Last week, the Senate Republican Policy Committee released this execrable document, START: Do Time Extension Instead of a Bad Treaty, on the New START treaty. Today, I finagled a copy of a memo that Senator Kyl’s staff has distrubuted in advance of a briefing that Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller will give to the Senate National …
Fun with Molybdenum
by | 2009-10-07 | 10 Comments
Molybdenum seems to be something that just won’t go away! Most people feel it is one of the reasons Iran appears willing to ship its indigenously enriched LEU first to France to be further purified and then to Russia to be enriched to the 19.75% U235 the TRR now uses. (See the latest ISIS technical …
TRR Tradeoffs
by | 2009-10-06 | 7 Comments
The immediate advantages of last week’s agreement-in-principle between Iran and the P5+1 / E3+3 are pretty clear. Iran gets about five years’ worth of fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor (TRR). And removing 1,200 kg of Iran’s LEU and returning it as fuel takes away the much-discussed breakout option for the near term, as James …
Can CTM Bust Russian Silos?
by | 2009-10-05 | 17 Comments
The Russians have made a lot of noise about the possibility that advanced conventional weapons in the US arsenal place their nuclear forces at risk and, as a corollary, that certain capabilities should be included in future arms control negotiations. Which raises an interesting question — do they? Can the proposed Conventional Trident Modification (CTM) …
