... inside the United States. Since the Energy Department claims to have lost track of several hundred thousand pounds of such material. From NTI : WASHINGTON -- A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records. That's just one of the findings of a report released yesterday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material." Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities review...

It should be pointed out that with respect to Iraq prior to 2003 the International Atomic Energy Agency was right about Saddam's nuclear program, and US intelligence was wrong. So with the perspective, consider these two stories regarding Iran and nuclear enrichment (paying special attention to US rhetoric in the background): Begin here : Much hay was made late last week over the allegation that the Iranian government had underreported the amount of urnaium it had enriched through November. The White House accused Iran of reneging on its international obligations, and called the nation an “urgent problem that has to be addressed.” Not so, says the International Atomic Enegy Agency (IAEA), which said the discrepancy between the reported and actual figures were “inherent in the early commissioning phases of such a facility when it is not known in advance how it will perform in practice.” They added that nothing indicates that Iran made any deliberate attempts to conceal the amount of...

We've been down this road before: Colin Powell at the UN, yellowcake, the whole nine yards. Now President Obama and CIA Director Panetta are openly beating the drums about Iranian nukes: It has been 15 months since the release of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which determined that the Iranian government had halted all efforts to create a nuclear weapon, and the outgoing chairman of the National Intelligence Council reaffirmed those findings only two months ago. The Obama Administration didn’t seem to read those reports, however. President Obama accused Iran of “development of a nuclear weapon” during a press conference. Incoming CIA director Leon Panetta declared during his testimony that “I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.” While the Iranian government continues to express its desire to improve relations, Obama and associates just keep hurling accusations at Iran’s civilian nuclear program. There’s one thing the administration is mis...

... because Iran has used what is essentially 50-year-old technology to plop a small satellite into space? Now the former head of the Israeli Space Agency (who knew they had one?) opines that this means Iran now has the ballistic missile capability to hit western Europe: Iran's launch of a satellite on Tuesday demonstrates a new and advanced capability that allows Teheran to fire ballistic missiles carrying nuclear warheads all the way to Western Europe, said Maj.-Gen. (res.) Isaac Ben-Israel, the former head of the Israel Space Agency. "You need specific and added energy when firing a satellite that weighs between 30 and 50 kilograms into space," Ben-Israel, who is also a Kadima MK, told The Jerusalem Post. "If they succeeded, then the equivalent within the atmosphere is firing a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead that weighs one ton all the way to Western Europe." This is a pretty interesting assertion, given that China required significant external tec...

... and who's most ready to use them. That would be Pakistan , of course, with an estimated 60-120 nukes of up to 35 KT throw weight, and India , with an estimated 45-100 warheads deliverable by ballistic missles, cruise missiles, and/or nuclear submarine-launched missiles. Latest reports have Pakistan moving troops away from the Afghani border toward India, and the Indian Air Force probing for gaps in the Paki radar net. In case anybody has missed this, here's the abstract of a 2007 study published in New Scientist regarding a limited nuclear exchange between the two countries: A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause one billion people to starve to death around the world, and hundreds of millions more to die from disease and conflicts over food.... Earlier studies have suggested that such a conflict would throw five million tonnes of black soot into the atmosphere, triggering a reduction of 1.25°C in the average temperature at the earth's surface for several...

Tricky thing that national self-determination. Countries and their leaders keep doing what they think is in their best interests, no matter what the industrialized west thinks. From Jason Poblete : While it barely generates the media attention that Iran or North Koreahas during the past few years, there are leaders in Latin America, South America to be exact, who have hinted that nuclear weaponization programs are a “right” of developing countries. Despite public acts to the country such as signing on to key non-proliferation treaties or agreements, as well as making the perfunctory diplomatic statements on non-proliferation, it is not clear that Brazil and Venezuela have completely abandoned nuclear weapons research. In some cases, it is quite the opposite. In an article published in the most recent edition of the U.S. Army War College publication, Parameters, Nader Elhefnawy writes about The Next Wave of Nuclear Proliferation. While I do not agree with all of his conclusions, i...