Wednesday, May 12, 2004

Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator. In the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing today, Sen. Feinstein (whom I cannot stand) caught Donald Rumsfeld in a (yet another) lie. You see, last year, when Rumsfeld was asked about the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator", which is a nuclear device that would penetrate into underground bunkers, he said that Pentagon is only conducting a study of RNEP. RNEP design (not to be confused with mini-nukes) has a yield up to a megaton, or around seventy times the force used on Hiroshima. Serious physicists (not Angry Arab) believe that you cannot detonate RNEP without causing a nuclear fallout. This is a scientific article about it, while this is by a group working against it. It turned out that the Pentagon is planning to spend more than $400 million for the "study of RNEP." Brace yourselves.