Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from March 2000

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from March 2000

Remembering Robert R. Wilson.(nuclear physicist)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
March 1, 2000... ROBERT R. WILSON, 85, DIED JANUARY 16 in Ithaca, New York, after a long illness. He was born in the town of Frontier, Wyoming, and he lived most of his life on the frontier of nuclear physics. Wilson was a key member of the Manhattan...

LETTERS.
March 1, 2000... Lugar was mistaken Many of the arguments Richard Lugar uses against the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) ("Better Safe...," January/February Bulletin) were also discussed by Wolfgang Panofsky and other authors in the same issue. But...

Private eye, public view.(private spy satellite captures images of primitive Korean missile site)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... Spy satellites have gone commercial. Last September, the Denver-based company Space Imaging launched the first privately owned high-resolution imaging satellite--dubbed "Ikonos"--into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California....

WEB Watch.(presidential candidate web sites)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... You've watched the debates and seen the commercials. But how do the candidates stack up online? Specifically, the Bulletin asked: When freed from the constraints of a 15-second sound bite, how well does each candidate spell out his ideas on...

Ready, set, irradiate.(food irradiation wins regulatory approval)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... The long-running struggle over U.S. government permission to irradiate food products came to an end on December 14, when the Food & Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture issued regulations for the irradiation of raw beef, pork,...

In brief.(news items from the world of nuclear physics)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... * Sharing The target chamber from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Nova laser was shipped to France in early December as part of the post-Cold War program of nuclear-weapons research sharing by two good friends who are nuclear...

A radioactive rarity.(children's book made with radium to glow in the dark)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... They say you never know what you're going to find on e-Bay, the Internet location where every day thousands of ordinary people act as auctioneers, offering their assorted wares to hundreds of thousands of others. So we probably shouldn't have...

Payback time.(residents of the Marshall Islands are seeking compensation for nuclear testing done during the Cold War)
March 1, 2000... I'M IN A HIGH-RISE OFFICE IN CENTRAL Honolulu and attorney Davor Pevec is showing me photos of the damage to his clients' property. There's quite a stack of them, aerial shots mostly, and Pevec is slowly laying them out on the boardroom table...

Marketing the Buddhist message.(Tibetans in exile)
March 1, 2000... THE TIBETANS WHO FLED TO INDIA with nothing but their robes after China invaded Tibet four decades ago have done well. Most of the exiles have jobs and their children receive free schooling and scholarships for higher education. Their basic...

An acquittal at last?(Alexander Nikitin acquitted of high treason in Russia for reporting on the environmental damage of Russia's nuclear fleet)
March 1, 2000... ON DECEMBER 29, A CITY COURT in St. Petersburg acquitted Alexander Nikitin, a retired Russian naval captain, of high treason. Thus ended the first chapter in the Nikitin affair. Whether there will be subsequent chapters is not yet known. ...

Energy's secrets: Finding the balance.(Department of Energy seeks security with openness)
March 1, 2000... In the rush to "fix" alleged nuclear leaks, policy-makers have all but forgotten the benefits of openness. A YEAR AFTER THE CHINESE NUCLEAR ESPIONAGE FLAP began, the impact of security reforms at the Energy Department is clear. Despite...

A political decision.(ballistic missile defense system nears deadline for approval)
March 1, 2000... Will the president decide to deploy Son of Star Wars this summer? LATE IN THE EVENING OF JANUARY 18, THE Pentagon launched a modified Minute-man II missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. A few minutes later, an experimental...

Vardo exposed.(Norwegian officials insists new satellite-tracking radar system not connected with United States missile defense system)
March 1, 2000... Bergen, Norway--In April 1998, I broke the story about how an American radar named HAVE STARE with a potential missile defense application was coming to Norway. My series of stories did not create an uproar. Norwegians are not easily excited...

The Target is Russia.(ballistic missile defense system could jeopardize arms reduction)
March 1, 2000... THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION IS relentlessly moving toward an ill-informed decision this summer to deploy an untested and fundamentally unworkable national missile defense (NMD) system. The administration claims this technically flawed defense is...

The wrong plan.(a better ballistic missile defense strategy)
March 1, 2000... CONGRESSIONAL HAWKS HAVE LONG demanded a national missile defense system, and the Clinton administration--as John Isaacs explains on page 22--may well comply with a decision to deploy one by 2005. The administration is developing a system...

Accident prone.(analysis of the accident at the Tokaimura nuclear facility in Japan)
March 1, 2000... ON THE MORNING OF SEPTEMBER 30, three workers were nearly finished purifying the uranium oxide they were processing to make fuel rods for Japan's Joyo fast research reactor. Ordinarily, the JCO fuel production plant at Tokaimura processed...

DESPERATELY SEEKING SIGNALS.(the National Security Agency's Echelon program)
March 1, 2000... "Echelon" may be worrisome, but it's not the all-absorbing big ear that some people think. THE FEAR THAT "BIG BROTHER" might be monitoring our private communications is not new. It's no wonder that when a January 1998 report to the...

Where's it gone?(the antinuclear movement loses momentum and visibility)
March 1, 2000... The peace movement at the turn of the century THERE'S NO EASY WAY TO SAY IT. OUTRAGE, or even concern, about nuclear weapons may be at an all-time low. Yet there are thousands of weapons in the United States and Russia still on hair-trigger...

Russia's political players.
March 1, 2000... After a decade of tension and instability, a spirit of cooperation would come as a great relief to most Russians. FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE THE PAINFUL but peaceful dissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, a Russian leader is likely...

Tito's Nuclear Legacy.(former Yugoslavian dictator Josip Broz Tito)
March 1, 2000... The West may be mistaken in not pushing for the removal of bomb-grade material from the nuclear center in Vinca, a suburb of Belgrade. YUGOSLAVIA--AT LEAST IN THE eyes of the West--is regarded as a pariah state. But it is a pariah state...

An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security After the Cold War.(Review)
March 1, 2000... An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security After the Cold War By Janne Nolan Brookings Institution Press, 1999 139 pages; $14.95 Janne Nolan's illuminating book does much to explain why, a decade after the collapse of the...

Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century.(Review)
March 1, 2000... Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century By Bruce Cumings Duke University Press, 1999 280 pages; $27.95 Reading this well presented work by Bruce Cumings is not fun. If you wish to have...

Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945-2000.(an estimated 128,000 nuclear weapons may exist in the world)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... THE FIVE ACKNOWLEDGED NUCLEAR POWERS STILL POSSESS more than 30,000 nuclear weapons. (Three other countries--Israel, India, and Pakistan--possess an unknown number of nuclear weapons.) The table provides estimates of each country's stockpile by...

The nuclear burden.(ongoing drills to maintain combat readiness)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2000... LAST JUNE, JUST TWO WEEKS AFTER B-2 BOMBERS flew their last missions over Yugoslavia, inspectors got out their clipboards at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where the B-2s are based. The mission of the clipboard cadre--called "Spirit...