Nuclear Technology

I cannot help but call the attention of your readers to the implications of your editorial "A Way Out of the Nuclear-Power Jitters" (July 7). Might we be sending the wrong message to those Third World countries scrambling around the globe in search of nuclear weapons, if the U.S. Department of Energy picks a civilian reactor technology to produce tritium for nuclear warheads? Yet that is precisely the dangerous course you would have DOE follow in selecting the modular, high-temperature, gas-cooled technology for a new weapons reactor.

SEOUL - Despite earlier reports of technical difficulties, North Korea launched a long-range rocket Wednesday, and initial reports indicated that in this fourth attempt since 1998, the regime in Pyongyang successfully deployed a satellite into orbit. If so, it would be a huge publicity coup for the new young leader, Kim Jong Un, and an embarrassment for rival South Korea, which has yet to establish a presence in space. The launch also caused some chagrin among intelligence analysts who were apparently misled by an announcement over the weekend that the missile launch would be delayed until later this month because of a technical glitch.

Some nuclear technology ordered by Libya for its former weapons program is missing, and the origin of other material is unclear, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. The Vienna-based agency's statement in a confidential report raised concerns about where the equipment is and whether North Korea could have been a provider.

A multi-front campaign to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon has been stalled for months by the distractions of a U.S. presidential campaign, Tehran's stop-and-go negotiating tactics and its role in deadly clashes in Syria and Gaza.  Now that President Obama has a fresh four-year mandate and Iran's influence with Middle East neighbors seems to be fading, Tehran is expected back at the negotiating table soon and, some observers believe, in a more constructive mood to resolve the nuclear standoff.

Vietnam has set up a nuclear technology center in Ho Chi Minh City to study how nuclear technology can help develop the national economy, Hanoi's Vietnam News Agency reported Tuesday. In a broadcast monitored in Tokyo, the agency said the center, under the direct guidance of the premier, will work in cooperation with the Dalat Nuclear Research Institute in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong and the Hanoi Nuclear Chemistry Center.

Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani on Sunday condemned the United States for forcing other countries not to cooperate with Tehran on nuclear projects, Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency reported. "America has frankly and boldly announced that the Islamic Republic of Iran has no right to use nuclear technology even for non-military goals," Rafsanjani said. U.S. military officials have expressed concern about a "military axis" involving Iran, Pakistan and China.

Mohamed ElBaradei, the chief U.N. nuclear inspector and a critic of U.S. claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, will meet with President Bush this week to discuss ways to tighten controls on nuclear technology and expertise. The meeting, requested by the White House, comes as the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is headed by ElBaradei, and nations worldwide search for the means to prevent advanced nuclear technology from being sold, as it was to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

Reykjavik has made more poignant the search by Harold Willens for a word to describe what he sees as our suicidal dependence on nuclear technology. Willens suggested technophilia , which means an abnormal attraction toward technology, and I suggested bombfix , meaning a fixed idea that nuclear weapons will save us. Willens is wrong to take this short-sighted view of technology, according to W. Ward Nelson of Clovis.

Two government ministers in the Netherlands acknowledged Monday that highly sensitive nuclear technology developed by a Dutch company may have been transferred to Libya and North Korea along with Iran and Pakistan. The disclosure in the Dutch parliament marked the first public confirmation of assertions that centrifuge technology for enriching uranium apparently found its way to Libya and North Korea. It was already known that Pakistan and Iran had the technology.

The White House is growing increasingly worried that Russia's political and economic crises will increase the flow of nuclear technology and know-how out of the former Soviet Union from a trickle to a flood. One of President Clinton's top foreign policy advisors said this week that there is a danger that the "leakage" of nuclear technology from Russia, which began with the breakup of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, could become a "hemorrhage."

Los Angeles Times WASHINGTON - When Susan Yip stood before a federal judge in San Antonio last month, she apologized tearfully for her role in smuggling American technology to Iran. Yip, a Taiwanese businesswoman, was sentenced Oct. 24 to two years in prison after pleading guilty to obtaining or trying to obtain more than $2.6 million worth of parts and materials that could be used in nuclear weapons, missile guidance systems and radio jammers. The scheme involved 599 transactions with 63 U.S. companies.

The 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran this week will draw dignitaries and representatives from more than 100 countries -- 35 heads of state, including Mohamed Morsi, the current chair of the movement and the first democratically elected president of Egypt, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. For the next three years, Iran will serve as the chair of the movement, which was formed in 1961 to counterbalance the superpowers. In early August, Iran hosted a high-level meeting that included Russia on the crisis in Syria.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. There's a party in the Asia Pacific, and the United States wants India to be its date. As U.S. foreign policy "pivots" away from the Middle East and Europe and toward Asia, U.S. officials are doing everything they can to cozy up to the nation that Mark Twain once called "the cradle of the human race. " America's courtship - a bipartisan effort - has included the great-power equivalent of sending flowers (civil nuclear technology underGeorge W. Bush)

Provocative opinion pieces from newspapers around the globe: Michael Gerson in the Washington Post has an interesting take on President Obama's 2012 campaign, which is clearly devoid of the inspirational sparks he ignited in 2008. To Gerson, the "brand" of the Obama campaign is ruthlessness, the kind of class-based, divisive techniques that could be used by any liberal politician. That seems surprising and disappointing, coming from a guy who used to represent hope and change.

President Obama on Monday made a direct appeal to the leaders of North Korea and Iran, urging them to "have the courage" to step away from their nuclear weapons programs, rather than follow a path toward greater isolation and economic distress. "You can continue down the road you are on, but we know where that leads," Obama said in a speech that balanced notes of diplomatic persuasion with hard-edged pressure. Addressing new leaders in Pyongyang, Obama warned that their current path would lead to "more broken dreams, more isolation and ever more distance between the people of North Korea and the dignity and opportunity they deserve.

The hard-to-predict and often-threatening plans of North Korea shadowed President Obama's nuclear security summit as soon as he arrived in Seoul, injecting a Cold War note to a meeting designed to deal with newer threats of terrorism and the spread of nuclear materials. The opening hours of the trip reprised similar journeys by his last two predecessors, reflecting the Korean peninsula's status as one of the last vestiges of what used to be a worldwide divide. Like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama traveled to the demilitarized zone that separates north and south, donning binoculars at a forward outpost only yards form the armistice line.

A summit between President Clinton and Russia's President Boris N. Yeltsin ended Wednesday with largely cosmetic concessions from the Russians and palpable disappointment on the U.S. side. Yeltsin agreed to drop a proposed sale by Moscow of uranium-enrichment equipment to Iran and to participate in discussions about the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the nations of the former Soviet empire. But these concessions were the minimum hopes of U.S.

Last week, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, confirmed a no-longer-surprising fact: the Pentagon has sent the White House a menu of options for going to war with Iran. But that doesn't mean the military thinks bombing Iran would be a good idea. "It's not prudent at this point to decide to attack Iran," Schwartz's boss, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on CNN last month, adding that his advice applied to Israel as well as the United States.

A high-stakes international standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions came no closer a resolution Saturday as the latest round of talks aimed at curtailing the controversial program ended in failure in Turkey. The two-day meeting in Istanbul between Iran and six world powers was in effect stalled from the very start, with Tehran insisting that it has the right to continue enriching uranium and demanding an end to United Nations sanctions. The United States and its allies believe that Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons.