NUKES SPREAD, LABS CLAMP DOWN

Both Bush and Kerry said it: the spread of nuclear weapons is the biggest secu­rity prob­lem the coun­try faces. And 2004 saw that sit­u­a­tion get a whole lot worse, with both Iran and North Korea mov­ing fur­ther down the atomic path.
Here at home, the nuclear news was a bit bet­ter. Plans for new atomic weapons were scrapped by Congress. And the Energy Department finally got seri­ous about secu­rity at its nuclear labs — after a slew of lost clas­si­fied disks and laser in the eye shamed the bureacracy into act­ing.
PAK NUKE SALES OVERT, GOV’T APPROVED
Pakistan’s gov­ern­ment is try­ing to por­tray the sale of nuclear tech­nol­ogy to Iran, Libya, and North Korea as the cloak-​​and-​​dagger work of a few, iso­lated rogues. But that’s a lie, says Jane’s Defense Weekly. Nuclear sales were so out in the open that under­lings of Abdul Qadeer Khan — the father of the Pakistani Bomb — were hand­ing out glossy brochures adver­tis­ing their ser­vices at a 2000 arms con­fer­ence.
IRAQI URANIUM NOW IN U.S. LABS
The good news: U.S. troops and sci­en­tists have taken a heap of radioac­tive mate­r­ial out of inse­cure loca­tions in Iraq. The bad news: they may have brought the stuff to one of the most inse­cure loca­tions here in America.
1 YEAR UNTIL IRAN NUKES
“Some American ana­lysts warn that there is only a year or so left to stop Iran from achiev­ing nuclear self-​​sufficiency. After that, they say, the coun­try will have the means to cre­ate a nuclear arse­nal with­out out­side help, for­ever alter­ing the Middle East bal­ance of power.“
NUKE STOCKPILES ON THE RISE
No mat­ter what Iran decides to do about its nuclear pro­gram, the chances of radioac­tive mate­r­ial get­ting into dan­ger­ous hands con­tinue to grow.
IRAN’S NUKE PAUSE — BAD NEWS?
So Iran has appar­ently stopped enrich­ing ura­nium for the moment, press­ing pause on its nuclear pro­gram. Great news, right? Actually, it could hardly be worse, argues Michael Levi, the Brookings Institution’s res­i­dent atomic author­ity.
NEW NUKE RESEARCH BLOWN UP
It ain’t dead, yet. But the Bush administration’s push to research and develop new nuclear weapons could be on the verge of flat-​​lining, after a key Congressional leader moved on Wednesday to elim­i­nate fund­ing for the atomic arms projects.
WHAT’S A “BUNKER BUSTER” NUKE?
In the debate tonight, Sen. Kerry made an aside about cut­ting the money to develop a new, “bunker-​​busting” nuclear weapon. What’s he talk­ing about?
GUARDS CHEATED NUKE SECURITY DRILLS
Security guards at the country’s lead­ing nuclear store­house have been cheat­ing dur­ing antiter­ror­ism drills — per­haps for as long as 20 years.
NOT AGAIN! LOS ALAMOS LOSES SECRET DISK
It’s become a recur­ring night­mare for man­agers at the nation’s most impor­tant nuclear weapons lab: a hard drive or disk, filled with clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, goes miss­ing. And sud­denly, Los Alamos offi­cials, try­ing to remerge from years of scan­dal, have a whole lot of explain­ing to do.
SANDIA HAS BUTTER FINGERS, TOO
Los Alamos isn’t the only weapons lab that can’t seem to keep track of its clas­si­fied disks. Sandia National Laboratories just announced that they, too, are “search­ing for a miss­ing floppy disk that was marked clas­si­fied.“
“AT A MINIMUM, ELECTROCUTION“
The heart-​​warming sto­ries of safety vio­la­tions from the country’s top nuclear weapons lab con­tinue to pile up, like presents under the ol’ yule­tide tree.
LOS ALAMOS SHUT DOWN
Los Alamos National Laboratory direc­tor Pete Nanos shut down the country’s lead­ing nuclear weapons lab on Friday, after a set of clas­si­fied com­puter disks dis­ap­peared, and a stu­dent was hit in the eye with a pow­er­ful laser beam — all in the space of a week.
ABRAHAM TO LOS ALAMOS: GET A CLUE
Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham has heard from his top deputies about the secu­rity sit­u­a­tion at Los Alamos. And he is pissed.
LOS ALAMOS SCIENTISTS SPOOKED
There’s some­thing miss­ing from all the hub­bub about secu­rity breaches and safety vio­la­tions and polit­i­cal maneu­ver­ings over at Los Alamos: a sense of how the lab’s 12,000 employ­ees feel about hav­ing their work­place shut down. The answer, in a word, is spooked.
NO SECRET DISKS FOR NUKE LABS
Stop using clas­si­fied disks — every­where. That’s the order Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham handed down today, telling the country’s entire nuclear weapons com­plex to lay off the use of clas­si­fied CDs, Zip disks, flop­pies and portable hard dri­ves until new train­ing and pro­ce­dures are put in place.
NUKE LAB FRAUDSTERS COP A PLEA
The men who helped start the cur­rent wave of scan­dals at Los Alamos have pled guilty to charges of con­spir­acy and mail fraud,
LOS ALAMOS CAVEMAN CAUGHT
Authorities have evicted a man from a cave on Los Alamos National Laboratory land where they say he appar­ently lived for years with the com­forts of home a wood-​​burning stove, solar pan­els con­nected to car bat­ter­ies for elec­tric­ity and a satel­lite radio.
NUKE LAB CONTRACT: AMNESIA ATTACK
Imagine, for a moment, that you had held your job for the last sixty years. And then the boss wanted you to re-​​apply for your job, all over again. But your past per­for­mance over the decades that would barely count, when you filled out the appli­ca­tion.
You’d call that kind of a mixed, mes­sage, right? But it’s exactly what the Energy Department did, when it began to put the Los Alamos National Laboratory’s con­tract up for bid, for the first time ever.

December 30th, 2004 | Nukes | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.