WhirledView

A Riddle

By CKR

Q. How is the CIA like the Los Alamos National Laboratory?

A1. Both have an independent knowledge base, and a dedication to maintaining it.

This is irritating to those who spin policy out of ideology.

Today’s New York Times says that a memo from Porter Goss said "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," but it seems to have left out the other side: that if the CIA doesn’t do policy, then the employees do not identify with, support or champion the administration and its policies. Neutral down the middle.

You want to get Bin Laden? You need to know where he is and where he’s likely to be. You need to analyze his habits and his strategies. Michael Scheuer and a group at the CIA were given the assignment of gathering this information. They overstepped into policy when they urged particular actions. At some point, somebody in the Agency got frustrated enough to let Scheuer publish a book with some good analysis and some prescriptions for action.

A policymaker and manager could deal with this by taking the information while settling down that urge toward policy. Information-gathering and analysis will always slide over into policy. Policy-makers have to weigh the consequences of action or inaction and then deal with them.

A2. Both are secret societies that exhibit the good and bad effects of secret societies.

Growing a dysfunctional culture is one of the bad effects, and there seems to be some of this in both places. It gives a handle for change to those who want change.

Rumor has it that Porter Goss’s aides, who had earlier been discharged from the Agency, have hit lists that are now being acted upon.

Los Alamos is still writing up self-criticisms and other tools of organizational reconstruction, six months after the shutdown that was supposed to last two.

The Soviets had an ideological problem with Darwin’s theory of evolution: it seemed to owe too much to Adam Smith. A fellow named Trofim Lysenko came up with a politically acceptable theory that the ideologues liked better. Biological science in Russia is still catching up to the rest of the world.

We’re not seeing Lysenko purges at the CIA and Los Alamos. Yet.

Why Uranium Enrichment?

By CKR

Brazil, Iran, North Korea, and the United States are all embarked on increasing their uranium enrichment capacity.

The statement has been made that the world is “awash” in enriched uranium, largely because Russia has sold some of its enriched uranium from decommissioned weapons to a US corporation for blending down to reactor fuel. In other words, Russia originally enriched that uranium up to weapons grade, and now it will be mixed with depleted uranium to decrease the enrichment to reactor grade. That uranium has come full circle.

So why are countries looking to enlarge their enrichment capability?

Most likely, North Korea is trying to extend their capabilities with nuclear weapons. They’ve said as much.

For Iran and Brazil, the picture is more mixed. Iran’s lack of candor with regard to its program suggests that the program is directed toward weapons. It is located in a dangerous neighborhood with nuclear neighbors and a war going on next door, after having been identified as belonging to the “Axis of Evil.” But Iran may also want a nuclear capability for peaceful purposes as well.

Brazil’s program is more likely for peaceful purposes. Although Brazil and Argentina indulged in a nuclear arms race in the 1980s, both have signed the Treaty of Tlatelolco, which makes Latin America and the Caribbean a nuclear-free zone. However, with the United States looking more unpredictable, it may be a prudent decision on the part of any national government to have a potential nuclear capability in reserve.

As more countries develop, more energy is needed. The price of oil has soared recently in part because of China’s and India’s increasing imports. Petroleum is a premium energy source because it is suitable for automotive and aviation fuels. Coal and nuclear energy are not practical for transport, and wind and solar power are out of the question. So it makes sense for the non-transport energy sources to be used in stationary power plants, the ones that deliver electricity to your home.

Additionally, petroleum is valuable for making plastics and other materials we depend on, but this is only about 10% of petroleum usage.

As the demand for transport fuels (and the price of oil) increases, so will the necessity for nuclear power. Across the world, nuclear power constitutes about 10% of electrical generating capacity.

The OECD-IAEA Red Book, the primary source of information on future needs for reactor fuel, projects that

Currently envisaged production capabilities through 2020 cannot by themselves satisfy projected world uranium requirements in either the low or high demand scenarios.

Enrichment plants take a number of years to build, particularly in countries that require an extensive regulatory process. It makes sense to start now.

You can’t look at an enrichment plant and say whether it’s for bombs or reactors. Feed the uranium through once, and you’ve got reactor fuel. Feed it through twice, and you’ve got what you need for a bomb. That’s true of any enrichment plant, whether gaseous diffusion, centrifuge, or laser.

As the need increases for enriched uranium for nuclear power, so does the necessity for finding ways to increase the availability of reactor fuel without increasing the risk of proliferating nuclear weapons.

World Citizens Guide

By CKR

Now here's a good idea.

The World Citizens Guide is a guide for American college students studying abroad. It gives information about culture, politics, religion, economics, and languages in countries in which the students might wind up. It's oriented toward behaviors  rather than the usual "where to eat, what to see" guides.

They've got a web site, but it doesn't seem to include all the good stuff that an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (5 November) says is in the Guide. It does have a link to download a free version, which I didn't do.

And another omission: no flag of Estonia, one of my favorite countries. Also missing: Latvia and Kazakhstan. The 100 flags on the website, they say, are those of the countries American students are "most likely to visit."

Otherwise it sounds good. The site has links that will be useful to any traveler.

Awe and Terror

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

"Harps!  Harps! Harps!  Twang!  Twang! Twang!"  Can't we have a little variety here?"

"Sorry, Boss.  The trumpeters and guitarists made terrific music, but their morals didn't pass the test. You said they could rot in hell--remember?"

"Their terms must be up by now."

"We aren't Buddhists, Boss.  These boys don't get another chance."

Twang!  Twang!

"The Crusades!  Those were the days.  And the Hundred Years' War.  They loved me then, shed blood, guts, tears, the real thing.  And what do I get now?  Hymns.  Teetotling. Text book squabbles over six days or a billion years, laughable either way in the light of eternity.  Wimps!  But they still expect the whole enchilada--happiness, long life, wings and a seat on the sofa next to me."

"Hey, Boss!  Got a prospect here!  Name's Bush--hubris up the kazoo.  Says he strayed, but now he loves only you.  Says he fought an election in your name and won.  Now he's on a roll land wants to keep the partnership going.  Claims 'washed in the blood of the Lamb' is no metaphor. He's got the biggest, strongest army in the world and he'll damn well use it as he pleases--but only in your service, Boss.    Listen!  He's singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers!'"

"Oh ho!  That's the spirit!  He's my man." 

"Wait.  Another call coming through.  Guy named bin Laden.  Says he's reclaiming the holy places and slaying the infidels and putting women back where they belong, out of sight, with lots of kids.  Says he's running a terrific low budget operation with borrowed planes and stolen missiles, but now he needs a little charge from you, something to inspire the jihadis, you know.  Says he loves you.  Knows you're all powerful.  With a little push from you, the Sword of Islam will triumph."

"Yes! Yes!"

"Which boss?  Tweedledee or Tweedle dum?"

"Both, dummy, both.  And make a hole in those clouds, will you.  This is going to be one hell of an action movie.  Oh baby!  Listen to those missiles!  Hear those bombs!  Oh that beautiful rat-a-tat-tat--and those screams!"   

Pat Sharpe

Win the Battle but Lose the War?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

It’s not really surprising that the US military siege of Falluja began within six days after the 2004 elections which gave President Bush a resounding second term mandate from 52%, or a slim majority of the Americans who voted and whose votes were counted.   

The good news:  reports yesterday suggested that US troops are taking light casualties. 

Does this mean, therefore, that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Doctrine to subdue Iraq by underwhelming force has begun to work?  Or that as in most guerrilla wars – many Iraqi fighters simply melted away – to return to fight another place, another day?  And on their, not the US military’s, terms?

Before proceeding with the Falluja bombardment, the US military, we are told, studied the mistakes made by the Russian military’s flattening of Grozny, the Chechen capital in 2000, as well as the US battle to regain Hue, Vietnam during the 1968 TET offensive.  Excellent thinking.  Insurgents don't play by the rules of standard military engagement.

But did these short term, but  costly, victories win either war?

We all know how the Vietnam War ended.  In Chechnya 2000, the Chechen insurgents escaped the city and headed for the hills from where they subsequently launched major terrorist attacks against Russian civilians – including women and children – in a school in Beslan just this past summer and a theater in Moscow, Russia’s capital in 2002.  The Russian war against Chechen independence is far from over – more than ten years after it began.  And the US suffered an ignominious retreat from Vietnam in April 1975.

Shouldn’t we have learned from Vietnam, and even from our own revolutionary war, that insurgents fueled by nationalism – and that’s what we face in Iraq - don't stand and fight by ordinary means?

I fully expect the US military to take Falluja in the hours and days ahead – or at least what’s left of the city - after the silencing of the aerial bombardments and the stilling of the machine guns that we get ghee-whiz glimpses of on television courtesy of the Pentagon’s embedded-with-the-troops reporters program.  But don’t expect Falluja’s capitulation to quell the Iraqi insurgency in the long run.  It may, instead, stoke resentment’s flames.   - PHK                

   

US Uranium Enrichment

By CKR

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a fact sheet on an application from Louisiana Energy Services (LES) to build a uranium enrichment plant in Eunice, New Mexico. Eunice is in the southeastern corner of New Mexico, south of Hobbs, close to the Texas border. It is in the middle of oil and gas country, and the people who live there would like to become less dependent on that single industry.

The NRC staff intends to complete its review of the LES application by June 2006. It conducted a scoping meeting on March 19, 2004, “to get public input into the types of issues to be addressed in the environmental review” and published a draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on September 17, links to which can be found here. The next step in the process will be a public meeting to allow comment on the EIS.

LES is a partnership currently consisting of Urenco, Exelon, Duke Power, Entergy, and Westinghouse. I can’t find a web site for LES, although such a site is mentioned in the transcript of the scoping meeting. I’ve also searched the partners' sites and can’t find a single mention of LES.

Brazil's Nuclear Ambitions

By CKR While international attention focuses on Iran and North Korea as the main nuclear proliferators in the world, ignoring Pakistan’s Nukes ‘R Us franchise, Brazil is building a uranium enrichment plant. The US is also planning to build a uranium enrichment plant. Science magazine had an article on “Brazil’s Nuclear Puzzle” in its 22 October issue, and the New York Times picked it up. The Science article can be found here. I won't link the NYT because their links decay too quickly, it was several days ago, and it didn't say a lot more than did the Science article. Brazil’s plant is expected to be ready to commission later this year (next month? how much is left of this year?). The US’s plant is in planning stages only. The concern expressed in the Science article, by Liz Palmer and Gary Milhollin of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, is twofold. First, that while Brazil’s plant is stated to be for enrichment of uranium to reactor grade (3.5% U-235), it could also be used to bring the U-235 concentration up to weapons grade (greater than 90%). Second, that Brazil is refusing to allow full inspection of the centrifuges, ostensibly to protect its advanced technology. The article gives a useful fact: About 3000 kg of uranium feed requires ~3500 SWU to make one implosion bomb. The same feed needs more than 2000 SWU to enrich to 3.5%. (Footnote 5) This fact can be derived from the mathematics of separations, found in elementary chemical engineering textbooks. SWU means “separative work unit,” which is hard to explain without those mathematics, and which changes with circumstances. The importance of footnote 5 is that any enrichment plant that can produce reactor-grade uranium can produce weapons-grade uranium. After this perspicacious start, the article then ignores the ability of the IAEA to take minute samples and determine the isotopic makeup of the uranium in them, as it has in Iran. The article presents a hypothetical case of secret hookups to input and output behind the screens around the centrifuges, recognizing that the power input to the plant would be a clue to clandestine enrichment. Presumably the IAEA would be allowed to take samples at various points in and around the plant that could indicate enrichment beyond reactor grade. The NYT article also goes on to speculate on why Brazil would want an enrichment plant, with lots of emphasis on macho considerations. But there are the simply practical: nuclear energy is the only large-scale source of energy that doesn't produce CO2, the primary greenhouse gas from fossil fuel; the supplies of enriched uranium, currently inflated by disposal of Soviet weapons, will become thinner as soon as 2020; and, in an uncertain world, it may be useful to keep options available for nuclear weapons. If an enrichment plant can produce reactor-grade uranium, it can produce weapons-grade uranium. That's inherent in the basics and can't be gotten around. I'll post more about the new US enrichment plant and how all this plays into concerns about the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty later.

Next attack?

By CKR

There's a nice show in the morning sky. Does it have any further significance?