Web Edition | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The NRC must ensure current levels of safety and performance as nuclear fleet expands

Anthony R. Pietrangelo — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 16:30:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The future of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is well-positioned to effectively take on new plant licensing and maintain its oversight of operating plants and its other responsibilities. Organizationally, the NRC created the Office of New Reactors in late 2006--separate from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation--to ensure that its primary responsibility of regulating operating plants wasn't distracted by new plant licensing.

The Indian approach to climate and energy policy

Divya Badami Rao — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 13:13:00 -0600

At the end of the thirteenth meeting of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change that took place in Bali last December, the Indian delegation was relieved, happy even.

Biosecurity solutions beyond the BWC

Ralf Trapp — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:42:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The expanding range of biowarfare threats

I agree with the other panelists that an international institution is needed to manage biorisks. The current mechanism under the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), which combines a work program with annual meetings of the States Parties, at expert as well as diplomatic levels, and which is supported by a small Implementation Support Unit (ISU) set up in 2007 at the U.N. Secretariat, cannot provide the necessary institutional structure to seriously address these risks at the international level.

Breaking the tyranny of oil

Kurt Zenz House — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:30:00 -0600

Contrary to popular belief, high gasoline prices are good, and they are good precisely because high oil prices are very bad. I'll admit that doesn't sound right, but allow me to explain. I'll start with oil. Saudi Arabia, the country able to produce oil at the lowest cost, decided in 1986 to gain market share by increasing production. That caused the price of oil to collapse, and despite a momentary increase during the first Gulf War, oil prices remained low for the next 15 years.

Establishing the next president's national security agenda: The role of the White House

Gordon Adams — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:35:00 -0600

As I outlined in the first part of this three-part series, the national security agenda facing the next president demands that the White House's role in setting policy and coordinating its implementation be seriously revamped.

COPUOS wades into the next great space debate

Theresa Hitchens — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:38:00 -0600

It is a well-worn cliché that the gears of international diplomacy grind at a glacial pace. Breakthroughs often are preceded by years of background work during which progress barely crawls forward. So, it is not surprising that this year's annual session of the Vienna-based U.N. Committee for Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) ended on June 20 without any decisions on the key question now bedeviling the global space community: How to ensure the long-term security of space operations in a more crowded, and more militarized, environment?

NRC should allow the public to fairly participate in its licensing hearings

Victor Gilinsky — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:53:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The future of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Let's talk about something no one is happy with--citizen and state participation in Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licensing hearings on nuclear plants and facilities. The industry and commission's view is that those who are flat out opposed should express themselves somewhere else, instead of tying up NRC hearings with safety issues best left to government experts. But because of federal preemption of safety regulation, states have no say in these matters and there is no somewhere else.

Biosecurity networks are lacking compared to multilateral institutions

Alan Pearson — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 10:58:30 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The expanding range of biowarfare threats

Both Jonathan Tucker and Pal Aas argue that we need an international organization devoted to managing the risks associated with biotechnology. According to Tucker, the organization would act to coordinate global action to mitigate biological risks, including establishing and enforcing minimum global standards for the safe and secure handling of dangerous pathogens and the oversight of dual-use research, assisting developing countries in building capacity to implement these standards, and more generally, bolstering the norm against the hostile use of biology.

Deciphering NNSA's Complex Transformation

Ingrid Drake — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:44:00 -0600

To draw attention to Complex Transformation, its "vision for a smaller, safer, more secure, and less expensive nuclear weapons complex," in January, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that it had begun removing Category I and II special nuclear materials (SNM) from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to the Savannah River Site--a task that the NNSA anticipates completing by the end of 2012 and would

Improved regulation has been good for the nuclear industry and public safety

Andrew C. Kadak — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The future of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

We have not yet discussed how U.S. utilities dramatically improved the performance of their nuclear plants in the last 10 years, and the role, if any, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) played in this improvement.

The U.S. military's quest to weaponize culture

Hugh Gusterson — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 17:06:00 -0600

The Pentagon seems to have decided that anthropology is to the war on terror what physics was to the Cold War. As an anthropologist, this makes me very nervous.

Where former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld believed that the United States would vanquish its enemies through technological superiority, his replacement Robert Gates has said that cultural expertise in counterinsurgency operations will be crucial in the future wars he anticipates.

Current regulatory discussions could help govern geoengineering research

Dan Whaley — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:57:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: Has the time come for geoengineering?

All geoengineering techniques raise some common (and complicated) questions: Should legitimate research activities continue? Should experimental as well as theoretical research take place? Who decides whether an experiment or project can go forward? Are people concerned about geoengineering because they fear that the research might be harmful, or because they're worried that the knowledge gained might be dangerous? Are science and business mutually exclusive activities?

The security impact of the neurosciences

Jonathan Y. Huang — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:39:00 -0600

In light of increased research into human brain function and cognition, some important questions have arisen: What are the implications of security-related applications of this research? What impact will this research and its applied technologies have globally? What international regimes could regulate the dual use or potential misuse of these technologies? Or will international regimes develop as a result?

The U.S. Air Force's indifference toward nuclear weapons

Lawrence J. Korb — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:46:00 -0600

From its creation as a separate service at the end of World War II until the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force was first among equals amid the nation's three military departments and four armed services--whether measured by budget share or in public appeal. During the 1950s, for example, the air force received about one-half of the entire defense budget, leaving the other three services to argue over the remaining 50 percent and fumbling to co-opt some part of the air force's mission.

A new international biorisks organization is needed to ensure security

Pal Aas — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:53:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The expanding range of biowarfare threats

Ralf Trapp clarified my concerns and points to the core of the problem: determining what chemicals are for law enforcement and which legal interpretations States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) will accept?

How evil can prevail in state-sanctioned biowarfare research

Laura H. Kahn — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:08:00 -0600

Some people consider physician Wouter Basson South Africa's Josef Mengele. During the 1998 Truth and Reconciliation hearings on Project Coast, South Africa's apartheid-era chemical and biowarfare programs, Schalk Janse van Rensburg, a veterinarian, stated that Basson, the program's head, wanted to devise a way to kill individuals that would appear undetectable to a forensics laboratory.

U.S.-Russian nuclear agreement raises serious concerns

Robert Alvarez — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:24:00 -0600

On May 13, President George W. Bush submitted to Congress an agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation with the Russian Federation. The "123 agreement"--named after a provision of the 1954 Atomic Energy Act--would establish a 30-year framework for nuclear commerce between the former Cold War enemies, allowing the transfer of nuclear commodities such as reactor components and U.S. government-owned technologies and materials to Russia.

The NRC needs its own oversight

David Lochbaum — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:33:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: The future of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

A common factor that differentiates top performing from underperforming nuclear power plants is the health of their corrective action programs (CAPs). By law, plant owners must have such programs in place that find and fix problems in a timely manner. This regulation recognizes that complex industrial sites such as nuclear plants experience everything from equipment failure to human error. CAPs provide for these realities while protecting against problems, either individually or collectively, that compromise safety margins.

Public safety and transporting ethanol

Richard Jaehne — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 15:39:00 -0600

Every day, tens of millions of gallons of grain alcohol moves from biorefineries located in rural Midwestern communities to major population centers on both coasts--in tanker trucks on congested highways, train cars passing through town centers, and river barges docked in busy ports. And the amount of ethanol transported throughout the country will only continue to increase as interest in fossil-fuel alternatives grows.

Let's investigate geoengineering impartially

Ken Caldeira — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 09:46:00 -0600

Roundtable Topic: Has the time come for geoengineering?

Alan Robock suggests that I must respond to the "totality" of his argument--that it's not enough to pick off his 20 theses one-by-one, as if the "totality" of his position is somehow more than the sum of its parts.