united states restarts atomic bomb program

[piet11111]

U.S. Rolls Out Nuclear Plan
The administration's proposal would modernize the nation's complex of laboratories and factories as well as produce new bombs.
By Ralph Vartabedian, Times Staff Writer
April 6, 2006

The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation's decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.

The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation's massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.

Until now, the nation has depended on carefully maintaining aging bombs produced during the Cold War arms race, some several decades old. The administration, however, wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022, as the Pentagon retires older bombs that it says will no longer be reliable or safe.

Under the plan, all of the nation's plutonium would be consolidated into a single facility that could be more effectively and cheaply defended against possible terrorist attacks. The plan would remove the plutonium kept at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by 2014, though transfers of the material could start sooner. In recent years, concern has grown that Livermore, surrounded by residential neighborhoods in the Bay Area, could not repel a terrorist attack.

But the administration blueprint is facing sharp criticism, both from those who say it does not move fast enough to consolidate plutonium stores and from those who say restarting bomb production would encourage aspiring nuclear powers across the globe to develop weapons.

source (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-nuke6apr06,0,5989419.story?coll=la-home-headlines)

[Janus]

The US already has the greatest amount of nuclear weapons. They had siarmed quite a bit since Cold War days but it seems that they are trying to develop more. Of course, the US is most likely trying to develop newer and more innovative weapons such as neutron bombs and whatnot rather than the old atomic ones.

[red team]

The neutron bomb is not a more powerful weapon. It's just a different weapon. Instead of thermal and blast effects destroying useful infrastructure, a neutron bomb detonation emits a deadly stream of neutron radiation which kills biological organisms (including people) by shredding their DNA. The neutron blast is so powerful that it could penetrate the thick steel hulls of tanks killing the crew inside. It's a useful weapon in military situations where you want to kill people while leaving weapon systems and structures intact.

As for new atomic weapons, the U.S. is researching earth penetrating nuclear weapons in an attempt to negate the advantage of adversaries burying their command centers underground.

[Cheung Mo]

And why is what's right for Crazy Chimp wrong for Killer Kim and Asshole Ayatollah?

[piet11111]

the nuclear "bunker busters" dont have any added effect then the conventional bunker busters.
link (http://www.fas.org/main/content.jsp?formAction=297&contentId=401)
www.fas.org is a good source for military related topics.
and apparantly the RNEP (robust nuclear earth penetrator) has been abandoned (but the bush gov desire for tactical nuclear weapons is still there i imagine)


On October 26, Pete Domenici, Republican Senator from New Mexico and chairman of the committee that oversees the budget of the Department of Energy, announced that Congress is halting funding on the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (RNEP), or “nuclear bunker buster,” at the request of the Administration. The effort will be transferred from the Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons lab to the Department of Defense, which will seek conventional, non-nuclear solutions for this military mission.

This is a major victory for a saner nuclear policy. There was widespread confusion in the public and press about nuclear bunker busters (confusion that the Administration did little to correct). A remarkable number of reports conflated nuclear bunker busters with so-called “mini-nukes.” Putting aside for the moment that a “mini” nuclear weapon is defined as one with an explosive yield of five thousand tons of TNT, or one third the size of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, the bunker busters were genuinely gigantic bombs. The largest being considered had a yield of 1.2 million tons of TNT. The other misconception was that the bombs would burrow deep inside the Earth before detonating, substantially reducing effects on the surface. In fact, the bombs would penetrate at most only a few meters into rock, causing no reduction in blast, fire, or fallout damage on the surface. The largest RNEP would have blown out a crater almost a thousand feet across and thrown a cloud of radioactive fallout tens of thousands of feet into the air where it would be blown hundreds of miles downwind.

Even with this enormous power, nuclear weapons are not particularly effective at destroying deep underground tunnels. The National Academy of Sciences reported that even megaton bombs could not reliably destroy tunnels more than 300 meters deep. Nations around the world started putting critical facilities underground in the first place in response to precision-guided weapons that made virtually all fixed surface targets vulnerable. The response to a nuclear bunker buster is obvious: just dig deeper. Any nation that can dig under a hundred meters of hard rock can dig under a kilometer of hard rock.

U.S. nuclear weapons simply have no remaining role on the battlefield of the future. Abandoning the RNEP is a big step toward a more rational, safer, nuclear policy.

[Eleutherios]

Originally posted by Cheung [email protected] 7 2006, 04:57 AM
And why is what's right for Crazy Chimp wrong for Killer Kim and Asshole Ayatollah?
Didn't you know? Our government is different. It only wants to use weapons for peaceful purposes.

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.” —Crazy Chimp

“I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place.” —Crazy Chimp

[Guest1]

Yes bush, that's a great idea! Put all the nuclear missiles at one facility!

Wow... seriously...

What happens when Kim decides to nuke that one facility? Or an accident occurs and one nuke explodes?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Doesn't this violate the non-proliferation treaty?

[Eleutherios]

Since when has Bush cared about international treaties?

[piet11111]

Originally posted by [email protected] 7 2006, 03:00 PM
Doesn't this violate the non-proliferation treaty?
to my understanding the non proliferation treaty is just a formal promise not to give foreign nations the technology to make nuclear weapons and that the nations with nukes
will not expand the active arsenal.
and the signers without nukes agree never to start a program to manufacture nukes.

it does partially violate a treaty with russia to dismantle nuclear weapons and never to develop new types of nukes like the RNEP.
the treaty itself does allow to manufacture new nukes to replace older ones aslong as a pre-set number of nuclear warheads in not exeeded (1 missile can hold multiple warheads aka mirv)
and america is still over the allowed number of warheads and also breaks the same treaty that also forbids space based weaponry (the star wars missile shield violates this)

but since america considers itself above treaty's they happily ignore this.

[Janus]

Doesn't this violate the non-proliferation treaty?
The signers of this treaty promised to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Article I states that the parties plan to pursue disarmament but doesn't provide any template for it. But some claim that the US has already violated it through the NATO nuclear weapons sharing agreement. The US signed SALT II but even that didn't work out due to mistrust between it and the USSR. So there really are no disarmament treaties that the US is bothered with right now.

[Dreckt]

In my eyes, the US does exactly what the Party did in "1984" (the book/movie not the year). What people produce goes into waste - such as newer weapons and to the war against the dark armies of Middleasia, oh, Middle East...

Last time I hear, the money involved in waging war would equal 28 000 dollars for every single United States citizen, or something like that.

[BlackStar]

This is all quite absurd, in the struggle to gain global peace, why do we need Nukes damnit. What they really should be doing is trying to Continue Lenin's work and develop
half ape half human UBER sodiers and send them into North Korea while also sendign a couple thousand to WAshington DC, see if they can get their hands on some of Bush's plans for those damn nukes, :D :D :D

[Dreckt]

According to this link, which is in Swedish, the US is planning to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/stor...,806623,00.html (http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,806623,00.html)

Kinda suicidal...

[piet11111]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 02:30 PM
According to this link, which is in Swedish, the US is planning to use nuclear weapons to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities:

http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/stor...,806623,00.html (http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,806623,00.html)

Kinda suicidal...
yes im also convinced they are going to use those nuclear bunker busters.
the american imperialists are getting desperate because their chances of an american "empire" are getting smaller every passing day.

[norwegian commie]

I read in the paper that US is establishing 6 permanent bases i iraq of the sort guantanamo. The violations against human rights continues.

Iran seems to be the next victim and then who knows

[Cheung Mo]

I predict than in 5 years from now, my position that Canada should greatly strengthen its military and nationalise its oil in order to get out of Washington's clutches (You cannot have sovereignty if you depend on another nation to defend you!) will go from being too extreme from the NDP to being accepted by a sizable proportion of Canadians.

[Dreckt]

Here we have one in english:

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/04/09/hersh...reut/index.html (http://edition.cnn.com/2006/US/04/09/hersh.iran.reut/index.html)