Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from September 1995

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from September 1995

Help Cuba with nuclear power.(Column)
September 1, 1995... Talk about overreaction! When a June 6, 1995, article in the Wall Street Journal merely suggested the possibility that construction of the Juragua nuclear power plant in Cuba might resume, the usual cast of characters in Miami and the U.S....

Attali bombshell a real dud. (Jacques Attali author of a UN report on nuclear smuggling from Russian supplies)
September 1, 1995... In mid-April, Jacques Attali announced that the equivalent of 30 kilograms of weapon-grade fissile material--"enough to fabricate at least two or three bombs"--had been stolen from the inventories of the former Soviet Union since 1993. But the...

Gold into straw. (pitiful state of Russian banking industry and the country's leadership struggle)(Column)
September 1, 1995... There had been no jokes in Moscow for a long time. Brezhnev--the subject, and simultaneously, the object of Russian folk irony--had long ago bought the farm. And Mr. Yeltsin, unfortunately, is so faceless that it is almost impossible to joke...

Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. (comprehensive test ban treaty - CTBT - undermined)
September 1, 1995... On May 15, less than three days after 175 states agreed to make the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) permanent, China exploded a nuclear weapon at its test site at Lop Nor. A month later, Jacques Chirac, the newly...

Paradise lost.(nuclear testing in the Pacific Ocean area to resume)
September 1, 1995... When France announced that it would conduct a series of eight underground nuclear tests at Moruroa Atoll in the South Pacific, it thumbed its nose at South Pacific nations who have been worried about French tests for nearly 30 years. In...

Letter from a Wisconsin jail. (a former editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists practices civil disobedience for the nuclear disarmament movement)
September 1, 1995... Among the hundreds of letters I have answered over the years while serving time in jails and prisons in Wisconsin, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, a recent letter asked a question often put to me in different ways: "What is your...

Right says arms control wrong: right-wing Republicans would erase 10 years of treaty-making.
September 1, 1995... Congressional Republicans are in the midst of an assault on arms control unlike anything since the earliest days of the Reagan presidency. Not content with obliterating the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), they are moving to sabotage...

Fast finish to plutonium peril: why not melt-and-mix weapon plutonium with the Energy Department's abundant supply of reactor waste?
September 1, 1995... As has been often noted in the Bulletin, it is important to remember that it isn't especially difficult to make a relatively simple but highly destructive fission weapon. The hard part is producing the fissile material at the core of the weapon....

NIF-ty exercise machine: is NIF a fancy cross-trainer for weapon scientists, or a covert way to design new weapons. (National Ignition Facility for laser projects at Lawrence Livermore lab)
September 1, 1995... The Nova laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is the most powerful laser in the world. But this year the Energy Department requested more than $60 million in planning and engineering money for a National Ignition Facility (NIF) to be...

End run around the NPT. (nonproliferation treaty)(reply to Hugh Gusterson's article "NIF-ty exercise machine" same issue)
September 1, 1995... We reject Hugh Gusterson's suggestion that activists who have challenged the proposed National Ignition Facility (NIF) and other new laboratory testing programs somehow pose a threat to a comprehensive test ban treaty and the nonproliferation...

So where's the peace dividend? (post-Cold War)(includes a related article with comparative statistics on US military spending and waste, and that of other countries)
September 1, 1995... That the United States should be strongly and competently defended is a widely accepted truism across the political spectrum, perhaps even including what's left of the Left. It has always been so. More than 200 years ago, Alexander Hamilton noted...

More security for less money. (how to cut military spending)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... The U.S. military establishment is shrinking. In 1990, at the peak of the Reagan-era buildup, the army had 18 active-duty divisions; the marines had three active-duty divisions; the navy had 16 carriers; and the air force had 24 active-duty...

Underfunding: or overprogramming? (an analysis by the Military Spending Working Group)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... The Military Spending Working Group blames the Bottom-Up Review (BUR) for pointing the nation down the wrong path. The BUR's fight-and-win-two-wars strategy justifies the buying of weapons and the sustaining of force levels that far exceed actual...

The competition has bowed out. (U.S. military needs have drastically decreased)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... Many of those who support military budget increases or oppose further decreases argue that the military has been decimated by budget cuts already, and that program and force structure have been ravaged. In short, they say the United States has...

Readiness and other strawmen. (military spending is unrealistically over budgeted)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... Those opposed to lower military spending say that budgets are already too small and additional cuts will make the gap between what Defense gets and what it needs even bigger, jeopardizing troop readiness and the maintenance of existing military...

Treat the troops right and save money.(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... Critics of lower military spending argue that budget cuts have excessively eroded the well-being of soldiers, and they will increasingly sap military effectiveness. That is, budget cuts are destroying morale in the ranks. It is not true that...

Prosperity for whom? (defense contractors)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... In the post--Cold War era, the defense budget has become, at least in part, a kind of jobs program. "Defense cuts hurt the economy" is a common refrain in Congress. Yes, workers and communities that serve the defense industry have borne heavy...

The egregious eight: a few programs to keep an eye on. (what next after the Stealth bomber)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... In 1989, the B-2 "Stealth" bomber had just emerged from behind the curtain of the "black budget." Its timing could not have been worse. Designed in secret, the B-2 was hyped as the ultimate penetrating bomber that could deliver nuclear weapons...

Chasing the phantom fleet. (SSN-21 Seawolf submarine project)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... The primary mission of an attack submarine, as its name implies, is to seek out and destroy nuclear missile-carrying enemy submarines. The SSN-21 Seawolf was originally conceived to combat new high-tech Soviet nuclear submarines, most of which...

THe C-17: a $340 million ugly duckling. (military transport aircraft)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... In 1981, the Defense Department decided to double its long-range airlift capability. In case of war with the Warsaw Pact in Europe, Pentagon planners wanted to be able to deploy six army divisions in 10 days. To this end, they ordered the C-17...

Cut foreign arms sales. (private sales plus government give-aways)(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... During the 1980s, the United States supplied weapons worth $200 million to the dictatorship in Somalia. But cleaning up the mess when that government fell cost the United States $2 billion and 24 American lives--not to mention those of other U.N....

THe dream of missile defense.(So Where's the Peace Dividend?)
September 1, 1995... The most expensive military project in history was Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), a.k.a. Star Wars, begun in 1983. Promising womb-like safety and security for all America, the president offered a bottomless checkbook to...

Information please. (the names of 18 organizations active in the Military Spending Working Group are given along with phone numbers and addresses)(Directory)
September 1, 1995... Call it a "CCC" program for the 1990s and beyond. The Military Spending Working Group was organized to Coordinate the sometimes disparate and often duplicative activities of peace and security organizations, Capitalize on their many and diverse...

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.
September 1, 1995... With the end of the Cold War, the curtain of secrecy surrounding much of the post-1945 history of U.S. military, intelligence, and diplomatic activities is slowly lifting. In late May, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Deutch declassified...

Indo-Pak Nuclear Standoff: The Role of the United States.
September 1, 1995... An American reviewer of this volume by the recently retired Indian Ministry of Defence official faces a dilemma: Praising the book may condemn it in the minds of Indian readers. U.S. nonproliferation policy has so antagonized Indian elites that...

Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America's Search for a New Foreign Policy.
September 1, 1995... The latest book by political scientist Michael Klare, Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, describes the baneful effects of a lack of imagination--and of imaginations run amok. For more than 40 years, writes Klare, the Cold War governed the shape...

The Global Spread of Arms: Political Economy of International Security.
September 1, 1995... Despite the end of the Cold War and the virtual disappearance of the U.S.-Soviet rivalry that sparked so many regional conflicts and proxy wars over nearly 50 years, the international trade in weaponry remains largely unchecked. Purchases have...

Estimated (C.I.S) stockpile, September 1995. (nuclear weapons)
September 1, 1995... Estimating the size and composition of the former Soviet nuclear stockpile remains difficult, even with improved--though at times conflicting and ambiguous--information from the Russian government. The table on page 63 shows our estimate of the...

Tales from nuclear storyland: a reader's guide to the nuclear news.(anecdotes released through various newspapers)
September 1, 1995... "Special to the Bulletin--Undercover agents of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner's Office hinted today that traces of red mercury were found in bloodstains recovered from O.J. Simpson's shaving kit. "In a press conference on the steps of...