On the radar: How MOX got this bad; Assessing Iron Dome; Elimination not armageddon; New STRATCOM commander; and What happens when wildfires hit radioactive forests?

June 25, 2013 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Alyssa Demus

Nuclear waste - The price of the Mixed Oxide fuel facility in South Carolina is spiraling out of control, as “government mismanagement, wasteful spending and construction snafus” turned the project from a hopeful $1 billion project into an $7.37 billion embarrassment.

--”A close look at its history reveals that the project had a weak construction contract; that Washington officials initially paid little attention to the project, despite its scope; that mismanagement and shoddy contracting practices cost the government more than $1.38 billion in avoidable expenses; that its piping may be flawed; and that prospects for selling its plutonium-laced fuel appear dim,” write Douglas Birch and Jeffrey Smith for the Center for Public Integrity in their part II of their series on the failing plutonium facility. http://bit.ly/19pc8li [1]

--Numbers: The MOX plant is currently set to come online 12 years late and $7 billion over its construction budget. Sale of the fuel to be produced by the plant - if a customer is ever identified - would see a return of $1 billion to $2 billion on the government’s expected investment of $20 billion.

--Chart: Rising cost for MOX facility. http://ow.ly/i/2rKmw [2]

This is sarcasm, right? - “So, instead of throwing rocks because of the recent cost overrun, we should be sending the Department of Energy and MOX bouquets for performing an important, difficult and controversial job in a very safe manner, with high quality and within a cost estimate established more than 10 years ago. The nation needs more projects managed as well as MOX,” writes Ernie Chaput in South Carolina’s Aiken Standard. http://bit.ly/14uNIjU [3]

Welcome to Early Warning - Subscribe to our morning email [4] or follow us on twitter [5].

--Have a tip or feedback for the editor? Email earlywarning@ploughshares.org earlywarning@ploughshares.org [6]. Want to support this work? Click here [7].

Assessing Iron Dome - “ Despite its utility in meeting Israel’s unique security challenges, Iron Dome is not a game changer, nor does it validate—at least not yet—Reagan’s vision of a global strategic-defense capability. Despite a growing (but incomplete) consensus on the need for some level of missile defense, the vision of “impotent and obsolete” ballistic missiles remains firmly out of reach for the foreseeable future,” write Peter Dombrowski, Catherine Kelleher and Eric Auner in The National Interest.

--The authors assess Iron Dome’s potential impact on efforts to deploy national, regional and global missile-defense systems, evaluate Iron Dome’s performance and consider the strategic implications of such systems. http://bit.ly/16wYcAG [8]

Not safe - Even after implementing modest reductions to 1,000 U.S. warheads, “the specter of nuclear catastrophe will continue to haunt humanity” as even a smaller arsenal could still inflict “unimaginable destruction across the plant,” write Ira Helfand and Alan Robock in CNN.

--The authors note that a nuclear strike of even 300 warheads on American cities would be enough to quickly kill 75 million to 100 million people, destroy all metropolitan areas and collapse the U.S. economic infrastructure. The climatic disruption from such nuclear war would be enough to cause catastrophic crop failures and global famine. http://bit.ly/16wUM0z [9]

Support for reductions - “The case for a new round of bilateral strategic arms reductions is sound,” writes the Charleston Post and Courier in an editorial. “The end of the Cold War with its opposing armies in Central Europe has removed the main reason for the creation and deployment of these missiles and airborne weapons. Now would be a good time to find ways to safely eliminate them.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/18dJ5A0 [10]

Tweet - @insidedefense [11]: New Bomber To Drive Long-Range Strike Costs to $10 Billion Per Year. Story: (paywall) http://bit.ly/1aKnTks [12]

STRATCOM’s new boss - President Obama has nominated Adm. Cecil Haney to be the next commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the military command “assigned to deter and detect nuclear attacks.” Adm. Haney currently serves as commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet and, if confirmed by the Senate, would succeed Gen. Robert Kehler at STRATCOM. American Forces Press Service has the story. http://1.usa.gov/11Y4iWe [13]

Tweet - @NTI_GSN [14]: Megatons to Megawatts Program Has Completed 95% of Transfers: NNSA http://t.co/vIQahGh9pZ [15]

Report - UN Panel of Experts report on North Korea sanctions.

--The sanctions “are also crucial in preventing [North Korea] from exporting sensitive nuclear and missile technology, thereby increasing the overall risk to international peace and security. The Panel, however, continues to highlight the uneven implementation of the resolutions in the present report, which creates gaps that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea exploits.” (pdf) http://bit.ly/16wSte5 [16]

Speed reads -

--”Lugar Expresses Optimism, Concern on Future of WMD Security” by Douglas Guarino of Global Security Newswire. http://bit.ly/147jdBy [17]

--”Nuclear Freeze Best Hope if NKorea Disarmament Talks Restart, Says Former Obama Adviser” from AP. http://goo.gl/2Sbxi [18]

--”Our Generation's Security Challenge: Eliminating Nuclear Weapons” by Joel Rubin in The Huffington Post. http://huff.to/12gO3YB [19]

Events:

--”North Korean Nuclear, Missile, and Space Programs: Imagery Brief and Policy Options With Joel Wit,” June 25, 12:30-2:00 PM @ The American Security Project, 1100 New York Ave. 7th Floor West Tower. Details here. http://ow.ly/mkBPA [20]

--”Give Peace a Chance: Preventing Mass Violence.” Sen. Richard Lugar and David Hamburg. June 27, 11:30 AM @ American Association for the Advancement of Science, second floor auditorium, 1200 New York Ave. Details here. http://ow.ly/mkSzW [21]

Dessert:

Fighting the radiological blaze - Nearly three decades after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, the threat of radioactivity looms - in the area’s forests. Since the accident, the surrounding trees have been absorbing radioactive contaminants while simultaneously desiccating due to changes in climate. If these dry forests catch fire, they could carry contaminated inhalable particles hundreds of miles away, which could be ingested by humans and contaminate foodstuffs.

--The current fire management system - people that look for signs of wildfires from watchtowers - is primitive, as are the local firefighting capabilities. In response, the “United Nations recently acknowledged the potential for another Chernobyl disaster and has mounted a $20 million sustainable development project designed to address wildfire and other environmental issues,” writes Jane Braxton Little at Scientific American. http://goo.gl/k9O55 [22]