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North Korean Nuclear Work Poses Greater Threat Than Iran, Amano Says

March 12, 2012 Comments off

GSN

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Yukiya Amano on Saturday said he believes the threat posed by Iran’s atomic activities is eclipsed by the dangers of North Korea’s known nuclear-weapon efforts, Kyodo News reported (see GSN, March 9).

The North’s development of nuclear weapons, which includes two nuclear tests to date, is a “threat to East Asia,” the head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog said.

“The problem (with North Korea) is serious and its impact on the world is larger” than Iran, Amano said. His organization and a number of governments around the world worry that Iran is seeking a nuclear-weapon capability; Tehran maintains that its atomic development program is strictly peaceful (see related GSN story, today).

The veteran Japanese diplomat said he hopes to dispatch IAEA monitors to North Korea to verify implementation of a recently agreed-to shutdown of Read more…

Categories: Iran, North Korea, nuclear technology Tags: , , , ,

Iran eyes talks after nuclear boasts

February 16, 2012 Comments off

dawn.com

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attends the unveiling ceremony of new nuclear projects in Tehran — Reuters

TEHRAN:Iran on Thursday expressed hopes of reviving moribund talks with world powers, a day after the Islamic republic unveiled what it described as major progress in its controversial nuclear programme.

“We have always welcomed the principle of negotiations and we believe that, with a positive approach and spirit of cooperation, there can be a step forward in these negotiations,” foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.

Iran on Wednesday sent a letter confirming its readiness to discuss resuming negotiations in response to an October 2011 offer in that sense made by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.

The last round of talks between Iran and the so-called P5+1 group,UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany, collapsed in Turkey in January 2011.

Iran’s tardy reply to Ashton appeared to be linked to the timing of its nuclear announcements also made on Wednesday, which collectively suggested the country had made strides in its atomic activities despite severe Western and UN sanctions.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wearing a white coat, oversaw what was described on state television as the insertion of Iran’s first domestically produced, 20-percent enriched fuel plate into Tehran’s research reactor.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday ordered Iran to “go build” four Full article here

Categories: Iran, nuclear technology Tags: , , , , ,

Panetta: Iran could have nuclear weapons, delivery vehicles in 2-3 years

January 30, 2012 3 comments

thehill.com

Iran could build and set off a nuclear weapon within two to three years if it decided to pursue one, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in a television interview aired Sunday.

“The consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon,” Panetta said during a profile on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

Tensions with Iran have mounted in recent months over Tehran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist. Iran has said its nuclear ambitions are peaceful.

 

Panetta, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency for two-and-a-half years before heading to the Pentagon, reiterated the Obama administration’s position that it would do everything it could to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. “If they proceed and we get intelligence that they’re proceeding with developing a nuclear weapon, then we will take whatever steps are necessary to stop it,” he said. Asked if that meant a possible Read more…

Categories: Iran, nuclear technology Tags: ,

China Economic Clout and Nuclear Expertise Invades Saudi Arabia

January 20, 2012 Comments off

oilprice.com

china saudia nuclear powerEver since the end of World War Two, the U.S. has come to regard Saudi Arabia as almost its exclusive oil producing enclave.Ever since the end of World War Two, the U.S. has come to regard Saudi Arabia as almost its exclusive oil producing enclave.

In February 1945, after the Yalta Conference with Soviet General Secretary Iosif Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on his way home U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud met aboard the New Orleans-class heavy cruiser U.S.S. Quincy in the Suez Canal’s Great Bitter Lake. During the meeting, instigated by Roosevelt, he and Ibn Saud concluded a secret agreement in which the U.S. would provide Saudi Arabia military security, including military assistance, training and a military base at Dhahran in Saudi Arabia, in exchange for secure access to supplies of oil.

Sixty-seven years later, my, how things have changed, as China is now muscling into the Kingdom of the Two Holy Places.

On 15 January Visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz agreed to Read more…

Categories: China, nuclear technology, Saudi Arabia Tags: , ,

Satellite imagery detects thermal ‘uplift’ signal of underground nuclear tests

January 11, 2012 1 comment

spaceref.com

Nuclear Explosion Location at the Lop Nor test site, China

CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new analysis of satellite data from the late 1990s documents for the first time the “uplift” of ground above a site of underground nuclear testing, providing researchers a potential new tool for analyzing the strength of detonation.

The study has just been published in Geophysical Research Letters.

Lead author Paul Vincent, a geophysicist at Oregon State University, cautions that the findings won’t lead to dramatic new ability to detect secret nuclear explosions because of the time lag between the test and the uplift signature, as well as geophysical requirements of the underlying terrain. However, he said, it does “provide another Read more…

Categories: nuclear technology Tags: , ,

IAEA Confirms Iran Has Started 20% Uranium Enrichment

January 10, 2012 Comments off

zerohedge.com

ranian technicians at the Uranium Conversion Facilities in Isfahan. (File photo)

The geopolitical foreplay is getting ridiculous. At this point it is quite obvious that virtually everyone involved in the US-Israel-Iran hate triangle is just itching for someone else to pull the trigger. And the latest report out of the IAEA will only precipitate this. Who – remember the IAEA? The same IAEA which did not find nukes in Iraq in 2003 only to be overriden by Dick “WMD” Cheney to “justify” an invasion. As RIA reports:  “The International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that Iran has started enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, which can easily be turned into fissile warhead material. “The IAEA can confirm that Iran has started the production of uranium enriched up to 20 percent using IR-1 centrifuges in the Fordo Fuel Enrichment Plant,” the agency said in a statement. However, IAEA Spokeswoman Gill Tudor said that all nuclear materials and operations in the Fordo facility are “under the Agency’s containment and surveillance.”” Naturally, that leaves the Read more…

Categories: Iran, nuclear technology Tags: , , , , ,

Madness Just Hit Record Highs: US Unable To Account For 36,000 Pounds Of Its Own Weapons Grade Uranium And Plutonium!

September 16, 2011 1 comment

infiniteunknown

Nuclear missile storage - Flickr/BWJones The U.S. Is Unable To Account For 36k Pounds Of Its Own Weapons Grade Uranium And Plutonium (Business Insider, Sep. 15, 2011):

Under special nuclear cooperation agreements, the United States sent 38,580 pounds of enriched uranium and plutonium to more than two-dozen foreign agencies and is unable to account for 36,000 pounds of the material.

The Government Accountability Office report says these 27 cooperation agreements, set up to facilitate cross border research, have no accountability and the U.S. has no way to enforce control.

Because there is no reporting process in place, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has been Read more…

Categories: nuclear technology, Uncategorized, United States Tags: , , , ,

China’s Underground Great Wall

August 22, 2011 1 comment

The diplomat

The impending sea trials of China’s first aircraft carrier set commentators abuzz in the West and Asia over the past couple of months. I weighed in myself. And for good reason. The cruise of the yet-to-be-officially-named flattop, which finally took place last week, heralded a decisive break with the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s Maoist past as a coastal defense force. This is a development worth exploring in detail. As it happened, the Naval War College also convened its first Asian Strategic Studies Conference in Newport last week, in conjunction with the American Enterprise Institute and the Journal of Strategic Studies. My assigned topic was to determine whether there exists a common Asian culture of sea power (no, say I) and how influential the Western canon of Read more…
Categories: China, nuclear technology Tags: , , ,

GE uranium enrichment plans raise fears: report

August 22, 2011 Comments off

france24

The Exelon Byron Nuclear Generating Stations in Byron, Illinois. US conglomerate General Electric is seeking permission to build a $1 billion plant for uranium enrichment by laser, a process which has raised proliferation fears, The New York Times said.
AFP – US conglomerate General Electric is seeking permission to build a $1 billion plant for uranium enrichment by laser, a process which has raised proliferation fears, The New York Times said Sunday.

After testing the enrichment process for two years, GE has asked the US government to approve its plans for a massive facility in North Carolina that could produce reactor fuel by the ton, the report said, citing GE officials.

“We are currently optimizing the design,” Christopher Monetta, president of Global Laser Enrichment, a subsidiary operated by GE and Japan’s Hitachi, said in an interview with the newspaper.

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to Read more…

Categories: General Electric, nuclear technology Tags: , , ,

China’s Nuclear Sub Needs

August 16, 2011 1 comment

the-diplomat

The past couple of weeks have seen a number of reports over a rumoured radiation leak from a 094 type Chinese nuclear submarine stationed near Dalian port. The incident is said to have occurred as electronic equipment was being installed on the sub.

Did it really happen? While some newspaper reports certainly seem to suggest so, officials have clamped down on discussion of the issue. This is hardly surprising since China has never been open about its nuclear assets (unless proudly displaying them during its national parades) and this would be especially the case over failures in these systems during regular research and development and deployment. This means that until there’s greater overall transparency in Chinese official reports, such alleged incidents remain simply rumors.

However, the news highlights the broader issue of nuclear-powered submarines armed with Read more…

Categories: China, nuclear technology Tags: , , , ,