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After 10 years of sifting through thousands of pages of classified records and overcoming secrecy obstacles at the nuclear weapons lab, independent investigators have provided the first rough estimates of radioactive and toxic releases from Los Alamos National Laboratory dating back to its earliest operations and the potential health impact of the nation's first atomic bomb blast on ranchers and other nearby residents in New Mexico. Investigators for the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) project released a draft final report in late June that-while far from definitive in its conclusions-said there was persuasive evidence from spotty, decades-old emissions monitoring data that radioactive releases during Los Alamos' early years were so significant that they could dwarf the cumulative releases from all of the Energy Department's other early nuclear weapons production sites. In particular, the researchers said that although the lab did not monitor emissions from many of its earliest plutonium processing facilities, fragmentary records-especially "industrial hygiene," or worker safety, reports from 1955 and 1956-suggest plutonium releases in the late 1940s and early 1950s were much higher than has been acknowledged by the government to date.

Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation's top intelligence official said on Tuesday, disclosing an overall number long shrouded in secrecy. Dennis Blair, the U.S. director of national intelligence, cited the figure as part of a four-year strategic blueprint for the sprawling, 200,000-person intelligence community. In an unclassified version of the blueprint released by Blair's office, intelligence agencies singled out as threats Iran's nuclear program, North Korea's "erratic behavior," and insurgencies fueled by militant groups, though Blair cited gains against al Qaeda. Blair also cited challenges from China's military modernization and natural resource-driven diplomacy, as well as from efforts by Russia to reassert its power.

In an era when the corporate media and the corporate politicians and the corporate military men gang up together and denounce and threaten other countries because of their nuclear related activities, they should spend much of that rhetorical energy by cross-examining themselves in a mirror. North Korea's latest nuclear test received much more attention than its earlier 'possible' test because of its greater power and the strategic message sent by its politically timed Taepodong II rocket launch. Iran has moved a little bit off the radar screen as its elections have proven more interesting than its nuclear 'threat' but it is under increasing scrutiny as it reaches weapons potential. When placed in relation to this "cautionary history", North Korea and Iran are acting only as all other nuclear powers have acted in the past, for the main theme behind In Mortal Hands is that of lies, deceit, deception, cover-ups, and secrecy to cover up the real issues with the nuclear industry. The real issue as reiterated constantly and perceptively by Stephanie Cooke is that of an industry whose central purpose is to create fissile material for weapons production regardless of and in spite of all other attempts to equate nuclear energy with peaceful purposes and with the 'greening' of the energy industry.

In yesterday's post, I provided a little background and explained that how the question of why we have so many nuclear weapons, and why we had even more back in the day, is not a very simple question. But I've learned a few things about this issue that I never knew before, and hopefully you didn't know them either. In the Cold War, especially the earlier years, the world was a much different place. There was no internet, no cell phones, very few satellites (the first satellite went up in 1957 and didn't do anything), no GPS systems, and a much more limited ability to fly over enemy air space to take pictures. We certainly didn't have stealth planes or UAV's. Today, we have all these things, and the US uses them to spy on its enemies. In the Cold War, the USSR resided behind the so-called "Iron Curtain" of secrecy and suspicion. In short, we couldn't see them, and they couldn't see us.

In a historic speech in Prague recently, President Obama proposed concrete steps to move toward "a world without nuclear weapons," including a test ban, an end to the production of fissile materials and a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians. This effort to build a safer world is most welcome: The six-decade-long history of nuclear weapons and nuclear power includes a frightening number of fiascoes still shrouded in secrecy. ad_icon As two new books illustrate, there is much to mine in this atomic tale: stories as big and dramatic as mushroom clouds, events that lend themselves easily to superlatives. When mistakes are made with nuclear reactors and warheads, the consequences are often scary indeed.

"THE Ministry of Defence should come clean once and for all about whether or not it plans to use the base at Machrihanish to store radioactive waste from old submarines. Alan Reid MP for Argyll and Bute has vowed to campaign to stop the waste ending up at Machrihanish or any of three other sites in Argyll and Bute and he has called on the MoD to go public. Defence Minister Quentin Davies MP has refused to reveal the sites on the secret list but has said Argyll and Bute is one of four regions being considered, along with Devon, Fife and Berkshire. 'This would appear to narrow the shortlist of sites in Argyll and Bute down to Coulport, Faslane, Glen Douglas and Machrihanish,' said Mr Reid, 'and I am disappointed that the Government is still refusing to publish its shortlist. The secrecy will only lead to speculation.' He added that all four in Argyll were unsuitable for the job."

"Shortly after nuclear weapons sleuths Tom Cochran and Bill Arkin published their unauthorized estimate of the size of the U.S. arsenal in 1984 they got a call from alarmed U.S. officials. "They called us over and wanted to know where we got the numbers," Cochran recalls from a time when almost everything about history's deadliest weapon - including how many the U.S. possessed - was classified secret. It was a culture of secrecy born during the Cold War, out of a belief that nuclear candor could be dangerous. America's official nuclear silence ended Monday when the Obama administration not only disclosed the number of U.S. nuclear weapons available for use in wartime - 5,113 as of last Sept. 30 - but surprised many by also publishing weapons totals for each year dating to 1962. (Pre-1962 data was released in 1993.)"

"In an attempt to bolster U.S. President Barack Obama's non-proliferation efforts, the United States on May 3 dispensed with decades of Cold War secrecy and published the size of its U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko praised the U.S. step and said Russia would consider doing the same after the ratification of the nuclear arms deal signed by Obama and Kremlin chief Dmitry Medvedev last month. Russia and the United States hold more than 95 percent of the world's nuclear weapons, enough to destroy the planet many times over, after first developing the weapons in top secret programs in the 1940s."

"The memories of former workers from the radioactive material processing plant in East Huntington always comes with a preface that the shared information was formerly top secret. Some describe a high chain link fence with armed security guards. Others remember armed guards overseeing the loading and unloading of product by railcar. The Huntington, WV Department of Energy plant supplied items to three gaseous diffusion plants that enriched uranium to make atomic weapons. These plants were in Piketon, Ohio (Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion); Paducah , Ky. (Paducah Gaseous Diffusion) and Oak Ridge, Tenn. (Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant). These three plants enriched uranium in a mile-long system of pipes, ducts, chambers , motors and electrical lines. The sublimed crystalline gaseous and greenish uranium flowed through nickel filters which separated isotopes. This section of the diffusion plant has been called The Cascade. ( Description courtesy of " A Pigeon in Piketon," by Geoffrey Sea, January 1, 2004 American Scholar .) "

In a letter to the editor in Boston Globe, Thomas D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), writes that the United States is reducing its nuclear weapons and that, "Currently, the stockpile is the smallest it has been since the Eisenhower administration." That statement leaves considerable confusion about the size of the stockpile. If "since the Eisenhower administration" means counting from 1961 when the Kennedy administration took over, that would mean the stockpile today contains nearly 20,000 warheads. If it means counting from the day the Eisenhower administration took office in 1953, it would mean fewer than 1,500 warheads.

A Canadian company that acquired a reported 550 tonnes of yellowcake uranium from Iraq says that the U.S. military wanted the deal to be kept quiet. "We were following the request of the U.S. government,'' Saskatoon-based Cameco Corp. spokesperson Lyle Krahn told The Canadian Press of the clandestine route the material took to get out of Baghdad and to Canada.

Little about the history of the Rocky Flats nuclear trigger plant engenders the trust of Coloradans. From its secretive Cold War era roots, to suppressed reports about contamination, to a stifled grand jury investigating environmental crimes, there remains a lingering suspicion that we still don't know everything about the former plant.

As the fight over nuclear energy shifts from safety to cost, timing the announcement of a multibillion-dollar expense takes on an increasingly strategic value to both sides. The estimated cost of new nuclear power plants has tripled, with projections now hitting $6 billion to $9 billion per reactor. Cost estimates are expected to continue escalating and make new nuclear power even harder to sell to a public that will ultimately pay for new plants through rate increases.

The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released reveal. Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be "very serious" after a nuclear war.

In a couple of memos over the past couple of years, including one dated Jan. 9, staff of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Board have mentioned the Special Material Capability Project at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. Federal and contractor officials at the Oak Ridge plant have been mum on details of the project, at least publicly, refusing to address what work will take place at the facility or what "special material" will be handled there. Last month's safety board report notes that project construction is about 80 percent complete and includes installation of major machines, including "a new negative-pressure glovebox in a Y-12 facility that provides additional worker protection."

More than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents could be declassified as the federal government responds to President Barack Obama's order to rethink the way it protects the nation's secrets. Among the changes announced Tuesday by Obama is a requirement that every record be released eventually and that federal agencies review how and why they mark documents classified or deny the release of historical records. A National Declassification Center at the National Archives will be established to assist them and help clear a backlog of the Cold War records by Dec. 31, 2013. Obama also reversed a decision by President George W. Bush that had allowed the intelligence community to block the release of a specific document, even if an interagency panel decided the information wouldn't harm national security.

More than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents could be declassified as the federal government responds to President Barack Obama's order to rethink the way it protects the nation's secrets. Among the changes announced Tuesday by Obama is a requirement that every record be released eventually and that federal agencies review how and why they mark documents classified or deny the release of historical records. A National Declassification Center at the National Archives will be established to assist them and help clear a backlog of the Cold War records by Dec. 31, 2013. Obama also reversed a decision by President George W. Bush that had allowed the intelligence community to block the release of a specific document, even if an interagency panel decided the information wouldn't harm national security.

How did Japanese workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant jury-rig fire hoses to cool damaged reactors? Is contaminated water from waste pools overflowing into the Pacific Ocean? Exactly who is the national incident commander? The answers to these and many other questions are unclear to U.S. nuclear scientists and policy experts, who say the quality and quantity of information coming out of Japan has left gaping holes in their understanding of the disaster nearly two weeks after it began.