corrente

We've often noted the malAdminsitration's fundamental unseriousness on the issue of loose nukes ("Reckless Indifference to the Nightmare Scenario").

Apparently, not even an election can change their attitude. (What's it going to take? No, please, don't answer that.)

Read the following, and weep:

MANGYSTAU, Kazakhstan (AP) - In a storage pool at a mothballed nuclear power plant on the shores of the Caspian Sea rests a key ingredient for anyone seeking to build a nuclear weapon: Containers of spent atomic fuel with enough plutonium to make dozens of bombs.

Despite international concern about the waste at the Mangyshlai nuclear power plant, plans to transport it away from the Caspian shore have stalled in a dispute between Kazakhstan and the United States over where and how it should be removed.

The fuel has been cooling for so long and was so lightly irradiated to begin with that it is no longer radioactive enough to be "self-protecting" against theft, according to the Washington-based Nuclear Threat Initiative, an anti-proliferation organization.

"Thieves could load it into a boat and take it away without necessarily receiving radiation doses that would immediately be incapacitating," the NTI wrote on its Web site.

The Kazakhs want U.S. help in a $40 million project to move the spent fuel to a safer site, but those efforts are deadlocked. The Kazakhs want to take the fuel to Semipalatinsk, the former nuclear weapons test site in eastern Kazakhstan.

But the United States wants it shipped to Russia, where other radioactive materials were sent.

The Kazakhs planned to build single-use casks to transport the waste and then store it in reinforced underground bunkers. But the United States persuaded them to use dual-use casks in which the fuel can be both transported and stored.

However, work on the dual-use casks is on hold, and the Kazakhs continue to work on single-use casks.

"No work is being done on the dual-use casks because no funding is coming from the United States. And we cannot understand why," said Irina Tajibayeva, executive director of the Kazakhstan government's Center for the Safety of Nuclear Technologies.

Given the security at the plant, any potential theft likely would have to be at least partly an inside job. Pugachev noted that employees' salaries are minuscule, and he said he makes 20 times less than a guard at a U.S. nuclear facility.

Pugachev also is well aware of the risks of loose nuclear materials, such as from a "dirty bomb" - a device that combines conventional explosives with radioactive material.

"I know how to do it," he said. (via AP)

You know, I read something like this, and words just fail me. It's like being clubbed over the head.

We can give away trillions to the rich in tax cuts, but we can't spend $40 million to make sure dozens of loose nukes never get built (any one of which could take out a city).

And if a loose nuke goes off, one obvious scenario is a military government. You'd think that Bush would be doing everything possible to prevent that. Why isn't he?

And if a loose nuke goes off, it's the loss of a major American city. Sure they vote Democratic, but it's all one America, right? So you'd expect Bush would be doing everything possible to protect all of us? Why isn't it he?