Abstract
Uncovering nuclear artifacts
I was thrilled to read “Target Audience” (July/August 2008 Bulletin), Joseph Masco's excellent analysis of 1950s-era short films about nuclear testing and civilian defense training for survival in a post-nuclear landscape. As Masco points out, these recently declassified films, created and distributed by the U.S. Defense Department and the armed forces, provide Cold War historians with visual artifacts that complement, and in many ways supersede, the numerous paper artifacts that have typically comprised the atomic archive.
Although Masco looks at only a small sample of films for the purposes of his article, he makes a convincing case for their rhetorical power. He makes it possible to trace the economic investment in security institutions and technologies promoted in the current political climate to the visual rhetoric of civil defense and strategic containment promoted in these Cold War-era films. Consider the ease with which, since 2001, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has awarded critical roles in the “war on terror” to private contracting firms and their for-profit avatars in the corporate sector. It becomes evident that politicians, policy makers, and legislators have been tapping into the economic potential of an uncertain future for more than half a century, making the “new concept of global order” imagined in the 1950s into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Associate professor of communication and science studies
University of California, San Diego
SOVIET NUCLEAR INTENTIONS
Jeffrey Lewis's article “Minimum Deterrence” (July/August 2008 Bulletin) pits U.S. nuclear policy against a hypothetical “policy maker sane enough to be deterred in the first place” or a “rational leader,” with nary a mention of the views and activities of the adversary the United States faced during the period under consideration: the Soviet Union. In fact, studies of Soviet doctrine have shown that it was Soviet policy to build its forces so as to achieve the capacity through offensive and defensive forces to sustain and eventually “win” a nuclear conflict, while limiting damage to the homeland. Further, Lewis counts China as a believer in minimum deterrence, while the same issue of the Bulletin concludes elsewhere that “China continues to expand and modernize its nuclear forces.”
Evanston, illinois
Today, however, the best historical scholarship–working from archival evidence rather than suppositions–has thoroughly discredited the hypothesis that Soviet strategic modernization was driven by a desire to “fight and win” a nuclear war. In particular, I strongly recommend Pavel Podvig's essay in the most recent edition of International Security. Podvig makes extensive use of the archival collection of Vitalii Kataev, a senior adviser to the secretary for the Defense Industry of the Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1974 to 1990, to demonstrate that the Soviet Union “had neither a plan nor the capability to fight and win a nuclear war.” We can now file the “window of vulnerability” theory in the debunked category along with skepticism toward climate change and conspiracy theories about the moon landings.
As for understanding the Chinese nuclear posture, the proper place to start is John Lewis and Xue Litai's China Builds the Bomb (1988). Readers with an unusual surfeit of spare time, or seemingly intractable case of insomnia, might also consider my own contribution, Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (2007).
A MISSILEER'S JOB
Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger's “The Ever-Ready Nuclear Missileer” (July/August 2008 Bulletin) was a splendid telescopic view into the seemingly alien world of post-Cold War nuclear operations. What struck me, both as a reader and as an active duty missileer, was the authors' attentiveness to the subtle details that have sustained the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force for the past 50 years. Hodge and Weinberger's comfort with missileer lingo, our rich history, and the applicability of our venerable weapon system in the modern age was marvelous.
Most impressive, however, was their willingness to ask the questions that most missileers don't–or won't–ask themselves: How does one survive after a nuclear exchange? How do you feel about turning the key? Do archaic nuclear missiles have a future in a world defined by small wars and enemies who operate outside the bonds of the nation-state?
It's true that today's wars are small. But America should never forget that a missileer's job, standing alert at the launch switch, is to make sure that they stay that way.
F. E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming
The hair-trigger standoff between the United States and Russia with ICBMs is a very real threat to human survival. The Bulletin does not need to exaggerate it. “The Ever-Ready Nuclear Missileer” (July/August 2008) tells us that air force officers “sit underground, ready at a moment's notice to launch thousands of nuclear-armed missiles.” In fact, as any Bulletin reader knows, the U.S. Air Force doesn't have thousands of ICBMs. It has hundreds.
Oakton, Virginia
Editor's Note: The Bulletin's Nuclear Notebook (March/April 2008) does in fact count 488 ICBMs in the U.S. arsenal, not thousands. We regret this error.
ON CARBON OFFSETS
David Greising's article, “The Carbon Frontier” (July/August 2008 Bulletin), describes the many pitfalls associated with measuring and verifying greenhouse gas offset credits. The uncertainty around offset credits, along with the high costs associated with ensuring their environmental integrity, has led the Union of Concerned Scientists to support only a very limited role for offset credits in state and federal carbon market programs such as cap-and-trade.
One important problem with offsets is that their carbon sequestering gains must be additional to business as usual. Otherwise, they aren't legitimately reducing global warming emissions (remember, that's the goal here). This standard is particularly difficult to meet. Take for example, the activities of Terry Davis, the no-till farmer in Greising's article. Davis has been no-till farming since 1980. Should a polluter be allowed to buy emissions reductions from Davis because he continues to no-till farm? Is this really an “additional” reduction? If the answer is “no,” we arrive at yet another problem with offsets: longtime no-till farmers such as Davis and others who are already doing the right thing are not eligible for offset credits, while those who just started these practices are.
A much better approach than promoting offset credits would be to use the revenues from a cap-and-trade auction of emissions allowances to support offset projects. In Davis's case, for example, he would receive no-till incentive payments, funded by auction revenues. The carbon frontier offers more effective ways than offset credits to harness market forces for environmental gains.
Union of Concerned Scientists Chicago, illinois
REPROCESSING'S PROLIFERATION RISK
In “The Future of GNEP” series (posted at www.thebulletin.org), Leonor Tomero criticizes the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) on a number of grounds. Chief among these is proliferation. Reprocessing under GNEP entails methods of transuranic separation including UREX+, COEX, and pyroprocessing. A recent Energy Department study led by Charles Bathke of Los Alamos National Laboratory suggested that these methods are not as proliferation resistant as their proponents claim. If the United States resumes commercial reprocessing as envisioned under GNEP, Tomero believes that other countries will follow suit and that an increase in this type of reprocessing activity would be difficult to safeguard.
GNEP proponents who disagree with Tomero point to the already well-developed reprocessing capabilities of countries such as Russia, Germany, Britain, Belgium, and South Korea, arguing that what's needed is an international framework that manages this know-how–and that GNEP is that framework.
As skepticism over GNEP grows and funding for it dwindles, maybe it's time to take another look at the domestic U.S. problem that was the impetus for GNEP in the first place: spent light water fuel at U.S. nuclear utility sites. If transuranic separation of the spent fuel is not acceptable, then what is the alternative?
One alternate reprocessing technique is burning the spent fuel from pressurized water reactors directly in CANDU heavy water reactors. Called DUPIC, this fuel cycle initiative is the result of a joint effort between the United States, South Korea, and Canada. It involves mechanical, not separative, reconditioning of the spent fuel–transuranics are not separated from the fission products. The DUPIC fuel cycle is thereby as proliferation resistant as the current once-through fuel cycle. And research suggests it is less costly than separative reprocessing methods.
Much of the resistance to DUPIC comes from those who, like Tomero, claim that CANDU reactors, because of their on-power refueling capability, present a greater proliferation risk than light water reactors. In fact, CANDU presents no more of a proliferation risk. The already small proliferation risks posed by these reactors can be further reduced with appropriate international safeguards. This is where anti-proliferation advocates should focus their energies.
Ottawa, Canada
SCIENCE CAN HAVE INFLUENCE
The timely article by Neal Lane, “Science in the Seat of Power” (July/August 2008 Bulletin), asks the question: “How can the U.S. science and engineering community be brought together to speak with one voice?” One answer is to model our efforts after the highly developed techniques used by the big aerospace and defense companies to make sure their products and programs are clearly explained to defense acquisitions personnel in Congress and the rest of the government. I spent my career as a scientist working for large aerospace companies in California, and I witnessed the process firsthand.
Copying these strategies might be a way to prevent “more urgent and politically consequential matters … to crowd out longer-term issues like science in Congress and the White House.” The highly developed techniques are there, we just need to tap into them.
CORRECTION
The September/October 2008 Bulletin Interview with Exelon CEO John Rowe on the economics of building new nuclear power plants quoted Rowe as saying: “If by 2016 or 2018 we have 48 new plants, that would be a lot.” Rowe's comment should have read: “If by 2016 or 2018 we have 4-8 new plants, that would be a lot.” We regret this editing error.