Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Nuclear power was the energy of Tomorrowland - in the 1950s it was going to make electricity too cheap to meter - until it came to a standstill over the past couple decades. It's now poised to make a dramatic comeback. At least, that's what many politicians and the media say. As the Senate this week debated the Warner-Lieberman carbon cap-and-trade bill, which would put a federal limit on greenhouse gas emissions, many doubtful senators said they wouldn't vote for the measure unless massive subsidies for nuclear were included. (The bill was shelved.) Even some veteran...
Normally placid Switzerland has been caught up in uncharacteristic intrigue since the government announced that it secretly destroyed highly technical blueprints for producing nuclear weapons. At a press conference on May 23, President Pascal Couchepin said the documents had been shredded to prevent them from falling into terrorists' hands. "The information contained in these papers presented a considerable risk to the security of Switzerland and the international community as a whole," he said...
...Swiss authorities, acting on a tip from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), arrested engineer Friedrich Tinner and his sons Marco and Urs on the suspicion of helping to supply gas centrifuge parts for use in Libya's now abandoned nuclear weapons program. They allegedly acted between 2001 and 2003 through the trafficking ring operated by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb. Khan, under house arrest in Pakistan, last week claimed he'd been coerced into his 2004 confession to helping Libya, North Korea and Iran with nuclear weapons...
...official stonewalling has fueled speculation that the United States, and specifically the CIA, has pressured the Swiss government to destroy the documents to aid its own efforts to stop nuclear smuggling, whatever the effect on the Tinners' trials. "The decision to destroy evidence related to an ongoing investigation is highly unusual and has raised questions over the possibility of CIA involvement," Egli says, pointing out that during his press conference Couchepin conceded that the Swiss government had also blocked an investigation into charges levelled by the federal attorney that Urs Tinner was engaging in illegal actions for a foreign country...
Though that criticism may be overstated, there is a lot wrong with the Climate Security Act, an unwieldy 494-page bill that has been stuffed with handouts to various interest groups, including the nuclear industry. Initially permits worth hundreds of billions of dollars will be given out, free, to industrial greenhouse gas emitters, rather than auctioned off. The act also allows companies to meet part of their carbon caps using offsets, even as scientists increasingly question the effectiveness of such carbon trading. Both measures are likely to depress the price of carbon over the life of the bill. (The lower...