Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists articles from September 2004

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists archives from September 2004

So far so good?(Editor's Note)(Editorial)
September 1, 2004... MOST OF THE AMERICANS WHO VOTED FOR GEORGE W. Bush in 2000 had no idea they were voting for a foreign policy that was unlike anything they had previously encountered. But by now they are in a strong position to evaluate it. Time to review: ...

In order to survive.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... ALBERT HUEBNER'S EXCELLENT BOOK review "Time to Panic" (July/August 2004 Bulletin) ends in a pessimistic tone: "Unless the energy and environmental crises can be quickly resolved, 'civilization as we know it will not survive.'" A cause for...

Race to space.(Update)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... In the last issue we reported that the Mojave, California-based company Scaled Composites, after successfully flying SpaceShipOne to an altitude of 211,400 feet--the edge of space--is expected to win the Ansari X Prize sometime in 2004 or 2005...

Pakistan frees nuke ring suspects.(Update)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... On July 24, Pakistan released three men--a nuclear scientist and two ex-army officials--whom it had held in solitary confinement for more than six months on suspicion of involvement in a nuclear black market (Los Angeles Times, July 25, 2004)....

No plans for new nukes here!(Bulletins)(Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory )
September 1, 2004... IF YOU THOUGHT ALL the talk about new nuclear weapons was just hot air, the proposed environmental plan for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a cool reminder that the Energy Department is moving ahead with plans to ramp up production of...

Not as bad as it looks.(Bulletins)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... IN ITS RESPONSE TO TWENTY-first century terror worries, the United States decided it needed to better prepare for a variety of new scenarios, including a bioterror attack using smallpox. But the last case of smallpox in the United States was in...

Woomera wins.(Bulletins)
September 1, 2004... ON JULY 14, THE PRIME Minister of Australia, John Howard, bowed to intense political pressure and announced that his government was dropping plans to locate a nuclear waste dump in South Australia. The question of where to put the new dump...

Cluck cluck.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... U.S. analysts studying high-altitude U.S. spy satellite photos of Iraq identified any number of what they believed were Scud missile storage sites that U.N. inspectors should investigate on the ground. But the analysts apparently confused...

How lucky can you get?
September 1, 2004... The General Accountability Office (the agency formerly known as the General Accounting Office) is looking into complaints that before the war in Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile group led by Ahmad Chalabi and supported in large...

The skies are very friendly indeed.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... According to a General Accountability Office (GAO) report released in June, between 1997 and 2003 the Defense Department spent at least $100 million on unused first-class airfares, but failed to cash in reimbursable tickets because employees...

Gaming the war game.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... The Indian Air Force simply whomped the U.S. Air Force in recent joint exercises--who'da thunk it? Especially when you consider that the U.S. airmen were piloting F-15Cs (called America's best fighter) while Indian pilots flew "low-tech Russian...

All the rage in Bogota.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Clothes from designer Miguel Caballero offer quite a bit more insurance against nasty accidents than do wrinkle-proof or stain-resistant items--they're bulletproof. Caballero's lightweight but "high security fashion"--let's call it Colombian...

Yet another sheep report.(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Eighteen years after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 359 Welsh farmers are still unable to sell their sheep without testing them for radioactive contamination. The sheep in question are raised on farms in a 53-square-mile...

They call it "neutron interrogation".(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory are apparently eager to help in the fight against terrorism by developing a detector to be used to scan the millions of large shipping containers that enter U.S. ports each year for the...

Iraq's peaceful atoms?
September 1, 2004... ADD IT TO THE LIST OF ironies of the U.S. invasion of Iraq: On the to-do list of the interim Iraqi government is building a nuclear research program. And the United States could end up helping. Rest assured, the program would serve only...

Boom or bust?(Mini-Nukes)
September 1, 2004... ON MAY 22, 2003 BOTH THE House and Senate passed separate versions of the 2004 defense bill. The $400.5 billion bill repealed the Spratt-Furse Amendment, adopted in 1993, which prohibited research and development on low-yield nuclear weapons...

The poppy problem.(Afghanistan)
September 1, 2004... IN THE LAST THREE YEARS, SINCE the U.S.-led toppling of the Taliban government, Afghanistan has reemerged as a major poppy producer. It may now be described as having a "narcoeconomy." The country has hundreds of factories for manufacturing...

Intelligence: no easy fix: a struggle by entrenched parties is likely to torpedo genuine intelligence community reform; the next CIA will not differ much from the old one.(Opinions)
September 1, 2004... AS YOU READ THIS, THE U.S. MEDIA IS MOST LIKELY reporting on a stormy debate about the very structure of the U.S. intelligence community. Release of the 9/11 report by the National Commission to Study the Terrorist Attacks Upon the United...

Bush, Kerry, and foreign policy: voters have a real--some would say stark--choice to make between the candidates when it comes to foreign policy.(Opinions)
September 1, 2004... MANY PEOPLE LOOK AT THE APPARENT AGREEMENT between Sen. John Kerry and President George W. Bush on Iraq policy and see, as former Alabama Gov. George Wallace used to say, not a dime's worth of difference between the two candidates. This feeling...

Almost back to square one: that's where the Bush administration now finds itself after nearly four years of playing games with policy on North Korea.(Opinions)
September 1, 2004... TAKING OFFICE IN JANUARY 2001, GEORGE W. Bush and his foreign policy team could have continued the Clinton-era negotiations aimed at suspending North Korea's nuclear weapon and missile programs. Indeed, incoming Secretary of State Colin Powell...

The best defense ... The Bush administration promises that its ambitious plan for missile defense is purely benign, but it looks a lot like a shield-and-spear strategy.(Opinions)
September 1, 2004... HE U.S. STRATEGY TO DEAL WITH WEAPONS OF mass destruction is based partly on the construction of a missile defense shield. The construction of six missile interceptors in Alaska and four in California by October 2004 simply represents the first...

Three Mile Island: health study meltdown: a quarter century after the accident at Three Mile Island, remarkably few questions about the health effects of that near-catastrophe have been asked--let alone answered.
September 1, 2004... MARCH 28 MARKED THE TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY of the partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. A series of events near the plant commemorated the worst nuclear power plant accident in U.S. history, but...

Is small scary? Nanotechnology seems to offer much the same promise--and danger--as biotechnology seemed to have in its early days. And it has attracted many of the same friends and foes.(Nanotech)
September 1, 2004... ADDRESSING THE FOURTH ANNUAL FORESIGHT Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology in 1995, Adm. David Jeremiah, a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a bold prediction. The "military applications of molecular manufacturing have...

Missile defense: winning minds, not hearts: the U.S. plan to build a global missile defense has been gaining international support, but not because other governments believe it will make their countries safer.(Cover Story)
September 1, 2004... MISSILE DEFENSE IS A COMPLEX and often misunderstood subject that tends to evoke strong emotional responses, and many continuo to feel that missile defense poses a serious risk to international security. Nevertheless, there has been a...

The long, slow death of the Fast Flux reactor: the Fast Flux Test Facility was supposed to underpin an ambitious U.S. breeder reactor program. But after the idea of the plutonium economy was abandoned, it became another of Energy's white elephants.
September 1, 2004... THE HANFORD SITE NUCLEAR RESERVATION, covering more than 500 square miles in central Washington State, has long been connected with plutonium. The site produced the fissile material for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and went on to generate...

Preempting the truth.(Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After)(Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You)(The Iraq War: A Military History )(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After By Dilip Hiro Nation Books, 2004 467 pages; $14.95 Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You By Paul Waldman Sourcebooks, 2004 311 pages; $24.95 The...

The turning point.(Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective By J. Samuel Walker University of California Press, 2004 315 pages; $24.95 TMI 25 Years Later: The Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant Accident and Its Impact By Bonnie A....

Still a mystery.(Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident )(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Idaho Falls: The Untold Story of America's First Nuclear Accident by William McKeown ECW Press, 2003 269 pages; $16.95 THE TECHNICAL DETAILS OF THE EXPLOSION that occurred on January 3, 1961, at the SL-1 nuclear research reactor near Idaho...

U.S. nuclear reductions.(NRDC Nuclear Notebook)
September 1, 2004... ON JUNE 1, NATIONAL NUCLEAR Security Administration chief Linton F. Brooks submitted a classified report to Congress detailing the plans that have been agreed to by the Energy and Defense Departments regarding reductions in the nuclear...

A not unreasonable failure?(And another thing ...)
September 1, 2004... FROM DAY ONE, THE CONSERVATIVE OFFICIALS WHO WERE swept into power at the CIA by the "Reagan revolution" made clear their view that the Directorate of Intelligence's tradition of rigorously objective independent analysis was impeding a deeper...