Free Republic

In each trial, 192 laser beams briefly fired into a half-inch-long gold cylinder. The cylinder held a tiny ball that contained the fuel, which was a mix of two kinds of hydrogen, called deuterium and tritium. The energy from the lasers kicked off a process that compressed the ball by an amount akin to squeezing a basketball down to the size of a pea, said Debbie Callahan, an author of the paper. That created the extremely high pressure and temperatures needed to get the hydrogen atoms to fuse. It was all over in the blink of an eye, with the...

The federal government’s intrusions with onerous regulations, taxpayer-funded subsidies, and mandates have resulted in economic inefficiencies in the energy marketplace. Congressman Jeff Duncan’s (R–SC) Energy Exploration and Production to Achieve National Demand (EXPAND) Act would remove or prevent many of the federal government’s interferences and allow the energy sector to operate more freely. Below are 10 provisions in the legislation that would benefit American families and the economy at large. 1. Opens Access to America’s Resources. Production of oil and natural gas in the U.S. is booming, but large swaths of federal lands and waters with abundant resources are locked...

Expanding his attack on the administration's nuclear deal with Iran, Sen. Ted Cruz Thursday said that President Obama should end talks, demand Tehran give up its nuclear program immediately and use military force if the terrorist nation doesn't give in. A "responsible president," the Texas Republican told a conference on Iran's grab for a nuclear weapon, "would stand up and say unequivocally, in terms that allow no confusion, 'Under no circumstances will the nation of Iran be allowed to acquire nuclear weapon capability, and they will either halt now or we will use every step necessary including direct military force...

President Obama has repeatedly promised to do whatever it takes to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb. If there is no other choice, he says, he will resort to force. In a March 2012 interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, the president famously rejected the alternative policy, namely, allowing Iran to go nuclear and then trying to contain it. He emphasized the point dramatically: “[A]s president of the United States,” he said, “I don’t bluff.” Really? Suppose this statement was just a show of toughness, timed to keep supporters of Israel on his side during the 2012 campaign season. Suppose that,...

<p>The Navy is investigating cheating allegations against about one-fifth of its trainers at a school for naval nuclear power reactor operators.</p> <p>It is the second exam-cheating scandal to hit the military this year, on top of disclosures of ethical lapses at all ranks in the military as it transitions from more than a decade of war-fighting.</p>

The number of Air Force servicemembers implicated in a scandal involving alleged cheating on tests of nuclear missile launch operations has roughly doubled from the 34 initially cited by the Air Force, officials said Tuesday. It wasn't immediately clear whether the additional 30-plus airmen suspected of being involved in cheating on proficiency tests are alleged to have participated in the cheating directly or were involved indirectly. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the information by name while the investigation is ongoing. The Air Force announced on Jan. 15 that while it was...

State officials plan to update the way they consider environmental and health effects when determining the overall cost of energy production, a move that could help guide decisions ranging from the fate of aging power plants to using cleaner sources of energy. The state Public Utilities Commission has agreed to update the way it considers costs, the St. Cloud Times reported . That could mean taking into account issues such as climate change, infant mortality and emergency room visits. "What this would do is to cause Minnesota to take a hard look before investments are made in power plants so...

American intelligence and security agencies are not currently capable of detecting when foreign nations are building nuclear weapons or ramping up their existing programs, according to a newly released Pentagon report that faults a range of U.S. agencies. “The nation is not yet organized or fully equipped” to detect clandestine nuclear activities across the globe, and in most cases “current solutions are either inadequate, or more often, do not exist,” according to the report, which was compiled over three years by the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board.

A Republican takeover of the Senate this fall could scuttle one of President Obama’s biggest second term goals — a nuclear deal with Iran. Republicans have lambasted the interim agreement with Iran, calling for the Senate to move an Iran sanctions bill. The House last year passed a measure in an overwhelming and bipartisan 400-20 vote. Both the Obama administration and Iran have warned moving such a measure could kill a final deal. A number of Democrats have also criticized the interim accord, which lifted $6 billion in sanctions on Iran in exchange for a commitment to restrictions on enriching...

In a televised interview on Wednesday, Jan. 22, Iran’s foreign minister said that a fact sheet distributed by the White House mischaracterized what Iran agreed to do in the Interim Nuclear Agreement. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, told CNN’s chief national security correspondent that the Obama administration “tried to create a false impression” by claiming that Iran had agreed to “dismantle” the machinery that enabled it to enrich uranium above five percent. The Iranian diplomat said that he was “not interested” in playing verbal games, while the White House was engaged in “underplaying its concessions and overplaying Iranian commitments.”...

Foreign Minister Zarif of Iran said on CNN that the White House is getting the nuclear deal wrong -- and that they don't have to give up anything: Said the Iranian foreign minister, "The White House version both underplays the concessions and overplays Iranian commitment. And I'm not interested in that. I'm simply saying, why don't we all stick to what we agreed? Why do we need to produce different texts?" CNN reporter: "Explain, then, to our viewers, what's different in terms of Iran's commitment to what you agreed to and what the White House says you agreed to?" The...

JERUSALEM, Israel -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off Iran's purported agreement to stop enriching uranium above 5 percent. Speaking before Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper addressed the Knesset, Netanyahu told parliamentarians the Islamic Republic will resume uranium enrichment at a time of its choosing. "The agreement in Geneva did away with the 20 percent stop, but left the train on its track and enables Iran to upgrade the locomotive by developing new centrifuges so when the day comes, it can leap in a very short time to the final stop on an express track, without stopping at an...

Updated (Jan 19, 2014 at 01:45 am) The pattern is not completely clear, and there are pieces missing from the puzzle, but I have found enough bits of evidence to convince me that it is more likely than not that someone purposely initiated the Three Mile Island (TMI) accident. This is a difficult story to tell; it’s not easy to revise history. It’s even harder to it successfully when there is sure to be disbelief, dismissal, and efforts to discredit. I prefer being respected and strive to avoid the potential of being marginalized as a crackpot. However, I feel a...

Should you be in the unfortunate position of being in the area when a nuclear bomb explodes, new research suggests rather than 'sheltering in place' as many emergency programs insist, your best bet for survival might be to run away from the blast. Sheltering in place is not always the best survival strategy after a nuclear detonation. If you can reach higher quality shelter in less than 30 minutes, you should go for it. If out in the open, you need to find any shelter at all as quickly as possible.

Released on January 16th, the White House Summary fails -- again -- to deal with Iran's continuing development of nuclear weaponry.  Iran has blasted the summary as "one sided;" what does that mean? According to the White House Summary, What Iran Has Committed To DoOn January 20th, the IAEA will report on the current status of Iran's nuclear program, and particularly on its uranium enrichment program and the Arak reactor.  The IAEA will also report on several specific steps that Iran has committed to take by or on the first day of implementation, including: Halting production of near-20% enriched uranium and disabling the...

Just what we need, another arms race. China's stepping up its bid for ballistic missile superiority, having just successfully test-fired the country's first hypersonic missile delivery vehicle, one capable of penetrating American air defenses to potentially deliver nuclear warheads. The Pentagon is not amused. The WU-14 hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) is part of China's extremely secretive missile development program, which has been quietly modernizing the country's conventional and nuclear missile systems. The missile test itself was not broadcast among any public channels but was detected, an anonymous Pentagon official confirmed with the Washington Free Beacon, flying at extremely high speeds...

37 nuclear missile launch officers are now being investigated under drug suspicions, according to Fox

In the spring of 2006, a veteran Democratic senator visiting Boston was asked at a small gathering what the Democratic Party’s strategy was to address the advancing specter of Iranian nuclear capability. “I don’t know,” he confessed. “With any luck Israel will do something about it and the rest of us will publicly blame Israel.” The senator was not being snide. He was being candid: For many Democrats, the Iranian nuclear issue is suffused with, if not dominated by, wishful thinking. For the Democratic left, economic sanctions on Iran have been regarded with ambivalence. In late 2007, as the Democratic...

In March of 2011, an undersea earthquake sent tsunamis thundering across Japan, killing nearly 20,000 people and creating the most expensive natural disaster in history. Among the casualities was the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, which was almost completely submerged by the tsunamis; an unprecedented event. Power was lost (obviously), cooling systems stopped, and the net result was a complete meltdown of three of the plant's reactor cores. It was a perfect storm of worst case scenarios. And now, even years afterward, some are calling it a worldwide radiation disaster, worse than even Chernobyl, that will produce a staggering death...

US Vice President Joe Biden when he met Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday night, Jan. 13, refused to level with him on the detailed agreements which the Americans claimed were reached by the six powers and Iran in their talks earlier this week on the implementation of their first-stage Geneva accord. This is reported by debkafile’s Washington and Jerusalem sources. It was the first time US President Barack Obama personally vetoed a briefing to Israel on the content of the international nuclear negotiations he instigated - notwithstanding his private and public pledges to Netanyahu of “full transparency.” This secretiveness has...