UK: Hackers seize military satellite
Chinese submarine able to nuke any place in US
China has new submarine stealth nuclear missiles

One of Britain's nuclear submarines came within "a few minutes" of a reactor meltdown, naval experts have revealed. HMS Tireless, a hunter-killer submarine now awaiting repair in Gibraltar, came far closer to catastrophe than previously thought.

A Royal Navy source said the incident, originally described by the Ministry of Defense as "minor," involved a failure of the cooling system that would have led to a meltdown in the reactor.

The resulting explosion would have released a cloud of radioactive dust contaminating thousands of square miles of the Mediterranean.

Disaster was averted by the vigilance of the crew and the smooth functioning of the submarine's emergency systems.

The incident took place on May 18, when the submarine was on exercise in the Mediterranean. It limped into Gibraltar for repairs the next day and has been there since.

MOSCOW -- Russia and the United States remain far apart Wednesday in their row over US plans to build a new nuclear defense shield, Interfax cited undisclosed diplomats here as saying. When Talbott arrived here Tuesday Moscow reiterated its warning to Washington not to step outside the bounds of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in order build a nuclear umbrella over the United States.

Russia says any modification of the treaty would render current START III arms control talks meaningless. Interfax reported that neither side budged from their positions during closed-door talks on Wednesday. "We want to make the world safe, and we are seeking the best of guarantees for the world's safety while securing Russia's position in the world," Interfax quoted Putin saying.

Talbott's visit comes amid a chill in US-Russian relations stemming from intense Western criticism of Russia's ongoing military campaign in the breakaway republic of Chechnya.

NEVADA TEST SITE -- For decades, there was no place for life on Frenchman Flat, where America once practiced for doomsday, where scientists and soldiers tested how efficiently their nuclear devices could destroy and kill.

In all, they blew up 928 nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site, an expanse of basins and ranges slightly larger than Rhode Island. After 1963, all were underground tests. But for the first 12 years, scientists detonated 100 atomic devices in Nevada's open air--14 of them above this dry lake bed shaped like a teardrop.

The fallout drifted far and wide, all the way to New York, contaminating milk, wheat, soil and fish, killing sheep, horse and cattle. Every American in the lower 48 states was exposed to iodine-131, a radioactive form of iodine. The National Cancer Institute says the releases were at least 10 times larger than those from the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl. As many as 75,000 people exposed during that period could develop thyroid cancer, the institute says.

To many Americans, this wasteland is now little more than a Cold War artifact, an environmental menace that causes cancer, a reminder of the dark side of the human spirit and the terrible damage a cracked atom can do.

Like many places that tied their fortunes to the arms race, this one is looking for a new role in new times. Staff has dropped from a Cold-War peak of 11,000 to fewer than 2,500; the annual budget from $1 billion to $400 million.

So, the government is considering another idea: To open this top-secret area to big-time tourism. Jeffrey Cruser, 17, and his dad, Alan, have come all the way from Beachwood, N.J., to see THE crater--Sedan. And now, the tour bus they're riding is approaching it.

Sedan was a nuclear bomb with the force of 104,000 tons of TNT. It was detonated 635 feet underground on July 6, 1962, an attempt at using atomic explosives to excavate harbors, reservoirs, even a new Panama canal.

Sedan displaced 12 million tons of earth, leaving a cone-shaped pit 1,280 feet in diameter and 320 feet deep. Some of that earth became radioactive dust that floated over Utah. Several years later, irregularly high numbers of children there developed leukemia. A statewide study by the University of Utah, published in 1990, said there is an association between radioactive fallout and leukemia risk.

Another passenger on the tour bus, Celia Owens, 50, an artist and writer who lives in New York City, gazes out at the desert. Her father was a foreman for seven years at a nuclear weapons assembly plant in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He died in January, 1961, of a rare blood disorder that Owens attributes to radiation exposure. "I guess I needed to see this for myself," she says, "to see where profit and greed can lead people."

The bus clambers up a rise. Down a gravel slope, beyond a fence and white and yellow platform, Sedan awaits. The visitors huddle near the railing, side-by-side, shoulders touching.

"Oh, my." "Wow." "Good Lord."

No one returns to the bus smiling.

China's new strategic submarine will be targeted against U.S. nuclear forces and carry missiles with small warheads similar to American weapons, The Washington Times reported. The People's Liberation Army Navy will start construction in the next several weeks on its first Type 094 missile submarine which will carry a smaller underwater variant of China's new DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missile, which was flight-tested in August. The JL-2 submarine-launched missile wil be deployed on the Type 094 and the DF-31. The JL-2 also is known as the Julang-2 and will have a range of about 7,400 miles. "These missiles will be able to hit any place in the United States, not just the Western states," said one official.

According to a congressional report on Chinese technology theft released earlier this year, the new Type 094 submarine will provide the People's Republic of China (PRC) with new strategic nuclear capabilities that will increase the threat to the United States. The report by the special panel headed by Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican, stated that the JL-2's 7,400-mile range allows it "to be launched from the PRC's territorial waters and to strike targets throughout the United States."

"Instead of venturing into the open ocean to attack the United States, the Type 094-class submarines could remain near PRC waters, protected by the PLA Navy and Air Force." The Cox committee report also said the submarines are part of a new Chinese nuclear strategy of developing weapons that are more "survivable" against U.S. nuclear missiles. The submarines provide such survivability because they are hard to detect. In addition to the new missile submarines, China also is building a new attack submarine known as the Type O93 that will be equipped with underwater-fired cruise missiles.

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Israel is ranked sixth among the world's nations with nuclear weapons in a secret document written by the U.S. Department of Energy. The paper says that Israel has 300 kilograms to 500 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, which it says is enough to produce at least 250 nuclear warheads. By comparison, Russia, which ranks first, has 140 tons of the material, while the U.S. has 85 tons. Britain has 7.6 tons, France six tons to seven tons, and China 1.7 tons to 2.8 tons. Israel ranks ahead of India, which has 150 kilograms to 250 kilograms, and North Korea, which has 23 kilograms to 35 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium.