Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from May 1995

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from May 1995

Dehousing. (military policy of bombing civilians)(Editorial)
May 1, 1995... Dozens of books and hundreds of articles have explored why atom bombs were used against Japan in August 1945. The debate has been particularly intense since 1965, with the publication of Atomic Diplomacy by Gar Alperovitz, who argued that the...

Misconceived patriotism: the Smithsonian's critics should have defended freedom rather than censorship. (controversy over the planned exhibit for the atomic bombing of Japan)(Column) (Column)
May 1, 1995... In January, while trying to deny that the Smithsonian Institution had caved in to political pressure, Smithsonian Secretary I. Michael Heyman announced that the National Air and Space Museum's planned fiftieth anniversary exhibit on the role the...

How big is small? (testing of nuclear weapons)
May 1, 1995... The Nevada Test Site may not be out of business just yet. Although no nuclear test has been conducted there since September 1992 because of the U.S. testing moratorium, some Pentagon planners are said to be quietly scheming to resume nuclear...

A perilous profession: if no one can protect journalists, who will protect democracy? (deaths of Russian journalists)
May 1, 1995... When a Russian television anchorman finished his sad report on the murder of Russian Public Television Executive Director Vladislav Listyev, he looked into the camera and said: "Who is the next?" Then there was a minute of silence....

Which fissile fingerprint? (results of investigations into nuclear fuel being sold illegally)
May 1, 1995... Like their German counterparts, Czech investigators are finding that pinpointing the source of smuggled fissile material is more complicated than they first expected. The more the experts discover, the more new, unanswered questions emerge....

Hawks take a hit. (military spending policy)
May 1, 1995... The first shots in the 104th Congress's battle on national security issues have been fired. The final outcome won't be known until fall, but the early skirmishes suggest that, although the Pentagon hawks are in charge of the levers of power, they...

Yes, haste made waste: the FBI's raid on Rocky Flats uncovered a toxic disaster - and a management that didn't need to care. (nuclear facility in Colorado)
May 1, 1995... Beginning on page 34, the Bulletin takes a look at the mess created by 50 years of building nuclear weapons. The material is based on candid, eye-opening reports recently issued by the Energy Department. Energy now estimates that it will cost...

Hiroshima memories. (a Japanese woman recalls the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan)(Cover Story)
May 1, 1995... Today I live in the United States where I'm a social worker in the Radiation Oncology Department at the University of Chicago Hospitals. The work is rewarding. Over the decades, the diagnostic and therapeutic uses of ionizing radiation have...

"Always" the target: while U.S. bomb scientists were racing against Germany, military planners were looking toward the Pacific.
May 1, 1995... On April 23, 1945, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, director of the Manhattan Project, wrote a memo to Henry L. Stimson, secretary of war. It contained a puzzling phrase, which I have italicized: "Our previous hopes that an implosion type of bomb might...

Smithsonian suffers Legionnaires' disease. (controversy over planned exhibit on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan)
May 1, 1995... Fifty years ago, I was an 11-year-old paperboy for the afternoon Cleveland Press. On the afternoon of August 6, 1945, the bundled papers waiting for me had a banner headline saying: "Atom Bomb Hits Japan." The second line said: "Blast Force...

Nothing clean about "cleanup." (waste created by making nuclear weapons)
May 1, 1995... Over the past 50 years, the United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars--at 1995 rates--to design and manufacture nuclear weapons. Now that the East-West arms race has finally ended, the nation may have to spend hundreds of billions...

How did we get in this mess? (waste created during the production of nuclear wepons; include related article on waste tanks at weapons production sites)
May 1, 1995... The creation of each gram of plutonium, reactor fuel element, and container of enriched uranium produced radioactive waste--virtually all of which remains with us today. The graphite bricks Enrico Fermi used for the first "atomic pile" at the...

Livermore on the defensive. (Lawrence Livermore Laboratories) (includes related information on the Energy Department FY 1995 budget)
May 1, 1995... Since the end of the Cold War, the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories has been in question. Budget cutters, arms controllers, and defense conversionists have been eyeing the multibillion-dollar facilities with increasing interest....

"Potatoes were guarded better:" stealing nuclear fuel from the storage building at Sevmorput was - and may still be - easy. (Russia)
May 1, 1995... On November 27, 1993, at about 1:00 a.m., Capt. Alexei Tikhomirov slipped through an unprotected gate and into the Sevmorput shipyard near Murmansk--one of the Russian navy's main storage facilities for nuclear fuel. The 35-year-old deputy chief...

Top guns: who's who in Russia's military; a scorecard for future maneuvering, power plays, and skirmishes.
May 1, 1995... Early this year a scandal broke out in the Russian army the likes of which could not have been imagined--even in one's worst nightmare--only a few years ago. Gen. Vladimir Gladyshev, the commander of the Russian military base in Georgia, openly...

Blacklisting Schweitzer. (former German scientist Albert Schweitzer)
May 1, 1995... Thanks to the recent declassification of key government documents, the dimensions of a bitter conflict between Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the famed humanitarian, and the U.S. government are evident for the first time. Albert...

The Firecracker Boys.
May 1, 1995... As the nuclear arms race recedes, or at least mutates into new forms, we learn more and more about the ways it polluted and poisoned the streams of our national life--both literally and figuratively. Dan O'Neill's absorbing new book The...

The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of the Cold War.
May 1, 1995... Raymond Garthoff, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, has written the definitive study of American-Soviet relations during the 1980s. It blames President Reagan and the ideologues in his administration for the deterioration of relations...

The Arms Production Dilemma: Contraction and Restraint in the World Combat Aircraft Industry.
May 1, 1995... Having helped turn back the nuclear buildup through the nuclear-weapons freeze in the 1980s, Randall Forsberg, executive director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies (IDDS), seeks a slowdown in the international trade in combat...

Known nuclear tests worldwide, 1945-1994.
May 1, 1995... China was the only nation that tested nuclear devices during 1994. China conducted its first test on June 10, and another on October 7. The United States last tested on September 23, 1992; the Soviet Union on October 24, 1990; Britain on November...

A fine garble. (contradictions of nuclear weapons policy)(Column)
May 1, 1995... The Pentagon seems bewitched, bothered, and bewildered, not to mention befuddled, regarding the circumstances under which it might be appropriate to use nuclear weapons in battle. On April 29, 1993, Gen. Colin Powell, then chairman of the Joint...