Nuclear Power and Nuclear Bombs: The Illusion of Control

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today - Monday, March 28, 2011:

Hiroshima to Fukushima: The Illusion of Control – Joe Cirincione and Paul Carroll in The Huffington Post [link]

• It is one of the great achievements of humankind that we can split the atom. The nuclear energy released, however is inherently dangerous--whether in a power plant or a bomb. And not just dangerous like skydiving or gasoline tanks may be dangerous, but dangerous on an immense scale and duration.
• The world learned of the dawn of the atomic age with the bombing of Hiroshima. The immense energy symbolized by that mushroom cloud inspired both fear and respect. Since then, the inherently dual nature of nuclear power has been developed and deployed widely for both military and civilian purposes.
• But the connections between the two are just as fundamental. Both involve our collective deception that we can always control the nuclear machines we invented. We cannot. There have been dozens of close calls, false alerts and near launches in the nuclear age. In one instance, a US bomber crash dropped two hydrogen bombs over North Carolina. Five out of six of the bomb's arming devices activated -- only the sixth prevented an actual nuclear detonation.
• August 29, 2007 provides a more recent reminder. On that day the U.S. Air Force lost track of the equivalent of 60 Hiroshima bombs for 36 hours. A B-52 bomber flew across the country with six nuclear missiles tucked under its wings. Unknown to the air crews, the missiles were each armed with a 150-kiloton nuclear warhead, ten times the power of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
• Nuclear energy -- whether in a bomb or a power plant -- always risks getting beyond our control. With bombs, there is a strong and growing global consensus that their time has passed, that their risks greatly outweigh their benefits. International security leaders increasingly say that we must move quickly and steadily to eliminate them.

Tainted Water at Two Reactors Increases Alarm for Japanese – David Jolly, Hiroko Tabuchi, and Keith Bradsher in The New York Times [link]

• Japan’s troubled effort to contain the nuclear contamination crisis at its stricken Fukushima Daiichi plant suffered a setback on Sunday when alarmingly high radiation levels were discovered in a flooded area inside the complex, raising new questions about how and when recovery workers could resume their tasks.
• Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operator, said the elevated radiation levels in the water, which had flooded the turbine buildings adjacent to the reactors at the plant, were at least four times the permissible exposure levels for workers at the plant and 100,000 times more than water ordinarily found at a nuclear facility.
• Tetsuo Iguchi, a professor in the department of quantum engineering at Nagoya University, said that at the sharply elevated levels of radiation, workers would be able to remain on the site for only about 15 minutes before health considerations required them to leave. That could compromise attempts to bring the crisis under control.
• There was no evacuation of the roughly 1,000 workers stationed at Daiichi after the high radiation levels were discovered. Naoki Sunoda, another spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power, said that since the crisis began, 19 workers had been exposed to radiation levels of 100 millisieverts.
• Despite the new problem, Mr. Sunoda said, workers on Monday were still trying to determine a way to approach the turbine building of reactor No. 2 to extract the contaminated water.

Worst-Case Scenario for Japan? - CNN's State of the Union with Candy Crowley

Deterrence During Disarmament: Deep Nuclear Reductions and International Security – New Book by James M. Acton [link]

• After two decades of stagnation, Russia and the United States have pledged their support for reductions in nuclear warheads. But the vision of mutual disarmament remains plagued by doubts on all sides. Russia, the US and American allies struggle as ever with the notion that downsizing would be a step into the unknown, and hold on to the belief that, when it comes to deterrence, size matters.
• Based on a series of interviews with opinion formers in Russia and the US, this Adelphi examines long-held concerns about the effectiveness of deterrence (including extended deterrence) at low numbers, the possible incentives to use nuclear weapons first in a crisis, the potential for rearmament and risks surrounding nuclear multipolarity.
• Deep reductions in nuclear arsenals are much less problematic than commonly perceived, as the experience of the USSR and the US in the early Cold War, and China, France and the United Kingdom over a longer period demonstrates. Taking into account these examples, together with potential stumbling blocks and crisis scenarios, this book contends that arsenal size has little bearing on many of the security challenges usually associated with low numbers, and accordingly, that making deep cuts would not undermine international security.

Experts Declare Nuclear Weapons Contrary to International Humanitarian Law – The Vancouver Declaration by The Simons Foundation and the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms [link]

• Released today by The Simons Foundation and the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA) and signed by eminent experts in international law and diplomacy, the Vancouver Declaration affirms that nuclear weapons are incompatible with international humanitarian law, the law stating what is universally prohibited in warfare.
• The declaration observes that with their uncontrollable blast, heat, and radiation effects, nuclear weapons are indeed weapons of mass destruction that by their nature cannot comply with fundamental rules forbidding the infliction of indiscriminate and disproportionate harm.
• Entitled “Law’s Imperative for the Urgent Achievement of a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World,” the declaration concludes by calling on states to commence and conclude negotiations on the global prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons as mandated by the legal obligation unanimously proclaimed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 1996.
• Dr. Jennifer Simons, President of The Simons Foundation, said: “It is my hope, shared by IALANA, that in the debate about the road to zero, the Vancouver Declaration will serve to underline the essential element - the inhumanity and illegality of nuclear weapons - and hasten their elimination. The possession of nuclear weapons should be an international crime.”

U.S. Air Force Locates Funds for Future-ICBM Studies – Elaine Grossman for Global Security Newswire [link]

• The U.S. Air Force has identified $2.6 million in fiscal 2012 to study technology options for a future ICBM, after a number of senior officials insisted last month that the president's budget request included no such funds.
• An Energy Department report in November raised anticipation on Capitol Hill that the Obama administration would invest $26 million annually, ostensibly beginning in the current budget year, to carry out a "Capabilities Based Assessment" for a new ground-based ballistic missile to replace the Minuteman 3 ICBMs. Those missiles, first fielded in 1970, are to retire in 2030.
• The service now plans to spend roughly $26 million on ICBM analyses over a three-year period between fiscal 2012 and 2014, beginning with the $2.6 million in the budget year that begins on October 1. Plans are for the initial installment to lay "the groundwork for analysis supporting future weapon systems development and deployment" and conduct "pre-milestone activities," the spokesman said.
• The nation today fields 450 Minuteman 3 missiles, but under New START will retain no more than 420 of the ICBMs, each armed with a single nuclear warhead. Washington and Moscow have seven years to implement all their reductions.