If this does not scare you, you need your head examined.
Two employees of Pakistan’s atomic energy agency have been abducted in the country’s restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police say.
One hopes that this was not a voluntary thing, because I’d rather have uncooperative nuclear technicians sharing a room with al Queida terrorists.
Slam dunk my ass!!!!
Tenet goes to the Hague too.
He has a good summary of the circumstances surrounding the Israeli air strike on Syria on September 6, 2007.
Unfortunately, there are more questions than answers there.
I still don’t think that it was a nuclear program, Syria is 5 years away from having a meaningful nuclear power infrastructure, but my predictive powers suck wet farts from dead pigeons.
I understand that there advantages to Sodium cooled reactors, particularly the fact that, because of the small cross section of the nucleus of Sodium, you can get a much more complete burn with fewer waste products, but that the Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Prototype Development, memorandum of understanding (MOU) will lead nowhere.
The U.S Department of Energy (DOE), the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) have expanded cooperation to coordinate Sodium-Cooled Fast Reactor Prototype development through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). The MOU establishes a collaborative framework with the ultimate goal of deploying sodium-cooled fast reactor prototypes. A sodium-cooled fast reactor uses liquid sodium to transfer heat, burning the plutonium and other transuranic elements in the process producing clean, safe nuclear power, less waste and increasing non-proliferation goals.
This makes the Hindenberg look like a cap gun.
Liquid Sodium explodes on contact with air.
Not much of a surprise.
Considering the American record on nuclear power, the terms over budget and behind schedule come to mind, the negotiations between France and India on nuclear power should come as no surprise.
They will get the job done right, and given the direct involvement of the French government, if the contractors screw up, they won’t go running to the government to get their money, as a number of US plants built in India have (IIRC one tied to Enron).
So, Bush’s agreement with India probably won’t generate a whole bunch of business for US companies, and it makes us less safe too…lovely.
A number of former defense officials from NATO Countries, including former JCS Chairman, and son of a Waffen SS member, John Shalikashvili, have recommended that NATO should reorganize to allow it to incorporate nuclear first strikes into it’s tactics.
Calling for a major change to Nato’s approach to defending its members and their interests, the authors of the report, which has been handed to Nato and Pentagon chiefs, said the first-strike use of nuclear weapons was a “indispensable instrument”.
I’m sorry, but anyone who says, “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction,” is simply, and deeply nuts.
The fact that this is not just laughed out of NATO and Pentagon HQ is an indication that something is truly broken about the way we think.
Yes, Bush has has disavowed the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that said that Iran has terminated it’s nuclear weapons program, and that they respond to international pressure.
The ability to accept reality, and then change one’s plans to accomodate it, is what separates the sane from the insane.
According to CNN’s report, she was bombed and shot:
Video of the scene just moments before the explosion showed Bhutto stepping into a heavily-guarded vehicle to leave the rally.
Khan said while it appeared Bhutto was shot, it was unclear if her bullet wounds were caused by a shooting or shrapnel from the bomb.
You don’t get bullet wounds from a bomb.
Shot and bombed, and this is a government teetering on the brink of anarchy with nuclear weapons.
good. A new nuclear warhead is the last thing we need right now.
This program is not about need, but about another attempt of the Bush Admin to encumber his successor with a program and the attendant policies.
We now have reports that India is accelerating production of its nuclear capable 3500 km range Agni-III missile.
Additionally, it’s working on a 6000km range missile, and if it can miniaturize its warheads, it can probably get at least 20% more range.
3500 km puts Beijing firmly in range, so we have the makings of an arms race, and Bush wants to sell them nuclear technology.
Just grand.
Paul Wolfowitz has been offered a position on the State Department’s International Security Advisory Board, where he will be offering advice on proliferation, and will have access to highly classified information.
This from a guy who lied us into war, and got fired from his last job because he was favoring his girl-friend.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Iran shuttered its program in 2003, and it remains shut down to this day.
I’m not sure why the CIA, NSA, DIA, etc. are pushing back against Dick Cheney and rest of the war porn chicken hawks, but it’s good that they are.
I’m not sure why the DNI, who has been adamant about not releasing NIEs, chose to release this. My guess is that someone in the press got a hold of it.
The Iranians have put it very clearly, they do not consider the United States, or at least the US as led by Bush and His Evil Minions™ to be a reliable negotiating partner. I agree with them Bush cannot be trusted to enter into good faith negotiations.
What’s more, this is a reasonable, and rational position.
“We don’t trust the United States,” he told McClatchy Newspapers after the IAEA Board of Governors finished its latest round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program. “We could suspend nuclear enrichment. We did it before for two and half years. But it wasn’t enough then, and wouldn’t be enough now. We will not suspend enrichment again because there is no end to what the United States will demand.”
I agree with Matthew Yglesias’s assesment, that it makes no sense to try to appease religious fanatics, so any confidence building measure is meaningless when the current US government simply cannot be trusted.
Brazil hasallocated $540 million in R&D on the submarine and on enrichment.
They believe that they can build a submarine for $1.2 billion.
They already have the enrichment technology down.
The justification is the newly discovered offshore Tupi field and its 5 billion to 8 billion barrels of oil reserves.
Truth be told, if all they want is an air-independent coastal defense boat, there are options out there, both with stored LOX, and the idea of using a smaller nuke plant, to provide underwater endurance, but not the higher underwater transit speeds of the US fleet submarines.
As I’ve said before, Musharraf is not a reliable partner on terrorism, choosing instead to spend US aid on Military Bling, and now Benazir Bhutto is calling on him to resign.
I see real echoes of the fall of the Shah of Iran, only this time, there is a nuclear arsenal involved.
Heckuva job Bushie.
The FAS has a has obtained new nuclear strike guidelines developed by the Bush administration:
The 2001 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and White House guidance issued in response to the terrorist attacks against the United States in September 2001 led to the creation of new nuclear strike options against regional states seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, according to a military planning document obtained by the Federation of American Scientists.
It should be noted that this is not about one or two nukes, it’s about a massive nuclear strike on the country targeted.
The creation of a “target base” indicates that the planning went further than simple retaliatory punishment with one or a few weapons, but envisioned actual nuclear warfighting intended to annihilate a wide range of facilities in order to deprive the states the ability to launch and fight with WMD. The new plan formally broadened strategic nuclear targeting from two adversaries (Russia and China) to a total of seven.
The second draft from March 2005 listed five scenarios where use of nuclear weapons might be requested:
(emphasis mine)
Let’s be clear about this, the last line basically says that we will engage in a massive nuclear first strike as an exercise in dick swinging. Basically, it allows for nuclear strikes to show that we are willing to make nuclear strikes.
If you are not terrified by Bush and his Rapture driven nuclear policies, I want whatever it is that you are smoking.
While we are trying to cut a sweet deal for Westinghouse and the rest of the moribund nuclear power industry, India continues to advance their military nuclear arsenal, this time with a test-fiuring of the Agni-1 missile.
Truth be told, I believe India’s nuclear arsenal to be reasonably secure. The problem is that as they develop this arsenal, Pakistan feels compelled to develop their nuclear arsenal, and I think that the whole of Pakistan is insecure.
The NAS is calling for a move slow approach on the Bush administration’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Program, which among other things, calls for civilian nuclear power to move wholesale into a Plutonium economy, with the US reprocessing spent fuel, and reactors to burn the extracted Plutonium.
Their arguments are not about the potential safety and terrorism issues of a Plutonium economy, but rather that this program is insufficiently mature, and that funds should go toward getting new, more conventional, commercial plants online in the US, so they are not anti-nuke by inclination.
To quote the NAS press release, “The research and development component of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a program that aims to reprocess spent nuclear fuel which could then be shared with partner countries, should not go forward at its current pace, says a new report from the National Research Council. DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, of which GNEP is a part, should instead assign the highest priority to facilitating the startup of new commercial nuclear power plants, a program that is currently falling behind schedule due to funding gaps.”
What is going on here is that be is doing everything in its power to make sure that nuclear power plants are a fact on the ground before they leave office out of ideological fervor, not a realistic assessment of the technology.
Chen Shui-bian has promised not to develop nuclear weapons.
There is some interesting history and law here. The history is that they did have an active nuclear weapons program in the 1970s, but Jimmy Carter shut it down.
The law is that the NNPT applies to nations, and not governments, so a strict reading would say that Taiwan, official name Republic of China, could be considered to have the right to develop and deploy weapons, as it is, according to the UN, China.
On a more pragmatic side, if Taiwan were developing nukes, and China found out, all hell would break loose, though if Taiwan actually had deployed nukes on delivery vehicles before it became known, it would stabilize the situation by forestalling potential PRC invasions.
Generally, I subscribe to the old adage, no nukes is good nukes.
The BJP is literally the only significant Fascist left on the planet. Its origins go back to the Fascist parties of the 1930s, and there is a direct line back to the man who assassinated Mahatma Gandhi.
A breakthrough in the India-US nuclear deal
India’s nuclear deal with the US might be saved. After weeks of bad news, with the Indian government failing to get its Communist-led parliamentary allies on side, the ground is at last shifting and it looks as if the Bharatiya Janata Party, India’s main opposition which has been objecting to the deal, might save the day.
It is of course too early to be sure, but I’d put money on a parliamentary debate quite soon where the Left gets isolated and there is a consensus – or maybe even a vote – in favor of going ahead. That would enable the deal to proceed via the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and meet the January deadline that the US is aiming for.
So what’s happened to lift the pall of gloom that was falling last week over the deal and over India-US relations? Basically, US diplomats in Delhi – plus former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who is visiting the city – have been calling in favors from old contacts in the BJP who they have been nurturing for years. The US has always felt more comfortable with the right-wing Hindu-nationalist BJP than with the Congress Party, which leads the current government. The BJP, which started defense and nuclear talks with the US when it was in power from 1998-2004, has traditionally been seen as more pro-business than Congress, which comes from a Socialist background and built India’s Cold War alliance with the former Soviet Union.
The US has also seen the BJP, with its base among India’s majority Hindu population, as a bulwark against Islam. So for years American diplomats have been courting young aspiring BJP politicians, as well as their leaders. Now, as I said, is the time to call in favors – and the calls are beginning to yield results.
The idea that the US has been consciously meddling in Indian politics this way is troubling. The BJP has an absolutely reprehensible policy toward religious minorities that has stoked the separatist fires in this nuclear armed nation is very counterproductive.
As to India’s “alliance with the former Soviet Union”, this really was a policy of neutrality, and a willingness of the USSR to supply weapons, because they both had a common foe, China.
As to the nuclear issue, the Indian government already knows how to make nuclear power plants, this deal, for them, is about getting an implied approval of their nuclear weapons program from the US, and Bush and His Evil Minions™ are merely interested in generating business for campaign contributors, in this case the moribund US nuclear power industry.
The deal is corrupt, and dangerous.