My Blog Posts

• Duck and Cover Version 2.0
  12/16/2010 02:07:25 PM EST
  William Broad’s article, “U.S. Rethinks Strategy for the Unthinkable,” which appeared in today’s New York Times, relays the Obama administration’s push for increased public awareness of what to do in the event of a nuclear blast.   Administration officials claim that the survivability from the fallout is greater than one might typically imagine.  The key is getting to adequate shelter and staying put, rather than fleeing as most people might do in such a situation.   Even remaining sheltered for just a few hours would significantly reduced the number of fatalities from radioactive fallout, concludes a report from a multiagency modeling effort led by Lawrence Livermore Labs in California.  The results from this model found that there would be approximately 285,000 casualties due to fallout a mile from ground zero if people did not seek shelter.  Minimal protection (e.g. a car) would reduce this to 125,000 casualties, and shelters such as a basement would further reduce the number of casualties 45,000.   The report concluded that the best shelter is in a large office building or an underground garage. What is problematic, however, is figuring out how to educate the public without causing undue fear or panic.  Upon arriving in office, President Obama attempted to initiate a planning for disaster response, but was impeded by political roadblocks.  Cities such as Las Vegas did not want to participate in mock disasters, claiming that it would reduce tourism.   The fact remains that public awareness and education is crucial.  Broad notes that there was insufficient disaster planning for Hurricane Katrina, which, as we all know, led to a very uncomfortable moment between Kayne West and Mike Myers.   If we want to avoid future uncomfortable moments, it might make sense to pursue a disaster management program which educates the public about how to minimize the risks from fallout.   This would be a much better use of our time and resources than, say, preparing for the very unlikely event of thousands of incoming Russian ICBMs from which escape is almost impossible.
  
• New START: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
  12/08/2010 11:23:16 AM EST
  In a The Wall Street Journal article published on November 30, Adam Entous and Jonathan Weisman allege that Russia has moved tactical nuclear weapons to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.  In light of the administration’s attempt to secure Senate approval of the New START treaty during the lame-duck’s final moments, the authors have stirred up longstanding GOP concerns about the issue of tactical nuclear weapons. Jeffrey Lewis, Nikolai Sokov (see the comments section of the aforementioned Jeffrey Lewis piece), and Pavel Podvig have already done an excellent job refuting Entous and Weisman’s assertions, noting that this “breaking news” is nothing more than a red-herring leaked with the intention of derailing New START ratification.  In lieu of rehashing what they have already addressed, I want to focus on how entry into force of New START is integral to paving the way for a subsequent agreement with Russia on tactical nuclear weapons...
• Nuclear Smuggling in Georgia Highlights Need for Stronger Safeguards
  11/22/2010 02:16:49 PM EST
  By Lt. General Robert Gard, Jr. and Candice DeNardi On Monday, November 8, 2010, two Armenians—Sumbat Tonoyan, a retired physicist, and Hrant Ohanyan, a failed businessman—pleaded guilty during a secret trial held in Tbilisi to smuggling 18 grams of highly enriched uranium (HEU) into Georgia. In March 2010, a month before the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C. where 47 world leaders pledged to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials within four years, Tonoyan and Ohanyan were arrested for smuggling HEU into Georgia.  The two Armenians placed the 18 grams of uranium, enriched to a weapons useable level, in a pack of Marlboro cigarettes lined with strips of lead to fool radiation detectors at the Georgian border.  Tonoyan and Ohanyan then smuggled the HEU via a train bound from Yerevan to Tbilisi, and attempted to sell it to someone they thought was an agent representing Islamic radicals; instead, he turned out to be an undercover agent of Georgia’s radioactive materials investigations team.     There are several disturbing facts about this incident.  It illustrates the very real threat of the theft, smuggling, and sale of nuclear materials to prospective buyers, especially terrorists.  But what’s equally chilling about this case, and others for that matter, is that the uranium the men were smuggling wasn’t even missed.  No one knows where exactly it came from, although most suspect it originated in Siberia, perhaps even up to ten years ago.  During the Cold War, many Soviet factories produced and stockpiled excess quantities of HEU or plutonium in order to make up for potential shortfalls in production quotas for future accounting periods (you didn’t want to fall behind on quotas in the Soviet Union, lest you be sent to the GULag).  Much of this was unaccounted for; it is impossible to know for sure, therefore, how much of this material was produced, where it is located, how it is stored, and—most importantly—how much is missing.