a great deal of concern about nuclear proliferation and is quick to accuse others--certain "rogue states" in particular--of moving fissile material across international borders. (If Iraq's nuclear materials...

The real price of failure.
January 1, 2004... At the same time that David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, reported his results to Congress in October, the administration was asking for $600 million more for his team, which had already spent $300 million in an unsuccessful search...

Statesmanship.
January 1, 2004... Televangelist Pat Robertson took some flak after he said in early October 2003 that the State Department should be taken out by a nuclear weapon. It was the second time Robertson had called for the annihilation of State on his television...

Take one very large box ...
January 1, 2004... Writing in the American Mineralogist, David Bish, an Indiana University scientist, has concluded that zeolite, the same mineral used to control the ammonia smell in kitty litter, could be used to trap radioactive materials, keeping them from...

Afta NAFTA.
January 1, 2004... Last fall the Detroit Metro News reported that trucks from Toronto, Canada, carrying medical wastes destined for a landfill in Wayne County, Michigan, were setting off newly installed radiation detectors at the Blue Water Bridge, which connects...

Keeping science alive.(Bulletins)
January 1, 2004... LAL BIHARI KNEW HE WAS alive. It just took him some time to prove it to the government of India, which had considered him dead since 1976. He ran for public office. He tried to obtain a widow's pension for his wife. Bihari even allegedly...

When pigs fly.(Bulletins)
January 1, 2004... IN OCTOBER 2003, THE U.S. State Department, in conjunction with the governments of Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, opened the Southeast Europe Mine Detection Dogs Center outside of Sarajevo. Thanks to their superior sense of smell, dogs...

Keys to the kingdom.
January 1, 2004... Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory apparently lost 12 master keys that unlock thousands of doors and gates at the high-security weapons facility (Tri-Valley Herald, November 7, 2003). According to the Energy Department's Office of Inspector...

A fishy tale.
January 1, 2004... The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation believes that if it can induce Entergy Corporation to close down at least one of the Indian Point nuclear power plants for at least 42 days a year, it will substantially reduce the...

Where's the (irradiated) beef?
January 1, 2004... The Agriculture Department's campaign in favor of irradiated ground beef is not enjoying the success the department had hoped for. In spring 2003, the department decided that if supermarkets wouldn't buy, perhaps those who prepare school...

And where's my tax break?
January 1, 2004... While seeking nearly $1 million in tax breaks for a food irradiation facility, a Fort Worth businessman, David Corbin, lashed out at people who, he said, just "don't like" the irradiation industry (Star-Telegram.com, September 17, 2003). To...

Body language.
January 1, 2004... Lie detectors have not panned out as gold-standard tests of truth telling. So Zuhair Bandar, project director of the "Silent Talker," and his colleagues at Britain's University of Manchester are developing an automated system, using cameras and...

On the defensive.
January 1, 2004... The United States is justly proud of its military prowess, but apparently a little defensive when anyone else shows a bit of talent. Defense Week's "Daily Update" on October 1, 2003, reported that the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet was...

The 2000 election, explained.
January 1, 2004... There's been a lot of controversy about who won the 2000 presidential election in Florida, but last fall controversial fundamentalist and Pentagon bigwig Gen. Jerry Boykin explained George W. Bush's presidency to an audience of co-religionists:...

We love lasers!
January 1, 2004... THE ABILITY TO USE A beam of energy to blow a hole in something at a distance has long captured the imagination of science fiction writers. Phasers, blasters, photon torpedoes--they're commonplace in movies and on television. If the U.S....

The death of no-dual-use.(Nuclear Weapons)
January 1, 2004... LIKE THE OTHER 103 commercial nuclear power reactors in the United States, the Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA) Watts Bar reactor, some 40 miles southwest of Knoxville, Tennessee, is today churning out energy for its commercial and...

Sheriff of the South Pacific.(Australia)
January 1, 2004... THE SHADOW OF SEPTEMBER 11 has reached the Solomon Islands. Australia's policy of non-intervention was abandoned in July when about 2,000 Australian-led troops invaded the islands. In the words of Australian Prime Minister John Howard, if the...

The illusion of plenty.(Oil)
January 1, 2004... ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE billion of anything sounds like a limitless quantity. But in terms of barrels of oil, it's just a drop in the gas tank. The world uses about 27 billion barrels of oil per year, meaning that 112 billion barrels--the proven...

Bush's nuclear hypocrisy: if the next administration wants to be seen as serious about nonproliferation, it'll have to undo a lot of Bush administration practices.(Opinions)
January 1, 2004... IT IS IRONIC AND HYPOCRITICAL. THAT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION has condemned both North Korea and Iran for their apparent efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The Bush administration itself is undermining the international nuclear nonproliferation...

Bush meets his Waterloo: beating a fast path to Baghdad, the Bush administration may have paved its road to ruin.(Opinions)
January 1, 2004... IN 1815, NAPOLEON MET HIS WATERLOO, A TERM now synonymous with military collapse. Adolf Hitler's grand plans for domination of Europe failed when he launched his armies toward Stalingrad. George W. Bush's plan to spread democracy around the...

Bungling democracy in the Muslim world: you don't promote democracy in the Middle East by cozying up to oppressive regimes.(Opinions)
January 1, 2004... DURING A NOVEMBER 6 SPEECH TO THE NATIONAL Endowment for Democracy, President George W. Bush told the Arab world that he will insist on democratic reform in the region. The Middle East, he said, will persist as a threat to world security unless...

LNG: safety in science: careful study of the consequences of spill fires can settle terminal--siting questions.(Opinions)
January 1, 2004... IN THE JULY/AUGUST 2003 BULLETIN ("TERRORISM: Ready to Blow?"), I wrote about concerns surrounding the shipment of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Of all the potential hazards associated with shipping LNG, I believe that a massive spill from a...

City on fire: by ignoring the fire damage that would result from a nuclear attack and taking into account blast damage alone, U.S. war planners were able to demand a far larger nuclear arsenal than necessary.
January 1, 2004... FOR MORE THAN 50 YEARS, THE U.S. GOVERNMENT has seriously underestimated damage from nuclear attacks. The earliest schemes to predict damage from atomic bombs, devised in 1947 and 1948, focused only on blast damage and ignored damage from fire,...

Doomsday for the 21st century: no more killer cockroaches from outer space?(The Center Spread)
January 1, 2004... THE CENTURY OPENED WITH BILL JOY'S APRIL 2000 Wired article, "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," which predicted human annihilation through nanotechnology, and an Australian team's invention of a 100 percent lethal mousepox virus. (Doomsday for...

The pros from Dover: President Bush surrounded himself with what should have been a crack team of national security experts. So what went wrong? Did their system just not work, or did they have the wrong agenda?
January 1, 2004... THERE IS A HILARIOUS SCENE IN THE MOVIE M*A*S*H where two young doctors from a field hospital at the front in the Korean War travel to Japan and proceed to have their way with local commanders and the military bureaucracy. Arriving to carry out...

Democracy or dominion? When the American public pays little attention to political affairs, it pays the price. The question today is the same as it has been earlier in U.S. history--how great a price?
January 1, 2004... THE AUTHORS OF A HIGHLY REGARDED TEXTBOOK, American Public Opinion, include an aggregate analysis of more than 2,000 "pop quizzes" surveying American political knowledge since the 1930s. Only 13 percent of the adult public could answer...

Dirty bomber? Dirty justice: according to John Ashcroft's Justice Department, even U.S. citizens are not entitled to their constitutional right to legal representation.
January 1, 2004... ON MAY 8, 2002, 31-YEAR-old Brooklyn-born Jose Padilla was arrested by FBI agents at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and held as a witness in connection with the September 11, 2001, attacks. Speaking at a special news conference in...

Toward nuclear abolition: a history of the world disarmament movement, 1971 to the present.(Book Review)
January 1, 2004... By Lawrence S. Wittner Stanford University Press, 2003 657 pages; $32.95 THE THIRD VOLUME OF LAWRENCE Wittner's encyclopedic and monumental work, The Struggle Against the Bomb, is his most important. Wittner has meticulously documented the...

Dismantling U.S. nuclear warheads.(NRDC Nuclear Notebook)
January 1, 2004... SINCE THE END OF THE COLD WAR, the main activity at the Pantex Plant in Texas has been dismantling warheads removed from the U.S. nuclear stockpile. Over the next decade, the plant's primary workload will shift toward modifying warheads to...

The party of preemption. (And another thing ...
January 1, 2004... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S STILL-SECRET DECEMBER 2001 Nuclear Posture Review complained about the "limitations in the present nuclear force" and asserted that "new capabilities must be developed to defeat emerging threats." "With a more...