Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from May 1994

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from May 1994

Crossroads. (Operation Crossroads, 1946) (Editorial)
May 1, 1994... Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, written in the late 1930s about Stalin's show trials, is angry, didactic, and compelling. In it, Nicolas Salmanovitch Rubashov, a party functionary, is imprisoned for counter-revolutionary activities. He...

Time to end the 40-year lie. (secrecy about the first hydrogen bomb test at Bikini in 1954) (Column)
May 1, 1994... On March 1, 1954, at Bikini Atoll--a curving string of several dozen tiny islands looping gracefully around a 24-mile-long lagoon--the United States tested its first deliverable hydrogen bomb. That test--Bravo--was the most destructive nuclear...

Big Brother's new hearing aids. (Clipper microchip that allows government agencies to access private computer transactions)
May 1, 1994... Do government officials bug you? The Clinton administration wants to make it easier for them to do so. To fight crime and terrorism, the White House has come up with more sophisticated ways to listen in on private conversations and...

Clinton's line of defense. (defense policy)
May 1, 1994... In a State of the Union address largely devoted to domestic issues, Bill Clinton told Congress: "Last year, I proposed a defense plan that maintains our post-Cold War security at a lower cost. This year many people urged me to cut our defense...

Kafka meets the free market. (criminal activity in Russia)
May 1, 1994... Everyone is talking about the Russian "mafia," Russian criminal activities in the West, nuclear smugglers, assassins, terrorists. Russian organized crime is spreading its tentacles around the world, if you believe the Western mass media. Now...

Still killing. (land mines)
May 1, 1994... Eighty-five to 100 million land mines are scattered across 62 countries. Mines kill at least 800 people a month and many more are maimed. The growing international awareness of this pervasive and vicious problem is the result of campaigns by...

Russia wants plastics, too. (the use of Russian chemical weapon plants to make other products)
May 1, 1994... Russia would like to turn a profit from its increasingly idle defense establishment--for instance, perambulators are now rolling off a former missile assembly line at Votkinsk. However, Russia's desire to preserve chemical plants that once...

Cosmonauts number zero. (includes related article on interviews with human subjects of Russian endurance testing)
May 1, 1994... The Institute of Medical Biological Problems, a secret, semi-military branch of the Soviet scientific community, recruited "Cosmonauts Number Zero," a group of professional test subjects, in late 1967. The group consisted of young athletes in...

The Able-Baker-Where's Charlie follies: the story of Operation Crossroads is a sad tale of U.S. naval arrogance ... and ignorance. (includes excerpt from 'Operation Crossroads' by Jonathan M. Weisgall)
May 1, 1994... Shortly after World War II ended, the war between the army and the navy resumed. Combat between the two forces in the halls of Congress and on newspaper editorial pages had a long if not particularly distinguished prewar history. For decades,...

Boley Caldwell wants an apology. (was sent to Pacific to participate in atomic bomb testing)
May 1, 1994... When he was 18, they asked him if he wanted to go to the Pacific to see an atomic bomb test. He didn't know what to say, so he said, "Sure." Growing up deep in the heart of Texas during the 1930s, Boley Caldwell led a hard but ultimately...

Dangerous surplus: as nuclear weapons are dismantled, plutonium must be made more proliferation resistant, says the National Academy of Sciences.
May 1, 1994... As result of existing arms-control reduction commitments, approximately 50 metric tons of weapon-grade plutonium is expected to become surplus in the United States--and a similar or larger amount in Russia--over the next 10 years. It is...

Let's use it: the U.S. policy that has served to keep reprocessed plutonium out of civilian nuclear fuel should be modified for the disposal of weapons plutonium. (includes related article on destruction of weapons plutonium)
May 1, 1994... The U.S. policy that has served to keep reprocessed plutonium out of civilian nuclear fuel should be modified for the disposal of weapons plutonium. Within the next year or two, the United States has a chance to decide what will be done...

Russian science: snubbed and sickly.
May 1, 1994... Fading respect, reduced funding, and the "brain drain" have brought science in Russia to the vanishing point. The momentous changes still occurring in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union are destined to have long-lasting effects on...

Giving Claiborne Parish the business. (opposition to a commercial uranium enrichment plant by residents of Claiborne Parish, Louisiana) (includes related article on Senator J. Bennett Johnston)
May 1, 1994... Residents of Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, learned of plans to build a commercial uranium enrichment plant in their community four years ago, at a hastily called town barbecue. Over corn, hash, and slaw they listened in astonishment as...

A Preponderance of Power.
May 1, 1994... A Preponderance of Power is an award-winning history of the Truman administration's national security policy. In it, University of Virginia historian Melvyn Leffler offers a prodigiously researched thesis that American policy-makers sought not...

Known nuclear tests worldwide, 1945-1993.
May 1, 1994... Officials in the United States, Russia, Britain, and France have released a great deal of new information about their nuclear testing programs since last year's update ("Nuclear Notebook," April 1993). United States. On December 7, 1993,...

The 30-minute world. (the intelligence community) (Column)
May 1, 1994... Before Aldrich Ames, Bobby Inman's Captain Queeg performance should have provided early warning that all was not well in the world of spies. Retired Admiral Inman was universally lauded for his analytic brilliance, but then he exposed the kind...