Nuclear information for everyone.
The Jasons have issued a report on the plutonium in nuclear weapons. The Jasons are a group of experts convened by the Department of Energy to consider various issues. They have been primarily focused on nuclear weapons, but they also have considered “Havana Syndrome” (cricket sounds) and global warming (real). Most of their work is [ ]
Donald Trump’s backers in Silicon Valley want to build nuclear reactors. They argue that small nuclear reactors, in particular, are essential to the build-out of their artificial intelligence dreams. Let’s leave that claim aside and look at the idea of a group whose motto is “Move fast and break things” developing nuclear power. Last week, [ ]
Scientific American has been acquired by LabX Media Group, which holds Discover Magazine, IFLScience, and a number of other science publications. I haven’t looked at IFLScience since it was a Twitter account stealing other people’s material. They say it’s different now. And they have started out by firing writers and editors. The Writers Guild of [ ]
Ever since Vladimir Putin announced a nuclear-powered cruise missile, some of us have been trying to figure out how that might work. I drew on my experience* with people working on the Rover reactor for exoatmospheric rocket propulsion to suggest that a direct drive, in which gas flows through the reactor to be heated for [ ]
The US government has 34 tons of plutonium it wants to dispose of. By 1990, the US and Russia held something like 65,000 nuclear weapons. The dissolution of the Soviet Union led to significant decreases on both sides. Bill Clinton negotiated an agreement that the US and Russia would each dispose of 34 tons of [ ]
Content Warning: Wonky. The journal Foreign Affairs article titled “Nuclear Deal With Iran?” by Matthew Sharp and Nate Swanson points out that more than the period of enrichment and the existing quantities of enriched uranium needs to be considered for an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. The manufacture and stockpiling of centrifuges were [ ]
Marty Pfeiffer (@nuclearanthro.bsky.social on Bluesky) is a gadfly to DOE and NNSA, mainly through their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) programs. He has been complaining that NNSA has not published its annual mandated report to Congress on Stockpile Stewardship, the program that monitors and researches the operation of nuclear weapons. This week he found out [ ]
It’s probably a good idea to read my earlier post on why nations don’t want nuclear weapons before reading this one. The various factors in a decision to build a nuclear arsenal weigh differently for the nations that are variously considered to be candidates for that decision. There is no one size that fits all. [ ]
As larger nations that have nuclear weapons attack smaller nations that don’t have nuclear weapons, conventional wisdom is that more nations will want nuclear weapons. This is less certain than much of the discussion makes it out to be. Three of the nations that have nuclear weapons – the United States, Russia, and China – [ ]
There are folks out there dreaming about a daring raid by special ops forces to grab Iran’s stock of enriched uranium. Trumpies would like to grab the Ayatollahs’ goodies. People concerned about proliferation would like the material under positive control. I would advise against such a raid. The enriched uranium seems to be at Isfahan [ ]