Tri-Valley Cares needs to be on this if they aren't already. We need to make sure that NNSA and LLNL does not make good on promises to pursue such stupid ideas as doing Plutonium experiments on NIF. The stupidity arises from the fact that a huge population is placed at risk in the short and long term. Why do this kind of experiment in a heavily populated area? Only a moron would push that kind of imbecile area. Do it somewhere else in the god forsaken hills of Los Alamos. Why should the communities in the Bay Area be subjected to such increased risk just because the lab's NIF has failed twice and is trying the Hail Mary pass of doing an SNM experiment just to justify their existence? Those Laser EoS techniques and the people analyzing the raw data are all just BAD anyways. You know what comes next after they do the experiment. They'll figure out that they need larger samples. More risk for the local population. Stop this imbecilic pursuit. They wan...
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Russia, U.S. Play Down Potential Delays on New START
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009
Global Security Newswire
Russia and the United States have sought to alleviate concerns about possible consequences if the sides fail to agree on a successor to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) ahead of the 1991 pact's expiration on Dec. 5, Russia Today reported yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 16).
U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreed in July to cut their nations' respective deployed strategic nuclear arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 warheads, down from the 2,200-weapon limit the two states are required to meet by 2012 under another treaty. The leaders also pledged to restrict strategic delivery vehicles on each side to between 500 and 1,100.
Negotiations have reportedly been complicated by differences on several issues, including Moscow's desire to curb U.S. monitoring of Russian mobile ICBMs and to count conventionally armed strategic missiles under the limits of the new agreement.
You can't maintain, you can't upgrade - eventually you have to dismantle those weapons.
When you dismantle all your weapons, then you've disarmed.
Russia must be experiencing mixed feelings right now.
On one hand they are getting fewer warheads pointed at them and promises of even less if new treaties are ratified.
On the other hand they have an opponent with an aging arsenal whose reliability will increasingly come into question. That could prompt the US to use two warheads instead of one to ensure a kill on a given target - raising the odds of escalation from a limited to full-scale exchange.
If I were them I'd be pushing the US to reduce the count, but upgrade the inventory.