User talk:Newsnightmeirion

Dated cleanup tags

Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot does not generally add tags, but merely dates those that are already there. Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 13:20 20 March 2007 (GMT).

U.S. Plutonium to Israel

Hi. I wondered if you know the detail of the 0.6kg of plutonium supplied by the U.S. to Israel as "Sources, samples" during 1960-1969, recorded in "Table 13. Removals under Agreements for Cooperation"[1] of "Plutonium: The First 50 Years" (the official U.S. DoE account of Plutonium use)[2]. It seems a much larger supply than the UK gave, and I thought it should be recorded in Israel and weapons of mass destruction.

NB Israel got far more plutonium than other "Sources, samples" only states, Turkey and Mexico got 0.2kg, and the rest 0.1kg or less. The report notes[3] these 28 minor states got between 2 to 3 kilograms between them, so that's between 20% and 30% for Israel. I wonder why?

The report says these U.S. supplies were under IAEA controls. Were UK samples under similar control? Rwendland 14:39, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is no record at the British end that these were under IAEA controls. I haven't checked with IAEA but the implication is that they were not - given that ministers were not even told. For instance some of the requests for fissile materials come directly from the Israeli Ministry of Defence and we also know that in the case of the French and the Israelis the British decided not to tell even the Americans about their export of small plutonium samples. I suspect the Americans would argue that their supplies were for the official Israeli programme - not Dimona - the small reactor given by the USA under Atoms for Peace. I'm trying to find a reference in "Plutonium: the first 50 years" to a British export of a sample of plutonium to Sweden in 1957 for their nuclear weapons programme. It is mentioned in Swedish sources as some of the material used (along with French plutonium) in criticality tests AFTER Sweden signed the NPT. Newsnightmeirion 09:12, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The table of Pu returns under Agreements For Cooperation[4] (including Sweden) is interesting, it's a fairly good match with states that considered nuclear weapon development in the 1950s/1960s! The only other thing the U.S. report says about Sweden is in the two Agreements for Cooperation sections in [5] [6], and Table 13 [7].

Not sure if it is related, but Sweden has been interested in the criticality risks in spent fuel deep repository for a long time. Have you seen the 1978 paper "Criticality in a spent fuel repository in wet crystalline rock" [8], and the last paragraph of [9]? Criticality seems to be a serious risk, and the Swedish approach is discussed in 5.3 of [10]. Rwendland 13:04, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merging proposal

Hi, I saw you are a contributor to the France and weapons of mass destruction article. I proposed that the Force de frappe article could be merged into this article, if you could tell us your point of view on that matter that could be really appreciated. -- Esurnir 15:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I couldn't read the page so I deleted the welcome message to make your talk page readable, hope you don't mind :-S. (there was someone that was screwed up about it that made your talk page unreadable, a missing html tag perhaps. -- Esurnir 15:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Personal discussion on Article Discussion pages

Newsnightmeirion, you are making personal comments to me on an article discussion page. I ask that you refrain from writing about my blog and various webpages on this discussion page and instead take it to my talk page. The article discussion page is not the proper place to discuss such things. I hope you will respect this. Bstone 18:40, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sir- I kindly ask, again, that you refrain from 1) using my personal name, 2) making personal statements and 3) treat everyone with respect. I trust you will respect this. Bstone 17:34, 6 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]