Security at America’s nuclear weapons labs is so lax that the buildings have repeatedly failed drills in which mock terrorists captured radioactive material and escaped, according to an article in Vanity Fair magazine.

Security at America’s nuclear weapons labs is so lax that the facilities have repeatedly failed drills in which mock terrorists captured radioactive material and escaped, according to an article in Vanity Fair magazine.

IRELAND’S little-known trade in computer software crucial for the development and maintenance of American and French nuclear weapons has prompted renewed questions about the role of a neutral state in programmes of this kind.

Victor F Weisskopf, an acclaimed physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and later advocated arms control, has died at the age of 93.

American nuclear scientists have been ordered to produce a ‘‘bunker-busting’’ bomb designed to destroy the deepest underground hiding places, it was reported today.

US Energy Department officials want the Los Alamos National Laboratory, known as the birthplace of the atomic bomb, to create a special facility where scientists can work with infectious agents such as plague, anthrax and tuberculosis.