Los Alamos nuclear lab under siege from wildfire

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M. —

A wildfire burning near the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb advanced on the Los Alamos laboratory and thousands of outdoor drums of plutonium-contaminated waste Tuesday as authorities stepped up efforts to protect the site and monitor the air for radiation.


Officials at the nation's premier nuclear weapons lab gave assurances that dangerous materials were safely stored and capable of withstanding flames from the 93-square-mile fire, which as of midday was as close as 50 feet from the grounds.

A small patch of land at the laboratory caught fire Monday before firefighters quickly put it out. Teams were on high alert to pounce on any new blazes and spent the day removing brush and low-hanging tree limbs from the lab's perimeter.

"We are throwing absolutely everything at this that we got," Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said in Los Alamos.

The fire has forced the evacuation of the entire city of Los Alamos, population 11,000, cast giant plumes of smoke over the region and raised fears among nuclear watchdogs that it will reach as many as 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste.

"The concern is that these drums will get so hot that they'll burst. That would put this toxic material into the plume. It's a concern for everybody," said Joni Arends, executive director of the Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety, an anti-nuclear group.


Arends' organiziation also worried that the fire could stir up nuclear-contaminated soil on lab property where experiments were conducted years ago. Burrowing animals have brought that contamination to the surface, she said.

Lab officials said there was very little risk of the fire reaching the drums of low-level nuclear waste, since the flames would have to jump through canyons first. Officials also stood ready to coat the drums with fire-resistant foam if the blaze got too close.

Lab spokeswoman Lisa Rosendorf said the drums contain Cold War-era waste that the lab sends away in weekly shipments for storage. She said the drums were on a paved area with few trees nearby. As of midday Tuesday, the flames were about two miles from the material.

"These drums are designed to a safety standard that would withstand a wildland fire worse than this one," Rosendorf said.

Los Alamos employs about 15,000 people, covers more than 36 square miles, includes about 2,000 buildings at nearly four dozen sites and plays a vital role in the nation's nuclear program.

Los Alamos fire inches closer to nuclear waste

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/28/national/main20075257.shtml

UC San Diego's engineering institute located at the Los Alamos National Laboratory is seen as flames rise from a wildfire in Los Alamos, N.M., Tuesday, June 28, 2011. (AP Photo)

(AP)  LOS ALAMOS, N.M. — A wildfire burning near the desert birthplace of the atomic bomb advanced on the Los Alamos laboratory and thousands of outdoor drums of plutonium-contaminated waste Tuesday as authorities stepped up efforts to protect the site and monitor the air for radiation.
Officials at the nation's premier nuclear weapons lab gave assurances that dangerous materials were safely stored and capable of withstanding flames from the 93-square-mile fire, which as of midday was as close as 50 feet from the grounds.

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• Los Alamos Wildfire (dawnmarie4.wordpress.com)
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• Wildfire shuts Los Alamos lab, forces evacuations (physorg.com)
• Thousands flee Los Alamos as wildfire advances (cbsnews.com)
• Los Alamos Nuclear Lab Threatened by Wildfire (fellowshipofminds.wordpress.com)
• Los Alamos lab still under threat from blaze (cbsnews.com)
• Huge Blaze Edges Closer To US Nuclear Lab (news.sky.com)
• Los Alamos evacuation ordered because of wildfire (ctv.ca)
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Nukes in Pakistan may be to easy for Terriostist to get a hold of

Image via Wikipediahttp://www.teapartynation.com/forum/topics/conspiracy-theory
Vast international conspiracies are generally the fare of Vince Flynn novels.    However, there is one conspiracy that we better pay attention to. 
 The conspiracy is the Islamic terrorists goal to get their hands on a nuclear warhead. 
 While this has not been headline news in the United States, a group of Islamic terrorists infiltrated and attacked a Pakistan Navy base.  The terrorists killed a number of people, destroyed at least two American made P-3 Orion aircraft that had recently been sent to Pakistan.    At least four terrorists have been killed so far.
 The Navy base is one of the most important military facilities in the Pakistani military.  The fact that terrorists were able to gain access to the base with relative ease should be ringing alarm bells all over the place. 
 Pakistan is a nuclear power.  While Pakistan does not reveal how many nuclear weapons it has, the best estimate is they have somewhere between 90 to 110 warheads. 
 Pakistan, just like America, does not advertise where it keeps its nuclear weapons.  Some of those nuclear weapons could even have been on that base.   The P-3 in American service can carry a nuclear weapon.  Whether the Pakistani P-3’s can is anyone’s guess. 
 The holy grail of the Islamists is to put a mushroom cloud above an American city.    The terrorist attack has got to raise serious questions about whether Pakistan can secure its nuclear warheads. 
 Meanwhile, Pakistan is rushing ahead with plans to complete a nuclear reactor that can produce weapons grade plutonium.  If terrorists cannot get a completed nuclear bomb, weapons grade plutonium is the next best thing.
 Given the fact that the Taliban is basically a creation of the Pakistani Intelligence Services and their obvious complicity in hiding Bin Laden, America cannot assume Pakistan will do anything to help the United States in the war on terror and may even look the other way if Al-Qaeda gets one of their nukes.

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• Q+A-Pakistan's nuclear weapons, safe or not? - Reuters (news.google.com)
• Contradictions emerge in accounts of Pakistan raid (ctv.ca)
• In safe hands? (bbc.co.uk)
• Analysis: Is Pakistan attack a blueprint for nuclear base raid? - Reuters (news.google.com)
• Taliban Strike Raises Concerns Over Safety of Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons - Bloomberg (news.google.com)
• Pakistani Troops Retake Naval Base From Militants (foxnews.com)
• Pakistani Troops Retake Naval Base From Militants - Fox News (news.google.com)
• Pakistani troops retake naval base from militants - Chicago Sun-Times (news.google.com)
• Jamyang Norbu: Who Created Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal? (huffingtonpost.com)
• Before Attack, Pakistan's Navy Boasted of Role in Fight Against Taliban (thelede.blogs.nytimes.com)

Naval base attack raises questions over safety of Pak nukes

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NEW DELHI: The Taliban attack on Pakistan's Mehran naval base raises an oft-repeated question: can Pakistan save its nuclear weapons?

Pakistan's nukes evoke a curious reaction -- every leader, in India or US, stress their safety, yet everybody stays up at night wondering whether they are really safe. Pakistan's failure to save its prized maritime reconnaissance aircraft has only deepened the worry.

Rahul Roy Chaudhury of International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), London, sums up the fears. "The attack on Mehran, a well-guarded military installation, at a time when Pakistan is on its highest alert status following the Abbottabad raid, raises serious questions over the security of Pakistan's nuclear assets. Not merely weapon storage sites, whose locations may be secure, but more likely, nuclear plants and research facilities whose locations are well known. This could be exacerbated by the passing of 'insider' information on their security systems by employees angered and radicalized by the Abbottabad raid."

How can Pakistan's nukes fall into the wrong hands? Either Taliban/al-Qaida getting a hold of the weapons, jihadis accessing fissile material which could be used to make a "dirty bomb" or, extremist officials within the Pakistani military establishment itself accessing weapons or material.

Taliban/al-Qaida have flirted with the idea of a "dirty bomb" or capturing nuclear assets for some time now. But as strategic experts have said, it's not easy getting a nuclear weapon, leave alone use it. The supporting infrastructure needed is fairly large. George Perkovich of Carnegie wrote, "Pakistan's...nukes are its crown jewels. The army cares about them in ways that it does not about bin Laden's whereabouts or fighting the Haqqani network."

Besides, Pakistan's weapons are not holed up in traditional silos. The military keeps them secret, but they are generally believed to be in storage sites (most probably in Punjab) and not in a high state of alert. Pakistani experts say they are also mobile to keep their locations secret. Shireen Mazari, Pakistani strategic expert, dismissed Taliban takeover fears in a post-Osama briefing. "The nuclear programme has matured, is robust, self-sustaining and widely dispersed." It's well guarded, but after a breach at their naval airbase, the question being asked is, how well is well guarded?

A new danger comes from the sophistication of Pakistan's nuclear weapons capability. In April 2011, Pakistan showed it could build tactical nuclear weapons with NASR. These are low-yield short range plutonium-based weapons and they are mobile. Which can give Pakistan's nuclear capability the jihadi edge, because they can be transported and used easily. The temptation to use them as a terror weapon just got easier.

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• U.S. confident of safety of nuclear weapons, despite al-Qaeda presence (hindu.com)
• You: Pakistani commandos retake Karachi naval base (guardian.co.uk)
• Pakistani commandos retake Karachi naval base - The Guardian (news.google.com)
• You: Attack on naval base precursor of threats to nukes: Imran (nation.com.pk)
• Pakistan Navy Base Attacked, 12 Dead (abcnews.go.com)
• Pakistan: Huge Blasts At A Naval Air Base In Karachi (globalvoicesonline.org)
• Taliban siege ends at military base (mirror.co.uk)
• Taliban storm Pakistan naval base - ABC Online (news.google.com)

Thanks, North Korea, for Reminding Us to Bomb Iran | The Blog on Obama: White House Dossier

Be sure to see the full article by Keith Koffler at the link below.

http://www.whitehousedossier.com/2010/11/23/north-korea-reminding-bomb-iran

by Keith Koffler on November 23, 2010, 11:29 am

If you want to have some idea what the world will look like once Iran gets nuclear weapons, have a look-see below. It’s our friend Kim Jong-Il, the Dear Leader, or his son, Baby Jerk, lobbing bombs at South Koreans on an island near the border.



So far, two South Korean soldiers have been killed, and more than a dozen soldier injured, along with a few civilians. The North Koreans can do this, because they have nuclear weapons. Here is why they have nuclear weapons:

That’s right, it was this guy who negotiated the “Agreed Framework” with North Korea in 1994 that gave them the cover to develop their uranium enrichment program.
So now North Korea gets to blow up South Korean ships – as they did in March, killing 46 sailors – and attack South Korean islands with impunity. Because there ain’t much we can do about it. Oh wait, maybe there are a few things.

Related articles

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• North Korea shells South Korean Island (crooksandliars.com)
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• "The Norks nuclear extortion" and related posts (prairiepundit.blogspot.com)
• Omitted facts in reporting North Korea attack (nowpublic.com)
• Obama's North Korean strategy? (politico.com)
• Obama Vows To Defend Ally S Korea (time.com)
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Iran starts "biggest" air defense war games

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The website of Iran's English-language Press TV said the five-day war games were being held near nuclear facilities and included tests of long-range missiles.
On Sunday, a senior commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards said land forces had carried out military drills near Iran's nuclear facilities "exactly like real combat."
Western countries suspect Iran's atomic work is a cover for a nuclear weapons programme. Tehran denies this, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity.
Israel, which says a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to its existence, and its ally the United States have refused to rule out pre-emptive strikes against Iran, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued strongly against the military option on Tuesday.
"The large-scale military maneuvers ... will improve readiness to confront possible threats to Iran's air space and the very populated, vital and nuclear centers," Ahmad Mighani, head of an air force unit that responds to threats to Iran's air space, was quoted by state TV as saying.
Iran has repeatedly announced advances in its military capability to show it is ready to respond to military aggression.
Some Western officials suspect Iran is developing more sophisticated missiles and carrying out well-publicized missile tests so that it can deliver a nuclear weapon.

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• Gates says military strike would unite a divided Iran (reuters.com)
• Gates sees Iran rift, says strike would unite country (reuters.com)
• Gates: Iran sanctions are working (cnn.com)
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The Weakening Of The United States National Defenses By President Obama - Tea Party Nation

Image via Wikipedia The picture on the right show which countries have nuclear missiles with Global Reach. If we loose ours guess what happens?
http://www.teapartynation.com/profiles/blogs/the-weakening-of-the-united
As I read through all this. I was actually surprised that so many other haven't realized this since it's been all over the news the past couple of years. I have to totally agree. Obama seems to want America Weak for some reason. Only God knows why.

Click the link to see the rest of the story.

In just the past week President Obama has made this country look week on defense. This is where he has made the United States look weak:

1. His new nuclear weapons strategy,

2. The banning of certain terms from the national Security Document,

3. The nuclear weapons treaty signed with Russia,

4. If the US is attacked with chemical or biological weapons that the nuclear option is off the table for retaliation.

The combination of all of these together make this country look weak to it's enemies around the world. You need to look strong to your enemies to prevent attacks against this country and its people here and abroad around the world. President Bush kept this country safe from attack for 8 years after 9/11 there was no attack on US soil. President Bush took the fight to the terrorists. In just president Obama's first year in office there were to attacks in this country which were the shooting at Fort Hood and the Christmas Day bomber. These were small attacks but it shows that terrorist do not fear president Obama in what he might do as they Feared president Bush. I fear that before President Obama is out of Office there will be a big attack on US soil. I pray this doesn't happen by I do fear it more as he weakens our national defenses.

In his nuclear weapons strategy which will reverse 65 years of US nuclear weapons policy. This will lessons the deterrence factor that US has by having the nuclear weapons. By lessoning its deterrence factor it allows the US to be more vulnerable to attack by nuclear states and soon be nuclear states or would be nuclear states. His idea for doing this is to keep terrorist from acquiring nuclear weapons is naive at best. This will not stop countries like Iran from trying to squire nuclear weapons or halt North Korea from continuing to build its nuclear arsenal.

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• North Korea vows to strengthen "nuclear deterrent" (reuters.com)
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Fighting Wars with Robots The Future is Here

Fighting Wars with Robots

about 3 hours ago from todaysworld

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  People have wondered for years what Technology can actually bring to our human lives. As some try to seek Health and Body. Others are bent on War and destruction. As always Check out all the links below. Also see the History Channels videos posted from YouTube.
  Think Terminator cannot happen? What really gets me is since the U.N. and many other plan so much for and RFID chipping device world wide on Humans, placing a device like this read them can only make a person really wonder.
  Imagine a day a robot loaded with weapons notices a person without a chip. Should it just open fire for not obeying the law?
  One of many questions I have concerning this.
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  The Transformation of American Warfare: Fighting Wars with Robots

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  The Pentagon is rapidly improving its ability to fight wars with robots. This capability is "bringing about the most profound transformation of warfare since the advent of the atom bomb," says Scientific American, and raises "a host of ethical and legal issues."
  

  

  "Robots are pouring onto battlefields as if a new species of mechanotronic alien had just landed on our planet," the publication says in an editorial on their development in its July issue.  "The prospect of androids that hunt down and kill on their own accord (shades of Terminator) should give us all pause. An automatic pilot that makes its own calls about whom to shoot violates the 'human' part of international humanitarian law, the one that recognizes that some weapons are so abhorrent that they just should be eliminated."
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  Fighting Hidden Killers

  Military works on new techniques to counter IEDs in Afghanistan.

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  BY PHILLIP O'CONNOR St. Louis Post-Dispatch
  Sunday, July 25, 2010
  
  FORT LEONARD WOOD — They are the leading killer of coalition forces in an increasingly deadly war. And with a surge of 30,000 U.S. troops under way in Afghanistan, military experts expect the number of casualties from homemade bombs to increase even more in coming months.
  The Counter Explosive Hazards Center is at the forefront of the Army's cat-and-mouse effort to defeat a weapon that in May alone killed 18 Americans and wounded 163 others.
  Headquartered in a nondescript building on this sprawling post about 112 miles south of Columbia, the center provides soldiers bound for combat zones with the most up-to-date training in everything from how to spot and disable such bombs to searching for those who plant them.
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  The Transformation of American Warfare: Fighting Wars with Robots
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  Singer, who directs the 21st Century Defense Initiative at The Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C., a non-profit research think tank, says robots include:
  # Lockheed Martin's High-Altitude Airship, an unmanned blimp that carries a radar the length of a football field and can fly at nearly 19,800 meters for over a month at a time.
  # Contractor QinetiQ North America's MAARS robot, resembling a tank that is armed with a machine gun and grenade launcher that does sentry and sniper duty.
  # The miniature surveillance "bot" from contractor AeroVironment that "mimics a hummingbird in size and its ability to hover over a target" and which flaps its wings frenetically as its cameras observe a scene.
  # The Counter-Rocket Artillery and Mortar, or C-RAM, which resembles Star Wars robot R2-D2 and is armed with a machine gun that can shoot down incoming missiles and is used to protect the Green Zone in Baghdad.
  # The TALON ground robot that can defuse bombs and peeks over obstacles to hunt for enemies.
  # The ChemBot, conceived by the University of Chicago and contractor iRobot, of Bedford, Mass., and which is "a bloblike machine that shifts shape, such that it is able to squeeze through a hole in the wall."
  # The Predator drone that can track 12 targets at once and which has been used in combat since 1995. This unmanned aerial vehicle(UAV) from General Atomics is armed with two lethal Hellfire missiles that have killed as many as 40 al-Qaeda leaders but which, by some estimates, have killed as many as 1,000 civilians across Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
  Author Singer writes that robots are machines built to operate in a "sense-think-act" paradigm. Information from their sensors is relayed to computer processors or artificial intelligence software that decide whether to activate their mechanical "effectors."
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Image via Wikipedia

As the 200 million man army of China keeps being provoked. If anyone knows anything on Prophecies. This should really interest you.

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk US sanctions against North Korea provoke Chinese anger The United States announced new sanctions against North Korea in an attempt to hit the rogue state's nuclear weapons programme and destabilise its regime. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said the measures would discourage North Korean aggression but China responded angrily accusing America of "aggravating regional tensions". Mrs Clinton said that the new sanctions would limit the purchase and sale of arms, and freeze the assets of Pyongyang's isolated leadership, which is accused of allowing millions of the country's people to starve. Meanwhile China, North Korea's only ally in the region, expressed concern over joint US-South Korean naval exercises off the Korean Peninsula which are due to begin on Sunday and will last four days. A total of 20 warships and submarines, including the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington, as well as 100 aircraft and 8,000 service personnel will take part.

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Israel convinces US with Credible military plan on Iran

2 minutes ago from todaysworld

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  Recent media reports suggests Jerusalem has increased diplomatic efforts to persuade White House that credible military option needed.

  Have Israel's efforts to convince the US to threaten Iran with a credible military option paid off? According to recent media reports, the answer might be yes.
  Since the US pushed a fourth round of sanctions against Iran through the UN Security Council last month, Jerusalem has increased diplomatic efforts to convince the White House that for the sanctions to work, a credible military option needs to be on the table to scare Iran to reconsider its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
  RELATED:
  Iran blames US for suicide bombing
  Clinton condemns Iran bombing
  An indication that this might have happened came in the latest issue of Time magazine, in an article titled "An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table."
  

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US and Israel fear Iran may be capable of a nuclear test this year

5 minutes ago from todaysworld

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  Shahram Amiri's voluntary repatriation to Iran and a second close look at the nuclear data he passed to the CIA are raising grave doubts about its value, debkafile's intelligence sources report. There is mounting suspicion in Washington and Jerusalem that Tehran employed the scientist to strew red herrings in their path, namely, out-of-date material for concealing and misdirecting their attention from the rapid progress taking place secretly in Iran's nuclear program.
  A high-ranking intelligence source in Washington remarked Monday, July 19, that he would not be surprised "if we woke up one morning to find the Iranians had conducted an underground nuclear test." This was not to say Iran had a bomb or nuclear warhead ready packed for delivery, he said, "Only that it was a lot closer to this option than the Americans and Israelis had been led to believe."
  Therefore, as of now, their forecast of a nuclear test capability has been brought forward to within the five months remaining of 2010.
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  Our sources report this revised forecast has emerged from US intelligence analysts' examination of two new premises regarding Amirir's input in the years he served as US informant:
  1. That he was an Iranian double agent and his apparent defection to the United States just over a year ago was fake, engineered by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
  2.  That Shahram Amiri, the nuclear scientist, was a made-up identity. After he landed to a heroes' welcome in Tehran last Thursday, July 15, Deputy Foreign Minister Hassan Qashqavi said:  "Shahram Amiri is not a nuclear scientist and we reject it."  Another Iranian official called him a clever spy who had managed to infiltrate US intelligence and deceive them for years.
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  Even if real nuggets were mixed in with the false data - a common ruse for making false intelligence appear credible - it still meant that Iran's leaders controlled the flow of factual information to the West and were in a position to change it in good time - so that when Amiri was asked by his US handlers to amplify on a piece of real information, it was no longer valid; Iran had moved on and created a new set of facts, unbeknownst to the Americans.
  A striking example of this tactic was the secret enrichment plant in a mountain near Qom, which became the subject of a dramatic joint appearance on Sept. 25, 2009 in Pittsburgh by President Obama, French president Nicolas Sarkozy and George Brown, then British prime minister.
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  Only in recent months, have US and allied agencies begun to appreciate that this technique of misdirection allowed Iran to pursue its nuclear and missile programs out of sight of spies and monitors. While the West and Israel relied on Amiri to keep them abreast of Iran's activities, nuclear development work went forward at still unknown locations and may have progressed a lot further than is suspected in the West.

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Abnormal radiation detected near Korean border

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Abnormal radiation detected near Korean border

3 minutes ago from todaysworld

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  SEOUL, South Korea - Abnormally high radiation levels were detected near the border between the two Koreas days after North Korea claimed to have mastered a complex technology key to manufacturing a hydrogen bomb, Seoul said Monday.
  The Science Ministry said its investigation ruled out a nuclear test by North Korea, but failed to determine the source of the radiation. It said there was no evidence of an earthquake, which follows an atomic explosion.
  On May 12, North Korea claimed its scientists succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction — a technology necessary to manufacture a hydrogen bomb. In its announcement, the North did not say how it would use the technology, only calling it a "breakthrough toward the development of new energy."
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  On May 15, however, the atmospheric concentration of xenon — an inert gas released after a nuclear explosion or radioactive leakage from a nuclear power plant — on the South Korean side of their shared border was found to be eight times higher than normal, according to South Korea's Science Ministry.
  South Korea subsequently looked for signs of an artificially induced earthquake of a magnitude typically registered during a nuclear test. Experts, however, found no signs of such a quake in North Korea, a ministry statement said.
  "We determined that there was no possibility of an underground nuclear test," it said. The ministry said the gas is not harmful.
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  A U.N. official in Vienna, however, said no signs of increased radioactivity were detected last month along the Korean border by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization, a U.N. agency that looks for signs of nuclear testing worldwide.
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  read more on www.military.com
  North Korea, which is believed to have enough weaponized plutonium for at least a half-dozen nuclear weapons, conducted two underground nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, drawing international condemnation and U.N. sanctions.
  The news of the detected radiation comes as tension is running high on the Korean peninsula over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on a North Korean torpedo attack. North Korea flatly denies the allegation and has warned any punishment would trigger war, as the U.N. Security Council reviews Seoul's request for action over the sinking

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Radioactive Fish Near Vt. Nuke Plant Deemed Common

clipped from abcnews.go.com When a fish taken from the Connecticut River recently tested positive for radioactive strontium-90, suspicion focused on the nearby Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as the likely source. Operators of the troubled 38-year-old nuclear plant on the banks of the river, where work is under way to clean up leaking radioactive tritium, revealed this month that it also found soil contaminated with strontium-90, an isotope linked to bone cancer and leukemia. Three days later, officials said a fish caught four miles upstream from the reactor in February had tested positive for strontium-90 in its bones. State officials say they don't believe the contamination came from Vermont Yankee. Fish and other living things — including humans — around the world have been absorbing tiny amounts of strontium-90 since the United States, Russia and China tested nuclear weapons in the atmosphere in the 1950s and 1960s.

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Israel stations nuclear missile subs off Iran

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With one side hell bent to try and destroy such a small nation, and a tiny nation willing to stand up for it's own protection. You would think more of the Governments world wide would do more to help. But instead it seems they would rather watch a full blown Nuclear attack be unleashed. It may be much closer than some would like to think about.

clipped from www.timesonline.co.uk Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline. The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers. The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels. The submarines could be used if Iran continues its programme to produce a nuclear bomb. “The 1,500km range of the submarines’ cruise missiles can reach any target in Iran,” said a navy officer. Apparently responding to the Israeli activity, an Iranian admiral said: “Anyone who wishes to do an evil act in the Persian Gulf will receive a forceful response from us.”

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