Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from November 2001

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from November 2001

Humor amid the rubble. (Editor's Note).(media priorities after September 11, 2001, terrorism)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... IT SHOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN A TRAGEDY TO DISLODGE THE ceaseless silliness of cable commentators as they prated on about the missing young intern Chandra Levy and the nature of her relationship with California Democrat Gary Condit. For weeks, CNN...

The struggle continues. (Letters).
November 1, 2001... I AGREE WITH ARJUN MAKHIJANI ("THE Burden of Proof," July/August Bulletin) that recent legislation providing health care and compensation for workers suffering from radiation-related illness as a consequence of their employment in the nuclear...

New bomb pits? You betcha. (Letters).
November 1, 2001... IN HIS ARTICLE "THE NEW-NUKE Chorus Tunes Up" (July/August Bulletin), Stephen Schwartz cites a Nuclear Watch of New Mexico paper on weapons modifications and possible new designs (available at www. nukewatch.org), as well as a personal...

Nuclear-Free Future Awards. (Letters).
November 1, 2001... THE FOURTH ANNUAL NUCLEAR-FREE Future Awards ceremony was held this September in Carnsore Point, Ireland, as part of a nine-day festival celebrating a nuclear-free Ireland. The awards program was started in 1998 by German author and...

Singing off the right sheet. (Updates).(nuclear weapons workers and diseases)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... In the July/August 2001 Bulletin, union lobbyist Richard Miller described new Labor Secretary Elaine Chao's failed attempt to pass along responsibility for a compensation program approved last year for sick nuclear weapons workers to another...

Stop that face! (Bulletins).(face-recognition technology and fighting terrorism)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... VIDEO CAMERAS AND face-recognition technology were used during the January 2001 Super Bowl (now known as the "Snooper Bowl") to search the crowd for known criminals and/or terrorists. But no miscreants were fingered and no evildoers taken into...

You'd be toast. (Bulletins).(nuclear weapons)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... As part of its effort to highlight the danger of keeping nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert, on September 6 the Back from the Brink campaign delivered a toaster like this one (the missiles pop up) to every member of Congress. The action was...

Best buddies. (Bulletins).(radioactive scrap recycling contracts)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... IN JULY, PUBLIC CITIZEN asked the Energy Department a simple question: Why had the department hired Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to perform a supposedly independent environmental analysis of the effects of recycling...

Don't make this mistake. (Bulletins).(writing wills)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... After Canadian Peter Dant died in June at the age of 90, it was revealed that his will was rife with errors. It seems that Dant, who was "deeply disappointed with the decline in written and spoken English," had decided to make the correction of...

There's something in the air ... (Bulletins).(stink bombs)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... The Pentagon is looking into a new kind of weapon, and it's going to be a real stinker. "Malodorant grenades"--otherwise known as stink bombs--may be the future of riot control. A super stinker could be used to get people out of an area and...

Sticky fingers, sweaty palms.(fingerprints and identification by personal sweat)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... There's a tiresome old saying: "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Well, apparently when the only tool you have is a giant synchrotron, everything looks as if it should be analyzed in one. Thus a team at Lawrence...

Ach du lieber ...(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... For two years, reports Agence France Presse (August 22), people living in some 300 homes in southwest Germany--"from Lake Constance to Heidelberg"--have been plagued by a mysterious nocturnal buzzing noise. They say the buzzing causes a "racing...

Mine's bigger than yours.(supercomputer)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory unveiled its new computer--the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative White, or "ASCI White"--in mid-August, calling it the world's most powerful supercomputer. Gen. John Gordon, the head of the Energy...

Oops.(radioactive waste)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... "All those [involved] feel bad about the mistake," said George Jackson, a Fluor Hanford vice president in charge of disposing of certain radioactive wastes at the Hanford, Washington, weapons facility, explaining that an "honest mistake" led...

Duck and cover.(missile defense ramifications)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Last month we learned that Americans have warned Canadians that a successful U.S. national missile defense might cause enemy missile debris to rain down on their territory. We also learned that if the "test site" the administration is eager to...

There you go again.(missile defenses)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... In a July 24 appearance on ABC's Nightline, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz responded to Ted Koppel's questions about whether missile defenses would work by giving an example: "The Navy Theater Wide System," he said, "is something that...

The ultimate symbol of victory. (Bulletins).(monuments to bombs)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... The plutonium used in the Nagasaki bomb was produced at the Hanford Reservation in Washington State, and the name of nearby Richland High School's sports team, the "Bombers," reflects the town's long association with Hanford. The team's logo is...

The early anti-Taliban team. (Afghanistan).
November 1, 2001... AS ITS LAST TANK RATTLED HOME IN FEBRUARY 1989, heading northward on the bridge over the Amu Darya River, the Soviet Union must have thought its Afghanistan nightmare was finally over. The war had dealt a mortal blow to the Soviets. Tens of...

Quiet cooperation. (Israel).
November 1, 2001... IN MAY, GIDEON FRANK, ISRAEL'S nuclear czar, came to Washington to meet Spencer Abraham, the new secretary of Energy. Frank's mission was to preserve an important achievement, a cooperative agreement he reached last year with former Energy...

Costing out the new agenda. (Terrorism).
November 1, 2001... THE SEPTEMBER 11 TERRORIST ATTACKS on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have changed everything. Thousands of families have been devastated. The nation as a whole has been drastically altered. And the change is nowhere more apparent than...

Neither trust nor verify, says U.S. (Bioweapons Treaty).
November 1, 2001... ON AUGUST 3, PETER GOOSEN, THE HEAD of South Africa's delegation to the Geneva talks on a bioweapons treaty verification protocol, let out a sigh. "Mr. Chairman," he said, "I have sat in this room listening to this debate today and I must admit...

On the wrong side of the line? (Reports).(bioweapons)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... A series of articles appearing in the September 4 New York Times revealed some of the reasons why the United States may have wanted to reject the bioweapons treaty's proposed verification protocol. The U.S. government admitted that it had...

Missile defense: since the attacks on September 11, the Bush administration has seemed as determined as ever to move ahead with a national missile defense system, although it would have done nothing to prevent the attacks. Another questions is how the rest of the world views U.S. plans. Here, a sampling of perspective from around the world. (Opinion)(Cover Story).
November 1, 2001... MISSILE DEFENSE For Russia, little loss, little gain By Pavel Podvig THE TERRORIST ATTACKS ON THE UNITED States will certainly lead to a reevaluation of the nature of threats faced by countries in the modern world as well as...

Consider yourself warned.(imagining the worst in regards to future wars)
November 1, 2001... DYSTOPIAS, OR ANTI-UTOPIAN VISIONS OF THE FUTURE, HIT MAINSTREAM FICtion in 1895, when H. G. Wells published The Time Machine. Post-nuclear-holocausts, from the thoughtful film On the Beach in 1959 to the grim made-for-TV movie The Day After in...

After September 11.(terrorist attack on World Trade Center and Pentagon)(Cover Story)
November 1, 2001... ON THE MORNING OF September 11, 2001, Mohamed Atta, age 33--an Egyptian who carried a passport from the United Arab Emirates, studied at the Technical University in Hamburg, Germany, and had taken flying instruction at Huffman Aviation in...

This is not a test.(emergency response to September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks)
November 1, 2001... In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. government implemented emergency plans that until then had been envisioned for use only in the event of an all-out nuclear war. The most...

Rocky Flats: closing in on closure.(closing of nuclear weapons plant)(Statistical Data Included)
November 1, 2001... JOHN "J.R." MARSCHALL WAS standing at the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant in what would have been dead man's land just a few weeks earlier. Fifty yards away from this flat, barren spot sits one of the massive, windowless concrete...

Here, there, everywhere: how did the British government get so deeply involved in the U.S. weapons complex cleanup?(Statistical Data Included)
November 1, 2001... WHEN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION announced its much-anticipated new energy policy in May, the oil, gas, and coal companies weren't the only ones cheering. From across the Atlantic, the head of a British government-owned enterprise added his...

Tall tales and deceptive discourses.(weapons treaties)
November 1, 2001... WEAPONS SYSTEMS, TREATIES, and strategies come to seem right (or wrong) in the context of the stories we tell ourselves about them. Social scientists and historians call these stories discourses. Sometimes new discourses (like our discourse on...

Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan.(Review)
November 1, 2001... Reaping the Whirlwind: The Taliban Movement in Afghanistan By Michael Griffin Pluto Press, 2001 312 pages; $27.50 IN APRIL, A NONDESCRIPT OUTDOOR swimming pool was reopened after several years of neglect. Pool openings normally don't...

Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century.(Review)
November 1, 2001... Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the 21st Century By Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight Public Affairs, 2001 270 pages; $24.00 BEFORE THE SEPTEMBER 11 TERROR ATTACKS in Washington and New York,...

Britain and the H-Bomb.(Review)
November 1, 2001... Britain and the H-Bomb By Lorna Arnold (with Katherine Pyne) Palgrave, 2001 273 pages; $69.95 IN DETAILING THE ROLE OF NUCLEAR weapons in shaping the Cold War, historians have extensively documented the political and technical histories of...

British nuclear forces, 2001.(Statistical Data Included)
November 1, 2001... IN JULY 1998, BRITAIN'S LABOUR GOVERNMENT announced several changes to its nuclear force resulting from its Strategic Defence Review: * Only one British submarine will patrol at any given time, and that boat will carry a reduced load of 48...

Some things never change.(September 11, 2001, terrorist attack)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... THE DEATH OF MORE THAN 6,000 CIVILIANS, AS IN the terrorist attacks on September 11, naturally evokes thoughts of nuclear weapons--it had seemed as if only they, with their enormous power, could cause death and destruction on such a scale. And,...