On the radar: Atomic amendments in NDAA; Nuclear fault lines; Monitoring Arak; To commemorate or not?; US-China summit; Atomic time capsule; and 25 million Big Macs.

June 7, 2013 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Alyssa Demus

NDAA amendment roundup - The House Armed Services Committee passed its draft of the FY 2014 defense authorization bill. Douglas Guarino summarized the bill and the nuclear policy amendments to it for Global Security Newswire.

--Blocking nuclear reductions: “Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) added language that would hold back $75 million for arms reductions required under the New START treaty with Russia until the administration submits a detailed report on how it would use the funds...A separate measure from Rogers would limit the president’s ability to enter into any agreements with Russia to further reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal.”

--Cutting nuclear funds: Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) offered an amendment that would have negated Republican efforts to add $200 million for nuclear weapons programs. The amendment failed along a party-line vote.

--East coast funding: Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) offered an amendment to eliminate $140 million from the bill which would hasten efforts to construct an East Coast missile defense site. The amendment failed on a 26-36 vote.

--GTRI hostage: Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) “added a measure to require Energy Department officials to certify that they will complete the projected $10 billion modernization of the B-61 nuclear gravity bomb arsenal by 2019. Failure to provide that assurance could now lead to restrictions on funding for the Global Threat Reduction Initiative.”

--CTR hostage: A provision “offered by Rep. Doug Lamborn would prevent the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program from spending money on work related to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty unless President Obama certifies that Russia and China are complying with the agreement.” Summary of action on the bill here. http://owl.li/lO8tH [1]

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Neighborly pressure - Neighboring Arab Gulf states expressed concern over the safety of Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor - which is “located in an earthquake-prone coastal area” - at an IAEA meeting Thursday. Arab Gulf states are pressuring Iran to join the 75-nation Convention on Nuclear Safety, as its currently the only state “operating a nuclear power plant that does not belong to the convention,” reports Fredrik Dahl at Reuters. Full story here. http://owl.li/lOeEa [6]

Arak monitors - Iran welcomed the IAEA’s new “powerful detection technologies” at the organization’s quarterly board of governor’s meeting, and suggested the agency use its monitors to “dispel international concern that [Iran] is seeking to build atomic weapons...The Islamic Republic won’t object to IAEA monitors using new technologies to determine whether plutonium is being extracted from spent fuel at its new reactor in Arak.” Jonathan Tirone at Bloomberg has the full story. http://owl.li/lOi9m [7]

Grappling with our atomic legacy - Last year, legislation to establish the Manhattan Project National Historical Park did not pass Congress due to concerns that commemorating Manhattan Project sites would come across as celebrating the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

--“As a nation, we have a responsibility to grapple openly and objectively with the Manhattan Project's complex legacy. To do that, we need a place for reflection,” argues Stephanie Meeks in The Los Angeles Times. Meeks notes that the National parks Service exists in part to preserve U.S. history - even the darker moments of it. http://owl.li/lOtmo [8]

US-China roundup - President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping are set to roll up their sleeves and and discuss some serious issues straining US-Chinese relations at a summit in California today. Sam Kane at Nukes of Hazard offers background on the status of US-China-North Korean relations and the summit’s nuclear implications. Full writeup here. http://owl.li/lOwmT [9]

Tweet - @nukes_of_hazard [10]: Nukes in America: our new interactive map showing the pieces of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. http://t.co/2D7KkJUjdY [11]

Events:

--June 10th is the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s commencement address at American University, where he called for banning nuclear testing. http://bit.ly/18J6Ugk [12]

--”The Implications of the NPT Regime for Nonproliferation.” Speech by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Countryman. June 18, 9:00 am @ Elliott School of International Affairs. RSVP and details here. http://owl.li/lH9Ks [13]

--Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, markup of its portion of the defense authorization bill, including NNSA’s nuclear nonproliferation programs. June 11, 6:00 pm 232A Russell Senate Office.

Dessert:

Tweet - @HuffingtonPost [14]: How cold warriors helped scientists solve brain riddle. http://huff.to/1958Mmt [15]

Lazy man’s Hiroshima-equivalents - Commentators tend to describe releases of energy in terms of their equivalents to the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and killed upwards of a hundred thousand people. Such comparisons of human tragedy and energy release is done in rather bad taste, but also tends to be done with shoddy math. To make the best of this, Alex Wellerstein at Restricted Data created a “Hiroshima-equivalent calculator.”

--Conversion examples: An Earthquake that registers 7.0 on the Richter scale is equivalent to 31.79 Hiroshimas. One billion kilowatt hours is equivalent to 5.74 Hiroshimas. 25 million Big Macs are equivalent to 1.17 Hiroshimas. http://owl.li/lOpwN [16]

Blast from the past - When Chris and Colleen Otcasek bought their new home in southern California earlier this month, they were surprised to find the house came with a 1960’s nuclear fallout shelter. But, when the couple finally “descended down [the] rusted staircase into the subterranean space,” what they expected to be “nothing more than a hole in the ground,” turned out to be a fully-furnished Cold War era bunker. Check out photos of the time capsule here at Mail Online. http://owl.li/lOpwN [16]