The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an anti-nuclear political affairs publication, recently published an attack on a new uranium isotope separation process called SILEX. SILEX, a laser-based process invented in Australia, is being promoted by a joint venture that includes…
Category: Nuclear diplomacy
Irony rules in the U.S. anti-proliferation community
The U.S. president, struggling to restore some semblance of maturity at the top of the nuclear regulatory commission (NRC), recently nominated an anti-proliferation activist to replace the outgoing Gregory Jaczko. This nomination is significant because it says a lot about…
American symbolism and its effect on nuclear proliferation: bureaucratic fantasy meets the real world
In 1976 U.S. president Gerald Ford announced that the U.S. would stop reprocessing used civilian nuclear fuel. The trigger for this decision was of course political: the announcement was on October 28, and in five days there would be a…
Why is Iran stepping up uranium enrichment?
The Iran nuclear program continues unabated. Readers of this blog may recall my assessment of Iran’s nuclear motives. The original reason Iran decided to go nuclear was Saddam Hussein. Iran and Iraq, after their bloody, costly, and inconclusive hot war…
Waste to power: beautiful concept, and demonstrably viable
I recently visited a waste-to-power project in my home town, Ottawa Ontario. This is the Carp Road landfill gas project. The Carp Road landfill is a private facility, run by Waste Management Inc., a Houston-based multinational whose name aptly describes…