nuclear (Page 7)

If we can bury farm waste, why not nuclear waste? (The potential escape of nuclear material is one of the themes of Whitley’s dynamic new novel Critical Mass). We have an extensive program to do just that, but it doesn’t always work.

The first weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found in the bottom of a landfill at the world’s oldest nuclear processing site in Hanford, WA. It was discovered inside an old glass jar inside an old safe at the bottom of the trash, abandoned and forgotten about since 1943. The Hanford factory created the plutonium that was used to make the bomb dropped on Nagasaki in Japan.
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We’re all nervous about the fact that Iran and North Korea may have nuclear warheads?so much so, that some countries are considering preliminary strikes against Iran. We know from the Valerie Plame affair that governments often have reasons to lie about the types of weapons they?or other governments?have actually built or stockpiled. What we need is a good way to track the illicit trade in nuclear material, so we can decide exactly what weapons each country actually has.
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Ancient texts from India describe a scenario which sounds to us very much like a nuclear war. If this is true, some of the only evidence may have been made into jewelry.

In 1966, Veincenzo de Michele saw a strange yellow-green stone in the center of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces, which were on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at the time. It turned out to be made of glass?but a VERY SPECIAL kind of glass, that was older than the very earliest Egyptian civilization, around 5,000 years ago. Click here to see an image of the necklace.
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A newly declassified report says that trident nuclear warheads, which are routinely moved from place to place so they do not make convenient targets, could become involved in a highway accident or plane crash, which could release a lethal dose of radiation.

In New Scientist magazine, Rob Edwards quotes a senior UK government official as saying, “The consequences of such an incident are likely to be considerable loss of life.” The US and the UK both use tridents and both countries move them regularly in order to insure a level of uncertainty about their locations. This was first done to ward off missile attacks from the Soviet Union and is now done to prevent terrorist attacks.
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