moonbuggy

`A computer hacker got into the U.S. agency that guards the country’s nuclear weapons stockpile and stole the personal records of at least 1,500 employees and contractors, a senior U.S. lawmaker said on Friday.

The target of the hacker, the National Nuclear Safety Administration, is the latest agency to reveal that sensitive private information about government workers was stolen.’

`In the Cold War arms race, scientists rushed to build thousands of warheads to counter the Soviet Union. Today, those scientists are racing once again, but this time to rebuild an aging nuclear stockpile.

Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico are locked in an intense competition with rivals at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the Bay Area to design the nation’s first new nuclear bomb in two decades. [..]

By law, the new weapons would pack the same explosive power as existing warheads and be suitable only for the same kinds of military targets as those of the weapons they replace. Unlike past proposals for new atomic weapons, the project has captured bipartisan support in Congress.’

followup to: Lab officials excited by new H-bomb project

`If you look at it just right, the universal radiation warning symbol looks a bit like an angel. The circle in the middle could indicate the head, the lower part might be the body, and the upper two arms of the trefoil could represent the wings. Looking at it another way, one might see it as a wheel, a triangular boomerang, a circular saw blade, or any number of relatively benign objects. Whatever a person’s first impression of it may be, someone unfamiliar with the symbol probably wouldn’t guess that it means “Danger! These rocks shoot death rays!”

The U.S. Department of Energy has been grappling with that problem recently, as they designed the warning markers to use at Yucca Mountain and at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) nuclear waste storage facilities. There’s no telling who might be around to exhume our radioactive sins in future centuries, but the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandates that warnings be erected which will warn away potential intruders for the next 10,000 years, whomever those intruders may be.’

`European Union states are reportedly considering reviving an offer to Iran of a light-water nuclear reactor to persuade it to halt uranium enrichment.

Britain, France and Germany will raise the idea with the US, China and Russia on Friday, an unnamed EU diplomat says.

The EU is preparing a new package of measures that it hopes will convince Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions.

The EU and the US fear that Iran – despite its denials – is actually trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Iran says its nuclear programme is aimed at meeting its energy needs only and insists on its right to enrich uranium. ‘

`This site is dedicated to the amateur scientist studying high energy physics. It is an overview of the work done by our local group of physics enthusiasts.

We work in the following areas:

Nuclear Fusion
Tesla Coils
Water Arc Explosions
Electrostatics
Instrument Construction
Magnetics’

`Located about 1 1/2 hrs from Spokane, 4 hrs. from Seattle, 5 hrs. from Portland.

360 Degree Views. Private water system. High Power lines on sight.

Hardened buildings built to withstand One megaton nuclear blast within three thousand feet!!

Wall thicknesses up to fourteen feet.

Three 155′ tall missile silos.

A dozen other large to huge buildings underground.

Thousands of feet of connecting tunnels.’

`School officials in Inglewood, Calif., said an elementary school principal made an “honest mistake” while trying to prevent student walkouts during immigration rallies.

Angie Marquez imposed a lockdown as nearly 40,000 students across Southern California left classes to attend immigrants’ rights demonstrations. But the lockdown didn’t allow children to go to the bathroom, forcing them to use buckets in the classroom.

One activist said what happened was “unsanitary, unnecessary and absolutely unacceptable.”

Marquez apparently misread the district handbook and ordered a lockdown designed for nuclear attacks.’

`In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That’s the conviction that inspired Greenpeace’s first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions — or nearly 10 percent of global emissions — of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.’

`Iran announced overnight it had successfully enriched uranium to make nuclear fuel, a dramatic breakthrough in its disputed atomic drive that defies a UN Security Council demand for the work to be halted.

The announcement came just 15 days before the expiry of a Security Council deadline for Iran to freeze enrichment – a process that can be extended to make the fissile core of an atom bomb.

In a speech carried live on state television, vice president and atomic energy chief Gholam Reza Aghazadeh announced that “on April 9, we successfully enriched uranium to 3.5 per cent,” the purity required for civilian reactor fuel.’

`The White House on Sunday sought to dampen the idea of a U.S. military strike on Iran, saying the United States is conducting “normal defense and intelligence planning” as President Bush seeks a diplomatic solution to Tehran’s suspected nuclear weapons program.

Administration officials — from President Bush on down — have left open the possibility of a military response if Iran does not end its nuclear ambitions. Several reports published Sunday said the administration was studying options for military strikes; one account raised the possibility of using nuclear bombs against Iran’s underground nuclear sites.

Britain’s foreign secretary called the idea of a nuclear strike “completely nuts.”‘

Also Bush administration ‘secretly plans air strikes’ as it seeks regime change in Iran:

`The Bush administration has sent undercover forces into Iran, and has stepped up secret planning for a possible major air attack on the country, according to the renowned US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

While publicly advocating diplomacy to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, Hersh reports in the next issue of The New Yorker magazine that “there is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change”.’

`The administration of President George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility, The New Yorker magazine has reported in its April 17 issue.

The article by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that Bush and others in the White House have come to view Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a potential Adolf Hitler.

“That’s the name they’re using,” the report quoted a former senior intelligence official as saying.

A senior unnamed Pentagon adviser is quoted in the article as saying that “this White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war.”‘

`The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation’s decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.

The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation’s massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.

Until now, the nation has depended on carefully maintaining aging bombs produced during the Cold War arms race, some several decades old. The administration, however, wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022, as the Pentagon retires older bombs that it says will no longer be reliable or safe.

Under the plan, all of the nation’s plutonium would be consolidated into a single facility that could be more effectively and cheaply defended against possible terrorist attacks. The plan would remove the plutonium kept at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by 2014, though transfers of the material could start sooner. In recent years, concern has grown that Livermore, surrounded by residential neighborhoods in the Bay Area, could not repel a terrorist attack.’

Yet at the same time they’re gonna chuck a hissy fit if Iran or North Korea do the same thing. Fuckwits.

`Australia and China have signed a nuclear deal allowing Beijing to import Australian uranium for power stations.

The agreement was signed under the gaze of both countries’ prime ministers.

Australia, which has 40% of the world’s known uranium deposits, sells uranium only to members of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. [..]

Australia insists that potential uranium buyers must agree to a separate bilateral deal stipulating that they will not divert nuclear fuel into weapons programmes.’

`An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (March 30, 2006) the first results of a new neutrino experiment. Sending a high-intensity beam of muon neutrinos from the lab’s site in Batavia, Illinois, to a particle detector in Soudan, Minnesota, scientists observed the disappearance of a significant fraction of these neutrinos. The observation is consistent with an effect known as neutrino oscillation, in which neutrinos change from one kind to another. The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment found a value of delta m2 = 0.0031 eV2, a quantity that plays a crucial role in neutrino oscillations and hence the role of neutrinos in the evolution of the universe.’

Lots of videos of nuclear explosions.

`The U.N. Security Council gave Iran 30 days to clear up suspicions that it is seeking nuclear weapons, and key members turned their focus on what to do if Iran refuses to suspend uranium enrichment and allow more intrusive inspections.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Berlin on Thursday for discussions between the five permanent council members the United States, Russia, China Britain and France plus Germany, on how much and what kind of pressure to exert on Iran if it refuses to comply.

After three weeks of intense negotiations, the 15-member Security Council approved a statement Wednesday asking the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, to report back in 30 days on Iran’s compliance with demands to stop enriching uranium.’

Like it matters. The US government no doubt already knows if it wants to invade Iran or not, and the UN isn’t going to sway them at all.

`North Korea suggested Tuesday it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the United States, according to the North’s official news agency. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said the North had built atomic weapons to counter the U.S. nuclear threat.

“As we declared, our strong revolutionary might put in place all measures to counter possible U.S. pre-emptive strike,” the spokesman said, according to the Korean Central News Agency. “Pre-emptive strike is not the monopoly of the United States.”

Last week, the communist country warned that it had the right to launch a pre-emptive strike, saying it would strengthen its war footing before joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises scheduled for this weekend.

The North’s spokesman said it would be a “wise” step for the United States to cooperate on nuclear issues with North Korea in the same way it does with India.’

`With power cleaner than coal and cheaper than natural gas, the nuclear industry, 20 years past its last meltdown, thinks it is ready for its second act: its first new reactor orders since the 1970’s.

But there is a catch. The public’s acceptance of new reactors depends in part on the performance of the old ones, and lately several of those have been discovered to be leaking radioactive water into the ground.

Near Braceville, Ill., the Braidwood Generating Station, owned by the Exelon Corporation, has leaked tritium into underground water that has shown up in the well of a family nearby. The company, which has bought out one property owner and is negotiating with others, has offered to help pay for a municipal water system for houses near the plant that have private wells.’

A bit of tritium never hurt anyone, I say. 🙂

‘It’s not just that America is being ruled by small and venal men, or that its reputation has been demolished, its army overstretched, its finances a mess. All of that, after all, was true toward the end of Vietnam as well. Now, though, there are all kinds of other lurking catastrophes, a whole armory of swords of Damocles dangling over a bloated, dispirited and anxious country. Peak oil — the point at which oil production maxes out — seems to be approaching, with disastrous consequences for America’s economy and infrastructure. Global warming is accelerating and could bring us many more storms even worse than Katrina, among other meteorological nightmares. The spread of Avian Flu has Michael Leavitt, secretary of health and human services, warning Americans to stockpile canned tuna and powdered milk. It looks like Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon, and the United States can’t do anything to stop it. Meanwhile, America’s growing religious fanaticism has brought about a generalized retreat from rationality, so that the country is becoming unwilling and perhaps unable to formulate policies based on fact rather than faith.’

`The UK supplied Israel with quantities of plutonium while Harold Wilson was prime minister, BBC Newsnight can reveal.

The sale was made despite a warning from British intelligence that it might “make a material contribution to an Israeli weapons programme”.

Under Wilson, Britain also sold Israel tons of chemicals used to make boosted atom bombs 20 times more powerful than Hiroshima or even Hydrogen Bombs.’

`A team of thieves that broke into an abandoned missile silo not far from the Russian city of Kostroma in search of nonferrous metals was shocked to find the shaft packed with Soviet money bills, Regnum news agency reported on Tuesday.

The incident would have remained secret, had the wind not blown hundreds of banknotes all over the countryside.’

`The Bunker is situated on 18 acres of land and surrounded by concertina wiring in Kent, England. It is an impregnable fortress, sitting 30 metres below ground. It has concrete walls three metres thick, steel doors weighing over two tons that protect the servers and digital storage units within.

Layered on top of this physical inaccessibility is a 24-hour watch with guard dogs, CCTV and a series of sophisticated access controls that offer the ultimate in protection from a myriad of attacks, including crackers, terrorist attack, electro-magnetic pulse, electronic eavesdropping, HERF weapons and solar flares.’

`Radiation detectors in Britain recorded a fourfold increase in uranium levels in the atmosphere after the “shock and awe” bombing campaign against Iraq, according to a report.

Environmental scientists who uncovered the figures through freedom of information laws say it is evidence that depleted uranium from the shells was carried by wind currents to Britain.

Government officials, however, say the sharp rise in uranium detected by radiation monitors in Berkshire was a coincidence and probably came from local sources.’

`6. Total number and types of nuclear warheads and bombs built, 1945-1990: more than 70,000/65 types [..]

8. Number of nuclear warheads requested by the Army in 1956 and 1957: 151,000 [..]

13. Fissile material produced: 104 metric tons of plutonium and 994 metric tons of highly-enriched
uranium [..]

41. Volume in cubic meters of radioactive waste resulting from weapons activities: 104,000,000 [..]’

`For the first time in more than 20 years, U.S. nuclear-weapons scientists are designing a new H-bomb, the first of probably several new nuclear explosives on the drawing boards.

If they succeed, in perhaps 20 or 25 more years, the United States would have an entirely new nuclear arsenal, and a highly automated fac- tory capable of turning out more warheads as needed, as well as new kinds of warheads.

“We are on the verge of an exciting time,” the nation’s top nuclear weapons executive, Linton Brooks, said last week at Lawrence Livermore weapons design laboratory.’

followup to: US scientists designing new generation of nuclear arms

`Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), while offering substantial improvements over the original design.

The device, which uses two opposing crystals to generate a powerful electric field, could potentially lead to a portable, battery-operated neutron generator for a variety of applications, from non-destructive testing to detecting explosives and scanning luggage at airports. The new results are described in the Feb. 10 issue of Physical Review Letters.’

`Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran’s nuclear sites as a “last resort” to block Teheran’s efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt. [..]

“This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment,” said a senior Pentagon adviser. “This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months.”‘

`A teenager who was repeatedly given a potentially fatal overdose of radiation at a leading cancer unit spoke yesterday of her fears after the hospital where she was given the treatment said the mistake was the result of human error.

Lisa Norris, 15, was undergoing radiation therapy for a brain tumour at Beatson Oncology Centre, Glasgow, when she was given the potentially deadly doses 17 times. Doctors have told her they do not know what the long-term effects on her health will be. “I could be brain damaged, I could be paralysed. We don’t know what’s in the future. I could not be here,” she said yesterday.’

`A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, and the Russian Academy of Sciences has used sound waves to induce nuclear fusion without the need for an external neutron source, according to a paper in the Jan. 27 issue of Physical Review Letters. [..]

By bombarding a special mixture of acetone and benzene with oscillating sound waves, the researchers caused bubbles in the mixture to expand and then violently collapse. This technique, which has been dubbed “sonofusion,” produces a shock wave that has the potential to fuse nuclei together, according to the team.’

`Sam Tabor, a professor of experimental nuclear physics at FSU and director of the university’s Superconducting Accelerator Laboratory, recently performed the experiment at the GSI laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany, in collaboration with the international team. In the experiment, a cigar-shaped atom was created using a particle collider. To the scientists’ surprise, this atom demonstrated a novel kind of radioactive decay by spitting out two free protons at the same time.

Radioactive decay normally involves the emission of one of three types of particle: a helium nucleus consisting of two protons and two neutrons, an electron or a photon. Exotic atoms engineered to contain fewer neutrons than in the atom’s natural state were expected to break down by emitting protons one at a time. But the correlated two-proton decay hadn’t been seen before and represents a new form of radioactivity.’