Nuclear News From a Journalist’s Perspective
US monitors kicked out of North Korea:
U.S. monitors of North Korea’s nuclear program left the communist nation after the regime ordered them out and vowed to restart its reactor in anger over U.N. criticism of its recent rocket launch.
Jeffrey Lewis and Meri Lugo on the what removing nuclear weapons from the arsenal really means:
Speaking in Prague on April 5, U.S. President Barack Obama called the thousands of nuclear weapons sitting in world arsenals “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War.” He proposed deep cuts in U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles. But when policymakers talk about nuclear reductions, what do they mean in practice? After all, you can’t just leave the warheads out on the curb on Tuesday morning for the garbage collector to pick up.
Steven Chu made his first visits to the nuclear weapons labs Thursday and Friday. Lots of talk, no specifics. Summary here.
I’ve been neglecting this blog for ages, but there’s a lot going on in the nuclear weapons world of late, so I’m going to give it another go. No promises.
Several stories out today on the GAO’s report on plutonium pit production costs
Interesting new study from the Congressional Budget Office. The bottom line, according to Daniel Hall, is that we’re unlikely to see the U.S. government levy a carbon cost sufficient to make nuclear power economically viable on its own.
Exchange-Monitor Publications has an interesting interview up with Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Michael Anastasio.
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman got a pretty good going over in a recent congressional hearing on Yucca Mountain. From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:
