Comments on Gone Nuclear: Open Debate on RRW - SciAm Style

When Nanos made his asinine reference to "look at ...

2007-05-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

When Nanos made his asinine reference to "look at the person next to you, he (or she?) might be a butthead or cowboy", it was all I could do not to want to stage a performance where the whole fukkin auditorium stood up and did a marine-corps style "sound-off" with alternating cries of "Beavis!", "Butthead!", "Beavis", "Butthead!"...

But that would have been juvenile. So we didn't

If we label those we disagree with as "juvenile," ...

2007-05-02T07:41:00.000-07:00

If we label those we disagree with as "juvenile," does that then make us mature? What if we use the butt-head and cowboy label instead?

this is ridiculously juvenile

2007-05-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

this is ridiculously juvenile

Well said.This is why We're proud of Pedicini and ...

2007-05-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

Well said.

This is why We're proud of Pedicini and Martz having their say and of the SciAm blog trying to open a more public conversation.

We noted this on the SciAm Blog.. I hope they will take the bait.

Where else can we promote this discussion?

The national conversation on the role of nuclear w...

2007-05-01T21:06:00.000-07:00

The national conversation on the role of nuclear weapons and/or a change in policy towards disarmament will just plain not occur.

1) We are in a presidential election year.
2) After that, we will be in some other election cycle (House of Reps, Senate, Presidential again...)

WMD is not a popular topic among candidates. Since our government consists of perpetual candidates,...

If a real discussion is to start, it would have to start with the scientists and designers at the weapons labs and at other respected (said with a bit of grimace) institutions of higher learning. After all, one can say that it was this very community (scientists) that got us into the nuclear club (e.g., Einstein, Oppenheimer...).

As a PhD at LANL, I vote for a sane policy that adopts a real risk management approach and accepts the possibility of failure of a significant number of our existing systems without backup. After all, we have lots of spares.

I predict that RRW will fail politically, and that it will effectively take down the LEP program it was intended to replace. No new pool of funds will emerge for complex or stockpile transformation so the funding will be taken out of the current stockpile maintenance fund. When the transformation fails, we will realize (too late) that we cannot go back to LEPs. Now THAT's a subtle way to get to disarmament!