Pravda, Moscow: Cold War is over – a Colder War is in store.

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In a year in which everybody is focused on the potential Iranian and South Korean nuclear power and where people start talking more and more about the Israeli arsenals (more than 400 atomic bombs) and that inspectors cannot check them, the United States and Russia seem to continue the videogame of the Cold War. There is nothing and nobody we can trust in this planet when we have to deal with nuclear power and weapons.

Find attached an article of the Pravda ( http://english.pravda.ru/) of June 29th 2006 about the preparation of a COLDER WAR.

Cold War is over – a colder war is in store
Front page / World / Americas
29.06.2006

The problem of nuclear disarmament has become one of the most important topics of recent international discussions. Today the most intense confrontation in the field of nuclear arms reduction is between Russia and the USA. Both countries have large amounts of nuclear warheads, both realize the necessity of disarmament and both don’t want to lose their dominance.

Today the Bush administration is expected to announce that it has dismantled the last of the most powerful nuclear missile warheads left over from the Cold War.
At the same time, however, a Senate subcommittee has added $10 million to next year's budget to fund a design competition for the second warhead in a new generation of U.S. nuclear weapons.
The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has increased by 50 percent the rate at which it is dismantling older weapons in the nuclear stockpile, which has about 5,000 weapons.
But Congress and the administration are pressing ahead with the Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which will guarantee production in the next decade of fewer but more reliable and secure nuclear warheads and bombs.
Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said yesterday that his Appropriations subcommittee had added $35 million to the fiscal 2007 budget "to accelerate the RRW design activities, including $10 million to initiate a second RRW design competition."
The panel's draft report says the second RRW design is proposed "to ensure that our strategic forces have at least two different certified RRW warheads" as a hedge against failure in any one system.
The nation's two nuclear weapons design centers, the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories, are competing to design the first RRW. The nuclear security agency is scheduled to make a choice late this year. A second RRW design competition may provide an opportunity to the losing lab.
The warhead at the center of today's announcement, the W-56, was put into operation in 1963 atop the Minuteman I intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). It had the explosive power of 1.2 megatons or "roughly 100 times greater" than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, according to Thomas B. Cochran, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's nuclear program.
The W-56 was retired in 1991, when the last Minuteman II ICBMs were taken out of their silos during the George H.W. Bush administration. However, it was not until 1999 that the government started dismantling the first W-56, a slow and precise process because of aging parts and nuclear materials, according to NNSA Deputy Administrator Thomas P. D'Agostino.

(See pages 2 and 3 of this article in: http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/82676-1/)

Please, have also a look at these more articles in the Pravda:

Fire on board Russian nuclear submarine put out, nuclear pollution excluded
09/07/2006 [article] /
Two people were killed in the fire that broke out on board the St.Daniil Moskovsky nuclear submarine at night. The fire has been extinguished, the nuclear reactor has been shut down, and the submarine is being towed on the .....

Russian K-19 nuclear submarine saved the globe from third world war
07/06/2006 [article] /
The K-19 submarine crew managed to prevent a nuclear explosion on board the cruiser and, as a possible consequence, a third world war. Not one of the sailors, (there were 139 crew members on board at the time), received a reward from the state and the families of the victims were left without support. For almost 30 years, no-one knew about this accident and the surviving sailors were bound by their duty to keep the military secret ....