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The Draft Nuclear Weapons Complex Report

by CKR

“Recommendations for the Nuclear Weapons Complex of the Future,” the draft report of the Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), gets a lot of things right in a world that may not exist.

SEAB was asked by the House of Representatives to take a look at the nuclear weapons complex: how it might be streamlined and improved to support a smaller nuclear stockpile for the 1700-2200 operationally deployed nuclear weapons anticipated by the Treaty of Moscow. That means two to three times that number of weapons for the total, with non-deployed spares, backups, and weapons in various stages of production and dismantlement.

The report fulfills its charge with a relentless and salutory logic: putting all the fissionable material at one site makes sense; consolidating all nuclear weapons manufacture at that site makes sense; good numbers are given for capacities and time requirements; improved manufacturing methods are outlined.

The task force’s vision of a single nuclear weapons production site that handles all fissionable material includes plutonium and highly enriched uranium foundries along with other metalworking facilities; a materials research, analytical chemistry, and production development laboratory; and a plant for for producing, machining and testing insensitive high explosives, a weapons assembly and disassembly hall; a plutonium and pit storage facility; a storage area for highly enriched uranium and secondary canned assemblies; a secure shipping and receiving facility; storage for non-nuclear components; and an environmental reclamation and waste recovery facility. The report is at a conceptual level, but it sketches a budget and timeline.

But a few points are neglected: how to fix the organizational problems that now cripple the design labs and will make transformation impossible within the report’s timeline, and the political responses to locating a plant that machines plutonium and high explosives and can be expected to be a terrorist magnet as well as to removing functions and therefore jobs from existing plants.

Tuesday Kamchatka Wildflower Blogging

by CKR

I've been in Kamchatka for the past two weeks in a group tour. I have mixed feelings about tours; I've taken only four in my entire life. I take tours when they offer something I'd be unlikely to manage for myself. That bar has raised as I travel more and more. But I don't speak Russian much, and I retain some apprehensions from my Cold War history. The nice side of tours is that someone else does all the work for you, and I needed something like that to get back into traveling after the upset of moving my home.

The Russians refer to Kamchatka as their Far East. Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka's largest city, is a four-to-five-hour flight from Anchorage. As usual, you can click on the photos for larger versions.

There's lots I intend to say about the trip in later posts. Places that are very different from one's usual surroundings help to refocus one's attention, and I felt that I was getting much too emotional about what's been going on in the US.
Internet and some English tv news (NHK, Japan) is available in Petropavlovsk, but we stayed there only the last night of the tour.

I'm going to post a few flower photos today. I see that there are some complexities I have to deal with in transferring my photos from my digital camera; this is my first trip with it. But there will be lots of photos in later posts. This first photo is of a Chocolate Lily (Fritillaria camtschatcensis).

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Treaties

...this time, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Fortunately, President Bush doesn't have the last word on this one. Congress must change the US Nonproliferation Act, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have to change its rules. We can hope they see the value of the NPT.

An alternative might have been to accept India into the NPT as a nuclear weapons state. India wants the recognition, and this would give them the message that responsibility accompanies that recognition.

Rich Folks, Poor Folks & Folk Art

By PLS
Santa Fe is a major art market. New Mexico is very poor.

A headline in a recent New Mexican declared that house prices in Santa Fe rival those in Boston, but there’s no speculative bubble in real estate, we’re assured. Rental income, in most cases, won’t cover the mortgage installments.

Nevertheless, rents are not all that low. Many people who were born in Santa Fe can’t afford to live here anymore, can’t buy, can’t rent, not unless they have high professional salaries. Ordinary workers have to move south to Rio Rancho or Albuquerque. They commute to jobs in Santa Fe. That means driving. That means high gas costs.

City Council makes a big deal out of requiring developers to include supposedly affordable houses in plans for pricey sub-divisions. But even if all the affordable units got built, which often doesn’t happen, for interesting reasons, the number of units accumulated wouldn’t come close to meeting demand.

So it’s hard to live modestly in Santa Fe, which has a disproportionate number of people for whom that is not a problem, a segment of the population to which I–sigh!--do not belong.

I have some friends with a genius for gleaning the second hand shops and creating looks that wow for practically nothing. However, this is also a city where sweet little $800 sweaters sell out before the markdown in January. Darn! Santa Fe casual, like the pueblo revival architecture dotting the hills all around the city, is not for the flat of wallet. Ethnic chic runs to Native American jewelry made of sterling silver, coral and turquoise, along with elegant antiques from Asia and Africa which (trust me!) can no longer be picked up for a song.

So Santa Fe is an excellent setting for an International Folk Art Market that offers exquisite examples of the world’s surviving handicrafts in a beautiful locale to entice both serious collectors and impulse shoppers to buy, buy, buy. This year's Folk Art Market took place last weekend.

The Source of the Forgeries?

by CKR

It has long seemed to me that a key to a number of questions about the lead-in to the Iraq war is the source of the carelessly forged documents purportedly showing that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. Unfortunately, this has so far seemed a technically unexciting detail to most of the press.

Possible motivations range from a simple desire for money on the part of some Italian with connections to law-enforcement in that country to bolstering the case by those in the US who longed for war with Iraq under any pretenses. Intermediate cases would also be of interest, like a forger (inside or outside government) in yet another country trying to undermine the Iraqi government for their own purposes. Possible specifics of any of these three cases range widely, but a clear determination of any of them would give insight into the march to war.

Because the documents were the basis for Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger, and the Karl Rove connection has refocused attention on that trip, the documents are part of the ongoing Karl Rove story. Recent developments give some support (although very indirect) to the idea that the documents may have been forged by someone in the US wanting to justify a war with Iraq.

Juan Cole links to the small amount of information and speculation that is out there.

The facts don't matter any more

By PHK

I was struck by a comment in Paul Krugman's column in July 15th's New York Times about how in Karl Rove’s America and George Bush’s White House the facts have simply become irrelevant. Unfortunately for this country, Krugman’s got it all too right: for far too many Americans the facts don’t matter. It seems to me that this is too often the case because far too many American primary and secondary schools have failed and failed big time. As a result, many Americans don't have a clue about the basics of our own system of government. Yet some of them are signing up to fight and die for our country in inhospitable lands.

Here’s a recent personal example. Last week. I was in line at the UNM parking services office to renew my permit for another year. A nice appearing blond blue eyed young man sporting what looked like a newly minted wedding band on the third finger of his left hand started asking me – and others – very basic questions about the university. It was clear he was a newcomer to UNM, probably a newcomer to Albuquerque, and perhaps new to New Mexico. He then asked me what I was studying. When I told him I taught Islam and Politics, he proceeded to demonstrate his complete ignorance about this very complex religion by telling me that the differences were rather like those between Republicans and Democrats. Somehow this then led him to the U.S. system of government whereupon he informed me that if the US had separation of church and state, federal employees would be blocked from practicing their religion.

The Pentagon Damns Itself

By PLS

When the FBI questioned interrogation procedures at Guantanamo, the military knew it had to respond and authorized an investigation.

The report of that investigation, headed by Air Force General Randall Schmidt, was released on July 14, at which time the General testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee.

Someone’s definitely been hurt when a Department of Defense news release (the one for the Schmidt report, dated July 14) has a headline like this:

Alleged Guantanamo Abuse Did Not Rise to Level of Inhumane

Language in a DoD press release is minutely crafted by military public affairs officers. After that it’s nitpickingly approved at a very high level. We would do well to take every word seriously. So let’s examine it.

Coming Home

by CKR

Well, the authorities let me out of Russia and into the United States, so things are looking good, except for my smoky, dirty clothes and suitcases still to lug.

I'm in Anchorage, having had a few hours sleep and a shower after last night's redeye flight and before tonight's. They're cleaning the motel lobby around me.

Kamchatka is a great place, and I've got a bunch of photos to share. Volcanoes and wildflowers.

But first I've got to catch up. I heard about the London bombings a few days ago, second hand. Last night (um, depending on how you think about the International Date Line) I saw an English-language newscast for the first time since I left. Or any sort of tv newscast at all. Petropavlovsk had some internet, but I didn't have a chance to use it. We were only in Petropavlovsk a couple of days.

And I have to do a suitcase full of laundry. If TSA searches it, it will serve them right.