Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from November 2003

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from November 2003

Bad ideas, good articles.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... DAVID KAY'S REPORT ON THE SEARCH FOR WEAPONS OF MASS destruction was due to be delivered "in September." Late in the month, efforts were being made to spin the obvious meaning of the still-pending report, that the administration's stated reason...

Remember the North Gate.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... I WAS ASTONISHED TO READ A MISLEADING report, "Sellafield, Salmon, and the Irish Sea," in the September/ October Bulletin. The author, Andy Oppenheimer, asserts that following the 1957 Windscale fire, the site was renamed Sellafield at a...

Oops.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... IN AN OTHERWISE ILLUMINATING ARTICLE on Britain's consideration of northern Canada as a site for early Cold War weapons tests ("O Lucky Canada," July/August Bulletin), authors John Clearwater and David O'Brien misstate a fact that should be...

A bad mix.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... SITING BIOWEAPON RESEARCH AT THE Energy Department's weapons labs ("Mixing Bugs and Bombs," September/October Bulletin) is yet another disconcerting policy decision in the seemingly endless list by the current administration. Unilateralism,...

Keeping promises.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... IN "THE NPT: CAN THIS TREATY BE Saved?" (September/October Bulletin), Richard Stanley and Michael Ryan Kraig conclude that "stopping the spread of [weapons of mass destruction] and reducing existing stockpiles will only become a reality if the...

New schools for terror.(Update)
November 1, 2003... In the January/February 2001 Bulletin, Jessica Stern reported on Pakistan's radical religious schools, or madrisas. "By educating, clothing, housing, and feeding the poorest of the poor for free, the madrisas fill a desperate need," wrote...

The unrealistic NRC.(Update)
November 1, 2003... In the May/June Bulletin, Daniel Hirsch, David Lochbaum, and Edwin Lyman reported on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) "dirty little secret'--its poor job of overseeing security at the 104 U.S. nuclear power plants. A September...

Rent-a-MiG.(Bulletins)
November 1, 2003... USUALLY, A LAST-minute checklist for vacation includes things like sunscreen, shorts, and a good book. But these days, more and more tourists traveling to Russia are packing combat boots and bomber jackets. Over the past decade, more and...

Flying high.
November 1, 2003... If you really want to see the next solar eclipse, you'd better hope the flight's not sold out--and that your wallet is stuffed with cash. On November 24, a Qantas 747 will fly over the Antarctic to view an eclipse lasting approximately 2...

Speak of the devil.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Even as the September/October Bulletin noted that France had needed to shut down nuclear plants one dry, hot summer when river levels dropped too low to safely handle still-heated water discharged from reactors, it happened again. This year's...

A word to the wise.
November 1, 2003... This summer, the British and U.S. governments were revealed to have relied on obviously forged documents suggesting that Iraqi agents had purchased uranium ore in Niger. In fact, the phony documents were one of the main reasons they argued that...

Our animal friends update.
November 1, 2003... The rabbits near the Dounreay nuclear plant in Scotland have been declared not very radioactively contaminated after all, and safe to eat (BBC News, September 3). Meanwhile, Bechtel, the contractor tearing down the H Reactor at the Hanford...

Nothing is their fault.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... Post-war Iraq has offered the administration an opportunity to parcel out no-bid contracts to its oil-company friends. Even better, in May the Bush administration issued Executive Order 13303, which grants blanket legal immunity to those...

Everything but the thyroid gland.
November 1, 2003... Documents released in August by Britain's National Archives show that in 1955 British scientists planned to test the feasibility of feeding the population radioactive meat--an experiment deemed necessary to plan for disruptions in the food...

Where's it going now?(Brief Article)
November 1, 2003... The amount of money the Bush administration has requested for classified programs is at the highest level since 1988, according to a report prepared by the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But unlike the 1980s--when...

A new wave of energy.(Bulletins)
November 1, 2003... CAPTURING ENERGY FROM the movement of tides is nothing new. Around 1,100 years ago (the early days of tidal power) mechanical energy was generated by damming naturally occurring tidal basins. A rising tide would fill the basin, and when the...

Facing facts, big brother butts out.(Bulletins)
November 1, 2003... IT'S BEEN A BAD FEW months for something called "face-recognition technology." As reported last year, Tampa, Florida began experimenting with Visionics Corp.'s "FaceIt" system in the summer of 2001 (see "Did You Pack Your Own Bags?"...

Edward Teller.(Bulletins)(Obituary)
November 1, 2003... TO WRITE OBJECTIVELY about Edward Teller (1908-2003) is a challenge. His life was long, encompassing events so remote in time that it is almost impossible to imagine how those events shaped him. He was a child during World War I and an...

Not-so-selective sanctions.(Burma)
November 1, 2003... ON AUGUST 28, THE UNITED States imposed crippling economic sanctions against Myanmar (Burma), a country whose human rights record makes Iraq under Saddam seem like a model welfare state. The move, intended to pressure the military junta to...

March, citizens, march.(Civil Defense)
November 1, 2003... HOW BEST TO ENGAGE VOLUNTEERS to help guard against terrorist attack? Or to respond in the aftermath of such an attack? Both the American and British governments have been trying to answer these questions. "Are you ready?" asks the U.S....

Climbing costs, plunging popularity: opinion on the war in Iraq turned against the president in September.(Opinions)
November 1, 2003... IT IS SAID THAT AMERICANS ARE OBSESSED WITH money. That aphorism was amply demonstrated on September 7 when President George W. Bush announced to the nation that he was submitting a request to Congress for $87 billion to pay for post-war...

Negotiating with the North: China, Japan, South Korea, and Russia are all doing their part. Now the United States needs to get down to business.
November 1, 2003... AFTER THREE YEARS OF DOING what he could to repudiate his predecessor's Korea policy, President George W. Bush now finds himself on the same precarious perch where President Bill Clinton stood in 1994 and again in late 1998. North Korea is...

Holding back: how agencies thwart the Freedom of Information Act.
November 1, 2003... ON JULY 4, 1966, PRESIDENT LYNDON Baines Johnson signed into law legislation that would have a significant impact over the ensuing decades. But in contrast to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and a number of other pieces of domestic legislation, it...

Atoms for peace: did the 50-year-old Atoms for Peace program accelerate nuclear weapons proliferation? The jury has been in for some time on this question, and the answer is yes.
November 1, 2003... THE CHARACTER OF THE ATOMS FOR PEACE program and the political decisions that shaped it have been the subject of numerous books and scholarly papers. But many popular narratives of the program begin with Dwight Eisenhower's famous December 1953...

Atoms for what?(The Center Spread)
November 1, 2003... PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER'S ATOMS FOR Peace program was supposed to distract other countries from pursuing nuclear weapons by sharing peaceful nuclear technology with them. It's funny how things have worked out. The best of...

Space cops: coming to a planet near you! No one within the administration or the nuclear weapons establishment is publicly advocating placing low-yield weapons in space--yet. Here's how it might happen.
November 1, 2003... NUCLEAR WEAPONS IN space? Inconceivable--the idea is a bogeyman from the 1950s and 1960s, a nightmare scenario put to rest by the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which prohibits the stationing of nuclear weapons (or any other weapons of mass...

Sweeping the skies: even if small nuclear warheads are employed in U.S. defenses, there will be no immaculate interceptions.
November 1, 2003... FEW YEARS AGO, DURING A DISCUSSION missile defense between one of the authors and a retired air force general, the general ventured into the realm of physics, He had thought a lot about the prevailing wisdom that hit to kill interceptors were...

Neocons: the men behind the curtain: undeterred by their encounters with reality, the strategists who pushed for war in Iraq believed then, and still believe, that their moment has come.
November 1, 2003... READING THE CALLS TO WAR with Iraq, one was reminded of Cato the Elder, who spent his retirement urging the Roman generals to remove the thorn of Carthage permanently from Rome's side so it could never again defy Roman might. The United...

Not your typical snapshots.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Face to Face with the Bomb: Nuclear Reality after the Cold War By Paul Shambroom Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003 144 pages; $34.95 PAUL SHAMBROOM HAS INVESTED A significant portion of his career photographically documenting hidden...

Not your typical road trip.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... The Traveler's Guide to Nuclear Weapons: A Journey Through America's Cold War Battlefields By James M. Maroncelli and Timothy L. Karpin Historical Odysseys Publishers, 2002 499 pages, 182 photo pages, and 199 maps and diagrams, in PDF format on...

Access still denied.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... LAST YEAR, IN "ACCESS DENIED" (March/April 2002), Brian Costner and Paul Rogers chronicled the shutdown of public access to previously unrestricted documents from the Energy Department and other federal agencies. After almost two years, little...

Chinese nuclear forces, 2003.(NRDC Nuclear Notebook)
November 1, 2003... Ballistic missiles. China operates approximately 120 ballistic missiles of four types: the DF-3A, DF-4, DF-5/5A, and DF-21A. Each missile carries a single nuclear warhead. China is gradually retiring its DF-3A medium-range ballistic...