Hillary Clinton on Nuclear Treaties

Two years ago, President Obama gave a landmark speech calling for total nuclear disarmament and pledging to work towards it with treaties addressing existing nuclear weapon arsenals, nuclear testing, and the production of materials for new nuclear weapons. 

Today, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is attending an international "Conference on Disarmament."  This is not an official U.N. meeting, but it is a U.N.-supported group of 65 nations with the intention of negotiating future disarmament treaties.

One of the key items on the agenda:  a proposed "Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty."  Signatories to such a treaty would agree not to produce any of the raw materials for new nuclear weapons.  The country currently stalling the progress of these negotiations is Pakistan.

Check out this transcript of Hillary Clinton's remarks.  Over the rest of the semester, we'll untangle the alphabet soup of nuclear treaties and give you some more background in what all this is about.

Watch out for your kids!

Two radiation-related news stories this week caught my eye, both from the New York Times.

Image originally from Springer Science+Business Media--Forensic Aspects of Pediatric Fractures: Differentiating Accidental Trauma from Child Abuse, by Rob A. C., Robben, Simon G. F., Rijn, Rick R. 1st Edition, 2010, Chapter 8: 171-188, Fig. 3.

The first deals with newborn babies being accidentally or carelessly subjected to excess x-rays.  This is the latest in a series of scares over the last couple of years about lax regulation of the intensity and frequency of medical x-rays and other forms of medical radiation exposure.  See the full article at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/28/health/28radiation.html



(Photographs by Marcus Yam for The New York Times)

The second article, also from the New York Times, deals with an increase in eye damage cases for teenagers playing with green laser pointers.  Many lasers that are commercially available have dangerously powerful lasers, some exceeding the federal limits.  If accidentally or intentionally directed at the eye, the focused laser light can cause heating and basically burn away part of the retina.  This is a really different kind of radiation damage compared to ionizing radiation (like that in the article on x-rays, above), but it shows that even ordinary green light can be harmful in some circumstances!

Here's the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/health/01laser.html

"A real bummer"

So, you know how nuclear bombs are bad and all that? And how it would be really bad if a country were to use them? Yeah, turns out it would be worse than we thought. Like, "oops, there goes a large chunk of the ozone layer" bad. Over a quarter of the ozone layer in 2 years if 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs went off. My question is, how big are the warheads we've got in store today compared to the "Hiroshima-sized" ones being used to create this statistic? Anyway, here's the unsettling article:


http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/nuclear-war-climate-change/

-Caitlin

Russell and Einstein

So, there's this really excellent blog called Letters of Note that posts a new piece of correspondence every weekday. The writers and recipients of the letters range everywhere from Franz Kafka to Marilyn Monroe to Zach Galifianakis to the CEO of the now defunct Tiger Oil Company. If you feel like it, you should browse through some of the letters, they're really neat.

Anyways, they just posted a letter from Bertrand Russell to Albert Einstein concerning their manifesto (which deals with nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction). Click here to read the letters.

It's not exactly news since it's obviously something that happened a long time ago, but I think it's really interesting to see a scientists personal thoughts about science instead of just, well, science.

posted by Liana Jegers

Radioprotective potential of mint: A brief review

from the Journal of Cancer Research and Therapeutics:

> Abstract

Radiation is an important modality in cancer treatment and estimates are that between one third and one half of all patients will require ionizing irradiation therapy during some point in their clinical management. However, the radiation-induced damage to the normal tissues restricts the therapeutic doses of radiation that can be delivered to tumors and thereby limits the effectiveness of the treatment. The use of chemical compounds (radioprotectors) represents an obvious strategy to improve the therapeutic index in radiotherapy. However, most of the synthetic radioprotective compounds studied have shown inadequate clinical application owing to their inherent toxicity and high cost. These observations necessitated a search for alternative agents that are less toxic and highly effective.
Studies in the recent past have shown that some medicinal plants possess radioprotective effects. Two species of the commonly used aromatic herb mint, Mentha piperita and M. arvensis protected mice against the γ-radiation-induced sickness and mortality. Detail investigations have also shown that the aqueous extract of M. piperita protected the vital radiosensitive organs: the testis, gastrointestinal and hemopoetic systems in mice. The radioprotective effects are possibly due to free radical scavenging, antioxidant, metal chelating, anti-inflammatory, antimutagenic, and enhancement of the DNA repair processes. This review for the first time summarizes the observations and elucidates the possible mechanisms responsible for the beneficial effects. The lacunae in the existing knowledge and directions for future research are also addressed.

Full article:

http://www.cancerjournal.net/article.asp?issn=0973-1482;year=2010;volume=6;issue=3;spage=255;epage=262;aulast=Baliga

Bethany Schmitt

Study: Cellphones Trigger Brain Response

By SHIRLEY S. WANG

Cellphone use appears to increase brain activity in regions close to where the phone antenna is held against the head, according to a new study, but researchers said the health implications are still unknown.

The study is the first to demonstrate that radiation from the devices has a direct impact on some brain cells, and is likely to fuel a long-running debate over the safety of cellular phones.

"This study shows that the human brain is sensitive to electromagnetic radiation coming out of cellphones," said Nora Volkow, an author on the study and a scientist at the National Institutes of Health. "That is something we need to face."

Shirley Wang has details of a just-released study indicating that cell phone use does have a direct impact on brain activity.

However, "our finding does not tell us if this is harmful or not," said Dr. Volkow, who is also the head of the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Some medical experts have been concerned for years about the possible long-term health consequences of frequent cellphone use. The city of San Francisco voted in June to require cellphone retailers to post the amount of radiation emitted by each phone because of the concern.

But results from studies looking at the health effects have been mixed. Some large-scale studies have found a link between cellphone use and brain cancer, but they haven't been able to show the cancer was caused by cellphone radiation.

The main concern is that radiation from phones could cause DNA mutations or changes in the brain, leading to tumors or cognitive decline. But to date there is no known evidence that the frequency of the waves emitted from phones is powerful enough to cause such changes, according to Reto Huber, a professor at the University Children's Hospital Zurich who has published several studies on electromagnetic fields and cellphones. He wasn't involved in this latest study.

In Tuesday's study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers from the National Institutes of Health and Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York examined the impact of cellphone use on brain activity by measuring the glucose metabolism—how much sugar a cell takes in to fuel activity—of 47 adults, the largest study of its kind to date. They conducted scans while subjects had cellphones held to their left and right sides for 50 minutes. The researchers found that some brain regions near the antenna became significantly more active when a cellphone was turned on and held to the ear, even though the participants didn't actually speak or listen to a conversation.

The increase in brain activity in those regions was comparable to the increase in level of glucose metabolism used by the visual cortex when someone talks—about 8% to 10%, according to Dr. Volkow.

Dr. Huber's group in Switzerland has conducted similar studies by measuring blood flow to brain regions—another indicator of brain activity—and found that there is an increase in flow to regions close to where the cellphone was held.

Mitchel Berger, a neuro-oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco, called the findings "very interesting and provocative" but said they don't increase his concerns about the safety of cellphones.

"You could get confused very rapidly and think this finding is equated with a health hazard," said Dr. Berger, who wasn't part of the study. "What it tells us is at the frequencies these phones currently generate, there are [brain] regions that are hyperactive."

Nevertheless, "I think until we really understand the very long-term effects with these newer phones it's not unreasonable to ask people to use headphones or speakers," said Dr. Berger.

If there aren't negative long-term effects, cellphones could be used as a non-invasive way to stimulate parts of the brain in a therapeutic sense, such as for depression treatment, said Dr. Volkow.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704071304576160652541652440.html

posted by In Kyong Lee

Egypt and nukes

How does unrest in North Africa and the Middle East play into nuclear issues?  I have no idea!  But, I am sure it's complex, and I hope we'll learn more over this semester.  I was surprised to see this recent MSNBC article:


MSNBC article on Egypt's weapons development

This seems to suggest that Egypt has been quietly working on WMDs, including nuclear weapons, and that they've even considered pulling out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.  This is news to me - the last time I heard much about Egypt's role in nuclear debate, it was when Egypt was advocating for a nuclear free Middle East, back in April:


Christian Science Monitor article from last year about a possible nuclear-weapons-free Middle East

In the article above, they characterize Egypt as :  "the loudest advocate for progress on a Middle East nuclear-weapons-free zone." 

I am not sure how to reconcile these different portrayals!  Got any insights?  Seen any related news?  Post it!

100% Chance of WMD strikes against the U.S.?

Earlier this week, a senior FBI official was quoted as saying that there is a 100% chance that a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD) will be used on U.S. soil.  The comment was made without specifying any particular timeline: 100% chance in a year?  In 10 years?  In the entire lifetime of the U.S.?

WMD is a term usually used to discuss large-scale weapons using chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear materials to cause mass casualties, terror, and economic hardship.  Note that it's important to distinguish between "radiological" weapons (weapons in which, typically, a nasty radioactive material is combined with explosives to make a big, dangerous mess) and "nuclear" weapons, which use nuclear fission and/or fusion to create unparalleled explosive power. 


The article originally written about this FBI official's comment points out that the risk of a true terrorist nuclear attack is the smallest.  Scary to think about these risks, no matter how small!  An important part of reading this article is noting the source:  the author is a well-published conservative commentator and the news site is pretty strongly right wing.  This news story has not been broadly picked up in the mainstream or left-wing media.


Conservative news site Newsmax article on the FBI official's statement

Scientists build the world's first anti-laser

"Physicists have built the world's first device that can cancel out a laser beam - a so-called anti-laser.

The device, created by a team from Yale University, is capable of absorbing an incoming laser beam entirely.
But this is not intended as a defence against high-power laser weapons, the researchers said.
Instead they think it could be used in next-generation supercomputers which will be built with components that use light rather than electrons."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12453893

Hinkley has been identified by the government as one of eight potential sites for a new nuclear power station.

Here are some articles that reference this new nuclear station.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset/hi/people_and_places/newsid_9401000/9401749.stm (video)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-12199711

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-11215839

Nuclear waste issue heats up again...

The United States has abandoned plans for the Yucca Mountain permanent repository for highly radioactive nuclear waste from nuclear power plants.  There don't seem to be any clear paths for creating an alternative plan or re-starting the Yucca Mountain plans, although some hope that this will happen soon.   Meanwhile, all of the waste that has been accumulating at nuclear reactors for the last 40 years or so is still just sitting there, often in storage containers that were only meant for temporary use. 

Recently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the governmental body responsible for regulating nuclear power plants and waste) has had to change its standards to adapt to the reality of nuclear waste storage.  They have had to declare that it is OK for nuclear waste to sit in temporary storage for as long as 60 years, since there's no alternative in sight.

Several states have gotten together and sued the NRC recently, stating that there should be an environmental review of existing sites before the 60-year temporary storage is allowed.  In some locations, the waste is in decaying, poorly maintained containers at old, defunct nuclear power plants with minimal security.  Nearby residents are nervous to have such high-risk materials maintained indefinitely in their communities.  But where else can we put it?


Time Magazine blog entry on the latest lawsuits over waste storage
New York Times coverage

Stuxnet craziness!

I think this is by far the weirdest, most disturbing, most fascinating "nuclear news" story currently unfolding... Stuxnet is the computer "worm" believed to be designed for targeted attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities. Today there were new hints that Israel really was primarily responsible for the worm, in a video created to celebrate the retirement of high-level Israeli defense official, which mentioned the worm.  Israel has not made any official statements about the worm.  However, they have previously undertaken targeted conventional attacks against nuclear facilities in neighboring countries (notably Syria in 2007).

Telegraph article on the video


Security analysts have been studying the worm after the fact to figure out how it worked and what it did.  In the mean time, several news organizations are reporting that "hacktivists" under the collective name Anonymous have obtained and released "decompiled" versions of the Stuxnet code.  It doesn't sound from the news stories as if their version is particularly dangerous, but the whole issue of targeted cyberattacks as a new form of war or subversion is pretty interesting...

A few articles:
BBC article on Symantec's analysis of the Stuxnet worm
Switched tech blog article on Anonymous obtaining the worm
Fox News article on the Anonymous release

Local Energy Issues: Chicago Clean Energy Coalition

You may have noticed signs around campus about a public hearing yesterday on a proposed "Clean Power Ordinance" for Chicago. The issue concerns two coal-burning power plants in densely populated neighborhoods of Chicago. The proposed ordinance would apply stringent limits on certain types of pollutants from those plants, possibly requiring them to switch to burning natural gas, or to close entirely. As we're talking about the issues surrounding nuclear power plants, it's important to remember the issues surrounding the alternatives, such as coal! This is a very interesting current case study in public energy issues and the risks associated with our electricity.

Here's a news story about the issue:



Below is an image from progressive website   Progress Illinois showing activists at yesterday's "ad hoc" public hearing. Their sign refers to a study claiming that 40 people in the city of Chicago die each year due to the pollutants from the two coal power plants in question. The group has been waiting for 10 months for a public hearing, hence claims that 30 people have died in that time period.



The company that owns the plants has worked with consultants to put out a press release reacting to the activists' claims, and you can read the press release here. The press release claims that the pollution from these two power plants represents about 1% of particulate pollution in the city. If that's true, then the number of deaths from these plants pales in comparison to the number of deaths from particulate pollution from transportation and other sources. They also specifically compare exposure to the pollution from these plants as being comparable to participating in a single one of the following activities (quoted from the article linked above):
* "About 15 minutes per week driving a car on an urban freeway
* About 20 minutes per week aboard a Chicago school bus
* Mowing the lawn twice a year
* About 15 minutes per week cooking with a gas stove or oven
* About half a day per year breathing air inside a home where someone smokes
* About 25 minutes per week burning candles in a home
* Two 20-minute visits per month to an indoor food court."


While this particular debate does not directly involve nuclear power, it is a classic example of the challenges involved in assessing risk from something like a power plant. Fascinating!

Breakdown of Korean Talks

After just a day, the talks between North and South Korea seem to have broken down.  The North refuses to apologize for the death of civilians when a border island was shelled last fall.  These talks were hoped to be a step towards higher-level, more substantive talks between the two nations.  Other countries such as the U.S. and China would like to see the two Koreas make significant progress before beginning a new round of discussions about North Korea's nuclear program.  It's not looking good!

Here's an article from the New York Times about the breakdown of talks.

Timeline of North Korea's Nuclear Program

South Korea and North Korea are in preliminary military talks today for the first time in months.  Could this be the first step towards restarting the "six-party" talks over North Korea's nuclear program?  Many hope so.

I came across a great short summary of the timeline of North Korea's nuclear program, by the Telegraph in the UK.  It's an excellent way to come up to speed quickly!  Here's the link.

Why Snakes Have no Legs (Random 3-d X-ray Imaging Science)

Check it out - the image above is of the leg bones of a snake!  Didn't know snakes had leg bones?  Me either!  I just saw this interesting press release on the the use of Synchotron-Radiation Computed Laminography to create high-tech 3-d images of fossils.  This isn't your ordinary every-day x-ray - the fossils are taken to a particle accelerator facility where intense x-ray beams are used to construct a three-dimensional reconstructed image.  This allows detailed measurements of the structure within ancient fossils.  Sounds like analysis of this particular fossil supports the idea that snakes evolved from burrowing lizards.