Free Republic

There is new evidence that North Korea may be preparing to for an underground test of nuclear bomb, U.S. officials tell ABC News. "It is the view of the intelligence community that a test is real possibility," says a senior State Department official. A senior military official tells ABC News that a U.S. intelligence agency has recently observed "suspicious vehicle movement" at a suspected North Korean test site. The activity includes the unloading of large reels of cable outside an underground facility called Pungyee-yok in northeast North Korea. Cables can be used in nuclear testing to connect an underground test...

A High-Risk Nuclear Stakeout The U.S. took too long to act, some experts say, letting a Pakistani scientist sell illicit technology well after it knew of his operation. By Douglas Frantz, Times Staff Writer WASHINGTON — Nuclear warhead plans that Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan sold to Libya were more complete and detailed than previously disclosed, raising new concerns about the cost of Washington's watch-and-wait policy before Khan and his global black market were shut down last year. Two Western nuclear weapons specialists who have examined the top-secret designs say the hundreds of pages of engineering drawings and handwritten notes...

May 22, 2004 NEVADA FOCUS: Stewards of U.S. nuclear stockpile plan new testBy KEN RITTERASSOCIATED PRESS NEVADA TEST SITE, Nev. (AP) - At ground zero for the nation's nuclear testing, the stewards of the atomic stockpile stopped creating mushroom clouds and craters more than a decade ago. Now they devise complex underground experiments like the upcoming "Armando" test using radar, laser and X-ray imaging to explore the finer points of how plutonium performs in an explosion. Scientists call the experiments "subcritical" because they don't set off full-scale thermonuclear blasts like those that rocked the Nevada desert northwest of Las Vegas...

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Senators from both parties have expressed concerns that continued research on a new "bunker buster" bomb could lead to a resumption of nuclear detonations at the Nevada Test Site. During a Senate energy and water subcommittee budget hearing Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she feared the Energy Department was "opening the nuclear door." She cited a report by the Congressional Research Service earlier this month that said the department plans to ask Congress to approve $485 million for the "bunker buster" bomb over the next five years. Lawmakers expressed concern the Energy Department was asking...

<p>Bush pushes for next generation of nukes By Tom Squitieri, USA TODAY MERCURY, Nev. — If the Bush administration succeeds in its determined but little-noticed push to develop a new generation of nuclear weapons, this sun-baked desert flatland 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas could once again reverberate with the ground-shaking thumps of nuclear explosions that used to be common here.</p>