Memo to Fox News: Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Energy Are Not The Same

[wtmusic]

"Last Wednesday, word leaked out through media channels that President Obama would include a call for further nuclear arms reduction in a speech has was scheduled to deliver in Berlin, Germany at the famous Brandenberg Gate. When Fox News got hold of the story, they figured the best image to twin with a picture of the President would be a shot of a cooling tower at an unnamed nuclear power plant.

Now you see the cooling tower ...

Needless to say, while I understand why editors and reporters often conflate nuclear weapons and commercial nuclear energy, it doesn't make it any less annoying when it happens. As we've pointed out in the past, generating nuclear electricity actually contributes to a more peaceful world. The best example of why that's true has to be the Megatons to Megawatts program, an effort to downblend former Soviet nuclear warheads into reactor fuel. Right now, fully half of the nation's electricity is generated from fuel that was once part of the Soviet Union's Cold War nuclear arsenal.

It's a powerful story, and one that's actually part of Pandora's Promise. Here's Stewart Brand:"

?feature=player_embedded

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2013/06/memo-to-fox-news-nuclear-weapons-and.html

[RobertEarl]

1. Fully half from russian nukes?

I doubt that, got a link?

You may not see this, wt, because you may have me on ignore?

If not, a reply to the last 3 replies made to you from me on this forum would be cool. If so, would someone else ask? Thanks.

[PamW]

9. Don't doubt it; believe it - it's TRUE

RobertEarl,

The "Megatons to Megawatts" program is run by the United States Enrichment Corporation (USEC).
Here is a link to one of their web pages on the program:

http://www.usec.com/russian-contracts/megatons-megawatts

which states

In years past, up to 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States has been generated by fuel fabricated using LEU from the Megatons to Megawatts program

In years past, 10% of the electricity produced in the USA came from nuclear power fueled by Russian nukes.

Since the total capacity of the entire US nuclear power reactor fleet is about 20% of the electricity of the USA.

Therefore, that 10% of the 20% represents HALF the fuel used by US power reactors.

Why would you doubt it? Is that just vacuous skepticism, or was there a "thought" process involved?

PamW

[RobertEarl]

10. Hi Pam

Here is the verbatim quote from wt:

"Right now, fully half of the nation's electricity is generated from fuel that was once part of the Soviet Union's Cold War nuclear arsenal. "

So you and him need to square it away. Seems both of you are wrong?

Hey, question for you: What's happening at Hanford?

Here's a DU link to the problem, maybe you have some inside info you'd like to share?
Worst Hanford tank may be leaking into soil
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023065024

Be sure to see suffragette's links.

[PamW]

11. Not half of total

RobertEarl,

If the claim is that half of the total electricity production in the USA is fueled by Russian nukes; that can't be.

It's obvious that can't be true; because the USA's fleet of nuclear power plants provides only 20% of the USA's total electricity. In fact, the only source that provides about half the total is the fleet of coal plants.

Since the total output of nuclear power plants in the USA is 20% of the total, then it's clear that 50% of the total can't come from Russian bomb fuel.

What is true is that 50% of the fuel in nuclear plants came from Russian nukes, so 50% of the nuclear-generated electricity was from Russian nukes. Since nuclear-generated electricity is 20% of the total, then 50% of 20% is 10%, and that is the figure given by USEC - the United States Enrichment Corp.

As far as Hanford; the first thing to be clear on is that Hanford has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with commercial nuclear power. Hanford is all about nuclear weapons.

Hanford was the place where the materials for the atomic bombs that ended World War II were made. The waste at Hanford is from making nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons program put the waste material in big underground tanks as temporary storage until a suitable permanent solution was determined.

Through the years, the Manhattan Project, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), and their current successor agency, the Department of Energy (DOE) have all been asking Congress to approve a final solution for the Hanford waste for the last SEVEN DECADES.

Thanks especially to the efforts of anti-nukes that never like spending any money on the nuclear weapons program, anti-nukes have been successful in ensuring that the nuclear weapons program has never had enough money to meets its needs for decades. What do you think the spending priorities are in the nuclear weapons program? Do you think Hanford clean-up is high up on the agenda of the managers of the nuclear weapons program? NO!

So when the money is short; what program does the nuclear weapons program stick with the deficit? Naturally, it's their low-priority program; the clean-up program. The Hanford waste was OK last year and the year before that; so why spend anything on it this year. Well, this is why.

It's as if you changed the oil in your car, and you wanted to do the environmentally-friendly thing and not pour it down the drain; you wanted to take it to a recycling center. However, the plans for your local recycling center have been held up. So you put the oil in a gas-can and put it in the backyard. You leave it there until "someday" when they get the recycling center operating, and you feel like taking the oil in. Well, years go by, and no recycling center, and you don't do anything else. Sooner or later, that old gas-can left out in the weather is going to rust and leak, and kill your flower bed.

Now whose fault is it that your flowers get killed and the ground in the beds is contaminated?

PamW

[RobertEarl]

16. So you proved wt was wrong

Good for you.

Hanford: Is there NO NPP fuel stored at Hanford?

Do you work for one of the contractors at Hanford?

You know billions of dollars have already been spent at Hanford, and the state of Washington is very upset that the problem looms larger than ever?

It's odd, don't you think, that we are spending big money on Russian ex-bomb material, yet you say ""... the nuclear weapons program has never had enough money to meets its needs...""

[PamW]

18. Not odd at all - different parts of the government

RobertEarl states:
It's odd, don't you think, that we are spending big money on Russian ex-bomb material, yet you say ""... the nuclear weapons program has never had enough money to meets its needs...""

It isn't odd AT ALL.

You have to realize that we are talking about TWO DIFFERENT parts of the Government.

The "big money" that we are spending on Russian ex-bomb material is allocated to USEC - the United States Enrichment Corporation.

Hanford doesn't belong to USEC; it belongs to the Dept. of Energy.

It's analogous to a little while back when the FAA was cutting back on air traffic controllers due to the sequester and the air traveling public was severely impacted. Could one say, "It's odd because we are spending billions of dollars in the Pentagon budget on aircraft, and we don't have money to pay air traffic controllers".

The Pentagon doesn't pay the air traffic controllers; the FAA does. The Pentagon may be flush with money; but the FAA isn't. So why would it be "odd" that the FAA had to furlough air traffic controllers?

Likewise, Congress spent the money on USEC so that we could take the Russian highly-enriched uranium out of Russian weapons ( good for us ), and have that uranium "down-blended" to low-enriched uranium which is suitable as reactor fuel, and then it was "burned" / destroyed in US power reactors. There's no more energy in that material to make it go "boom". All the energy in the material was extracted by the reactor, and the power plant turned it into electricity. So no energy in the fuel - it's not useful to make bombs.

Congress hasn't seen fit to spend the money necessary to clean-up Hanford. Yes, there has been money spent at Hanford; mostly on doing tests to see what the true composition of the Hanford waste is. However, Congress has NOT appropriated the money to extract that waste from the tanks, process it, and put it away in permanent storage.

Part of the problem was that the plan called for that waste to be buried in a geological repository at Yucca Mountain. The Yucca Mountain project was stopped dead in its tracks. That's where Congress planned for the Hanford waste to go. Since Yucca Mountain was stopped; there was no place to put the waste; so Congress didn't fund removing the waste from the vulnerable tanks; because they didn't have anywhere else to put it.

There's ZERO nuclear power plant spent fuel waste at Hanford. ALL nuclear power plant waste is sited at the power plants.

NO - I do NOT work for one of the contractors at Hanford.

An entity of the University of California signs my paycheck.

PamW

[RobertEarl]

19. How much $$ do they need?

How is it you know there is no NPP fuel at Hanford?

Did you know that the budget this year at Hanford is $2 billion or more? How much have the contractors been paid so far?

Why can't they pump the leaking tanks at Hanford and place the residue in new tanks?

[PamW]

20. Answers to questions

RobertEarl,

Spent nuclear power plant fuel is solid and looks just like new fuel. Spent reactor fuel is an "assembly" that looks like a square array of rods. The array for a PWR ( pressurized water reactor ) is 17 x 17. The array for a BWR ( boiling water reactor from GE ) is 9 x 9. The actual fuel is a ceramic that is inside the tubes. What happens when the fuel is "burned" in a reactor all happens at the sub-microscopic level. The assembly looks the same when it comes out as when it went in. So spent fuel consists of all these "assemblies" of fuel rods. Congress outlawed reprocessing / recycling of spent nuclear fuel back in 1978. Assemblies have to cool for years before they can be reprocessed. Because the 1978 ban came before any fuel was ready to reprocess; no commercial reactor fuel has been reprocessed. It all sits in the form of these assemblies in the pools at the plants, or they have been moved to "dry casks" that sit at the plants.

What is stored at Hanford is liquid waste from an old form of reprocessing used in the Manhattan Project. The fuel elements for the "production reactors" at Hanford, those are the reactors that made the plutonium for the Nagasaki bomb and subsequent bombs; was reprocessed using the old form of reprocessing technology. The first step in that process was dissolving the the production reactor fuel elements in nitric acid.

You can read about this in Richard Rhodes Pulitzer-Prize winning book, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb". The reprocessing plants at Hanford are long buildings called "Queen Marys" because they are about that long. Inside is a big "canyon" ( the sister facilities at Savannah River are called canyons; like F Canyon and H Canyon ). The chemical processing that is reprocessing took place in this concrete canyon.

On page 604, of "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", author Rhodes quotes someone who was there when the reprocessing operation first started on Dec 26, 1944. The first step was dissolving the spent fuel elements in nitric acid, and the witness tells how the concrete canyon was filled with brown smoke. The exhaust fans exhausted that smoke up the stack of the canyon, and the smoke floated away on the breeze. Of course, that smoke was radioactive, which is why Hanford was built in a remote location.

The chemical processes extracted the plutonium from the dissolved fuel / nitric acid mixture. The extracted plutonium was sent to be made into bomb components. The liquid residue was what was stored in those tanks.

After years of sitting in the tanks, the "sludge" is no longer liquid, but has a consistencies ranging between thick peanut butter up to hardened cement with some liquid interspersed.

So there's no nuclear power plant fuel at Hanford because none was reprocessed, and none was reprocessed using the old "wet" method used back in the 1940s.

I don't recall what the cost to deal permanently with the Hanford waste; but I think it is was in excess of $100 billion. So $2 billion a year doesn't cover it. We've only been spending money on cleanup since 1990 when the weapons production mission was stopped. ( See second link below ) Dealing with the tanks is only part of the problem. There was also the "cocooning" of the reactors.

Because the consistency of the sludge is so thick, it can no longer be pumped out; it's going to have to be physically scooped out.

http://www.hanfordchallenge.org/hanfords-history/

http://www.hanfordchallenge.org/the-big-issues/cleanup-progress/

http://www.hanfordchallenge.org/the-big-issues/tank-waste/

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/TPlant

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/100Area

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/BReactor

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/NReactor

The last link tells about the "N Reactor" which was the most powerful production reactor at Hanford that operated from 1963 to 1987. Shortly after its construction, Hanford N Reactor was dedicated by then President John F. Kennedy and the last link shows a picture of Kennedy speaking at the occasion.

PamW

[suffragette]

21. What about Columbia Generating Station? That's the operational nuclear plant on the Hanford site.

And the spent fuel from it is stored on site.

So your statement about Hanford having nothing to do with commercial nuclear power, despite the all caps and bold, is not correct.

http://www.emd.wa.gov/telcom/telcom_columbia_generating_station.shtml

Energy Northwest (Formerly Washington Public Power Supply System or WPPSS) is the owner and operator of the only commercial nuclear power plant in Washington State. This plant, called Columbia Generating Station (formerly WNP-2), is situated on land leased from the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) on the Hanford Site about 12 miles northwest of Richland, Washington.


http://www.energy-northwest.com/generation/cgs/waste.php

Eventually, spent fuel will be shipped to a national disposal facility being developed by the U.S. Department of Energy at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In the meantime, Columbia Generating Station will continue to safely store its spent fuel here on site.
Most spent fuel is stored in a specially designed pool of water inside the reactor building. The water cools the fuel and acts as a shield against radiation. Columbia Generating Station has also installed an additional dry cask storage facility on site.

[PamW]

22. What is "Hanford"

suffragette,

When I say "Hanford"; I mean the US Dept. of Energy weapons production facility.

The Columbia Generating Station is NOT part of the Dept. of Energy facility. It is a commercial operation on land LEASED from the Dept. of Energy.

As a commercial facility, it's NOT part of the weapons complex and its fuel is not reprocessed into a liquid form, and hence can't be stored in the Hanford tanks.

Like all commercial nuclear power plants, Columbia is in a state of "limbo" on what to do with spent fuel since the Obama administration CANCELLED the Yucca Mountain Project.

PamW

[suffragette]

23. The State of Washington disagrees with you

The links I posted above are from official state sites and define Columbia Generating Station, which is an operating nuclear plant as being located on the Hanford site.

Here's another one from the DOE Hanford website:

http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/618BurialGrounds

Two of Hanford’s most challenging remediation projects will be the 618-10 and 618-11 burial grounds. The burial grounds contain wastes that were generated by activities in the 300 Area of the Hanford Site which is just north of the city of Richland. The 300 Area was used for developing and manufacturing reactor fuel and conducting laboratory research during Hanford’s plutonium production mission. Some of the most hazardous wastes on the Hanford Site were disposed of in the 618-10 and 618-11 burial grounds.

As is the case with other burial grounds at Hanford, long before one shovelful of dirt can be removed from the ground, workers must spend time doing research into what was put into the burial ground in the first place. The research is intended to give crews an idea of what kinds of waste they will encounter during cleanup. With wastes as potentially hazardous as the materials in 618-10 and 618-11, crews simply must be prepared to find the unexpected and deal with it safely and appropriately.


Work has already started in the 618-10 Burial Ground which is found about four miles northwest of the 300 Area and only a few hundred yards from Hanford’s main highway. Intrusive and non-intrusive characterization has been completed and remediation of the burial ground began in the spring of 2011.

The 618-11 Burial Ground is located about seven miles from the 300 Area and adjacent to the Columbia Generating Station, the commercial nuclear power plant located on the Hanford Site. Characterization of that burial ground began in the spring of 2011.

I bolded the sentence specifying CGS is on the Hanford site for you.


Parse it all you want, separate who is operating what, but CGS is located on the site and is producing new waste. And all of the waste, the old leaking waste from the former weapons program and the new nuclear waste from the operating nuclear plant is being stored on the Hanford site.

[PamW]

25. Reading Comprehension Problem???

suffragette,

Do you have a reading comprehension problem??

I stated in a previous post:

When I say "Hanford"; I mean the US Dept. of Energy weapons production facility.

When I say that, I'm telling you what I mean when I say "Hanford".

The word "Hanford" is over loaded, there are multiple meanings of the word "Hanford".

One could mean the production facility, or one could mean the site.... The only way to be unambiguous is to write out the whole name of the facility every time; but that gets cumbersome. So I use the word "Hanford" to mean the production facility. Anywhere you see me say "Hanford", please mentally substitute the full name "US Dept. of Energy Hanford nuclear weapons production facility".

I told you in the previous post what MY shorthand definition was for "Hanford".

Now you say that the State of Washington disagrees with me.

I'm giving you MY shorthand definition. I'm telling you what I mean by the word "Hanford" out of the multiple meanings.

Put your brain in gear and THINK - how does the State of Washington have anything to do with MY personal naming convention??

People here post some of the most ill-considered, and ill-thought out posts; but yours takes the cake.

The State of Washington disagrees indeed!

I'm telling you which one of multiple definitions of the word that I use for my convention, and the State of Washington may have another.

However, I'm telling you what I mean so that you can understand future posts.

Belay that; you've proved you probably will NEVER understand if you can't understand the previous post.

PamW

[kristopher]

2. Compared to Pandora's Promise, the Breakthrough Institute and the nuclear industry writ large...

...Fox News is a bastion of intellectual integrity.



Supposed "Environmentalists" at Breakthrough Institute taken to woodshed
http://www.democraticunderground.com/112747297


The Breakthrough Institute – Why The Hot Air?
Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/17/the-breakthrough-institute-why-the-hot-air/

[cprise]

3. This is what the corporate media uniformly do

...when fulminating about nuclear-anything in third-world countries. Or at least the countries that have not been bought out lock, stock and politician by multinationals. They elide nuclear power with weapons using language markedly different from their reporting about the west.

Iran is a crisis that needs to be solved before the pro-nuclear (energy) crew garner any more credibility, here and elsewhere. Or is the nuclear version of climate conservation supposed to carry an exception for particular pariah states? (One would think...)

[wtmusic]

4. We've shot ourselves in the foot on Iran.

"In talks earlier this year in Istanbul and Baghdad, the West still sought to have Iran halt its enrichment and would not recognize Iran’s right to that activity. In return, it expected the Iranians to accept meager concessions, such as the removal of sanctions on oil shipping insurance and on spare parts for civilian planes. There was no talk of substantive sanctions being relaxed or upcoming EU sanctions on oil and the Iranian central bank being delayed. The hardened positions and lack of flexibility on the part of the West have made the Iranians dig in their heels. With each blockage and punitive Western action, Iran further advances its nuclear program.

At the June 18-19 talks in Moscow, the P5+1 once again was not in a position to offer anything on sanctions or Iran’s rights to enrichment while Iran signaled its readiness to accept many of the group’s major demands, such as stopping enrichment at the 20 percent level; building confidence, possibly by setting limits on production of 20 percent-enriched uranium; responding positively to the IAEA to provide the maximum level of cooperation and transparency; and extensively addressing the possible-military-dimension issues, which require Iran to implement the additional protocol and provide the IAEA with access beyond the level required by the protocol.

A comparison of the June 19 statement in Moscow by Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief and lead negotiator for the P5+1, with her April 14 Istanbul statement reveals a major difference. The P5+1 is now giving more emphasis to Iran’s compliance with its international obligations, namely, UN Security Council resolutions, rather than focusing on the country’s obligations under the NPT. This is a clear setback from the Istanbul position. It indicates a focus on suspension of Iran’s enrichment activities, a demand that has been a deal breaker since 2003."

http://www.armscontrol.org/2012_07-08/The_Iranian_Nuclear_Dispute_Origins_and_Current_Options

Whether the U.S. adopts nuclear power or not will not have any effect on the situation in Iran. We need to recognize Iran's sovereign right to nuclear power while demanding a stringent IAEA inspection regime.

[cprise]

5. There is no inspection regime that is good enough

...when dealing with states that are relentlessly portrayed as highly suspicious and aggressive. ANY corner of a pariah country can be said to hide a nuclear threat; We learned this with Iraq. An antagonist like the US can just keep creating longer and longer lists of places that need to be inspected.

Would you turn your entire country over to IAEA inspectors?

[wtmusic]

6. I guess that's my point

in that we're involved in a problem of our own making, and it's not a nuclear one but a diplomatic one.

Iran's new leader is considered a moderate but is equally determined to get nuclear power. There is no stopping them. We can either come to the bargaining table with reasonable demands, or risk losing it all.

Iran is the vanguard of what will be many formerly third-world countries getting access to nuclear power, not all of them with stable regimes. We need to develop a roadmap for guarding against weapons proliferation.

[cprise]

7. This is a nuclear problem

Its about a uniquely concentrated form of power (literal and otherwise) and the corruption that entrenches within it, wanting it to proliferate on 'their' side.

FWIW, I think the west could conceivably stop Iran. If our economy spirals into the drain again, the corporate media will be baying for Iranian blood.

[wtmusic]

14. You do know that it's impossible to build a weapon with reactor grade fuel, don't you?

"Uniquely concentrated" doesn't mean anything.

[kristopher]

8. "We need...a roadmap for guarding against weapons proliferation"

There isn't one. If you have a way to do it, let's hear it, because no one in the past 50 years has been able to devise a way to sell nuclear power with the "energy self sufficiency" argument while simultaneously denying countries the right to refine their own fuel if they wish.

Inspections don't work for two reasons:
1) they are voluntary. Once a country has the facilities in place for refining they can halt inspections if they wish.
2) the amount of "slop" in the fuel cycle accounting system allows for the gradual accumulation of enough material for making weapons.

The idea of using breeder reactors (IFR, thorium or otherwise) just makes the problem worse.

Since we're on the topic.

Fukushima, Nuclear Power Plants And The Middle East: What Could Go Wrong?

TEL AVIV, Israel -- As Western democracies re-evaluate their dependence on nuclear energy in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima plant meltdown in 2011, the Middle East is forging ahead into the atomic age. According to projections from Nuclear Energy Insider, which supplies forecasts and analysis on the nuclear energy markets in the Middle East and North Africa, about $200 billion will be spent over the next 15 years in the two regions, where a total of 37 new reactors will be built...

http://www.ibtimes.com/fukushima-nuclear-power-plants-middle-east-what-could-go-wrong-1316621

With solar prices plummeting as they are I doubt if 37 reactors are going to be built, but the non-economic dynamics laid out in the article are pretty accurate.

[PamW]

12. 100% WRONG as ALWAYS

kristopher states
The idea of using breeder reactors (IFR, thorium or otherwise) just makes the problem worse.

LIE LIE LIE LIE that all you can do on this issue.

The head of the IFR project at Argonne National Lab, nuclear physicist, Dr. Charles Till gave the following interview about 15 years ago to PBS Frontline:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/interviews/till.html

in which he states:
Q: So it would be very difficult to handle for weapons, would it?

A: It's impossible to handle for weapons, as it stands.

It's highly radioactive. It's highly heat producing. It has all of the characteristics that make it extremely, well, make it impossible for someone to make a weapon.

About 20 years ago, Congress asked one of the USA's nuclear weapons laboratories about whether it was or was not possible to make a nuclear weapon with material from an IFR. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory did that study which is referred to in the following response to the New York Times by Senators Simon(D) and Kempthorne(R):

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/07/05/opinion/l-new-reactor-solves-plutonium-problem-586307.html

You are mistaken in suggesting that the reactor produces bomb-grade plutonium: it never separates plutonium; the fuel goes into the reactor in a metal alloy form that contains highly radioactive actinides. A recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory study indicates that fuel from this reactor is more proliferation-resistant than spent commercial fuel, which also contains plutonium.

By what "pedigree" can you make these continuous WRONG claims about making nuclear weapons from reactor waste? Are you a nuclear physicist? Are you a nuclear weapons physicist? Are any of the sources you quote nuclear weapons physicists?

Although some very general knowledge about nuclear weapons has been released; the design details of what really can and can NOT be done in the field of nuclear weapons is not generally available information. Those details are only located at, and can really be discussed at, the two US nuclear weapons design laboratories; Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Lawrence Livermore in California.

However, the US Congress can ask those labs for their assessments, and the Labs have to answer truthfully to Congress - after all, it is Congress that employs those labs; the work FOR Congress.

Congress posed the question about the IFR to Lawrence Livermore, and the nuclear weapons designers at Lawrence Livermore said that the IFR can NOT be used to make nuclear weapons as Dr. Till states.

Do you have any experts that know more about nuclear weapons than the scientists at Lawrence Livermore? Certainly those pseudo-scientists at Union of Concerned Scientists don't know more about nuclear weapons than the people who designed the US stockpile. UCS "pseudo-scientists" don't even have the security clearance ( Q clearance ) needed to access the information.

So the nuclear weapons experts that I quote say you can't. You have what??

It's as if the question at hand were a medical question, and I had the world expert medical doctors from the Mayo Clinic in my corner, and you keep reciting what some old "witch doctor" from the Australian outback.

How come you never listen to scientists, except when you politically agree with them? If you don't like what the scientist say; you ignore them and go on believing and touting the opposite.

Isn't that what "climate deniers" are doing. Don't we ridicule "climate deniers" and call them stupid idiots because they don't listen to the scientists? We expect them to accept what scientists tell them when it isn't what they want to hear. So shouldn't those on this side of the "climate deniers" also follow what we want the "climate deniers" to do? Or is it just rank hypocrisy.

The "climate deniers" are stupid for not listening to the scientists. However, if the scientists tell us something that we don't want to hear; then it's OK for us to ignore the scientists.

Is that HYPOCRISY what you think should rule the day?

So why don't we discuss this and let SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS educate us as to what scientific truth is.

PamW

[kristopher]

15. What a fucking flake.

[PamW]

17. Nothing of substance, I note

As always, I get these vacuous blanket denouncements in reply with no reasoning; and not addressing any of the points I brought up.

Of course; that's good; because their is no rebuttal to the scientific truth.

PamW

[oldhippie]

24. Ha!

Oh, the irony ...

PamW 1
kris -0

[PamW]

13. They argeed.

cprise states:
Would you turn your entire country over to IAEA inspectors?

The only nations that have to allow IAEA inspectors are the non-weapon state signatories of the NPT - the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

In other words, by signing the NPT Treaty; those nations AGREED to let in IAEA inspectors.

Nobody "made" them do it. They agreed to it. In return, the non-weapon states get access to nuclear information and data and technical support. It's all information and assistance that would be prohibitively costly for them otherwise. However, the weapons-states promised to provide access in return for access by the IAEA inspectors who are the "police" to make sure that technology is not misused for weapons.

Again, the signatory nation agreed.

It's a little like having someone paroled from prison, i.e. released early. Part of getting the early release is for the convict to submit to drug testing at any time the parole officer wishes. Then you have the former convict complain about getting drug tested.

It was a condition of the release. If you don't want to be drug tested; then stay in prison and serve your entire sentence. We are giving you a break, but that break has a condition associated with it that you can voluntarily accept. Of course, if you don't accept the condition; you don't get the break.

The convict has no case to complain about a condition of his release that he freely accepted.

Likewise, the NPT signatory country agreed to IAEA inspections in return for information and access. I don't see where there's any room to complain about conditions that you voluntarily accepted.

PamW