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| US-China showdown looms over climate talks COPENHAGEN (AP) -- In a showdown between the world's two largest polluters, China accused the United States and other rich nations Tuesday of backsliding on commitments to fight global warming and the top American envoy declared the U.S. would not change its offer on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.... hosted.ap.org |
This is no smoking gun, nor Iranian bomb | Norman Dombey Nothing in the published 'intelligence documents' shows Iran is close to having nuclear weaponsSeven years ago Condoleezza Rice said "there will always be some uncertainty" in determining how close Iraq may be to obtaining a nuclear weapon, but "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud". Now the focus is on Iran, not Iraq. Iran's nuclear projects are in the news again. According to the Times last week, alleged "confidential intelligence documents" show Iran is working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb. The notes, the newspaper claims, describe "a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the component of a nuclear bomb that triggers an explosion". President Ahmadinejad yesterday denounced the documents as more American forgeries. But even if we take them as genuine, is this a real "smoking gun" – and what do the documents show anyway?In my opinion they should be read recognising the long Iranian interest in the physics of nuclear fusion. Jim Callaghan, then British foreign secretary, visited Iran in March 1976. The shah told him that he was particularly interested in the UK's fusion programme and "if any opportunity arose whereby Iran could come in on the programme, they would be happy to do so". That interest has continued for more than 30 years. In 1993 Iran agreed with China to co-operate in the study of fusion and there is an continuing programme of work in Tehran.Nuclear fusion is the mechanism whereby the sun shines and sustains life on earth. Nuclear reactors and atomic bombs rely on fission; hydrogen bombs rely on fusion. There are as yet no fusion reactors that produce energy because, even after 50 years of trying, more energy is needed to produce fusion than is obtained from the output. Nevertheless, industrialised countries persist in research in this field. At present the joint EU-US-Japan-China-India-Korea-Russia Iter project is building a fusion reactor prototype at Cadarache in France. Research in this area is allowed by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.The "intelligence documents" published by the Times describe a four-year project, so if the Iranians were to build a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon it is not being treated as a matter of urgency. By contrast, the Manhattan Project scientists arrived at Los Alamos in early 1943, and the Trinity test occurred in July 1945.Then the documents state that "policy is to develop co-operation with research and university centres in order to carry out the projects outside of the centre" and that samples are to be produced "by mutual co-operation … [then presented] to other research centres for marketing purposes". It is unlikely that nuclear weapon projects would be distributed among several universities, or weapon parts marketed to research centres.The documents call for two physicists with PhDs and two with masters degrees to carry out the work. That doesn't sound like a top priority national programme. That sounds more like a university research project.Then there is uranium deuteride, or UD3. According to the Times: "Critically, while other neutron sources have possible civilian uses, UD3 has only one application – to be the metaphorical match that lights a nuclear bomb." That is a surprising statement. In fact the document's only mention of UD3 states that it would prefer not to use it but to replace uranium with titanium. That gives a clue about what the Iranians are doing.Titanium deuteride is used to store deuterium gas so that the gas can be generated when it is heated. It seems to me, therefore, that the function of UD3 is to generate deuterium gas so that it can be used in a plasma focus neutron generator. The neutron generator could then produce isotopes for use by other laboratories, hence the reference to market samples. UD3 is not known to be used as a neutron initiator in nuclear weapons: it was not used as an initiator in American, British or Soviet weapons when those weapons were developed.So why the emphasis on UD3 as a initiator for a weapon? First, Abdul Qadeer Khan, the disgraced Pakistani scientist who stole centrifuge designs from the Dutch uranium enrichment plant at Almelo and began Pakistan's weapon project, claimed that UD3 was used as an initiator by Pakistan. Second, Chinese physicists reported they had imploded UD3 using chemical explosives and thus obtained a beam of neutrons. So the argument is that China now uses UD3 as an initiator, passed the design to Pakistan, which in turn passed it to Iran.This is possible, but not demonstrated by the documents. A neutron initiator for a weapon needs precise timing: this is difficult using implosion by chemical explosives. Khan is a highly unreliable source. The document does not discuss obtaining neutrons by implosion: it discusses using pulsed neutrons presumably obtained using oscillating magnetic fields.Perhaps I am wrong. Both fusion and fission physics involve processes which can be used either in military or civil applications. But I have read nothing in the documents published by the Times to be able to conclude that they are describing an initiator for a nuclear weapon.Nuclear weaponsIranPhysicsWeapons technologyMiddle EastMahmoud AhmadinejadNuclear powerThe TimesUS militaryPakistanChinaNetherlandsNorman Dombeyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Nestle rules out bid for Cadbury Food giant Nestle says it does not intend to table a bid for Cadbury, while Kraft changes the terms of its takeover offer. news.bbc.co.uk |
Brown may have survived. But the coup was a success | Seumas Milne After last week's comic opera putsch, Blairites are back in charge – and calling time on a timid social democratic turnThe battle for Labour's future is now on – in government, or far more likely out of it. That is the real message of last week's comic opera coup attempt against Gordon Brown, and its febrile aftermath. The putsch that wasn't has naturally been written off as yet another failure, for the obvious reason that the prime minister remains stubbornly in post.But that assumes ousting Brown was the main purpose of the plot. For most of those involved, as one senior minister argues, the unlikely prospect of changing the leader at such a late stage before an election was only a "small part of it". More serious was "positioning for the future" and changing the political direction of the government now. From that point of view, all the signs are that the coup has been a ringing success.Brown and his closest allies have been brought to heel, Blairite and Treasury orthodoxy has been re-established, and the government's recent crab-like shift towards a more recognisably social democratic stance has come to a juddering halt. That was encapsulated at Monday's meeting of Labour MPs when Lord Mandelson, whose powers now extend well beyond those of a mere deputy premier, smilingly accepted Brown's pledge that he was merely "one of a team" who would not now be interfering in other people's jobs – such as running the party's election campaign.Of course the conspirators were hopelessly inept. "If I'd have been organising it," a Downing Street insider comments, "Gordon would be out by now." Who in their right mind would have picked Geoff Hoon, defence secretary during the invasion of Iraq, and Patricia Hewitt, a former privatising health secretary now working for the private health sector, as the patsies for the operation – or allowed the reputation of the Blairite standbearer, David Miliband, to be sealed as a serial ditherer? Naturally, news of renewed infighting also immediately knocked back Labour's tentative polling recovery.But by exploiting the coup attempt to demand a change of direction, and making the prime minister's closest ally, Ed Balls, their fall guy, the cabinet's anti-Brown majority has unmistakably called time on the Keynesian-inspired and progressive tax measures that have won public support but caused such alarm in the City, Treasury and media.That was made clearest by Alistair Darling in the Times on Saturday. Not only did the chancellor pledge that his cuts would be the toughest for 20 years – tougher, indeed, than the Tories' – but he went out of his way to highlight his "well to do" background, insisting that opposition to "punitive taxation" was a "cornerstone of all our policies". Elsewhere, he promised that higher than expected growth would be used to cut the deficit faster, rather than shield public services.The target was clear enough. Those, notably Balls and the prime minister himself, who had argued in favour of setting Labour investment against Tory cuts, or pressed for more progressive taxation to pay for the crisis, had been put back in their box. After weeks in which their case has been absurdly caricatured as a "class war" or "core vote" strategy, all the signs are that reheated Blairism is back, with Brown dutifully mouthing its catch-all slogan of "aspiration".In reality, the core vote charge is a classic straw man attack. Labour has always depended on an electoral coalition of lower- and middle-income voters, though New Labour's neglect of its working class base and its refusal until last year to lay a finger on the swollen incomes of the wealthy has been a central factor in its haemorrhage of votes over a decade. The tentative moves to correct that failure have clearly proved too much: any hint of indulgence of traditional Labour voters can evidently not be tolerated.Both Brown and Balls were of course architects of New Labour and its fatal embrace of neoliberal economics, privatisation and "light-touch" regulation in the 1990s. But in their qualified resistance to the lemming-like rush for spending cuts, they are on the side of the angels. True, there has to be a credible plan for debt reduction once growth resumes, and there are risks that borrowing costs will rise as Bank of England life support is withdrawn.But both economically and politically, it makes far more sense to keep the emphasis on public spending and investment, without which the crisis would have already turned into an Irish-style slump. Private investment has collapsed and, as Mandelson himself argues, "growth is the best antidote to debt". Instead, in the wake of last week's internal coup, Labour has ditched the chance to go into the election as the anti-cuts party, is fighting on Tory territory, and appears determined to run a Dutch auction with the other main parties on who can slash the deficit fastest. It's the ghost of Labour governments past.Now they're back in charge of the government, the Blairites are setting out their stall to take control of the party after its expected defeat. David Miliband told Tuesday's cabinet meeting that Labour's early manifesto plans were not nearly radical enough, that a "game-changing" offer to the electorate was needed, including proportional representation and sweeping political reform. That was echoed in this week's Guardian article by James Purnell, who resigned in the last failed coup and is now looking for allies on the centre-left.But for all the talk of a new radicalism, neither man appears prepared to turn his back on New Labour's calamitous embrace of corporate power and its besetting failure to confront private wealth and inequality. Indeed, Purnell goes out of his way to emphasise his support in cabinet for talking about cuts and makes a case for a market in schools providers and a less powerful state that strikingly overlaps with the approach of David Cameron's Conservatives.Despite everything that has happened in the past couple of years, the majority of the cabinet remain wedded to a model of free market capitalism and corporate privilege that simply isn't delivering the goods to their voters, core or otherwise, while bailed-out executives in state-owned banks still stuff their pockets with impunity. Their dominance has been strengthened still further in the past week. Unless that grip is broken, the crisis of representation in British politics can only deepen.Gordon BrownLabourLabour party leadershipAlistair DarlingEd BallsDavid MilibandPeter MandelsonSeumas Milneguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Economic growth 'cannot continue' Continuing global economic growth "is not possible" if nations are to tackle climate change, a report warns. news.bbc.co.uk |