Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from November 2002

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from November 2002

With dominion over all. (Editor's Note).(US superpower)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... AFTER THE BERLIN WALL AND THE SOVIET UNION COLlapsed, Colin Powell--then chairman of the Joint Chiefs--complained that the United States had scarcely any enemies left: "I'm running out of demons," he said. "I'm down to Kim Il Sung and Castro."...

Lacking core values. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2002... IN 1942, I WORKED ON THE MANHATtan Project, serving on the Enrico Fermi/Walter Zinn team as custodian of special materials. In one particular case (which I recall in my 1999 memoir Pursuit of Plutonium), I detected and reported a gap in the...

Make that 11. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2002... YOUR SUMMARY OF 10 OF THE INTERnational treaties to which the United States does not subscribe ("Going It Alone," July/August 2002) is shocking enough. Unfortunately, there are more. Another important treaty was described by Ellen Goodman in...

More money needed. (Letters).
November 1, 2002... MICHAEL S. REIDY, IN HIS REVIEW OF Science, Money, and Politics by Daniel S. Greenberg, (July/August 2002 Bulletin), quotes from an unnamed senior research physicist at Yale who wrote in the New York Times that Congress "has cut the budget for...

More head trauma. (Update).(Davis-Basse nuclear power plant )(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... The hole discovered earlier this year in the vessel head--the top of the container that houses the reactor core--at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant was bad, but it could have been much worse. Leaking coolant water had caused an...

Hanging by a thread. (Bulletins).(space elevators)
November 1, 2002... AT THE BEGINING OF Roald Dahl's book Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Charlie takes an elevator ride through the roof of his recently inherited Wonka chocolate factory and into deep space. Brad Edwards's space elevator plans aren't nearly...

Your lying eyes. (Bulletins).(automated facial recognition systems)
November 1, 2002... DEVELOPERS OF AUTOmated facial recognition systems haven't overcome the technology's main flaws: No one can be recognized unless his face is in a digitized database, and the system is easily duped and overwhelmed. Donning a pair of sunglasses,...

Meltdown. (Bulletins).(Greenpeace protestor Jim Riccio)
November 1, 2002... In September, the "Nuclear Renaissance Conference" in Washington, D.C. was disrupted by a lone protester, Jim Riccio of Greenpeace, who brought with him a 150-pound ice sculpture of a nuclear power plant--which quietly did what ice does. As...

The envelope, please. (Bulletins).
November 1, 2002... HERE'S A NEW LINE TO try on the Internal Revenue Service the next time you get a late notice: I'm afraid of my mail. According to a July report issued by the U.S. Office of Compliance, "handling irradiated mail for substantial periods of time...

"Hey you"?(Faslane submarine base, Scotland)
November 1, 2002... Anti-nuclear protesters frequently appear outside Britain's Trident submarine base at Faslane, Scotland. On occasion, lax security has allowed them to sneak onto the base as well. In August, however, two residents of Edinburgh, members of a...

Retroactively secret.(President's Foreign Advisory Intelligence Board)
November 1, 2002... The President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, or PFIAB, is a group of presidential advisers, some with highly ideologically driven foreign policy objectives. Steven Aftergood's Secrecy News reported in mid-August that the board has...

Who exactly was the enemy?(British government's use of radioactive gases on its citizens, 1950s-1970s)
November 1, 2002... The Guardian and BBC Radio 4 revealed in September that as part of a series of experiments from the 1950s to the 1970s, the British government released radioactive gases across miles of English towns and villages in a series of secret trials...

Did you know?(US Army's School of Americas)
November 1, 2002... A lot of people claim that the U.S. Army's School of Americas--a.k.a. the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation--at Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Central and South American military men in the use of torture and extortion. Or at...

Running faster, not even staying in place.(Colombia cocaine eradictation)
November 1, 2002... The U.S. coca eradication program in Colombia has cost American taxpayers nearly $2 billion since 1999. Meanwhile, the amount of coca Colombia produces has increased--by 25 percent from 2000 to 2001 alone. According to U.S. estimates, during...

Lessons in copyright.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology's "soldier of the future")
November 1, 2002... When a research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied for a grant to outfit the "soldier of the future," they thought it might be nice to add an illustration (Boston Globe, August 28). After MIT won a $50 million award to...

Defense v. the environment, continued.
November 1, 2002... Apparently letting up for the moment on its desire to flout environmental rules regarding air and water safety, the Defense Department is now concentrating on exemption from the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the...

Ahead of the curve.(Berkeley, California)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... Wired News (September 16) reports that the city of Berkeley, California--a long-time "nuclear weapons-free zone"--has declared that it is now a "space-based weapons-free zone" as well. A city council resolution has declared the air space as far...

Be prepared ... for what, exactly? (Bulletins).
November 1, 2002... BEING A BOY SCOUT IS ALL about learning practical skills--how to build a camp fire in the rain, how to tie a sheepshank knot, how to use a compass... how nuclear fission works? That's right--one of the 120 merit badges that scouts can earn...

Awards. (Bulletins).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2002... THE BULLETIN WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE NUCLEAR-Free Future Foundation, which in October presented the magazine with an award in special recognition of its long-time service as "the world's most reliable source of news and information about global...

A tale of two cities. (Albania).
November 1, 2002... IF YOU HAVEN'T VISITED Albania in a few years, the traffic will surprise you. Those deserted roads and city squares have followed the communists into oblivion, along with the old police state's rules forbidding private automobile ownership,...

Hot seats. (The Elections).
November 1, 2002... THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS will determine which party controls the Senate and House of Representatives. There is a lot at stake; the Democratic-controlled Senate has been one of the few checks on President George W. Bush's actions. The...

Beryllium: giving Kazakhstan the business: U.S. plans to partner with the former Soviet republic are already making some people sick. (Opinions).
November 1, 2002... ON JULY 1, ENERGY SECRETARY SPENCER Abraham announced that the Energy Department would team up with the Republic of Kazakhstan and two private American companies--Brush Wellman and RWE NUKEM--to produce beryllium-copper alloys for commercial...

The Moscow Treaty: making matters worse: when it comes to reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons, less is not more. Less is less. Less verification, less cooperative inspection, less warhead and launcher destruction, and less accountability mean less security. (Opinions).
November 1, 2002... THE SO-CALLED Moscow TREATY, WHICH will allegedly reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals, does not even rise to the level of what the legal profession would call a "legally cognizable" obligation--that is, an agreement with binding,...

Searching for safe haven: of the planet's more than 6 billion people, some 240 million are on the move, fleeing war, persecution, poverty, environmental degradation, or just seeking a better life. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... YOU'LL FIND THEIR NAMES ON PAGE TWO of every issue of the Bulletin: Albert Einstein, Hans Bethe, Rudolf Peierls, Leo Szilard, Victor Weisskopf, and James Franck. Besides having served on the Bulletin's board of sponsors, these individuals share...

Neglect is never benign: a worldwide survey of refugees shows that when crises emerge, the international community takes too little action, too late. Things have only gotten worse since last September. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEptember 11, 2001, and the subsequent "war on terrorism" launched by the United States and its allies have had a spillover effect on the lives of refugees worldwide. Afghan refugees, internally displaced persons,...

Nowhere to run, no place to hide: until recently the internally displaced were the exclusive responsibility of their own governments. They could be deported, starved to death, or exterminated while the international community stood by. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... WHEN THE BOMBS STARTED FALLING IN Afghanistan in October 2001, a relatively small number of Afghans could get out--no more than 200,000. Pakistan and Iran sealed their borders and the Taliban blocked mass movements. Only those with the physical...

Blaming the victim: refugees and global security: the bulk of the world's refugees remain in the developing world. And the industrialized states, more worried after September 11, are taking new steps to keep them away. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... THE ISSUES OF HUMAN SECURITY AND THE SECURITY of states are intimately linked. For example, a greater respect for human rights, more equitable development, and the spread of democracy in war-torn places like Afghanistan, Kosovo, and the...

60 years ago ... (The Center Spread).(first nuclear chain reactor, December 2, 1942)
November 1, 2002... Boiling the egg Sixty years ago, shortly before 4 p.m. on December 2,1942, a bitterly cold day in Chicago, the first nuclear chain reactor went "critical" and the Atomic Age was born. The chain reaction experiment was in a doubles...

Unequal protection: when women are persecuted, it's often described as a cultural norm rather than a reason to grant asylum. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... ON DECEMBER 17, 1994, FAUZIYA KASsindja arrived at Newark International Airport and immediately requested asylum. The 17-year-old Togo native had fled her country to escape an arranged marriage for which she would have been forced to undergo...

Is this peace? The civil war ended six years ago. Although Guatemala's uprooted are trying to rebuild their lives, extreme poverty, violence, distrust, and fear remain. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... DURING GUATEMALA'S 36-YEAR CIVIL war, more than a million people were driven from their homes. This spring, I visited the country to see how, six years after the signing of "a firm and lasting peace" between the government and the guerrillas,...

A government of their own: from the beginning in 1974, Greek Cypriots who fled the Turkish invasion of the north have had the full aid and support of the government of Cyprus. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS, A GREEK CYPRIOT born and raised in "the second-largest Cypriot city--the London borough of Haringey, where Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities get along fine"--recounted the story of her first visit to Cyprus in the March...

Aid under fire: relief efforts in Palestinian refugee camps are not for the faint of heart. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... PROVIDING HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO Palestinian refugees in the West Bank and Gaza Strip can be a hazardous business, for both aid workers and recipients. On May 20, I joined a large convoy of U.S. and European Christian relief organizations...

Chaos in the camps: the flood of refugees from Rwanda included both innocent victims and ruthless killers. Although U.N. supported and supplied, from the beginning the camps in Zaire were ruled by thugs. (The Uprooted).
November 1, 2002... BEFORE 1990, VERY FEW INDIVIDUALS OUTside Africa were familiar with Rwanda, let alone had any expertise on the country. Those familiar with Rwanda knew only that it was the place where you could find mountain gorillas or that it was where Hutus...

Unpleasant surprises await: new forms of international cooperation will be needed to address the myriad problems that arise when vast numbers of humans migrate.
November 1, 2002... PEOPLE MOVE. THIS SELF-EVIDENT ASSERtion cannot, of course, capture the almost limitless nuances associated with large numbers of individuals crossing national borders. When people are forced to move across borders for political reasons, they...

Blame Truman.(Book Review)
November 1, 2002... Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953 By Arnold A. Offner Stanford University, 2002 626 pages; $37.95 IN 279 B.C., KING PYRRHUS OF Greece defeated the Romans in the Battle of Asculum. The victory was so costly,...

Global nuclear stockpiles, 1945-2002. (NRDC Nuclear Notebook).
November 1, 2002... THE FIVE MAJOR NUCLEAR POWERS CURRENTLY HAVE MORE than 20,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenals, as shown in the table at right. But this does not include a number of intact Russian nuclear warheads of indeterminate status--possibly as many as...