Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from March 2003

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from March 2003

Transferring terror. (Editor's Note).(Editorial)
March 1, 2003... IN JUNE 1993, PERVEZ HOODBHOY, A PROMINENT PAKISTANI physicist (and member of the Bulletin's Board of Sponsors) wrote a thought-provoking article for this magazine titled "Myth-Building: The `Islamic Bomb.'" It's even more provocative today....

No upgrade needed. (Letters).
March 1, 2003... I'M THE AUTHOR OF AIR FORCE ONE, a book about President George W. Bush's aircraft and presidential air travel. An "In Brief" item ("Keep in Touch," January/February 2003) tells readers there are four presidential aircraft. While the...

Palestinian refugees. (Letters).
March 1, 2003... "AID UNDER FIRE," BY NABIL HANDAL (November/December 2002 Bulletin) is long on myth but short on the factual basis for the creation of the "Palestinian refugee problem." U.N. Resolution 181 in 1947 proposed a two-state solution to the...

Two minute warning. (Letters).
March 1, 2003... SO MANY SABERS ARE RATTLING YOU can't hear yourself think. With the current level of tensions, the clock should be moved to five and perhaps four minutes till midnight. Having worked as an engineer at the Nuclear Test Site qualifies me, I...

Art critics. (Letters).
March 1, 2003... YOUR COVER ARTIST FOR JANUARY/ February 2003 captured the real mood and faces of our fearless leaders. Let's hope their mood changes, and the hands of the clock, too. Mark Petnuch Richton Park, Illinois IN ORDER FOR THE BULLETIN TO...

The plutonium economy. (Update).(Japan's nuclear industry)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Japan's long-troubled plutonium-based nuclear industry was hit by two setbacks in late January. On January 27, a Japanese high court blocked efforts to reopen the Monju experimental breeder reactor, shut down since a 1995 coolant leak....

As American as atomic pie. (Bulletins).(Robert Dohrmann)
March 1, 2003... JUST HOW DOES ONE make an atomic pie? First, start thinking about how the nuclear age has colored modern culture. Then, take some oils and acrylics, add a little sculpture, mix in some mixed media--and voila! If you're like Robert Dohrmann,...

For the newly paranoid. (Bulletins).(fallout shelters)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... IT MAY LOOK LIKE A SCI-FI alien aircraft, but the "Guardian" is the latest fallout shelter/personal bunker made by Miami-based U.S. Bunkers. Described as mobile by the company, this personal shelter weighs in at a svelte 13 to 15 tons--of...

Glowing with excitement. (Bulletins).(tritium)
March 1, 2003... ALTHOUGH THE U.S. government's supply of tritium--the radioactive gas that adds explosive punch to thermonuclear weapons--may be running low, private companies across the globe appear to have little trouble procuring the gas for their products....

That other atomic clock.(National Institute of Standards and Technology, NASA, International Space Station)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... As if the National Institute of Standard's F1 atomic clock were not precise enough (it's described as accurate to within one second in 30 million years), a new project funded by NASA--the Primary Atomic Reference Clock in Space, or "PARCS"...

Bombast in Bombay.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... The recent unpleasantness with North Korea has alerted almost everyone to the less-than-tactful nature of Korean rhetoric. But some striking verbal assaults on the Indian subcontinent may have gone unnoticed (BBC, January 8). George Fernandes,...

Keeping it clean.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... As Steven Aftergood revealed in the December 18 issue of his always informative e-mail journal, Secrecy News, the U.S. Navy takes tough steps to protect its essential secrets. For instance, it has classified as secret certain "technical data"...

Winning at war, losing at PR?(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Boeing has been showing a new sales film, titled "The Army--Objective Force: Realizing the Vision," to British firms to promote its next-generation of weaponry--unmanned aircraft and high-speed robot tanks. The animated film, which resembles a...

The continuing saga of Los Alamos.(Los Alamos National Laboratory)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Ever since a May 2000 fire burned thousands of acres and threatened parts of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, workers have been thinning some of the forests near the lab (Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2002). But Los Alamos has placed some...

Down in the dumps.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... According to the December 8, 2002 Los Angeles Times, for at least the last 10 years California has allowed "mildly radioactive" waste from nuclear sites to be carted off to city dumps that were not licensed to handle any sort of radioactive...

And before you feel superior to California ...(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... In November, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission proposed a new rule that would permit the disposal in unlicensed dumps of waste uranium and thorium, materials whose radioactive level would "allow exposures five times higher than the level the...

Making friends and influencing people.(Richard Perle)
March 1, 2003... Perhaps anticipating France and Germany's reluctance to get on board the U.S. war-with-Iraq train in January, long-time Pentagon adviser Richard Perle took the occasion of his trip to Europe last November to complain that the continent had lost...

All the rage in New York. (Bulletins).(survival gear)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... CLEAR THESE DUSTY Post-its and dried up highlighters from the office supply cabinet, or make a little room in the linen closet. Shopping for survival gear could be the next hot retail trend. Since September 11, there's been an upswing in...

Knowing/not knowing Mr. Kim. (Bulletins).(Kim Jong Il)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... ALMOST ALL OF WHAT IS "known" about North Korea's Kim Jong Il comes from "leaks" by U.S. intelligence and the South Korean government, which have found it convenient to periodically play up or play down Kim's reputation for bizarre behavior....

Kola cleanup coming? (Russia).(Kola Peninsula)
March 1, 2003... THE MOOD WAS ELEVATED LAST November at the inauguration of a "Norwegian village" at Andreeva Bay--Russia's once-secret naval base, now a dangerously rundown nuclear waste storage site. Norway's then-Secretary of State Elsbeth Tronstad called...

Her Majesty's new nukes? (Britain).
March 1, 2003... AS THE UNITED STATES ARTICulates a preemptive nuclear strategy in the "war on terrorism," how far in line with that policy is America's number one ally, Britain? The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), leaked to the press back in early...

To vote or not to vote. (Congress).
March 1, 2003... ON JANUARY 7, THE FIRST DAY of the 108th Congress, Senate Democrats skipped the usual niceties and immediately challenged a stingy Republican plan to compensate out-of-work Americans. A week later, they offered a series of amendments to the...

Too close for comfort: with weapon delivery measured in minutes, an India-Pakistan agreement on missile controls is essential. (Opinions).
March 1, 2003... INDIA TEST-LAUNCHED A NUCLEAR-CAPABLE Agni I missile on January 9--yet another in increasingly frequent South Asian missile tests. Last year, India conducted a total of nine missile tests while Pakistan tested five times. These tests are...

More transparency needed: a U.S.-Russian uranium agreement, useful in itself, might also unstick the fissban talks.
March 1, 2003... THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA HAVE ALready made considerable progress in reducing stockpiles of fissile material--both plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)--through a series of bilateral agreements and unilateral decisions. But to...

"Slow-walked and stonewalled": the administration's near-gag order assured a less-than-satisfactory outcome to the congressional investigation of 9/11.
March 1, 2003... FROM THE DAY AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, when the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. took place, it was clear there would be a congressional investigation of the intelligence aspects of the disaster. Unanswered questions loomed in...

North Korea: less than meets the eye. (The Center Spread).
March 1, 2003... WHO FAILED TO LIVE UP TO THE AGREED FRAMEWORK between the United States and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea? A better question might be, who didn't? The agreement had three main points: * Both sides would work together to...

Afghanistan: the more it changes ... Americans like to think the war in Afghanistan is over, but that would be a serious mistake.
March 1, 2003... ONE MIGHT CONCLUDE THAT HAMID Karzai, the interim head of the Afghan government, is doing well. Foreign dignitaries visit frequently, relief work is going on, and streetlights have been installed in Kabul by a German firm. The Japanese are...

A bomb for the Ummah: some of Pakistan's nuclear scientists believe that the bomb should be shared with all of the Muslim community, even--or especially--with Al Qaeda.
March 1, 2003... IN JUNE 2000, TWO PAKISTANI NUCLEAR SCIENtists, Sultan Bashir-ud-Din Mahmood and Chaudiri Abdul Majeed, founded Ummah Tameer-e-Nau, "Reconstruction of the Muslim Ummah," or "UTN," an organization whose purported purpose was to conduct relief...

No experience necessary: the Nth country experiment showed that three post-docs with no nuclear knowledge could design a working atom bomb.
March 1, 2003... THIRTY-NINE YEARS AGO, IN THE dusty ranch town of Livermore, California, the U.S. government secretly chose three newly minted post-doc physicists, put them off in a corner of a laboratory with no access to classified information, and told them...

Planning to deceive: how the defense department practices the fine art of making friends and influencing people.
March 1, 2003... THE EARLY YEARS OF THE George W. Bush administration, with the war on terrorism, the face-off with Iraq, and the confrontation with North Korea, have required it to be concerned with the perceptions of foreign leaders and publics. Last year's...

Policy by e-mail.(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... Tritium on Ice: The Dangerous New Alliance of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power By Kenneth D. Bergeron MIT Press, 2002 232 pages; $24.95 DECADES AGO, NOBEL LAUREATE HANnes Alfven warned, "Atoms for peace and atoms for war are Siamese...

Triumphalism, or the "Wolfowitz indiscretion".(Book Review)
March 1, 2003... American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy By Andrew J. Bacevich Harvard University, 2002 320 pages; $29.95 POST-COLD WAR U.S. FOREIGN POLIcy has exhibited the sort of triumphalism that makes you think of Lord...

North Korea's nuclear program, 2003. (Nuclear Notebook).
March 1, 2003... NORTH KOREA HAS APPARENTLY BEcome the world's ninth nuclear power. Last November, the CIA estimated that Pyongyang has one, perhaps two, nuclear weapons. The North Korean crisis, as it has emerged over the past several months, is an extremely...