Here is a link to a CRS report on this topic. (There are no sensitive secrets in this report.) This link is provided by Steven Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists: www.fas.org. You can go there and subscribe to Secrecy News, eMail edition, as I have. This will provide you with insights into the manifold secret apparatuses of the USA and their penchant for withholding information. It will also get you access to Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports which are not normally available to the public.

So what, you say. Click on the first link above and read the entire report. Or, scan it for these words and phrases:

• scathing
• fiasco
• concreted shut
• substitute oversight recommendations
• cancellation risk

You will also note that 100 rem is considered OK, whereas Wikipedia thinks 100 rem gives a high chance of acute radiation syndrome, possibly death within weeks.

This CRS report is a unique, bizarre insight into the entire issue of nuclear weapons manufacture, government boondoggle spending, all in the name of researching how many ‘pits’ can be made in a year (a ‘pit’ is the detonator for a nuclear weapon – whether on a bomb or a rocket) and how to increase that number.

Apparently 11 pits a year is now all that can be actually constructed. While this seems fantastically low, especially given the enormous building floor spaces involved, the difficulty of managing plutonium is clearly presented here. Merely checking the chemistry (is it pure enough?) uses an army of Chemical Analysis people, dealing with radioactive material. Plutonium is aptly named, it is the devil itself to deal with.

Read the whole CRS Report. Subscribe to Secrecy News.

If you’re really impressed, send Aftergood a donation. Canadians don’t get tax breaks on this, but are known to contribute once in a blue moon.