Web Edition | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The science fiction effect

Laura H. Kahn — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:37:13 -0800

It's alive! Neurophysiology. Huddled around a warm fireplace one cold summer's night in 1816, a small group of friends decided to hold a competition to see who could write the scariest horror story. While vacationing in a villa by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, the friends spent their time reading ghost stories and discussing the exciting experiment being performed by the scientists of the day: reanimating dead matter.

New START: One year later

Kingston Reif — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 13:06:28 -0800

February 5 marks the one-year anniversary of the New Strategic Arms Reductions Treaty's (New START) entry into force. Signed by the United States and Russia in April 2010, New START caps each country's nuclear arsenal at 1,550 deployed strategic warheads, 700 deployed strategic delivery vehicles (long-range missiles and bombers), and 800 deployed and non-deployed strategic launchers (long-range missile tubes on submarines, missile silos, and bombers).

An education in occupation

Hugh Gusterson — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:43:43 -0800

As the last American soldiers left Iraq in December, so, too, did many of the journalists who had covered the war, leaving little in the way of media coverage of post-war Iraq.

America's nuclear future: Does the public have a fair say in it?

Seth P. Tuler — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:33:59 -0800

For the past two years the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) has worked to develop a strategy "for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle." The Commission's final report was released on January 26. It is too early to assess the policy outcomes of the BRC's effort, but we can take stock now of how effectively it provided opportunities for stakeholder and public engagement.

A hinge moment for the BWC?

Kirk C. Bansak — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:58:46 -0800

Although it was an eleventh-hour decision, the Seventh Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) Review Conference in Geneva did manage to produce a consensus final document this past December. As the saying goes, "a win is a win," and in the end the final document -- adopted with less than an hour to go in the three-week meeting -- would not have derived any more force if adopted earlier.

How to prevent war with Iran

Joshua Pollack — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:03:17 -0800

The pace of events in the confrontation between Iran, Israel, and the United States has accelerated rapidly in the last few months. The mysterious destruction of an Iranian missile facility in November was followed by a new wave of US-organized sanctions against Iran's central bank.

Involuntary response

Fissile Materials Working Group — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:23:58 -0800

Earlier this month, widespread inaction on the increasing dangers posed by nuclear proliferation and climate change forced the Bulletin's Doomsday Clock to move one minute closer to midnight, indicating the mounting perils confronting humanity's survival. One factor pushing the clock forward to five minutes to midnight was the failure to ensure strict security and comprehensive international oversight for nuclear weapons and materials, which continue to accumulate in a few nations.

Energy.gov: Where information goes to die

Dawn Stover — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:38:34 -0800

We live in an Information Age. Never before have we had so much data at our fingertips, thanks to digitization and the Internet. But information is only useful if it is accessible, searchable, and intelligible.

Crying wolf about an Iranian nuclear bomb

Jacques E. C. Hymans — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:42:18 -0800

The long-simmering international crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions may now have reached a boiling point. Washington is imposing sanctions on Iranian oil exports, the heart of the Iranian economy. And Tehran, in turn, is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly a fifth of the world's oil trade passes on a daily basis. The potential for outright war between the United States and Iran has never seemed more plausible.

Going viral

Laura H. Kahn — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 05:40:47 -0800

We've been lucky. The avian influenza (H5N1) virus that first emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 -- which killed six and caused 18 serious illnesses -- has not acquired the ability to spread easily from person to person. Virtually all of the reported cases have involved contact with infected birds or bird products.

The defensive nature of China's "underground great wall"

Hui Zhang — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:19:41 -0800

There has been a lot of prominent discussion lately (in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, among other places) about the size of China's nuclear arsenal, based on a study by Georgetown University professor Phillip Karber, "Strategic Implications of China's Underground

Nuclear scientists as assassination targets

William Tobey — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:28:40 -0800

Since 2007, international media have reported the violent deaths of four scientists and engineers connected with Iran's nuclear program and an attempt on the life of a fifth. The news reports on such killings are murky, incomplete, and, in some instances, likely inaccurate. The motivations and identity of the persons behind the killings are also obscure, but the fact that they are taking place is undeniable.

Nuclear nomads: A look at the subcontracted heroes

Gabrielle Hecht — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:01:36 -0800

In the days after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station last March, the international media celebrated the heroism of the "Fukushima 50" -- the plant and emergency workers who exposed themselves to extremely high radiation levels to get the reactors under control. Their efforts, it seems, were doomed from the start. Three of the reactor cores melted down anyway. And the cleanup will take decades.

Biological indecision

Malcolm Dando — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 17:35:32 -0800

The December 2011 Seventh Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in Geneva was widely expected to significantly strengthen international measures in the prohibition regime against weapons of mass destruction. After all, the review came after a series of constructive annual meetings in the second Intersessional Process (ISP) -- the meetings and actions taken throughout the five years between each review conference -- from 2007 to 2010 as well as in a number of meetings held over the last couple of years in different parts of the world.

North Korea from 30,000 feet

Niko Milonopoulos — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:17:35 -0800

The first publicly available overhead imagery that suggested North Korea was constructing a new nuclear reactor at its Yongbyon complex appeared on November 4, 2010. Charles L. Pritchard, a former special envoy for negotiations with North Korea and the president of the Korea Economic Institute, along with a delegation from the institute provided the first confirmation of this construction after a visit to Yongbyon that week.

Staying in the zone

Mark Jansson — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 06:30:51 -0800

Few things have gone right since the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference called for a 2012 meeting to discuss establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Evidence of nuclear weapons-related research in Iran has continued to mount, putting the world, and particularly Israel, on edge. By now, the enthusiasms of 2010 seem almost quaint.

Using microbes to fight microbes

Laura H. Kahn — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 04:57:53 -0800

There are more microorganisms in and on our bodies than human cells. In fact, scientists estimate that microorganisms outnumber human cells by 10 to 1. These microbes cover our skin, nose, mouth, and gastrointestinal and urogenital tracts. Called the "human microbiome," scientists are investigating the relationship between these microbes and disease.

Glass houses of accuracy?

Randy Olson — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 16:14:06 -0800

Roundtable Topic: When politicians distort science

For my final essay in this Roundtable, I want to shift momentarily from the distortion of science in the public sphere to the distortion of science within the profession itself.

Radiological materials and the Nuclear Security Summit

Fissile Materials Working Group — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 13:07:18 -0800

With the second Nuclear Security Summit fast approaching, it is a good moment to reflect on one of the new issues with which the Seoul summit will attempt to grapple: radiological security. The first Nuclear Security Summit in Washington focused on weapons-usable nuclear materials -- highly enriched uranium and plutonium. The rationale behind a strictly defined agenda was to attract attention to the materials that pose the gravest dangers, as they can be used in a nuclear weapon.

Climate change in 2050: Where's the beef?

Dawn Stover — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:41:37 -0800

"What will a day in the life of a Californian be like in 40 years? If the state cuts greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 -- a target mandated by a state executive order -- a person could wake up in a net-zero energy home, commute to work in a battery-powered car, work in an office with smart windows and solar panels, then return home and plug in her car to a carbon-free grid."