We can't have nuclear POWER, but we can have nuclear TOURISM?

This is a bizarre bit of news from Washington State: Manhattan Project reactor nears landmark status.

YAKIMA, Wash. - The National Park Service's advisory board on Tuesday recommended designating the world's first full-scale nuclear reactor, which produced plutonium for one of two bombs dropped on Japan during World War II, as a national historic landmark.

The unanimous vote Tuesday brings former weapons workers and local residents one step closer to preserving the historic B Reactor at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation. A final decision on the reactor rests with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.

"This is a great step toward preserving both the B Reactor and an important chapter of our nation's history," Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement announcing the decision. "The B Reactor will give future generations a chance to learn about the important contribution this region made to the World War II effort and the service and sacrifice of the Hanford community."

I support the development of new nuclear power generation plants -- new ones, based on technologies far safer than the ones used at the Hanford Reservation. I don't think anyone should go near Hanford if they don't absolutely have to.

The government shut down B Reactor in 1968 and decommissioned it.

Eight other reactors were built at Hanford to produce plutonium for the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal. The remnants of that effort today make Hanford the nation's most contaminated nuclear site, with cleanup costs expected to top $50 billion.

Five reactors at the site already have been dismantled and cocooned, which involves removing extra buildings around the reactors, demolishing all but the shield walls surrounding the reactor cores and sealing them in concrete.

But I have to ask: since Sen. Murray thinks that obsolete nuclear reactors are safe enough for vacationing families, does she support a large-scale program to replace fossil-fuel-based electricity generating plants with nuclear plants? And building enough extra nuke plants to generate sufficient hydrogen to replace petroleum-based fuels for transportation? With its long coastline, Washington State is an ideal place to build clusters of nukes for hydrogen production. Aside from its benefits in reducing petroleum dependence and pollution, that would be a much bigger boost to Washington's economy than Hanford nuclear tourism.

Another backwards news story

Non-news from Iran about their latest stalling tactic:

Iran is ready to provide answers on past suspicious nuclear activities to the International Atomic Energy Agency within the next few months, the agency's head said Friday after meeting with the country's top nuclear negotiator.

But the Iranian official suggested the offer was conditional to an end of U.N. Security Council involvement in Iran's nuclear program. The council has already imposed two sets of sanctions on the Islamic republic over the past half year for its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment and is poised to impose new penalties.

Why can't we see a news story like this?

Coalition forces are ready to cease bombing sorties against Iranian military and nuclear development facilities within the next few months, the U.N. Secretary-General said Friday after meeting with the country's top nuclear negotiator.

But the U.N. official suggested the offer of a cease-fire was conditional to the end of the Iranian nuclear program. The Islamic Republic has already escalated its nuclear program many times in response to the U.N. Security Council's sanctions for that program and says it is ready to rebuild its program when the bombing stops.

It would be refreshing, to say the least.

Time to shatter the centrifuges

Iran says it has enough uranium in a form enriched enough to be within months of building a "Little Boy" bomb.

Iran claimed today to have stockpiled 100kg of enriched uranium, enough in theory to create two nuclear bombs of the kind that destroyed Hiroshima.



A war exhibition held in Iran in 2005

The news will once again stoke fears that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime is seeking to build a nuclear weapon.

Iran would need 50kg of weapons-grade uranium in order to make one nuclear weapon equal in power to the one dropped by the Americans in 1945.

So far, the regime’s uranium has only been enriched to the level needed for generating electricity in civilian nuclear power stations.

But if Iran chooses to enrich it to 84 per cent purity, it would reach weapons-grade level and become the essential material for building a bomb.

The United States possesses conventional bombs, MOABs, that can cause massive concussion. By creating a large artificial earthquake in Natanz, it should be possible to vibrate the centrifuges there enough to send them off-balance and cause them to shatter from their own momentum. Israel might be able to do the job with more conventional bombs, but I would rather see 18,700 pounds of high explosive in one fell swoop rather than nine 2,000-pound explosions in series.

UPDATE:

Hey! No take-backs!

Iran's Interior Ministry denied a report Friday quoting the minister as saying Iran has produced 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of enriched uranium. The ministry said he was misquoted.

The semiofficial ISNA news agency reported that the minister, Mostafa Pourmohammadi, also said Iran now has 3,000 hooked-up centrifuges actively enriching uranium.

The Interior Ministry later issued a statement denying Pourmohammadi made the comments reported by ISNA. The minister "only spoke about Iran's nuclear achievements and he did not mention amount of enriched uranium and the number of installed centrifuges," said the statement, carried on the Web site of the state broadcasting company. "The recently published report is denied."

Is this the old bluff-and-deny strategy? Probably not -- sounds more like the old I-showed-my-hand-too-soon blunder.