Free Republic

Gundremmingen plant in southern Germany was found to be riddled with computer viruses, including those which would allow attackers remote access to equipment for moving nuclear fuel rods. Viruses, known as W32.Ramnit and Conficker, were discovered at the plant, which is located 75 miles northwest of Munich. W32.Ramnit has the potential to give an attacker remote control over a system when it is connected to the internet and is also designed to steal files from infected computers. The virus could be used by groups such as Islamic State to obtain nuclear secrets, bringing them one step closer to building a...

5:30 A.M., Monday July 16th, 1945: The day dawned brighter than ever before over the New Mexico desert. But it was not the Sun's soothing rays that set the landscape alight; it was the radiant flash of the very first atomic bomb. Trinity, the nuclear offspring of the Manhattan Project, detonated with the force of 21,000 tons of TNT. The accompanying fireball reached temperatures of 8,430 degrees Kelvin, hotter than the surface of the sun, and sent a mushroom cloud of smoke and debris soaring more than seven miles into the sky. That day, every human on the planet was...

North Korea gearing up for another 'nuclear test' after failed missile launch April 16, 2016 08:27 SGT By Jacob J North Korean leader Kim Jong-un suffered a double whammy as a medium-range rocket launch failed and ally China castigated the reclusive regime for its military misadventures. However, the setback will only spur the dictator to adopt a tougher posturing in a bid to shore up power and Pyongyang was more likely than not to carry out a fifth nuclear test, observers have said. South Korean officials and international experts said the chances of North Korea conducting another nuclear test were...

On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima. While there meeting with this G-7 counterparts, Kerry strongly hinted that his visit was a precursor to a visit to the site of the first nuclear bombing by President Barack Obama next month. The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama is responsible for drastically increasing the chance of nuclear war. Indeed, Obama’s own actions lend easily to the conclusion that he wishes to do penance for America’s decision to attack Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs, (and so...

Then and now, Obama and his advisers argued that ballistic missiles are not part of the mullahs' nuclear project. This claim, which made little sense at the time, makes no sense whatsoever today. On Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry visited Hiroshima. While there meeting with this G-7 counterparts, Kerry strongly hinted that his visit was a precursor to a visit to the site of the first nuclear bombing by President Barack Obama next month. The irony of course is that for all his professed commitment to ridding the world of nuclear weapons, Obama is responsible for drastically increasing...

“Cheap natural gas is killing coal.” While that headline has been written dozens of times over the last few years, it continues to be true. In fact, natural gas has become even cheaper over the past year, and the slow death of coal is poised to accelerate. In a new report from Moody’s, and reported on by SNL, the ratings agency predicts that cheap natural gas could lead to another massive wave of coal-fired power plant closures over the next year and a half.

Global military spending reached almost $1.7 trillion in 2015, marking a year-on-year increase for the first time since 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms expenditure around the world. The United States remained far and away the top spender, which despite a dip from 2014, accounted for more than a third of total global spending. It was followed by China and then, perhaps surprisingly, Saudi Arabia, which supplanted Russia in third place.

WASHINGTON, April 4 (Yonhap) -- Recent satellite imagery shows "suspicious activity" at North Korea's nuclear complex in what could be a sign that Pyongyang might be trying to harvest weapons-grade plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, a U.S. website monitoring the North said Monday. The website 38 North said in a report that the satellite imagery has shown "exhaust plumes" from a thermal plant used to heat the Yongbyon nuclear complex's Radiochemical Laboratory, where spent nuclear fuel rods are reprocessed to extract plutonium. "During the past five weeks, exhaust plumes on two, possibly three, occasions were observed at the Radiochemical Laboratory's...

U.S. President Barack Obama urged world leaders on Friday to do more to safeguard vulnerable nuclear facilities to prevent “madmen” from groups like Islamic State from getting their hands on an atomic weapon or a radioactive “dirty bomb.” Speaking at a nuclear security summit in Washington, Obama said the world faced a persistent and evolving threat of nuclear terrorism despite progress in reducing such risks. “We cannot be complacent,” he said. Obama said no group had succeeded in obtaining bomb materials but that al Qaeda had long sought them, and he cited actions by Islamic State militants behind recent attacks...

World leaders gathered on Friday in Washington for the Nuclear Security Summit to discuss the growing threat of nuclear terrorism. Noting the chilling possibility of a nuclear attack, US President Barack Obama remarked that Islamic State terrorists have already made use of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East, and that there is evidence ISIS has made efforts to acquire nuclear material. "ISIL has already used chemical weapons,” Obama said. “[T]here is no doubt if these madmen ever got their hands on a bomb or nuclear material they would use it to kill as many as possible". "It would...

Not long after the Ayatollah Khomeini announced his fatwa against Salman Rushdie, the British novelist suddenly turned up on a Muslim radio station in West London late one night and told his interviewer he'd converted to Islam. Marvelous religion, couldn't be happier, Allahu Akbar and all that. And the Ayatollah said hey, that's terrific news, glad to hear it. But we're still gonna kill you.

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama said Friday that the U.S. and its allies are taking steps to help Iran benefit from a landmark nuclear agreement reached last year, including moves to facilitate trade and banking transactions for the Islamic Republic.

President Obama boasted Friday about his administration's exemplary record on transparency related to nuclear materials, and cited as an example his decision to share U.S. security protocols with the world, along with information about the size of the U.S.'s highly enriched uranium stockpile. As of Sept. 30, 2013 the nation had 585.6 metric tons of highly enriched uranium, a fact that hasn't been declassified in 15 years, Obama noted during the summit's opening session. The last public figure was 740.7 metric tons, and the difference shows the U.S. has reduced its stockpile by more than 20 percent. "This type of...

— President Obama on Friday questioned Donald J. Trump’s fitness for office after statements from the Republican front-runner that the United States and its allies should move away from decades of constraints on the use of nuclear weapons. “We don’t want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is,” Mr. Obama said. Speaking to reporters at the end of a summit meeting devoted to nuclear security, the president said the comments by Mr. Trump reflected a person who “doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula or the world in general.”

President Barack Obama said Friday that the world faces a persistent and evolving threat from terrorists who are eager to unleash a devastating nuclear attack. “It would change our world,” he said. Hosting his last nuclear security summit, said the world has measurably reduced the risk of nuclear terrorism by taking “concrete, tangible steps.” He said no terrorists have thus far obtained nuclear material, and he praised recent moves by Argentina, Switzerland and Uzbekistan for getting rid of their stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. Still, Obama said, the prospect of the Islamic State group or other extremists getting a weapon...

The United Nations' recently implemented sanctions against North Korea are already driving a wedge between longtime allies North Korea and China, a document from the Workers' Party of North Korea reveals. In the document, the Workers' Party condemns Beijing for partaking in the sanctions aimed at curbing North Korea's nuclear program and urges its people to confront China with a "nuclear storm" for its alleged "betrayal of socialism," Daily NK reports.

The operator of Japan's destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant switched on a giant refrigeration system on Thursday to create an unprecedented underground ice wall around its damaged reactors. Radioactive water has been flowing from the reactors, and other methods have failed to fully control it. The decontamination and decommissioning of the plant, damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011, hinge of the success of the wall.

The annual Nuclear Security Summit, aimed at reducing the world's nuclear weapons, gets underway Thursday in Washington with President Obama hosting a series of meetings with the leaders of several Asian nations to talk about efforts to prevent North Korea from becoming a bigger threat. But the gathering of more than 50 world leaders will focus primarily on keeping terrorists from obtaining the ingredients for a dirty bomb, a concern heightened by last week's terror attacks in Belgium. "Given the continued threat posed by organizations such as the terrorist group we call ISIL, or ISIS, we'll also join allies and...

Temperament matters...The world owes an enormous debt to a quiet, steady Russian naval officer... It’s October 1962, the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and there’s a Soviet submarine in the Caribbean that’s been spotted by the American Navy.. The sub is hiding in the ocean, and the Americans are dropping depth charges left and right of the hull. Inside, the sub is rocking, shaking with each new explosion. What the Americans don’t know is that this sub has a tactical nuclear torpedo on board, available to launch,... The Russian in question, an exhausted, nervous submarine commander named Valentin Savitsky,...

In a March 21 interview with Al-Mayadeen TV, Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah said that if Israel attacked Lebanon's cities and infrastructure, Hizbullah would wage an "all-out war that will know no boundaries or red lines," including the bombing of "petrochemical plants,biological research institutes, centers, and plants, nuclear plants - not just one - installations for the disposal of nuclear waste, and storage facilities for nuclear warheads," most of which were "located either within cities or in their vicinity."