''174 to 6, UN tells Israel to let in nuclear inspectors''

From 'There are no Sunglasses'

''The UN general assembly has overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling on Israel to open its nuclear programme for inspection.

The resolution, approved by a vote of 174 to six with six abstentions, calls on Israel to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) “without further delay” and open its nuclear facilities to inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Those voting against were Israel, the US, Canada, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.''

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''Belarus to Go Nuclear as It Allies With China and Russia''

From The New American

''Europe’s last dictatorship may soon go nuclear as it announces major construction of its first nuclear power plant while at the same time it is apparently aiding Communist China with its mobile launchers for intercontinental ballistic missiles.''

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''Pakistan swelling nuclear arsenal to counter India''

From Pakistan Today

''Primarily aimed at India, Pakistan is making qualitative and quantitative improvements to its nuclear arsenal and “could increase the number of circumstances under which it would be willing to use nuclear weapons”, a Congressional report has said. “Pakistan appears to be increasing its fissile production capability and improving its delivery vehicles in order to hedge against possible increases in India’s nuclear arsenal.''

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''Okinawa's first nuclear missile men break silence''

From Japan Times
By Jon Mitchell

''Six months prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, a parallel drama had played out on the other side of the world as the U.S. brought near-identical missiles to the ones the Russians stationed on Cuba to another small island — Okinawa.

While the full facts of that deployment have still not officially been disclosed, now for the first time three of the U.S. Air Force's nuclear pioneers have broken the silence about Okinawa's secret missiles, life within the bunkers and a military miscalculation of apocalyptic proportions — the targeting of unaligned China.''

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'Okinawa, nuclear weapons and 'Japan's special psychological problem'

From Japan Times
By Jon Mitchell

''Situated among boiling sulfur pits and magma-blackened rocks, the hot-spring resort of Hakone, 100 km west of Tokyo, provided a suitably apocalyptic backdrop for secret nuclear talks held by the United States and Japan in November 1961. The meetings, attended by U.S. President John F. Kennedy's secretary of state, Dean Rusk, and Japan's foreign minister, Zentaro Kosaka, had repercussions for the U.S. Air Force missileers then recently dispatched to Okinawa — and they offer a disturbing glimpse into Tokyo's attitude to U.S. atomic weaponry just 16 years after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.''

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''Mideast nuclear conference in jeopardy''

From AP

''Hopes dimmed Monday for staging major nuclear talks later this year between Israel and its Muslim rivals, as Iran and Arab countries at a 189-nation conference accused Israel of being the greatest threat to peace in the region and Egypt warned that Arab states might rethink their opposition to atomic arms.

Because Israel has not signed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, it was not present at Tuesday's gathering of treaty members. But the United States defended its ally, warning that singling out Israel for criticism diminished the prospect of a planned meeting between it and its Muslim neighbors to explore the prospect of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction.''

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''Putin worries that the technological revolution sweeping the world could devalue their most important legacy from the Soviet era — its nuclear arsenal''

From Moscow Times

''Leaders are upset over the growing scientific and technical gap between Russia and the West. It's not the scarcity of high-technology products coming out of Russia that alarms them. What worries President-elect Vladimir Putin and his inner circle is that the technological revolution sweeping the world could devalue their most important legacy from the Soviet era — its nuclear arsenal.

But unlike the Soviet Politburo, today's leaders cannot keep the subservient population in a state of poverty for the sake of maintaining nuclear parity with the United States or outdo it with "miracle weapons." To this day, many military and political leaders hope that a Russian Einstein would somehow emerge out of nowhere who could enable the country to leapfrog over its rivals in a single bound.''
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''TalkingStickTV - Bruce Gagnon - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space''

From TalkingstickTV

very interesting.........

''Will Turkey Keep U.S. Nukes, Get Its Own, Or Go Nuke-Free?''

From EurasiaNet

''The most likely eventual outcome, however, would seem to be that some of the European hosts of U.S. nukes (Germany, Belgium, and The Netherlands) would decide to give them up, while Italy and Turkey would keep them. Turkey has been interested in maintaining that concrete measure of NATO's dedication to its defense, but some other analysts are wondering if other developments are causing Turkey to rethink its nuclear strategy.''

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''USA Used Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Afghanistan and Iraq''

From Oriental Review

"In his book Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War Michel Chossudovsky tells us about the interconnection between the Pentagon and US corporations. The book says the US Congress okayed the use of tactical nuclear weapons in non-conventional wars in 2003. According to congressmen it was quite “safe for civilians” (1).

Indeed military technology moved far ahead after two nuclear bombs were used against Japan, especially in the field of developing nuclear munitions of low and super low yields. Back in 1950s the Davy Crocket “nuclear gun”, the smallest weapon system with the range of to 4.5 km, joined the armed forces’ inventory. It was destined to be deployed in great numbers in West Europe to fight back a sudden attack by the Soviet Union."

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''United States Circumvented Laws To Help Japan Accumulate Tons of Plutonium''

From DC Bureau

"The United States deliberately allowed Japan access to the United States’ most secret nuclear weapons facilities while it transferred tens of billions of dollars worth of American tax paid research that has allowed Japan to amass 70 tons of weapons grade plutonium since the 1980s, a National Security News Service investigation reveals. These activities repeatedly violated U.S. laws regarding controls of sensitive nuclear materials that could be diverted to weapons programs in Japan. The NSNS investigation found that the United States has known about a secret nuclear weapons program in Japan since the 1960s, according to CIA reports."

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''US draws up plans for nuclear drones''

i thought we were broke??..............From The Guardian


"American scientists have drawn up plans for a new generation of nuclear-powered drones capable of flying over remote regions of the world for months on end without refuelling.


"It's pretty terrifying prospect," said Chris Coles of Drone Wars UK, which campaigns against the increasing use of drones for both military and civilian purposes. "Drones are much less safe than other aircraft and tend to crash a lot. There is a major push by this industry to increase the use of drones and both the public and government are struggling to keep up with the implications."


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''North Korea Likely Enriching Uranium Outside of Yongbyon Facility''

From Asia Security Watch

"In the last week, North Korea has managed to drive an entire ballistic missile through loopholes in the recent U.S. and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) agreement of delivering food aide in exchange for North Korean concessions in nuclear and missile research."

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''Israel’s nuclear stockpile''

from opinion maker...

"Israel hasn’t signed the Nuclear Arms Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has consistently maintained a policy of ambiguity about its nuclear arsenal by neither accepting nor denying its possession. The Jewish state had begun its quest for nuclear weapons since its inception in 1948. In 1956, France provided Israel with an 18-megawatt nuclear reactor that, after Israel's invasion of Egypt in 1956, was upgraded to 24-megawatt. The reactor France provided was erected at Dimona, in Negev desert, and has since remained functional, to which the UK, IAEA, and US are privy. France even provided Israel with heavy water it purchased from Norway thus breaching the assurances France gave to donors for not passing it on to a third country."

Pakistan: "Munawar sees conspiracy to seize Pakistan nukes"

"Amir Jamat-e-Islami (JI) Syed Munawar Hassan on Wednesday said Pakistan was being weakened under a planned conspiracy to declare it a failed state and its nuclear assets unsafe so that they can be seized, Geo News reported.

He said troika of US-India-Israel was actively pursuing a strategy to tear up Pakistan in pieces.

He said Pakistan authorities were in hold of evidence of India's brazen intrusion in Balochistan being carried out by crossing into the province from Afghanistan. Despite this fact, there is enthusiasm for granting a status of Most Favorite Nation (MFN) to India, he lamented." 


from the news pakistan.....

''Egypt to follow through with plans for nuclear power plant''

should make israel happy........read more from egypt independent...

"Prime Minister Kamal al-Ganzouri on Tuesday informed ministers that the government will follow through with its plans to build Egypt’s first nuclear power plant, said Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Fayza Abouelnaga."

'UN probe unveils new suspected Syrian nuclear facility'

from haaretz......

"U.N. investigators have identified a previously unknown complex in Syria that bolsters suspicions that the Syrian government worked with A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, to acquire technology that could be used to make nuclear arms.

The buildings in northwest Syria closely match the design of a uranium enrichment plant provided to Libya when Muammar Gadhafi was trying to build nuclear weapons under Khan's guidance, officials told The Associated Press"...........READ MORE

'Fukushima caesium leaks 'equal 168 Hiroshimas'

pray for japan..............from the telegraph.........

"Government nuclear experts, however, said the World War II bomb blast and the accidental reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen ongoing radiation leaks but no deaths so far, were beyond comparison.

The amount of caesium-137 released since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 quake and tsunami has been estimated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, quoting a government calculation.

That compares with the 89 tera becquerels released by "Little Boy", the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the final days of World War II, the report said"..............READ MORE

'Russia must decide fate of sunken nuclear subs'

from ria novosti......

"Russia must decide by 2013 what to do with two sunken nuclear submarines in the Barents and Kara seas in order to avoid the potential radioactive pollution of the area, a senior Russian nuclear official said on Monday.

"We must decide as soon as possible whether we will lift these subs or bury them completely on site," Ivan Kamenskih, deputy general director of Russia's nuclear corporation Rosatom, told a conference on board the Yamal nuclear icebreaker.

The B-159 (K-159) was a November class nuclear submarine, which sank in the Barents Sea in August 2003, 238 meters down, with nine of her crew and 800 kilograms of spent nuclear fuel, while being moved for dismantling.

The K-27 was an experimental attack submarine built in 1962 and decommissioned in 1979 due to its troublesome nuclear reactors. Her reactor compartment was sealed and the submarine was scuttled in the eastern Kara Sea in 1982 at the depth of 33 meters"..............READ MORE

'Chernobyl: A field trip to no man's land'

from bbc.........

"Andrea Bonisoli-Alquati, a willowy Italian biologist, is sitting with a team of his colleagues in one of the very few restaurants in Chernobyl.

In this half-empty dingy canteen, while the speakers blare out euro-pop, Andrea is eating dinner on the first evening of a six day scientific excursion to the 30km exclusion zone that surrounds the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

He is one of an international team of a dozen researchers who are here to study the ecosystem that was left behind after the 1986 accident.

In the 25 years since the accident, which showered the area with radioactive dust, the town of Chernobyl and the main roads through the zone have been cleaned up.

These days, many areas of the zone are deemed safe enough for tourists. But this team is deliberately heading into the overgrown pastures and forests - areas that are most contaminated and therefore most dangerous.

They come here to find out what the impacts are of a nuclear accident on the life that is left behind"...............READ MORE