Web Edition | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

It's smart to scale back nuclear weapons spending

Kingston Reif — Tue, 21 May 2013 00:14:02 -0400

As part of his effort to win Republican support for the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) in 2010, President Obama submitted to lawmakers a 10-year plan to maintain and modernize US nuclear warheads, strategic delivery systems, and their supporting infrastructure.

Turkey's nuclear ambitions

Aaron Stein — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:08:45 -0400

This month Turkey and Japan agreed to begin exclusive negotiations on constructing four nuclear power reactors at Sinop on the Black Sea. The deal marks the start of Turkey's second nuclear power project, after it reached a similar deal three years ago with a Russian consortium to construct four reactors at Akkuyu near the Mediterranean.

Paying for the great urbanization of China

Hal Harvey — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:27:17 -0400

Consider the impact Pierre L'Enfant had when he laid out Washington, DC, or when Robert Moses worked his plans for New York, or when Daniel Burnham designed Chicago. These planners set patterns that have affected us ever since: They significantly determined how we get around, how our work and home lives connect, whether we live in welcoming neighborhoods, how much traffic congestion we suffer, and more. Their influence reaches into the industrial metabolism as well, as design choices affect our energy and material consumption. And the patterns persist for many decades.

How do you solve a problem like plutonium?

Fissile Materials Working Group — Mon, 06 May 2013 19:09:24 -0400

Four years ago in Prague, President Barack Obama focused the world's attention on a "strange turn of history:" Even as the danger of global nuclear war has lessened, the threat we face from nuclear materials is greater than ever, because of international terrorist networks, a global black market trade, and the spread of technology that could help build a bomb.

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?

Your money or your life?

Dawn Stover — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:25:19 -0400

When I moved to a neighborhood known as the "murder capital" of New York City, I figured it was only a matter of time before someone held a knife to my throat and demanded my wallet. I would hand it over, of course. It's only money, right? But it didn't happen like I thought it would. I left a Christmas party late one night and heard someone running behind me as I approached a subway entrance. When I whirled to look, I was struck with a heavy object. I tumbled down the staircase and scrambled to my feet -- still in possession of 30 cents and two subway tokens.

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.

Could a nuclear-armed Iran be contained?

Kingston Reif — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:32:11 -0400

On September 4, 1962, President John F. Kennedy released a statement in response to intelligence reports of a Soviet arms buildup in Cuba. Kennedy said the United States did not have evidence "of the presence of offensive ground-to-ground missiles; or of other significant offensive capability either in Cuban hands or under Soviet direction and guidance." However, he warned, "Were it to be otherwise, the gravest issues would arise."

Who would use chemical weapons?

Laura H. Kahn — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:46:27 -0400

The combatants in Syria are pointing fingers at each other. Syrian officials claim that the rebels used chemical weapons in a March 19th attack against Khan al-Assal, a town near Aleppo; the rebels say the Syrian government was the culprit. Whichever is the case, at least 25 people died and many others were wounded in the assault. The UN has decided to investigate: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, a former weapons monitor for the UN Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), to lead the investigation.

Science, art, and the legacy of Martyl

Kennette Benedict — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 11:27:07 -0400

Martyl Langsdorf, the artist who created the Doomsday Clock, died on March 26th at the age of 96 in Chicago. Known to many friends and fans simply as Martyl, she was a petite and vivacious woman who had an outsize influence on public consciousness about nuclear weapons through her design of the clock that first graced the cover of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947, and continues to be used today.

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.

Lessons not learned: Insider threats in pathogen research

Derrin Culp — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 20:54:38 -0400

In the classic film Dr. Strangelove, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper was the ultimate insider threat. As the nuclear-armed B-52s that Ripper unilaterally dispatched proceeded toward their Soviet targets, the American president confronted Air Force Gen. Buck Turgidson in exasperation: "When you instituted the human reliability tests, you assured me there was no possibility of such a thing ever occurring." To which Turgidson replied, "Well, I don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir."

Shooting down the Star Wars myth

Pavel Podvig — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:34:51 -0400

It has been 30 years since US President Ronald Reagan called for development of a missile defense system that was supposed to make nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) launched by Reagan's famous "Star Wars" speech in March 1983 has survived to the present day, but with ever-lower expectations.

Why humans should go to Mars

Laura H. Kahn — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 19:29:22 -0400

Humans first emerged from Africa around 60,000 years ago in search of new lands to explore and colonize. Since then, we've spread out across much of the planet and even gone into low Earth orbit in the International Space Station. The need to explore new frontiers appears to be embedded in our DNA.

Disarmament and the pro-life movement: A match made in heaven?

Russ Wellen — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:46:38 -0400

They identify with different ends of the political spectrum, but nuclear disarmament activists and anti-abortion protesters have something in common: A desire to protect innocent life.

That shared interest represents a major opportunity that disarmament activists are letting slip by. Though nuclear weapons pose as great a danger to the planet as ever, the disarmament movement has flagged since the end of the Cold War. It can and should reinvigorate itself by recruiting anti-abortion Christians.

The thin red line

Charles P. Blair — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 01:04:18 -0400

Both opposition forces and the Syrian government have alleged that chemical weapons were used in last Tuesday's attack on the village of Khan al-Assal, bringing to the fore one of the most potentially far-reaching of the many dangers that have arisen during Syria's civil war. Now entering its third year, the Syrian revolt -- by far the longest uprising of the Arab Spring -- is the first in history that threatens to violently topple a government armed with weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The meaning of Halabja

Jean Pascal Zanders — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 18:06:49 -0400

Halabja is a name etched in the history of chemical warfare. There are few documented instances of deliberate chemical weapons attacks against civilian communities; the one that Saddam Hussein's forces made against the Iraqi Kurdish town of Halabja 25 years ago is the largest. Human Rights Watch recorded more than 3,200 immediate fatalities, with many more Kurdish citizens exposed to clouds of poisonous gas.

Nonproliferation in a time of austerity

Fissile Materials Working Group — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:02:00 -0400

Since the early 1990s, the nonproliferation community has obsessed over the annual appropriations to programs at the US defense, state, and energy departments that are designed to keep weapons of mass destruction (WMD) out of the wrong hands. While the budgets of individual programs have fluctuated, the unmistakable trend in US nonproliferation spending was upward. Program managers could generally count on this year's budget being higher than last year's, and next year's being higher still.

Nuclear weapons cuts will make the United States safer

Kingston Reif — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:17:56 -0500

Nuclear arms control is back in the news.

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.