FEBRUARY 2004

Last May 9, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to repeal a 10-year ban on the research and development of "low-yield" nuclear weapons—defined as nukes having an explosive power smaller than 5 kilotons. (The House committee will take up the measure this week.) The Bush administration has lobbied heavily for the repeal. Democrats oppose the idea on the grounds that "mini-nukes"—by blurring the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons—make nuclear war more thinkable and, therefore, in the minds of some, more doable.

Some in the Bush administration are living proof of this objection. They want to demystify nuclear weapons, strip away the taboo against their use, and insinuate them into the arsenal of U.S. war-fighting tools. A key figure in this effort is Keith Payne.

Payne is not a well-known figure, even in Washington policy circles. But he ought to be. He is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for "forces policy"—essentially, the Pentagon's top civilian official assigned to the development, procurement, planning, and possible use of nuclear weapons.

For 20 years before he came to the Pentagon at the start of the George W. Bush administration, Payne was at the forefront of a small group of think-tank mavens—outspoken but, at the time, marginal—who argued not only that nuclear weapons were usable, but that nuclear war was, in a meaningful sense, winnable. He first made his mark with an article in the summer 1980 issue of Foreign Policy (written with fellow hawk Colin Gray) called "Victory Is Possible." Among its pronouncements: "an intelligent United States offensive [nuclear] strategy, wedded to homeland defenses, should reduce U.S. casualties to approximately 20 million … a level compatible with national survival and recovery." (As Gen. Buck Turgidson, the George C. Scott character in Dr. Strangelove, put it, "I'm not saying we won't get our hair mussed up, but 10-20 million tops, depending on the breaks.")

Payne was in his 20s, working for Herman Kahn at the Hudson Institute, at the time he co-wrote the article, but anyone who would dismiss it as youthful extremism should look at a paper he wrote in January 2001, titled "Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control." Payne wrote it as president of the National Institute for Public Policy, a conservative research organization in Fairfax, Va. The paper came out of a panel that included Payne's old colleague Colin Gray, as well as Stephen J. Hadley (who is now Bush's deputy national security adviser) and Stephen Cambone (now an assistant secretary of defense and a member of Rumsfeld's inner circle).

Payne put together the panel out of a concern—as he put it in a 1999 paper called "Nuclear Weapons: Theirs and Ours"—that "the future of United States nuclear forces faces a very serious challenge" from "anti-nuclear activists" and that "unless a coolly reasoned response is presented, their agenda will appear to be the only game in town."

The NIPP study was intended as that "coolly reasoned response," written for the incoming administration. In it, Payne laid out a post-Cold War rationale for the continued deployment of thousands of nuclear weapons and the development of new, specially tailored nukes. Parts of the rationale were fairly routine: to deter a potentially resurgent and hostile Russia, to dissuade rogue regimes from trying to threaten to us, and so forth. But there were some eyebrow-raising parts as well. For instance, Payne noted that, in Operation Desert Storm, allied forces had a hard time finding and hitting Iraqi Scud missiles. In a future war, he wrote, "If the locations of dispersed mobile launchers cannot be determined with enough precision to permit pinpoint strikes, suspected deployment areas might be subjected to multiple nuclear strikes."

Note the phrasing. It's startling enough that Payne suggests attacking (even non-nuclear) mobile missiles with nukes. But he goes further, suggesting that we attack whole "areas" where mobile missiles are merely "suspected" to be deployed. And he suggests attacking these with "multiple" nuclear weapons. Payne also argues that nuclear weapons might be needed to destroy "deeply buried facilities … such as underground biological weapons facilities." He leaves unanswered why simply disabling such a facility—which he admits can be done with conventional weapons—wouldn't be good enough. He then says the need to destroy these sorts of targets means we cannot afford to make deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal but should instead continue to build new types of nuclear weapons.

Let us assume for a moment that hitting such targets is a vital task and that only nukes can do the job. How many mobile-missile deployment areas are there? How many possible underground biochem facilities? Unless Payne is suggesting blowing up gigantic swaths of land (to get every square foot where missiles might roam) and every cave and basement that might hold a lab, I can't imagine that—even under his assumptions—more than a few dozen extra nuclear weapons might be needed, on top of the 7,000 or so we currently possess.

Finally, Payne falls back on the rationale that nuclear-weapons planners have invoked for decades when they've run out of concrete reasons—perceptions. "The United States," he writes, "is likely to desire the capability to deter authoritarian adversaries who are impressed by an opposing nuclear force with greater rather than fewer weapons." The great thing about this argument is that no number of weapons, however enormous, is enough; there's always room for more. For this reason, Payne opposes any arms-reduction treaty unless it gives the United States "the de jure prerogative to adjust its nuclear force structure to coincide with changes in strategic requirements." To the extent nuclear arms are reduced, they should just be stored away, not destroyed.

Lots of think tanks have disgorged lots of wild-eyed reports over the years. The significance of this one is that it has been translated into official policy. In January 2002, Rumsfeld issued a classified report called the "Nuclear Posture Review." Copies were leaked and soon appeared on several Web sites. Among the sections that drew attention: "Nuclear weapons … provide credible military options to deter a wide range of threats. … Greater flexibility is needed with respect to nuclear forces and planning than was the case during the Cold War. … Nuclear-attack options that vary in scale, scope and purpose will complement other military capabilities."

These statements are truly different from official statements of the previous two decades. Some documents have tried to develop scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be used without committing suicide in the process. But rarely did they view nuclear weapons as a "complement" to other types of weapons. Nor are the similarities between these two reports—Payne's of January 2001 and Rumsfeld's of January 2002—a coincidence. Payne served on a missile-defense panel that Rumsfeld headed in 1998. They reportedly got along well. Rumsfeld hired Payne on the basis of the NIPP report, which he definitely read.

Payne is not in any position to advise the president on the use of nuclear weapons, nor does he hold a slot anywhere in the chain of command. He does, however, have a role in deciding what kinds of nukes should be built, deployed, and discarded. He is the Pentagon's civilian liaison with the nuclear-war planning staff at the Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb. And he was handpicked for the job because of his views. In a serious crisis, the numbers and types of weapons that he helps put in place could shape the president's sense of what options are available and feasible. The Senate vote brings Keith's Payne's terrifying dream that much closer.

Bush To Eliminate Nuclear
Plant Safety Standards
To Let Contractors Devise Their Own New Rules
By Nancy Zuckerbrod
1-29-4

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is moving to replace government safety standards at federal nuclear facilities with requirements written by contractors -- after Congress directed it to start fining the contractors for violations.   Long-established government minimum standards at the more than two dozen nuclear weapons plants and research labs around the nation would become unenforceable guidelines under the Energy Department proposal.   Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., an author of the 2002 legislation ordering the fines, accused the administration of distorting Congress' intent with a plan that "will likely decrease worker protection."   John Conway, chairman the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, which oversees safety at the Energy Department, agreed that the proposal would weaken safety standards covering more than 100,000 workers at the facilities. "The way it's written, I don't like it at all," hed said.   Energy Department officials said they have not made a final decision on the proposal and emphasized that the government would retain the authority to approve or reject the contractor-written safety requirements.   "The department believes the proposed rule seeks to fully protect our workers," Assistant Secretary Beverly Cook said.   The proposal was outlined in a draft regulation put out by the department last month. Cook described it as part of a continuing effort to get contractors to focus on hazards specific to their sites.   The Energy Department can now fine contractors who expose workers to hazardous levels of radiation, but it has no authority to levy fines for failing to protect workers from other industrial dangers, such as exposure to toxic chemicals.   The proposed rule would change that, allowing the department to assess fines against contractors who violate what would be contractor-written safety plans.   "The decision making will be largely in the hands of contractors to decide what protections are appropriate," said Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio. "It's the fox guarding the hen house."   The government often gives contractors financial incentives to complete projects ahead of schedule, and tough safety standards could slow contractors down, said Leon Owens, a worker and past president of the local union at the government's uranium plant in Paducah, Ky.   "I don't feel that a contractor would be as inclined to develop rules that would go the extra length to provide adequate protection for workers," Owens said.   http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2376295

 

Scientists claim a new form of matter created

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Scientists said on Wednesday they had created a new form of matter and predicted it could help lead to the next generation of superconductors for use in electricity generation, more efficient trains and countless other applications.

The new matter form is called a fermionic condensate and it is the sixth known form of matter -- after gases, solids, liquids, plasma and a Bose-Einstein condensate, created only in 1995.

"What we've done is create this new exotic form of matter," Deborah Jin, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology's joint lab with the University of Colorado, who led the study, told a news conference.

"It is a scientific breakthrough in providing a new type of quantum mechanical behavior," added Jin.

Jin and her colleagues' cloud of supercooled potassium atoms is one step closer to an everyday, usable superconductor -- a material that conducts electricity without losing any of its energy.

"It is related to a Bose-Einstein condensate," Jin said. "It's not a superconductor but it is really something in between these two that may help us in science link these two interesting behaviors."

And other researchers may find practical applications.

"If you had a superconductor you could transmit electricity with no losses," Jin said. "Right now something like 10 percent of all electricity we produce in the United States is lost. It heats up wires. It doesn't do anybody any good."

Or superconductors could allow for the invention of magnetically levitated trains, she added. Free of friction they could glide along at high speeds using a fraction of the energy trains now use.

Jin, a recent recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant," was building on the discovery of the Bose-Einstein condensate by her colleagues Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman. They won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.

Bose-Einstein condensates are collections of thousands of ultracold particles that occupy a single quantum state -- they all essentially behave like a single, huge superatom.

But Jin says these Bose-Einstein condensates are made with bosons, which like to act in unison.

"Bosons are copycats. They basically want to do what everyone else is doing," she said.

Her team's new form of matter uses fermions -- the everyday building blocks of matter that include protons, electrons and neutrons.

"They are not copycats," Jin said. "Fermions are your independent thinkers -- they don't copy their neighbors."

But Jin's team coaxed them into doing just that.

They cooled potassium gas to a billionth of a degree Celsius above absolute zero or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit -- which is the point at which matter stops moving.

They confined the gas in a vacuum chamber and used magnetic fields and laser light to manipulate the potassium atoms into pairing up.

"This is very similar to what happens to electrons in a superconductor," Jin said.

This is more likely to provide applications in the practical world than a Bose-Einstein condensate, she said, because fermions are what make up solid matter.

Bosons, in contrast, are seen in photons, and subatomic particles called W and Z particles.

Jin stressed her team worked with a supercooled gas, which provides little opportunity for everyday application. But the way the potassium atoms acted suggested there should be a way to translate the behavior into a room-temperature solid.

"Our atoms are more strongly attracted to one another than in normal superconductors," she said.

Uut and Uup Add Their Atomic Mass to Periodic Table(Though quite what is its "stability" I fail to see - check its decay time!!!jb.editor)

By JAMES GLANZ Published: February 1, 2004

A team of Russian and American scientists are reporting today that they have created two new chemical elements, called superheavies because of their enormous atomic mass. The discoveries fill a gap at the furthest edge of the periodic table and hint strongly at a weird landscape of undiscovered elements beyond.

The team, made up of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia, is disclosing its findings in a paper being published today in Physical Review C, a leading chemistry journal. The paper was reviewed by scientific peers outside the research group before publication.

"Two new elements have been produced," said Dr. Walt Loveland, a nuclear chemist at Oregon State University who is familiar with the research. "It's just incredibly exciting. It seems to open up the possibility of synthesizing more elements beyond this."

The periodic table is the oddly shaped checkerboard — with an H for hydrogen, the lightest element, in the upper-left-hand corner — that hangs in chemistry classrooms the world over. Each element has a different number of protons, particles with a positive electrical charge, in the dense central kernel called the nucleus.

The number of protons, beginning with one for hydrogen, fixes an element's place in the periodic table and does much to determine an element's chemical properties: ductile and metallic at room temperature for gold (No. 79), gaseous and largely inert for neon (10), liquid and toxic for mercury (80).

Elements as heavy as uranium, No. 92 on the list, are found in nature, and others have been created artificially(plutonium,jb.editor). But much heavier elements have been difficult to make, partly because they became increasingly unstable and short-lived.

Still, for roughly half a century, nuclear scientists have been searching for an elusive "island of stability," somewhere among the superheavies, in which long-lived elements with new chemical properties might exist. Dr. Loveland said that the new results indicated that scientists might be closing in on that island.

"We're sort of in the shoals of the island of stability," said Dr. Kenton J. Moody, a Livermore nuclear physicist who was one of the experimenters in the work.

"It's an amazing effect," he added. "We're really just chipping away at the edges of it."

The experiments took place at a cyclotron, a circular particle accelerator, in Dubna, where the scientists fired a rare isotope of calcium at americium, an element used in applications as varied as nuclear weapons research and household smoke detectors. Four times during a month of 24-hour-a-day bombardment in July and August, scientists on the experiment said, a calcium nucleus fused with an americium nucleus and created a new element.

Each calcium nucleus contains 20 protons and americium 95. Since the number of protons determines where an element goes in the periodic table, simple addition shows the new element to bear the atomic number 115, which had never been seen before. Within a fraction of a second, the four atoms of Element 115 decayed radioactively to an element with 113 protons. That element had never been seen, either. The atoms of 113 lasted for as long as 1.2 seconds before decaying radioactively to known elements.

Scientists generally do not give permanent names to elements and write them into textbooks until the discoveries have been confirmed by another laboratory. By an international convention based on the numbers, element 113 will be given the temporary name Ununtrium (abbreviated Uut for the periodic table) and element 115 will be designated Ununpentium (Uup).

Dr. Loveland said he agreed that the new elements would require independent confirmation before they could receive final acceptance. And he conceded that the Dubna find was likely to receive more than the usual amount of scrutiny: two years ago, the reported discovery of Element 118 was retracted after a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory was found to have fabricated evidence.