Years

2006

325 posts

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North Korean Ghost Ship

Indian authorities have stopped a North Korean ship headed to Iran. [cue suspense music…] Except, it was empty! [GASP] “MV Omrani-II” developed a snag and entered Indian waters on October 29 and was towed to the Mumbai Port where the…

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NORKS Gave Beijing 20 Minutes Warning

A new IISS Strategic Comment—“North Korea’s Nuclear Test: Continuing Reverberations”—confirms statements by US and South Korean officials that the NORKs gave the Chinese all of twenty minutes notice before the nuclear test: Chinese sources confirm that North Korea informed Beijing…

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Nuclear Power for Everyone!

Should I be uneasy that six countries have recently expressed a newfound interest in nuclear energy? The Middle East Economic Digest, which a number of the other news sources like The Times are referencing, quotes IAEA deputy-director general Tomihiro Taniguchi…

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"There is no fighting in the War Room"

Studio 360 is featuring a radio show about the bomb, with guest Richard Rhodes, who is, as always, awesome. The show starts off with a short bio of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which is a bit too simple and sentimental, but…

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North Korean Missile Exports

So, I am thumbing through Richard Grimmett’s CRS report Conventional Arms Transfers to Developing Nations, 1998-2005 to find this phrase: Other non-European suppliers [ahem, North Korea] … delivered [to Near East region during the 2002-2005 period] 40 surface-to-surface missiles, a…

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Fuel Cycle Docs

Managing the Atom has acquired copies of the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) Comparison Report and Piet et al, Fuel Cycle Scenario Definition, Evaluation, and Trade-offs INL/EXT-06-11683 (August 2006). Go hog wild. Or, if you live in Rhode Island, cohog…

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NORK Nuke Missile?

So, my initial speculation about the cause of failure for North Korea’s nuclear test—remember that I thought the NORKS tried to reduce the size of the warhead with fancy implosion techniques—seems to have gained some credibility. (See So, Like, Why…

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On sale now: Israeli bomb shelters

There are all kinds of elaborate rumors that during the Cold War, Russia built networks of shelters and tunnels underneath Moscow. Israel seems to still be working on its state of the art underground bunker and apparently theirs is not…

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More on NCRI and Iran

Adding to Jeffrey’s post… Annoyed for similar reasons, I pointed out a while back that the NCRI on its own doesn’t appear to have produced a whole lot of actionable intelligence on Iran. To an extent, though, I guess one…

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Why has North Korea decided to negotiate?

North Korea has announced that it will return to negotiations. The six party talks could resume sometime in the next two months. Up to now, North Korea’s line has been that it will return to the talks if the US…