Welcome to the Spring 2011 Unstable Nucleus class at SAIC!

Howdy everyone.  In the first class this week (assuming we have one - your instructor is at home with a fever at the moment AND we're expecting a blizzard tomorrow) I'll be catching everyone up on a few of the active news stories we'll be following this semester.  Almost all of the readings for this class will come from current news stories, so these topics are likely to come up week after week.  We'll use our study of nuclear physics to become more informed readers of the nuclear news.

1) Iran! Iran's apparent nuclear ambitions have been a focus of world attention for the last couple of years.  Iran has been steadily building capacity at its nuclear facilities, claiming that the work is all to support peaceful nuclear energy and medical purposes.  Yet, the same facilities could be used to produce materials for nuclear weapons.  The US has supported sanctions against Iran, but also in the last year an intriguing software worm called Stuxnet infiltrated Iranian nuclear facilities, causing havoc.  Was this worm a tool of the US goverment and/or Israel to stall Iran's progress?  Some recent news stories:
Reuters article on a British diplomat's claim that Iran could have a bomb in as little as a year
Opinion piece from a Fox News blog, critiquing the Obama administration's handling of Iran.
New York Times article on the Stuxnet worm 

2) North Korea!  North Korea has had nuclear weapons for a while, and this has created enormous tensions in the region.  The goal of the rest of the world is to get them to agree to disarm, but are there any actual paths towards doing that?  Are they actively increasing their nuclear weapons capacity?  
Bloomberg article on a recently discovered secret nuclear facility in North Korea
Guardian article about South Korea pressing for new nuclear talks with North Korea

3) Obama's Nuclear Weapons agenda.  You might have heard some of the news last fall about the New START treaty debates in Congress.  Well, the treaty passed.  Obama had relatively little to say about foreign policy in his recent State of the Union Address, but in the background he is pushing a fairly aggressive nuclear disarmament agenda.  Here are a couple of updates:
New York Times article on the Russian ratification of New START
Critical analysis of the treaty from the Xinhua news agency (China)

4) Resurgence of Nuclear Power.  Nuclear power (or nuclear energy) refers to electricity generated using nuclear reactions.  There's been a renewed interest in nuclear power as an alternative to energy from fossil fuel sources.  For the first time in decades, the US has authorized the production of new power plants.  Obama counts nuclear power in his idea of "clean energy" when he calls for 80% of US energy to come from clean sources by 2035, as he did in the State of the Union Address.
Washington Post article about senate support for nuclear energy

5) Ongoing debate over Nuclear Waste.We may not have heard any major news stories lately about nuclear waste, but that doesn't mean the problem has gone away.  Nuclear waste storage remains one of the big questions associated with nuclear technology.
Update on legal battles over the Yucca Mountain waste project

Finally, we'll also be talking about any news items that pop up that have to do with radiation, radioactivity, etc.  But, those will be the subject of the first homework assignment, so I will post a few separately.   Happy reading!