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Atoms trapped by light and measured with a CCD camera have the potential to outdo today's most accurate atomic clocks, and although it's early days, a pair of linked optical lattice clocks have yielded accuracy of a second every 300 million years. In doing so, the group that performed the test, outlined here in Nature and published in full in Nature Communications say their experiment performed at the limit of experimental accuracy, outperforming three linked caesium-based atomic clocks. Ever since 1967, the time standard has been governed by cesium clocks, in which the transition of atoms between high- and low-energy...

An uncovered file documents Cold War-era investigations into an important question: is it safe to drink beer that was exposed to an atomic bomb detonation? And does it taste OK?

Iran's nuclear chief said Monday that "terrorists and saboteurs" might have infiltrated the International Atomic Energy Agency in an effort to derail his nation's atomic program, in an unprecedentedly harsh attack on the integrity of the U.N. organization and its probe of allegations that Tehran is striving to make nuclear arms. Fereydoun Abbasi also rebuked the United States in comments to the IAEA's 155-nation general conference, reflecting Iran's determination to continue defying international pressure aimed at curbing its nuclear program and nudging it toward cooperation with the IAEA inspection. As such, the speech was bound to give a greater voice...

A landmark study on Hiroshima survivors comprehensively disproves nuclear lobby spin about ionising radiation being safe at low doses. Noel Wauchope reports. The nuclear industry has a long history of concealing the truth about low dose radiation This week, a new report about low dose ionising radiation was published — one that should put a spanner in the works of the nuclear lobby. It is called ‘Studies of the Mortality of Atomic Bomb Survivors, Report 14, 1950–2003: An Overview of Cancer and Noncancer Diseases’. First of all, let me explain why this report is so important and so timely. It’s...

He was correct about the Soviet atomic spies. The whole focus of the Soviet atomic bomb program was to build a copy of the American "Fat Man" implosion device. Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, David Greenglass, Rosenbergs and the other spies provided all of the info on the bomb to the Soviets. The first Soviet atomic bomb called "RDS-1", detonated on 29 August 1949 was an almost exact copy of the American "Fat Man".

ran has created a stockpile of enriched uranium that could be used to manufacture four nuclear weapons, head of the IDF's Military Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi said on Thursday. Speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Kochavi said that once Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the decision to go to the so-called "breakout stage" and begin enriching uranium to military-grade levels, it would take the Iranians a year to make a crude device and another year or two to manufacture a nuclear warhead that can be installed on a ballistic missile.

Citing ongoing threats from nuclear proliferation, climate change and the need to find sustainable and safe sources of energy, scientists moved the symbolic “Doomsday Clock” one minute closer to midnight on Tuesday. The clock was moved from six minutes till midnight to five minutes to midnight. The clock is symbolic and has been maintained by the University of Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists since 1947. The closer to a setting of midnight it gets, the closer it is estimated that a global disaster will occur. “It is five minutes to midnight,” the scientists said Tuesday. “Two years ago, it...

The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, will this week release a report on Iran’s nuclear activities. According to Western officials It will offer overpowering evidence that the Islamic republic has acquired and assembled the equipment and skills needed to build its first nuclear weapon. Details of the report have already begun to emerge. Here are the key points: Iran is in the advanced stages of designing a nuclear explosive device small enough to fit in a warhead. Its indigenous design involves a so-called R265 generator, which is a spherical shell with explosives around the outside. The name...

“After Biak the enemy withdrew to deep caverns.Rooting them out became a bloody business which reached itsultimate horrors in the last months of the war.You think of the lives which would have been lost in an invasion of Japan’s home islands – a staggering number of Americans but millions more of Japanese..."

In the midst of a still struggling and fragile global economy, Germany has announced that it will shut down seven nuclear plants by the end of the year--which means that Germans will be left to run their factories, heat their homes, and power their economy with 10% less electrical generating capacity. Nine more plants will be shut down over the next decade and tens of billions of dollars in investment will be lost. The grounds for this move, and similar proposals in Switzerland, Italy, and other countries, is safety. As the Swiss energy minister put it, “Fukushima showed that the...

Three of Fukushima Daiichi's six reactors were in operation when yesterday's quake hit, at which point they shut down automatically and commenced removal of residual heat with the help of emergency diesel generators. These suddenly stopped about an hour later, and this has been put down to tsunami flooding by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The loss of the diesels led the plant owners Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) to immediately notify the government of a technical emergency situation, which allows officials to take additional precautionary measures. For many hours the primary focus of work at the site was...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. Security Council committee has been told that North Korea, which has exploded two nuclear devices, may have additional secret atomic facilities, council diplomats said on Monday. The diplomats told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the assessment was included in a confidential report prepared by the so-called U.N. Panel of Experts, a group that monitors compliance with two rounds of U.N. sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear arms program. The report to the U.N. North Korea sanctions committee was based on conversations with a U.S. nuclear scientist, Siegfried Hecker, who saw hundreds of...

Jerusalem - Israel's minister of strategic affairs says that technical difficulties have pushed back the Iranian timetable for producing a nuclear weapon. Moshe Yaalon told Israel Radio on Wednesday that Iran is at least three years away from developing a nuclear bomb. Israeli military officials have said Tehran has the expertise to build a bomb, but needs time to gather the necessary materials. Yaalon's assessment matched the outer range of past Israeli estimates of Iran's suspected weapons programme.

A scientist and his wife who used to work at a high-level U.S. energy laboratory were arrested Friday after an FBI sting operation and indicted on charges of conspiring to help develop a nuclear weapon for Venezuela. After their arrest, the two appeared in federal court in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They dealt with an FBI undercover agent posing as a Venezuelan agent. The government did not allege that Venezuela or anyone working for it sought U.S. secrets.

TOKYO — Survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are welcoming a decision by the United States to send its first ever delegation to a ceremony marking the anniversary of the attacks, but are asking for something they aren't likely to get — an apology. Tokyo has praised the decision to send U.S. Ambassador John Roos to the Hiroshima anniversary on Friday, though some survivors of the attack, which is seen by many in Japan as an unjustified use of excessive force against a civilian population, say they have mixed feelings. "They best thing they could do would...

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NEW YORK – Publication has been halted for a disputed book about the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945, The Associated Press has learned. Charles Pellegrino's "The Last Train from Hiroshima" had received strong reviews and had been optioned for a possible film by "Avatar" director James Cameron. But publisher Henry Holt and Company, responding to questions from the AP, said Monday that Pellegrino "was not able to answer" several concerns, including whether two men mentioned in the text actually existed. "It is with deep regret that Henry Holt and Company announces that we will not print, correct or ship...

Atomic CSI team fingerprints 1940s 'Joachimsthal' metals EU nuke boffins say that mysterious bits of uranium found last year in a Dutch scrapyard originated in the Nazi nuclear-weapons programme of the 1940s. Forensic nuke scientists at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) traced two pieces of metal - described as a cube and a plate - back to their exact origins and dates. Apparently both came from ores extracted at the "Joachimsthal" mine in what is now the Czech Republic, though the two are from different production batches. The cube, according to specialists at the JRC's Institute for Transuranium...

Tock-tick. The hands of the Doomsday Clock have been sent back one minute. The alarm is now set to go boom! in six, and not five, minutes. Time enough for one more beer. It used to be 300 short seconds until The End, but the good people of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) have looked out upon the world and, lo, they have found it less quarrelsome. They see “encouraging progress” in both “key threat areas”: nuclear weapons … and climate change? Yes, climate change. The BAS has three boards: A majority of scientists (like top physicists Steven...

Is Italy capable of delivering a thermonuclear strike? Could the Belgians and the Dutch drop hydrogen bombs on enemy targets? And what about Germany - a country where fear of atomkraft is so great that the last government opposed all civilian nuclear power? Germany's air force couldn't possibly be training to deliver bombs 13 times more powerful than the one that destroyed Hiroshima, could it? It is Europe's dirty secret that the list of nuclear-capable countries extends beyond those - Britain and France - who have built their own weapons. Nuclear bombs are stored on air-force bases in Italy, Belgium,...