Norman Dombey is an emeritus professor of physics and astronomy at Sussex. He has written many pieces about nuclear weapons for the LRB, arguing late in 2002, for example, that Iraq did not have the capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction.
The word ‘radioactive’ was first used in public on 18 July 1898, when Marie Curie and her husband, Pierre, reported to the French Academy of Sciences on the progress of their work on becquerel rays – what we would now call ionising radiation. The Curies had subjected pitchblende, a black mineral composed largely of uranium dioxide, to repeated heating, then dissolved the...
The prime minister made it clear that except where Her Majesty’s Government may decide that supreme national interests are at stake, these British forces will be used for the purposes of international defence of the Western Alliance in all circumstances.
Harold Macmillan, 21 December 1962
Harold Macmillan’s statement was made during a visit to the Bahamas to meet President...
On 7 June 1981, Israeli aircraft bombed and completely destroyed the Iraqi nuclear research reactor Osirak. The French government, which had sold the reactor to Iraq, protested. Bertrand Barre, its nuclear attaché in Washington, explained that the reactor posed no proliferation risk and that ‘it was intended to be used . . . for testing or converting materials into isotopes, which have specialised uses in medicine.’ The UN Security Council strongly condemned the attack as being ‘in clear violation of the charter of the United Nations and the norms of international conduct’. The United States, however, objected to the imposing of any sanctions on Israel.
On 4 February, the Board of Governors of the IAEA finally decided to report Iran to the UN Security Council. Their resolution noted that ‘after nearly three years of intensive verification activity, the agency is not yet in a position … to conclude that there are no undeclared nuclear materials or activities in Iran.’ It went on to point out ‘Iran’s many...
Did Scooter Libby, Vice-President Cheney’s chief of staff, lie to a grand jury about Valerie Plame and the leaking of her name to the press? If he did, was it retaliation aimed at her husband, Joseph Wilson, who wrote in the New York Times that the allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Niger was false – based, it turned out, on forged documents passed on to...
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