Slashdot Mirror

Must be slow time for 'news'

2004 Reference: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/17/usa.oliverburkeman1

And for those interested in the general subject of PALS two blog posts

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3066/biscuits-cookies-and-nuclear-bombs
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2088/blair-on-the-ever-ready-misileer

Must be slow time for 'news'

2004 Reference: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jun/17/usa.oliverburkeman1

And for those interested in the general subject of PALS two blog posts

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3066/biscuits-cookies-and-nuclear-bombs
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/2088/blair-on-the-ever-ready-misileer

Jeffrey Lewis over at Arms Control Wonk give some thoughts about the nuts and bolts of eliminating Syria's chemical weapons, the link is a few days old but I expect us still valid http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/6807/syria-cw-elimination-modalities

Tactical nukes make nuclear war practical.

That's what the nuclear-capable nations' militaries hoped for, but it didn't turn out that way. As already stated in a number of posts above (and argued in TFA), the distinction between tactical and strategic nukes is very difficult to make. Nuclear weapons are simply too powerful (and too dirty, regardless of the size) to be useful in a tactical setting.

One party which seems to have recently realized this is, wonder of wonders, North Korea. There are strong indications that their designed yield was about 4 kT. A piddly tac nuke, right? Well, as mentioned in the discussion after the referenced article, imagine those 4 kT going off in the heart of Seoul or Tokyo...

North Korea had just signed a agreement not to test weapons – which specifically included not testing long range missiles for “scientific purposes” in exchange for food aid.

They didn't sign anything -- see this article. Missile launch ban is the consequence of the UNSC Resolution 1874, adopted after the North's second nuclear test. I don't think that the North is irrational -- just quite determined to preserve the regime and prepared to play provocative moves to that end.

Setting aside the idea that it doesn't matter whether there are decoys in the payload of an ICBM if you shoot it down during boost phase for the moment, effective decoys aren't trivial for a country like North Korea to add to their vehicles due to weight.

Good analysis of this issue is at Arms Control Wonk (there is a particularly good discussion in the comments section).

I'm 90% certain this 3000 front companies figure is going to appear in a ton of places now. But where the hell does it come from?

Jeffrey Lewis comments on the matter (about 7 years ago...)

http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/727/how-many-chinese-front-companies

The number has been the same for the last 13 years it seems.

Er, there's a bit wrong with your statement here. Most obviously, the axis of evil speech occurred in January of 2002, not 2003. That helps your case a bit, because a lot of the more serious failures of cooperation by Iran and North Korea occurred towards the end of 2002.. However, in both cases, there were serious failures to cooperate with international inspections before the speech. The entire James Kelly visit to North Korea was over evidence of non-cooperation that had been building up since the late Clinton years. Similarly, in the case of Iran, Iran had likely begun building new nuclear sites since before the speech http://guests.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/517/exiles-and-iran-intel. You can make an argument that Iran and North Korea may have accelerated their programs due to the Axis of Evil speech, and that's a more nuanced and viable argument, but that's a much weaker statement.

Moving on from there, there are other factual problems with your remarks. You claimed that

Iran has never shown itself to be a particularly hostile or irrational nation in any military sense

Right, so funding Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad isn't at all evidence of a "particularly hostile" or "irrational" attitude. http://www.cfr.org/iran/state-sponsors-iran/p9362. Iran doesn't even share a direct border with Israel but they are one of the largest supporters of attacks on Israel. That doesn't exactly scream peaceful to me.

There are enough factual problems as pointed out above, that your four point proposal simply doesn't make sense.

I don't know the current budget, but some estimates of the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) may be as high as $40 billion, with more realistic numbers being perhaps closer to $15-$20 billion. Keep in mind that nearly everything that the NRO does is for stuff that goes into space, and that the USAF has other vehicles which goes into space too that is beyond the NRO programs as well. This is "the other space agency" which is seldom talked about. Other federal departments also have their own independent projects in space, like NOAA and their weather satellites.

Also keep in mind that not everything that NASA does goes into space, as there is the aviation research arm and some other activities they perform as well.

Iodine-131 has a half-life of eight days but Cesium-137 has a much longer half-life of 30 years.
30 years of maintaining a leaking plant that is in shambles and too hot to enter.

This says nothing about the plutonium in the other reactor.
http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/3906/fepc-info-sheet-414#more-1429

Reference please the authorities on things like this: it-aint-no-thing

It is either amusing or disturbing; but that part of Dr. Strangelove is very nearly a string of quotations from actual military theorists. One Herman Kahn in particular.

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2308/the-second-north-korean-nuclear-test provides a sober view of the latest test as well as other Korean and arms control related http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/acw?q=korean&sa=Search topics.

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/ may well support your thinking but I can't be bothered to click through the archive to make sure.

You announce it first just to make sure te watchers know exactly what the are watching although sometimes things do go wrong like the until now secret J/FPS-5 making a hash of things http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2241/dprk-blip-on-a-screen

A reasoned look at the collision via http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2185/the-future-is-now

Space Track lists two new objects in orbit with a 56 degree inclination: 2009-004A and 2009-004B (catalog numbers 33506 and 33507, respectively). AFSK telemetry supposedly from Omid are on Wikipedia.

Here is a picture of Omid, it isn't very large.

For a good discussion of the risk magnitude of the re-entry of USA-193 read the comments on this blog:

http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1797/usa-193-risk-calculation

The expected ("average") number of people who might be exposed to hydrazine was around 0.035, the probability of anyone being exposed was about 0.01 (that is to say 1%), the risk of a fatality from exposure is considerably less than that (hydrazine is toxic, but it is nothing like a lethal war gas). The cost of the shoot-down though was 60 million dollars. If we suppose a fatality risk of 0.1% (i.e. in the case that someone is exposed there is an average fatality risk of 10%), then the cost per avoided fatality was something like 60 billion dollars. Normally the economic value attached to a human life for planning purposes is several million dollars, the Bush Administration's EPA recently set its value at $6.9 million: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92470116) Thus the shootdown hazard reduction decision seems out of line with government priorities to a tune of about 10,000 fold.

Why the shootdown? My guess is a combination of a live interceptor test, and destruction of highly classified technology.

The task of this piece on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.

There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.

The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story about this in March 2006:

Two circumstances could prove to be Lerch's undoing: first, the fact that the German ship "BBC China" was intercepted in October 2003 carrying a cargo of containers filled with nuclear technology headed for Libya and, second, that the incident prompted a panicked Gadhafi to disclose the names of all those who had supplied the Libyans with material and expertise for their nuclear program.
...
The authorities caught up with Gotthard Lerch, who Tahir calls his "main contractor," in Switzerland. They also arrested members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco -- all on the suspicion of having built parts for Gadhafi's nuclear weapons program in return for 15 to 20 million Swiss francs.

Tinner was flipped by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.

Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.

The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies having been involved in such. A new book asserts that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.

A Dutch court somehow 'lost' legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.

Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?

This whole story stinks from A to Z

The task of this piece on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.

There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.

The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story about this in March 2006:

Two circumstances could prove to be Lerch's undoing: first, the fact that the German ship "BBC China" was intercepted in October 2003 carrying a cargo of containers filled with nuclear technology headed for Libya and, second, that the incident prompted a panicked Gadhafi to disclose the names of all those who had supplied the Libyans with material and expertise for their nuclear program.
...
The authorities caught up with Gotthard Lerch, who Tahir calls his "main contractor," in Switzerland. They also arrested members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco -- all on the suspicion of having built parts for Gadhafi's nuclear weapons program in return for 15 to 20 million Swiss francs.

Tinner was flipped by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.

Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.

The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies having been involved in such. A new book asserts that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.

A Dutch court somehow 'lost' legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.

Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?

This whole story stinks from A to Z

The task of this piece on the front page of today's Washington Post is to establish the believe that Iran has a nuclear weapon design.

An international smuggling ring that sold bomb-related parts to Libya, Iran and North Korea also managed to acquire blueprints for an advanced nuclear weapon, according to a draft report by a former top U.N. arms inspector that suggests the plans could have been shared secretly with any number of countries or rogue groups.

The drawings, discovered in 2006 on computers owned by Swiss businessmen, included essential details for building a compact nuclear device that could be fitted on a type of ballistic missile used by Iran and more than a dozen developing countries, the report states.

The Swiss 'businessmen', Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, are alleged to have sold several nuke related stuff to Lybia and other countries.

There is more to the Tinner story, but for now let me concentrate on the date. The WaPo says the laptop has been discovered in 2006. But Tinner was under CIA control at least since the 2003 bust of nuclear related stuff on board of the 'BBC China'.

The German magazine Der Spiegel had a big story about this in March 2006:

Two circumstances could prove to be Lerch's undoing: first, the fact that the German ship "BBC China" was intercepted in October 2003 carrying a cargo of containers filled with nuclear technology headed for Libya and, second, that the incident prompted a panicked Gadhafi to disclose the names of all those who had supplied the Libyans with material and expertise for their nuclear program.
...
The authorities caught up with Gotthard Lerch, who Tahir calls his "main contractor," in Switzerland. They also arrested members of the Tinner family -- Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, Urs and Marco -- all on the suspicion of having built parts for Gadhafi's nuclear weapons program in return for 15 to 20 million Swiss francs.

Tinner was flipped by the CIA at least since the 'BBC China' event but likely even earlier. Another man taking part in the alleged smuggling was also turned by the CIA or has worked for the CIA all along.

Indeed it somehow seems like everybody involved in the issue was somehow related to the CIA.

The usual story is that the Pakistani scientist A.Q. Kahn was the one who ran a smuggling network. That may not be true at all. Khan denies having been involved in such. A new book asserts that it was then Prime Minister of Pakistan Bhutto who personally gave Pakistani nuclear secrets to North Korea in exchange for North Korean No Dong missiles for the Pakistani army.

A Dutch court somehow 'lost' legal files about the Khan case and the CIA likely had a hand in this too. The CIA also successfully pressed (link in German) the Swiss government to destroy information it had about the Tinner case. Tinner will thereby never be convicted.

Now please explain to me how people arrested in 2003 and flipped by the CIA at least since then managed to keep nuclear plans on a laptop that were somehow found only in 2006?

This whole story stinks from A to Z

the main reason for a heavy water reactor is that it can run on natural uranium. It is one way to start a nuclear program when there is no enriched fuel. Sure it can do some neat tricks for bomb making, but also for research and industry.

This thread's long-dead, but if you check your comment history and see this, I'm going to refer you to Arms Control Wonk for nonpartisan coverage of proliferation issues.

This week we're talking about the mysterious box (reactor) on the Euphrates, but last week we had pictures of Iran's president holding bits of Iranian centrifuge rotors.

If, as you suggest, the Iranian civilian nuclear programme relies on un-enriched uranium, what are the centrifuges for?

PROTIP: If you can get from natural uranium to 5% LEU, you're 95% of the way to weapons-grade HEU. Google the term "separative work unit" and go from there. Six months from the day the Iranians can produce enough LEU to run a heavy-water-moderated reactor they will have a gun-type device. It'll be a waste of fissionables compared to the harder-to-build implosion-type device, but maybe the Iranians don't care.

Of course, if you read armscontrolwonk.com you would have had this info three weeks ago (note that J. Lewis contributed on the NYT story mentioned as well).

They are sending a clear message to China.
In an way, it is an opportunity for a US response to this: http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/18/0235229

The thing is, you do not want "pollute" your (everyone's actually) orbital pathways around earth with millions of pieces of high-velocity debris like the Chinese irresponsibly did here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/19/china_satellite/
The Chinese dramatically increased debris in several orbital pathways from the state-sanctioned shoot-down of their former satellite. This is basically putting a mine field in that part of space. Rocket Scientists do not do things like this *without* first considering the consequences. (As in creating "nearly 800 debris fragments of size 10 cm or larger, nearly 40,000 debris fragments with size between 1 and 10 cm, and roughly 2 million fragments of size 1 mm or larger" at hyper-velocities http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1360/chinese-asat-test-massive-debris-creation-likely ) The Chinese knew what they were doing with the shoot-down and is highly likely it was on purpose.
It is likely the US do not want to create orbital debris, but are willing to chance it at the last possible moment to prevent the bird from falling in unfriendly turf. The Media's Hydrazine fuel scare is mostly hype. True, hydrazine is hazardous, but it readily dissipates and soon breaks down into Ammonia and Nitrogen (both of which are naturally occurring in our the environment).

This is really the best confirmation data we have. DPRK says they set off a nuke. Even if a nuke had fizzled, it would've been bigger than the 550T explosion the seismometers felt. From here, "A geology professor at Yale, Jeffrey Park, emails to tell me that the updated Richter magnitude for the North Korea event is 3.5, which he calls "mighty small for a crude nuke." And that's true: it suggests a very small yield. But the odd thing is that it's actually harder to build a 1 kiloton weapon than a 5 or 10 kiloton weapon, and it's unlikely North Korea has the expertise to do this."

So, nobody's really sure what to believe right now, and eventually it'll just fall to consensus on the data we already have.

The best place to hear about the debate's over at ArmsControlWonk. New radionucliotide data, insider info from some well-placed anonymous sources, and insights into the scientific cultures within dictatorships paints an interesting picture.

As for passive solar, I'm all in favour, but there are several issues:

• it's not enough
• There's an enormous existing housing stock that will take many decades to rebuild.
• Passive solar makes SFA difference in high-density living. Do you think 2+ billion Chinese and Indians will be living in American-style McMansions, or apartments?
• Jevon's paradox. In this case, Americans spend their energy savings on bigger houses, negating the efficiency gains.

As to your objections to nuclear, low-level waste is really a nonissue...the stuff is simply not that dangerous compared to the myriad other waste we dump into landfills or spray into the atmosphere. Compared to the thousands of lung cancers caused by radon annually, LLW is a piffling risk. High-level waste is the problem, if mostly a political one. See how Sweden is dealing with it.

Finally, terrorism. Nuclear plants are a pretty tough target. How well defended is the Maroondah reservoir?

Alas, the Airborne Laser Project is in danger of being canceled. The reprieve is contingent on meeting a very tight schedule.

Such puerile jokes. I'm sure Hans Blix would not be amused...

...in an Aug. 23 interview with Arms Control Today, a Department of State official confirmed that a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) predicts that Iran will not be able to acquire fissile material for a weapon before "early to mid-next decade."

I think this whole blog thing is getting way out of hand. Who cares that much about someone else life? Most people can't even care for themselves...why should you be worrying about checking out the latest cell phone picture with a story about how the line at McDonalds is too long. Gimme a break.

You're reading the wrong blogs. Here's a few:

http://defensetech.org/
http://www.back-to-iraq.com/
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
http://www.juancole.com/
http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/