Bush Pushes Forward in Race to Militarize Space

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US takes unilateral stance in new space policy

NewScientist.com news service
Jeff Hecht

10 October 2006 -- The US has issued a new national space policy that reflects a more aggressive and unilateral stance than the previous version issued a decade ago by former president Bill Clinton.

The earlier statement said US operations should be "consistent with treaty obligations". But the new one, issued on Friday, flat-out rejects new agreements that would limit the US testing or use of military equipment in space.

The new version also uses stronger language to assert that the US can defend its spacecraft, echoing an air force push for "space superiority" made in 2004. The new policy states the US has the right "to protect its space capabilities, respond to interference, and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests".

And it seems to open the door to a new anti-satellite arms race. One idea already in development is a robotic spacecraft that could approach a satellite to check it out, then sabotage it if it seems a danger to US interests.

Another concern is plans by the US Missile Defense Agency to orbit a small fleet of rockets with heavy heads to act as kinetic-energy interceptors. Although nominally intended for missile defence, Hitchens told New Scientist they would also be effective anti-satellite weapons. So far, however, she sees no signs of "a bucketload of money going to war fighting in space".

Other puzzles remain. The document includes a long section on which government agencies will administer space nuclear power systems, which will be used if they "safely enable or significantly enhance space exploration or operational capabilities". The question is whether the systems are part of president George W Bush's plans for crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, or potential power plants for some new kind of military satellite.

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn10262-us-takes-unilateral-stance-in-new-space-policy.html


my take: North Korea Drives Bush Into Outer Space (10-10-2006)


related Articles:

* Instant Expert: Weapons Technology
* http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9980
* 04 September 2006
* Top 10: Weapons of the future
* http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn9979
* 04 September 2006
* Nuclear-reactor spacecraft poor for astronomy
* http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7928
* 31 August 2005

related weblinks:

* US Space Policy (PDF)
* http://www.ostp.gov/html/US%20National%20Space%20Policy.pdf
* Center for Defense Information
* http://www.cdi.org/
* Missile Defense Agency
* http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html

[rubberducky]

1. bushco looking for a place to hide??? LOL

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4. just looking for a loftier position

to lord over us

[papau]

2. Ion drive Deep Space 1 to be replaced by atomic powered craft?

I don't understand how - but no doubt the neo-cons can explain the idea.

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3. It's just a front for their ambition to build a space-based reactor

to power their platform-based, space lasers. They need an entirely new infrastructure of nuclear power plants here on earth to facilitate the new generation of military meddling in space. The new nuclear infrastructure just so happens to be part and parcel of the new generation effort to develop new 'usable' mini nukes utilizing new 'blended' nuclear fuels.

[papau]

6. blended fuels are in place already - what do they need NASA for?

Over 35 reactors in Europe are licensed to use MOX fuel, and 20 French reactors are licensed to use it as 30% of their fuel (military plutonium blended with uranium oxide forming a mixed oxide (MOX) fuel). There is even competition from thorium-plutonium fuel.

The idea was of course "mega-tons to mega watts" - but mini-nukes via blended fuels is new to me. And why in space?

In any case I agree powering the Reagan/Bush space based laser missile defense that does not work and is not needed will need, of course, nuclear plants in space.

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7. The new plants that would utilize the new blended fuels will be formatted

to accomodate the new weapons, under the Bush plan . . .


Dr. Strangelove's Revenge

By Lynn Hamilton, AlterNet. Posted November 7, 2002.

" . . . the DOE recently announced that the Savannah River Site is in the running for yet another project, this one a "modern pit facility," which Barczak interprets to mean "a site that could produce/manufacture new plutonium pits for nuclear bombs."

"Many have felt all along that bringing the plutonium to South Carolina to make MOX was just a guise to get it here to do what the DOE really wants...to make new nuclear bombs"

http://www.alternet.org/story/14499/


France and Belgium produce MOX, but not from the weapons-grade plutonium. The Bush plan is experimental. The French make their MOX from commercial plutonium from their nuclear power plants' spent fuel rods .

Weapons plutonium contains a chemical called gallium which must be almost completely removed from weapons grade plutonium prior to fuel fabrication. This is a new element that would be added to the host of contaminents that seep into the ground and infect communities surrounding the plants.

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8. Fast Flux Test Facility and MOX

. Fast Flux Test Facility and MOX

The Fast Flux Test Facility (FFTF) is a sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor at the Hanford Nuclear site in south central Washington state. The DOE would like to re-start this reactor ostensibly to produce medical isotopes and plutonium-238 fuel sources for NASA spacecraft. But a mission in support of nuclear weapons research in the DOE's stockpile stewardship program is also possible (described as providing "special isotopes in significant quantities for national security").

There are also serious safety and environmental concerns: Hanford is already severely contaminated and in desperate need of clean-up, and the reactor coolant, sodium, explodes on contact with air.

FFTF would run on MOX fuel, using on-site supplies of MOX for the first six years, then importing MOX fuel from Germany for the next 7-20 years of operation. After 20 years, it would run on highly enriched (bomb-grade) uranium fuel, in direct opposition to nonproliferation efforts to discontinue the use of this fuel in research reactors.

http://www.wand.org/issuesact/moxbbd_8-24.html


in my view, all of the effort by the Bush regime is for their ambition for new nukes. The rest is a cover. All of the seemingly benign uses for the new nuclear facilities and the space initiatives, are meant to mask and couch their weapons programs and carry them forward as the seemingly benign programs progress.

[papau]

9. thanks for the heads up - each day I learn how much I do not know or

forgot.

I did not remember the gallium used to stabilize the U in the bomb - not a bad chemical - doesn't seem a real pollutant - but it complicates the use of spent bomb U.

But you Hanford comment is spot on. The plume from Hanford is moving through the water table and since we have no way to stop it, we do not discuss the disaster that is coming. I hope this new plant has a few safeguards. And I hope it is not really for bombs.

But I agree that atoms in space is not a NASA need - it is to power the space based lasers for the pretend missile defense - more of our tax money for the welfare trillions for the Bush defense company investments.

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10. Gallium arsenide eats away at the tubes which would hold the MOX fuels

and has to be separated, removed . . .


The Department of Energy (DOE) is currently looking into the means to be taken to dispose of 50 tons of plutonium left in cold war nuclear weapon stockpiles. Plutonium is not a natural element. It is created by human skill and effort - and it is indestructible. The presence of gallium in the plutonium complicates its disposition even further. Originally added to keep the plutonium stable over wide ranges of temperature, gallium generates large amounts of radioactive wastewater if it is removed using current known methods - and it must be removed.

The DOE has decided that some of the plutonium should be mixed with uranium and used as fuel - called Mixed Oxide or MOx - in existing nuclear power plants. Gallium interferes with the conversion itself and causes chemical problems when the MOx is used. The remainder of the plutonium is to be mixed with radioactive waste and "vitrified" into glass at a plant in South Carolina which already processes nuclear waste.

At the high temperatures required to mix plutonium with glass any gallium present becomes a gas which adheres to the sides of the furnace leaving behind a permanent radioactive metal coating. Neither procedures reduces the amount of plutonium: one makes use of it but creates more nuclear waste; the other simply makes it useless for reconversion to weapons.

http://www.pww.org/archives97/97-02-08-2.html


Los Alamos National Laboratory: Document LA-UR-96-4764.

Technologies for gallium removal and plutonium oxide production

The currently available fully developed technology for gallium removal and plutonium oxide production is an aqueous process which results in the generation of large quantities of liquid radioactive wastes. For this reason, it would be highly desirable to avoid using the aqueous process and in its stead use the dry processes being developed at the Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories.

http://www.ieer.org/latest/gallium.html


MOX = PLUTONIUM AT A REACTOR NEAR YOU

In order to make the nuclear weapons, other ingredients were added to the plutonium. One of these is Gallium, which has not been put in a reactor core before, and which interacts with zirconium, one of the metals composing the fuel rod’s "cladding."

Compromise of fuel cladding can cause a host of problems including greatly increased releases of radioactivity to air and water. People living near the Pilgrim nuclear power reactor in Massachusetts had a 400% greater chance of suffering leukemia than those who lived upwind during the years when that reactor was using fuel with faulty cladding.

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/moxandreactor.htm

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5. .