‘State television reports that Iran has successfully launched its first space rocket. Fars news agency quotes the deputy head of Iran’s aerospace research centre, Ali Akbar Golrou, as saying the rocket reached an altitude of 150 kilometres, but did not stay in orbit. [..]
Bahrami, told state television that the rocket was carrying “material intended for research created by the ministries of science and defense.” Bahrami added, “All the tests [prior to the launch] have been carried out in the country’s industrial facilities in line with international regulations.” [..]
The announcement of the rocket launch comes at a time of growing tension between Iran and the West over Tehran’s nuclear program. [..]’
‘Most US intelligence on Iran shared with the International Atomic Energy Agency has proved to be inaccurate and failed to lead to discoveries of a smoking gun inside the Islamic Republic, The Los Angeles Times reported on its website on Saturday.
Citing unnamed diplomats working in Vienna, the newspaper said the CIA and other Western intelligence services have been providing sensitive information to the IAEA since 2002.
But none of the tips about Iran’s suspected secret weapons sites provided clear evidence that the Islamic Republic is developing a nuclear arms arsenal, the report said.
“Since 2002, pretty much all the intelligence that’s come to us has proved to be wrong,” the paper quotes a senior IAEA diplomat as saying.
Another official described the agency’s intelligence stream as “very cold now” because “so little panned out,” The Times reported.’
‘In an apparent acknowledgment of the plummeting standard of public scientific education in the West, the UN’s nuclear tentacle today unveiled a new danger sign for radiation which must approach the nadir of literalism. [..]
Spokeswoman Caroline MacKenzie summed up the new stance against Darwinian natural selection, and in favour of Homer Simpson: “We can’t teach the world about radiation, but we can warn people about dangerous sources for the price of sticker.”
So, as well as the traditional exclamation mark trefoil, a skull and crossbones is there to belt and braces the fact that radiation isn’t nice. Any dunderheads then unsure of what to do in such circumstances are further helped out by the addition of the image of a running stick man.’
see it here »
‘With the rising use of radioisotopes in medicine and the growing use of radiation detectors in a security-conscious nation, patients are triggering alarms in places where they may not even realize they’re being scanned, doctors and security officials say.
Nearly 60,000 people a day in the United States undergo treatment or tests that leave tiny amounts of radioactive material in their bodies, according to the Society of Nuclear Medicine. It is not enough to hurt them or anyone else, but it is enough to trigger radiation alarms for up to three months.’
`Iran has begun installing 3,000 centrifuges to increase its uranium enrichment program, a senior Iranian legislator said Saturday — but the claim was later denied by the country’s nuclear body.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s foreign policy and national security committee, said the installation of the centrifuges — which spin uranium gas into enriched material — was underway at a plant in Natanz.
The installation “stabilizes Iran’s capability in the field of nuclear technology,” Boroujerdi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency. [..]
“No new centrifuge machine has been installed in Natanz facility,” Simorgh was quoted as saying by Iran’s IRNA news agency.’
`The safety of Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal was called into question yesterday after Georgia said it had arrested a man trying to sell weapons-grade uranium hidden under his jacket. Officials in Tiblisi said Oleg Khintsagov had been captured after smuggling the uranium into the country. Agents posing as members of a radical Islamist group arrested the Russian businessman in a sting operation.
Mr Khintsagov, 50, had offered to sell 100 grams of enriched uranium for $1m, officials said. After producing a sample, he told agents he had a further two or three kilograms of uranium at his home in Vladikavkaz, in neighbouring southern Russia – enough to make a small nuclear bomb.’
`The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday — symbolizing the annihilation of civilization and adding the perils of global warming for the first time.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons, advanced the clock to five minutes until midnight. It was the first adjustment of the clock since 2002.
“We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age,” the bulletin’s board of directors said in a statement.
They pointed to North Korea’s first nuclear test, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, U.S. flirtation with “bunker buster” nuclear bombs, the continued presence of 26,000 American and Russian nuclear weapons and inadequate security for nuclear materials.’
This is the official “Account of the Accident”. It’s quite long but kinda interesting, if you like that sorta thing. 🙂
The full report is also available.
`You saw the stories that dominated the headlines in 2006: the war in Iraq, North Korea’s nuclear tests, and the U.S. midterm elections. But what about the news that remained under the radar? From the Bush administration’s post-Katrina power grab to a growing arms race in Latin America to the new hackable passports, FP delivers the Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2006.’
`A US nuclear submarine has collided with a Japanese ship in the Arabian Sea, Japanese and US government officials have said.
The collision took place in the Arabian Sea, south of the Straits of Hormuz, although no details were available about the submarine’s exact location.
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed that a collision had taken place, AFP reports.
There was no immediate information about any possible casualties or the exact nature of the collision.’
`The Bush administration is expected to announce next week a major step forward in the building of the country’s first new nuclear warhead in nearly two decades. It will propose combining elements of competing designs from two weapons laboratories in an approach that some experts argue is untested and risky.
The new weapon would not add to but replace the nation’s existing arsenal of aging warheads, with a new generation meant to be sturdier, more reliable, safer from accidental detonation and more secure from theft by terrorists.’
`Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
Two Israeli air force squadrons are training to blow up an Iranian facility using low-yield nuclear “bunker-busters”, according to several Israeli military sources.
The attack would be the first with nuclear weapons since 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Israeli weapons would each have a force equivalent to one-fifteenth of the Hiroshima bomb.’
`Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday a horrific terrorist act on the United States that will result in “mass killing” late in 2007.
“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”
Robertson said God told him during a recent prayer retreat that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.
“I put these things out with humility,” he said.’
God told me that Pat Robertson is a fuckwit. I say this, of course, with the utmost humility.
Update: video of this here – Pat Robertson’s Predictions for 2007
`In 1922, a bank teller named Grace Fryer became concerned when her teeth began to loosen and fall out for no discernible reason. Her troubles were compounded when her jaw became swollen and inflamed, so she sought the assistance of a doctor in diagnosing the inexplicable symptoms. Using a primitive X-ray machine, the physician discovered serious bone decay, the likes of which he had never seen. Her jawbone was honeycombed with small holes, in a random pattern reminiscent of moth-eaten fabric.’
`Australians are more likely to be attacked by a shark or hit by lightning than die from a nuclear power plant disaster.
In releasing a report commissioned on the viability of nuclear power in Australia, Prime Minister John Howard said there were no sound reasons to not go nuclear.
The final report from the Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy review board said the risk of implementing nuclear power is of an acceptably low level.’
`Radioactive nuclei that hang around for a mere half-minute before falling apart hardly seem stable. Yet compared with the fleeting lifetimes of their superheavy atomic neighbors, the roughly 30-second period that transpired from creation to disintegration of four atoms of a newly discovered isotope of element 108 qualifies those atoms as rock solid.’
‘From the awesome BBC doco “Hiroshima”. See CGI effects bring this disaster to horrifying life.’
(20.1meg Flash video)
see it here »
`A container packed with radioactive material has been stolen from a fortified research facility in eastern India, prompting a major hunt and fears of contamination, officials said.
“It carries uranium and radiation and could have an adverse effect in an area of 1.5 kilometres (0.93 mile),” Jharkhand Chief Minister Madhu Khoda warned.
Khoda said the uranium was stolen nearly three weeks ago after being moved to a research site at the densely-populated town of Rajrappa from a federal atomic facility near Mumbai.’
`A watchdog group charges a nuclear warhead nearly exploded in Texas when it was being dismantled at the government’s Pantex facility near Amarillo.
The Project on Government Oversight says it has been told by knowledgeable experts that the warhead nearly detonated in 2005 because an unsafe amount of pressure was applied while it was being disassembled, The Austin American-Statesman reports.
The U.S. Energy Department fined the plant’s operators $110,000 last month. [..]
The watchdog group says the problem was caused in part by technicians at the plant being required to work up to 72 hours each week.’
`During his Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday, Gates mentioned why Iran might be seeking the means to build an atomic bomb: “They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf,” he said.
The remark led Israeli news bulletins. State-run radio suggested Gates may have breached a U.S. “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that dates back to the late 1960s.
“It’s quite unprecedented,” a retired Israeli diplomat told Reuters on Thursday when asked about Gates’s testimony. “I can only assume he has yet to get to grips with the understandings that exist between us and the Americans.”‘
‘By the time doctors finally discovered what had poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, he had only three hours to live.
As he lay unconscious, his wife Marina holding his hand and his ten-year-old son, Anatoli, stroking his forehead, a laboratory test on a urine sample identified the lethal element polonium-210 as the silent killer ravaging his body. [..]
The revelations about polonium-210 provoked a new rush of conspiracy theories. Security experts said this was no crude grudge killing but was the work of assassins with likely access to a nuclear installation, not just to a radioactive isotope that could be acquired from medical waste.’
I used to work a bit with polonium-210. Never did me any harm. But I s’pose I was playing with only nanograms at a time and definitely not eating it. 🙂
`Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war.
The Bush administration did so under pressure from congressional Republicans who said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say present a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.’
`Iran will offer cash incentives to travel agencies to encourage Western tourists to visit the country, giving a premium for Americans, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
The Islamic republic’s political leadership has been trying to reach out to ordinary Americans to show that a standoff over Iran’s nuclear ambitions is with the Bush administration — not U.S. citizens. [..]
“Iran’s tourism department will pay $20 per person to those who attract European or American tourists to the country,” the agency on Tuesday quoted Mohammed Sharif Malakzadeh, deputy head of the department, as saying.’
‘Authorities in northern New Mexico have stumbled onto what appears to be classified information from Los Alamos National Laboratory while arresting a man suspected of domestic violence and dealing methamphetamine from his mobile home. [..]
Police alerted the FBI to the secret documents, which agents traced back to a woman linked to the drug dealer, officials said. The woman is a contract employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to an FBI official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.
The official would not describe the documents except to say that they appeared to contain classified material and were stored on a computer file.’
`Prime Minister John Howard has given his strongest support yet to the use of nuclear power in Australia, backing the local development of the “clean” energy industry.
An expert taskforce is due to release a draft report next month on the merits of nuclear power and whether Australia should be thinking of value-adding options, such as enrichment, for its vast uranium stores.
But before the experts have even had their say, Mr Howard has indicated he believes nuclear power is an industry Australia should be developing.’
`Reclusive North Korea said on Tuesday it would conduct its first-ever nuclear test, blaming a U.S. “threat of nuclear war and sanctions” for forcing its hand.
The statement by North Korea’s foreign ministry, which was carried on the official KCNA News Agency, was immediately condemned by Japan as called “totally unforgivable.”
Its announcement capped weeks of rumors that the Stalinist state was planning a test and came amid increasingly bitter relations with the outside world after it test-fired missiles in July.’
‘When NASA announced its “Galileo into Jupiter” option, among those to publish immediate, serious objections (and later to repeat them on “Coast to Coast AM”) was an engineer named Jacco van der Worp. Van der Worp claimed that, plunging into Jupiter’s deep and increasingly dense atmosphere, the on-board Galileo electrical power supply — a set of 144 plutonium-238 fuel pellets, arrayed in two large canister devices called “RTGs” (Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators — see image and schematic, below) — would ultimately “implode”; that the plutonium Galileo carried would ultimately collapse in upon itself under the enormous pressures of Jupiter’s overwhelming atmosphere —
Triggering a runaway nuclear explosion!’
`On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously. [..]
The activists used bolt-cutters to get into the E-9 Minuteman II facility, located just northwest of the White Shield, North Dakota. “Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300 kiloton nuclear warhead,” the group said in a statement. “The activists painted ‘It’s a sin to build a nuclear weapon’ on the face of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their blood on the missile lid.”
This was all done while wearing face paint, dunce caps, misfitting overalls, and bright yellow wigs.’
`[..] political interest in nuclear power is reviving across the world, thanks in part to concerns about global warming and energy security. Already, some 441 commercial reactors operate in 31 countries and provide 17% of the planet’s electricity, according to America’s Department of Energy. Until recently, the talk was of how to retire these reactors gracefully. Now it is of how to extend their lives. In addition, another 32 reactors are being built, mostly in India, China and their neighbours. These new power stations belong to what has been called the third generation of reactors, designs that have been informed by experience and that are considered by their creators to be advanced. But will these new stations really be safer than their predecessors?’
