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

Stories we're following today - Tuesday, March 29, 2011:

Contaminated Water Escaping Nuclear Plant, Japanese Regulator Warns – Hiroko Tabuchi and Ken Belson in The New York Times [link [1]]

• Highly contaminated water is escaping a damaged reactor at the crippled nuclear power plant in Japan and could soon leak into the ocean, where some radioactive materials had already been detected.
• In another new finding, Tokyo Electric Power Company, which runs the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power station, said late Monday that it had detected higher levels of plutonium in soil samples taken from within the compound a week ago, raising fears of yet another dangerous element that may be escaping the crippled reactors.
• Yukio Edano, the chief cabinet secretary, said early Tuesday that the makeup of the plutonium in the soil suggested that traces could be escaping the reactors. Together with the highly radioactive water, he called the traces of plutonium more evidence that fuel rods inside some of the reactors may be damaged. “There is a high possibility that there has been a slight melting of the fuel rods,” he said.
• The trick now, Mr. Edano said, was to keep pumping enough water to ensure that these fuel rods did not overheat, at the same time trying to minimize the overflow of contaminated water.
• The disclosure about the escaping contaminated water came as workers pressed their efforts to remove highly radioactive water from inside buildings. The high levels of radioactivity have made it harder to get inside the buildings, slowing the effort to cool the reactors and spent-fuel pools.

What If Gadhafi Had Gone Nuclear? – Michael Oren in The Wall Street Journal [link [2]]

• America and its allies, empowered by the United Nations and the Arab League, are interceding militarily in Libya. But would that action have been delayed or even precluded if Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi had access to nuclear weapons? No doubt Gadhafi is asking himself that same question.
• Gadhafi unilaterally forfeited his nuclear weapons program by 2004, turning over uranium-enriching centrifuges and warhead designs… Gadhafi did so because he believed he was less secure with the bomb than he would be after relinquishing it. He feared that the U.S., which had recently invaded Iraq, would deal with him much as it had Saddam Hussein.
• A similar fear, many intelligence experts in the U.S. and elsewhere believe, impelled the Iranian regime to suspend its own nuclear weapons program in 2003. According to these analysts, the program resumed only when the threat of military intervention receded. It continues to make steady progress today.
• The efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons have been obscured by the dramatic images emanating from the region, but the upheaval makes that campaign all the more critical. While cynically shooting its own dissidents, the Iranian regime is calling for the overthrow of other Middle Eastern governments and exploiting the disorder to extend its influence.
• Now is the moment to dissuade the Iranian regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon that might deter any Libya-like intervention or provide the ayatollahs with a doomsday option. If Gadhafi had not surrendered his centrifuges in 2004 and he were now surrounded in his bunker with nothing left but a button, would he push it?
• NOTE: Mr. Oren is the Israeli ambassador to the United States.

Kyl Shoots And Misses Again – Kingston Reif in “Nukes of Hazard” a Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation blog [link [3]]

• Fresh off his failure to defeat the New START treaty, last week Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) organized a letter signed by 40 other Republican Senators warning President Obama that he must consult with Congress before altering nuclear weapons guidance to allow for deeper reductions below New START levels.
• The letter warns that “very low levels of nuclear forces, such as the arbitrary levels of 500 or 1000 warheads per side advocated by some in the international arms control community, would have important and as yet unknown consequences for nuclear stability.” Yet what country would not be deterred at such levels? And if a country couldn’t be deterred by a U.S. arsenal of 500-1000 nuclear weapons, what logic presumes that they would be deterred by a much larger U.S. arsenal of 5,000 weapons?
• Though hard to swallow, the fact remains that the United States is, and will continue to be, vulnerable to nuclear attack so long as nuclear weapons exist. Kyl and the nuclear hawks propose to escape this vulnerability by building new nuclear weapons, developing impenetrable missile defenses, threatening to use nuclear weapons against a wide array of threats, and maintaining sufficient nuclear forces to launch a disarming first strike against any potential adversary (or in the case of Russia at least feign such a capability).
• Future U.S. arms control negotiators should retain maximum flexibility to negotiate treaty provisions in the best interests of the United States. The Senate will have an opportunity to vote any treaty up or down.
• The Nuclear Posture Review, New START agreement, Nuclear Security Summit, and most recent NPT Review Conference are all steps in the right direction. Now it’s time to take the next steps.

5 Washington Peace Demonstrators Sentenced to Prison - The Associated Press 

• Two priests, a nun and two women in their 60s who cut through fences at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor to protest submarine nuclear weapons were sentenced Monday to prison terms ranging from two to 15 months.
• A federal jury convicted the five anti-war demonstrators of conspiracy, trespass and destruction of government property in December. They had faced up to 10 years in prison, and prosecutors recommended sentences ranging between six months and 36 months.
• Court documents say the group cut through fences on Nov. 2, 2009, to reach an area near where nuclear warheads are stored in bunkers. The protesters put up banners, sprinkled blood on the ground, scattered sunflower seeds and prayed until they were arrested.
• The five defendants said nuclear warheads stored at the base and on submarines there are illegal under international, national and humanitarian law, but a judge prohibited them from using international law and the lethality of nuclear weapons as a defense. The trial hinged on straightforward charges relating to trespassing and property damage.