I think readers of this blog would like this. Someone created a persona of Stephen Hawking as a rapper.

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Goodness. Via “Danger Room,”:http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/nuke-bomber-fail/#more-57319 we learn that the blog “In from the Cold”:http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-did-barksdale-pass.html obtained “a report”:http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2011/09/BarksdaleNSIReportSep2007.pdf about a 2007 Limited Nuclear Surety Inspection of the 2nd Bomb Wing at Barksdale AFB.

I can’t speak to In From the Cold’s discussion of whether the 2BW deserved the “Satisfactory” grade granted by the inspectors, but the post accurately describes some of the report’s more lurid details:

bq.. According to evaluators, the first attempt at aircraft generation was terminated after 14 hours, due to problems with weapons handling trailers and generators.

A second try at aircraft generations also failed. The exercise was initially delayed (due to uneven pavement under the B-52 weapons bay), prompting a relocation of the aircraft. As the exercise continued, crews experienced more equipment problems. The second attempt was finally halted at the 15-hour point, when “critical faults” were discovered during post-load checks.

During the next attempt, the 2nd BW attempted to generate two aircraft. The third B-52 was rejected due to a critical fault during post-load checks. Ground crews managed to generate the fourth bomber, but not before another equipment problem (with a lift arm) required a weapons demate/mate.

All told, Barksdale personnel spent more than 30 hours generating a single nuclear-capable aircraft.

p. There are other interesting items in the report; it’s well worth your time.

Apologies to _The Wire_…

As I wrote a “couple of days ago,”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2123/nsa-911-docs-and-wmd “The National Security Archive posted some declassified documents on Sept 11. Most of them have nothing to do with WMD, but there are a couple of exceptions.”

This one is a “November 2001 memo”:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB358a/doc21.pdf from then-SecState Powell to President Bush about a forthcoming meeting between Bush and then-Pakistani President Musharraf. None of the issues described in the memo will be new to those who follow Pakistan, but I think the part regarding proliferation is historically interesting.

Recounting an October meeting he had with Musharraf, Powell wrote that he had told the Pakistani president that “lifting the nuclear-related sanctions ” on “9/22/01”:http://usinfo.org/wf-archive/2001/010924/epf103.htm “did not signal a lessening of our concerns or a green light to further nuclear or missile procurements.” Given Pakistan’s advances in its nuclear weapons and missile programs, I’m not sure how much of Powell’s message was heeded.

It appears, however, that the main US concern at that point was proliferation _from_ Pakistan. Powell wrote that “we need to stress the importance of exercising restraint and terminating any onward proliferation.” He also told Bush that

bq. In Islamabad, I raised our proliferation concerns, [redacted] with Musharraf.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to fill in that blank, but I’m still curious.

Jeffrey has been good enough to “post”:http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4513/aq-khan-documents#more-1882 the Khan network documents from “this report”:http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/09/16/exclusive-new-aq-khan-documents-suggest-pakistan-spread-nuclear-weapon/ by Fox News, thereby saving me the trouble and providing some good commentary to boot. He also “asked”:http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4518/where-are-the-rest-of-the-khan-docs about the whereabouts of documents which have apparently formed the basis for other related news stories.

The National Security Archive “posted some declassified documents”:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB358a/index.htm on Sept 11. Most of them have nothing to do with WMD, but there are a couple of exceptions.

“This one”:http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB358a/doc13.pdf is a 9/30/01 memo for the President from then-SecDef Rumsfeld. The memo is about the aims of U.S. military action post- the 2001 attacks. Right near the end, it states

bq. The regimes of such [terrorist-supporting] States should see that it will be fatal to host terrorists who attack the U.S. as was done on September 11. If the war does not significantly change the world’s political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim. There is value in being clear on the order of magnitude of the necessary change.

The memo goes on to list some goals that the United States should “envision,” one of them being “dismantlement or destruction of WMD capabilities in [redacted] and [redacted].” Everyone can fill in their own blanks, I suppose.

Happy Sunday.

So the IAEA “announced”:http://iaea.org/newscenter/news/2011/cleanlabext.html a few days back that it has opened the Safeguards Clean Laboratory Extension, which is part of the Environmental Sample Laboratory located at SAL. That laboratory, as the IAEA “explains,”:http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/SV/Safeguards/analytical-services.html analyzes environmental samples in order to help “detect the absence of undeclared material and activities in” IAEA member-states.

This is distinct from the Nuclear Material Laboratory, which is also located at SAL and analyzes nuclear material samples collected from member-states’ declared nuclear facilities in order to “verify States’ nuclear material accountancy declarations.”

Anyway, the clean lab extension houses a new Large Geometry Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometer (LG-SIMS) which, according to the IAEA, is pretty amazing:

bq. If human vision were as acute as the LG-SIMS, we would be able to sort through millions of objects in the asteroid belt to detect a single tennis ball. This level of resolution is needed when the Clean Laboratory Extension is analysing minute particles whose weight is measured in “femtograms”. That unit is equivalent to a quadrillionth of a gram, roughly 10 000 times smaller than a grain of sand, or about the weight of a human cell. Such precise analysis allows forensic experts in Seibersdorf to determine a uranium isotope particle’s distinctive fingerprint. Those clues then yield information about where it was mined, how it was processed and to which level of enrichment.

That paragraph is IAEA-speak for “dog’s bollocks.”

You all know that ISIS and “Arms Control Wonk”:http://lewis.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/4447/iaea-dg-reports-on-iran-dprk posted the IAEA reports on “North Korea”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_DPRK_2Sept2011.pdf and “Iran.”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_2Sept2011.pdf

Each document has several interesting aspects, but I was struck by the section of the N Korea report which explains that Libya told the IAEA in 2003 that it had imported from the AQK network “two small cylinders containing UF6 in September 2000, and one large cylinder containing UF6 in February 2001.”

This is significant, I think, because it’s the first time that the IAEA has confirmed that the natural UF6 in the large container “very likely” originated in North Korea. That wasn’t “so clear”:http://www.armscontrol.org/print/1763 a few years ago. This also, of course, indicates that North Korea had non-trivial “undeclared conversion capabilities prior to 2001.” There have been question marks about such a capability.

Interestingly, the report says that the UF6 in the other two containers probably didn’t come from N Korea, even though all three containers were in that country. The report does not say where this UF6 came from.

Not bad for one paragraph.

*UPDATE:*

Ah. ISIS “noticed this as well.”:http://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/isis-analysis-of-iaea-safeguards-report-on-the-democratic-peoples-republic-/

Well.

The IAEA is “hosting”:http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/2011/prn201112.html the Forum on Experience of Possible Relevance to the Creation of a Nuclear-Weapons-Free Zone in the Middle East 11/21-22. Interesting.