20 posts
“Laßt mich in Ruhe mit euren Gewissensbissen, das ist doch so schöne Physik!” –Enrico Fermi, arguing with his colleagues on the Manhattan Project about the ethical implications of developing the atomic bomb. What? I thought Enrico Fermi was Italian! And…
Reader MP sends along a picture of nine easter eggs — one for each state with nuclear weapons
The most successful and longest serving Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency was the first man to hold this job, William C. Foster. During his tenure, the United States negotiated the Limited Test Ban Treaty and the Nonproliferation…
I’ve been doing a lot of work lately on state-to-state nuclear cooperation — especially the connection between Pakistan and North Korea. I recently reread Bamboo and Blood, by James Church (a pseudonym for one of the most distinguished North Korea…
At one point in a wide-ranging op-ed back in March, Frank von Hippel made the case for a global switchover to multinational consortia for uranium enrichment: [It] would make it more difficult for any one country to divert the material…
Here are the information sheets from our friends at FEPC from 4/15, 4/18, 4/19 and 4/20. On a related note, TEPCO has walked back the estimate of Cl-38 on which Ferenc Dalnoki based his paper, What Was The Cause Of…
One of Herb York’s many talents was his ability to write clearly with a strong narrative line, despite his training in physics and immersion in technical detail. See, for example, Herb’s book, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb (1976).…
Your daily information sheet sheet from our friends at FEPC.
We have some interesting comments on yesterday’s thread about the wonders of the INES. I wonder Fukushima results in a fundamental reform of the scale, with the IAEA taking on a role in vetting how states rank their nuclear disasters.…
The Japanese government is conducting selective evacuations of areas outside the 20 km evacuation zone and has upgraded the accident to a 7 on the INES scale. Thoughts on those two events, along with your daily information sheet from our…
