Analysis | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

If the Boston Marathon attack had involved dirty bombs

George M. Moore — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:56:04 -0400

Last month's Boston Marathon bombing was horrific enough without getting into ways in which it could have been worse. But in fact there is one avenue of speculation worth exploring, because doing so could help keep cities safe in the future: What if the explosive devices allegedly used by the Tsarnaev brothers had contained radioactive material? What would be the effect of such a so-called dirty bomb?

China moves cautiously ahead on nuclear energy

Hui Zhang — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:17:50 -0400

From 2005 to 2011, China rapidly developed its nuclear power capacity. In 2010 alone, it began operations at two new reactors and broke ground on 10 more, accounting for more than 60 percent of new reactor construction worldwide and making the Chinese nuclear industry by far the fastest-growing in the world. By the end of 2010, China had 14 nuclear reactors in operation with a total capacity of about 11 gigawatts electric, or GWe.

Interview with Siegfried Hecker: North Korea complicates the long-term picture

Bulletin Staff — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 12:10:39 -0400

Pronouncements from Pyongyang during the past few weeks have been ominous, among other things threatening the United States and South Korea with preemptive nuclear attacks. North Korea announced on April 2 that it would restart its nuclear facilities, including its 5-megawatt nuclear reactor in Yongbyon, north of the capital, which had been disabled and mothballed since an agreement in October 2007.

A broader reading of seismic waves from North Korea

Jeffrey Park — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 13:31:53 -0500

A few minutes short of noon, local time, on February 12, an underground blast in a remote corner of North Korea sent seismic waves worldwide, leaving clear recordings on thousands of seismometers. Some of these seismological recorders belong to clandestine intelligence-gathering networks in the service of individual nations. You and I will probably never see the data gathered by these networks, but we don't need to. Primarily to monitor earthquakes within active fault zones, thousands of seismometers around the globe record ground motion and distribute that information to the public.

On second thought: IAEA re-categorizes the operational status for 47 of Japan's nuclear reactors

Mycle Schneider — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 14:35:20 -0500

Update: On January 18, 2013, the operational information included in the International Atomic Energy Agency's Power Reactor Information System database was reversed. The following day, the agency stated in a press release that the significant move was due to a "clerical error" by Japan's Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, which is the agency's counterpart in Japan.

An open letter to President Obama: The time on the Doomsday Clock is five minutes to midnight

Robert Socolow — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 15:54:23 -0500

Editor's note: Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 using the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero), to convey threats to humanity and the planet.

Who should manage the nuclear weapons complex?

Robert Alvarez — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 10:15:16 -0500

As the lame-duck Congress wraps up business, a serious debate is unfolding over the future of the US nuclear weapons complex. For the first time since the end of World War II, the long-held policy that places control of the design and production of nuclear weapons in civilian hands may be up for grabs. At issue: What is to be done with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), now located inside the US Department of Energy?

Explain This: Subcritical experiments

Frank von Hippel — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:23:14 -0500

Earlier this month, the US National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that it had conducted a subcritical experiment with plutonium in an underground tunnel 300 meters below the Nevada National Security Site (formerly, the Nevada Test Site), about 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Named Pollux, it was the 27th such experiment that the United States has conducted since it ended test nuclear explosions in 1992.

Underestimated or overestimated? North Korea’s satellite launch in perspective

David Wright — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 10:42:52 -0500

Despite supposed technical problems with its rocket, North Korea surprised the world this week by launching its Unha-3 rocket and successfully placing a satellite into orbit.

The launch -- using the same rocket, satellite, and trajectory -- was a repeat of last April's attempt, which failed. Overall, it was North Korea's fifth attempt to launch a satellite, and its first success.

Buck Rogers and the atomic education of America

John Mecklin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 20:13:34 -0500

Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World
By Ferenc Morton Szasz
University of Nevada Press
$34.95

On the brink of war -- and childbirth -- in Idaho

Charles G. Simpson — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 20:36:42 -0400

I completed missile officer training at Sheppard Air Force Base in Texas and reported to the new Titan I squadron -- officially known as the 569th Strategic Missile Squadron -- at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho in February 1962. My wife Carol and I departed Sheppard in our new sports car, stopping at the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas along the way.

On the brink of the abyss in the Urals

Valery Yarynich — Fri, 26 Oct 2012 01:53:48 -0400

The escalation of the crisis in relations between the United States and Soviet Union in October 1962 had a most direct impact on the lives of the staff officers for the Kirov rocket corps, named after the city nearest its bases in the Ural Mountains. On October 23, I received orders to go to one of the two divisions of our corps in which intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) of the 8K64 type -- SS-7 in American terminology -- had recently been put on combat duty.

Advancing China's nuclear security

Hui Zhang — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:09:50 -0400

China, like all nuclear weapon states, bears a responsibility to provide leadership in nuclear security issues. But China's strategy for securing its nuclear weapons -- and the complex of facilities where fissile material for weapons is fabricated and stored -- has so far remained largely opaque.

Remembering the Cuban Missile Crisis

Jayantha Dhanapala — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 08:46:19 -0400

Over the past 50 years, dozens of articles have appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on the Cuban Missile Crisis. And with each passing year, new and relevant information has been reported -- which, for better or worse, has taught readers that the world was closer to full-scale nuclear war than was originally thought.

50 years ago: The Cuban Missile Crisis and its underappreciated hero

A. Walter Dorn — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:17:50 -0400

On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy shocked the world by announcing the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba and by imposing a blockade on missile-carrying ships moving toward the island. With the superpower navies about to collide, many experts feared an escalation to nuclear war. Though historians have credited American resolve for Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's decision to stop his ships and withdraw his missiles, resolution of the crisis was actually far more complex.

Getting to bioweapons consensus

Malcolm Dando — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 23:00:22 -0400

At the Seventh Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference in Geneva last December, the treaty's 165 member states agreed to a new intersessional process of work to be done in preparation for the next such conference, in 2016. This new process retained the limited aim ("to discuss, and promote common understanding and effective action") of the previous two intersessional processes, but it did restructure the convention's annual meeting of experts and state parties within the process.

How to unsnag US-South Korea nuclear negotiations

Miles A. Pomper — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:05:26 -0400

With time running out before the expiration of the US-South Korea nuclear cooperation agreement that has governed the two countries' nuclear trade since 1972, negotiators remain far apart on the terms of a new pact. Failure to reach a deal would threaten billions of dollars in nuclear commerce between the two countries.

Global food security and "virtual water"

Joel Carr — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 19:42:05 -0400

Food production requires adequate soils, climate, and water. Roughly 70 percent of the freshwater appropriated by humans worldwide is used for food production. In the absence of trade, people rely on local freshwater resources to grow food. However, when water limitations constrain food production to the point that there is not enough food for everyone, the trade of food commodities provides a mechanism by which regions can compensate for inadequate local water resources.

Climate change and wildfire: How vulnerable are we?

Max Moritz — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:00:26 -0400

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists concluded in 2007 that climate change poses almost as serious a threat to human survival as nuclear weapons do. Citing both perils in its decision to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin noted:

The new biological countermeasures program: Will it work?

Leonard A. Cole — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 18:11:17 -0400

On June 18, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new program to protect the population against health threats. Primed by worries about bioterrorism and pandemic flu and other possible epidemics, the department established three centers to more quickly develop and manufacture medical countermeasures. The initial cost of the program is $400 million, with an eventual government outlay projected as high as $2 billion.