On August 22 (“Some New Wrinkles in Nuclear Weapons Secrecy”), Secrecy News mistakenly wrote that the SILEX uranium enrichment process is “a unique case in which information that was privately generated was nevertheless classified by the government. As far as could be determined, the decision to classify this non-governmental information under the Atomic Energy Act is the first and only time that such authority has been exercised.” That was inaccurate.
Dr. Andrew Weston-Dawkes, the director of the Department of Energy Office of Classification, said that offhand he was aware of at least one other such case of classification of privately-generated information. It involved “an AVLIS-like technology,” he said, referring to “atomic vapor laser isotope separation.”
Bryan Siebert, the former director of the DOE Office of Classification, said his recollection was that some of the laser fusion technology developed by the private company KMS Fusion in the early 1970s was also considered to be classified, “a long time before SILEX.” An account of the KMS Fusion case — which, he said, is “inaccurate in many ways” — is available from Wikipedia here.
Beyond that, said Dr. Weston-Dawkes, “there’s a long history of us going out to people [in the private sector] saying ‘you’re doing stuff’ [that needs to be reviewed for classification].”
He pointed to a 1972 public notice (pdf) issued by the Atomic Energy Commission. It instructed “any person” working on isotope separation techniques to notify the Commission whenever a separation process has been demonstrated “so the Commission can give him appropriate classification and reporting guidance.”
There are many other instances in which individual authors have tangled with Department of Energy classification officials concerning the publication of information that DOE believed to be classified, such as Howard Morland’s article on the H-Bomb that was the subject of The Progressive case in 1979. But those disputes involved previously generated and previously classified information, not qualitatively new inventions or developments.
With 2000 nuclear weapons on alert, far more powerful than the first bomb tested in the Jornada Del Muerto during the Trinity Test 80 years ago, our world has been fundamentally altered.
As the United States continues nuclear modernization on all legs of its nuclear triad through the creation of new variants of warheads, missiles, and delivery platforms, examining the effects of nuclear weapons production on the public is ever more pressing.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
To better understand what might drive the way we live, learn, and work in 2050, we’re asking the community to share their expertise and thoughts about how key factors like research and development infrastructure and automation will shape the trajectory of the ecosystem.