Pro-forma nuclear safety is harder than ever to sell. There's
ass-kissing to the sci-fi community (.pdf, download it), the
instructional video (warning, boring .wmv, > 12 mins long). But...
The design lifetimes of
Yucca Mountain and the
Waste Isolation Pilot Plant won't protect
future generations from groundwater absorbing transuranic waste (Pu239 and like toxins, deadly when ingested for 240,000 years).
Do you have this stuff in your
back yard today, and how will it
get there safely? On top of that, the
capacity problem, which looks intractable as long as we keep relicensing plants.
If I didn't know better, I assume the only way the government could succeed in getting this done would be to
hoodwink us.
posted by nj_subgenius
on Apr 4, 2005 -
34 comments
Dirty Bombs
Federal investigators have documented 1,300 cases of lost, stolen or abandoned radioactive material inside the United States over the past five years and have concluded there is a significant risk that terrorists could cobble enough together for a dirty bomb.
(warning - Salon link)
posted by Irontom
on Nov 10, 2003 -
13 comments
Former N. Korean Nuclear Contractors are "pretty sure that at some point Don was involved," since it was not unusual to seek help from board members "when we needed contacts with the U.S. government." An article in yesterday's
Fortune mentions and quotes a number of former employees/contractors for a Swiss engineering firm -- headed by
Donald Rumsfeld at the time that Pyongyang began getting its nuke on. Nevertheless,
Today Rumsfeld, riding high after the Iraq war, is reportedly discussing a plan for "regime change" in North Korea. But his silence about the nuclear reactors raises questions about what he did--or didn't do--as an ABB director. unsurprisingly,
the media is
not exactly all over this.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly
on Apr 30, 2003 -
25 comments
US Lets N. Korea Get Nuclear Data (Boston Globe) "
Transfer Pact Stays in Effect: WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has not suspended or revoked the authority of Westinghouse Co. to transfer documents related to nuclear technology to North Korea, despite the fact that the Asian nation has admitted that it violated terms of a nonproliferation agreement it signed with Washington in 1994, US Department of Energy documents show."
posted by troutfishing
on Mar 8, 2003 -
43 comments
Is Libya next? This story in Israel's
Ha'aretz has a very very interesting lead: "
The U.S. agrees with Israeli assessments that Libya has renewed its efforts to acquire a nuclear bomb, and that those efforts have been stepped up since 1999, when the UN sanctions on the country were removed." Not only that, Ariel Sharon says that he believes the Iraqis might be helping build said nuclear bomb, and that Libya might attain nuclear capability before Iraq does.
And not only
that, the always-exciting "unnamed experts" suggest that Pakistan and North Korea might have a hand in this as well.
Libya is still on the State Department list of nations that support terror, so why hasn't this story been getting any play stateside? Is it really overstating the case to suggest that Bush's new doctrine of preemptive strikes without hard evidence, if applied across the board, could very well lead to world war?
posted by textureslut
on Sep 24, 2002 -
76 comments
Ship searched for nuclear material after it was diverted from New York harbor, reports MS-NBC. Apparently a Department of Energy Nuclear Emergency Search Team (NEST) was involved. Initial report states that elevated gamma and neutron emissions were detected.
Aside from this report--which is unconfirmed--how likely is such an attack? How do we deal with thousands of container ships, each holding hundreds of anonymous containers? This kind of attack scares me much more than airplanes dropping out of the sky.
posted by mooncrow
on Sep 12, 2002 -
17 comments
In the midst of all the talk of possible terrorist deployments of Weapons of Mass-Destruction,
this seems like a somewhat dramatic, if effective, approach to pre-empting the threat of blackmarket nuclear proliferation. The co-operative approach adopted by the U.S and Russia - and presumably the Yugoslav Government itself - also seems encouraging.
Should this 'surprise-attack' approach now be used to negate the threat posed as nuclear facilities are decommissioned worldwide??
posted by Doozer
on Aug 23, 2002 -
3 comments
Close to home? Worried about transport of nuclear waste? Find out how close to your home it'll pass with this handy map.
In my case, it'll be transported on train tracks that I can see and hear from my bedroom...
posted by delmoi
on Jun 15, 2002 -
24 comments
Canadians figure out exactly how many nukes it would take. Using the software, researchers estimated it would take 124 weapons to destroy the U.S. and 51 to eliminate Russia as a country. The computer program mimics the U.S. military's SIOP, or Single Integrated Operational Plan, which outlines the targeting of America's nuclear weapons and the likely consequences of each attack. [via dailyrotten.com]
posted by skallas
on Jan 4, 2002 -
20 comments
"Real" Deal about Nuclear, Bio, and Chem Attacks. I've also seen this in the newsgroups, but it hasn't come to my various email accounts yet. While the article seems pretty reasonable, there doesn't seem to be any info on who this SFC Red Thomas is, nor is there any scientific backup (no links to
further reading etc.).
posted by youthbc1
on Oct 21, 2001 -
4 comments
Is Terrorists For Nukes the 2001 version of Arms For Hostages? President Bush has lifted the sanctions on India and Pakistan imposed by the U.S. in 1998 to protest their "tit-for-tat" nuclear tests. In a memorandum just released by the White House, he states that keeping those sanctions in place "would not be in the national security interests of the United States".
Is this an acceptable exchange? Just how far should the U.S. go in appeasing Pakistan, not to mention further fuelling its already explosive confrontation with India?
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Sep 23, 2001 -
8 comments
