When I was in grade school, I was taught how to improve my chances of survival in a nuclear attack.

Remember that?

Remember the round yellow and black fallout shelter signs? Remember people building fallout shelters in their back yards?

It was nice not to have to think about that stuff, but lately, I've been thinking about it again.

Not because I am worried about somebody lobbing nukes at the U.S., but because of all the rhetoric about nuclear weapons. Lately, the news just kind of conjured up some of those old nuke memories.

I thought that we - when I say we I mean the entire industrialized world - had gotten over that whole nuclear thing.

I guess not.

And frankly, the U.S. seems to be a fairly willing player.

I was a little surprised at the language in the White House document released earlier this week called "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction." The document was delivered to Congress Wednesday.

It's only six pages, but it spells out a policy that says the U.S. "reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force - including through resort to all of our options - to the use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our forces abroad and friends and allies."

It has other pretty grave language, like, "Because deterrence may not succeed, and because of the potentially devastating consequences of WMD use against our forces and civilian population, U.S. military forces and appropriate civilian agencies must have the capability to defend against WMD-armed adversaries, including in appropriate cases through pre-emptive measures."

And, in discussing nonproliferation, there's this: "We must dissuade supplier states from cooperating with proliferant states and induce proliferant states to end their WMD and missile programs."

The U.S. policy for years has been to use nuclear weapons, but only as a last resort. The new language released this week was some of the most strident since the height of the Cold War.

Associated Press, quoting a senior administration official, reported that the language "intends to threaten U.S. nuclear retaliation as a deterrent to hostile governments."

I suppose that's OK, but all this talk of use of nukes still is a little unsettling.

Then I stumbled across an article in the online edition of New Scientist magazine. It was reprinted from the magazine's November print edition. The article, "Bunker-busters set to go nuclear," talks about how the U.S. government is set to fund research into a new and improved type of nuke designed to penetrate and destroy deeply buried targets like underground bunkers.

The program sought to fund the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" or RNEP for short.

Typing RNEP into my favorite Internet search engine brought me 1,600 hits.

I found that the RNEP funding, part of the 2003 Defense Authorization Act, was passed in the House of Representatives Nov. 12 and the Senate the following day.

According to the December edition of Arms Control Today, the research will examine "what the potential is for the modification of weapons in our system" to strike hardened and deeply buried targets.

That's what Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham told the Senate Armed Services Committee back in March.

Arms Control Today continues, "Portions of the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review leaked in March had indicated that the Bush administration wanted an improved ability to strike underground military facilities, including those containing biological or chemical weapons and related equipment, thus spurring the Energy Department to examine options for nuclear 'bunker busters,' the informal term used for RNEPs."

The idea is to make the tips of the missiles so hard that they penetrate deep enough to avoid fallout and collateral damage.

But some scientists are aghast.

They say there is no combination of tip hardness and velocity capable of performing as advertised.

The New Scientist magazine notes, "They (scientists) say the thousands of tons of radioactive debris produced by a bunker-busting nuclear weapon would not be contained within the rock, concrete and soil above the target, but would contaminate a wide area around it."

There is a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that bars any test with a live warhead, but this wouldn't stop us from using an RNEP untested.

Maybe it was just me, but all of this seemed to slip under the radar of the major news organizations. We have CNN playing all the time in the newsroom and if they ran the story, I must have missed it.

Another story in Arms Control Today was written by U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar.

The story is thousands of words long, but at one point Lugar outlines a list of 10 non-proliferation projects.

Lugar: "If the 10-Plus-10 agreement is implemented, careful analysis and coordination must occur to ensure that the initiative achieves the maximum nonproliferation benefits. In June 2002, I developed the following 'Top 10 List' of nonproliferation projects that could be undertaken as additional resources become available. Other proliferation threats exist beyond the 10 listed, but the intent of the list is to stimulate critical thinking about matching resources to the threats that face the international community."

Here's project number 3: "Tactical Nuclear Weapons: U.S.-Russian cooperation must move beyond strategic nuclear systems into the tactical weapons arena. By some measures, the proliferation threat posed by tactical nuclear systems is more serious than that posed by strategic weapons. Tactical warheads are more portable; they usually are deployed closer to potential flashpoints; and many are not secured at the same level as strategic systems. We must establish mutual confidence in the quantity, status, storage and security of tactical nuclear weapons."

So on the one hand we have a policy statement that says we must "induce proliferant states" to end their missile programs. We have Sen. Lugar urging a 10-point nonproliferation project.

At the same time, we're approving funding to expand our nuclear arsenal.

Seems a bit hypocritical, doesn't it? [[In-content Ad]]