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