Wired.com: Inside London’s Secret Crisis-Command Bunker
If nuclear attack or civil breakdown ever threatens the United Kingdom, the heads of government and the military know where to go. Beneath the streets of London, deeper than the capitol’s famous tube system, exists a hidden bunker on constant standby.
Replete with blast doors, a broadcast studio and a giant screen resembling CNN’s massive touchscreen wall on The Situation Room, this nuclear safe house sits in wait for the end of the world. Welcome to the Ministry of Defence’s Crisis Command Center, subterranean England.
David Moore’s series The Last Things documents a complex to which no other photographer has ever gained access. According to Moore, the ministry’s official line is that the Crisis Command Center “doesn’t exist,” which is the case inasmuch as the policy of the ministry is not to discuss its facilities.
“I told the Ministry of Defence, ‘I am not a journalist, I am an artist,’” Moore said in a Skype interview. “That was very important. They needed to know I wasn’t doing an exposé.” Although Moore was unable to confirm or deny the fact, it is widely speculated that The Last Things documents the Pindar complex constructed beneath Whitehall in the 1990s.
As of today the facility has only been used for less-grandiose purposes as a communication center and to play out war-game scenarios. One gets the impression that it is an ill-timed response to a Cold War mentality, with its actual utility uncertain.
Prior to beginning the work in 2006, Moore enlisted the help of Angela Weight, former Keeper of Art at the Imperial War Museum in London. Together they lobbied ministry officials. “We had a series of meetings, slowly climbing the hierarchy of authority,” said Moore.
Always accompanied by a low-ranking officer, the photographer had a loose agreement about what he could and could not shoot. It was clear when certain doors were to remain locked.
“At a point, I wondered if I was being sold a lie — if I was being shown things that weren’t actually in operation,” he said. As the project progressed, however, his paranoia waned.
To this day, Moore is not certain why he was granted entry’ He was only told by a ministry official that his work “fell within operational guidelines.” By prior agreement, the ministry received several of Moore’s prints for its permanent art collection, which probably sweetened the deal.
Moore has been led to believe no other freelance photographer will ever gain access to the site, though interestingly, the ministry does employ its own in-house photographers, whose photos are presumably for use in internal reports.
Upon completion of the project, Moore and the Ministry of Defence convened for a censorship panel. No images could be — or have been — released without ministry approval.
“I was asked to digitally manipulate some of the images,” said Moore. “Door numbers [were redacted]. We haggled over descriptions and captions.”
As Weight describes in her afterword to The Last Things, “There was to be no compromise [on captions]; any form of linkage or association, such as the word ‘government’ for example, was firmly denied.”
The negotiations became part of Moore’s process. He came to think of these amendments as things added, not taken away: “I dedicate a page in the book to describing the changes I’ve made. I make it obvious.”
The Last Things continues Moore’s portfolio of works on secret and relevant state infrastructure. “My work is not nostalgic,” says Moore. “My photographs are always of live spaces. The crisis command center is not mothballed.” He’s previously taken a forensic view of the Britain’s Houses of Parliament and has since photographed the top-security jail cells for terrorist suspects inside Paddington Green Police Station, London. Moore is currently working on access to other classified sites that remain unnamed.
“My work shows hidden spaces,” he said. “I want to use photography as a democratic tool. Looking at state apparatus and panoptic sites, I see my work as an act of visual democracy.”
- – -
The Last Things, with texts by Chris Petit & Angela Weight is published by Dewi Lewis (2008). It is Moore’s third book.
Listen to a podcast of David Moore speaking about The Last Things at Belfast Exposed.
All photos © David Moore.
Tags: Crisis Command Center, David Moore, London, Ministry of Defence, Nuclear Attack, The Last Things
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Photo Enlargers Loom Like Dinosaurs of the Film Age
By Pete Brook January 18, 2011 | 3:13 pm | Categories: Gear, Photo Gallery, Studios, history
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Lab owner: Adrian Ensor
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There were 204 photo printing labs in and around London in 2006, printing images from film stock to paper. By 2009, only six remained.
In each of these labs’ darkrooms were photo enlargers, themselves quite large, that projected the images from film negatives onto a piece of photo paper. Richard Nicholson’s series Analog — The Last One Out, Please Turn On the Light is a requiem for these hulking machines, now gradually wending their way to obscurity and landfill.
For over a century, the vast infrastructure of film photography was steadily growing and evolving, but the rise of digital equipment over the last decade has forced it to decay exponentially. In many cases it’s disappearing entirely. Polaroid film has already been discontinued, and just last month the last rolls of Kodachrome were processed at Dwayne’s Photo in Parsons, Kansas.
Just because the use of analog printing tools is shrinking, however, doesn’t mean it will die altogether. As black-and-white printer Jim Margeree has reminded us, there is still a lot to talk about “beyond the trite ‘analog vs. digital’ clichés.” There is too much chatter about death in photography, and for photojournalism in particular. Nicholson’s Analog is a celebration as much as it is a goodbye.
Nicholson spoke with Raw File about his motives, his challenges, his own use of analog and digital technologies and just what happened to those giant enlargers:
Wired.com: Why this subject?
Richard Nicholson: I love darkrooms. My father built one when I was a child and introduced me to photography. I’ve always enjoyed printing my own work.
In 2006, the hire darkroom I was using became very quiet. Canon had just released the 5D camera and photographers were rushing to switch from film to digital. London labs were closing in quick succession.
The writing was on the wall for film, but I didn’t want to let it go. I started looking at the darkroom in a new light. I was most interested in the enlargers — hulking specimens of modernist industrial design. It struck me they had a human scale and form: a neck, head, two armatures. I felt sorry for them.
Each craft used to have its own highly engineered machines, but these have been rendered obsolete by the computer. I’m no Luddite. I wouldn’t turn the back the clock, but I think the crafts and these machines deserve to be remembered.
The project focuses on the darkrooms of professional printers. I wanted to photograph lived-in spaces. The personal details soften the hard lines of the machinery.
Monday, January 31, 2011
31 Jan, 2010: Mon: Nuclear news: Dagmar Wilson dies at 94; organizer of women's disarmament protesters
Los Angeles Times: Dagmar Wilson dies at 94; organizer of women's disarmament protesters
At the height of the Cold War, the illustrator and mother of three organized 50,000 women to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. Foes tried to paint her as a Communist, but failed miserably.
In 1961, the Berlin Wall went up, the Cold War arms race was on and Dagmar Wilson, a storybook illustrator and mother of three, steamed into the national spotlight.
A self-described "non-joiner," Wilson sparked a movement that on Nov. 1, 1961, drew an estimated 50,000 women across the country out of their homes and offices and into the streets to demonstrate for disarmament. Women Strike for Peace, the loose network of activists she founded, mounted the largest national women's peace protest of the 20th century and helped push the United States and the Soviet Union into signing a nuclear test-ban treaty two years later.
The protesters were not radicals, although Red hunters tried to portray them as such — and failed miserably. They were, like Wilson, well educated, middle-class women in white gloves and tasteful hats who were impelled by fears of radioactive milk and impatience with the men who ran peace groups and governments.
"You know how men are. They talk in abstractions and the technicalities of the bomb, almost as if this were all a game of chess. Well, it isn't," Wilson said shortly after the protest. "There are times, it seems to me, when the only thing to do is let out a loud scream.... Just women raising a hue and cry against nuclear weapons for all of them to cut it out."
Wilson, who was active in Women Strike for Peace through the early 1970s, died of natural causes Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., said her daughter Sally M. Ballin. She was 94.
Born Dagmar Searchinger in New York City on Jan. 25, 1916, she grew up in Europe, where her father was a CBS radio correspondent. She graduated in 1937 from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Soon after she married Christopher Wilson and moved to Washington, where he was a British Embassy officer.
When the '60s dawned, she was raising three girls and managing a busy career illustrating children's books. She eventually had 50 titles to her credit, including the classic "Poems to Read to the Very Young," published in 1961.
In September of that year, philosopher Bertrand Russell, then 89, was arrested for his part in an anti-nuclear bomb demonstration at London's Trafalgar Square. The night of the arrest Wilson and her husband were hosting a cocktail party at which she expressed her anger at Russell's jailing. "I felt like chartering a plane and going over to picket the jail," she said, but none of her guests seemed to share her alarm.
The next day she began calling every woman she knew. Soon afterward, a small group met in her living room. They decided to call themselves Women Strike for Peace and conceived a plan for women to leave their jobs and kitchens for a day in protest of what they believed was impending planetary crisis. Word spread through church groups, PTA networks and women's clubs, and six weeks later tens of thousands of women in 60 cities, including 4,000 women in Los Angeles, were mobilized.
President Kennedy watched from a White House window as Wilson's group of 1,500 women demonstrated at the foot of the Washington Monument. That day, the group sent letters to the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and her Soviet counterpart, Nina Khrushchev, imploring them to speak to their husbands about disarmament.
At a news conference two months later, the president said he had received the message of these "extremely earnest" women who were "concerned as we all are of the possibility of nuclear war." In 1963 he signed a partial nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union.
Wilson's high visibility in the protest made her a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which subpoenaed her in 1962 along with other Women Strike for Peace members. Dozens of women packed the hearing, turning a somber inquisition into brilliant guerrilla theater.
Whenever a woman rose to testify, another woman rose to present her with a flower, and when she was done speaking, she received hugs, kisses and applause. When Wilson's turn came, she was given a full bouquet.
She used humor to resist the committee's efforts to smear her as a Communist sympathizer. Would she, the committee asked, allow Nazis or fascists to join the organization? "If only we could get them!" she replied. Would she permit Communists to hold leadership positions in the group? "Unless everyone in the world joins in this fight, then God help us."
The next day's headlines were not flattering to the committee, which had destroyed the reputations of many men and women over the previous decade. One headline was particularly succinct: "Peace Gals Make Red Hunters Look Silly."
Wilson said later that her appearance before the committee was probably "the one great moment of my life."
By the end of the decade, a new generation of activists focused on U.S. involvement in Vietnam had flowered. Wilson withdrew to a quieter life as a landscape painter in Loudoun County, Va., where she was involved in local environmental and peace groups.
In addition to Ballin, of Burlington, Vt., she is survived by daughters Clare Wilson of Silver Spring, Md., and Jessica Wilson of Mt. Gilead, Va.; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
One of Wilson's last major acts for Women Strike for Peace was a peace mission to Hanoi in 1967, shortly after U.S. bombs began to fall on the city. In the book "The Price of Dissent," a 2001 collection of oral histories by Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, she described waiting by a bombed-out bridge on a moonlit night and recalling how she had gazed "at the same darn moon" before leaving Georgetown two weeks earlier.
"It just gave me an uncanny, 'one-planet' feeling," she said. "We live together on one Earth. Can we do it in peace? I still cherish that dream."
At the height of the Cold War, the illustrator and mother of three organized 50,000 women to demonstrate against nuclear weapons. Foes tried to paint her as a Communist, but failed miserably.
In 1961, the Berlin Wall went up, the Cold War arms race was on and Dagmar Wilson, a storybook illustrator and mother of three, steamed into the national spotlight.
A self-described "non-joiner," Wilson sparked a movement that on Nov. 1, 1961, drew an estimated 50,000 women across the country out of their homes and offices and into the streets to demonstrate for disarmament. Women Strike for Peace, the loose network of activists she founded, mounted the largest national women's peace protest of the 20th century and helped push the United States and the Soviet Union into signing a nuclear test-ban treaty two years later.
The protesters were not radicals, although Red hunters tried to portray them as such — and failed miserably. They were, like Wilson, well educated, middle-class women in white gloves and tasteful hats who were impelled by fears of radioactive milk and impatience with the men who ran peace groups and governments.
"You know how men are. They talk in abstractions and the technicalities of the bomb, almost as if this were all a game of chess. Well, it isn't," Wilson said shortly after the protest. "There are times, it seems to me, when the only thing to do is let out a loud scream.... Just women raising a hue and cry against nuclear weapons for all of them to cut it out."
Wilson, who was active in Women Strike for Peace through the early 1970s, died of natural causes Jan. 6 in Washington, D.C., said her daughter Sally M. Ballin. She was 94.
Born Dagmar Searchinger in New York City on Jan. 25, 1916, she grew up in Europe, where her father was a CBS radio correspondent. She graduated in 1937 from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Soon after she married Christopher Wilson and moved to Washington, where he was a British Embassy officer.
When the '60s dawned, she was raising three girls and managing a busy career illustrating children's books. She eventually had 50 titles to her credit, including the classic "Poems to Read to the Very Young," published in 1961.
In September of that year, philosopher Bertrand Russell, then 89, was arrested for his part in an anti-nuclear bomb demonstration at London's Trafalgar Square. The night of the arrest Wilson and her husband were hosting a cocktail party at which she expressed her anger at Russell's jailing. "I felt like chartering a plane and going over to picket the jail," she said, but none of her guests seemed to share her alarm.
The next day she began calling every woman she knew. Soon afterward, a small group met in her living room. They decided to call themselves Women Strike for Peace and conceived a plan for women to leave their jobs and kitchens for a day in protest of what they believed was impending planetary crisis. Word spread through church groups, PTA networks and women's clubs, and six weeks later tens of thousands of women in 60 cities, including 4,000 women in Los Angeles, were mobilized.
President Kennedy watched from a White House window as Wilson's group of 1,500 women demonstrated at the foot of the Washington Monument. That day, the group sent letters to the first lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, and her Soviet counterpart, Nina Khrushchev, imploring them to speak to their husbands about disarmament.
At a news conference two months later, the president said he had received the message of these "extremely earnest" women who were "concerned as we all are of the possibility of nuclear war." In 1963 he signed a partial nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union.
Wilson's high visibility in the protest made her a target of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which subpoenaed her in 1962 along with other Women Strike for Peace members. Dozens of women packed the hearing, turning a somber inquisition into brilliant guerrilla theater.
Whenever a woman rose to testify, another woman rose to present her with a flower, and when she was done speaking, she received hugs, kisses and applause. When Wilson's turn came, she was given a full bouquet.
She used humor to resist the committee's efforts to smear her as a Communist sympathizer. Would she, the committee asked, allow Nazis or fascists to join the organization? "If only we could get them!" she replied. Would she permit Communists to hold leadership positions in the group? "Unless everyone in the world joins in this fight, then God help us."
The next day's headlines were not flattering to the committee, which had destroyed the reputations of many men and women over the previous decade. One headline was particularly succinct: "Peace Gals Make Red Hunters Look Silly."
Wilson said later that her appearance before the committee was probably "the one great moment of my life."
By the end of the decade, a new generation of activists focused on U.S. involvement in Vietnam had flowered. Wilson withdrew to a quieter life as a landscape painter in Loudoun County, Va., where she was involved in local environmental and peace groups.
In addition to Ballin, of Burlington, Vt., she is survived by daughters Clare Wilson of Silver Spring, Md., and Jessica Wilson of Mt. Gilead, Va.; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
One of Wilson's last major acts for Women Strike for Peace was a peace mission to Hanoi in 1967, shortly after U.S. bombs began to fall on the city. In the book "The Price of Dissent," a 2001 collection of oral histories by Bud Schultz and Ruth Schultz, she described waiting by a bombed-out bridge on a moonlit night and recalling how she had gazed "at the same darn moon" before leaving Georgetown two weeks earlier.
"It just gave me an uncanny, 'one-planet' feeling," she said. "We live together on one Earth. Can we do it in peace? I still cherish that dream."
Friday, January 21, 2011
21 Jan 2011, Fri, Nuclear News: U.S. Nuclear Output Falls as Duke Shuts North Carolina Reactors
Bloomberg: U.S. Nuclear Output Falls as Duke Shuts North Carolina Reactors
U.S. nuclear-power production fell 1.8 percent to its lowest level in seven weeks after Duke Energy Corp. shut both units at its McGuire plant in North Carolina, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Production from U.S. reactors fell by 1,661 megawatts from yesterday to 93,111 megawatts, or 92 percent of capacity, the least since Nov. 30, according to a report today from the NRC and data compiled by Bloomberg. Seven of 104 power units were offline.
Duke Energy shut the McGuire 1 and 2 reactors after fish clogged an intake strainer from a pond used as a backup water source in case of an earthquake, the NRC said. The pond was treated about a year ago to kill the fish, the federal agency said. During the shutdown, unit 1 was manually tripped offline from 28 percent of capacity after a feedwater pump quit.
The reactors were operating at their full capacities of 1,100 megawatts each yesterday before the shutdown began at 11 a.m. local time. The plant is located 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Charlotte.
Exelon Corp. slowed its 619-megawatt Oyster Creek unit in New Jersey to 70 percent of capacity from full power yesterday. The plant is located 33 miles north of Atlantic City.
Scana Corp. boosted its 966-megawatt Virgil C. Summer reactor in South Carolina to 99 percent of capacity from 23 percent yesterday after planned maintenance on a reactor coolant pump that began three days ago. The plant is located near Jenkinsville, about 26 miles northwest of Columbia.
U.S. nuclear-power production fell 1.8 percent to its lowest level in seven weeks after Duke Energy Corp. shut both units at its McGuire plant in North Carolina, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Production from U.S. reactors fell by 1,661 megawatts from yesterday to 93,111 megawatts, or 92 percent of capacity, the least since Nov. 30, according to a report today from the NRC and data compiled by Bloomberg. Seven of 104 power units were offline.
Duke Energy shut the McGuire 1 and 2 reactors after fish clogged an intake strainer from a pond used as a backup water source in case of an earthquake, the NRC said. The pond was treated about a year ago to kill the fish, the federal agency said. During the shutdown, unit 1 was manually tripped offline from 28 percent of capacity after a feedwater pump quit.
The reactors were operating at their full capacities of 1,100 megawatts each yesterday before the shutdown began at 11 a.m. local time. The plant is located 15 miles (24 kilometers) north of Charlotte.
Exelon Corp. slowed its 619-megawatt Oyster Creek unit in New Jersey to 70 percent of capacity from full power yesterday. The plant is located 33 miles north of Atlantic City.
Scana Corp. boosted its 966-megawatt Virgil C. Summer reactor in South Carolina to 99 percent of capacity from 23 percent yesterday after planned maintenance on a reactor coolant pump that began three days ago. The plant is located near Jenkinsville, about 26 miles northwest of Columbia.
21 Jan 2011, Fri, Nuclear News: Iran nuclear talks enter final day, little to show
Reuters: Iran nuclear talks enter final day, little to show
(Reuters) - World powers enter a second and final day of talks with Iran on Saturday, having made scant progress toward persuading the Islamic Republic to curb its nuclear program on the first day of the meeting in Istanbul.
There was some relief that Iran was ready to continue, as diplomats expressed concern that talks could have collapsed on the first day as both sides dug in around old positions.
The West suspects that Iran plans to develop a nuclear weapon and negotiators went into the Istanbul meeting with low expectations for any breakthrough in the eight-year-old stand-off. Tehran says its atomic energy program is peaceful.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is the lead negotiator for the big powers -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
"She seems to have had some success in trying narrow the gaps and the Iranians seem to be responding positively to her," a Western diplomat said.
Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili also met separately with heads of the Russian and Chinese delegations, but it was uncertain whether he would agree to meet Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Bill Burns, the head of the U.S. team.
"We are fully prepared to have a conversation with Iran, but whether it will happen remains to be seen," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington.
Burns and Jalili met on the sidelines of an earlier round of talks in Geneva in 2009, but such contacts have been rarely confirmed by the Iranian side and usually have taken place behind the scenes since the fall of the U.S.-backed shah in Iran in 1979.
Early on during Friday's sessions, an Iranian delegate said Iran refused to discuss any suspension of its uranium enrichment activities during the Istanbul talks.
Iran has ignored Security Council resolutions demanding it suspend enrichment, with trade and other benefits offered in return, and refused to grant unfettered access for U.N. nuclear inspectors.
Uranium enriched to a low degree yields fuel for electricity or, if refined to a very high level, the fissile core of a nuclear bomb.
Iran's nuclear standoff with the West has escalated in the past year, with the United Nations imposing new sanctions and Western states rejecting a revised proposal for Iran to swap some of its fuel abroad as too little, too late.
Ashton outlined a possible revised offer for a nuclear fuel swap that would entail Iran handing over a large chunk of its stockpile of low enriched uranium (LEU). But no offer was made as Iran's preconditions included a suspension of economic sanctions, a Western diplomat said.
The big powers are looking for some gesture from Iran that would demonstrate serious intent to engage and form the basis for a next round of talks.
They are prepared to revise 2009 proposals for a swap, whereby Iran would exchange some of its LEU for highly processed fuel to keep a Tehran reactor that makes medical isotopes running.
The idea tentatively was agreed in October 2009 only for Iran to back out some weeks later.
Since then, Iran's known LEU stockpile has doubled and it has begun enriching uranium up to 20 percent fissile purity for conversion into reactor fuel.
Consequently, the Western powers would want Iran to exchange a far larger amount than the 1,200 kg (2,645 lb) of LEU agreed in 2009.
They want to prevent Tehran from accumulating enough for a nuclear weapon while negotiations proceed on a broader solution to the crisis.
Nuclear experts David Albright and Andrea Stricker said Iran's nuclear program was "suffering mounting setbacks," giving more time for diplomacy to resolve the dispute and reducing the imminence of potential military strikes, should either Israel of the United States opt to use force.
Foreign intelligence agencies appeared to have targeted Iran's nuclear work in various ways, such as sabotage of equipment it seeks abroad, cyber attacks as well as the assassination of nuclear experts, they said in an analysis.
"But predicting when Iran might obtain nuclear weapons is highly uncertain," Albright and Stricker, of the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security, wrote.
"Most international analysts believe Iran has not yet made the critical decision about whether to build nuclear weapons. Yet Tehran's actions increasingly appear to be working toward that capability," they added.
(Reuters) - World powers enter a second and final day of talks with Iran on Saturday, having made scant progress toward persuading the Islamic Republic to curb its nuclear program on the first day of the meeting in Istanbul.
There was some relief that Iran was ready to continue, as diplomats expressed concern that talks could have collapsed on the first day as both sides dug in around old positions.
The West suspects that Iran plans to develop a nuclear weapon and negotiators went into the Istanbul meeting with low expectations for any breakthrough in the eight-year-old stand-off. Tehran says its atomic energy program is peaceful.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is the lead negotiator for the big powers -- the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.
"She seems to have had some success in trying narrow the gaps and the Iranians seem to be responding positively to her," a Western diplomat said.
Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili also met separately with heads of the Russian and Chinese delegations, but it was uncertain whether he would agree to meet Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Bill Burns, the head of the U.S. team.
"We are fully prepared to have a conversation with Iran, but whether it will happen remains to be seen," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington.
Burns and Jalili met on the sidelines of an earlier round of talks in Geneva in 2009, but such contacts have been rarely confirmed by the Iranian side and usually have taken place behind the scenes since the fall of the U.S.-backed shah in Iran in 1979.
Early on during Friday's sessions, an Iranian delegate said Iran refused to discuss any suspension of its uranium enrichment activities during the Istanbul talks.
Iran has ignored Security Council resolutions demanding it suspend enrichment, with trade and other benefits offered in return, and refused to grant unfettered access for U.N. nuclear inspectors.
Uranium enriched to a low degree yields fuel for electricity or, if refined to a very high level, the fissile core of a nuclear bomb.
Iran's nuclear standoff with the West has escalated in the past year, with the United Nations imposing new sanctions and Western states rejecting a revised proposal for Iran to swap some of its fuel abroad as too little, too late.
Ashton outlined a possible revised offer for a nuclear fuel swap that would entail Iran handing over a large chunk of its stockpile of low enriched uranium (LEU). But no offer was made as Iran's preconditions included a suspension of economic sanctions, a Western diplomat said.
The big powers are looking for some gesture from Iran that would demonstrate serious intent to engage and form the basis for a next round of talks.
They are prepared to revise 2009 proposals for a swap, whereby Iran would exchange some of its LEU for highly processed fuel to keep a Tehran reactor that makes medical isotopes running.
The idea tentatively was agreed in October 2009 only for Iran to back out some weeks later.
Since then, Iran's known LEU stockpile has doubled and it has begun enriching uranium up to 20 percent fissile purity for conversion into reactor fuel.
Consequently, the Western powers would want Iran to exchange a far larger amount than the 1,200 kg (2,645 lb) of LEU agreed in 2009.
They want to prevent Tehran from accumulating enough for a nuclear weapon while negotiations proceed on a broader solution to the crisis.
Nuclear experts David Albright and Andrea Stricker said Iran's nuclear program was "suffering mounting setbacks," giving more time for diplomacy to resolve the dispute and reducing the imminence of potential military strikes, should either Israel of the United States opt to use force.
Foreign intelligence agencies appeared to have targeted Iran's nuclear work in various ways, such as sabotage of equipment it seeks abroad, cyber attacks as well as the assassination of nuclear experts, they said in an analysis.
"But predicting when Iran might obtain nuclear weapons is highly uncertain," Albright and Stricker, of the U.S.-based Institute for Science and International Security, wrote.
"Most international analysts believe Iran has not yet made the critical decision about whether to build nuclear weapons. Yet Tehran's actions increasingly appear to be working toward that capability," they added.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
20 Jan, 2010, Thu, Nuclear News: France plans underwater nuclear reactor
UPI.com: France plans underwater nuclear reactor
PARIS, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Plans to build underwater civilian nuclear reactors are in the works in France, with a prototype expected to be rolled out in 2016, officials said.
DCNS, the French state-controlled naval company, said it will work in partnership with French companies Areva, EDF, and the French Atomic Energy Commission to build small- and medium-sized underwater reactors to provide electricity to consumers on land, Radio France Internationale reported Wednesday.
The company said its Flexblue project, expected to enter the building phase in 2013, is in response to global energy challenges and renewed interest in nuclear power.
Flexblue "reduces greenhouse gas emissions while conserving fossil fuels," the company said in a statement.
Engineers have been working on plans to create a capsule-shaped reactor that would be moored on the sea floor several miles off the coast, the company said.
DCNS Chief Executive Officer Patrick Boissier told the French publication Usine Nouvelle underwater reactors are safer, and less vulnerable to terrorist attack and natural disasters than those on land.
"The reactor would produce safe, competitive energy, that does not emit any carbon," Boissier said.
Much of France's electricity is from nuclear power.
PARIS, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Plans to build underwater civilian nuclear reactors are in the works in France, with a prototype expected to be rolled out in 2016, officials said.
DCNS, the French state-controlled naval company, said it will work in partnership with French companies Areva, EDF, and the French Atomic Energy Commission to build small- and medium-sized underwater reactors to provide electricity to consumers on land, Radio France Internationale reported Wednesday.
The company said its Flexblue project, expected to enter the building phase in 2013, is in response to global energy challenges and renewed interest in nuclear power.
Flexblue "reduces greenhouse gas emissions while conserving fossil fuels," the company said in a statement.
Engineers have been working on plans to create a capsule-shaped reactor that would be moored on the sea floor several miles off the coast, the company said.
DCNS Chief Executive Officer Patrick Boissier told the French publication Usine Nouvelle underwater reactors are safer, and less vulnerable to terrorist attack and natural disasters than those on land.
"The reactor would produce safe, competitive energy, that does not emit any carbon," Boissier said.
Much of France's electricity is from nuclear power.
20 Jan, 2010, Thur, Nuclear News: GDF Said to Pull Out of Venture Building Romania Nuclear Plants
Bloomberg: GDF Said to Pull Out of Venture Building Romania Nuclear Plants
GDF Suez SA will pull out of an agreement to build two nuclear reactors in Romania, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The company is withdrawing from the venture because it’s been unable to agree a regulatory framework for the project, the person said, declining to be identified before an official announcement.
The EnergoNuclear venture planned for the first reactor to start in 2017, according to its website. The government currently owns 60 percent of the venture, which also includes Italy’s Enel SpA, Iberdrola SA of Spain, GDF Suez, Germany’s RWE AG and steelmaker ArcelorMittal.
GDF Suez SA will pull out of an agreement to build two nuclear reactors in Romania, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
The company is withdrawing from the venture because it’s been unable to agree a regulatory framework for the project, the person said, declining to be identified before an official announcement.
The EnergoNuclear venture planned for the first reactor to start in 2017, according to its website. The government currently owns 60 percent of the venture, which also includes Italy’s Enel SpA, Iberdrola SA of Spain, GDF Suez, Germany’s RWE AG and steelmaker ArcelorMittal.
19 Jan, 2010, Wed, Nuclear News: New agreement sets up Idaho to become nuclear waste site
Los Angeles Times: Andrus: New agreement sets up Idaho to become nuclear waste site
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus said he's troubled by a new deal that would allow even small amounts of nuclear waste to be shipped to eastern Idaho.
Andrus was instrumental in negotiating an agreement in 1995 with the federal government to limit nuclear waste shipments coming into the state for any reason.
In a Jan. 11 letter obtained by the Idaho Statesman, Andrus raises questions with Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter about a new agreement that clears shipments of small amounts of waste to the Idaho National Laboratory for research.
The new agreement essentially makes Idaho a final destination for nuclear waste, Andrus said.
"The good news is the Department of Energy has found a place to store nuclear waste," Andrus said. "The bad news is it's between Idaho Falls and Arco."
Otter, a Republican, said the 880 pounds of used fuel coming to the lab annually under the new agreement was being used for research and will count toward existing limits set in the state's 1995 nuclear waste agreement with the federal government.
That agreement requires the federal government to remove all 300 tons of spent fuel at the lab by 2035, or pay the state $60,000 a day if it fails to do so.
"What this agreement does is simply set forth the process by which spent commercial fuel research can occur, recognizing and adhering to all of the limits and deadlines of the 1995 agreement," said Jon Hanian, Otter's spokesman.
Andrus, however, said the change, combined with the federal decision not to store nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, means Idaho will end up storing more nuclear waste.
In his letter, Andrus said he also finds it troubling the state is willing to get tough with the federal government on wolves and health care reform but has decided not to take a stand on allowing new sources of nuclear waste to come to the state.
Andrus teamed with former Republican Idaho Gov. Phil Batt to forge the original agreement limiting nuclear waste shipments to Idaho, fearing radioactive and toxic Cold War garbage shipped to the 890-square-mile nuclear reservation from sites including the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Golden, Colo., would spread to the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer and eventually the Snake River.
Batt supports the new agreement made by Otter.
"I think it's a good deal for Idaho and a good deal for the nation," Batt said. "We are a part of the United States and should be working together to achieve energy independence. This is not a partisan issue."
Andrus said the old agreement allowed small amounts of nuclear waste for research into Idaho with a deadline for it to be removed.
John Grossenbacher, Idaho National Laboratory director, said the procedure was expensive and made long-term research programs difficult to set up — problems eliminated with the new agreement.
"The agreement gives us much more flexibility," said Grossenbacher. "We can do our job much more effectively."
Energy Department spokesman Brad Bugger said the agency has spent more than $700 million to upgrade the Idaho National Laboratory since 2005. He said the number of jobs at the lab have increased from 3,300 in 2005 to 4,075.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus said he's troubled by a new deal that would allow even small amounts of nuclear waste to be shipped to eastern Idaho.
Andrus was instrumental in negotiating an agreement in 1995 with the federal government to limit nuclear waste shipments coming into the state for any reason.
In a Jan. 11 letter obtained by the Idaho Statesman, Andrus raises questions with Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter about a new agreement that clears shipments of small amounts of waste to the Idaho National Laboratory for research.
The new agreement essentially makes Idaho a final destination for nuclear waste, Andrus said.
"The good news is the Department of Energy has found a place to store nuclear waste," Andrus said. "The bad news is it's between Idaho Falls and Arco."
Otter, a Republican, said the 880 pounds of used fuel coming to the lab annually under the new agreement was being used for research and will count toward existing limits set in the state's 1995 nuclear waste agreement with the federal government.
That agreement requires the federal government to remove all 300 tons of spent fuel at the lab by 2035, or pay the state $60,000 a day if it fails to do so.
"What this agreement does is simply set forth the process by which spent commercial fuel research can occur, recognizing and adhering to all of the limits and deadlines of the 1995 agreement," said Jon Hanian, Otter's spokesman.
Andrus, however, said the change, combined with the federal decision not to store nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, means Idaho will end up storing more nuclear waste.
In his letter, Andrus said he also finds it troubling the state is willing to get tough with the federal government on wolves and health care reform but has decided not to take a stand on allowing new sources of nuclear waste to come to the state.
Andrus teamed with former Republican Idaho Gov. Phil Batt to forge the original agreement limiting nuclear waste shipments to Idaho, fearing radioactive and toxic Cold War garbage shipped to the 890-square-mile nuclear reservation from sites including the Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Golden, Colo., would spread to the Eastern Snake Plain Aquifer and eventually the Snake River.
Batt supports the new agreement made by Otter.
"I think it's a good deal for Idaho and a good deal for the nation," Batt said. "We are a part of the United States and should be working together to achieve energy independence. This is not a partisan issue."
Andrus said the old agreement allowed small amounts of nuclear waste for research into Idaho with a deadline for it to be removed.
John Grossenbacher, Idaho National Laboratory director, said the procedure was expensive and made long-term research programs difficult to set up — problems eliminated with the new agreement.
"The agreement gives us much more flexibility," said Grossenbacher. "We can do our job much more effectively."
Energy Department spokesman Brad Bugger said the agency has spent more than $700 million to upgrade the Idaho National Laboratory since 2005. He said the number of jobs at the lab have increased from 3,300 in 2005 to 4,075.
Quake risk may be lower at Calif nuclear plant
Note.... one would hope that regardless of the estimated risk of earthquake in any given area, any nuclear power plant, built anywhere in the world, regardless of whether if its in a known-earthquake zone or not, would be built to withstand a magniture 10 earthquake!
SFGate: Quake risk may be lower at Calif nuclear plant
(01-20) 09:10 PST San Luis Obispo, Calif. (AP) --
The earthquake risk near a California central coast nuclear plant may lower than previously thought.
When the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was built 30 years ago, it was estimated the area's Hosgri Fault could produce a magnitude-7.5 quake. The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plant near San Luis Obispo was designed to withstand that size quake.
PG&E seismologist Norm Abrahamson now says recent studies and sophisticated geological modeling have provided 10 times more data about the Hosgri Fault. The risk has been downgraded to about half the original estimate.
The San Luis Obispo Tribunes says the shake potential is now about the same as three nearby smaller faults — the Los Osos, San Luis Bay and Shoreline faults.
The new information was presented Wednesday to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
SFGate: Quake risk may be lower at Calif nuclear plant
(01-20) 09:10 PST San Luis Obispo, Calif. (AP) --
The earthquake risk near a California central coast nuclear plant may lower than previously thought.
When the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant was built 30 years ago, it was estimated the area's Hosgri Fault could produce a magnitude-7.5 quake. The Pacific Gas & Electric Co. plant near San Luis Obispo was designed to withstand that size quake.
PG&E seismologist Norm Abrahamson now says recent studies and sophisticated geological modeling have provided 10 times more data about the Hosgri Fault. The risk has been downgraded to about half the original estimate.
The San Luis Obispo Tribunes says the shake potential is now about the same as three nearby smaller faults — the Los Osos, San Luis Bay and Shoreline faults.
The new information was presented Wednesday to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
20 Jan, 2010, Thur, Nuclear News: Turkey to host nuclear talks for Iran, U.N. Security Council members, Germany
The Washington Post: Turkey to host nuclear talks for Iran, U.N. Security Council members, Germany
ISTANBUL - Turkey will once again take on the challenge of facilitating discussion between Iran and the international community Friday, when Iranian officials and representatives of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany convene for nuclear talks in Istanbul.
Turkey's official role during the talks is that of host, as the European Union's foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, emphasized last week during a preparatory visit to Istanbul. "The negotiations began with the P5-plus-1, and we are right to continue the way that we have started," Ashton said.
Nevertheless, Turkey's involvement in Iranian nuclear talks represents an important part of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's efforts in the Middle East.
Ankara has been striving to attain greater influence in the region, chiefly through pursuit of Davutoglu's policies of "zero problems with neighbors" and "strategic depth." The two-pronged approach focuses on working through points of contention with neighboring countries to promote regional stability and prosperity.
"Turkey has the most to lose if the situation in the region gets worse," said Arzu Celalifer Ekinci, a Middle East policy analyst.
Last May, Turkey and Brazil brokered the Tehran Declaration, a nuclear fuel swap deal on the eve of a U.N. Security Council vote on sanctions against Iran. The United States and its European partners rejected the deal, arguing that it came too late and offered too little: The amount of enriched uranium to be swapped was inadequate, they said, and the declaration would hinder a new round of sanctions.
The rebuff prompted Turkey to temporarily curtail its nuclear mediation efforts. "When the voices criticizing Turkey's involvement in the Iranian nuclear talks grew louder, Turkey chose, as it should have, to back off a bit while still continuing its efforts," Ekinci said.
Bilateral relations between Turkey and Iran remain relatively close, however, as Ankara seeks to increase trade and regional cooperation with Iran. Davutoglu and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ali Ekber Salihi, met Tuesday to discuss not only the nuclear negotiations but also recent developments in Lebanon.
Turkey's increased involvement, not just with Iran but throughout the Middle East, has become a cornerstone of the country's more hands-on approach to foreign policy.
Its efforts to help resolve the crisis in Lebanon have included joining Syria and Qatar for a trilateral meeting in Damascus, as well as a trip to Beirut by Davutoglu. That mediation attempt was suspended Thursday.
Turkey was also a facilitator of the Syrian-Israeli talks last year, though that effort also proved unsuccessful. Turkey's own relations with Israel soured in June after an Israeli raid on a Turkish aid ship headed to the blockaded Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of nine Turks.
Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel, but the two countries maintain close economic ties. Foreign Ministry officials have not ruled out normalizing relations if Israel agrees to apologize for the raid and offer compensation to the families of the victims.
Davutoglu has repeatedly stressed that his "zero problems with neighbors" policy extends to all of Turkey's neighbors. That policy is "great in theory, but very difficult in practice," Ekinci said.
ISTANBUL - Turkey will once again take on the challenge of facilitating discussion between Iran and the international community Friday, when Iranian officials and representatives of the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany convene for nuclear talks in Istanbul.
Turkey's official role during the talks is that of host, as the European Union's foreign affairs chief, Catherine Ashton, emphasized last week during a preparatory visit to Istanbul. "The negotiations began with the P5-plus-1, and we are right to continue the way that we have started," Ashton said.
Nevertheless, Turkey's involvement in Iranian nuclear talks represents an important part of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's efforts in the Middle East.
Ankara has been striving to attain greater influence in the region, chiefly through pursuit of Davutoglu's policies of "zero problems with neighbors" and "strategic depth." The two-pronged approach focuses on working through points of contention with neighboring countries to promote regional stability and prosperity.
"Turkey has the most to lose if the situation in the region gets worse," said Arzu Celalifer Ekinci, a Middle East policy analyst.
Last May, Turkey and Brazil brokered the Tehran Declaration, a nuclear fuel swap deal on the eve of a U.N. Security Council vote on sanctions against Iran. The United States and its European partners rejected the deal, arguing that it came too late and offered too little: The amount of enriched uranium to be swapped was inadequate, they said, and the declaration would hinder a new round of sanctions.
The rebuff prompted Turkey to temporarily curtail its nuclear mediation efforts. "When the voices criticizing Turkey's involvement in the Iranian nuclear talks grew louder, Turkey chose, as it should have, to back off a bit while still continuing its efforts," Ekinci said.
Bilateral relations between Turkey and Iran remain relatively close, however, as Ankara seeks to increase trade and regional cooperation with Iran. Davutoglu and his Iranian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ali Ekber Salihi, met Tuesday to discuss not only the nuclear negotiations but also recent developments in Lebanon.
Turkey's increased involvement, not just with Iran but throughout the Middle East, has become a cornerstone of the country's more hands-on approach to foreign policy.
Its efforts to help resolve the crisis in Lebanon have included joining Syria and Qatar for a trilateral meeting in Damascus, as well as a trip to Beirut by Davutoglu. That mediation attempt was suspended Thursday.
Turkey was also a facilitator of the Syrian-Israeli talks last year, though that effort also proved unsuccessful. Turkey's own relations with Israel soured in June after an Israeli raid on a Turkish aid ship headed to the blockaded Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of nine Turks.
Turkey withdrew its ambassador to Israel, but the two countries maintain close economic ties. Foreign Ministry officials have not ruled out normalizing relations if Israel agrees to apologize for the raid and offer compensation to the families of the victims.
Davutoglu has repeatedly stressed that his "zero problems with neighbors" policy extends to all of Turkey's neighbors. That policy is "great in theory, but very difficult in practice," Ekinci said.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
18 Jan, 2011, Tuesday: Nuclear News: Stuxnet Increasingly Sounding Like A Movie Plot
TechDirt: Stuxnet Increasingly Sounding Like A Movie Plot
Like many people, I've been following the story of the Stuxnet worm with great interest. As you probably know, this worm was apparently designed to infect Iranian nuclear operations to create problems -- and supposedly setting back their nuclear operations quite a bit. The NY Times came out with a fascinating investigative report about the background of Stuxnet over the weekend, and it's worth a read. What I found most entertaining was the rather Hollywood-trickery angle by which Stuxnet did its dirty work:
That latter part is, indeed, right out of a movie. I guess sometimes truth does mimic fiction. That said, I'm still trying to figure out how or why Iran allowed any sort of outside code or computers into their nuclear operations.
Like many people, I've been following the story of the Stuxnet worm with great interest. As you probably know, this worm was apparently designed to infect Iranian nuclear operations to create problems -- and supposedly setting back their nuclear operations quite a bit. The NY Times came out with a fascinating investigative report about the background of Stuxnet over the weekend, and it's worth a read. What I found most entertaining was the rather Hollywood-trickery angle by which Stuxnet did its dirty work:
The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.
That latter part is, indeed, right out of a movie. I guess sometimes truth does mimic fiction. That said, I'm still trying to figure out how or why Iran allowed any sort of outside code or computers into their nuclear operations.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Booklist: The Oxford Guide to the History of Physics and Astronomy
The Oxford Guide to the History of Physics and Astronomy, edited by John L. Heilbron
Oxford University Press, 2005
348 pages plus index
Library: 530.03 OXF
Biographies, and explanations of historical events under the following categories:
Historiography of Science
-General Concepts and Approaches
-Major periods in time
-Major Divisions
Organization and Diffusion of Science
-The Scientific Profession
-Generalized Institutions
-Individual Institutions
-Diffusion (beyond science)
Communication (within science)
Patronage
The Body of Scientific Knowledge
-Epistemology and Methodology
-Cross-cutting concepts
-Major Subject Divisions
-Minor Subject Divisions
-Theoretical Constructs
Apparatus and Instruments
-In general
-In particular
-In use
-Intellectual
-Social
Geographical
Uses
-Applied Sciences
Biographies
Oxford University Press, 2005
348 pages plus index
Library: 530.03 OXF
Biographies, and explanations of historical events under the following categories:
Historiography of Science
-General Concepts and Approaches
-Major periods in time
-Major Divisions
Organization and Diffusion of Science
-The Scientific Profession
-Generalized Institutions
-Individual Institutions
-Diffusion (beyond science)
Communication (within science)
Patronage
The Body of Scientific Knowledge
-Epistemology and Methodology
-Cross-cutting concepts
-Major Subject Divisions
-Minor Subject Divisions
-Theoretical Constructs
Apparatus and Instruments
-In general
-In particular
-In use
-Intellectual
-Social
Geographical
Uses
-Applied Sciences
Biographies
Saturday, January 15, 2011
15 Jan, 2011, Sat, Nuclear News:
TopNews360.TCM.net: Gates gets tour of Chinese nuclear base
By Associated Press
MUTIANYU, China (AP) — China invited U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates inside its nuclear warfare headquarters on Wednesday, giving him a rare glimpse into control of weapons that could one day be launched at the United States.
Both the U.S. and China have long–range missiles that could reach the other's shores. Both nations say they have no intention of using the weapons that way.
"There was a discussion of nuclear strategy and their overall approach to conflict," including China's policy of not using nuclear weapons pre–emptively, Gates told reporters afterward.
"It was a pretty wide–ranging conversation, pretty open," Gates said.
He spoke atop China's Great Wall, where he paid a brief tourist visit before leaving the country.
Gates' assignment during four days in China was to patch up damaged ties between the two militaries. He claimed success Wednesday, saying military leaders he met support broader engagement.
"I think the discussions were very productive and set the stage for taking the military–to–military relationship to the next level," he said.
Gates said that during the base visit China's commander of nuclear rocket forces, Gen. Jing Zhiyuan, accepted an invitation to visit U.S. Strategic Command headquarters in Nebraska.
The weapons command center in the Beijing suburb of Qinqhe is a site a few U.S. officials have visited previously, including former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2005, so Gates was unlikely to learn much about China's capabilities that was not already known. Chinese military officials also routinely scrub all traces of truly sensitive materials before allowing Westerners inside such places, as Gates seemed to acknowledge Tuesday. Reporters were barred from the site.
Still, Gates' visit to the base was sought by the United States to balance the 2009 visit of a senior Chinese general to U.S. Strategic Command.
The Chinese base maintains control over nuclear and conventional strategic missile forces, although U.S. analysts have said wartime operations probably would be conducted from another, more secretive site. China has short–, medium–, long–, and intercontinental–range ballistic missiles.
China maintains a nuclear arsenal of about 200 warheads deliverable by land– and submarine–based missiles as well as bomber aircraft, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
China last week reaffirmed its commitment not to use nuclear weapons pre–emptively.
Foreign observers have suggested China might abandon its no first–use policy in the event of a major crisis over Taiwan or other crucial concerns, although ranking Chinese military officers and government–backed scholars repeatedly have denied such speculation.
Gates' four–day trip to China was dominated by the effort to repair strained military ties ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington next week. A senior Chinese diplomat said Wednesday that Hu would call for new talks on North Korea during the trip.
Gates met Hu on Tuesday.
The U.S. defense secretary's visit turned the page on a rocky year in which China pulled out of military talks and withheld an earlier invitation to Gates in protest of a nearly $6.4 billion arms sale to China's rival, Taiwan.
China agreed Monday to more direct military cooperation with the United States but stopped short of the broad give and take the United States says would benefit both nations. Gates said China is taking seriously his proposal to erect a new, more durable framework for military talks. He hopes to convene the first such discussions in the first half of 2011.
The security talks would be a step beyond current contacts largely focused on maritime issues, and would cover nuclear and missile defense issues as well as cyberwarfare and military uses of space.
Hu praised the renewal of lower–level military exchanges with the U.S. during his meeting with Gates. China made sure Gates saw the highest–level officials, and threw lavish banquets and lunches for him.
Gates' long–delayed visit would be "very helpful in promoting mutual understanding and trust and facilitate improvement and development of military–to–military relations between our two countries," Hu said during their meeting at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of parliament in downtown Beijing.
For now, the United States and China will expand the fragile discussions between the two militaries and work more closely in noncombat areas such as counterterrorism and counterpiracy.
Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie said China wants to avoid "misunderstanding and miscalculation" between the two militaries, a nod toward the open lines of communication sought by the United States as a way to stop either side from blundering into war.
China conducted the first test flight of a radar–evading fighter jet just hours before Gates met with Hu on Tuesday. Gates told reporters afterward that he asked Hu whether the test was timed intentionally to coincide with his visit and that he took Hu "at his word" that it was not.
Guan Youfei, deputy director of Foreign Affairs Office of the Defense Ministry, said later, "The development of China's military hardware is not aimed at any other country or any specific target" and the timing of the stealth fighter test "was a matter of routine working arrangements."
By Associated Press
MUTIANYU, China (AP) — China invited U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates inside its nuclear warfare headquarters on Wednesday, giving him a rare glimpse into control of weapons that could one day be launched at the United States.
Both the U.S. and China have long–range missiles that could reach the other's shores. Both nations say they have no intention of using the weapons that way.
"There was a discussion of nuclear strategy and their overall approach to conflict," including China's policy of not using nuclear weapons pre–emptively, Gates told reporters afterward.
"It was a pretty wide–ranging conversation, pretty open," Gates said.
He spoke atop China's Great Wall, where he paid a brief tourist visit before leaving the country.
Gates' assignment during four days in China was to patch up damaged ties between the two militaries. He claimed success Wednesday, saying military leaders he met support broader engagement.
"I think the discussions were very productive and set the stage for taking the military–to–military relationship to the next level," he said.
Gates said that during the base visit China's commander of nuclear rocket forces, Gen. Jing Zhiyuan, accepted an invitation to visit U.S. Strategic Command headquarters in Nebraska.
The weapons command center in the Beijing suburb of Qinqhe is a site a few U.S. officials have visited previously, including former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in 2005, so Gates was unlikely to learn much about China's capabilities that was not already known. Chinese military officials also routinely scrub all traces of truly sensitive materials before allowing Westerners inside such places, as Gates seemed to acknowledge Tuesday. Reporters were barred from the site.
Still, Gates' visit to the base was sought by the United States to balance the 2009 visit of a senior Chinese general to U.S. Strategic Command.
The Chinese base maintains control over nuclear and conventional strategic missile forces, although U.S. analysts have said wartime operations probably would be conducted from another, more secretive site. China has short–, medium–, long–, and intercontinental–range ballistic missiles.
China maintains a nuclear arsenal of about 200 warheads deliverable by land– and submarine–based missiles as well as bomber aircraft, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
China last week reaffirmed its commitment not to use nuclear weapons pre–emptively.
Foreign observers have suggested China might abandon its no first–use policy in the event of a major crisis over Taiwan or other crucial concerns, although ranking Chinese military officers and government–backed scholars repeatedly have denied such speculation.
Gates' four–day trip to China was dominated by the effort to repair strained military ties ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit to Washington next week. A senior Chinese diplomat said Wednesday that Hu would call for new talks on North Korea during the trip.
Gates met Hu on Tuesday.
The U.S. defense secretary's visit turned the page on a rocky year in which China pulled out of military talks and withheld an earlier invitation to Gates in protest of a nearly $6.4 billion arms sale to China's rival, Taiwan.
China agreed Monday to more direct military cooperation with the United States but stopped short of the broad give and take the United States says would benefit both nations. Gates said China is taking seriously his proposal to erect a new, more durable framework for military talks. He hopes to convene the first such discussions in the first half of 2011.
The security talks would be a step beyond current contacts largely focused on maritime issues, and would cover nuclear and missile defense issues as well as cyberwarfare and military uses of space.
Hu praised the renewal of lower–level military exchanges with the U.S. during his meeting with Gates. China made sure Gates saw the highest–level officials, and threw lavish banquets and lunches for him.
Gates' long–delayed visit would be "very helpful in promoting mutual understanding and trust and facilitate improvement and development of military–to–military relations between our two countries," Hu said during their meeting at the Great Hall of the People, the seat of parliament in downtown Beijing.
For now, the United States and China will expand the fragile discussions between the two militaries and work more closely in noncombat areas such as counterterrorism and counterpiracy.
Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Liang Guanglie said China wants to avoid "misunderstanding and miscalculation" between the two militaries, a nod toward the open lines of communication sought by the United States as a way to stop either side from blundering into war.
China conducted the first test flight of a radar–evading fighter jet just hours before Gates met with Hu on Tuesday. Gates told reporters afterward that he asked Hu whether the test was timed intentionally to coincide with his visit and that he took Hu "at his word" that it was not.
Guan Youfei, deputy director of Foreign Affairs Office of the Defense Ministry, said later, "The development of China's military hardware is not aimed at any other country or any specific target" and the timing of the stealth fighter test "was a matter of routine working arrangements."
15 Jan, 2011, Sat, Nuclear News: History teaches that Iran will choose nuclear weapons
The National: History teaches that Iran will choose nuclear weaponsBruno Tertrais
One of the most vexing questions regarding the Iranian nuclear crisis is whether or not Tehran already intends to build weapons or whether it just wants the option to do so in the future. This is vital in determining the diplomatic margin of manoeuvre that the international community has vis-a-vis Iran.
In both the West and the Middle East, many observers believe that Iran is working towards a "nuclear option" but will stop just short of the nuclear threshold - that is, it will avoid building a nuclear device. This would be, on the face of it, the most rational choice for Tehran: having a "breakout" capability, but avoiding the provocation of testing a nuclear weapon and withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, this is a very unlikely outcome. Countries rarely stop a military-orientated nuclear programme below the threshold. When so much investment has been made, it is too tempting to go all the way. India did so for a while: it probably did not build nuclear weapons before the late 1980s, but that was after it had tested a device in 1974, an event that shook the world. Japan is often touted as a possible model for Iran - including by some in Tehran - but it is a totally inappropriate comparison.
The Japanese uranium enrichment programme has sound economic rationales, and Tokyo has not built nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. And there is absolutely no evidence that Japan - the most inspected country in the world because of the size of its nuclear complex - has ever conducted any "weaponisation" study.
Countries that did stop before reaching the threshold were at a far less advanced stage than Iran is today. Sweden, Argentina, South Korea and Libya had military intentions, but they all stopped their programmes, for various reasons, at fairly early stages. The only exceptions to this rule are Iraq and Brazil.
The first one is well-known. Baghdad had a large hidden uranium enrichment programme and was very close to the nuclear threshold when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991. Had Iraq not been defeated by the international coalition, and placed under a United Nations regime of surveillance and sanctions, it would very likely have built nuclear weapons.
The case of Brazil is lesser-known, but provides an interesting example because of its eerie similarity to Iran's programme. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brasilia, then under military rule, conducted two nuclear programmes. The first was civilian and open: in 1987, Brazil proudly announced that it had succeeded in enriching uranium to 20 per cent.
The second one was secret and run by the military. It included a parallel enrichment programme, reprocessing activities, ballistic missiles and weaponisation studies. A test site was even built. That second programme was partly revealed in 1988 by Jose Sarney, Brazil's new civilian president, and then fully exposed and shut down in 1990.
The history of the French nuclear programme can also provide some interesting lessons when trying to fathom the dynamics of Iran's venture. When the French Atomic Energy Commissary was created in 1945, its mission was to explore all dimensions of nuclear science and technology, be it civilian or military.
But the idea of building the bomb rapidly gained support throughout the military. Three rationales appeared in the French debate. One was modernity and the benefits that nuclear technology could bring to the economy and to the armed forces. The second was prestige: France needed to regain its status in Europe after the Second World War.
Finally, atomic weapons were seen as a security guarantee against another invasion, or to ensure that no external power would again be able to coerce France. By 1956, there was so much investment in nuclear infrastructure that any decision to stop would have been financially and politically costly.
Two reactors able to produce weapon-grade plutonium were being built, and a decision was taken to build a reprocessing plant. France was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, but its intentions were still publicly undeclared.
The lessons from these historical case studies are clear. To ask whether or not a country has actually decided to build the bomb may be pointless. Some countries can arrive at the threshold without ever having made a firm political decision to make nuclear weapons. There is an inherent momentum in nuclear programmes that makes it harder and harder to stop, or reverse, the advance towards the threshold. The bottom line is that Iran is likely to cross the threshold eventually unless there is military action against it, or if regime change comes about.
This calls for a sobering look at the negotiation process. The prospects for a compromise are becoming increasingly unlikely. So what options remain? Recommending a military strike against Iran remains an unappealing option - the last thing the region needs is another war. However, betting on a regime change in Tehran any time soon would also be unreasonable.
The rational course of action is thus to increase pressure on Iran through strengthened sanctions, and perhaps also through the threat of military action in case it is seen as crossing the threshold. The combined effects of sanctions, economic mismanagement and domestic discontent, as well as the fear of a US military strike, may at some point give pause to the Iranian leaders if they fear for the existence of the regime.
Bruno Tertrais is a senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in France
One of the most vexing questions regarding the Iranian nuclear crisis is whether or not Tehran already intends to build weapons or whether it just wants the option to do so in the future. This is vital in determining the diplomatic margin of manoeuvre that the international community has vis-a-vis Iran.
In both the West and the Middle East, many observers believe that Iran is working towards a "nuclear option" but will stop just short of the nuclear threshold - that is, it will avoid building a nuclear device. This would be, on the face of it, the most rational choice for Tehran: having a "breakout" capability, but avoiding the provocation of testing a nuclear weapon and withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
However, this is a very unlikely outcome. Countries rarely stop a military-orientated nuclear programme below the threshold. When so much investment has been made, it is too tempting to go all the way. India did so for a while: it probably did not build nuclear weapons before the late 1980s, but that was after it had tested a device in 1974, an event that shook the world. Japan is often touted as a possible model for Iran - including by some in Tehran - but it is a totally inappropriate comparison.
The Japanese uranium enrichment programme has sound economic rationales, and Tokyo has not built nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. And there is absolutely no evidence that Japan - the most inspected country in the world because of the size of its nuclear complex - has ever conducted any "weaponisation" study.
Countries that did stop before reaching the threshold were at a far less advanced stage than Iran is today. Sweden, Argentina, South Korea and Libya had military intentions, but they all stopped their programmes, for various reasons, at fairly early stages. The only exceptions to this rule are Iraq and Brazil.
The first one is well-known. Baghdad had a large hidden uranium enrichment programme and was very close to the nuclear threshold when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991. Had Iraq not been defeated by the international coalition, and placed under a United Nations regime of surveillance and sanctions, it would very likely have built nuclear weapons.
The case of Brazil is lesser-known, but provides an interesting example because of its eerie similarity to Iran's programme. In the 1970s and 1980s, Brasilia, then under military rule, conducted two nuclear programmes. The first was civilian and open: in 1987, Brazil proudly announced that it had succeeded in enriching uranium to 20 per cent.
The second one was secret and run by the military. It included a parallel enrichment programme, reprocessing activities, ballistic missiles and weaponisation studies. A test site was even built. That second programme was partly revealed in 1988 by Jose Sarney, Brazil's new civilian president, and then fully exposed and shut down in 1990.
The history of the French nuclear programme can also provide some interesting lessons when trying to fathom the dynamics of Iran's venture. When the French Atomic Energy Commissary was created in 1945, its mission was to explore all dimensions of nuclear science and technology, be it civilian or military.
But the idea of building the bomb rapidly gained support throughout the military. Three rationales appeared in the French debate. One was modernity and the benefits that nuclear technology could bring to the economy and to the armed forces. The second was prestige: France needed to regain its status in Europe after the Second World War.
Finally, atomic weapons were seen as a security guarantee against another invasion, or to ensure that no external power would again be able to coerce France. By 1956, there was so much investment in nuclear infrastructure that any decision to stop would have been financially and politically costly.
Two reactors able to produce weapon-grade plutonium were being built, and a decision was taken to build a reprocessing plant. France was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, but its intentions were still publicly undeclared.
The lessons from these historical case studies are clear. To ask whether or not a country has actually decided to build the bomb may be pointless. Some countries can arrive at the threshold without ever having made a firm political decision to make nuclear weapons. There is an inherent momentum in nuclear programmes that makes it harder and harder to stop, or reverse, the advance towards the threshold. The bottom line is that Iran is likely to cross the threshold eventually unless there is military action against it, or if regime change comes about.
This calls for a sobering look at the negotiation process. The prospects for a compromise are becoming increasingly unlikely. So what options remain? Recommending a military strike against Iran remains an unappealing option - the last thing the region needs is another war. However, betting on a regime change in Tehran any time soon would also be unreasonable.
The rational course of action is thus to increase pressure on Iran through strengthened sanctions, and perhaps also through the threat of military action in case it is seen as crossing the threshold. The combined effects of sanctions, economic mismanagement and domestic discontent, as well as the fear of a US military strike, may at some point give pause to the Iranian leaders if they fear for the existence of the regime.
Bruno Tertrais is a senior research fellow at the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique in France
Friday, January 14, 2011
14 Jan, 2011, Fri, Nuclear News: Nuclear watchdog asks Burma to open up suspect sites
The Telegraph: Burma/Myanmar news: Nuclear watchdog asks Burma to open up suspect sites
Burma has reportedly been asked to open up for a visit by the UN's nuclear watchdog, following concerns that the ruling junta may be trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Speculation about Burma's nuclear intentions has grown since 2002 and were backed by photographs and documents of alleged missile projects and nuclear sites were disclosed by Major Sai Thein Win, a Burmese army defector.
Robert Kelley, a former International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspector, wrote that an analysis of the materials "leads to only one conclusion: this technology is only for nuclear weapons and not civilian use or nuclear power".
Last September, Tin Win, the Burmese ambassador to the IAEA said: "There have been unfounded allegations reported by the international media during this year that Burma is attempting to development a nuclear program. Burma will never engage in activities related to the production and proliferation of nuclear weapons."
The country's Foreign ministry has also denounced reports about the country's alleged nuclear programme, and its rumoured co-operation with North Korea, as "groundless accusations" Burma is a signatory to the United Nations nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has told the IAEA that it has little or no nuclear material in the country.
According to the treaty, Burma should give the IAEA six months notice before operating a nuclear facility, according to a spokesman
Burma has reportedly been asked to open up for a visit by the UN's nuclear watchdog, following concerns that the ruling junta may be trying to build a nuclear weapon.
Speculation about Burma's nuclear intentions has grown since 2002 and were backed by photographs and documents of alleged missile projects and nuclear sites were disclosed by Major Sai Thein Win, a Burmese army defector.
Robert Kelley, a former International Atomic Energy Agency weapons inspector, wrote that an analysis of the materials "leads to only one conclusion: this technology is only for nuclear weapons and not civilian use or nuclear power".
Last September, Tin Win, the Burmese ambassador to the IAEA said: "There have been unfounded allegations reported by the international media during this year that Burma is attempting to development a nuclear program. Burma will never engage in activities related to the production and proliferation of nuclear weapons."
The country's Foreign ministry has also denounced reports about the country's alleged nuclear programme, and its rumoured co-operation with North Korea, as "groundless accusations" Burma is a signatory to the United Nations nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has told the IAEA that it has little or no nuclear material in the country.
According to the treaty, Burma should give the IAEA six months notice before operating a nuclear facility, according to a spokesman
14 Jan, 2011, Fri, Nuclear News: Taiwan May Delay Startup of its Fourth Nuclear Plant
Bloomberg Business Week: Taiwan May Delay Startup of its Fourth Nuclear Plant
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan Power Co. may delay the startup of the island’s fourth nuclear plant for the fifth time since the state-run utility proposed the project in 1980.
Commercial operations will probably begin around end-2012, compared with late 2011 previously planned, Huang Huei-yu, a public relations officer at the utility, said by phone in Taipei. The island’s biggest electricity producer, known as Taipower, needs to reinstall cables in the control room, she said today.
Taipower, the island’s monopoly grid operator, had postponed four times the start of the No. 4 plant, located 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Taipei, because of safety concerns and rising construction costs. The project costs about NT$280 billion ($9.65 billion), according to Huang.
The No. 4 plant has two units with a planned capacity of 2,700 megawatts, accounting for 6 percent of Taiwan’s installed capacity when completed.
Atomic reactors accounted for 13 percent of Taiwan’s electricity generation capacity in November, compared with 29 percent for coal-fired generators and 37 percent for gas-fueled units, according to the company’s website.
Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Taiwan Power Co. may delay the startup of the island’s fourth nuclear plant for the fifth time since the state-run utility proposed the project in 1980.
Commercial operations will probably begin around end-2012, compared with late 2011 previously planned, Huang Huei-yu, a public relations officer at the utility, said by phone in Taipei. The island’s biggest electricity producer, known as Taipower, needs to reinstall cables in the control room, she said today.
Taipower, the island’s monopoly grid operator, had postponed four times the start of the No. 4 plant, located 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Taipei, because of safety concerns and rising construction costs. The project costs about NT$280 billion ($9.65 billion), according to Huang.
The No. 4 plant has two units with a planned capacity of 2,700 megawatts, accounting for 6 percent of Taiwan’s installed capacity when completed.
Atomic reactors accounted for 13 percent of Taiwan’s electricity generation capacity in November, compared with 29 percent for coal-fired generators and 37 percent for gas-fueled units, according to the company’s website.
14 Jan 2011, Fri, Nuclear News: Palo Verde nuclear plant clears another hurdle for license renewal
Platts: Palo Verde nuclear plant clears another hurdle for license renewal
Arizona Public Service moved closer to receiving approval to renew the operating licenses for the three Palo Verde nuclear units in Arizona with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's issuance of a final safety evaluation report.
In a statement Thursday, the NRC said there are no open safety items that would preclude renewing the units' operating licenses for an additional 20 years.
Operating licenses for Palo Verde-1, -2 and -3 expire in 2025, 2026 and 2027, respectively. Each unit is rated at 1,428 MW, the largest of any nuclear units operating in the US. The plant itself is the largest US electricity generation plant of any kind and one of only four US nuclear stations with three units.
Earlier this month, the NRC issued its final environmental report on APS' license renewal application, concluding there are no environmental impacts that would preclude extended operation of the Palo Verde units. An environmental report and a safety report are the two main parts of NRC staff's review of license renewal requests.
The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent group of experts that advises the NRC on reactor safety matters, will discuss the report during a February meeting. The committee will later issue a letter to the commission discussing the results of the review.
A decision on the renewal by the director of NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation is scheduled for April if no hearing is held, or a decision by the commission is scheduled for October if there is a hearing, NRC said on its website.
More than half of the 104 operating power reactors in the US have already received approval for renewal of their licenses, and operators of the remaining reactors have applied for renewals or are expected to do so.
Arizona Public Service moved closer to receiving approval to renew the operating licenses for the three Palo Verde nuclear units in Arizona with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission's issuance of a final safety evaluation report.
In a statement Thursday, the NRC said there are no open safety items that would preclude renewing the units' operating licenses for an additional 20 years.
Operating licenses for Palo Verde-1, -2 and -3 expire in 2025, 2026 and 2027, respectively. Each unit is rated at 1,428 MW, the largest of any nuclear units operating in the US. The plant itself is the largest US electricity generation plant of any kind and one of only four US nuclear stations with three units.
Earlier this month, the NRC issued its final environmental report on APS' license renewal application, concluding there are no environmental impacts that would preclude extended operation of the Palo Verde units. An environmental report and a safety report are the two main parts of NRC staff's review of license renewal requests.
The Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, an independent group of experts that advises the NRC on reactor safety matters, will discuss the report during a February meeting. The committee will later issue a letter to the commission discussing the results of the review.
A decision on the renewal by the director of NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation is scheduled for April if no hearing is held, or a decision by the commission is scheduled for October if there is a hearing, NRC said on its website.
More than half of the 104 operating power reactors in the US have already received approval for renewal of their licenses, and operators of the remaining reactors have applied for renewals or are expected to do so.
14 Jan, 2011, Fri, Nuclear News: Ros-Lehtinen promises to stop Obama's civilian nuclear deals
FP: Ros-Lehtinen promises to stop Obama's civilian nuclear deals
The Obama administration is negotiating civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with a host of countries around the world. But Congress will intervene to try to stop some of those deals, if House Foreign Relations Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen but has anything to say about it.
Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-American firebrand who took over the committee last week, has promised to fight the administration's foreign policy agenda on a wide range of fronts. On her first day, she pledged to take an axe to the State Department's budget, and last month she single-handedly killed the bill to make opposition to forced child marriages an element of U.S. foreign policy. Her next target is the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), the law that governs civilian nuclear agreements -- commonly known as "123" agreements for the section of the AEA governing them.
Ros-Lehtinen is angry that the U.S. entered into a 123 agreement with Russia this month. The administration submitted the agreement to Congress last May. Ros-Lehtinen introduced a resolution to stop it during the previous congressional session, but the resolution never came up for a vote in the Democratic-led House. The deal consequently went through after the 90-day waiting period expired.
"The U.S.-Russia nuclear cooperation agreement that went into effect this week never got a vote in Congress," Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday. "The Atomic Energy Act must be reformed so that these far-reaching and potentially dangerous agreements are required to receive an up-or-down vote in Congress before going into effect."
She also promised that her bill would require the administration to certify that a country has met a number or requirements before signing a nuclear deal with the United States, and to verify that the deal would advance U.S. interests.
Ros-Lehtinen said that Russia did not deserve that "concession" due to what she calls its ongoing support of Iran's nuclear program. She specifically mentioned its assistance in building and fueling the Bushehr nuclear plant, even though George W. Bush's administration actually supported that project.
She also criticized Russia for continuing "to shield Iran from U.S. and international sanctions and taking other actions that undermine U.S. interests around the world, such as selling weapons to Syria and signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with the Burmese regime, which is a North Korea nuclear partner."
In Ros-Lehtinen's view, the administration has given several "concessions" to Russia already, including the New START nuclear reductions pact, changes in European missile defense plans, and exempting Russian companies from Iranian sanctions.
Others in Congress opposed the Russia 123 agreement, including Ed Markey (D-MA), chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. That loose coalition could create problems for the administration if and when it completes new 123 agreements.
The next countries in line for 123 agreements are Vietnam and Jordan, and their deals promise to face a different criticism than the agreement with Russia. Critics in both parties on Capitol Hill are set to press the administration to include bans on plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment in the deals, and those countries aren't likely to agree.
The administration painted itself into a corner on this issue when it hailed the 2009 123 agreement with the UAE as the "gold standard," because it included the provisions banning enrichment. But team Obama then hit a wall when Vietnam refused to agree to the same prohibitions. Jordan as well has indicated it wants to preserve what it views as its right to produce nuclear fuel sometime in the future.
If the administration insists on the prohibitions now, it risks causing the pending deals with Vietnam and Jordan to unravel in the short term, and perhaps losing out on other potential deals in the longer term. If the administration backs down and signs agreements without nuclear fuel production restrictions, it will cause a bipartisan uproar on Capitol Hill.
Inside the administration, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman has been arguing for months that the administration should just get rid of the enrichment provisions. On the other side of the debate, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg has taken the position that the provisions are important.
In addition to Vietnam and Jordan, the administration is also considering beginning negotiations on a 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia. Ros-Lehtinen has already come out as a critic of the administration's plan to sell $60 billion worth of weapons to the kingdom.
Last August, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to Obama to demand that the UAE standard be applied to all future civilian nuclear deals. The lawmakers threw Obama's own words from his 2009 speech in Prague back at him, when the president said, "We need a new paradigm for civil nuclear cooperation that allows all countries to enjoy the benefits of nuclear power, while avoiding the spread of nuclear weapons and technologies."
"That new paradigm exists," the lawmakers wrote, referring to the UAE standard.
In November, a group of 16 non-proliferation experts wrote to the administration to demand that the standard in the UAE 123 agreement be extended to U.S. federal energy loan guarantees, federal contracts, or other subsidies or assistance to help foreign government-backed nuclear firms expand their nuclear business in the United States.
The letter was signed by right-leaning experts such as Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, as well as left-leaning experts such as Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
"All of us believe that it makes no sense for our government to help foreign firms expand their nuclear business in the U.S. with federal loan guarantees, government contracts, or Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses unless they are willing to support the very toughest nuclear nonproliferation standards our own government has developed in the U.S.-UAE deal," the experts wrote.
The Obama administration is negotiating civilian nuclear cooperation agreements with a host of countries around the world. But Congress will intervene to try to stop some of those deals, if House Foreign Relations Committee chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen but has anything to say about it.
Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-American firebrand who took over the committee last week, has promised to fight the administration's foreign policy agenda on a wide range of fronts. On her first day, she pledged to take an axe to the State Department's budget, and last month she single-handedly killed the bill to make opposition to forced child marriages an element of U.S. foreign policy. Her next target is the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), the law that governs civilian nuclear agreements -- commonly known as "123" agreements for the section of the AEA governing them.
Ros-Lehtinen is angry that the U.S. entered into a 123 agreement with Russia this month. The administration submitted the agreement to Congress last May. Ros-Lehtinen introduced a resolution to stop it during the previous congressional session, but the resolution never came up for a vote in the Democratic-led House. The deal consequently went through after the 90-day waiting period expired.
"The U.S.-Russia nuclear cooperation agreement that went into effect this week never got a vote in Congress," Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday. "The Atomic Energy Act must be reformed so that these far-reaching and potentially dangerous agreements are required to receive an up-or-down vote in Congress before going into effect."
She also promised that her bill would require the administration to certify that a country has met a number or requirements before signing a nuclear deal with the United States, and to verify that the deal would advance U.S. interests.
Ros-Lehtinen said that Russia did not deserve that "concession" due to what she calls its ongoing support of Iran's nuclear program. She specifically mentioned its assistance in building and fueling the Bushehr nuclear plant, even though George W. Bush's administration actually supported that project.
She also criticized Russia for continuing "to shield Iran from U.S. and international sanctions and taking other actions that undermine U.S. interests around the world, such as selling weapons to Syria and signing a nuclear cooperation agreement with the Burmese regime, which is a North Korea nuclear partner."
In Ros-Lehtinen's view, the administration has given several "concessions" to Russia already, including the New START nuclear reductions pact, changes in European missile defense plans, and exempting Russian companies from Iranian sanctions.
Others in Congress opposed the Russia 123 agreement, including Ed Markey (D-MA), chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee. That loose coalition could create problems for the administration if and when it completes new 123 agreements.
The next countries in line for 123 agreements are Vietnam and Jordan, and their deals promise to face a different criticism than the agreement with Russia. Critics in both parties on Capitol Hill are set to press the administration to include bans on plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment in the deals, and those countries aren't likely to agree.
The administration painted itself into a corner on this issue when it hailed the 2009 123 agreement with the UAE as the "gold standard," because it included the provisions banning enrichment. But team Obama then hit a wall when Vietnam refused to agree to the same prohibitions. Jordan as well has indicated it wants to preserve what it views as its right to produce nuclear fuel sometime in the future.
If the administration insists on the prohibitions now, it risks causing the pending deals with Vietnam and Jordan to unravel in the short term, and perhaps losing out on other potential deals in the longer term. If the administration backs down and signs agreements without nuclear fuel production restrictions, it will cause a bipartisan uproar on Capitol Hill.
Inside the administration, Deputy Energy Secretary Daniel Poneman has been arguing for months that the administration should just get rid of the enrichment provisions. On the other side of the debate, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg has taken the position that the provisions are important.
In addition to Vietnam and Jordan, the administration is also considering beginning negotiations on a 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia. Ros-Lehtinen has already come out as a critic of the administration's plan to sell $60 billion worth of weapons to the kingdom.
Last August, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to Obama to demand that the UAE standard be applied to all future civilian nuclear deals. The lawmakers threw Obama's own words from his 2009 speech in Prague back at him, when the president said, "We need a new paradigm for civil nuclear cooperation that allows all countries to enjoy the benefits of nuclear power, while avoiding the spread of nuclear weapons and technologies."
"That new paradigm exists," the lawmakers wrote, referring to the UAE standard.
In November, a group of 16 non-proliferation experts wrote to the administration to demand that the standard in the UAE 123 agreement be extended to U.S. federal energy loan guarantees, federal contracts, or other subsidies or assistance to help foreign government-backed nuclear firms expand their nuclear business in the United States.
The letter was signed by right-leaning experts such as Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, as well as left-leaning experts such as Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
"All of us believe that it makes no sense for our government to help foreign firms expand their nuclear business in the U.S. with federal loan guarantees, government contracts, or Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses unless they are willing to support the very toughest nuclear nonproliferation standards our own government has developed in the U.S.-UAE deal," the experts wrote.
14 Jan, 2010, Fri, Nuclear News: China, Russia won't join nuclear tour: Iran
Reuters: China, Russia won't join nuclear tour: Iran
Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday that the ambassadors of China and Russia would not join a tour of Iranian nuclear sites.
"They are not coming ... Their decision is respected," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Reuters.
He said seven ambassadors accredited to the United Nations nuclear watchdog would join the January 15-16 trip, including those of Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria.
Iran's envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Friday that the ambassadors of China and Russia would not join a tour of Iranian nuclear sites.
"They are not coming ... Their decision is respected," Ali Asghar Soltanieh told Reuters.
He said seven ambassadors accredited to the United Nations nuclear watchdog would join the January 15-16 trip, including those of Egypt, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria.
General History of Physics: 1927, Wigner and the Conservation of Parity
I'm reading Asimov's book of essays, The Left Hand of the Electron, which is why all of a sudden I've dropped into history of physics discoveries (and not nuclear physics at this point). Essay - "The Problem of Left and Right"
In 1927, the Hungarian physicist Eugene P. Wigner showed that conservation of parity is equivalent to right-left symmetry. (This is in regards to the Conservation Laws).
From Wikipedia:
Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner (Hungarian Wigner Jenő Pál; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian American physicist and mathematician.
He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"; the other half of the award was shared between Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Wigner is important for having laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics as well as for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus, and for his several mathematical theorems.
Law of Conservation of Parity
In physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of one spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it is also commonly described by the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates:
(Wikipedia's article explains it thoroughly, with all sorts of symbols. Our goal here is not to explain how such discoveries work, but merely to note their history.)
Asimov explains the issue very simply: "This means that for parity to be conserved there must be no reason to prefer the right direction to the left or vice versa in considering the laws of nature. If one billiard ball hits another to the right of center and bounces off to the right, it will bounce off to the left in just the same way if it hits the other ball to the left of center."
In 1927, the Hungarian physicist Eugene P. Wigner showed that conservation of parity is equivalent to right-left symmetry. (This is in regards to the Conservation Laws).
From Wikipedia:
Eugene Paul "E. P." Wigner (Hungarian Wigner Jenő Pál; November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian American physicist and mathematician.
He received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 "for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry principles"; the other half of the award was shared between Maria Goeppert-Mayer and J. Hans D. Jensen. Wigner is important for having laid the foundation for the theory of symmetries in quantum mechanics as well as for his research into the structure of the atomic nucleus, and for his several mathematical theorems.
Law of Conservation of Parity
In physics, a parity transformation (also called parity inversion) is the flip in the sign of one spatial coordinate. In three dimensions, it is also commonly described by the simultaneous flip in the sign of all three spatial coordinates:
(Wikipedia's article explains it thoroughly, with all sorts of symbols. Our goal here is not to explain how such discoveries work, but merely to note their history.)
Asimov explains the issue very simply: "This means that for parity to be conserved there must be no reason to prefer the right direction to the left or vice versa in considering the laws of nature. If one billiard ball hits another to the right of center and bounces off to the right, it will bounce off to the left in just the same way if it hits the other ball to the left of center."
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
12 Jan 2011, Wed, Nuclear News: Russian-U.S. Atomic Trade Pact Takes Effect
This is actually more news that was published on Tuesday the 11th, but I thought it was important enough to add more to it.
Russian-U.S. Atomic Trade Pact Takes Effect
Russia and the United States today formally placed into effect a new civilian atomic trade pact enabling nuclear technology transfers and related private-sector initiatives between the two countries, Reuters reported (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2010).
The "123 agreement" entered into force when U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle and Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov swapped diplomatic notes in Moscow. The pact establishes a regulatory pathway for relevant nonmilitary manufacturing arrangements, business ventures and scientific studies, and it allows for federally approved trade involving nuclear power equipment and other atomic parts not subject to special controls.
The deal might permit Russia to reprocess used U.S.-origin reactor fuel, generating additional fuel as well as weapon-usable plutonium. Still, the agreement could help Russia and the United States offer atomic power to third-party nations that might otherwise pursue energy capabilities with military applications, according to U.S. government sources (Steve Gutterman, Reuters, Jan. 11).
"These new technologies will help us combat the global threat of nuclear proliferation and also create new commercial opportunities for American and Russian companies to produce cleaner, more reliable and safer nuclear energy," the Associated Press quoted Beyrle as saying at a ceremony marking the agreement's entry into force.
Ryabkov added: "What we are trying to achieve is to create new -- I would even say innovative -- technologies of the nuclear fuel cycle, develop the reactor technologies to provide on the one hand economic and energy efficiency ... and on the other hand to reduce the risks of the potential improper use of the nuclear materials needed for these activities" (Lynn Berry, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 11).
The proposal originated with the Bush administration but was withdrawn from congressional consideration in 2008 as part of the diplomatic fallout from Russia's military conflict with Georgia, Reuters reported. The Obama administration last May submitted the deal to Congress, which had 90 days of "continuous session" to either take no action and allow the agreement to be implemented or to approve legislation that would curtail or kill the accord (Gutterman, Reuters).
Russian-U.S. Atomic Trade Pact Takes Effect
Russia and the United States today formally placed into effect a new civilian atomic trade pact enabling nuclear technology transfers and related private-sector initiatives between the two countries, Reuters reported (see GSN, Dec. 10, 2010).
The "123 agreement" entered into force when U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle and Deputy Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov swapped diplomatic notes in Moscow. The pact establishes a regulatory pathway for relevant nonmilitary manufacturing arrangements, business ventures and scientific studies, and it allows for federally approved trade involving nuclear power equipment and other atomic parts not subject to special controls.
The deal might permit Russia to reprocess used U.S.-origin reactor fuel, generating additional fuel as well as weapon-usable plutonium. Still, the agreement could help Russia and the United States offer atomic power to third-party nations that might otherwise pursue energy capabilities with military applications, according to U.S. government sources (Steve Gutterman, Reuters, Jan. 11).
"These new technologies will help us combat the global threat of nuclear proliferation and also create new commercial opportunities for American and Russian companies to produce cleaner, more reliable and safer nuclear energy," the Associated Press quoted Beyrle as saying at a ceremony marking the agreement's entry into force.
Ryabkov added: "What we are trying to achieve is to create new -- I would even say innovative -- technologies of the nuclear fuel cycle, develop the reactor technologies to provide on the one hand economic and energy efficiency ... and on the other hand to reduce the risks of the potential improper use of the nuclear materials needed for these activities" (Lynn Berry, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Jan. 11).
The proposal originated with the Bush administration but was withdrawn from congressional consideration in 2008 as part of the diplomatic fallout from Russia's military conflict with Georgia, Reuters reported. The Obama administration last May submitted the deal to Congress, which had 90 days of "continuous session" to either take no action and allow the agreement to be implemented or to approve legislation that would curtail or kill the accord (Gutterman, Reuters).
12 Jan 2011, Wed, Nuclear News: Japanese Restrictions Could Threaten French Reactor Sale to India
NTI: Global Security Newswire: Japanese Restrictions Could Threaten French Reactor Sale to India
Japanese restrictions on atomic trade with India could complicate plans for France to construct a new atomic power facility in the South Asian state, the head of the French nuclear firm Areva said yesterday (see GSN, March 13, 2008).
The company's design for the planned two-reactor atomic plant at Jaitapur calls for the use of "extra large forgings" available only from Japan, the Times of India quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
Areva chief operating officer Luc Orsel said the firm could find ways around the complication. However, he still urged India to conclude "a bilateral agreement" with Japan on civilian nuclear trade (see GSN, Nov. 15, 2010)
New Delhi and Tokyo have conducted multiple rounds of talks on a potential atomic trade deal. Japan, though, is said to have mandated Indian nonproliferation assurances considered more substantive than what the nuclear-armed South Asian nation accepted in its 2008 atomic trade deal with the United States. Tokyo wants India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, according to previous reports.
Japan has also called on New Delhi to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, according to the Times (Ashis Ray, Times of India, Jan. 12).
Japanese restrictions on atomic trade with India could complicate plans for France to construct a new atomic power facility in the South Asian state, the head of the French nuclear firm Areva said yesterday (see GSN, March 13, 2008).
The company's design for the planned two-reactor atomic plant at Jaitapur calls for the use of "extra large forgings" available only from Japan, the Times of India quoted a diplomatic source as saying.
Areva chief operating officer Luc Orsel said the firm could find ways around the complication. However, he still urged India to conclude "a bilateral agreement" with Japan on civilian nuclear trade (see GSN, Nov. 15, 2010)
New Delhi and Tokyo have conducted multiple rounds of talks on a potential atomic trade deal. Japan, though, is said to have mandated Indian nonproliferation assurances considered more substantive than what the nuclear-armed South Asian nation accepted in its 2008 atomic trade deal with the United States. Tokyo wants India to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, according to previous reports.
Japan has also called on New Delhi to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, according to the Times (Ashis Ray, Times of India, Jan. 12).
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
11 Jan, 2011, Tues, Nuclear News: Analysis: Risk of strike on Iran over nuclear plans recedes
Reuters: Analysis: Risk of strike on Iran over nuclear plans recedes
Reuters) - Sanctions and possible sabotage may be slowing Iran's nuclear drive, reducing the risk that Israel might resort to military strikes against the Islamic Republic's atomic sites any time soon.
Technical glitches and other hurdles for Iran's uranium enrichment programme could also provide more time for diplomatic efforts by major powers to persuade it to curb work the West fears is aimed at making bombs, a charge Tehran denies.
"There is a feeling that the sanctions and also some of the covert action are buying time, more time than many previously expected," a senior Western diplomat said.
Oliver Thraenert, senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said: "I do believe people are a bit more relaxed now ... the technical problems the Iranians have are much more severe than expected."
This is likely to reduce the persistent speculation in recent years that Iran's foes, especially Israel but also the United States, may soon launch military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute.
Israel, which bombed an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and a suspected Syrian nuclear site in 2007, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence and has indicated it could use force to prevent it developing such weapons.
But Israeli intelligence assessments published last week said the Jewish state now believed Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before 2015 and that a top Israeli official had counseled against pre-emptive military action.
It signaled new confidence in U.S.-led sanctions and other measures designed to discourage or delay Iran's nuclear work.
"Israel appears no less willing to contemplate military action against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons," Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said.
"However, there has been a dramatic change recently in statements from Israeli officials about the timeline they project for Iran to achieve a nuclear weapons capability."
WAR DRUM STOPPED BEATING?
U.S.-based journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote about the "coming confrontation" between Iran and Israel in an Atlantic magazine article last year, said one Israeli official now put the chances of an Israeli strike on Iran in the next year at below 20 percent.
"And he was one of the Israelis who felt, in the spring of last year, that it would be necessary for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities by the end of 2011," Goldberg wrote in a blog this week.
Washington has not ruled out armed action against Iran, even though U.S. officials have warned that it would only delay its nuclear programme and that persuading Tehran to abandon its activities was the only viable long-term solution.
But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that sanctions had set back Tehran's nuclear work, giving major powers more time to persuade it to change tack.
Shannon Kile at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said the "war drum was really beating" about a year ago, but this no longer seemed to be the case.
But any reduction in tension and lessening of talk of possible military conflict, with possible dire consequences for the world economy, could turn out to be temporary.
"There definitely has been sort of a de-escalation of the situation," Kile said. But, he added, "I don't see that as being necessarily something more permanent or lasting."
Iran is still amassing refined uranium -- material which can be used to make bombs if enriched much further -- and it is showing no sign of backing down in the long-running international dispute over its atomic ambitions.
"Technical difficulties and sanctions should not lead anyone to think we are near a solution," said Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist at the RAND Corporation.
"Iran may be motivated more than ever to develop the nuclear programme, especially since the ruling elite believe that backing down would send precisely the wrong signal to the United States and its allies."
IRANIAN NUCLEAR "BREAKTHROUGH"
Analysts say Iran's nuclear work has been experiencing technical difficulties for several years, partly because it is using enrichment centrifuges adapted from a smuggled 1970s European design which is prone to overheating and vibration.
Iran is testing an advanced, more durable model able to refine uranium two or three times faster, and says it intends to introduce it for production in the near future.
But the sanctions, which ban trade in nuclear-related technology and equipment, may make this more difficult.
Signs of foreign sabotage, such as the Stuxnet computer worm which some experts believe was aimed at Iran's enrichment activities, could also be a factor. In addition, Iran has blamed the West and Israel for the killing of two nuclear scientists last year, a charge Washington has rejected as "absurd."
The U.S.-based think-tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, said in an analysis that "overt and covert disruption activities have had significant effect in slowing Iran's centrifuge programme."
Iran rejects any suggestions that it is experiencing major technical woes and last week announced a new "breakthrough" in its nuclear programme, saying it would make its own fuel for a research reactor later this year.
It says its nuclear work is aimed at producing electricity.
Western officials say tougher sanctions imposed on Iran since last year are hurting its economy and that this may force it to enter serious nuclear talks with six world powers -- the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and China.
But no substantial progress was made when talks resumed in Geneva last month, for the first time in more than a year, and expectations of a breakthrough are low ahead of a second round in Istanbul next week.
"Sanctions will not force Iran to capitulate," Thielmann said. "It is also clear that negotiations will be a drawn-out and difficult process, requiring many months."
Reuters) - Sanctions and possible sabotage may be slowing Iran's nuclear drive, reducing the risk that Israel might resort to military strikes against the Islamic Republic's atomic sites any time soon.
Technical glitches and other hurdles for Iran's uranium enrichment programme could also provide more time for diplomatic efforts by major powers to persuade it to curb work the West fears is aimed at making bombs, a charge Tehran denies.
"There is a feeling that the sanctions and also some of the covert action are buying time, more time than many previously expected," a senior Western diplomat said.
Oliver Thraenert, senior fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, said: "I do believe people are a bit more relaxed now ... the technical problems the Iranians have are much more severe than expected."
This is likely to reduce the persistent speculation in recent years that Iran's foes, especially Israel but also the United States, may soon launch military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute.
Israel, which bombed an Iraqi reactor in 1981 and a suspected Syrian nuclear site in 2007, sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence and has indicated it could use force to prevent it developing such weapons.
But Israeli intelligence assessments published last week said the Jewish state now believed Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon before 2015 and that a top Israeli official had counseled against pre-emptive military action.
It signaled new confidence in U.S.-led sanctions and other measures designed to discourage or delay Iran's nuclear work.
"Israel appears no less willing to contemplate military action against Iran to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons," Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association, said.
"However, there has been a dramatic change recently in statements from Israeli officials about the timeline they project for Iran to achieve a nuclear weapons capability."
WAR DRUM STOPPED BEATING?
U.S.-based journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, who wrote about the "coming confrontation" between Iran and Israel in an Atlantic magazine article last year, said one Israeli official now put the chances of an Israeli strike on Iran in the next year at below 20 percent.
"And he was one of the Israelis who felt, in the spring of last year, that it would be necessary for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear facilities by the end of 2011," Goldberg wrote in a blog this week.
Washington has not ruled out armed action against Iran, even though U.S. officials have warned that it would only delay its nuclear programme and that persuading Tehran to abandon its activities was the only viable long-term solution.
But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that sanctions had set back Tehran's nuclear work, giving major powers more time to persuade it to change tack.
Shannon Kile at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said the "war drum was really beating" about a year ago, but this no longer seemed to be the case.
But any reduction in tension and lessening of talk of possible military conflict, with possible dire consequences for the world economy, could turn out to be temporary.
"There definitely has been sort of a de-escalation of the situation," Kile said. But, he added, "I don't see that as being necessarily something more permanent or lasting."
Iran is still amassing refined uranium -- material which can be used to make bombs if enriched much further -- and it is showing no sign of backing down in the long-running international dispute over its atomic ambitions.
"Technical difficulties and sanctions should not lead anyone to think we are near a solution," said Alireza Nader, an Iran specialist at the RAND Corporation.
"Iran may be motivated more than ever to develop the nuclear programme, especially since the ruling elite believe that backing down would send precisely the wrong signal to the United States and its allies."
IRANIAN NUCLEAR "BREAKTHROUGH"
Analysts say Iran's nuclear work has been experiencing technical difficulties for several years, partly because it is using enrichment centrifuges adapted from a smuggled 1970s European design which is prone to overheating and vibration.
Iran is testing an advanced, more durable model able to refine uranium two or three times faster, and says it intends to introduce it for production in the near future.
But the sanctions, which ban trade in nuclear-related technology and equipment, may make this more difficult.
Signs of foreign sabotage, such as the Stuxnet computer worm which some experts believe was aimed at Iran's enrichment activities, could also be a factor. In addition, Iran has blamed the West and Israel for the killing of two nuclear scientists last year, a charge Washington has rejected as "absurd."
The U.S.-based think-tank, the Institute for Science and International Security, said in an analysis that "overt and covert disruption activities have had significant effect in slowing Iran's centrifuge programme."
Iran rejects any suggestions that it is experiencing major technical woes and last week announced a new "breakthrough" in its nuclear programme, saying it would make its own fuel for a research reactor later this year.
It says its nuclear work is aimed at producing electricity.
Western officials say tougher sanctions imposed on Iran since last year are hurting its economy and that this may force it to enter serious nuclear talks with six world powers -- the United States, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and China.
But no substantial progress was made when talks resumed in Geneva last month, for the first time in more than a year, and expectations of a breakthrough are low ahead of a second round in Istanbul next week.
"Sanctions will not force Iran to capitulate," Thielmann said. "It is also clear that negotiations will be a drawn-out and difficult process, requiring many months."
11 Jan 2011, Tues, Nuclear News: Russia: Nuclear Deal Takes Effect
New York Times: World: Russia: Nuclear Deal Takes Effect
An agreement between Russia and the United States to cooperate more closely on civilian nuclear power took effect Tuesday and was hailed by both sides as a sign that a recent thaw in relations was bearing fruit. The deal, called the 123 Agreement, is intended to ease cross-border investment in nuclear power by resolving issues like liability for accidents.
An agreement between Russia and the United States to cooperate more closely on civilian nuclear power took effect Tuesday and was hailed by both sides as a sign that a recent thaw in relations was bearing fruit. The deal, called the 123 Agreement, is intended to ease cross-border investment in nuclear power by resolving issues like liability for accidents.
The Atom - It's Discovery and How it Works, Pt 1
Isaac Asimov made his non-science fiction career by making science understandable to the masses. He did this by starting every explanation at the beginning, and going on from there.
I can do no better than to follow the example set by Asimov, and start my explanation of nuclear physics, as he would do, at the very beginning. Even more, I'm going to use one of Asimov's own book as a source - Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos.
The Theory of the Atom
Just why, and how, did a Greek philosopher (or naturalist - science didn't come into vogue until the 1300s, and is from the Latin word "scientia") - knowledge) ever think of the idea that matter was made from atoms, and that an atom could not be broken down into any smaller parts.
Asimov explains it this way.
Natural philosophers back in the time of the ancient Greeks were curious and posed questions to themselves - and others.
"Suppose you had a heap of thousands of small, smooth pebbles. If you were divide this heap into two smaller heaps, and then teo smaller again and again (by getting rid of one of the heaps each time, and dividing the remainder) how long could this process go on.
No matter how large your initial heap of pebbles, eventually you would be left with just two pebbles, and if you threw one away, you'd be left with one.
(According to Asimov, if you started with a million pebbles, you'd be down to two pebbles after about twenty divisions).
Now, take your final pebble, and pound it with a hammer to reduce it to the smallest possible fragments. Imagine then, finally, that the pebble has been ground into dust so fine you can't see it, can that continue to be divided by two?
The Greek philosopher Leucippus (490 - ? BC) is the first person we know by name who considered this problem of dividing matter. He insisted that, sooner or later, a fragment would reach so small a size that it could not be broken down into anything smaller.
Democritus (460-370 BC), a pupil of Leucippis, believed in his theory, and called this finalk fragment an "atomos" - "unbreakable." According to Democritus, al matter consisted of a collection of atoms, and if there was space between the atoms, that space contained nothing - it was a void.
Democritus is said to have written 60 books (handwritten, of course). But Democritus' theory was scoffed at in his own time, and none of his books survive.
Plato and Aristotle didn't accept the view of atoms, they believed, and taught, that matter could be divided endlessly. Epicurus, on the other hand, did believe and teach the theory of atoms. He wrote 300 books, none of them survive.
If none of those books survived, how do we know about them?
Roman Titus Lucretius Carus (96-55 BC, living 200 years after Epicurus) also believed in the theory of atoms. Known as Lucretius, he published a long poem, in 56 BC, the year before his death, "De Rerun Natura (On the nature of things). In it, he explained Epicurus' theory of atomism in great detail.
This book was popular in its time. But after about 4 AD, with Christianity growing in power, Lucretius was denounced for what was considered to be atheism. His books were no longer copied (still hand copied) and extant books were destroyed or lost.
One copy - one - survived the Middle Ages and was discovered in 1417 (in Florence). It was recopied then, and 50 years later, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, it was one of the first items to be printed.
This poem, then, spread throughout western Europe and was the chief source of knowledge of the ancient theories of atomism.
According to Wikipedia:
I can do no better than to follow the example set by Asimov, and start my explanation of nuclear physics, as he would do, at the very beginning. Even more, I'm going to use one of Asimov's own book as a source - Atom: Journey Across the Subatomic Cosmos.
The Theory of the Atom
Just why, and how, did a Greek philosopher (or naturalist - science didn't come into vogue until the 1300s, and is from the Latin word "scientia") - knowledge) ever think of the idea that matter was made from atoms, and that an atom could not be broken down into any smaller parts.
Asimov explains it this way.
Natural philosophers back in the time of the ancient Greeks were curious and posed questions to themselves - and others.
"Suppose you had a heap of thousands of small, smooth pebbles. If you were divide this heap into two smaller heaps, and then teo smaller again and again (by getting rid of one of the heaps each time, and dividing the remainder) how long could this process go on.
No matter how large your initial heap of pebbles, eventually you would be left with just two pebbles, and if you threw one away, you'd be left with one.
(According to Asimov, if you started with a million pebbles, you'd be down to two pebbles after about twenty divisions).
Now, take your final pebble, and pound it with a hammer to reduce it to the smallest possible fragments. Imagine then, finally, that the pebble has been ground into dust so fine you can't see it, can that continue to be divided by two?
The Greek philosopher Leucippus (490 - ? BC) is the first person we know by name who considered this problem of dividing matter. He insisted that, sooner or later, a fragment would reach so small a size that it could not be broken down into anything smaller.
Democritus (460-370 BC), a pupil of Leucippis, believed in his theory, and called this finalk fragment an "atomos" - "unbreakable." According to Democritus, al matter consisted of a collection of atoms, and if there was space between the atoms, that space contained nothing - it was a void.
Democritus is said to have written 60 books (handwritten, of course). But Democritus' theory was scoffed at in his own time, and none of his books survive.
Plato and Aristotle didn't accept the view of atoms, they believed, and taught, that matter could be divided endlessly. Epicurus, on the other hand, did believe and teach the theory of atoms. He wrote 300 books, none of them survive.
If none of those books survived, how do we know about them?
Roman Titus Lucretius Carus (96-55 BC, living 200 years after Epicurus) also believed in the theory of atoms. Known as Lucretius, he published a long poem, in 56 BC, the year before his death, "De Rerun Natura (On the nature of things). In it, he explained Epicurus' theory of atomism in great detail.
This book was popular in its time. But after about 4 AD, with Christianity growing in power, Lucretius was denounced for what was considered to be atheism. His books were no longer copied (still hand copied) and extant books were destroyed or lost.
One copy - one - survived the Middle Ages and was discovered in 1417 (in Florence). It was recopied then, and 50 years later, when Gutenberg invented the printing press, it was one of the first items to be printed.
This poem, then, spread throughout western Europe and was the chief source of knowledge of the ancient theories of atomism.
According to Wikipedia:
Purpose of the poemAccording to Lucretius's frequent statements in his poem, the main purpose of the work was to free Gaius Memmius's (and presumably all of mankind's) mind of superstition and the fear of death. He attempts this by expounding the philosophical system of Epicurus, whom Lucretius apotheosizes as the hero of his epic poem.
Lucretius identifies superstition (religio in the Latin) with the notion that the gods/supernatural powers created our world or interfere with its operations in any way. He argues against fear of such gods by demonstrating through observations and logical argument that the operations of the world can be accounted for entirely in terms of natural phenomena—the regular but purposeless motions and interactions of tiny atoms in empty space—instead of in terms of the will of the gods.
He argues against the fear of death by stating that death is the dissipation of a being's material mind. Lucretius uses the analogy of a vessel, stating that the physical body is the vessel that holds both the mind (mens) and spirit (anima) of a human being. Neither the mind nor spirit can survive independent of the body. Thus Lucretius states that once the vessel (the body) shatters (dies) its contents (mind and spirit) can, logically, no longer exist. So, as a simple ceasing-to-be, death can be neither good nor bad for this being. Being completely devoid of sensation and thought, a dead person cannot miss being alive. According to Lucretius, fear of death is a projection of terrors experienced in life, of pain that only a living (intact) mind can feel. Lucretius also puts forward the 'symmetry argument' against the fear of death. In it, he says that people who fear the prospect of eternal non-existence after death should think back to the eternity of non-existence before their birth, which they probably do not fear.
[edit] Structure of the poemThe structure of the poem over the six books falls into two main parts. The first three books provide a fundamental account of being and nothingness, matter and space, the atoms and their movement, the infinity of the universe both as regards time and space, the regularity of reproduction (no prodigies, everything in its proper habitat), the nature of mind (animus, directing thought) and spirit (anima, sentience) as material bodily entities, and their mortality, since they and their functions (consciousness, pain) end with the bodies that contain them and with which they are interwoven. The last three books give an atomic and materialist explanation of phenomena preoccupying human reflection, such as vision and the senses, sex and reproduction, natural forces and agriculture, the heavens, and disease.
[edit] Style of the poemHis poem De Rerum Natura (usually translated as"On the Nature of Things" or "On the Nature of the Universe") transmits the ideas of Epicurean physics, which includes Atomism, and psychology. Lucretius was one of the first Epicureans to write in Latin.
Lucretius compares his work in this poem to that of a doctor healing a child: just as the doctor may put honey on the rim of a cup containing bitter wormwood (most likely Absinth Wormwood) believed to have healing properties, the patient is "tricked" into accepting something beneficial but difficult to swallow, "but not deceived" by the doctor (Book IV lines 12-19). The meaning of this refrain found throughout the poem is debatable.
Stylistically, most scholars attribute the full blossoming of Latin hexameter to Virgil. De Rerum Natura however, is of indisputable importance for the part it played in naturalizing Greek philosophical ideas and discourse in the Latin language and its influence on Virgil and other later poets. Lucretius's hexameter is very distinct from the smooth urbanity of Virgil or Ovid. His use of heterodynes, assonance, and vigorously syncopated Latin forms create a harsh acoustic to some ears, although this is probably merely an impression created by contrast with later poets and general unfamiliarity with Latin poetry recited by skilled readers. John Donne has a similar reputation in English poetry because of his powerful and thought-laden discourse. The sustained energy of Lucretius's poetry (even when treating highly technical particularities, such as the movement of atoms through space or the films which give rise to vision when they strike the eye) is virtually unparalleled in Latin literature, with the possible exception of parts of Tacitus's Annals, or perhaps Books II and IV of the Aeneid. The six books contain many formulaic elements such as deliberately repeated lines, refrains, and regularized emotional peaks.
Among many poetic high points a few should be mentioned. The introduction to Book I (the invocation to Venus and Spring) is unsurpassed, both in its initial ecstatic address to the life-force and regeneration, and in the celebration of the courage and clear-sightedness of Epicurus and the vitriolic polemic against superstition (Latin: "religio") which provide the bridge to the main didactic body of the poem. The opening sections of the various books emphasize the novelty of the undertaking Lucretius has set himself and the gratitude mankind owes to Epicurus for delivering it from unfounded terrors and an empty, joyless and servile life. And the great conclusions to Book III (on death and why it holds no terrors) and Book VI (on disease, especially the plague) are as graphic as anything in literature, as are various accounts throughout the poem of storms, battles, fire and flood.
Books: Plutonium, by Jeremy Bernstein
Books: Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element, by Jeremy Bernstein
Joseph Henry Press, 2007
171 pages, plus 8 pages of b&w photos, Notes, Index
Library: 546.434 BER
Description
When plutonium was first manufactured at Berkeley in the spring of 1941, there was so little of it that it was not visible to the naked eye. It took a year to accumulate enough so that one could actually see it. Now so much has been produced that we don't know what to do to get rid of it. We have created a monster.
The history of plutonium is as strange as the element itself. When scientists began looking for it, they did so simply in the spirit of inquiry, not certain whether there were still spots to fill on the periodic table. But the discovery of fission made it clear that this still-hypothetical element would be more than just a scientific curiosity - it could be the main ingredient of a powerful nuclear weapon.
As it turned out, it is good for almost nothing else. Plutonium's nuclear potential put it at the heart of the World War II arms race--the Russians found out about it through espionage, the Germans through independent research, and everybody wanted some. Now it is warehoused around the world--the United States alone possesses about 47 metric tons-but it has almost no practical use outside its role in nuclear weaponry. How did the product of scientific curiosity become such a dangerous burden?
In his new history of this complex and dangerous element, noted physicist Jeremy Bernstein describes the steps that were taken to transform plutonium from a laboratory novelty into the nuclear weapon that destroyed Nagasaki. This is the first book to weave together the many strands of plutonium's story, explaining not only the science but also the people involved.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
1. Preamble
2. The History of Uranium
3. The Periodfic Table
4. Frau Rontgen's Hand
5. Close Calls
6. Fissions
7. Transuranics
8. Plutonium Goes to War
9. Los Alamos
10. Electrons
11. Now What?
Notes
Credits
Index
Photos
-The perfect solids
-Frau Rontgen's hand in x-rays
-The Noldacks in their laboratoy
-Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner
-Fritz Strassmann
-Robert J. Oppenheimer, Enrico FErmi and Ernest Orlando Lawrence
-Mandred, Baron von Ardenne
-Glenn T. Seaborg with a geiger counter
-William 'Williw' Zachariasen
-Cyril Stanley Smith
-Ted Magel
-Hanford site with the Columbia River, Washington
-Rocky Flats, Colorado
-Map showing stored locations of plutonium in Russia
Monday, January 10, 2011
10 Jan 2011, Mon, Nuclear News: Nuclear plants firing in France, EDF says
UPI.com: Nuclear plants firing in France, EDF says
PARIS, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- All of the 58 nuclear reactors operated by utility company EDF are hooked up to the French grid for the first time in six years, the company said.
Electricite de France, the world's largest utility company, said the 58 nuclear reactors at its 19 nuclear power stations are set up now to produce 60 million kilowatt hours of electricity for French consumers for the first time since December 2004.
The linkage of the 58 reactors, EDF said, represents an "impressive industrial feat" that guarantees French consumers a reliable power source during a harsh winter season.
The French utility company said its production was 5 percent higher for peak consumption periods from Dec. 1, 2009, through Feb. 15, 2010, than during the previous reporting period. This increase, the company said, represents about 4,200 megawatts of energy.
EDF, however, said "the only guarantee" of sustainable performance, was to modernize its regional production systems, which it said would cost around $4.5 million per year.
PARIS, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- All of the 58 nuclear reactors operated by utility company EDF are hooked up to the French grid for the first time in six years, the company said.
Electricite de France, the world's largest utility company, said the 58 nuclear reactors at its 19 nuclear power stations are set up now to produce 60 million kilowatt hours of electricity for French consumers for the first time since December 2004.
The linkage of the 58 reactors, EDF said, represents an "impressive industrial feat" that guarantees French consumers a reliable power source during a harsh winter season.
The French utility company said its production was 5 percent higher for peak consumption periods from Dec. 1, 2009, through Feb. 15, 2010, than during the previous reporting period. This increase, the company said, represents about 4,200 megawatts of energy.
EDF, however, said "the only guarantee" of sustainable performance, was to modernize its regional production systems, which it said would cost around $4.5 million per year.
10 Jan 2011, Monday, Nuclear News: ke Energy-Progress Energy behemoth covets nuclear power amid soaring costs
TampaBay.com: Duke Energy-Progress Energy behemoth covets nuclear power amid soaring costs
By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist
Duke Energy's purchase of Progress Energy not only creates the nation's biggest electricity provider, but it also combines two fans of nuclear power that are eager for more.
Even so, the shocking leap in the price of building nuclear power plants and the national waffling on a U.S. energy policy — we still lack consensus on "clean" coal, natural gas, hydro, solar and wind — raise warning flags on nuclear's prospects even as these companies insist nukes are key.
Combined, the companies boast six nuclear power plants in the Carolinas and one in Citrus County, generating electricity from 12 nuclear reactors. Together, the companies will be the third largest nationwide in nuclear generation capacity behind Chicago's Exelon and New Orleans' Entergy, but ahead of Georgia's Southern Co. or Florida Power & Light (part of NextEra Energy), two big competitors in the southeastern United States.
In remarks Monday, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers and Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson emphasized that their combined corporate heft will be key to nuclear power expansion. Why? Because the extraordinary costs of nuclear power plant construction make it financially risky for any power companies but the very biggest to afford.
Says Progress Energy's Johnson, who becomes CEO of the resulting company: "Our size and scale, once combined, position us well for nuclear generation."
Maybe. Soaring nuclear building expenses are prompting some experts to question whether nukes in the future can competitively produce electricity. And some aging nuclear plants are starting to show wear and tear.
In Florida, Progress Energy's Crystal River plant has been shut down for a startling 18 months as a crack in an exterior wall is fixed. Price tag so far? About a quarter-billion dollars in repairs and the purchase of replacement electricity. Another Progress Energy nuclear plant, in North Carolina, last month was identified as leaking tritium, a radioactive substance linked to cancer. The leak, now stopped, is being monitored.
Progress Energy wants to build four new nuclear power reactors — two in Florida's Levy County and two in North Carolina. Duke also wants to build two reactors in South Carolina. That means the new company seeks up to six new nuclear reactors. It remains unclear, even to the companies, if they are all still firm go-ahead projects.
In St. Petersburg, Progress Energy Florida CEO Vinny Dolan says his company will seek a license for its Levy nuclear plant and then "see where we are."
The price tag on the Levy County project alone sailed past $20 billion long ago. In contrast, the entire market value of Progress Energy as a public corporation (stock price multiplied by shares outstanding) is less than $13 billion.
That disparity is a big reason why Progress Energy does not want to bet the company on building one nuclear power project. Even when combined, the current market value of Duke and Progress Energy is only $36 billion.
That's a big number. But so is $20 billion-plus for a nuclear power project.
That is why the power companies want state legislators that already let companies charge ratepayers in advance for nuclear construction costs to make it even easier in the future. So says Jim Warren, who heads the North Carolina nuclear watchdog group NC Waste Awareness and Reduction Network — NC Warn for short.
Both Duke and Progress Energy have been waffling in recent years over their nuclear ambitions, Warren says, though a merger may motivate them to press forward.
By coincidence, NC Warn on Monday held a news conference critical of alleged design flaws in one nuclear power plant design — Westinghouse's model AP1000 — that both Duke and Progress Energy endorse.
Upshot? A vastly larger, pro-nuke company still doesn't guarantee a nuclear future
By Robert Trigaux, Times Business Columnist
Duke Energy's purchase of Progress Energy not only creates the nation's biggest electricity provider, but it also combines two fans of nuclear power that are eager for more.
Even so, the shocking leap in the price of building nuclear power plants and the national waffling on a U.S. energy policy — we still lack consensus on "clean" coal, natural gas, hydro, solar and wind — raise warning flags on nuclear's prospects even as these companies insist nukes are key.
Combined, the companies boast six nuclear power plants in the Carolinas and one in Citrus County, generating electricity from 12 nuclear reactors. Together, the companies will be the third largest nationwide in nuclear generation capacity behind Chicago's Exelon and New Orleans' Entergy, but ahead of Georgia's Southern Co. or Florida Power & Light (part of NextEra Energy), two big competitors in the southeastern United States.
In remarks Monday, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers and Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson emphasized that their combined corporate heft will be key to nuclear power expansion. Why? Because the extraordinary costs of nuclear power plant construction make it financially risky for any power companies but the very biggest to afford.
Says Progress Energy's Johnson, who becomes CEO of the resulting company: "Our size and scale, once combined, position us well for nuclear generation."
Maybe. Soaring nuclear building expenses are prompting some experts to question whether nukes in the future can competitively produce electricity. And some aging nuclear plants are starting to show wear and tear.
In Florida, Progress Energy's Crystal River plant has been shut down for a startling 18 months as a crack in an exterior wall is fixed. Price tag so far? About a quarter-billion dollars in repairs and the purchase of replacement electricity. Another Progress Energy nuclear plant, in North Carolina, last month was identified as leaking tritium, a radioactive substance linked to cancer. The leak, now stopped, is being monitored.
Progress Energy wants to build four new nuclear power reactors — two in Florida's Levy County and two in North Carolina. Duke also wants to build two reactors in South Carolina. That means the new company seeks up to six new nuclear reactors. It remains unclear, even to the companies, if they are all still firm go-ahead projects.
In St. Petersburg, Progress Energy Florida CEO Vinny Dolan says his company will seek a license for its Levy nuclear plant and then "see where we are."
The price tag on the Levy County project alone sailed past $20 billion long ago. In contrast, the entire market value of Progress Energy as a public corporation (stock price multiplied by shares outstanding) is less than $13 billion.
That disparity is a big reason why Progress Energy does not want to bet the company on building one nuclear power project. Even when combined, the current market value of Duke and Progress Energy is only $36 billion.
That's a big number. But so is $20 billion-plus for a nuclear power project.
That is why the power companies want state legislators that already let companies charge ratepayers in advance for nuclear construction costs to make it even easier in the future. So says Jim Warren, who heads the North Carolina nuclear watchdog group NC Waste Awareness and Reduction Network — NC Warn for short.
Both Duke and Progress Energy have been waffling in recent years over their nuclear ambitions, Warren says, though a merger may motivate them to press forward.
By coincidence, NC Warn on Monday held a news conference critical of alleged design flaws in one nuclear power plant design — Westinghouse's model AP1000 — that both Duke and Progress Energy endorse.
Upshot? A vastly larger, pro-nuke company still doesn't guarantee a nuclear future
10 Jan, 2011, Mon, Nuclear News: Iran 'uncovers Israel spy network'
Aljazeera: Iran 'uncovers Israel spy network'
State television identifies a young Iranian as "main element" behind death of a nuclear scientist in January last year.
Iran's state media has reported the arrest of a "network of spies" linked to Israel's Mossad intelligence service it blamed for the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
The station on Monday aired the footage of a young man identified as Majid Jamalifash, who it said was the "main element" behind the assassination of the scientist.
In a statement, the intelligence ministry said Israel had used European, non-European and some neighbouring countries to carry out the assassination plot.
"The ministry ... has identified and arrested members of a spy and terrorist network linked to the Zionist regime," the station said on Monday quoting the statement.
Iran does not recognise the state of Israel.
"The network of spies and terrorists linked to ... Mossad was destroyed. The network was behind the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi."
A remote-controlled bomb killed the Tehran University scientist in the Iranian capital on January 12 last year.
Israeli training
Iran blamed the United States and Israel for Ali-Mohammadi's death, a charge Washington has rejected as "absurd".
Jamalifash reportedly said Israeli officers trained him in a military base near Tel Aviv in surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, as well as how to collect "information from a specific place and sticking a bomb under a car".
He also said he had practised detonating bombs in that base "several times", according to the state television's website.
Tensions are running high between Iran and Israel which has not ruled out military strikes if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve a row over Iran's nuclear programme.
Western sources have said Ali-Mohammadi, a physics professor, worked closely with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi and Fereydoun Abbassi-Davani, both named in UN sanctions resolutions because of their work on suspected nuclear weapons development.
Another Iranian nuclear scientist was killed on November 29 by a car bomb in Tehran, with Iranian officials saying it was an Israeli or US-sponsored attack on its atomic programme.
Death penalty
Under Iran's penal code, imposed since its 1979 Islamic revolution, espionage can carry the death penalty.
In December Iran hanged an Iranian man convicted of spying for Israel.
Another Iranian man was hanged in 2008 for allegedly working with Mossad. Israel denied any link to the case.
Iran and Israel have been arch-enemies since the Iranian revolution, and Tehran periodically announces arrests of people suspected of spying for Israel.
Israel, believed to be the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, the United States and its allies, accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear programme as cover to build atomic weapons.
Iran denies the charge, saying it wants to use nuclear power to generate electricity.
State television identifies a young Iranian as "main element" behind death of a nuclear scientist in January last year.
Iran's state media has reported the arrest of a "network of spies" linked to Israel's Mossad intelligence service it blamed for the murder of an Iranian nuclear scientist.
The station on Monday aired the footage of a young man identified as Majid Jamalifash, who it said was the "main element" behind the assassination of the scientist.
In a statement, the intelligence ministry said Israel had used European, non-European and some neighbouring countries to carry out the assassination plot.
"The ministry ... has identified and arrested members of a spy and terrorist network linked to the Zionist regime," the station said on Monday quoting the statement.
Iran does not recognise the state of Israel.
"The network of spies and terrorists linked to ... Mossad was destroyed. The network was behind the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi."
A remote-controlled bomb killed the Tehran University scientist in the Iranian capital on January 12 last year.
Israeli training
Iran blamed the United States and Israel for Ali-Mohammadi's death, a charge Washington has rejected as "absurd".
Jamalifash reportedly said Israeli officers trained him in a military base near Tel Aviv in surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, as well as how to collect "information from a specific place and sticking a bomb under a car".
He also said he had practised detonating bombs in that base "several times", according to the state television's website.
Tensions are running high between Iran and Israel which has not ruled out military strikes if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve a row over Iran's nuclear programme.
Western sources have said Ali-Mohammadi, a physics professor, worked closely with Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi and Fereydoun Abbassi-Davani, both named in UN sanctions resolutions because of their work on suspected nuclear weapons development.
Another Iranian nuclear scientist was killed on November 29 by a car bomb in Tehran, with Iranian officials saying it was an Israeli or US-sponsored attack on its atomic programme.
Death penalty
Under Iran's penal code, imposed since its 1979 Islamic revolution, espionage can carry the death penalty.
In December Iran hanged an Iranian man convicted of spying for Israel.
Another Iranian man was hanged in 2008 for allegedly working with Mossad. Israel denied any link to the case.
Iran and Israel have been arch-enemies since the Iranian revolution, and Tehran periodically announces arrests of people suspected of spying for Israel.
Israel, believed to be the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, the United States and its allies, accuse Iran of using a civilian nuclear programme as cover to build atomic weapons.
Iran denies the charge, saying it wants to use nuclear power to generate electricity.
10 Jan, 2011, Monday, Nuclear News: 2 of 4 VY safey valves were leaking, useless
Boston.com: 2 of 4 VY safey valves were leaking, useless
VERNON, Vt.—Two of four safety valves designed to pump water into the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's reactor core to cool it during an accident were found inoperable during a refueling outage in April.
The Brattleboro Reformer reports the plant told the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Dec. 22 it found the condition during a refueling outage in April.
Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who advises the Legislature on Vermont Yankee, says the valves normally help relieve pressure in the reactor when the plant shuts down suddenly. He says their backup is a high pressure coolant injection system that was found leaking in September.
Vermont Yankee is scheduled to close in March of 2012 when its current license expires, though it is seeking a 20-year extension
VERNON, Vt.—Two of four safety valves designed to pump water into the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant's reactor core to cool it during an accident were found inoperable during a refueling outage in April.
The Brattleboro Reformer reports the plant told the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Dec. 22 it found the condition during a refueling outage in April.
Arnold Gundersen, a nuclear engineer who advises the Legislature on Vermont Yankee, says the valves normally help relieve pressure in the reactor when the plant shuts down suddenly. He says their backup is a high pressure coolant injection system that was found leaking in September.
Vermont Yankee is scheduled to close in March of 2012 when its current license expires, though it is seeking a 20-year extension
Friday, January 7, 2011
7 Jan 2011, Friday, Nuclear News:
Washington Post: Defense team gets security clearances in nuke case
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Lawyers for a New Mexico physicist, who is accused of trying to help Venezuela develop a nuclear weapon, have received security clearances and can begin to review documents after agreeing with prosecutors on a deal to share unclassified material.
Attorney Amy Sirignano, representing former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, says the clearances were issued Thursday.
Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, are accused of offering to help develop a nuclear weapon for Venezuela through dealings with an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a representative of the Venezuelan government.
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Lawyers for a New Mexico physicist, who is accused of trying to help Venezuela develop a nuclear weapon, have received security clearances and can begin to review documents after agreeing with prosecutors on a deal to share unclassified material.
Attorney Amy Sirignano, representing former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni, says the clearances were issued Thursday.
Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni and his wife, Marjorie Roxby Mascheroni, are accused of offering to help develop a nuclear weapon for Venezuela through dealings with an undercover FBI agent, who was posing as a representative of the Venezuelan government.
Both defendants have pleaded not guilty.
7 Jan, 2011, Friday, Nuclear News: Buying time with Iran
The Washington Post: Buying time with Iran
By David Ignatius
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Obama administration has concluded that Iran's nuclear program has been slowed by a combination of sanctions, sabotage and Iran's own technical troubles. Because of the delay, U.S. officials see what one describes as "a little bit of space" before any military showdown with Iran.
Israeli officials, too, see more time on the clock. Moshe Yaalon, Israel's deputy prime minister, noted the Iranian slowdown in a Dec. 29 interview with Israel Radio and said the West has up to three years to stop Tehran from making a bomb.
"These [Iranian] difficulties slow the timeline, of course," said Yaalon, a former Israeli defense chief. And last Thursday, outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan told Israeli reporters that Iran couldn't build a bomb before 2015 at the earliest, in part because of unspecified "measures that have been deployed against them."
A senior Obama administration official gave me a similar account of Iran's troubles. "They're not moving as fast as we had feared a year ago," he said.
This new assessment of Iran's nuclear setbacks has lowered the temperature on what had been 2010's hottest strategic issue. Last summer, Jerusalem and Washington were talking themselves into a war fever, prompted in part by a powerful article in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg that starkly described the likelihood of military action. This fever seems to have broken.
What's increasingly clear is that low-key weapons - covert sabotage and economic sanctions - are accomplishing many of the benefits of military action, without the costs. It's a devious approach - all the more so because it's accompanied by near-constant U.S. proposals of diplomatic dialogue - but in that sense, it matches Iran's own operating style of pursuing multiple options at once.
Officials won't discuss the clandestine program of cyberattack and other sabotage being waged against the Iranian nuclear program. Yet we see the effects - in crashing centrifuges and reduced operations of the Iranian enrichment facility at Natanz - but don't understand the causes. That's the way covert action is supposed to work.
The most direct confirmation that sabotage has paid off came from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said in November that the Stuxnet computer virus had damaged the Natanz operation. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," he said.
A fascinating (and remarkably detailed) account of the Stuxnet attack was published Dec. 22 by the Institute for Science and International Security. The study described how the virus was targeted to attack a key electronic control in the centrifuges, known as a "frequency converter," so that the spin of the rotors was increased and slowed in a way that would cause a malfunction.
According to the ISIS report, the virus may have been introduced in early or mid 2009. By late 2009 or early 2010, the study said, Iran decommissioned and replaced about 1,000 centrifuges - far more than normal breakage. The virus hid its electronic tracks, but an analysis by the security firm Symantec showed that the code included the term "DEADFOO7," which could refer to the aviation term for a dead engine and also be a play on James Bond's fictional code name.
Stuxnet was just one of what appeared to have been a series of efforts to disrupt the supply chain of the Iranian nuclear program. "Such overt and covert disruption activities have had significant effect in slowing Iran's centrifuge program," concluded the ISIS.
The delays in the Iranian program are important because they add strategic warning time for the West to respond to any Iranian push for a bomb. U.S. officials estimate that if Iran were to try a "break out" by enriching uranium at Natanz to the 90 percent level needed for a bomb, that move (requiring reconfiguration of the centrifuges) would be detectable - and it would take Iran one to two more years to make a bomb.
The Iranians could try what U.S. officials call a "sneak out" at a secret enrichment facility like the one they constructed near Qom. They would have to use their poorly performing (and perhaps still Stuxnet-infected) old centrifuges or an unproven new model. Alternative enrichment technologies, such as lasers or a heavy-water reactor, don't appear feasible for Iran now, officials say. Foreign technology from Russia and other suppliers has been halted, and the Iranians can't build the complex hardware (such as a "pressure vessel" needed for the heavy-water reactor) on their own.
The Obama administration keeps holding the door open for negotiations, and another round is scheduled this month in Istanbul. But the real news is that Tehran has technical problems - bringing sighs of relief (and a few mischievous smiles) in the West.
By David Ignatius
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Obama administration has concluded that Iran's nuclear program has been slowed by a combination of sanctions, sabotage and Iran's own technical troubles. Because of the delay, U.S. officials see what one describes as "a little bit of space" before any military showdown with Iran.
Israeli officials, too, see more time on the clock. Moshe Yaalon, Israel's deputy prime minister, noted the Iranian slowdown in a Dec. 29 interview with Israel Radio and said the West has up to three years to stop Tehran from making a bomb.
"These [Iranian] difficulties slow the timeline, of course," said Yaalon, a former Israeli defense chief. And last Thursday, outgoing Mossad chief Meir Dagan told Israeli reporters that Iran couldn't build a bomb before 2015 at the earliest, in part because of unspecified "measures that have been deployed against them."
A senior Obama administration official gave me a similar account of Iran's troubles. "They're not moving as fast as we had feared a year ago," he said.
This new assessment of Iran's nuclear setbacks has lowered the temperature on what had been 2010's hottest strategic issue. Last summer, Jerusalem and Washington were talking themselves into a war fever, prompted in part by a powerful article in the Atlantic by Jeffrey Goldberg that starkly described the likelihood of military action. This fever seems to have broken.
What's increasingly clear is that low-key weapons - covert sabotage and economic sanctions - are accomplishing many of the benefits of military action, without the costs. It's a devious approach - all the more so because it's accompanied by near-constant U.S. proposals of diplomatic dialogue - but in that sense, it matches Iran's own operating style of pursuing multiple options at once.
Officials won't discuss the clandestine program of cyberattack and other sabotage being waged against the Iranian nuclear program. Yet we see the effects - in crashing centrifuges and reduced operations of the Iranian enrichment facility at Natanz - but don't understand the causes. That's the way covert action is supposed to work.
The most direct confirmation that sabotage has paid off came from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who said in November that the Stuxnet computer virus had damaged the Natanz operation. "They succeeded in creating problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with the software they had installed in electronic parts," he said.
A fascinating (and remarkably detailed) account of the Stuxnet attack was published Dec. 22 by the Institute for Science and International Security. The study described how the virus was targeted to attack a key electronic control in the centrifuges, known as a "frequency converter," so that the spin of the rotors was increased and slowed in a way that would cause a malfunction.
According to the ISIS report, the virus may have been introduced in early or mid 2009. By late 2009 or early 2010, the study said, Iran decommissioned and replaced about 1,000 centrifuges - far more than normal breakage. The virus hid its electronic tracks, but an analysis by the security firm Symantec showed that the code included the term "DEADFOO7," which could refer to the aviation term for a dead engine and also be a play on James Bond's fictional code name.
Stuxnet was just one of what appeared to have been a series of efforts to disrupt the supply chain of the Iranian nuclear program. "Such overt and covert disruption activities have had significant effect in slowing Iran's centrifuge program," concluded the ISIS.
The delays in the Iranian program are important because they add strategic warning time for the West to respond to any Iranian push for a bomb. U.S. officials estimate that if Iran were to try a "break out" by enriching uranium at Natanz to the 90 percent level needed for a bomb, that move (requiring reconfiguration of the centrifuges) would be detectable - and it would take Iran one to two more years to make a bomb.
The Iranians could try what U.S. officials call a "sneak out" at a secret enrichment facility like the one they constructed near Qom. They would have to use their poorly performing (and perhaps still Stuxnet-infected) old centrifuges or an unproven new model. Alternative enrichment technologies, such as lasers or a heavy-water reactor, don't appear feasible for Iran now, officials say. Foreign technology from Russia and other suppliers has been halted, and the Iranians can't build the complex hardware (such as a "pressure vessel" needed for the heavy-water reactor) on their own.
The Obama administration keeps holding the door open for negotiations, and another round is scheduled this month in Istanbul. But the real news is that Tehran has technical problems - bringing sighs of relief (and a few mischievous smiles) in the West.
7 Jan 2011, Friday, Nuclear News: Graham, DeMint: Bring nuclear waste to South Carolina
Politics AP: Graham, DeMint: Bring nuclear waste to South Carolina
By Sammy Fretwell
The State
U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint said Friday the nation should recycle its used nuclear fuel, a move that could bring jobs to the state's Savannah River Site.
Recycling is one option for handling the nation's waste now that the Obama Administration has decided not to dispose of the waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Speaking at a forum in Augusta on how to handle the nation's growing burden of deadly atomic garbage, Graham said he believes nuclear fuel reprocessing can be done — and that the Savannah River Site near Aiken should be a leader in finding the best way to recycle radioactive trash.
"I'm very willing for the Savannah River site to be the research and the development facility for the nation to make that idea a reality,'' Graham, R-S.C., told the Blue Ribbon Panel on America's Nuclear Future, which held the hearing. "The goal of reprocessing and recycling is to reduce your storage footprint, right?''
The forum was held to get input on how the United States should resolve its nuclear waste problem. The nation has some 70,000 metric tons of the highly poisonous material. Much of that is building up at power plants, but some is at atomic weapons complexes such as SRS. The panel will make a recommendation to President Obama about what the nation should do.
Graham and DeMint were joined in their support by representatives of power companies and SRS boosters. No formal plan is on the table to reprocess fuel, but it is a controversial practice that has sparked discussion lately in South Carolina.
The idea is to re-use highly radioactive nuclear fuel, after it has been burned in power plants. That would prevent it from becoming waste that must be buried or stored, supporters say.
But the process can create its own toxic waste stream and it has plenty of detractors.
By Sammy Fretwell
The State
U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint said Friday the nation should recycle its used nuclear fuel, a move that could bring jobs to the state's Savannah River Site.
Recycling is one option for handling the nation's waste now that the Obama Administration has decided not to dispose of the waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Speaking at a forum in Augusta on how to handle the nation's growing burden of deadly atomic garbage, Graham said he believes nuclear fuel reprocessing can be done — and that the Savannah River Site near Aiken should be a leader in finding the best way to recycle radioactive trash.
"I'm very willing for the Savannah River site to be the research and the development facility for the nation to make that idea a reality,'' Graham, R-S.C., told the Blue Ribbon Panel on America's Nuclear Future, which held the hearing. "The goal of reprocessing and recycling is to reduce your storage footprint, right?''
The forum was held to get input on how the United States should resolve its nuclear waste problem. The nation has some 70,000 metric tons of the highly poisonous material. Much of that is building up at power plants, but some is at atomic weapons complexes such as SRS. The panel will make a recommendation to President Obama about what the nation should do.
Graham and DeMint were joined in their support by representatives of power companies and SRS boosters. No formal plan is on the table to reprocess fuel, but it is a controversial practice that has sparked discussion lately in South Carolina.
The idea is to re-use highly radioactive nuclear fuel, after it has been burned in power plants. That would prevent it from becoming waste that must be buried or stored, supporters say.
But the process can create its own toxic waste stream and it has plenty of detractors.
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