nuclear

A Nuclear Family Vacation is published by Bloomsbury.

The opening scene of the newest Indiana Jones film is set in Nevada in 1957, possibly during Operation Plumbbob, an actual nuclear-test series in which the U.S. measured the response of humans and physical structures to nuclear blasts. Satellite images give a hint of what's left: a pockmarked brown landscape of craters and broken buildings. There are smashed reinforced-concrete domes, shattered windows, as well as iron rails and bridges that the heat and explosion have twisted. It looks, I am told, like a place where Superman (or perhaps Uri Geller) had given himself over to a fit of rage.

The Department of Energy is preparing to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to store radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, under a plan endorsed by John McCain.

The word "mountain" has lovely connotations: icy streams, conifer forests, unblemished views of a snowy sierra, yodeling competitions. (OK, so not they're not all lovely.) Alas for Yucca Mountain, these images of alpine sweetness do not apply to it at all. If Yucca Mountain had a name that conveyed just how baking-hot, barren, forlorn, and lifeless it is -- perhaps "Yucca Death Vault" would do it justice -- more people might see the logic in the government's plan, now nearly thirty years old, to use it to store the nation's radioactive garbage. The mountain is dry, geologically appropriate, and far enough from human settlements to keep it secure in case of accident or attack. Nevadans and anti-nuke activists object and say that the risk of leaks, of terrorist attacks, and of unforeseen catastrophes is too great to allow Yucca Mountain to accept the waste. But the waste has to go somewhere, and Yucca Mountain is the right spot.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates returned mostly empty-handed from India, with India's ruling coalition still sitting on a landmark bilateral deal on civilian nuclear cooperation.

Gates's setback says more about the frailties of Indian coalition politics than about a cooling of bilateral ties. The U.S. and India are much cuddlier strategically than during my days as a foreign service officer in Bombay in the late 1980s, when the CIA station chief had to use a rickety sailboat from the Royal Bombay Yacht Club to snoop on India's western fleet (or maybe that was just his excuse to go sailing on Uncle Sam's dime). From 2006 to 2007, U.S. military assistance to India more than quadrupled to more than $1 billion (up from near zero in my day), the Indians recently agreed to buy six C-130 cargo planes, and the U.S. may win a $10 billion deal to supply fighter jets. (Last year, India was -- after China -- the world's second biggest buyer of military hardware, mostly from Russia and Israel.) And Indians feel a lot warmer toward the United States than your average Pakistani, despite billions in assistance over the years to that putative "ally." MORE