Dr Strangelove!

It's free on hulu!

link

-Cat

three articles from this morning.

Another India Update from BBC: India watchdog seeks radioactive waste explanation

Southern Co. Nuclear Power plant to hire up to 21,000 new workers (seeking out college students)

Playing peace to target Iran

"Every time the US president tries painstakingly to build a coalition against Iran up pops Israel, writes Graham Usher in New York"

Madeline Snively (sorry, I'm bad with webpage formatting!)

Update on Cobalt 60 Leak in India

The New York Times ran an article yesterday on the incident in India where several scrap yard employees were hospitalized after exposure to Cobalt-60, the radioactive isotope used in radiotherapy and food irradiation. The New York Times reported that the material originated inside a medical machine that was auctioned off by the chemistry department of a nearby university. The machine was, apparently, from 1968, and nobody knew it contained anything toxic. It had been in a basement at the university for many years.

The New York Times also reported that one of the shop workers passed away in the hospital from multiple organ failure due to radiation poisoning.

Here is the full article:

Indian University Is Deemed Source of Radiation Exposure - NEW YORK TIMES

-Grace Claiborn

Power for Progress

Power for Progress Comic

-Caitlin

US Weighs Iran Military Option

"If Iran decides to go for nuclear weapons, the US may not be able to permanently stop this from happening unless it is willing to occupy the country."

madeline snively

Not nuclear...but electrical

First U.S. Offshore Wind Farm Gets Government OK

This is a little off-topic, but not by much. Many people believe wind power is unrealistic and that nuclear power is the only "ecological electricity" for our (America's) finances and sciences.

madeline snively

Chernobyl Today

Some spooky but beautiful photos from Chernobyl.

Link

-Pablo

A cold war-era sign giving instructions for the aftermath of a nuclear attack from Portland, USA.

larger image here

Jameson Doody

Tsar Bomba

http://sonicbomb.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=90

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfoQsZa8F1c&feature=related

Jameson Doody

Brazil dismisses sanctions over Iran's nuclear standoff, prefers dialogue

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki (R) talks with his Brazilian counterpart Celso Amorin during a joint press conference in Tehran, capital of Iran, April 27, 2010. Mottaki said that Iran is willing to consider enriching uranium in other countries as suggested by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-04/27/c_13270045.htm

Kerry Yang

The world's views of Nuclear Weapons at a glance

Check out this news site where they categorize nuclear news from different views of each nuclear country.  

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-04/15/c_13252337_2.htm

Kerry Yang

Cobalt-60 Leak in Inda

Here's an article from the New York Times detailing the leak in India. (I've been waiting for the NY Times to pick this story up...)

Scrap Metal Radiation Raises Concerns in India

An interesting tidbit: One of the workers from the scrap metal shop took a sliver of the contaminated metal, so he could test if it was potentially valuable. He put the little piece of metal in his wallet, and slipped it in his back pocket. He forgot about the scrap, and after several weeks, he complained of pains in his buttocks. The pain grew worse and he finally collapsed and was taken to the doctor.

-Grace Claiborn

Replacing Nukes?

"In coming years, President Obama will decide whether to deploy a new class of weapons capable of reaching any corner of the earth from the United States in under an hour and with such accuracy and force that they would greatly diminish America’s reliance on its nuclear arsenal.

Yet even now, concerns about the technology are so strong that the Obama administration has acceded to a demand by Russia that the United States decommission one nuclear missile for every one of these conventional weapons fielded by the Pentagon. That provision, the White House said, is buried deep inside the New Start treaty that Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev signed in Prague two weeks ago. "
More


-Cat

Tactical Nukes Under Dispute!

Rememver those US 'tactical nukes' that are in Europe, that we talked about on Wednesday in class?  Well, sounds like they're being discussed at the NATO meeting that is going on right now.  Some members of NATO would like them to be removed, but the US is taking the stance that the NATO alliance is a "nuclear alliance".


Check it out:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/world/europe/23diplo.html

At Los Alamos, Working Against Their Own Creation

madeline snively

Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Cartoon

This piece of cartoon reproduced the atomic bombing situation on August 6th Hiroshima in 1945.

Beautifully done but yet very very sad and violent.

Kerry Yang

Current debates

Here's an interesting critique of Obama's nuclear summit from last week.  It's pretty blistering:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR2010041504663.html
Worth reading also are a couple of letters that were written to the Washington Post in reply:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/19/AR2010041904666.html
Your final project for this class could easily take the form of argumentation pieces like these!


While we're mining the Washington Post for interesting nuclear news, here's an update on Iran's current approach to the international debate over its nuclear program:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/20/AR2010042004423.html
Looks like they're trying to prevent sanctions, and still aiming for a fuel swap under very specific conditions.  They are also aiming to remind the world about the fundamental flaws in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and to undermine the upcoming review of that Treaty by stirring up conflict between the nuclear "haves" and the nuclear "have-nots". 

Meanwhile, a Boston Globe editorial claims we need to learn to live with a nuclear Iran:
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/21/get_ready_to_live_with_nuclear_iran/

Cobalt-60 Leak in India

Cobalt-60 found a local scrap metal shop in Delhi, India. The shop owner is in critical condition at the hospital, while several other shop workers are hospitalized with varying levels of radiation sickness. Seven victims are currently known and hospitalized, while at least four others have been exposed. The police in India are still in the dark about the source of the metal. The event has inspired new interest in installing radiation detectors throughout the city.

Yahoo News article: Radiation Leak: Did Cobalt-60 Come From Abroad?

Another article summarizing the event:

Fresh radiation source found in Delhi, cops to scan area

-Grace Claiborn

Want to survive 50 megaton nuclear blast?

An American company, Vevos, is claiming to have an underground shelter that sustains life for a year after a 50 megaton nuclear explosion (within a ten mile radius). It's probably a really expensive scam, considering the "end times" rhetoric on the company's website... but an interesting thought, nonetheless.

Vevos's shelters are underground communities that can hold 3,400 people. They have furnished living quarters that are self-sustaining, and some other interesting perks like a DNA depository for every living species on earth.

An article about the "Apocalypse-proof" bunker

Vivos commercial website

-Jameson Doody

Iran's response to the Nuclear Posture Review.

www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/world/middleeast/12iran.html

-Lauren Wassmer

U.S. Nuclear Posturing Makes No Major Promises

Huffington Post , opinion piece by Michael J. Martin about the NUCLEAR POSTURE REPORT

the article

- Nimisha

Aussie Uranium won't be used in Russian Nukes

Australia is a large producer of uranium

and is Kevin Rudd is making

decisions to which countries australia

will sell to. ( australia will not supply uranium to India)

Aussie Uranium won't be used in Russian Nukes

"Australia would effectively be relinquishing responsibility for supplying the raw ingredient for bomb fuel to a nuclear weapons state with an acknowledged lack of transparency in its civil-military arrangements," spokesman Bill Williams said.

- Nimisha Gupta

Radon Spa information links

Radon Spa Therapy for Arthritis

"A placebo-controlled study from Germany reports that radon spa therapy offers benefits for patients with rheumatoid arthritis."

Low Dose Radon as Alternative Therapy for Chronic Illness

Photo caption: "The water here contains calcium, magnesium-hydrogen-carbonic, iodine, bromide and radon. Thus the spa is recommended for those who have motor disorders, rheums, some backbone problems, or heart and blood system disease."

Madeline Snively

Obama's nuclear summit

Today was the second and final day of a nuclear security summit hosted in Washington by President Obama.  The two major objectives (as well as I can tell) were to address the risk of nuclear terrorism, and to rally support for sanctions against Iran.  It sounds like the summit was more successful on the former than the latter.  While none of the final agreements between nations are legally binding, many nations pledged to destroy weapons-grade nuclear materials and work towards better nuclear security. 

On the question of Iran, China has been advocating a diplomatic approach rather than sanctions. It's a little unclear where China stands at the moment, but Obama claims there has been progress on the question of sanctions.  China imports a lot of oil from Iran, and it's also at odds with the U.S. over currency issues at the moment, so there are some significant roadblocks to full cooperation with the Obama agenda on Iran. 

A decent summary article from CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/04/13/obama.hu.nuclear.meeting/?hpt=T1

An interesting Fox News article about the U.S. taking on all the nuclear material of the world:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/04/13/popular-destination-worlds-unwanted-nuclear-supply/

I LOVE OBAMA THIS WEEK!

"Saying that the prospect of nuclear terrorism had emerged as one of the greatest threats to global security, President Obama called on world leaders “not simply to talk, but to act” to secure or destroy vulnerable stockpiles of nuclear materials.

...

Seeking to lend force to his warning, Mr. Obama said that dozens of countries held nuclear materials that could be sold or stolen, and that a weapon fashioned from an apple-size piece of plutonium could kill or injure hundreds of thousands of people"

Here

-Cat

Like Ike...

Apparently Eisenhower had a similar nuke policy, this is really interesting...

"On Monday, President Obama announced, in his Nuclear Posture Review, a new American approach to nuclear war that comes right out of Eisenhower’s playbook."

-Cat

New regulations for medical radiation equipment...

I AM HYJACKING THIS BLOG

:)

-Cat

"Even as the two presidents hailed the treaty, however, they found no common ground on American plans to build an antimissile shield in Europe to counter any Iranian threat. Mr. Obama refused Russian demands to include limits on missile defense in the treaty, nearly scuttling the agreement. In the days leading up to the ceremony here, Russian officials alternately claimed the agreement would bind the program or complained that it did not and threatened to withdraw if it went forward.

The treaty, if ratified by lawmakers in both countries, would require each country to deploy no more than 1,550 strategic warheads, down from 2,200 allowed in the Treaty of Moscow signed by President George W. Bush in 2002. Each would be limited to 800 total land-, air- and sea-based launchers — 700 of which can be deployed at any given time — down from 1,600 permitted under the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, or Start."

Here.

-Cat

NPR NYT Editorial

Here.

-Cat

NPR

Here.

-Cat

Weird Science

Something so heavy it's stable?

-Cat

NPR: dig in!

 
 (Image from the Department of Defense website)


The full-blown announcement of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) was today!  Is it weird that I find this incredibly exciting?

There were remarks by Secretaries Gates, Clinton, and Chu describing the report in a briefing earlier today.  The NPR is the policy document that explicitly defines the U.S. policy on nuclear weapons:  how many we should have, the conditions under which we might use them, our strategies for addressing nuclear proliferation, the treaty obligations we will support, and the weapons development projects we will perform. 

The Obama NPR breaks very significantly from several of the previous versions, and I would anticipate significant commentary and response world-wide in the next few weeks.  Of note:  this is the first such review that is completely unclassified!  You can read the whole thing at:
 http://www.defense.gov/npr/

Here's a CNN article with video from the briefing.  

Get ready for controversy!

Finally, there is some news about the Nuclear Posture Review that has been going on in the background in the Obama administration.  Everyone with an interest in 'things nuclear' has been waiting to see how much Obama changes previous policy. 

Here's a quote from a New York Times article on one of the biggest announced changes in the imminent Review:  "For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty"

Believe it or not, this is a big change in policy, that does seem to be in line with Obama's stated anti-nuke agenda.  Suddenly, we should start hearing a lot more about what nuclear weapons mean in the U.S. these days!

See an interesting opinion article?  Post it!

Readings for HW6

To continue our discussion of some of the aspects of the (very complex) argument over nuclear power, I've picked just a couple of selected topics for followup this week.  The written questions about these readings are posted to the portal page under Week 8.

Topic 1:  Tritium Leaks at Vermont Yankee Power Plant
A Vermont Public Radio update from last week
A "Vermont Digger" blog posting/news release about Greenpeace criticisms of the Yankee plant
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Backgrounder on Tritium releases at power plants


Topic 2:  Security of Nuclear Power Plants
A repost (see posts last week) of an opinion piece by retired CIA terrorism expert Charles Faddis
A rebuttal of this piece, written by the head of the Nuclear Energy Institute (an industry group)


Topic 3:  The argument against reprocessing
I've pointed out that there are some experts out there who feel that "reprocessing" nuclear waste is a really bad idea.  Here's an opinion piece that argues that point of view (it's a pdf document - if you have trouble reading it, email me and I'll send it to you):
Frank von Hippel opinion piece against reprocessing

China, US, Iran and the UN

China is backing the UN's 'Iran' policy but disapproving Obama with visiting the Dalai Lama, along with some good ol' US selling of $6 billion worth of weapons...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/world/asia/02china.html?hp

-Harrison Brunswick