Longtime blogfriend and scientist Cheryl Rofer has a brand new, slickly designed, venture up and running –  Nuclear Diner:

About Nuclear Diner

Nuclear Diner is a place for discussing all aspects of nuclear energy from all points of view. Civilian power reactors, nuclear weapons, their uses and dangers; the daily news and opinion on such matters, and, occasionally, a bit of humor, all will be found at the Diner.Both civilian and military nuclear issues need new thinking. After Fukushima, far too many people have reverted to old thinking: on one side, all nuclear is bad and must be stopped; on the other, let’s just move forward with new and better reactors. On the weapons side, the New Start Treaty of 2010 brings the enormous Russian and American nuclear arsenals down to a level where the other nuclear weapon powers must be brought into the conversation. The treaty also opens up the potential for accountability of each nuclear warhead, essential for lower and decreasing numbers.All this calls for new thinking from people who may not have been included in earlier discussions. Nuclear energy, in both civilian and military forms, affects everyone. Both civilian and military accidents can have worldwide consequences. Nuclear energy can supply electricity without producing carbon dioxide and global warming. But can it do that safely?We hope that many people will participate in Nuclear Diner at the level they are comfortable with. You don’t have to be an expert to express an opinion, and we hope that you will challenge the experts when they say something that doesn’t make sense. We hope that questions will be answered and that discussion will lead to new ideas and new solutions for the problems that are out there.

A sampling from the menu at Nuclear Diner:

What Does the “Nuclear Weapons Budget” Include?

Let’s go back to the Ploughshares Foundation paper that says the “nuclear weapons budget” is $600 billion to $740 billion over the next ten years. In order to gauge the effect of Representative Ed Markey’s proposed $200 billion cut, we need to know what that “nuclear weapons budget” includes. I’m putting it in quotes because, as I said earlier, the government doesn’t break it out that way. The Ploughshares numbers come from a study by Stephen Schwartz and Deepti Choubey….

What rights does one country have to limit construction of a nuclear power plant if they identify potential safety issues?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania has formally issued a complaint against the Belarus government over the lack of seismic testing completed for the planned site of their nuclear….

What To Cut for $200 Billion?

Let’s look at what might be subtracted from the “nuclear weapon budget” if Representative Ed Markey gets his decrease of $200 billion….

How to Deter Kim Jong-Il – The Great B-83 Controversy

The original article argues that conventional military responses to North Korean provocations would be insufficient because so many of North Korea’s strategic targets are in deep underground bunkers. Kim Jong-Il himself must be put at risk, and he is likely to hide in the deepest and most hardened bunkers. The current earth-penetrating warhead in the US arsenal, the B-61-11, is insufficient to endanger those bunkers. Modifying an existing warhead, the B-83, could provide a weapon that would worry Kim. Lewis and Colby argue that the modifications would not make a “new” weapon and would not threaten strategic stability with Moscow and Beijing, nor would it lower the threshold for nuclear use….

If the NPT, nuclear terrorism, nuclear physics, deterrence theory or nuclear energy policy are your issues then the Nuclear Diner has a seat at their counter waiting for you.

Adding to the blogroll…..

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Nuclear Diner, rofer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.