Israel’s nuclear weapons-GOOD. Iran’s nuclear power- BAD. Why so?
“At some point, for its own security, Israel will have to take the bombs out of the basement and put them on the negotiating table.”.
Why is the U.S. okay with Israel having nuclear weapons but not Iran? WP BY MAX FISHER December 2 Iranian officials sometimes respond to accusations that Tehran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability by replying that, not only do they not want a bomb, they’d actuallylike to see a nuclear-weapons-free Middle East. Yes, this is surely in part a deflection, meant to shift attention away from concerns about Iran’s nuclear activities by not-so-subtly nodding to the one country in the region that does have nuclear weapons: Israel.
But could Iran have a point? Is there something hypocritical about the world tolerating Israel’s nuclear arsenal, which the country does not officially acknowledge but has been publicly known for decades, and yet punishing Iran with severe economic sanctions just for its suspected steps toward a weapons program? Even Saudi Arabia, which sees Iran as its implacable enemy and made its accommodations with Israel long ago, often joins Tehran’s calls for a “nuclear-free region.” And anyone not closely versed in Middle East issues might naturally wonder why the United States would accept Israeli warheads but not an Iranian program.
- This issue comes up in every lecture I give,” Joe Cirincione, president of the nuclear nonproliferation-focused Ploughshares Fund, told me. The suspicions that Israel gets special treatment because it’s Israel, and that Western countries are unfairly hard on Israel’s neighbors, tend to inform how many in the Middle East see the ongoing nuclear disputes. “It is impossible to give a nuclear policy talk in the Middle East without having the questions focus almost entirely on Israel,” Cirincione said…….. Continue reading
March of surviving UK nuclear test veterans to Downing St.
“We’ve got 80 MPs backing our call for recognition and had an amazing response from the public. They have to hear us sooner or later.”
In recent weeks Veterans’ Minister Anna Soubry has insisted there is ‘nothing unique’ about the atomic survivors, and said there were no plans to issue any formal thanks to them.
A court case suing the Ministry of Defence for negligence has been granted the go-ahead but is stalled by a lack of funding.
Now she’s been back – older, wiser, and twice as angry about the toxic legacy of Britain’s nuclear experiments. ‘My husband died because he served his country,’ she said. ‘We will not go away. We can’t – they have poisoned our families for generations to come.’
Her husband John was one of 22,000 men ordered to witness atomic bomb tests between 1952 and 1967, wearing nothing but cotton shirts and shorts as radioactive fallout showered down upon them. Fewer than 3,000 are still alive, suffering a catalogue of cancers, rare illnesses, and 10 times the normal rate of birth defects in their children.
This week 200 veterans and relatives marched on Parliament to demand an end to 60 years of injustice. They included a two-year-old in his pushchair, a wheelchair-bound mum-of-two born with twisted limbs, and Marilyn and her two sons. Continue reading
Support building for justice for UK nuclear veterans
Britain’s nuclear test veterans are inching towards the recognition they deservehttp://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-nuclear-test-veterans-inching-2873338 They don’t want much. They want a thank you, they want to know their sick children will have care, they want medical research
The nuclear test survivors are the closest they have ever been to winning recognition.
In 10 years of covering their campaign I have never seen them nearer to finally getting the official salute they deserve.
They have 80 MPs, lawyers, and charity experts fighting to get them where they ought to be – front and centre in the national consciousness, just for a moment.
For 60 years Ministry of Defence bureaucrats have denied the obvious: that nuclear bombs could cause any harm to thousands of men stood below in nothing but cotton shorts.
They’ve never answered the question why, if it was so safe, they didn’t explode them over Surrey.
At test sites in Australia, America and the South Pacific men lived, slept, and ate for up to a year at a time in areas heavily contaminated by radiation.
We’d never do that now. We shouldn’t have done it then.
This is one story I find it hard to be objective about. You cannot help but hug a woman who tells you about six successive miscarriages, or weep for a daughter who tells you how she held her father’s hand as a rare kind of cancer ripped him from her .
I have met men whose health problems deserve their own hospital wing. One whose eyelashes are growing into his eyeballs, another with 200 different skin cancers, a third with pouches of fatty tissue the size of tennis balls all over his body.
There is no science that definitively proves they all came from one cause. Radiation causes random genetic changes, and is hard to pin down.
But anyone can see what happened to these men – and to their wives, children and grandchildren – was most likely the result of atomic tests.
And from speaking to them and fighting for them I can tell you they don’t want much. They want a thank you, they want to know their sick children will have care, they want medical research.
They need, and deserve, a salute from Her Majesty’s Government and the final order: to stand at ease.
USA’s nuclear missile launch code was unsafe for 20 years!
Starting World War III with just one finger: The secret U.S. nuclear missile launch code was kept terrifyingly simple for nearly 20 years – and even printed on a checklist – (GOOD PHOTOS) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2515598/Launch-code-US-nuclear-weapons-easy-00000000.html By DAILY MAIL REPORTER 29 November 2013 For nearly 20 years, the secret code to authorize launching U.S. nuclear missiles, and starting World War III, was terrifyingly simple and even noted down on a checklist.
From 1962, when John F Kennedy instituted PAL encoding on nuclear weapons, until 1977, the combination to fire the devastating missiles at the height of the Cold War was just 00000000. Continue reading
Surviving UK nuclear veterans still fighting for justice
Veterans exposed to radioactive fallout take fight for justice to Number 10 NUCLEAR test veterans took their fight for justice to Downing Street yesterday more than 50 years after they were exposed to radioactive fallout. Express, 27 Nov 13 They are demanding formal recognition of their plight and the creation of a £25 million Government-funded Benevolent Fund to meet their medical needs.
Yet Britain is at the bottom of an international table for helping the veterans of nuclear countries. Even the Isle of Man has gone further than London.
More than 20,000 servicemen took part in the British Nuclear Test programme in the 1950s and 1960s but only about 3,000 are left alive…….. Continue reading
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy wants to build a laser uranium enrichment facility in Kentucky
GE Hitachi, Energy Dept. in talks over Ky. uranium Chron, By DYLAN LOVAN and ROGER ALFORD, Associated Press | November 27, 2013 LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — The U.S. Department of Energy said Wednesday that it is entering negotiations with General Electric’s nuclear division on a proposal to replace an aging uranium enrichment plant in Kentucky with a new facility.
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy wants to build a laser enrichment facility that would make use of the depleted uranium kept at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant. The Energy Department announced that it has selected GE Hitachi to begin exclusive negotiations for the sale of the uranium inventory.
GE Hitachi spokesman Chris White said Global Laser Enrichment that uses a unique laser technology would extract natural uranium from Paducah’s stores of depleted tails. The uranium would be used to fuel commercial nuclear reactors in the U.S., he said.
The negotiations are just beginning and there is no timetable on building a new plant, White said…….http://www.chron.com/business/energy/article/GE-Hitachi-Energy-Dept-in-talks-over-Ky-uranium-5017015.php
The censorship of the true effects of depleted uranium
A factor rarely mentioned is the potential effects of DU on children yet to be born to U.S. Iraq war veterans, who served in places like Fallujah, Basra and Najaf.
HORRIFIC EFFECTS OF DEPLETED URANIUM STILL CENSORED BY U.S. MILITARY, MEDIA HTTPS://AMERICANFREEPRESS.NET/?P=13599 NOVEMBER 03, 2013 BY RICHARD WALKER In a move seen by medical experts worldwide as an effort to suppress the truth about the horrors of depleted uranium (DU) munitions, the United Nations (UN) health arm, the World Health Organization (WHO), along with the Ministry of Health of Iraq (MoH) on September 13, 2013, produced a report that was not even authored, meaning no experts attached their names to it, on birth defects among Iraqi babies in which DU was not even considered a factor.
The report was published on the WHO website at a time when birth defects among Iraqi babies have been rising steadily, especially in areas like Najaf and Fallujah, where DU shells were used indiscriminately, killing and injuring large numbers of civilians. Some estimates for the 2003 death toll in Iraq put the civilian casualties in Fallujah as high as 75% to 80%. Continue reading
France’s dishonourable history in nuclear weapons proliferation
France’s own nuclear flaws LA Times November, Bennett Ramberg 16, 2013 France’s feisty objection to elements of the proposed Iran nuclear agreement may have merit, but Eric Edelman and Ray Takeyh are way off base writing that “France has an honorable history” in shielding the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and underlying norms. France has had a tradition of helping countries with suspect nuclear ambitions. Before the treaty, Paris provided Israel with the Dimona reactor that it knew would be used for weapons development. After the NPT went into force in 1970, France provided Saddam Hussein’s Iraq with the Osirak reactor. When questions arose, France refused to modify Osirak’s weapons-grade fuel. Paris also provided Iraq with equipment for laboratory work on nuclear enrichment.
In the early 1970s, France provided Pakistan with plutonium extraction technology. Only strong U.S. pressure in 1978 forced Paris to abandon the export of a large reprocessing plant, but this did not stop French companies from supplying other equipment that Islamabad used in the weapons program.
An early partner in India’s “peaceful” nuclear program, France also continued to assist New Delhi after it exploded its first nuclear weapon in 1974.
France has a lot of nonproliferation catching up to do if it is to be taken seriously.
The writer served in the State Department‘s Bureau ofPolitico-Military Affairs in the George H.W. Bush administration. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-le-1116-saturday-france-iran-nuclear-20131116,0,3444686.story#axzz2l1V1VIW6
USA nuclear missile arsenal far outweighs China’s
Admiral: China Nuclear Missile Submarine Threat is Not Credible Says U.S. nuclear-armed missile submarines remain a powerful deterrent Washington Free Beacon, BY: Bill Gertz November 16, 2013 SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — China’s recent threat to use submarine-launched nuclear missiles to attack U.S. cities lacks credibility, the Navy’s top admiral said on Saturday.
“For a submarine-launched ballistic missile to be effective it has to be accurate, and you have to be stealthy, and survivable and I’ll leave it at that,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of naval operations, said when asked about publication in China’s state-run press last month of plans for killing between 5 million and 12 million Americans in a nuclear strikes.
Greenert said U.S. nuclear-armed missile submarines remain a powerful deterrent despite an aging U.S. nuclear arsenal and the urgent need to upgrade those forces in the face of sharp defense spending cuts……http://freebeacon.com/admiral-china-nuclear-missile-submarine-threat-is-not-credible/
Reasons behind Russia’s belligerent nuclear posture
Russia Flexes Its Nuclear Muscles, The National Interest, Nikolas K. Gvosdev November 14, 2013 Two decades after the Cold War removed the Damocles’ sword of mutually-assured destruction in a sea of nuclear fire from over our heads, and, in the words of George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “made the doctrine of mutual Soviet-American deterrence obsolete“, the Russian decision to update, modernize and upgrade its nuclear forces is seen as a worrisome harbinger of a new era of strategic competition between Moscow and Washington. …….
it is important to note important gaps between stated plans and executable outcomes. Reading the press releases of the Russian Ministry of Defense alone does not provide the entire story.
For one thing, the next generation systems have flaws. Nearly half of the tests of the Bulava missile—meant to be the signature piece of the new Borei-class boomers—have failed, with some experts questioning whether the other tests which were classed as “successes” are also masking problems…….
For an Obama administration that holds out the promise of a world without nuclear weapons, however, the Russian decision to renovate its nuclear posture creates real difficulties, especially when Russia is also resuming long-distance patrols and conducting exercises. (The Russian claim that these new efforts are in direct response to U.S. missile-defense efforts also creates political difficulties.)…… the Russian push to upgrade its nuclear forces may push the administration to scuttle any plan for shifting the U.S. nuclear posture to the most minimal one needed for deterrence.http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/russia-flexes-its-nuclear-muscles-9399
Does China have secret tunnels of nuclear warheads?
China ‘hiding up to 3,000 nuclear warheads in secret tunnels’, Telegraph, 01 Dec 2011
An unconventional project by US university students has concluded that China’s nuclear arsenal could be many times larger than current estimates, drawing the attention of Pentagon analysts. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Georgetown University students under the instruction of a former Pentagon official have assembled the largest body of public knowledge yet about a vast network of secret tunnels dug by China’s secretive Second Artillery Corps, responsible for nuclear warheads.
The 363-page study has not yet been published, but has already sparked a congressional hearing and been circulated among top US defence officials, including the Air Force vice chief of staff, the Post reported…….. the students were able to obtain a 400-page manual produced by the Second Artillery and usually only available to Chinese military personnel.The students’ professor, Phillip Karber, 65, spent the Cold War as a top strategist reporting directly to the secretary of defence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Post said.
Karber said that – based on the study of the tunnels – China could have up to 3,000 nuclear warheads, far higher than the current estimates, which range from 80 to 400, according to the Post.
US officials could not immediately be reached to comment on the report. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8927580/China-hiding-up-to-3000-nuclear-warheads-in-secret-tunnels.html
USA ramps up killing capabilities with new version of B61 nuclear bomb
America’s Killing Machine: “Life Extension” of the B61-12 Nuclear Bomb By Hans M. Kristensen Global Research, November 07, 2013 With every official statement about the B61 nuclear bomb life-extension program, the capabilities of the new version (B61-12) appear to be increasing.
Previously, officials from the DOD, STRATCOM, and NNSA said the program is a consolidation of the B61-3, B61-4, B61-7, and B61-10 gravity bombs that would provide no additional military capabilities beyond those weapons.
This pledge echoed the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, which states: “Life Extension Programs (LEPs)…will not support new military missions or provide for new military capabilities.”
Yet the addition of a guided tail kit will increase the accuracy of the B61-12 compared with the other weapons and provide new warfighting capabilities. The tail kit is necessary, officials say, for the 50-kilotons B61-12 (with a reused B61-4 warhead) to be able to hold at risk the same targets as the 360-kilotons B61-7 warhead. But in Europe, where the B61-7 has never been deployed, the guided tail kit will be a significant boost of the military capabilities – an improvement that doesn’t fit the promise of reducing the role of nuclear weapons.
More recently we also learned that the guided tail kit will provide the B61-12 with a “modest standoff capability,” something the current B61 versions don’t have.
And during yesterday’s hearing in the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, defense officials said the B61-12 would also replace the B61-11, a single-yield 400-kiloton nuclear earth-penetrating bomb introduced in 1997, and the B83-1, a strategic bomb with variable yields up to 1,200 kilotons.
If so, the military capabilities of the B61-12 will be able to cover the entire range of military targeting missions for gravity bombs, ranging from the lowest yield of the B61-4 (0.3 kilotons) to the 1,200-kiloton B83-1 as well as the nuclear earth-penetration mission of the B61-11.
That’s quite an achievement for a weapon that just a few years ago was described simply as a refurbishment of four old B61s. Now the B61-12 has become the all-in-one nuclear bomb on steroids, spanning the full spectrum of gravity bomb missions anywhere.
That has some pretty significant implications in Europe where the United States has never deployed bombs with the military capabilities of the B61-7, B61-11 and B83-1. And it opens up a portfolio of enhanced targeting options with less radioactive fallout – more useable nuclear strike scenarios. Not bad for a simple life-extension, but less clear why it is needed and how it fits U.S. and NATO promises to reduce the role of nuclear weapons and seek “bold reductions” in U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons in Europe.
The Magic Reduction Bomb
During yesterday’s hearing, the military and nuclear lab officials portrayed the B61-12 as key to future reductions and modifications of the nuclear stockpile………
To me, the willingness to trade all gravity bombs for the B61-12 is a tacit admission that most of the existing weapons are not needed but offered as sweeteners to “sell” the expensive program to Congress and the public.
Except for Representatives Loretta Sanchez and John Garamendi, none of the members that had shown up for the hearing asked any critical or difficult questions. Instead they appeared to invite the views that they knew the witnesses had anyway. There were no independent witnesses at the hearing, which appeared to be intended as a pushback against efforts in the Senate to scale back the B61-12 program.
There are no targets for the B61-12 that cannot be held at risk with ballistic or cruise missiles. And it is unlikely that there are any nuclear bombs deployed in Europe a decade from now. Instead, a basic gravity bomb capability on the B-2 and next-generation bomber could be achieved with a simpler and cheaper non-nuclear life-extension of the B61 as proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein. http://www.globalresearch.ca/americas-killing-machine-life-extension-of-the-b61-12-nuclear-bomb/5357155
Dubious claims about Pakistan sending nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia
Does Pakistan have nuclear weapons ready to ship to Saudi Arabia? A new BBC report says they are packed and ready to go osted by Julian Borger Friday 8 November 2013 theguardian.comIt has long been rumoured, and often reported, that in return for bankrolling the Pakistani nuclear weapons project, Saudi Arabia has a claim on some of those weapons in time of need. It has never been proved though, nor has it ever been clear how such a deal would work. Continue reading
The multi $billion cost of USA “modernising” its nuclear weaponry
US to spend billions ‘modernizing’ nuclear arsenal By AFP | 6 Nov, 2013, WASHINGTON: The United States plans to spend billions to upgrade a decades-oldatomic bomb designed to stop a Soviet invasion of Europe, as part of a controversial project to modernize its nuclear arsenal.
Some lawmakers and experts dismiss the effort as a colossal waste of money that could derail arms control talks with Russia. ……. Some members of Congress are wary of the price tag, as the estimated cost for modernizing the B61 bomb keeps rising, from an initial $4 billion to $8.1 billion. And a Pentagon panel has projected the cost could reach $10 to $12 billion.
“The case against the B61 life extension is simple: it is unaffordable, unworkable and unnecessary,” said Kingston Reif of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
For skeptics, the project looks overly ambitious at a time of budget austerity, when the Air Force is already planning major spending on the new F-35 fighter jet, a new long-range bomber and a new cruise missile.
The cost of the program is coming under particular scrutiny because Obama himself is pushing to scrap tactical weapons in Europe, prompting criticism that the whole undertaking is unneccessary.
“To me, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend billions of dollars to extend the life of weapons that the president has already said he wants to get rid of,” said Tom Collina, director of research at the Arms Control Association.
In an editorial, the New York Times denounced the effort as a “Faustian bargain” Obama made with Senate Republicans in 2010, promising modernization of the nuclear arsenal to secure approval of the New Start arms reduction agreement with Russia. Obama has touted fresh arms control negotiations with Russia as a priority but making improvements to the B61 bomb could undermine prospects for any deal with Moscow, Collina and other experts said.
“Certainly, if the United States puts upgraded B61 bombs that are more accurate in Europe, Russia will probably have a response,” Collina said.
“I don’t know what that would be, but it certainly won’t be very positive.” http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/us-to-spend-billions-modernizing-nuclear-arsenal/articleshow/25333663.cms
The Cold War very nearly brought global nuclear catastrophe
“Even though the cold war ended more than 20 years ago, thousands of warheads are still actively deployed by the nuclear-armed states,” “We continue to face unacceptably high risks and will continue to do so until we have taken steps to abolish these exceptionally dangerous weapons.”.
How a war game brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster Former classified documents show how close the Soviet Union came to launching an attack in 1983 The Guardian, Jamie Doward The Observer, Sunday 3 November 2013 Chilling new evidence that Britain and America came close to provoking the Soviet Union into launching a nuclear attack has emerged in former classified documents written at the height of the cold war.
Cabinet memos and briefing papers released under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a major war games exercise, Operation Able Art, conducted in November 1983 by the US and its Nato allies was so realistic it made the Russians believe that a nuclear strike on its territory was a real possibility. Continue reading
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