Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from September 2002

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from September 2002

Phony stories. (Editor's Note).(nuclear arms rumors printed in reputable periodicals)(Editorial)
September 1, 2002... THERE'S NOTHING QUITE LIKE SO-CALLED NEWS STORIES filled with inside dope from unnamed government officials. These politically motivated tall tales reward those who spin them twice: first, by making an immediate splash; and second, having made...

Sweating it out. (Letters).(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2002... AS A RETIRED NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER I find your magazine essential for understanding what is going on in the world today. I am actually more concerned about the potential for nuclear disaster now than at any other time in my life. It is...

More on Bohr. (Letters).(Niels Bohr)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2002... WILLIAM SWEET'S ARTICLE, "THE BOHR Letters: No More Uncertainty" (May/June 2002 Bulletin), unfortunately contains two mistakes: First, it wasn't Peter Jensen who visited Bohr in Copenhagen during the war, but Johannes Jensen. Peter Jensen...

The Russia-Iran connection. (Update).(nuclear technology trade)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In the January/February 2001 Bulletin, Aluf Benn reported on growing U.S. and Israeli concerns over the transfer of missile and nuclear technology from Russia to Iran, where Moscow has an $800 million contract to build a nuclear reactor. An...

Just a matter of time. (Bulletins).(Yucca Mountain radioactive waste repository)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... IF YOU'RE GOING TO build a repository for radioactive waste, you'd better be prepared to keep people away--for a long time. Now that the Senate has approved Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a permanent repository for the nation's spent fuel, with...

Asleep at the switch? (Bulletins).(possibility of asteroid hitting atmosphere and triggering nuclear warfare warning systems debunked)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In July, U.S. Air Force Gen. Simon Worden told Aerospace Daily that the Earth faced new dangers from asteroids--and this time he wasn't talking about big dinosaur-killer, wipe-out-life-on-Earth-as-we-know-it asteroids. Worden hypothesized...

Into the cold clutches of technology. (Bulletins).(film Naqoyqatsi)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... "IF WE HAVE A HISTORY OF Western civilization, it's a history of the battlefield," says filmmaker Godfrey Reggio, whose most recent film, Naqoyqatsi, will be released October 2. Naqoyqatsi means "war as a way of life" in Hopi, but the...

Tick ... tick ... ticked off. (Bulletins).(American Prospect appropriates Doomsday Clock imagery from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... IMAGINE OUR SURPRISE when we saw the July 1 issue of the American Prospect, with an image remarkably similar to the Bulletin's Doomsday Clock on the cover--except that the hands were at four rather than seven minutes to midnight. Perhaps,...

Midnight Oil on nuclear transport. (Bulletins).(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... THE CITY OF CHICAGO didn't want any banners except those of corporate sponsors at its annual "Taste of Chicago" festival. But Peter Garrett, the lead singer of the Australian band Midnight Oil, promised to display some kind of anti-Yucca...

A few years too late.(court case on sale of two electrical plugs used to arm the bomb dropped on Hiroshima)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In mid-June, the U.S. government went to court to try to block the sale of a couple of collectors' items: the two electrical plugs used to arm the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The plugs had been in the possession of Morris Jeppson, a crew member...

You can take it with you.(Norway needs hacker to access archives; "Dead Man's Switch" computer program)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Ottar Grepstad, the director of Norway's cultural center, is pleading with hackers--to crack into his system. He lost access to the archive, which contains electronic copies of Norway's most important historical documents, when the man in...

What about property values?(plutonium shipments to South Carolina from Rocky Flats bomb plant)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... While South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges continues his losing battle with the Energy Department for assurances that plutonium from the closed Rocky Flats bomb plant won't stay in his state, attorney Marguerite Willis is intervening in Hodges's suit...

Corporate culture.(British Nuclear Fuels)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Americans may or may not feel better knowing that some of the business practices and ethics deafness that have been uncovered this year are not restricted to U.S. corporations. When British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) released its annual results in...

Be all you can be--digitally.("America's Army" computer game)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... In July, the army released the first part of a computer game called "America's Army," designed to encourage potential enlistees to role-play their way through basic training and combat missions, as well as try out a variety of army careers. The...

We all breathed a sigh of relief.(Department of Defense drops planned name change from Strategic Command to Global Command)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Rumor has it that the Defense Department had been flirting with the name "Global Command" (suggested short form, "GoCom"), as a grand new moniker meant to indicate the integration of U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Space Command. But in...

Toothy telephone.(tooth implant audio)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... Two students from MIT's Media Lab Europe have devised the ultimate in personal sound--a tooth implant that transfers digital signals from radios and mobile phones directly to the inner ear via bone resonance. With more than one implant,...

Alice Stewart. (Bulletins).(epidemiologist)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
September 1, 2002... ALICE STEWART, AN EPIDEMIOLOGIST whose work has been admired by many long-time Bulletin readers, died in late June near Oxford, England, at age 95. Her pioneering studies of the effects of exposure to radiation were at first dismissed by both...

Britain: terror target number two? (Reports).(British response to World Trade Center terrorist attack)
September 1, 2002... THE LIVES OF MORE BRITONS were lost in the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11 than in any other terrorist attack, despite more than 30 years of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and other terrorist actions. Initial press reports...

Spy mania. (Russia).
September 1, 2002... RUSSIA'S FEDERAL SECURITY Service (FSB), the former KGB, is having a banner year prosecuting purported spies. The price for its success, however, is growing mobilization of activists and international human rights groups who charge that the...

The Senate's one-vote difference. (Congress).(missile defense funding)
September 1, 2002... PASSIONS WERE HIGH ON THE Senate floor as Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman joined a long string of senators denouncing the Ninth Circuit Court's decision declaring the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional. ...

Goodbye missiles, hello NATO. (Bulgaria).
September 1, 2002... ON MAY 31, BULGARIAN DEfense Minister Nikolay Svinarov and James Pardew, the U.S. ambassador to Bulgaria, signed a memorandum in Sofia calling for the dismantlement of Bulgaria's SS23, Scud, and FROG missiles, removing one of the remaining...

Wasted at the wellhead. (Energy).(natural gas)
September 1, 2002... DEPOSITS OF NATURAL GAS IN THE earth's crust are commonly tapped for heating homes, generating electricity, moving vehicles, and other uses in the chemicals industry. But when natural gas is produced as a byproduct of oil production, it is...

Pelted by paint, downed by debris: missile defenses will put valuable satellites at even greater risk. (Opinion).
September 1, 2002... WE THINK OF SPACE AS EMPTY, BUT THE space near Earth is littered with debris. More than 9,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters in diameter, nearly all manmade, are currently being tracked, and there are probably more than 100,000 pieces of...

Nuclear gamblers: "we can make a first strike, and a second, or even a third." (Opinion).(India and Pakistan)
September 1, 2002... FOR MORE THAN A DECADE BEFORE INDIA INItiated nuclear testing in May 1998, the rival nuclear tribes in Pakistan and India had pleaded for converting their respective country's covert nuclear program into an overt one. They argued that because...

Bioweapons: new labs, more terror?
September 1, 2002... IT HAS BEEN ALMOST A YEAR SINCE THE FIRST anthrax letter was mailed last September 18. Since then, FBI agents and scientists have unraveled many of the mysteries surrounding the strain of anthrax, and have created a profile of the likely...

Minatom: the grab for trash.(Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy; spent nuclear power rods)
September 1, 2002... Of all of Siberia's far-flung nuclear cities, Krasnoyarsk--a gritty industrial hub 1,500 miles east of Moscow--holds pride of place as Russia's preeminent nuclear town. Surrounded by a maze of uranium mines, a massive underground plutonium...

Battle stats. (the Center Spread).(Department of Peace and Conflict report on armed conflict since 1989)
September 1, 2002... Although Europe and North America breathed a collective sigh of relief when the Cold War ended a dozen years ago, for much of the world there was no celebration. Instead, many long-simmering ethnic rivalries, border disputes, and internal...

Minatom: dreams of glory.(Russia's Ministry of Atomic Energy to sell spend fuel rods to finance more nuclear plants)
September 1, 2002... RUSSIA FACES DECADES OF effort and vast expenditures if it is to get a handle on radioactive waste control and cleanup--and the Ministry of Atomic Energy's (Minatom) plans to import spent fuel rods in exchange for billions of dollars could...

Laser defenses: what if they work?(dangers of nuclear missile interception)
September 1, 2002... THE IDEA BEHIND MISSILE DEFENSES HAS ALWAYS BEEN TO save people from the disastrous consequences of nuclear attack. How ironic it is, then, that some of the defensive systems the United States is actively planning--including the U.S. Air...

Preemptive posturing: what happened to deterrence?
September 1, 2002... South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and President Bill Clinton met at the White House in June 1998 to discuss "new approaches" toward North Korea and "peace and stability on the peninsula." Just days before, a squadron of U.S. F-15E fighter...

Russia: of truth and testing.(George W. Bush administration allegations that Russia was ready to resume nuclear testing proven false)
September 1, 2002... ON MAY 12, THE NEW YORK Times reported that the Bush administration had been secretly briefing members of Congress, alleging that Russia was preparing to resume underground nuclear tests on the Arctic Circle island of Novaya Zemlya....

One weird dude.('The Bureau and the Mole')
September 1, 2002... The Bureau and the Mole By David A. Vise Atlantic Monthly Press, 2002 272 pages; $25.00 ROBERT HANSSEN'S WIFE BONNIE, convinced that he was concealing an affair from her, persuaded him to tell her what he was trying to cover up in the...

Water and more.(Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict)
September 1, 2002... Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict By Michael T. Klare Metropolitan Books, 2001 289 pages; $26.00 MOST PEOPLE PROBABLY DON'T DRAW a connection between last September's terrorist attacks on the United States and issues of...

Israeli nuclear forces, 2002. (NRDC Nuclear Notebook).
September 1, 2002... IT IS ISRAELI POLICY TO NEITHER confirm nor deny that it possesses nuclear weapons, although it is generally accepted by friend and foe alike that Israel has been a nuclear state for several decades. Its declaratory policy states: "Israel will...

Numbers aren't everything. (The Last Word).(agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce nuclear warheads)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2002... "THE APPROACH WE'VE TAKEN IS TO TREAT RUSSIA not as an adversary but as a friendly power," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a July hearing on the "Moscow Treaty," the recent U.S.-Russian...