Comptabilité

United States General Accounting OfficeBiblio.com

Nuclear Winter: Uncertainties Surround the Long-Term Effects of Nuclear War; Report to the Congress GAO/NSIAD-86-62

198683634Washington DC: United States General Accounting Office 1986. Presumed First Edition First printing. Wraps. Good. 55 1 pages. Footnotes. Appendix I is Selected Literature Reviewed. This report examines scientific and policy implications of nuclear winter. It is based on extensive review of relevant literature and detailed discussions with a wide range of scientists researchers and policy analysts within and outside of government. It provides an overview of what is known about nuclear winter and of ongoing research addressing areas of scientific uncertainty. It also outlines potential implications for defense strategy arms control and foreign policy-making and points out the absence of a consensus on the need for policy changes at this time. The Office of Science and Technology Policy after reviewing the report in draft suggested that GAO by discussing potential policy implications was giving more validity to the nuclear winter theory that was warranted and suggested the tenor of the report be changed. GAO did not agree. Nuclear winter is a severe and prolonged global climatic cooling effect that is hypothesized to occur after widespread firestorms following a large-scale nuclear war. The hypothesis is based on the fact that such fires can inject soot into the stratosphere where it can block some direct sunlight from reaching the surface of the Earth. It is speculated that the resulting cooling would lead to widespread crop failure and famine. When developing computer models of nuclear-winter scenarios researchers use the conventional bombing of Hamburg and the Hiroshima firestorm in World War II as example cases where soot might have been injected into the stratosphere alongside modern observations of natural large-area wildfire-firestorms. "Nuclear winter" or as it was initially termed "nuclear twilight" began to be considered as a scientific concept in the 1980s after it became clear that an earlier hypothesis that fireball generated NOx emissions would devastate the ozone layer was losing credibility. It was within this context that the climatic effects of soot from fires became the new focus of the climatic effects of nuclear war. In these model scenarios various soot clouds containing uncertain quantities of soot were assumed to form over cities oil refineries and more rural missile silos. Once the quantity of soot is decided upon by the researchers the climate effects of these soot clouds are then modeled. The term "nuclear winter" was a neologism coined in 1983 by Richard P. Turco in reference to a one-dimensional computer model created to examine the "nuclear twilight" idea. This model projected that massive quantities of soot and smoke would remain aloft in the air for on the order of years causing a severe planet-wide drop in temperature. Turco would later distance himself from these extreme conclusions. After the failure of the predictions on the effects of the 1991 Kuwait oil fires that were made by the primary team of climatologists that advocate the hypothesis over a decade passed without any new published papers on the topic. United States General Accounting Office paperback

Ground Zero Books · États-Unis85,00 $US≈ 71,92 €

United States General Accounting OfficeBiblio.com

Nuclear Weapons Complex: Issues Surrounding Consolidating Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories; Statement of Victor S. Rezendes Director Energy and Science Issues Resources Community and Economic Development Division: Testimony Before the Committee on Science Space and Technology House of Representatives GAO/T-RCED-92-98

199280751Washington DC: United States General Accounting Office 1992. Contemporary Xerox copies. Six individually stapled items held together by a binder clip. Good. 1 31 pages. Together with copies of the testimonies of John Deutch 10 pages Lewis Branscomb 11 pages William Brinkman 5 pages and Eric Bloch 14 pages. Also included at the Opening Remarks of Chairman George E. Brown Jr. 5 pages. Dr. Deutch testified in his capacity as an Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and referred to his holding several positions at the Department of Energy during the period 1978 to 1980. Professor Branscomb testified in his capacity as the Director Science Technology and Public Policy Program as the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professor Branscomb had served as the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and was thus the President's Science Advisor. William F. Brinkman testified as the Executive Director Research Physics Division of AT&T Bell Laboratories. William Frank Brinkman was an American physicist who served as president of the American Physical Society 2002 and was the head of the Office of Science at the United States Department of Energy 2009-2013. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984 and won the George E. Pake Prize in 1994. Erich Bloch was a Distinguished Fellow Council on Competitiveness. Erich Bloch 1925 - 2016 was an electrical engineer and administrator. He was involved with developing IBM's first transistorized supercomputer 7030 Stretch and mainframe computer System/360. He served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990. Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: We are pleased to be here today to testify on the Department of Energy's DOE nuclear weapons laboratories. As you requested our testimony focuses on three areas: 1 the research development and testing RD&T capabilities of the Los Alamos and Livermore National Laboratories; 2 the recent trends in staffing and funding at DOE's weapons laboratories; and 3 options identified by the laboratories and DOE for consolidating the Los Alamos and Livermore RD&T programs. This<br/>testimony provides a baseline for future congressional deliberations on these issue. Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories maintain a deliberately redundant nuclear warhead research development and testing RD&T infrastructure. The redundancy<br/>between Los Alamos and Livermore was intended to stimulate competition in the nation's efforts to design nuclear warheads. With the end of the Cold War however the nature of the nuclear warhead RD&T effort at the laboratories has been changing rapidly. Changes in the world coupled with the possibility of substantial budget cuts in the nuclear weapons area brings into question whether the nation still needs or can financially sustain the laboratories' current level of redundancy. In summary although Los Alamos and Livermore have<br/>duplicative RD&T capabilities in general over the years their independent approaches have led to each developing specialized knowledge and capabilities. Over the past several years both RD&T funding and staffing have declined significantly at the laboratories. With this recent and anticipated continued decline in resources devoted to nuclear weapons RD&T some consolidation of the laboratories' functions has already occurred and more is in process. The laboratories believe the potential savings are small relative to the funds needed to maintain the entire nuclear weapons complex. The laboratories believe however that savings are possible by avoiding additional duplicative facilities in the future. Both laboratories strongly prefer the current two-laboratory structure for weapons design. However Los Alamos officials believe that if the nation is to maintain its nuclear competence in the event of further significant cuts in nuclear weapons RD&T the current structure may need to be radically altered. In addition they believe that any new configuration must maintain the current benefits of competition and peer review. United States General Accounting Office unknown

Ground Zero Books · États-Unis50,00 $US≈ 42,31 €

Comptabilité

Filtres actifs

Siècle

Langage

Ajouté

Sujets

Catalogues

Filtres actifs

Siècle

Langage

Ajouté

Sujets

Catalogues

Filtres actifs

Siècle

Langage

Ajouté

Sujets

Catalogues