Avatar photoMichael Krepon's Shoebox

We are starting a new feature — Michael Krepon’s shoebox. As you will see from his explanatory note, he has collected quotes over thirty years, largely organized around his book writing projects. (You should check out his most recent book, Better Safe Than Sorry: The Ironies of Living With the Bomb, Stanford University Press, 2009). …

Avatar photoDas Puffen Boomer

On Thursday and Friday, I attended a workshop sponsored by AAAS and Princeton concerning advances in Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty monitoring and verification. There was considerable discussion of “venting” — when underground nuclear tests eject radioactive material into the atmosphere — as a detection method. There were frequent, grim jokes about BANEBERRY, the worst …

Avatar photoDPRK: U'nha-2 Powered Trajectory

Jan Stupl’s contour of pixel intensity of the U’nha-2 contrail image Jan Stupl, who is a Science Fellow at Stanford’s CISAC this year and who has done an amazing experimental and theoretical analysis of the US Airborne Laser, produced a very important processed image of the DigitalGlobe/Globalsecurity.org image of the U’nha-2 launch. This has allowed …

Avatar photoDPRK: Back to Square One

Cross-posted from Verification, Implementation and Compliance. The monitors have been switched off. The cameras are being removed from their mounts, and the seals are broken. The guesthouse just off the main site no longer houses the IAEA three-person team or the four-person US experts group. By now, the equipment is probably being packed into boxes …