Uncertain Future of the Labs

August 29, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Leah Fae Cochran

A nuclear economy - “Nuclear weaponry is big business in New Mexico,” writes John Fleck on the importance of national lab funding to New Mexico’s economy. While New Mexico’s congressional delegation works to keep taxpayer money flowing into their districts ($4.6 billion for Sandia and Los Alamos), the labs themselves have brought upon themselves a series of embarrassing cost overruns that resulted in high profile nuclear plans getting scrapped. Congress now needs to deal with the labs’ cost explosions during a climate of fiscal austerity.

--”Underlying the discussion are questions about the size and future missions of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, including the possibility of further reductions in the number of bombs and warheads deployed,” writes Fleck. If the stockpile comes down, “That raises questions about workload at the nuclear weapons labs, and specifically about the timing and need for additional refurbishment of aging nuclear weapons, which makes up a large part of the current weapons workload.” Full article at The Albuquerque Journal. http://bit.ly/SSTNSZ

$10K - The State Department announced a contest intended for “garage tinkerers and technologists, gadget entrepreneurs and students” to use readily available technology for nuclear verification and compliance applications. The prize? There is $10,000 in the pot, with at least one award being no smaller than $5,000 and no award being smaller than $1,000.

--Rose Gottemoeller, acting under-secretary of state for arms control and international security, told CNN that the State Department is asking if there are "new ways that we can use existing data, such as Twitter streams, to generate information that will be useful to arms control and nonproliferation verification and monitoring? Are there ways that we can help our inspectors to do their jobs better, by having better tools available? Are there ways that governments and citizens can work together to ensure better monitoring and verification of treaties and agreements?" http://bit.ly/POTWnf

--Enter the competition here. Deadline is October 26. http://bit.ly/Oq9L2k

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Quote - “As you know, we are interested in continuing arms control talks going forward. That said, we reject any linkage with missile defense. As we always say, these are defensive systems; they are not directed at Russia; they’re primarily directed at the threat from Iran and from rogues, et cetera,” said State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland about recent comments from Vladimir Putin that Russia might be interested in further nuclear reductions. http://bit.ly/NCc6ql

Tweet - @JoshRogin: Romney camp doubles down on Russia as “geopolitical foe” http://bit.ly/Ub2Luq

Tweet - @CSIS: #ThisDayInHistory: 1949 - The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, #Kazakhstan.

IDANT- “Today is the official International Day Against Nuclear Tests, established in 2009 on the anniversary of the closure of the main former Soviet test site of Semipalatinsk, where more than 456 nuclear explosions contaminated the land and its inhabitants,” writes Daryl Kimball in Arms Control Now. Read about the history of testing moratoriums and their relation to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty here. http://bit.ly/O2pSE3

Task force - The IAEA established a special task force on Iran this month tasked with investigating alleged nuclear weapons activities, implementing IAEA agreements with Iran and relevant UN Security Council and IAEA resolutions on Iran’s activities, reports George Jahn of the Associated Press.

-- The task force is made up of “weapons experts, intelligence analysts and other specialists” but will have “no more power regarding inspections of Iran's known or suspected nuclear sites than previous IAEA inspectors did,” writes Jahn. Full story here. http://bit.ly/SSozeP

Psychological not strategic - Arguments for maintaining nuclear weapons built for Cold War strategy are becoming increasingly for “political and psychological rationales,” writes Kingston Reif. One rational, touted by the 2009 Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, is to continue to provide reassurance of our security commitments to our European allies.

--”While the United States should not make significant changes to its nuclear weapons policy without the input of key allies, overexaggerating the assurance value of specific nuclear capabilities risks preserving an excessive number and diversity of weapons that do not enhance deterrence, are unduly expensive, and could actually undermine alliance cohesion,” writes Reif. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has the analysis. http://bit.ly/Podv9X

Forbidden fruit - “The weapons scientist was told that in the future he could eat the [orange] or store it inside his office safe with the rest of his classified documents, but if he left the orange out on his desk unsupervised it was a security infraction that could be referred to the FBI for investigation.” Alex Wellerstein writes of a little episode at Los Alamos where nuclear secrecy efforts crossed into the realm of the absurd. http://bit.ly/OJyD7t