Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from May 2003

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from May 2003

Ah, hubris. (Editor's Note).(Brief Article)(Editorial)
May 1, 2003... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S DOMESTIC POLICY IS SIMplicity itself: more money for the rich. But could the administration's foreign policy be described as plainly? One might say it is the determination to do just about anything it likes,...

An unlikely theory. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... THE MARCH/APRIL NRDC NUCLEAR Notebook, "North Korea's Nuclear Program, 2003," does not discuss the reasons North Korea might have for developing an enriched uranium bomb if it already has a plutonium bomb. The CIA's latest assessment, as your...

Not us. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... LINCOLN HAD CONFIDENCE IN THE people's wisdom. We can only trust that the world will duly note and long remember that it was not the American people who promoted the executive who diverted the last, best hope of Earth to international...

Don't censor science. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... THE RECENT NEWS FROM DENVER--that more than 20 scientific journals, including Nature and Science, have agreed to censor and/or modify information that the editors believe might compromise the security of the United States--is appalling. ...

Too much tritium. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... CHARLES FERGUSON, IN HIS REVIEW OF my book, Tritium on Ice (March/ April 2003), captured well my two main arguments against the U.S. plan to produce tritium for nuclear weapons in commercial nuclear power plants--that it was contrary to U.S....

Force projection from space. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... JAMES MOLTZ'S "REINING IN THE Space Cowboys" (January/February 2003) was particularly interesting not for what it covered, but for what it failed to mention. While the systems Moltz discusses are a threat to the future use of space, the...

School of hard knocks. (Update).(Fort Benning, Georgia)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Based at Fort Benning, Georgia, the U.S. Army's School of the Americas--recently renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation--is a controversial training school for Latin American soldiers, and, many add, dictators and...

Easy in, easy out. (Bulletins).(Los Alamos National Laboratory security)
May 1, 2003... THE GUARDS WON'T shoot you. But you may die laughing when you hear the lame excuses for why it's so easy to wander around Los Alamos National Laboratory. After I took a little trip in late February to Los Alamos National Laboratory, and...

How many Nobel laureates does it take to change the world? (Bulletins).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... EARLIER THIS YEAR, 45 NOBEL laureates signed a declaration opposing a unilateral, preventive war on Iraq. (Among the signatories were five members of the Bulletin's board of sponsors.) The Nobelists' gesture garnered some media attention but...

Here's lookin' at you, kid. (Bulletins).
May 1, 2003... MANY AMERICANS breathed a sigh of relief when the Senate blocked funds for the "Total Information Awareness" (TIA) project in January. The ban on spending, introduced by Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, was added to defense legislation to prevent the...

Under the hood. (Bulletins).
May 1, 2003... WHETHER THE UNITED States can remain confident in its nuclear weapons without testing them is a question that comes up ever more frequently. The answer will largely determine the fate of the nuclear testing moratorium. In his 1999...

Need Caller I.D.?(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... In its first week of operation, the new emergency phone in North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven's office rang three times. One call was a wrong number; the other two were from telemarketers (Wired.com, March 10).

Be prepared, be very prepared.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... The Department of Homeland Security finally got its Web site (ready.gov) up in late February. There, the department invited the public to download a brochure titled "Preparing Makes Sense. Get Ready Now." The not-so-ready brochure, however, had...

Nuclear plant security, option 1.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Greenpeace occasionally demonstrates at Britain's nuclear plants to make a point about the plants' vulnerability to terrorism, but the protesters usually leave after a few hours. In February, a protest at the Tihange nuclear power plant in...

Nuclear plant security, option 2.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... In January, the Bulletin reported that in October, Greenpeace had invaded Britain's Sizewell B plant, demonstrating its lack of security. Plant managers dismissed the event, and insisted that despite the activists' easy entry (they tossed...

FOIA information ...(Fredom of Information Act)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... There've been a lot of complaints lately about various government departments' reluctance to fill Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Defense Department, though, has produced a training video that instructs employees on how to...

Making the "war on terror" work for you.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Duke Energy is gearing up for a possible licensing battle over its plan to build a new factory in South Carolina to produce mixed oxide or "MOX" fuel (part uranium, part weapon plutonium). Luckily for Duke, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission...

A rose is not a rose is not a rose?(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Food-processing companies have complained about having to label whether their ground beef or other purportedly raw or fresh item has been zapped--irradiated, that is. For several years they've been lobbying to call the process "cold...

Try, try again.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... As usual, the military is seeking to be exempted from environmental laws. But this year, the Pentagon is taking a different tack, proposing what it says is a "common sense" rule that will strike a balance between environmental protection and...

Outta this world.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... Cong. Dan Foley, a New Mexico Republican, has introduced legislation that would designate every second Thursday in February "Extraterrestrial Culture Day" (BBC, March 11). Foley said he introduced the bill "in recognition of the many...

Furor over fuel. (Iran).
May 1, 2003... A MID SUSPICIONS THAT IT WAS developing secret nuclear weapons facilities, Iran revealed earlier this year that its nuclear capabilities were more advanced than thought--that it was nearly ready to start up a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment...

Stung by stingers. (Terrorism).
May 1, 2003... IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A ROUTINE departure from Moi International Airport in Mombasa, Kenya. But on November 28, 2002, an Israeli airliner came close to disaster. As the aircraft took off, passengers and crew heard a boom and saw two white vapor...

Overweight and oh-so-late. (Airborne Laser).
May 1, 2003... THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION wants the Airborne Laser (ABL) system to be part of its layered national missile defense system. Originally planned for use as a theater missile defense system, it is hoped that the ABL will be able to identify and...

Congress goes AWOL. (War In Iraq).
May 1, 2003... ON MARCH 17, PRESIDENT George W. Bush announced to the nation that the United States was going to war against Iraq. The next day's headline should have read "Congress Declares War on Iraq"--except that Congress did not declare war, despite its...

When speed matters: the United Nations needs its own rapid deployment force, dedicated to serving not one, but all, nations. (Opinions).
May 1, 2003... THE U.N. DOESN'T HAVE AN ARMY," SAID U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000. "We borrow from our governments, so we can put on the ground [only] the troops the governments offer." In Ivory Coast, tensions could escalate to a genocidal level...

A necessary war? Not according to U.N. monitors--or to U.S. intelligence, which has watched the situation even more carefully. (Cover Story).(Cover Story)
May 1, 2003... FOR MONTHS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION treated the world to a series of lurid claims about the military threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. By far the most expansive description of the threat was made by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his...

You're on your own--again: civil defense? It's the same old story. Citizens will have to pay for their own protection against possible attack.
May 1, 2003... IN THE FALL OF 1961, AT THE HEIGHT OF excitement over U.S. civil defense, some people took survival very seriously. Charles Davis of Austin, Texas, for example, kept four rifles and a .357 Magnum to defend his home fallout shelter, as well as...

Gimme shelter: underground America. (The Center Spread).
May 1, 2003... AFTER WORLD WAR II, THE UNITED STATES AND THE SOVIET UNION spent millions on nuclear weapons. The two superpowers eventually expanded their arsenals to the point where they could theoretically annihilate everyone on the planet--several times...

The NRC's dirty little secret: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is still unwilling to respond to serious security problems.
May 1, 2003... FOR A QUARTER OF A CENTURY, THE NUCLEAR Regulatory Commission (NRC) kept its dirty little secret: Despite the fact that a successful attack on a U.S. nuclear plant could cause thousands of illnesses and deaths in the surrounding area, and...

Nixing nukes in Vietnam: in 1966, a group of scientists studied the possible use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Here's why their report advised against it.
May 1, 2003... AS THE VIETNAM WAR ESCALATED IN SPRING 1966, a high-ranking Pentagon official with access to President Lyndon Johnson was heard by scientist Freeman Dyson to say, "It might be a good idea to toss in a nuke from time to time, just to keep the...

Nuclear targeting: the first 60 years: the idea, in May 1943, that atomic bombs could produce a U.S.-dictated world peace was a fantasy then--as it is now.
May 1, 2003... ON MAY 5, 1943, THE MILItary Policy Committee of the Manhattan Project met for the first time to discuss potential targets for the nascent atomic bomb. While Manhattan Project scientists had been pursuing the bomb with the single-minded desire...

Wake up, babus. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2003... DEVELOPMENTS ON THE KOREAN peninsula hold ominous portents for South Asia. Japan, China, and even South Korea advocate restraint in dealing with the North Korean regime, but none should be shown when it comes to India. It is high time...

Bunker down.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... One Nation Underground: The Fallout Shelter in American Culture By Kenneth D. Rose New York University Press, 2001 313 pages; $28.95 Survival City: Adventures Among the Ruins of Atomic America By Tom Vanderbilt Princeton Architectural...

Beneath the waves.(Book Review)
May 1, 2003... A Time to Die: The Untold Story of the Kursk Tragedy by Robert Moore Crown Publishers, 2003 271 pages; $25.00 ROBERT MOORE'S RIVETING TALE OF the sinking of the Kursk recounts the story of the botched attempt to rescue the 118 men stranded...

U.S. nuclear forces, 2003. (NRDC Nuclear Notebook).
May 1, 2003... KEY EVENTS THAT AFFECTED U.S. NUCLEAR forces over the past year included the signing of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (the "Moscow Treaty") by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin of Russia in May, and the U.S. withdrawal...

Rightful names. (And another thing ...).(Brief Article)
May 1, 2003... THE TERM "WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION" (WMD) was long reserved for nuclear explosives, which release upon detonation a million times more energy per weight than conventional explosives like TNT. More recently, though, and especially now in...