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If a nuclear bomb were to go off in a U.S. city, how long would it take to get info on what kind it was and where it came from?

Los Angeles Times had an article about nuclear forensics and government teams who are working on detection. I appreciate the attempt to make it sound cool…elite teams with radiation-detecting helicopters!

About every three days, unknown to most Americans, an elite team of federal scientists hits the streets in the fight against nuclear terrorism.

An independent study (led by Michael May at Stanford) on forensics and policy approaches should be out next month. Jay C. Davis, a retired weapons scientist working on the forensics study, gives some goals for a forensics time:

Davis said it was hoped that nuclear forensics could determine the size of a detonation within one hour; the sophistication of the bomb design within six hours; how the fuel was enriched within 72 hours; and the peculiar details of national design — “Does this look like a Russian, a Chinese or a Pakistani device, or something we have never seen before?” — within a week.

It’s a pretty good article with some interesting details on how detections teams would work after locating a nuclear device.

(Also, despite all my hopes, I have not in fact moved a tropical island without internet. I am just in grad school. Happy Hour deserves a break from the books however, so hope to see you at Big Hunt on Wednesday!)

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After looking at low-res blurs for years, now you can count the cars in the Dimona parking lot. Granted they were probably there a year or two ago, but this is still cool. The latest update of Google Earth has some fun new images of Israeli sites.

To find the nuclear reactor, search for the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Google Earth. It should be a pretty clear image with a marker for the wikipedia entry.

The San Francisco Chronicle has more info on Israeli military sites you can now find on Google Earth. As to be expected, Israeli officials are not commenting.

According to Israeli experts, the photographs in question are a year or two years old, and clearly show the layout of top-secret buildings. The photograph of the nuclear plant at Dimona shows the approach roads, internal walkways and individual buildings in a facility that is off-limits and hidden behind electric fences with large warnings signs and a complex array of cameras and other security devices.

The images also include Camp Rabin, the heavily guarded defense headquarters in central Tel Aviv that is surrounded by anti-terrorist blockades, a high wall and buildings with bomb-proof windows. It contains the underground bunker from which Israel’s top generals command their military campaigns, as well as the offices of the prime minister, defense minister and Shin Bet secret service.

Moreover, the alleged Mossad headquarters, whose location is a highly protected secret, was identified and labeled by a Google Earth user.

Update: As related wonkporn, here is a video which appears to have been made by an Israeli TV channel (alas no date or any other real details) on the facilities at Dimona, based on information Mordechai Vanunu leaked to British press. The background music is my favorite part.

Jeffrey adds: Here is the .kmz file.

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A few weeks ago I blogged about Russia’s “Father of All Bombs,” a fuel-air bomb they claimed to be the world’s largest non-nuclear weapon.

Did the Russians really drop the bomb off a Tu-160 bomber or was the drop a hoax?

David Axe at Wired has some interesting speculations.

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Jeffrey will be participating in an event tomorrow at the New America Foundation. He and Gary Samore, Vice President and Director of Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, will be speaking about Iran’s nuclear program.

More details here, and the basics below.

Countering a Nuclear-Armed Iran

Thursday, September 27, 2007
3:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

New America Foundation
1630 Connecticut Ave, NW, 7th Floor
Washington, DC

Featured Speakers:
Gary Samore, Council on Foreign Relations
Jeffrey Lewis, New America Foundation

RSVP to communications@newamerica.net with name, affiliation, contact info.

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Wolfgang Panofsky, director emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, died of a heart attack on Monday evening. He was 88.

There is much to be said about Dr. Panofsky’s contributions, from his pioneering research at Los Alamos, Stanford, and Berkeley, as well as his contributions to the policy debate on proliferation and nuclear security. I’m sure many of ACW readers may have personal recollections of his life or his work, which I invite you to share.

A few years ago I watched Dr. Panofsky lead a panel in a National Academies Symposium, marking the 60th Anniversary of Trinity. NAS hosted an incredible group of speakers, all of whom were there at Trinity. Dr. Panofsky’s closing comments still stand out in my mind:

Throughout human history proliferation of any new technology for either peace or war – be it fire, gun powder, steel fabrication, electronics, or whatever – has never been stopped, but in response to Trinity we must stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons. But how can we accomplish this? Treaties and other international agreements have been very successful in slowing proliferation, but in the long run each sovereign state on this globe must be persuaded that its National Security is better served without possessing nuclear weapons than with them. It also requires each state now possessing nuclear weapons to examine critically whether their stockpiles of these weapons and of the critical materials to make them are truly consistent with their National Security – not to meet short range contingencies but to serve the long range true security of the nation.

-W.K.H. Panofsky, prepared remarks for Academies Symposium 60th Anniversary of Trinity, July 15, 2005.

Panofsky’s last published article, “Nuclear Insecurity,” appears in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs. Additionally, his autobiography Panofsky on Physics, Politics, and Peace: Pief Remembers will be out in mid October.

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Earlier this week, AP reported that Russia tested a conventional bomb, which Russian television described as the “world’s most powerful non-nuclear air-delivered bomb.”

The TV station highlighted the importance of this weapon. In other words, our bomb is bigger than your bomb.

Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the “dad of all bombs” is four times more powerful than the U.S. “mother of all bombs.”

[snip]

The U.S. Massive Ordnance Air Blast, nicknamed the Mother Of All Bombs, is a large-yield satellite-guided, air-delivered bomb described as the most powerful non-nuclear weapon in history.

Channel One said that while the Russian bomb contains 7.8 tons of high explosives compared to more than 8 tons of explosives in the U.S. bomb, it’s four times more powerful because it uses a new, highly efficient type of explosives that the report didn’t identify.

So, why does one need a bomb so big? A bomb that Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff said “is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability.”

To get the terrorists of course.

Rukshin said the new bomb would allow the military to “protect the nation’s security and confront international terrorism in any situation and any region.”

What is this all about? I am not sure yet. But “showing off” seems to be a topic in Russia news lately. Flexing some muscles, first literally, and now with really big fireballs.

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On August 30, the first time since 1968, a U.S. bomber transported missiles armed with six nuclear warheads. By accident.

The story is front page CNN.com, but here is the more detailed version at Military Times.

The article quotes Hans Kristensen and Phil Coyle on a very important point. This mixup would not be an easy mistake to make, which means security measures were seriously overlooked.

Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, said a host of security checks and warning signs must have been passed over, or completely ignored, for the warheads to have been unknowingly loaded onto the B-52.

ACMs are specifically designed to carry a W80-1 nuclear warhead with a yield of 5 to 150 kilotons and delivered by B-52 strategic bombers.

“It’s not like they had nuclear ACMs and conventional ACMs right next to each other and they just happened to load one with a nuclear warhead,” Kristensen said.

The Defense Department uses a computerized tracking program to keep tabs on each one of its nuclear warheads, he said. For the six warheads to make it onto the B-52, each one would have had to be signed out of its storage bunker and transported to the bomber. Diligent safety protocols would then have had to been ignored to load the warheads onto the plane, Kristensen said.

All ACMs loaded with a nuclear warhead have distinct red signs distinguishing them from ACMs without a nuclear yield, he said. ACMs with nuclear warheads also weigh significantly more than missiles without them.

“I just can’t imagine how all of this happened,” said Philip Coyle, a senior adviser on nuclear weapons at the Center for Defense Information. “The procedures are so rigid; this is the last thing that’s supposed to happen.”

The warheads could not have been detonated, either on purpose or in the event of an accident. Yet the fact that they were missing for 3 and a half hours -the mistake was only noticed when the plane landed – is very distrubing.

Are accidents with nuclear weapons rare? Is 10 rare? 20?

Here are the well known mishaps, involving test launches, mistaken simulations, and even a bear. There are more details and analysis in Scott Sagan’s The Limits of Safety.

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We don’t get many feel good stories on a nonproliferation blog.

This Washington Post piece is pretty close though. Next up, Nunn and Lugar superhero suits. Capes of course, but minus latex.

PODOLSK, Russia, Aug. 29 — Heavily guarded trucks rolled up to the Luch nuclear institute here on Tuesday night and unloaded five green reinforced containers holding a total of 21 pounds of uranium, about a third of it highly enriched, which had been quietly removed from a research reactor in Otwock, Poland.

[snip]

On Wednesday, as workers prepared to open the casks from Poland, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and former senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) got a firsthand look on a visit to Luch at the struggle to locate the fissile material and keep it from falling into the wrong hands, a program that they created more than 15 years ago and now faces new challenges.

[snip]

Later Wednesday, Nunn and Lugar witnessed the burn-off of a solid-fuel second-stage engine from an SS-25 intercontinental ballistic missile at a site northeast of Moscow. The burn is part of Russia’s effort to destroy the missiles in keeping with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Along with U.S. Ambassador William J. Burns, Nunn and Lugar were invited to press a large red button on a boxy panel in a control room to start the burn. They then watched on closed-circuit television as the engine roared for two minutes 15 seconds.

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This week, T&D happy hour is going classy. I know everyone will miss the greasy Big Hunt burgers and pizza, but don’t be afraid, change is good.

We will be at Heritage India, about a block down Connecticut from Dupont, at 6pm on Thursday, August 30.

Top 5 Policy Recommendations Reasons for Think and Drink Attendance

- Who are we kidding, it’s more drinking than thinking.

- Little Indian tapas to go with that martini.

- Key opportunity have conversations that start with “so this one time, my summer intern…”

- Jeffrey has stories and gossip far too scandalous and inappropriate even for the blog. Just keep those beers coming.

- My last DC happy hour before academia sets in.

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When I hear “Dimona,” I think super-secret Israeli nuke program. I mean, doesn’t everyone? Little did I know that other grand secrets can be found in this little part of the Israeli desert. Who cares about the nukes when you suddenly discover that Dimona is in fact also home of the nicest bathroom in Israel.

But let me start at the beginning.

I was traveling in Israel last week. I’ll post some fun pictures of the Lebanon border (big fence) the Syria border (big mountains) and the security wall (again, big fence) later. Of course, I couldn’t help but notice signs we passed with arrows towards Dimona. Signs for the town of course, but I didn’t sweat over the Deadly Arsenals map for nothing. The reactor is close. (Here all nice and blurry on google earth).

As luck would have it, we did drive right through the town of Dimona, and along the road where, for a good long stretch, you can see the reactor dome sort of gleaming in the distance. Driving from the town of Dimona towards the Dead Sea, a large sparse area with low rolling hills opens up on the right. A serious looking security fence runs along the side of the road.

The Israeli guide on the trip told a nice story about the super-secret Israeli Krembo chocolate factory over to the right. So secret is the Krembo recipe that Israel has shot down a plane which wandered over the factory, and the man who revealed chocolate secrets to the world was put in jail for a long long time. Very cute. I was amused.

Now the good stuff. In the town of Dimona itself, there is a shopping mall. Rolling into the parking lot, I started hearing comments about the bathrooms. The mall looked decent, average even. But then I turned a corner and was witness to the super-secret Israeli bathroom program, no fences. No, it’s not a brochure. I sneaked a super secret photo.

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