What doesn't melt under laser?
[What doesn't melt under laser?]
U.S., Russian Officials Discuss Deep Nuclear Cuts
January 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-russia-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian defense officials on Tuesday began a two-day planning meeting on joint nuclear arms cuts, with a spotlight on U.S. plans to store -- not destroy -- many of its thousands of warheads.
U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith met privately with Russia's first deputy chief of staff, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, and they then joined their delegations in a third-floor conference room at U.S. military headquarters.
No details of the initial round of planning were expected before they were completed late on Wednesday. But Russia was expected to repeat objections to U.S. storage of perhaps hundreds of strategic warheads now on missiles and bombs.
Both countries have pledged to reduce by about two-thirds their currently deployed Cold War strategic nuclear arsenals of more than 6,000 warheads each over the coming decade.
But Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch told reporters last week the United States planned to store at least some of the removed warheads for possible emergency redeployment.
The Russian Foreign Ministry quickly urged Washington to fulfill pledges to proceed with real cuts, saying, ``That means strategic nuclear weapons must be cut not only 'on paper'.''
``We are certainly not trying to mislead anybody,'' Crouch said when pressed by reporters on why all of the U.S. warheads to be taken off of missiles and aircraft would not be destroyed.
``We think it is a major step in the right direction that we are able to move those (deployed) forces down to significantly lower levels. And we also think it is a prudent thing to have, in a very uncertain period, some responsive capability.''
FIRST OF SEVERAL ROUNDS THIS YEAR
Baluyevsky was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency before departing Moscow as saying the bilateral talks would be followed by other rounds in the coming months ahead of an expected visit by President Bush to Moscow at mid-year for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bush has vowed to cut the deployed U.S. arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, while Putin has said he plans cuts to between 1,500 and 2,200.
Putin, at a 2001 summit with Bush in Texas, raised questions about what the United States planned to do with the warheads that it removed from missiles and bombers.
A senior U.S. diplomat expressed confidence ahead of the Pentagon meeting that a deal would be reached with Russia that could quell fears about the U.S. plans.
``The Russians have fired their opening salvo on the issue but I think we'll be able to wrestle it to the ground,'' the diplomat told reporters on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon talks, which follow a December 2001 meeting in Brussels between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov, were another sign of the warming security relationship between the former Cold War foes.
Also on the agenda for the talks was the U.S. plan to develop a strategic missile defense over objections from Russia and China. Bush announced last month that Washington would withdraw in six months from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibits such defenses.
Bush says new threats have emerged from ``rogue states'' including Iran, Iraq and North Korea and the Sept. 11 attacks on America have further fueled arguments for a strong defense.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
The battle of Yucca Mountain
EDITORIAL
January 15, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020115-72458440.htm
Another act in the radioactive drama of Yucca Mountain began last week. As expected, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham gave a glowing review to developing the mountain (located somewhere near "Nowhere, Nevada") as a storage facility for high-level nuclear waste. This provoked a heated response from Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who complained, "This decision stinks."
The governor and the administration will probably be exchanging a few more unfriendly lines, since President Bush is expected to approve the project, and Mr. Guinn is expected to veto it. Since Congress has ultimate authority in that case, and since Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has already vowed to kill the project, the sequence would set the stage for (sigh) another election-year confrontation between the administration and Senate Democrats.
All of this is entirely predictable. In the first place, taxpayers have already fronted nearly $7 billion for the project's development. While (predictably) no one, including the Energy Department, is certain how much the final project will cost, it could rise to $50 billion. That's serious money, even by Beltway standards.
However, so is the problem that the repository has been designed to solve, namely, the continuing buildup of high-level nuclear waste. Each year, about 2,000 tons of excess plutonium, spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive waste are added to the already existent 40,000 tons. That waste is currently being stored at 131 different sites in 39 states around the country. However, those sites are running out of room - the Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that by 2010, when (hopefully), the curtain will officially lift on the repository at Yucca Mountain, nearly 80 percent of nuclear power plants will have exhausted their storage capacities.
Such short-sighted storage has scripted a tragedy in-waiting. Mr. Abraham correctly cited national security as a primary reason for moving forward with the Yucca repository, since by explosively releasing containment, a terrorist could turn any one of those storage sites into a "dirty" radioactive bomb. A consolidated repository at Yucca would fulfill the solution offered by Mark Twain's Puddn'head Wilson, "Put all your eggs in one basket and - watch that basket."
Moreover, if a terrorist did somehow penetrate security at the Yucca repository, he would face the problem of having to penetrate a mountain to cause a radioactive problem. Such a drama would play out a long way away from any significant population centers, but near the Nevada Test Site, where numerous explosive nuclear dramas have already run.
It can only be hoped that Senate Democrats decide to respond with a chorus of "Ayes" at the denouement of the decision on the Yucca repository later this year.
----
Sununu could not have been more insulting, and ignorant
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Las Vegas Review-Journal
COLUMN: John L. Smith
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/Jan-15-Tue-2002/news/17868509.html
Hey, that was quick.
Even in the long, twisted political history of Yucca Mountain, where politicians and nuclear pitchmen have often melted down, rarely has a man managed so swiftly to sound like a moron and alienate himself from an entire state population in fewer than 100 words.
Talk about efficiency.
Barely a day after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced his endorsement of Yucca as a high-level nuclear waste dump site over the vociferous objections of lowly Nevada, pro-nuke lobbyist John Sununu chimed in and managed to question our state's patriotic heart while insulting generations of residents.
"If I were advising Nevada long term, I would suggest they do whatever they have to do politically in a way that doesn't create resentment in the country," Sununu told a Review-Journal reporter. "If Nevada is not willing to do its part in what is part of a national plan for homeland security ... maybe Americans ought to vacation somewhere else."
Believe it or not, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually pays Sununu to open his mouth on this issue.
What will he do for his next trick, desecrate our state flag? Pluck a mountain bluebird? Gun down a desert bighorn?
If Nevada is not willing to do its part?
Nevada Test Site workers and their families, please rise and introduce yourself to Mr. Sensitivity. You toiled for decades during the heart of the Cold War to ensure the United States stayed ahead of the atomic weapons race. You were there for 928 nuclear bomb tests. You made certain America won the world's most dangerous game.
And you paid the price. Many, who were later diagnosed with cancer, suffered for their loyalty. Many more of the downwinders afflicted by radioactive fallout paid our Cold War debts with their lives.
Nevadans are only now beginning to understand the level of contamination present in the groundwater around the test site.
If Nevada is not willing to do its part?
Nellis Air Force Base has been doing more than its share of heavy lifting in its more than 50 years, training the best fighter pilots on the planet and making sure the United States maintained its air superiority.
There's tiny Indian Springs with its proud history of military service, and the Fallon Naval Air Station. At Fallon, the presence of a leukemia cluster in the rural farming community has been linked by some to fuel emissions from the air base.
From Wendover, where the crew of the Enola Gay prepared for its atomic mission, to Hawthorne's vast ammunition storage facility, Nevada has played an integral role in the defense of this nation for generations.
Sununu's remarks not only insulted Nevadans but potentially residents of every state along the nuclear waste transportation route. That's 43 in all.
Ironically, his observation might have provided a boost to Nevada's flagging spirits following Abraham's announcement. On Monday, Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera announced they were sending a letter to President Bush critical of Abraham and the site selection process.
At Nellis, U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign blasted Sununu's fighting words. He provided them with further confirmation that those forcing nuclear waste down our throats are only too happy to take cheap shots.
"The Department of Energy for 20 years has been trying to sell Nevada on the (idea of accepting) nuclear waste, there's lots of good things in it for you. Nevadans have not agreed," Reid said. "There's a small group of people that would prostitute the state of Nevada. I have said and will continue to say, we are not in the business of being whores and, therefore, we are not going to talk about price."
If it were really a matter of national security, Reid noted, perhaps as governor of New Hampshire Sununu should have embraced a nuclear waste storage site in that state.
"He did everything he could, and he was successful, at keeping nuclear waste out of New Hampshire," he said. "So he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth."
And they actually pay Sununu to speak.
John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@lvrj.com or call him at 383-0295.
January 15, 2002
By REUTERS
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-arms-russia-usa.html
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. and Russian defense officials on Tuesday began a two-day planning meeting on joint nuclear arms cuts, with a spotlight on U.S. plans to store -- not destroy -- many of its thousands of warheads.
U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith met privately with Russia's first deputy chief of staff, Col. Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, and they then joined their delegations in a third-floor conference room at U.S. military headquarters.
No details of the initial round of planning were expected before they were completed late on Wednesday. But Russia was expected to repeat objections to U.S. storage of perhaps hundreds of strategic warheads now on missiles and bombs.
Both countries have pledged to reduce by about two-thirds their currently deployed Cold War strategic nuclear arsenals of more than 6,000 warheads each over the coming decade.
But Assistant Defense Secretary J.D. Crouch told reporters last week the United States planned to store at least some of the removed warheads for possible emergency redeployment.
The Russian Foreign Ministry quickly urged Washington to fulfill pledges to proceed with real cuts, saying, ``That means strategic nuclear weapons must be cut not only 'on paper'.''
``We are certainly not trying to mislead anybody,'' Crouch said when pressed by reporters on why all of the U.S. warheads to be taken off of missiles and aircraft would not be destroyed.
``We think it is a major step in the right direction that we are able to move those (deployed) forces down to significantly lower levels. And we also think it is a prudent thing to have, in a very uncertain period, some responsive capability.''
FIRST OF SEVERAL ROUNDS THIS YEAR
Baluyevsky was quoted by Itar-Tass news agency before departing Moscow as saying the bilateral talks would be followed by other rounds in the coming months ahead of an expected visit by President Bush to Moscow at mid-year for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Bush has vowed to cut the deployed U.S. arsenal to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads, while Putin has said he plans cuts to between 1,500 and 2,200.
Putin, at a 2001 summit with Bush in Texas, raised questions about what the United States planned to do with the warheads that it removed from missiles and bombers.
A senior U.S. diplomat expressed confidence ahead of the Pentagon meeting that a deal would be reached with Russia that could quell fears about the U.S. plans.
``The Russians have fired their opening salvo on the issue but I think we'll be able to wrestle it to the ground,'' the diplomat told reporters on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon talks, which follow a December 2001 meeting in Brussels between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Russian counterpart Sergei Ivanov, were another sign of the warming security relationship between the former Cold War foes.
Also on the agenda for the talks was the U.S. plan to develop a strategic missile defense over objections from Russia and China. Bush announced last month that Washington would withdraw in six months from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, which prohibits such defenses.
Bush says new threats have emerged from ``rogue states'' including Iran, Iraq and North Korea and the Sept. 11 attacks on America have further fueled arguments for a strong defense.
-------- u.s. nuc facilities
-------- nevada
The battle of Yucca Mountain
EDITORIAL
January 15, 2002
Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20020115-72458440.htm
Another act in the radioactive drama of Yucca Mountain began last week. As expected, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham gave a glowing review to developing the mountain (located somewhere near "Nowhere, Nevada") as a storage facility for high-level nuclear waste. This provoked a heated response from Nevada Gov. Kenny Guinn, who complained, "This decision stinks."
The governor and the administration will probably be exchanging a few more unfriendly lines, since President Bush is expected to approve the project, and Mr. Guinn is expected to veto it. Since Congress has ultimate authority in that case, and since Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle has already vowed to kill the project, the sequence would set the stage for (sigh) another election-year confrontation between the administration and Senate Democrats.
All of this is entirely predictable. In the first place, taxpayers have already fronted nearly $7 billion for the project's development. While (predictably) no one, including the Energy Department, is certain how much the final project will cost, it could rise to $50 billion. That's serious money, even by Beltway standards.
However, so is the problem that the repository has been designed to solve, namely, the continuing buildup of high-level nuclear waste. Each year, about 2,000 tons of excess plutonium, spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive waste are added to the already existent 40,000 tons. That waste is currently being stored at 131 different sites in 39 states around the country. However, those sites are running out of room - the Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that by 2010, when (hopefully), the curtain will officially lift on the repository at Yucca Mountain, nearly 80 percent of nuclear power plants will have exhausted their storage capacities.
Such short-sighted storage has scripted a tragedy in-waiting. Mr. Abraham correctly cited national security as a primary reason for moving forward with the Yucca repository, since by explosively releasing containment, a terrorist could turn any one of those storage sites into a "dirty" radioactive bomb. A consolidated repository at Yucca would fulfill the solution offered by Mark Twain's Puddn'head Wilson, "Put all your eggs in one basket and - watch that basket."
Moreover, if a terrorist did somehow penetrate security at the Yucca repository, he would face the problem of having to penetrate a mountain to cause a radioactive problem. Such a drama would play out a long way away from any significant population centers, but near the Nevada Test Site, where numerous explosive nuclear dramas have already run.
It can only be hoped that Senate Democrats decide to respond with a chorus of "Ayes" at the denouement of the decision on the Yucca repository later this year.
----
Sununu could not have been more insulting, and ignorant
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
Las Vegas Review-Journal
COLUMN: John L. Smith
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/Jan-15-Tue-2002/news/17868509.html
Hey, that was quick.
Even in the long, twisted political history of Yucca Mountain, where politicians and nuclear pitchmen have often melted down, rarely has a man managed so swiftly to sound like a moron and alienate himself from an entire state population in fewer than 100 words.
Talk about efficiency.
Barely a day after Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced his endorsement of Yucca as a high-level nuclear waste dump site over the vociferous objections of lowly Nevada, pro-nuke lobbyist John Sununu chimed in and managed to question our state's patriotic heart while insulting generations of residents.
"If I were advising Nevada long term, I would suggest they do whatever they have to do politically in a way that doesn't create resentment in the country," Sununu told a Review-Journal reporter. "If Nevada is not willing to do its part in what is part of a national plan for homeland security ... maybe Americans ought to vacation somewhere else."
Believe it or not, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually pays Sununu to open his mouth on this issue.
What will he do for his next trick, desecrate our state flag? Pluck a mountain bluebird? Gun down a desert bighorn?
If Nevada is not willing to do its part?
Nevada Test Site workers and their families, please rise and introduce yourself to Mr. Sensitivity. You toiled for decades during the heart of the Cold War to ensure the United States stayed ahead of the atomic weapons race. You were there for 928 nuclear bomb tests. You made certain America won the world's most dangerous game.
And you paid the price. Many, who were later diagnosed with cancer, suffered for their loyalty. Many more of the downwinders afflicted by radioactive fallout paid our Cold War debts with their lives.
Nevadans are only now beginning to understand the level of contamination present in the groundwater around the test site.
If Nevada is not willing to do its part?
Nellis Air Force Base has been doing more than its share of heavy lifting in its more than 50 years, training the best fighter pilots on the planet and making sure the United States maintained its air superiority.
There's tiny Indian Springs with its proud history of military service, and the Fallon Naval Air Station. At Fallon, the presence of a leukemia cluster in the rural farming community has been linked by some to fuel emissions from the air base.
From Wendover, where the crew of the Enola Gay prepared for its atomic mission, to Hawthorne's vast ammunition storage facility, Nevada has played an integral role in the defense of this nation for generations.
Sununu's remarks not only insulted Nevadans but potentially residents of every state along the nuclear waste transportation route. That's 43 in all.
Ironically, his observation might have provided a boost to Nevada's flagging spirits following Abraham's announcement. On Monday, Mayor Oscar Goodman and Clark County Commission Chairman Dario Herrera announced they were sending a letter to President Bush critical of Abraham and the site selection process.
At Nellis, U.S. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign blasted Sununu's fighting words. He provided them with further confirmation that those forcing nuclear waste down our throats are only too happy to take cheap shots.
"The Department of Energy for 20 years has been trying to sell Nevada on the (idea of accepting) nuclear waste, there's lots of good things in it for you. Nevadans have not agreed," Reid said. "There's a small group of people that would prostitute the state of Nevada. I have said and will continue to say, we are not in the business of being whores and, therefore, we are not going to talk about price."
If it were really a matter of national security, Reid noted, perhaps as governor of New Hampshire Sununu should have embraced a nuclear waste storage site in that state.
"He did everything he could, and he was successful, at keeping nuclear waste out of New Hampshire," he said. "So he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth."
And they actually pay Sununu to speak.
John L. Smith's column appears Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. E-mail him at Smith@lvrj.com or call him at 383-0295.
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