hi egg - i must be dense because i don't really get the northrop story - unless it's like the electric car?
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Updates re nuclear arms control/disarmament:
April 2, 2009
For Immediate Release
U.S. - Russian Nuclear Arms Control Talks Revived
- Expert available for interviews -
Washington DC—Hans Kristensen, the director of the Nuclear Information Project of the Federation of American Scientists, is available for comment on the estimates for nuclear weapons in the world.
Please visit
http://fas.org/press/faq/index.html for information on:
• Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories
• Russian Tactical Nuclear Weapons
• U.S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons In Europe
NOTE TO REPORTERS –
To schedule an interview with Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, please contact Monica Amarelo at email
mamarelo@fas.org or call 202-454-4680. OR Hans Kristensen (202) 454-4695
hristensen@fas.org
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March 30, 2009
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/03
** DOE ON VERIFYING DISMANTLEMENT OF NUCLEAR WARHEADS
In anticipation of future nuclear arms control agreements that would require the dismantlement of nuclear warheads, the Department of Energy undertook a
technical study during the Clinton Administration to determine how such dismantlement could be verifiably accomplished. The resulting report, experts say, is still the best available treatment of the subject.
A copy of the unclassified report, marked "official use only," was obtained by Secrecy News and posted online today.
The DOE authors identified ten types of activities that could be used in a warhead dismantlement regime, involving various forms of monitoring at successive stages of the process. One or more of the ten could be employed, depending on the degree of confidence desired.
In principle, it should be fairly straightforward to dismantle a given nuclear warhead with confidence. However, "determining that an item to be dismantled is actually a nuclear warhead is very difficult" without compromising classified information, the report states. The use of x-rays or radiographs to confirm that an object is in fact a warhead "would be highly intrusive and would reveal highly classified nuclear warhead design information" to foreign inspectors, potentially exposing design vulnerabilities and other sensitive information. Such concerns might be addressed by other forms of monitoring, the report says.
The study concluded that "transparency measures for monitoring warhead dismantlement can be applied... with up to a moderate level of confidence that dismantlement has taken place if implemented at the Unclassified to [Confidential] level." Verification that an actual weapon has been dismantled -- which is a more demanding standard than mere "transparency" -- can be achieved with an appropriate exchange of classified nuclear weapons design information.
The report provides a detailed description of the dismantlement process, a summary of previous dismantlement studies (including one by the Federation of American Scientists and another by the JASONs, but not the 1960s-era
Project Cloud Gap study), and other valuable information that could serve to inform and accelerate current analyses of nuclear warhead dismantlement.
See "
Transparency and Verification Options: An Initial Analysis of Approaches for Monitoring Warhead Dismantlement," prepared by the Department of Energy Office of Arms Control and Nonproliferation, May 19, 1997
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