“Remember: The Soviets are the competition. Los Alamos is the enemy.” Statement Attributed to a Weapons Designer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Stephen Schwartz on the RRW program Congress imagined the Reliable Replacement Warhead program as an effort to “improve the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing weapons and their components.” The devil, however, is …
Iran's UF6 Is "Crap"
by | 2005-09-28 | 5 Comments
Regular readers know that Iran’s uranium conversion facility (UCF) at Esfahan (Isfahan) stinks—a fact Paul first reported in the October 2004 edition of Arms Control Today and which forms the basis for IC judgements about Iran’s proximity to a nuclear weapons capability. Nuclear Fuel and Reuters (hat tip SQ and GSN) have written four articles …
Technical Difficulties at Bushehr?
by | 2005-09-27 | 16 Comments
Middle East News Line (via GSN) cites Russian officials describing technical difficulties with Bushehr arising from changes to design specifications: Russia’s effort to complete Iran’s first nuclear plant continues to be hampered by technical difficulties. Russian officials said that despite significant progress over the last year, the Bushehr nuclear reactor plant has encountered technical difficulties. …
Ex-Interpreter on Six Party Joint Statement
by | 2005-09-26 | 2 Comments
The Six Party Joint Statement calls on North Korea to “abandon”—not “dismantle”—it’s nuclear pograms. A few days ago, I observed that Glenn Kessler and Edward Cody missed this distinction in an otherwise outstanding article. Still, I felt like I was missing something. Tong Kim—recently retired from State Department, where he was the senior Korean interpreter …
