Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from May 1999

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from May 1999

A funny kind of deterrence.(India and Pakistan's nuclear programs hide poverty of people)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1999... The word "surreal" is often used to depict the woes of human existence on the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. It also aptly characterizes the security milieu emerging in the wake of the May 1998 nuclear tests. Pakistan and India are the only...

The war on speech.(language that uses war metaphors)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1999... The language police are after us all, not just the name-callers they once had in their sights. They want to strip speech of "linguistic violence," a category that includes a wide assortment of words and expressions. For some time, the...

Spies R Us.(government fears that toy Furby may be used as spying device)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1999... Move over ballistic missiles, rogue states, loose nukes, and bioterrorists--Fortress America has a new national security threat. It's small and fluffy, comes in assorted colors, and might at this very moment be holding a conversation with your...

In brief.
May 1, 1999... * Lotsa luck It's been bugging the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the international Electrotechnical Commission that the terms commonly used to express how much memory a computer chip has--namely, kilobyte,...

Nukewaste.gov.(government plans World Wide Web site with nuclear waste information)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1999... Under the terms of an unprecedented legal settlement, the Energy Department will offer web surfers an alternative to Furby autopsies (see "Spies R Us," page 8) and day-trading technology stocks. On the cyberhorizon: an on-line database...

Check out "Jump-START".
May 1, 1999... www.stimson.org Sometimes you just have to cut to the chase. Those of us who think about arms control and nuclear proliferation are inclined to use the namby-pamby word "concern." As in, "Iraq is a state of proliferation concern." ...

Simpson wins Szilard award.
May 1, 1999... The American Physical Society presented John A. Simpson with its 1999 Leo Szilard Award for Physics in the Public Interest at its centennial meeting in Atlanta in March. During World War II, Szilard and Simpson worked in the Manhattan Project's...

When Quebec shrugged.
May 1, 1999... Canada, it seems, is likely to be "the first target of a North Korean nuclear attack." Or so said three Canadian MPS when they returned home from a meeting of NATO representatives at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania....

New mines, what ban?(mines being laid in Angola)
May 1, 1999... The news from Angola these days is almost all bad, given the resurgence of fighting in December between the government and the rebel UNITA movement of Jonas Savimbi. And with the fighting has come the laying of new minefields in previously...

Frozen out.(journalist not allowed to India's Department of Atomic Energy meetings)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1999... In the United States, decision-makers on the public payroll are required by "sunshine laws" to meet with the press and answer questions as openly as possible. Not so in India, at least when it comes to the people who manage the country's...

Tough choices on Temelin.(Temelin nuclear power plant in Czech Republic)
May 1, 1999... What to do with Temelin, the unfinished nuclear power plant in the southern Czech Republic? That's the $2 billion question facing the Czech government. A succession of governments dating back to the communist days have spent nearly that...

A legacy of contamination.(Soviet Union's peaceful nuclear explosions)
May 1, 1999... Information about Soviet underground testing near Semipalatinsk and Novaya Zemlya has been well reported since the end of the Soviet Union. Accidents at nuclear power stations, the consequences of atomic weapons testing, problems with nuclear...

Henry Kendall, Glenn Seaborg, Gerhard Herzberg.(scientists)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
May 1, 1999... Over a 14-day period this year, the world lost three distinguished scientists, Nobel laureates all, and all associated in some way with the Bulletin. Henry W. Kendall, 72, died February 18 while scuba diving in Florida's Wakulla Springs...

The hijacking of UNSCOM.(United Nations Special Commission used incorrectly)
May 1, 1999... The work of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) charged with disarming Iraq of its chemical and biological weapons was disrupted last December. And in an exceptionally problematic way. UNSCOM's downfall resulted not only from the use of...

MISSILE DEFENSE: It's back.
May 1, 1999... Senate and house votes to endorse national missile defense exploded like thunderclaps across the American national security landscape in mid-March. The prolonged Republican campaign for deployment--which had seemed like a fool's errand only...

MISSILE DEFENSE: And it still won't work.(missile defense not technically possible in 1999)
May 1, 1999... THE DEBATE OVER WHETHER THE UNITED STATES SHOULD deploy a national missile defense (NMD) has been raging since the 1960s.[1] In the fall of 1967, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, reacting to pressure from Congress to deploy an ABM system,...

MISSILE DEFENSE: Not such a bad idea.
May 1, 1999... THROUGHOUT THE COLD WAR, IF EITHER THE UNITED States or the Soviet Union had deployed meaningful missile defenses, the other side clearly had the means to compensate by increasing offensive forces. The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty...

A very convenient scandal.(alleged Chinese espionage not taken serious in US press for long time)
May 1, 1999... What a difference eight years make. On November 22, 1990, the New York Times published an article headlined, "Chinese Atom-Arms Spying in U.S. Reported." It began, "Chinese intelligence agents succeeded in stealing nuclear-weapons secrets from...

The wind farm in the cabbage patch.(U.S. nonprofit organization install wind power in North Korea)
May 1, 1999... A California non-profit's small wind power project offered a rare glimpse into daily life in a North Korean farming village. In the 1990s, relations between the United States and North Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) have...

RUSSIA'S FRAGILE UNION.(corruption, political violence, and humanitarian catastrophes)
May 1, 1999... On November 20, 1998, Galina Starovoitova, one of Russia's few democratic politicians worthy of the name, was murdered in the entryway of her St. Petersburg apartment. Her death attracted brief notice in the Western press at first. But...

Minatom at the edge.(Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy)
May 1, 1999... Once insulated from budget cuts, a cash-strapped Minatom is looking for new sources of income. The decade-long financial turmoil in Russia, which turned into a crisis in August with the collapse of the banking system, will have a long-term...

Getting it right.(U.S. aid to Russian scientists)
May 1, 1999... Against the backdrop of a crumbling Russian economy, a congressional study issued in February aims criticism at two key U.S. efforts designed to keep desperate Russian weapons scientists from selling their talents to the highest bidder. ...

Canning plutonium: cheaper and faster.(Russia and U.S. plans to dispose of excess plutonium)
May 1, 1999... Why Russia's excess weapons plutonium ought to be immobilized rather than burned. Russia and the United States face an enormous and urgent post-Cold War task: converting their vast plutonium surpluses into a form that is relatively safe...

The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea.(Review)
May 1, 1999... The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea By Stephen Endicott and Edward Hagerman Indiana University Press, 1998 274 pages; $29.95 During the Korean War, communist-bloc nations claimed that...

Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another.(Review)
May 1, 1999... Never at War: Why Democracies Will Not Fight One Another By Spencer Weart Yale University Press, 1998 424 pages; $35.00 A number of authors have argued that the proliferation of democratic governments in the 1980s and 1990s--whether in...

Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992.(Review)
May 1, 1999... Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992 By William M. LeoGrande University of North Carolina, 1998 773 pages; $45.00 At a massive 590 pages of text, this book will not find its way onto many people's...

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda.(Review)
May 1, 1999... We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda By Philip Gourevitch Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998 353 pages; $25.00 In 1994, the tiny central African republic of Rwanda endured a...

Chinese Nuclear Forces, 1999.
May 1, 1999... China maintains an arsenal of about 400 warheads: some 250 "strategic" weapons in a triad of long-range land-based missiles, bombers, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles; and some 150 "tactical" weapons--presumably lower-yield bombs for...

End of an era.(nuclear bombers being used for conventional warfare)(Brief Article)
May 1, 1999... During "Allied Force," NATO'S bombing operation in Yugoslavia, the B-2 bomber, built to penetrate Soviet defenses and deliver many megatons of nuclear explosives, drew first blood in conventional combat. The B-2 is the last U.S. weapon that...