Weapons Laboratory Research Articles

COOPERATION BETWEEN UKRAINE AND NATO IN COUNTERING DESTRUCTIVE IINFORMATIONAL INFLUENCES OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION (2022–2023)

The research analyses NATO's experience in countering information threats, since the current level of development requires a collective fight against the spread of information, using it as a form of warfare. The spread of information is becoming increasingly complex due to the development of technology and the evolution of communication channels. It is show that NATO has recognized the need to adapt its strategies and capabilities to effectively counter the challenges posed by disinformation, propaganda and cyber operations and to expand its tools to counter hybrid threats. The article analyses the potential of the NATO-Ukraine partnership in the fight against Russian propaganda, their cooperation in the field of information security: common interests and trends. It also describes the main challenges and threats to NATO-Ukraine cooperation and defines the framework for NATO-Ukraine cooperation in cyber defense. The flow of Russian disinformation has increased significantly since the start of Russia's full-scale war in Ukraine. However, Ukraine began strengthening its information and media environment as early as 2014, and began working on mechanisms to combat information threats. Russia's disinformation campaigns are aimed at causing divisions within Ukraine and between other governments. It is important to note that the North Atlantic Alliance is also subject to Russian propaganda. For example, the Russian mass media spread the following information: 1) the purpose of the Maidan is to create NATO bases in Crimea; 2) NATO placed a biological weapons laboratory in Ukraine; 3) NATO special services worked on the hijacking of Russian planes by Ukraine; 4) NATO considers Ukraine a disposable tool for war with Russia and others. That is, it should be noted that information and its dissemination play an important role for states and international organizations to spread their own interests and achieve goals. The authors provide key recommendations for strengthening the counteraction to disinformation that can be used by any actor in international relations. As a result, it is argued that states should work to create a new autonomous institution that can conduct the data analysis necessary to ensure the independent control required by the new policy framework; media literacy should be developed; and technology companies such as Meta, YouTube and Twitter should adhere to their policies on prohibiting disinformation funded by advertising.

Lost in Transition: Removing, Resettling, and Renewing Appalachia ed. by Aaron D. Purcell

Reviewed by: Lost in Transition: Removing, Resettling, and Renewing Appalachia ed. by Aaron D. Purcell Madison Cates Lost in Transition: Removing, Resettling, and Renewing Appalachia. Edited by Aaron D. Purcell. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2021. Pp. xvi, 283. $48.00, ISBN 978-1-62190-589-9.) Displacement narratives have long occupied a central place in Appalachian literature and film. Fictionalized stories of love, conflict, and loss that unfold when Duke Power or the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) come to town appear in works ranging from Ron Rash's novels to the star-studded 1960 film Wild River. Taking such legacies of dams and lost towns as its starting point, Lost in Transition: Removing, Resettling, and Renewing Appalachia, a [End Page 802] collection of essays edited by Aaron D. Purcell, offers a cohesive and welcome antidote to the relative paucity of historical studies on loss and displacement in the modern South. Of course, prominent works by economic and environmental historians do show well how dams and national parks reshaped the modern South. But few of these histories have centered the local experiences and memories of displacement fundamental to the region's twentieth-century history as effectively as Lost in Transition. Not simply a critique of the bureaucratic "progress narrative" that was central to public and private land actions, this collection shows the power of local histories to peel back the layers of the physical and imagined landscapes of the South and reveal pasts often hidden in plain sight (p. 216). Using case studies including the atomic weapons labs of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, dams built by Duke Power and TVA, and three different national parks, the authors explore how intertwined discourses of "progress" and "removal"––formerly used to justify the dispossession of Native Americans––were repurposed to justify removals in the twentieth century. To do so, they rely on a wealth of government documents, oral histories, and local newspapers. This archive of Appalachian dispossession is one of the volume's most important contributions. As Purcell and others show, opening documents hidden behind sanitized, euphemistic labels like TVA's "population readjustment case files" helps expose the emotional and contested process of creating parks, lakes, and dams (p. 41). These archives also reinforce the diversity of Appalachia. As Alyssa D. Warrick and Russell Olwell point out in their respective essays on Mammoth Cave and Oak Ridge, federal documents provide in-depth profiles of Black communities that struggled to remain amid eminent domain and white repression. These essays work well with pieces by Margaret Lynn Brown on the Great Smoky Mountains and by Katrina M. Powell and Savannah Paige Murray on Shenandoah National Park and the New River Valley, which examine how ideas about race, class, and nostalgia influenced later efforts to remember, lament, and protest communal dispossession. In each chapter, oral testimonies––collected both at the time of removal and in more contemporary interviews––offer powerful correctives to the progress narratives that sought to erase these communities. Two of the later essays, Matthew Chisholm's study of Bryson City, North Carolina's "Road to Nowhere" and Stephen Wallace Taylor's conclusion, analyze the fluidity of local memory through the changing politics of Appalachia. Here, the growing resentment toward public land actions owes as much to the New Right and its challenge to the New Deal as it does to local grievances. Historians of the region's environment, politics, and memory should learn from and engage with the valuable insights provided by such in-depth local studies. To the authors' collective credit, the juxtaposition of the rural, small Appalachian communities against the "nearly unstoppable" forces of public and private actors only occasionally strays toward what Taylor calls a "hero narrative" (pp. 186, 216). It is easy to portray displaced communities as tragic figures, often defiant but usually doomed. But at their best, these essays avoid [End Page 803] that temptation by showing how communal memories are constructed and contested. Such stories offer a more fitting elegy for Appalachia, where nostalgic lamentations are both recognized and examined. Madison Cates Coastal Carolina University Copyright © 2022 The Southern Historical Association

From Gas Hysteria to Nuclear Fear

While the histories of chemical and nuclear weapons are often categorically demarcated, this paper presents the transitional history between the development of early chemical weapons and the first atomic bomb in order to reveal both the institutional and imaginary connections between the two. In the wake of World War I, nationalized chemical weapons research provided one blueprint for the kind of large-scale military-industrial-academic complex required to build the atomic bomb. The German chemical weapons laboratories at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical and Electrochemistry (KWI), directed by Fritz Haber, were particularly successful in creating a hierarchical mobilization of people, funds, and materials that the Americans were able to replicate both in their own chemical weapons production and when building the atomic bomb in the early 1940s. Institutional and cultural similarities between these weapons programs were further fertilized by a strikingly similar interwar imagining of both chemical and radiological weapons. These prophecies prefigured certain eye-witness reports from the dropping of the first atomic bombs, where radioactive clouds supposedly spread over the bomb site. In reality, there were important distinctions in both power and method of destruction between chemical weapons and the atomic bomb, but the post–World War II positing of a newly demarcated “Atomic Age” created a conceptual distance between poison gas and nuclear weapons. By pointing to chemistry’s significant contributions (both real and imaginary) to the creation of the atomic bomb, this article reminds readers of the rhetorical similarities and institutional connections between the two weapons with an eye toward broadening our categorical understanding of the atmospheric weapons that still threaten the world today.

How United States Agricultural Herbicides Became Military and Environmental Chemical Weapons: Historical and Residual Effects

Discoveries in Charles Darwin’s laboratory led to modern herbicides. Darwin discovered the internal mechanism that directed plants to grow toward sunlight and sources of water. Scientists in Europe and America later called this mechanism a plant’s hormone response system. Administrators and scientists, including Dr. Ezra J. Kraus, the Head of the Botany Department at the University of Chicago and a plant physiologist, suggested on the eve of WWII that weed killers had significant military value as chemical weapons. Dr. Kraus obtained access to a synthetic chemical, 2,4-D, and found that when the chemical was absorbed through the leaves of plants, it destroyed a plant’s hormones. After exposure, the plant experienced rapid and uncontrolled growth, and then the leaves shriveled, died and fell off. Dr. Kraus obtained funding for his Department of Botany research program from Department of Defense (DOD) during World War II (WWII). Camp Detrick (Biological Weapons Laboratory) scientists later obtained samples of newly created 2,4,5-T which contained unknown amounts of the by-product dioxin TCDD. In the 1950s and 1960s, Fort Detrick military scientists formulated the herbicide Agent Orange, which was a 50 - 50 mixture of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. These dual purpose herbicides were used by DOD and USDA. American and European farmers in the 1940s used 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T to eliminate weeds from pastureland and cropland. After WWII, synthetic herbicides (and pesticides) development continued in tandem with production of synthetic fertilizers and breeding of high-yield plant varieties. These new agricultural products were then shipped worldwide to increase crop yields, as part of the Green Revolution. This new system of agricultural technologies was intended to eliminate global starvation and increase food security by increasing field and farm crop yields. In contrast, the goal of military use of herbicides, as chemical weapons, was to defoliate jungle forests and destroy food crops as a strategy to win battles and wars. The primary objective of this research study is to describe how agricultural herbicides became tactical chemical weapons. A current assessment will address the environmental impacts of military and environmental chemical weapons on the United States and Vietnam ecosystems and need for additional dioxin TCDD hotspot clean-up efforts.

Lawsuit alleges scientific misconduct at U.S. nuclear weapons lab

Lawsuit alleges scientific misconduct at U.S. nuclear weapons lab

Weapons labs to build costly new device to better understand plutonium

Scientists say subcritical experiments with plutonium will eliminate the need for nuclear tests, a promise that was first made in 1995.

The American Lab: An Insider's History of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by C. Bruce Tarter

Reviewed by: The American Lab: An Insider's History of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory by C. Bruce Tarter Benjamin Sims (bio) The American Lab: An Insider's History of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory By C. Bruce Tarter. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. Pp. 472. In The American Lab, former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director C. Bruce Tarter provides a detailed history of the laboratory from its origins in the 1950s through 2009. Tarter has done his homework; this is a carefully researched account, citing many primary sources and oral history interviews. While large portions of the book are devoted to administrative details and quick glosses on a plethora of minor projects likely to interest insiders, it nonetheless provides a useful record of an important and understudied institution (Livermore) and time (the late- and post-Cold War periods). While Tarter's early history of the laboratory is comprehensive, the book really comes to life with his account of the political and technical maneuvering that enabled the weapons laboratories to continue to thrive under the rubric of stockpile stewardship following the end of the Cold War. His observations on the transition of nuclear weapons work to a routine and bureaucratic enterprise and the cultural differences between Livermore and Los Alamos laboratories also illuminate the changing roles and influence of these two laboratories between the Cold War era and the present. Tarter characterizes the relationship between the laboratories as one between an older, established, conservative institution (Los Alamos) and a brash start-up company eager to innovate and make a name for itself (Livermore). Unlike Los Alamos, which emerged out of urgent efforts at a time of national emergency, Livermore's existence was the result of hard-fought [End Page 1238] political and technical battles going back to its main founders, E.O. Lawrence and Edward Teller. In Tarter's account, Livermore was a driver of innovation through the 1960s and 1970s and quickly staked its claim in the nuclear weapons business as an equal partner with Los Alamos, which was largely content to work within existing constraints. Livermore continued to display greater willingness than Los Alamos to engage in political and technical maneuvering to push new and risky projects and concepts, even where technical feasibility had not quite been established. Although this strategy enabled the laboratory to grow, in some cases it led to technical and administrative difficulties. It also contributed to the laboratory's reputation for actively pushing a militaristic, "hardline, anticommunist point of view" that led to public criticism—particularly in relation to missile defense. Tarter led Livermore from 1994 through 2002, a time period that encompasses the core of the difficult transition of the United States nuclear weapons complex from a Cold War footing, focused on development and testing of nuclear weapons, to a post-Cold War era of diversifying missions and increased bureaucratic oversight. The American Lab provides an engaging account of this period, partly from Tarter's own perspective. It also highlights the role of Assistant Secretary of Energy for Defense Programs Vic Reis in the development of the Stockpile Stewardship Program, which enabled the weapons laboratories to survive and even prosper after the Cold War. Although Tarter covers many of the other players, Reis appears as an energetic and charismatic force who broke the laboratories' post-Cold War sense of malaise, encouraged new ideas, and laid the groundwork for the future. Tarter might have written a more focused and accessible (if less comprehensive) book had he chosen to cover this period in detail rather than the entire history of the laboratory. Much of the scholarly work on the nuclear weapons laboratories in the post-Cold War period has been by sociologists and anthropologists, including Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, Hugh Gusterson, Joseph Masco, Laura McNamara, and the author of this review in collaboration with Christopher Henke. Gusterson's work is particularly relevant here because of its focus on Livermore scientists. While these authors cover key events and delve deeply into the mindset and experiences of weapons scientists, they do not provide a comprehensive institutional perspective or historical timeline for the weapons laboratories. The collection Doomed to Cooperate, compiled by Siegfried Hecker, Tarter's...

Classification of weathered andesitic rock materials from the İzmir Subway line on the basis of strength and deformation

Variously weathered pink andesite and autobreccia samples collected from the boreholes at the elevation of the Izmir Subway line were investigated for mineralogical content and physical, mechanical and deformation properties, following which the andesitic rocks were compared with different andesites from various parts of Turkey as well as from Slovakia and Romania based on published data. A weathering grade zoning graph that takes elasticity modulus (Et) values into account was introduced for andesitic rocks from Turkey and Europe. The aim of the study was to determine the variability in strength, strain and elastic properties of different andesites at different weathering stages. In this context, two engineering classifications for rock materials based on uniaxial compressive strength (σc), Et and Poisson’s ratio (ν) were used to classify the fresh and weathered andesites. The modulus ratio classification proposed by Deere and Miller (Report AFML-TR-65-116, Air Force Weapons Laboratory Kirtland Air Force Base, Albuquerque, NM, USA; 1966) failed to differentiate the various weathering grades of the andesites. However, the m-value obtained from the plot of the σc value against the $$ \frac{{\mathrm{E}}_{\mathrm{t}}}{\nu } $$ ratio on a log–log scale, as suggested by Turk and Dearman (Bull Int Assoc Eng Geol 28:162–167; 1983), was found to be unique for each rock type and to be a distinguishing parameter for andesitic rocks. Thus, the upper and lower bound limits of the m-value were defined for the andesite samples. The m-value was also used to calculate horizontal strain at failure. Higher horizontal strain values were calculated for the highly weathered andesites having higher m-values. The reasons for the significantly lower strength and Et values for the Izmir Subway line andesites were interpreted with regard to the mineralogical and petrographical properties.

After safety breaches, new Los Alamos director pushes for accountability at nuclear weapons lab

After safety breaches, new Los Alamos director pushes for accountability at nuclear weapons lab

Feeding Children, Communities, and Souls

Feeding Children, Communities, and Souls

Relationships between NNSA and weapons labs are works in progress

An advisory committee recommends clarifying responsibilities and reducing burdensome reviews and audits. An advisory committee recommends clarifying responsibilities and reducing burdensome reviews and audits.

Walter Kohn (1923–2016)

Walter Kohn (1923–2016)

Jill Hruby becomes first woman to run US nuclear weapons lab

Jill Hruby becomes first woman to run US nuclear weapons lab

Geoengineering and the politics of science

The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) include an assessment of geoengineering—methods for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, or cooling the Earth by reflecting more of the sun’s radiation back into space. The IPCC assessment signals the arrival of geoengineering into the mainstream of climate science, and may normalize climate engineering as a policy response to global warming. Already, conservative forces in the United States are promoting it as a substitute for emissions reductions. Climate scientists are sharply divided over geoengineering, in much the same way that Manhattan Project scientists were divided over nuclear weapons after World War II. Testing a geoengineering scheme, such as sulfate aerosol spraying, is inherently difficult. Deployment would make political decision makers highly dependent on a technocratic elite. In a geoengineered world, experts would control the conditions of daily life, and it is unlikely that such a regime would be a just one. A disproportionate number of scientists currently working on geoengineering have either worked at, or collaborated with, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The history of US nuclear weapons laboratories during the Cold War reveals a belief in humankind’s right to exercise total mastery over nature. With geoengineering, this kind of thinking is staging a powerful comeback in the face of climate crisis.

Project Update: Evaluating the Community Health Legacy of WWI Chemical Weapons Testing

The Spring Valley community of Washington, District of Columbia, was built on the site of a World War I chemical weapons lab where testing activities had distributed arsenic to surface soil and waste disposal had resulted in localized subsurface contamination. In previous work, findings were suggestive of potential site-related health issues, although no evidence of cancer clustering was found. In follow-up, we updated the community health assessment and explored time trends for several arsenic-related cancers. Health indicators continue to be very good in Spring Valley. For all major causes of mortality, Spring Valley rates were lower than United States (US) rates with most substantially lower (20-80 %); rates for heart diseases, Alzheimer's, and essential hypertension and related kidney disease were only slightly lower than US rates (3-8 %). Incidence and mortality rates for the selected cancers in the Spring Valley area were lower than US rates. Small non-statistically significant increasing time trends were observed in Spring Valley for incidence of two arsenic-related cancers: bladder and lung and bronchus. A moderate statistically significant increasing rate trend was observed for lung and bronchus cancer mortality in Spring Valley (p < 0.01). Lung and bronchus cancer mortality rates were also increasing in the Chevy Chase community, the local comparison area closely matched to Spring Valley on important demographic variables, suggesting that the observed increases may not be site-related. A full profile of common cancer site rates and trends for both study areas was suggested to better understand the rate trend findings but no epidemiological study was recommended.

Weapons labs hampered by restrictions on experiments, panel finds

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">National Research Council report finds quality of science and engineering at the three labs is very high, but urges Department of Energy to review its safety requirements.</xhtml:span>

Early Developments in Sensors and Simulators at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory

Personnel at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory introduced many innovative concepts in electromagnetics (EM) and created new antenna and sensor designs that made possible much of the wideband electromagnetics technology we have today. Many practitioners in high power EM are familiar with wideband sensors and simulators, but may not be aware of their origin. The purpose of this paper is to describe some of the concepts from which many of the designs evolved and provide some interesting insight into the mind of Dr. Carl Baum, who created them.

Entrepreneurial President—Richard Atkinson and the University of California, 1995–2003

DOI 10.1515/cjpp-2012-0032 Calif. J. Politics Policy 2012; 4(3):273–275 Book review Entrepreneurial President—Richard Atkinson and the University of California, 1995–2003 By Patricia A. Pelfrey ISBN: 9780520270800, 250 pp., Universityof California Press: Berkeley, CA. Dr. Pat Pelfrey has written a most interesting book on Richard Atkinson, presi- dent of the University of California during the last years of the golden century for public universities in the USA. Pelfrey understands Dick Atkinson, no mean task considering his complexities. Indeed, the reader knows after just a few chap- ters that she recognizes the most intriguing aspects of Atkinson’s personality. For example, he seems to some to be simultaneously unusually intelligent and apparently anti-intellectual. In fact, Pelfry convincingly explains with examples throughout the book that Atkinson was “highly intellectual, but with a distinctly un-academic dislike of verbal dueling”. It is hard to imagine anyone more qualified than Pat Pelfrey to write this book. She is an English literature and composition expert by PhD education, but a University of California (UC) presidents expert from 40 years of career and pro- fession, going back to President Charles Hitch in 1970. That expertise is appar- ent throughout the book. In addition, Pelfrey has written A Brief History of the University of California. The author pays special attention to three UC transitions in which Atkinson played major roles: the move of the UC into the post-affirmative action age; the expansion of the research enterprise into collaborations with the private sector; and the move away from the intimate relationships with Los Alamos and Liver- more National Weapons Laboratories. The three areas are well-chosen. One fin­ i­shes the book feeling that while it is not a complete biography or history, when the last page is read, you have little doubt that you now better understand what motivated Dick Atkinson. SP-1, SP-2. Pelfrey begins her book with what is easily the clearest and most inclusive discussion of the passage of SP-1 and SP-2 so far published. “On July 20, 1995, the Board of Regents of the University of California rolled back thirty years of history by abolishing the use of racial and ethnic preferences in admissions and employment. The two resolutions approved by the board, SP-1 (on admissions) and SP-2 (on employment and purchasing), passed by a narrow margin after a long and exhausting day of regental maneuvering and unsuccessful attempts at compromise”.

An outsider's inside view of Sandia National Laboratories

<xhtml:span xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en"> In excerpts from his new autobiography, Nigel Hey recounts his experiences as a public information officer at a nuclear weapons lab. </xhtml:span>

A Collaborative Effort to Address the Distribution of Plutonium-Contaminated Sludge in Livermore, California

Plutonium releases from the U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in Livermore, California resulted in the contamination of sewage sludge. Two research models to address the potential public health impacts of plutonium-contaminated sludge distribution were undertaken. One model was a collaborative approach that emphasized incorporating local knowledge into the scientific analysis and fostering the growth of mutually respectful relationships between scientists, governmental, and non-governmental collaborators. The second was a dose-assessment approach that utilized existing data to estimate radiological doses from exposure to plutonium contaminated sewage sludge and compared the estimated doses with those that have caused sickness or death. The two models reached different conclusions; neither addressed issues of intergenerational equity and primary prevention of exposure. Advancing an ethical research agenda will involve looking upstream of the contamination and working toward sustainable solutions to security that do not involve the public health threats embedded in the global embrace of nuclear weapons.