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"While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its sixty-fifth anniversary will be marked-or mourned, if you will-this Friday, July 16. Entire books have been written about the test, so I'll just touch on one key issue here briefly (there's much more in my book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America). It's related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era. In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren't sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, "The Father of the Bomb," worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain."

"While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its sixty-fifth anniversary will be marked -- or mourned, if you will -- tomorrow, July 16. Entire books have been written about the test, so I'll just touch on one key issue here briefly (there's much more in my book with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America). It's related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era."

"In his provocative new book "Bomb Power" (Penguin Press, 2010) historian Garry Wills argues that the rise of the National Security State and the ongoing expansion of presidential authority, including the spread of government secrecy, are rooted in the development of the atomic bomb in World War II. "At the bottom of it all has been the Bomb," writes Prof. Wills. "All this grew out of the Manhattan Project, out of its product, and even more out of its process. The project's secret work, secretly funded at the behest of the President, was a model for the covert activities and overt authority of the government we now experience.""

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given Entergy Nuclear permission to keep a change in its technical specifications secret that deals with the nuclear fuel that will be loaded next spring into Vermont Yankee's core. A subcontractor for Entergy, Global Nuclear Fuels, had requested the secrecy, saying it involved proprietary information. Entergy Nuclear spokesman Larry Smith said Monday that the proprietary information belonged to Global Nuclear Fuels, and he said the request had met the criteria set out by the NRC. Entergy was notified Monday that the exemption was granted. At issue are the thermal stresses that occur in the reactor core, which if above a certain standard, can damage fuel cladding. Damaged fuel leaks radiation.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given Entergy Nuclear permission to keep a change in its technical specifications secret that deals with the nuclear fuel that will be loaded next spring into Vermont Yankee's core. A subcontractor for Entergy, Global Nuclear Fuels, had requested the secrecy, saying it involved proprietary information. Entergy Nuclear spokesman Larry Smith said Monday that the proprietary information belonged to Global Nuclear Fuels, and he said the request had met the criteria set out by the NRC. Entergy was notified Monday that the exemption was granted. At issue are the thermal stresses that occur in the reactor core, which if above a certain standard, can damage fuel cladding. Damaged fuel leaks radiation.

"Over the last half century, the government has repeatedly kept information secret because it would be embarrassing. President Obama wants the federal bureaucracy to reform this harmful tradition. The Department of Energy website proclaims, "From his first day in office, President Obama has pushed to make the federal government more open and more accessible to the American people. The Department of Energy is proud to be doing our part." But DOE's definition of "doing our part" seems to entail subverting the President's directive. The agency is pulling a cloak of secrecy over complex government financial transactions already lacking in transparency. The federal government has offered taxpayer funded loan guarantees for new nuclear reactor construction. These guarantees mean that you and I will repay the lender if the project developers cannot. The first guarantee, for $8.3 billion, has been conditionally offered for two Georgia reactors. More guarantees are proposed -- at a total of $54.5 billion -- which would amount to more than $500 for every American family. Some in Congress want unlimited nuclear loan guarantees, which would translate to unlimited taxpayer exposure. But will those American families know the criteria for issuing these loan guarantees? Not on your life. They won't even be told what fee is being charged to compensate them for taking on the default risk."

President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit was a high-yield event for Israel, with little of the diplomatic fallout that made the country's leaders duck such forums in the past. But it may be only a fleeting reprieve for the decades-old, U.S.-tolerated secrecy around Israel's assumed atomic arsenal. Obama's drive to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and, more immediately, to defuse tinderbox Middle East standoffs will mean increased pressure on Israel to scrap its self-styled policy of nuclear "ambiguity" or "opacity," some analysts say.

Public employees have filed a lawsuit demanding documents related to the U.S. EPA's plans made "in secrecy" to allow public exposure to increased levels of radioactivity following nuclear accidents or attacks. The lawsuit filed Wednesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility under the Freedom of Information Act claims that the agency "wrongfully withheld" comments submitted by EPA and other federal and state agency officials and by representatives of private corporations or trade associations to the EPA Office of Radiation and Indoor Air as it prepared its updated Protective Action Guides. The radiation guides are protocols for responding to incidents ranging from nuclear power plant accidents to transportation spills to dirty bombs.

Public employees have filed a lawsuit demanding documents related to the U.S. EPA's plans made "in secrecy" to allow public exposure to increased levels of radioactivity following nuclear accidents or attacks. The lawsuit filed Wednesday by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility under the Freedom of Information Act claims that the agency "wrongfully withheld" comments submitted by EPA and other federal and state agency officials and by representatives of private corporations or trade associations to the EPA Office of Radiation and Indoor Air as it prepared its updated Protective Action Guides. The radiation guides are protocols for responding to incidents ranging from nuclear power plant accidents to transportation spills to dirty bombs.

DTE Energy's progress toward construction of a new nuclear power plant might be sidetracked by legal challenges to both the project and the process. Critics argue that hearings held Wednesday were timed to minimize public participation, that the plans for the reactor are shrouded in secrecy, and the public was being asked unfairly to comment on a reactor design that doesn't yet exist. Monroe resident Michael Keegan of Don't Waste Michigan, said the first notice of Wednesday's hearings were issued on Christmas Eve and scheduled to be held "in the heart of a Michigan winter." He suggested that because of the timing of the notices, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission should extend the deadline for accepting comments on the scope of the planned federal environmental review of the proposal for 90 days and hold another hearing in the spring when the weather would be better.

Nineteen-year-old Gary Thornton had no idea what he was getting into in June 1962 when he signed a form swearing to secrecy about the U.S. government's involvement in a secret nuclear weapons testing program. The penalty for speaking out was a $20,000 fine or 20 years behind bars. As an enlistee in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he spent two years on a ship in the South Pacific and Far East and had many interesting experiences at various ports along the way.

Enough processed uranium to make six nuclear weapons was secretly transported thousands of miles by truck, rail and ship on a monthlong trip from a research reactor in Budapest, Hungary, to a facility in Russia so it could be more closely protected against theft, U.S. officials revealed Wednesday. The shipment, conducted under tight secrecy and security, included a three-week trip by cargo ship through the Mediterranean, up the English Channel and the North Sea to Russia's Arctic seaport of Murmansk, the only port Russia allows for handling nuclear material.

Enough processed uranium to make six nuclear weapons was secretly transported thousands of miles by truck, rail and ship on a monthlong trip from a research reactor in Budapest, Hungary, to a facility in Russia so it could be more closely protected against theft, U.S. officials revealed Wednesday. The shipment, conducted under tight secrecy and security, included a three-week trip by cargo ship through the Mediterranean, up the English Channel and the North Sea to Russia's Arctic seaport of Murmansk, the only port Russia allows for handling nuclear material. The 13 radiation-proof casks, each weighing 17,000 pounds, arrived by rail at the secure nuclear material facility at Mayak in Siberia on Wednesday, carrying 341 pounds of weapons usable uranium, said Kenneth Baker, a National Nuclear Security Administration official who oversaw the complex project.

While public pressure is finally achieving cleaner fossil plant emissions, Sen. John McCain adamantly insists that nuclear energy is safe and efficient. In recent years, the press reveals bit by bit the litany of dangerous nuclear plant vulnerabilities, most importantly those of toxic waste storage and close-call meltdowns. As there is always the risk of possible multiple state catastrophes, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is expected to uphold the ultimate, stringent, no-fail safety standards. But, the NRC has been attacked by congressional lawmakers for its secrecy.

Criminals have the right to know what evidence is used against them, but sick nuclear weapons workers do not. If a sick worker fights all the way through the federal program meant to compensate those made ill building atomic bombs, the government gets the last word - in the form of a secret report.

A CONVOY of trucks transported nuclear waste from the Lucas Heights reactor to Port Kembla early on Monday morning. As usual, the operation took place in secrecy and under heavy security. It was the ninth shipment of used or spent nuclear fuel to leave Lucas Heights for overseas storage facilities since 1963. Normally, the shipment leaves through Port Botany but because of construction work at that location, went to Port Kembla on this occasion. The Illawarra Mercury reported that port sources had told of workers ``holding their breath'' as the small ship rolled towards the jetty as the first of eight containers was loaded.

An anti-nuclear group say the Federal Government needs to come clean about whether it will build a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. Yesterday, the Government scuttled a bill in the Senate that would have overturned legislation that allows for a waste dump in the NT. Natalie Wasley from the Beyond Nuclear Initiative says the Prime Minister needs to honour his commitment to scrap the legislation. "Not even different ministers and senators within the party can get an answer from [Resources Minister Martin] ... Ferguson, so really it's up to Prime Minister Rudd to call him out on his silence and his secrecy and expose what the Government is intending to do to the community," she said.

An international shipping website is publishing co-ordinates of the nuclear shipment after its departure from Port Kembla harbour. Despite a veil of secrecy and extensive anti-terrorism measures for the transfer of the spent nuclear rods over land through Wollongong, the website is carrying up-to-date information about the vessel, MV Lynx, including its location at sea and its expected arrival time in the United States. Even those who do not know the ship's name can find its path, simply by searching for ships which have recently left the country.

In Nicole Krauss' sparse and astonishing novel, Man Walks Into A Room, local cops find a disoriented man wandering along Highway 95 in the desolate Mercury Valley of Nevada. After the officers get him out of the shimmering heat, we learn that the man, Samson, has a brain tumor that has obliterated a large chunk of his memory. He has no recollection of the last 24 years of his life. Samson is able to recover the human and concrete remnants of those lost 24 years. His wife is there, loving and supportive; his home is still his; his job is still available. Nevertheless, his life crumbles. His very identity unravels in the absence of the anchor of a large span of memory. It's terrifying. Parts of the nuclear West, especially those involved in Cold War weapons production, suffer from a similar condition. Take Rocky Flats, for example, which for four decades produced tens of thousands of the pits that detonate atomic bombs. While it was in operation, the industrial complex outside Denver, Colo., was veiled in absolute secrecy. The people who worked there couldn't tell outsiders what they did, and they couldn't even talk to one another about their work.

"It is incumbent upon all levels of government, as well as public and private parties within the U.S., to prepare for" a nuclear detonation in a U.S. city, according to a new U.S. government document. "Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation" (pdf) was drafted by an interagency team and published by the Homeland Security Council earlier this month (h/t Docuticker.com). Security requirements for the protection of classified or controlled information held by the Department of Energy are set forth in a newly revised "Information Security Manual" (pdf), DoE Manual 470.4-4A, January 16, 2009.