Sweet! New nuclear weapons for US!

[Peak_Oil]

Lawmakers who hailed Congress' decision in November to squash funding for two controversial nuclear weapons programs may have to go to the mat once again after indications from the Bush administration that it will seek to revive the program in its 2006 fiscal year budget.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has been a proponent of new nuclear weapons research since early in his term. After Congress ignored the administration's prior request of nearly $37 million to continue studying several weapons — including the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (search), or "bunker-buster" bomb, and a low-yield bomb, or "mini-nuke" — officials began quietly looking for ways to restore them.

Earlier last week, the Washington Post reported on a memo Rumsfeld sent to then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham about two months ago.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,146535,00.html

[K-W]

1. Who needs the christian apocalypse when we can make our own.

Well, I guess the anti-ballistic missile system will protect us...

gulp.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Clandestine project threatens nuclear non-proliferation

Sean Hobbs, Sydney

Looking at a map of the world, where would you expect to find a clandestine nuclear project? A project shrouded in secrecy that is attempting to make the process of enriching uranium cheaper, easier and more mobile? An attempt to develop technology that in 1981 the CIA reported could be used to “set up a garage-sized plant to produce weapon-grade uranium anywhere in the world”?

It’s happening in our backyard, in Sydney’s leafy southern suburbs. Silex Systems Ltd, in conjunction with the Australian government, is involved in a highly classified project to develop “separation of isotopes by laser excitation” (Silex) at Lucas Heights.

Silex, which is registered on the Australian Stock Exchange, is attempting to revolutionise the process of enriching uranium, using lasers in place of traditional centrifuge methods.

“If they actually get it to work then they are sitting on some knowledge that is potentially incredibly dangerous”, James Courtney, anti-nuclear campaigner for Greenpeace Australia, told Green Left Weekly on January 30.

Whereas no country has constructed traditional facilities for enriching uranium undetected, Courtney pointed out that lasers have the potential to do the job without emitting the “signatures” that lead to detection. These include waste gases, ultra-high frequencies from huge numbers of spinning centrifuges and the considerable size and power consumption of current plants.

It is feared that successfully developing the technology will pose significant new risks for the spread of nuclear weapons technology. The Stockholm International Peace and Research Institute stated as early as 1983: “There can be no doubt that continued progress in laser isotope separation will greatly complicate efforts to control nuclear weapon proliferation.” It is a sentiment that continues to echo distinctly across the landscape of contemporary global politics.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2005/614/614p9.htm

[Inland]

3. I feel safer already! Another 9/11 could NEVER happen now! nt

[bunkerbuster1]

4. I may need to change my screen name now.