Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from November 2004

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from November 2004

George W. Custer.(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
November 1, 2004... THE BUSH TEAM MUST HAVE SENT OUT A MEMO, TELLING bureaucrats and friends in the press which cliches are acceptable in describing how things are going in Iraq and which platitudes are not. Saying things like "we're turning the corner," or...

Blast from the past.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... I BECAME CURIOUS WHEN I SAW THE July/August issue of the Bulletin at my local library. When I opened it, the familiar names listed as sponsors captured my attention. Then I read James A. Schoke's letter regarding his "encounter with J. Robert...

Vote for nonproliferation.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2004... IT IS UNLIKELY THAT THE DISINTEGRATing situation regarding nuclear weapons proliferation will be addressed in any depth during the presidential campaign. It is not suited to sound bites or bumper stickers. However, with Iran and North Korea...

Where's the (irradiated) beef?(Bulletins)
November 1, 2004... ONE YEAR AGO, THE U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved the use of irradiated beef in the national school lunch program. But critics like the watchdog group Public Citizen cried foul, saying that using irradiated meat in hot lunches...

Bolton explains.(Bulletins)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... The undersecretary for arms control and international security, John R. Bolton (at right), explained the Bush administration's nuclear proliferation policies in a September 7 Financial Times op-ed: Bolton "Rather than rely on...

Pumping up the volume.
November 1, 2004... U.S. ARMY PSYOPS HAVE been known to employ music such as unrelenting heavy metal and banal children's songs as a means of breaking foreign prisoners. But now the latest in non-lethal weapons brings the concept of acoustic punishment to the...

2001, or so.
November 1, 2004... September 11 is a date the American public will never forget. The year 9/11 happened, on the other hand, is proving to be a bit more taxing on the nation's memory. A nearly two-year-old government sign at Ground Zero listed the date of the...

Controversies never die, but ...(Brief Article)
November 1, 2004... In response to yet another Bush administration claim that Iraq had obtained uranium from Niger, in late July Proliferation News (www.carnegieendowment .org/npp) tried using something all too rare in the Iraq-has-WMD story--common sense. The...

When less is more.
November 1, 2004... The good news? The Bush administration says it wants to lower the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. The bad news? Somehow, it turns out having fewer weapons will cost more money. As Linton Brooks, head of the National Nuclear...

In the interest of fairness.
November 1, 2004... Gordon Prather, one-time nuclear weapons physicist, responded to a September report that, like Iranian scientists, five U.S.-trained South Korean scientists had also used lasers to separate minute amounts of plutonium: "If Bush has to treat...

Smaller government.
November 1, 2004... One time-honored way to claim to have reduced government payrolls is through contracting work out. According to Elizabeth Brown, that's exactly what the Defense Department is doing--hiring defense contractors to help write the department's...

Be afraid ...
November 1, 2004... Selling insecurity is a major industry. According to Michael Myser, colleges can apply for federal funding for classes that fall under the homeland security rubric (Wired News, August 18). And so they are offering courses ranging from "Urban...

... Be very afraid.
November 1, 2004... Take the 300-page book, Weapons of Mass Destruction: What You Should Know: A Citizen's Guide to Biological, Chemical, and Nuclear & Radiological Agents and Weapons ($39.99 in paperback), which appears to consist entirely of reprinted material,...

Scientists pick flicks.
November 1, 2004... WHEN IT COMES TO SCIence fiction movies, it turns out the finest minds in modern science are a lot like the rest of us. An August poll conducted by Britain's Guardian newspaper (an unscientific survey, we're guessing) revealed that the...

Gerard Piel, Ralph E. Lapp.
November 1, 2004... The Bulletin recently lost two good friends from the past--Gerard Piel and Ralph E. Lapp. Gerard Piel Bulletin sponsor and former Scientific American publisher Gerard Piel died September S from complications of a stroke he suffered in...

Are Indo-Israeli deals doomed?(Arms Sales)
November 1, 2004... THE INSTALLATION OF THE CONgress Party-led coalition government following India's May election has raised serious questions about the future of India's relations with Israel and the profitable Indo-Israeli arms trade. Despite the usual...

Stockpiles still growing.(Fissile Material)
November 1, 2004... STOCKPILES OF FISSILE MATERIAL--the key ingredient in nuclear weapons--remain huge. At the end of 2003 there were more than 3,700 metric tons of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (uranium enriched to 20 percent or more uranium 235), enough...

The elephant in the closet: forget about domestic issues. Whoever wins the presidency in November will be consumed with one thing--Iraq.(Opinions)
November 1, 2004... REGARDLESS OF THE OUTCOME THIS NOVEMBER, the president sworn in on January 20, 2005 will find himself and his team almost completely consumed by the disaster in Iraq. Both candidates have discussed improving health care, making...

Europe, carry your weight: if Europe would help Russia get rid of more weapons uranium, it would go a long way in reducing the risk of nuclear terrorism.
November 1, 2004... FORTY-THOUSAND PEOPLE DEAD. THREE HUNDRED thousand injured. And more casualties to come as radiation clouds spread. This was the terrifying outcome of "Black Dawn," a terrorism prevention exercise held by European leaders in May 2004. (1) The...

The first one to get away: an expedition to the crash site of the first U.S. "broken arrow" sorts through lingering questions about the fate of an atomic practice flight.
November 1, 2004... TWO-THOUSAND METERS UP MOUNT KOloget in the Kispiox Valley of northern British Columbia, exposed rock and snowfields cover the treeless mountainside; the only evidence of life is the occasional weasel. It is here that the mangled and charred...

Scientists on the stump: fearful of Barry Goldwater's aggressive pro-nuclear views, scientists rallied behind Lyndon Johnson's 1964 campaign.
November 1, 2004... SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE GRUMBLED about George W. Bush's unilateral, bellicose, and preemptive foreign policies and dangerous embrace of nuclear weapons but have not worked actively for his defeat might learn a valuable lesson from the forces behind...

Rethinking doomsday: loose nukes, nanobots, smallpox, oh my! In this age of endless imagining, and some very real risks, which terrorist threats should be taken most seriously?
November 1, 2004... THIS YEAR, BEGINNING WITH THE JANUARY/ February 2004 issue, the Bulletin began a series of articles we dubbed "Rethinking Doomsday." The effort was in direct response to the remarkable proliferation of potential death-and-destruction scenarios...

The new bunker mentality.(The Center Spread)
November 1, 2004... Gone are the days of "duck and cover." Welcome to the twenty-first century mindset--duct tape and cover. The time-tested threat of nuclear weapons still lingers, but new dangers like the potential for terrorists to use chemical or...

Homegrown terror: a bomb is a bomb. A chemical weapon is a chemical weapon. It won't matter to the victims whether their attacker's name is Ahmed or Bill.
November 1, 2004... ON APRIL 10, 2003, A TEAM of federal agents armed with a search warrant entered a storage unit in a small Texas town and were stunned to find a homemade hydrogen cyanide device--a green metal military ammo box containing 800 grams of pure...

Taking biodefense too far: the United States is developing a costly bio-umbrella to protect its citizens against biothreats that do not now--and may never--exist.
November 1, 2004... ON APRIL 28, PRESIDENT George W. Bush unveiled an unclassified version of a secret presidential directive, "Biodefense for the 21st Century," indicating his administration's plans for defending Americans from terrorists intent on spreading...

Countdown to showdown: the United States wanted the Security Council to sanction Iran, but the European Union preferred to make a deal. Now Iran appears to have backed out of their agreement ...(Iran)
November 1, 2004... THE DIRECTOR GENERAL OF THE INTERNAtional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, reported to the board of governors on September 1, 2004, that Iran intended to convert 37 metric tons of yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride, the "feed"...

Details.(Book Review)
November 1, 2004... Atom Bombs: The Top Secret Inside Story of Little Boy and Fat Man By John Coster-Mullen Self-published, 2004 359 pages; $45.00 THE LITERATURE ON THE MANHATTAN Project is vast, but there is always room for interesting new research that...

U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe, 1954-2004.(NRDC: nuclear notebook)
November 1, 2004... MORE THAN A DECADE AFTER THE DISsolution of the Soviet Union, only the United States continues to deploy land-based nuclear weapons outside its borders. Defense and NATO officials have yet to outline the purpose or the targets of the weapons,...

Bush's "dirty war".(And another thing ...)
November 1, 2004... FOLLOWING 9/11, SOME TIME IN LATE 2001 OR POSSIBLY January 2002, George W. Bush signed a still-secret presidential intelligence "finding" creating a covert Special Access Program to track down and either kill or capture high-value Al Qaeda...