It looks like the New York Times is eager to replay its role in putting forth bad information in the service of getting the United States involved in another war.
A long article by Peter Baker, Mark Landler, David Sanger, and Anne Barnard today reports that President Obama’s comments on redlines and game-changers were “off the cuff.” The article then goes on to press the idea of chemical weapons use, even though the reporters leave out some important facts.
North Korea tested another nuclear device on February 12. One of the questions about that test was whether the fissionable material used was enriched uranium or plutonium. That question could only be answered by outsiders if samples of the xenon isotopes produced by the fission could be captured and analyzed. That couldn’t be done; North Korea does a very effective job of containing their tests. The xenon isotopes are short-lived, so the window of opportunity is now closed.
If we are going to learn more about North Korea’s bomb design, we will have to do it another way. Continue reading
To supplement the series on the MOX plant, here is a PowerPoint presentation from Shaw-AREVA . This is also available from the South Carolina Energy Office.
Posts in the Nuclear Diner series:
Where Do Nuclear Weapons Go To Die?
Nuclear Fuel from Nuclear Weapons
Ten years ago, I was not yet blogging. But I had an opinion about the accusations against Iraq. Bits and pieces of it might still be excavated from dead or dying discussion forums. I’ll expand here. I have to start by going back further than that.
The 1991 Iraq war had served up a big surprise for those of us following nuclear issues: Saddam Hussein’s electromagnetic separation project. Who’d have thought that would be the technology in today’s world? Which, of course, was a good reason for the Iraqis to go for it. After all, it helped enrich the uranium for the Little Boy bomb exploded over Hiroshima. Continue reading
During the Fukushima disaster two years ago, one of the concerns raised was that one of the reactors had some MOX (uranium-plutonium mixed oxide) fuel elements in it. All operating reactors contain plutonium. Is that a problem?
Plutonium is indeed nasty stuff. The metal can burn in air, and it can be used to make nuclear weapons. Like other heavy and radioactive metals, it shouldn’t be ingested because it can cause cancer and other problems. It must be isolated from direct human contact and must be secured against theft. Too much plutonium in one place will support a chain reaction that will result in large fluxes of neutrons and gamma rays. So processes have to be engineered so that critical quantities of plutonium don’t accumulate.
But the degree of the danger is often exaggerated. Industry and hospitals handle eequally dangerous materials regularly. Clean rooms prevent dust from being incorporated into precise electronics; similar technology can contain dangerous materials. Continue reading
Richard Silverstein presents a possible narrative of what happened to Ben Zygier, the Mossad agent who died mysteriously in prison.
I’m not following that story in detail, but something from Silverstein’s account (which he points out is partially speculative) hit me:
Koustoukis revealed in 2010 that Zygier worked for a mysterious European company that sold computers and other technical equipment. He also reported that Zygier used his passports to travel repeatedly to Iran, presumably to sell such equipment.
Stuxnet spread via thumb drives, not via the internet. Someone had to plug a drive into an Iranian computer. What if it was a salesman offering some helpful virus cleanup software or a new game? Here it is, see what a cool game? Thanks, good stuff.
And the additional Stuxnet package wouldn’t show up until later, in another way.
The standoff continues between Iran and the IAEA about an inspection of the Parchin facility that is suspected of holding a containment tank for explosives tests related to nuclear weapons development.
Robert Kelley has renewed his objection that such a containment tank makes no sense. Continue reading
About a month ago, Al Jazeera reported
Seven people have died in Homs after they inhaled a “poisonous gas” used by government forces in a rebel-held neighbourhood, activists said.
There are a couple of warnings right up front: It’s on a breaking-news blog, and “activists said.”
Breaking news, especially in conflict zones, is always dicey. Reporters talk to a few people on the ground who have bits and pieces of information and add in their own expectations and experience. What eyewitnesses say may have little to do with what actually happened. Continue reading
Commissar Rudolf and his wife are enjoying the holiday in their Moscow apartment. She looks out the window and says, “I think it’s beginning to snow.” He walks over to the window, turns to her, and says, “Rudolf the Red knows rain, dear.”
That’s how I learned the joke back when we were learning to duck and cover from nuclear armageddon rather than a crazed shooter in school. It’s a great extended pun, but when Republicans are the Reds and commissars are a thing of the past, nobody’s going to get it.
So it had to change. Continue reading
One of the criteria I use for judging whether a reporter knows what he’s talking about is the way he uses words. In science, words are used very precisely, some of them the same words that are used in everyday conversation. I recognize that reporters may try to simplify complex concepts for their readers; but they need to understand what they are simplifying. I also look for problems of logic and sequencing: has the reporter thought out how an activity must happen?
Here are two of those problems in David Ignatius’s article on Syrian chemical weapons. Continue reading
