Attacks on nuclear power plants in the Russia/Ukraine war seem to be growing more frequent and have moved into Russia as well as Ukraine. This is the 3rd auspicious and dangerous threats in as many days, but the nuclear attacks by Ukraine in Russia are recent, while the attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is operated by Russia, have been going on for more than two years.
But the fact that nuclear power plants are becoming more frequently involved in these skirmishes demonstrates that it may be easier to fight a nuclear war involving radioactive power plants than it is to fight a war with conventional weapons. One could easily say that this war has already turned into a nuclear war, which could indicate that nuclear war is already officially underway. This ongoing situation could get much worse, and, of course, will never get better if the nuclear reactors at these nuclear power plants (and others) are used as weapons of mass destruction. ~llaw
IAEA unable to determine cause of Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant fire
By Reuters
August 12, 20243:58 PM PDTUpdated a day ago
The logo of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is seen at their headquarters before an emergency meeting at the request of both Ukraine and Russia, to discuss attacks on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, after both countries accused each other of drone attacks, in Vienna, Austria April 11, 2024. REUTERS/Leonhard Foeger/File Photo
Aug 13 (Reuters) – The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said late on Monday that its representatives inspected a damaged cooling tower at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant in Ukraine but could not immediately determine the cause of a fire there at the weekend.
Moscow and Kyiv have accused each other of starting the fire at the vast dormant nuclear power plant in Ukraine, with Russia blaming a drone attack and Ukraine saying it was likely Russia’s negligence or arson.
The IAEA team found no immediate sign of drone remains and assessed that it was unlikely that the primary source of the fire began at the base of the cooling tower, the IAEA said in a statement on its website.
“The team has not been able to draw definitive conclusions (on the cause of fire) on the basis of the findings and observations so far,” the agency said.
Neither Moscow or Kyiv have reported signs of elevated radiation.
The IAEA said damage was most likely concentrated on the interior of the tower at the water nozzle distribution level, at roughly 10 metres (33 ft) high.
“The team confirmed that there were no significant signs of disturbance of the debris, ash or soot located at the base of the cooling tower,” the IAEA said.
“The nuclear safety of the plant was not affected, as the cooling towers are not currently in operation.”
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There is so much trouble going on in the Russia/Ukraine war that I have switched back to Sky News (because their coverage is always the most comprehensive and you can pick and choose the stories of interest to you to your heart’s content. We now have two major nuclear power plants directly involved in this war, which ought to alert you about what nuclear power plants can become at anytime anywhere; and that is nuclear weapons of mass destruction, or WMDs.
We will start with their continuing coverage of this rapidly escalating serious and dangerous conflict — that could well, with a single errant spark, turn into an international war involving most, if not all, nuclear armed countries, but it would only take one ICBM, Submarine, Jet Bomber, or any other kind of nuclear attack from any one of them to start WWIII, or the end of the world as we know it. Some of us call it nuclear armageddon . . . llaw
Ukraine-Russia latest: Ukraine now controls 1,000sq km of Russian territory, official says – as Putin responds to Kyiv’s assaults
Parts of the Russian region of Belgorod are evacuated, as the local governor reports “Ukrainian activity”. This follows local reports that Kyiv’s forces entered the region yesterday. In the nearby Kursk region, Ukraine’s invasion continues.
We’ll be back tomorrow morning with more updates on the Ukraine war.
Before we go, here’s a reminder of what has happened today:
Some 11,000 people were evacuated from the Krasnoyaruzhsky district in Russia’s Belgorod region due to activity by Ukrainian forces;
Kyiv’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi claimed Ukraine controlled around 1,000 square kilometres of Russia’s Kursk region;
The US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk region had allowed Kyiv to seize the battlefield initiative for the first time since the end of last year;
A fire broke out at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant;
China called for de-escalation after Ukrainian troops launched a surprise assault inside Russia;
Vladimir Putin said the Russian military must “dislodge” Ukrainian troops from border regions, according to reports;
The governor of Russia’s Kursk region claimed Ukrainian forces used shells containing chemical weapons during their invasion.
Vladimir Putin at a meeting with security officials (Reuters)
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
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0.38%increase; green up pointing triangle —pushed back on an aspect of Talen Energy’s agreement to sell nuclear … all-nighters and 100-hour weeks that …
Moscow and Kyiv have blamed each other for a large fire that broke out at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine on Sunday, with the …
The following article is an update from yesterday’s post concerning the possibility of a potential nuclear disaster amid the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war. We are now seeing nuclear power plants, either by accident or by war strategy, adding possible nuclear tragedy to innocent citizens who are evacuating the Kursk reactor location.
A news report yesterday, posted here, said that 76,000 Russian citizens were ordered to evacuate , and yesterday even Russian president Vladimir Putin is urging more evacuations, apparently not directly due to war, but to the possibility of ta Kursk Power Plant meltdown and radiation released ot the atmosphere, similar to the long ongoing concerns of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine. where nearby fighting has been ongoing for nearly two years.
My point here , as I have often mentioned in past posts in this daily blog, is that nuclear power plants are potentially as dangerous as nuclear war, whether accidentally by earthquakes, floods, typhoons, hurricanes, or, just as likely, operational errors by plant operators, and most certainly as weapons of war when available. We are well advised, therefore, to not only disarm all nuclear weapons on the face of the Earth, but also do the same with nuclear powerplants. It is a mystery to me why nobody seems to understand the ‘all things nuclear’ threat to all life on the planet, including animal life. as well as our own. ~llaw
Nuclear disaster warning for two countries as Putin orders urgent mass evacuation
Ukrainian forces have made a surprise incursion into Russian territory sparking fears fighting could develop around the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant.
The Kursk Nuclear Power plant is close to where Russian and Ukrainian forces could be fighting (Image: Getty )
The head of the international atomic monitoring body has issued a stark warning to Russia and Ukraine to avoid fighting getting close to huge nuclear power plant.
Rafael Grossi, the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), urged both militaries to “exercise maximum restraint” if combat erupts near the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant.
A humiliated Vladimir Putin has now been forced to issue a massive evacuation order for more than 76,000 civilians from the Kursk region. The measures, which also apply to the neighbouring Belgorod and Bryansk provinces that border Ukraine, allow the government to relocate residents, control phone communications and requisition vehicles.
The Russian Defence Ministry said today (Saturday) that fighting was continuing in the Kursk and that the army has conducted airstrikes against Ukrainian forces.
In an urgent statement issued last night, IAEA boss Rafael Grossi said: “The IAEA has been monitoring the situation on the reported military activities taking place in the vicinity of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant.
President Putin has been forced to issue an evacuation order for civilians (Image: Getty )
“In view of the reportedly significant military activity, I wish to remind all parties of the seven indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during an armed conflict.”
Mr Grossi urged Russia and Ukraine to respect principles adhered to so far in the conflict which have been used to protect the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine.
He added: “These include, among others, the imperative to ensure the physical integrity of a nuclear power plant. This is valid irrespective of where an NPP is situated.
“At this juncture, I would like to appeal to all sides to exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences.”Subscribe
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
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A credible American and Israeli threat to strike critical Iranian assets and sites – including military, nuclear, oil and electricity facilities, as ..
I apologize for not posting my comments on the extremely dangerous world-threatening nuclear war and/or nuclear power yesterday, so I have updated the status of the Russia/Ukraine war situation. This time it comes from the Russian side of the border between the two nations . . . ~llaw
Ukraine updates: Russia says 76,000 evacuated from Kursk
Russia said tens of thousands of residents of the Kursk border region have been brought to safety as a Ukrainian incursion lasts into its fifth day. Meanwhile, Belarus said Ukraine violated its airspace. DW has more.
What you need to know
Russia says 76,000 evacuated from Kursk region amid Ukrainian incursion
Russia launches new operations to fight back Ukraine’s incursion into border regions
Belarus says Ukraine violated its airspace
IAEA, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, called for restraint from Ukraine and Russia.
Russia imposed anti-terrorism measures in the Kursk, Bryansk, and Belgorod regions
“Today, Commander-in-Chief Syrsyki has already reported several times – on the frontline situation and our actions to push the war out into the aggressor’s territory,” Zelenskyy said. He expressed gratitude to the Ukrainian miltiary for its efforts.
“Ukraine is proving that it really knows how to restore justice and guarantees exactly the kind of pressure that is needed – pressure on the aggressor,” Zelenskyy said.
Russia says over 76,000 residents of Kursk evacuated
Russia on Saturday said over 76,000 residents in the western parts of Kursk bordering Ukraine have been evacuated so far this week.
“More than 76,000 people have been temporarily relocated to safe places,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted an official from the regional emergency situations ministry as saying at a press briefing on Saturday.
Ukrainian forces began an incursion on Tuesday into the Kursk region in a surprise attack.
The fighting, which has caught Russia off guard, now persists into a fifth day.
ARTICLE 2 from IAIA:
IAEA Director General Statement on Developments in the Russian Federation
09 Aug 2024
Vienna, Austria
The IAEA has been monitoring the situation on the reported military activities taking place in the vicinity of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP).
This NPP has six units of two different reactor types: RBMK-1000 and VVER-510. Two of the RBMK-1000 are in shutdown and two are fully operational. The two VVER-510 units are under construction.
In view of the reportedly significant military activity, I wish to remind all parties of the seven indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety and security during an armed conflict. Additionally, I emphasize the five concrete principles to help to ensure nuclear safety and security which have been established for the Zaporizhzhya NPP in the context of the current conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, and which are equally applicable in this situation. These include, among others, the imperative to ensure the physical integrity of a nuclear power plant. This is valid irrespective of where an NPP is situated.
At this juncture, I would like to appeal to all sides to exercise maximum restraint in order to avoid a nuclear accident with the potential for serious radiological consequences. I am personally in contact with the relevant authorities of both countries and will continue to be seized of the matter. I will continue to update the international community as appropriate.
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
The Kursk Nuclear Power Station is one of the largest atomic power facilities in Russia and supplies electricity to the entire federal district, which …
The AP turned to White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi and experts at the Energy Department and Nuclear Regulatory Commission to help answer …
For conspicuous reasons, the likelihood of direct war between Israel and Iran is increasingly “high.”[1] What remains inconspicuous is that such a war …
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This evening you will have to choose your own ‘nuclear poison’ about reading and digesting in order to evaluate it because I am having a whole lot of trouble with Facebook deleting my posts once again. I guess it’s because they cannot distinguish between what I call Information and Education and they call SPAM, Bullying, and Safety issues that this blog, according to them, seems to serve up on occasion according to Facebook’s AI operated “Community Standards”. Yes the same bogus standards that have thrown many of you in ‘Facebook jail’ for potentially offending someone(s) with words like using the ‘poison’ as I’ve done above without their ability to know the context in which the word is used. I have heard many of those kinds of stories and the outrage that goes with them, but Facebook seems to care less about whether or not you deserved your jail term because their AI technology mistakenly put you behind bars. Well, what I am serving up every day to humanity is not going to tolerate their AI technology’s lack of human qualities like such a simple thing as understanding the languages that humans use and how they use them . . .
In my case they have deleted some of my blog posts in both July and now last night in August for absolutely opposing reasons (between some kind of a personal influence on my readers or what it actually is — a blog concerning genuine humanitarian concern with media nuclear news on both sides of any issue, and educational knowledge and warnings about the seriously growing human and other life-threatening dangers of ‘all things nuclear’ regarding both nuclear war and nuclear power plants.
Just know that they (the Facebook AI clones) are ‘dead’ wrong and that they are attempting to destroy information that is vital to the future health, welfare, safety, and lives of each and ever one of us on planet Earth, as well as a world of other innocent living creatures who have every right to exist on this planet as well. I hereby challenge Facebook to “Fix the Error of their Ways”. ~llaw
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There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Ameren Missouri’s Callaway nuclear power plant seen during a Lighthawk flight on Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Callaway County. Behind caution tape, a …
During the Cold War, nuclear deterrence and its central feature August 2022 study by leading scientists forecast that a major nuclear war between the …
READ MORE Is Italy’s super-volcano about to blow? Visitors to Yellowstone ran for their lives last month — after an erupting geyser launched a boiling …
IAEA Weekly News
9 August 2024
Read the top news and updates published on IAEA.org this week.
A new version of the IAEA publication ‘Milestones in the Development of a National Infrastructure for Nuclear Power’ is now published and has been revised to address issues related to small modular reactors (SMRs). Read more →
The occurrence of intense fires near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) continues to add to the growing challenges facing Europe’s largest nuclear power plant (NPP), IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said today. Read more →
The tritium concentration in the eighth batch of diluted ALPS treated water, which the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) began discharging today, is far below Japan’s operational limit, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) experts have confirmed. Read more →
Interested contributors have until 2 December 2024 to submit synopses for the International Conference on Stakeholder Engagement for Nuclear Power Programmes, to be held from 26 to 30 May 2025 at IAEA headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Read more →
This World Breastfeeding Week, the IAEA is calling for more countries to provide input to a unique database. The IAEA’s Database on Human Milk Intake has been built using information generated from a nuclear technique that accurately measures breast milk intake. Read more →
From the article: “Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons?” That says it all. Need I say more?
This ‘use it or lose it’ factor is a huge part of the concept of ‘deterrence’, which I’ve been harping about for months, including my last two “All Things Nuclear” blog posts prior to this one.
But let me ask just a couple of questions, which is about the very logic of ‘deterrence’:
If we spend trillions to upgrade our nuclear arsenal, how much will Russia, China, and perhaps North Korea spend to do the same with their nuclear arsenal in order to maintain the ‘deterrence’ balance of equality?We, and the other nuclear armed nations already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy virtually every human life on Earth (including most other life) several times over, so we are already at a point where ‘deterrence’ doesn’t matter beyond our collective insanity of ‘keeping up with the [nuclear] Jones’s”.
If ‘deterrence’ goes on and on, toward ad infinitum, when, where, and why does it stop?‘Deterrence’ is useless because a financially strapped country (or maybe just a sick of the waste of wealth one like say, Russia, China, or, in particular, North Korea decide the ‘deterrence game of thrones’ is beyond sanity and decide to ‘end it all’ by launching their existing ICBMs or their entire triad of nuclear weapons of mass destruction on one of the others. I say, just “one” because that’s all that’s necessary to start WWIII, meaning the instant retaliatory involvement of all nations, including, unfortunately, those who are not nuclear empowered.~llaw
Meet the army of lobbyists behind $2 trillion nuclear weapons boost
The ‘Sentinel’ ICBM is the latest boondoggle to avoid cancellation due to massive industry investment in the right places
The Pentagon is in the midst of a massive $2 trillion multiyear plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines. A large chunk of that funding will go to major nuclear weapons contractors like Bechtel, General Dynamics, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. And they will do everything in their power to keep that money flowing.
This January, a review of the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program under the Nunn-McCurdy Act — a congressional provision designed to rein in cost overruns of Pentagon weapons programs — found that the missile, the crown jewel of the nuclear overhaul plan involving 450 missile-holding silos spread across five states, is already 81% over its original budget. It is now estimated that it will cost a total of nearly $141 billion to develop and purchase, a figure only likely to rise in the future.
That Pentagon review had the option of canceling the Sentinel program because of such a staggering cost increase. Instead, it doubled down on the program, asserting that it would be an essential element of any future nuclear deterrent and must continue, even if the funding for other defense programs has to be cut to make way for it. In justifying the decision, Deputy Defense Secretary William LaPlante stated: “We are fully aware of the costs, but we are also aware of the risks of not modernizing our nuclear forces and not addressing the very real threats we confront.”
Cost is indeed one significant issue, but the biggest risk to the rest of us comes from continuing to build and deploy ICBMs, rather than delaying or shelving the Sentinel program. As former Secretary of Defense William Perry has noted, ICBMs are “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world” because they “could trigger an accidental nuclear war.” As he explained, a president warned (accurately or not) of an enemy nuclear attack would have only minutes to decide whether to launch such ICBMs and conceivably devastate the planet.
Possessing such potentially world-ending systems only increases the possibility of an unintended nuclear conflict prompted by a false alarm. And as Norman Solomon and the late Daniel Ellsberg once wrote, “If reducing the dangers of nuclear war is a goal, the top priority should be to remove the triad’s ground-based leg — not modernize it.”
This is no small matter. It is believed that a large-scale nuclear exchange could result in more than five billion of us humans dying, once the possibility of a “nuclear winter” and the potential destruction of agriculture across much of the planet is taken into account, according to an analysis by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War.
In short, the need to reduce nuclear risks by eliminating such ICBMs could not be more urgent. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” — an estimate of how close the world may be at any moment to a nuclear conflict — is now set at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it’s been since that tracker was first created in 1947. And just this June, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense agreement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a potential first step toward a drive by Moscow to help Pyongyang expand its nuclear arsenal further. And of the nine countries now possessing nuclear weapons, it’s hardly the only one other than the U.S. in an expansionist phase.
Considering the rising tide of nuclear escalation globally, is it really the right time for this country to invest a fortune of taxpayer dollars in a new generation of devastating “use them or lose them” weapons? The American public has long said no, according to a 2020 poll by the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation, which showed that 61% of us actually support phasing out ICBM systems like the Sentinel.
The Pentagon’s misguided plan to keep such ICBMs in the U.S arsenal for decades to come is only reinforced by the political power of members of Congress and the companies that benefit financially from the current buildup.
Who decides? The role of the ICBM lobby
A prime example of the power of the nuclear weapons lobby is the Senate ICBM Coalition. That group is composed of senators from four states — Montana, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming — that either house major ICBM bases or host significant work on the Sentinel. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that the members of that coalition have received more than $3 million in donations from firms involved in the production of the Sentinel over the past four election cycles. Nor were they alone. ICBM contractors made contributions to 92 of the 100 senators and 413 of the 435 house members in 2024. Some received hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The nuclear lobby paid special attention to members of the armed services committees in the House and Senate. For example, Mike Turner, a House Republican from Ohio, has been a relentless advocate of “modernizing” the nuclear arsenal. In a June 2024 talk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which itself has received well over a million dollars in funding from nuclear weapons producers, he called for systematically upgrading the nuclear arsenal for decades to come, while chiding any of his congressional colleagues not taking such an aggressive stance on the subject.
Although Turner vigorously touts the need for a costly nuclear buildup, he fails to mention that, with $305,000 in donations, he’s been the fourth-highest recipient of funding from the ICBM lobby over the four elections between 2018 and 2024. Little wonder that he pushes for new nuclear weapons and staunchly opposes extending the New START arms reduction treaty.
In another example of contractor influence, veteran Texas representative Kay Granger secured the largest total of contributions from the ICBM lobby of any House member. With $675,000 in missile contractor contributions in hand, Granger went to bat for the lobby, lending a feminist veneer to nuclear “modernization” by giving a speech on her experience as a woman in politics at Northrop Grumman’s Women’s conference. And we’re sure you won’t be surprised that Granger has anything but a strong track record when it comes to keeping the Pentagon and arms makers accountable for waste, fraud, and abuse in weapons programs. Her X account is, in fact, littered with posts heaping praise on Lockheed Martin and its overpriced, underperforming F-35 combat aircraft.
Other recipients of ICBM contractor funding, like Alabama Congressman Mike Rogers, have lamented the might of the “far-left disarmament community,” and the undue influence of “anti-nuclear zealots” on our politics. Missing from the statements his office puts together and the speeches his staffers write for him, however, is any mention of the $471,000 in funding he’s received so far from ICBM producers. You won’t be surprised, we’re sure, to discover that Rogers has pledged to seek a provision in the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act to support the Pentagon’s plan to continue the Sentinel program.
Lobbying dollars and the revolving door
The flood of campaign contributions from ICBM contractors is reinforced by their staggering investments in lobbying. In any given year, the arms industry as a whole employs between 800 and 1,000 lobbyists, well more than one for every member of Congress. Most of those lobbyists hired by ICBM contractors come through the “revolving door” from careers in the Pentagon, Congress, or the Executive Branch. That means they come with the necessary tools for success in Washington: an understanding of the appropriations cycle and close relations with decision-makers on the Hill.
During the last four election cycles, ICBM contractors spent upwards of $226 million on 275 extremely well-paid lobbyists. For example, Bud Cramer, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who once sat on the defense subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, netted $640,000 in fees from Northrop Grumman over a span of six years. He was also a cofounder of the Blue Dog Democrats, an influential conservative faction within the Democratic Party. Perhaps you won’t be surprised to learn that Cramer’s former chief of staff, Jefferies Murray, also lobbies for Northrop Grumman.
While some lobbyists work for one contractor, others have shared allegiances. For example, during his tenure as a lobbyist, former Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Trent Lott received more than $600,000 for his efforts for Raytheon, Textron Inc., and United Technologies (before United Technologies and Raytheon merged to form RX Technologies). Former Virginia Congressman Jim Moran similarly received $640,000 from Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics.
Playing the jobs card
The argument of last resort for the Sentinel and similar questionable weapons programs is that they create well-paying jobs in key states and districts. Northrop Grumman has played the jobs card effectively with respect to the Sentinel, claiming it will create 10,000 jobs in its development phase alone, including about 2,250 in the state of Utah, where the hub for the program is located.
As a start, however, those 10,000 jobs will help a minuscule fraction of the 167-million-member American workforce. Moreover, Northrop Grumman claims facilities tied to the program will be set up in 32 states. If 2,250 of those jobs end up in Utah, that leaves 7,750 more jobs spread across 31 states — an average of about 250 jobs per state, essentially a rounding error compared to total employment in most localities.
Nor has Northrop Grumman provided any documentation for the number of jobs the Sentinel program will allegedly create. Journalist Taylor Barnes of ReThink Media was rebuffed in her efforts to get a copy of the agreement between Northrop Grumman and the state of Utah that reportedly indicates how many Sentinel-related jobs the company needs to create to get the full subsidy offered to put its primary facility in Utah.
A statement by a Utah official justifying that lack of transparency suggested Northrop Grumman was operating in “a competitive defense industry” and that revealing details of the agreement might somehow harm the company. But any modest financial harm Northrop Grumman might suffer, were those details revealed, pales in comparison with the immense risks and costs of the Sentinel program itself.
There are two major flaws in the jobs argument with respect to the future production of nuclear weapons. First, military spending should be based on security considerations, not pork-barrel politics. Second, as Heidi Peltier of the Costs of War Project has effectively demonstrated, virtually any other expenditure of funds currently devoted to Pentagon programs would create between 9% and 250% more jobs than weapons spending does. If Congress were instead to put such funds into addressing climate change, dealing with future disease epidemics, poverty, or homelessness — all serious threats to public safety — the American economy would gain hundreds of thousands of jobs. Choosing to fund those ICBMs instead is, in fact, a job killer, not a job creator.
Unwarranted influence in the nuclear age
Advocates for eliminating ICBMs from the American arsenal make a strong case. (If only they were better heard!) For example, former Representative John Tierney of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation offered this blunt indictment of ICBMs:
“Not only are intercontinental ballistic missiles redundant, but they are prone to a high risk of accidental use…They do not make us any safer. Their only value is to the defense contractors who line their fat pockets with large cost overruns at the expense of our taxpayers. It has got to stop.”
The late Daniel Ellsberg made a similar point in a February 2018 interview with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:
“You would not have these arsenals, in the U.S. or elsewhere, if it were not the case that it was highly profitable to the military-industrial complex, to the aerospace industry, to the electronics industry, and to the weapons design labs to keep modernizing these weapons, improving accuracy, improving launch time, all that. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower talked about is a very powerful influence. We’ve talked about unwarranted influence. We’ve had that for more than half a century.”
Given how the politics of Pentagon spending normally work, that nuclear weapons policy is being so heavily influenced by individuals and organizations profiting from an ongoing arms race should be anything but surprising. Still, in the case of such weaponry, the stakes are so high that critical decisions shouldn’t be determined by parochial politics. The influence of such special interest groups and corporate weapons-makers over life-and-death issues should be considered both a moral outrage and perhaps the ultimate security risk.
Isn’t it finally time for the executive branch and Congress to start assessing the need for ICBMs on their merits, rather than on contractor lobbying, weapons company funding, and the sort of strategic thinking that was already outmoded by the end of the 1950s? For that to happen, our representatives would need to hear from their constituents loud and clear.
This article was originally published at Tom Dispatch and was republished with permission.
Hekmat Aboukhater is a Democratizing Foreign Policy program Intern at the Quincy Institute. Previously, Hekmat worked with the United Nations Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.
William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. His work focuses on the arms industry and U.S. military budget.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.Subscribe
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
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Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are 3 Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
National Security Archive – The George Washington University
The Groves files also include records capturing early discussions about the role of heavy water nuclear reactors in the Manhattan Project and in post- …
Once again, from yesterday’s and many other of my blog posts over the last several months: “Deterrence”, will not save us from nuclear war; it only makes it more likely because the idea of having billions upon billions of nuclear hardware while constantly building more eventually becomes meaningless, nothing more than a waste of all those billions of dollars and other resources, until one day someone in the ‘deterrence’ trio, or perhaps more likely outsider North Korea, finally says, “Oh, to hell with it,” decides to drop out of the nuclear race, and to use what they’ve already got, and that means only one thing: The Earth we live on becomes instantly uninhabitable.
We have boxed ourselves in, and I mean all of us who have the power of nuclear weapons at our disposal. There is no way out, and continuing to build bigger, more powerful, and deployment methods (the nuclear warfare “Triads”, and Russia is threatening to add orbiter nuclear weapons in outer space as a fourth, so how could the U.S. and China be far behind?).
So, I ask you, who are these so-called “Experts” we keep talking about, and just why are they called experts? Believe me, there are no “Experts” related to the ‘All Things Nuclear” world-wide discussion, unless it is those, like me, who know enough to understand that all things nuclear will one day destroy humanity and most other life on planet Earth. Oppenheimer, Einstein, (the long gone ‘genius experts’), and many lesser known experts of the Manhattan Project warned us all, but on August 6th and 9th, 1945 (today is the proverbial “day after”), the USA murdered somewhere around a quarter-million innocent people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan, ending WWII, which should have told us all we needed to know about nuclear weapons, nuclear wars, and nuclear-powered anything and everything. First, the world must disarm, and then we must go the rest of the way to rid ourselves forever of all things nuclear in order to survive . . . ~llaw
The nuclear weapons era is making a comeback, and experts say we’re all not paying attention
Nuclear weapons are poised to once again take center stage, decades after the Cold War ended.
The US, threatened by a rising China, is being advised to consider an expansion of its nuclear forces.
Leading experts told BI that few in the public are paying attention the worrying trends.
In 2022, Congress formed the Strategic Posture Commission — a bipartisan team of 12 experts hand-picked to advise the US on what to do with its nuclear weapons.
These are rare. The only other time Congress created such a group was in 2008.
But China was a new concern. Western intelligence says Beijing has since 2020 launched a sudden expansion of its nuclear stockpile, amassing launchers and warheads without explanation.
Alarm bells were ringing in Washington. The Cold War was a stand-off between two nuclear superpowers, and the US now fears China is on a highway to becoming a third.
“The new global environment is fundamentally different than anything experienced in the past, even in the darkest days of the Cold War,” they said.
The commissioners recommended that the US consider its first nuclear expansion since the Cold War, including more warheads, delivery systems, defenses, and launchers.
All of this underlines a deeper anxiety among leading experts that the international arena, fixated for decades on the post-9/11 war on terror, is now tilting relentlessly back to an era of nuclear build-up and brinkmanship.
Business Insider asked 10 nuclear scholars — including four Commissioners — and US-China relations experts on how the US should act.
They agreed that if global trends do not dramatically reverse, the world is poised to live under the shadow of nuclear threat again.
Several prominent arms control scholars have criticized the Commission’s report, fearing an arms race that they feel is unnecessary and will escalate the risk of annihilating humanity.
But signs are showing that the US government feels a build-up may have to be considered. In a speech on Thursday, Vipin Narang, the Defense Department’s senior official overseeing nuclear policy, said that “we now find ourselves in nothing short of a new nuclear age.”
It’s a looming future that some experts feel is being dismissed in the US, especially among younger generations born after the Soviet Union’s collapse.
“All of the trend lines are going in the wrong direction. So I think we are moving toward a much more dangerous world than it is today,” said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“And it’s certainly possible that in the future, it could be as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than the original Cold War,” he said.
The Two-Peer Problem
At the crux of the US’ concerns is what American leaders call the Two-Peer Problem.
The US is worried it will need to simultaneously counter two of its equals on the nuclear playing field, when it traditionally only had the power to fight one — namely, the Soviet Union.
China paraded its Dongfeng-41 intercontinental strategic nuclear missiles on the 70th anniversary of its government. Xinhua/Lan Hongguang via Getty Images
At that rate, China will have 1,550 warheads — putting it on par with US and Russian capabilities — by 2035.
That would be the Two-Peer Problem: A three-way tie that experts fear will shatter the past basis for nuclear negotiations.
A simple way to understand this dilemma is to look at the numbers.
The US and Russia previously agreed to limit arsenals to 1,550 deployed warheads each.
If China were to reach parity, Washington would want an arsenal matching Moscow’s and Beijing’s combined, or theoretically 3,100 warheads.
Russia and China are more likely to think the appropriate equilibrium is for everyone to deploy 1,550 warheads each. However, given their close ties, the US is unlikely to accept such an agreement.
With no common number to reach, the three powers will be prone to rushing to gain the upper hand, Acton said.
“Once this arms race really kicks off, I think it’s going to be very, very, very hard to stop it,” he added.
The race against 2035
By its calculations, Washington now has only 11 years to find and establish a solution by 2035. That’s a short window for nuclear programs, which are generally rolled out over decades, not years.
“Decisions need to be made now,” wrote the Commission.
The recommendations in its report included putting multiple warheads on one intercontinental ballistic missile (known as MIRV), building more B-21 stealth bombers, and basing nuclear weapons in the Indo-Pacific region.
It also advised the US to look into more tactical nukes, which are lower-yield bombs that Russia stockpiles by the thousands. The report made no recommendations on numbers.
Rose Gottemoeller, one of the 12 Commissioners, emphasized to BI that the report only asked the US to begin planning for an expansion, not to pull the trigger on a build-up now.
“We have the opportunity between now and 2035 to try to get Russia back to the negotiating table and to get China to start talking to us about controlling nuclear weapons,” said Gottemoeller, NATO’s deputy secretary-general from 2016 to 2019 and the former US chief negotiator with Russia on nuclear programs.
Washington and Moscow held nuclear talks for decades during the Cold War and beyond, but China has not engaged in such discussion so far.
That’s unacceptable to the US. “They’re not obligated to agree to anything specific, but they are obligated to negotiate in good faith, and they have certainly not done that,” said Marshall Billingslea, former US special presidential envoy for arms control and one of the 12 Commissioners.
Russia, meanwhile, spent the last two years making nuclear threats over the war in Ukraine.
To scholars supporting a US nuclear expansion, the situation has deteriorated so drastically that the time to simply hope for negotiations has passed. America must act, they told BI.
“I think when the United States is strong, our adversaries think: ‘Okay, this is dangerous. We don’t want to get into a conflict with the United States,'” Matt Kroenig, a professor at Georgetown University’s government studies department. He was also one of the 12 Commissioners.
“When the United States is weak, that’s when you see aggression and violence,” he added.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment sent by BI.
Not all experts are convinced
Scholars who disagree said the US is looking at the Two-Peer Problem incorrectly.
Nuclear weapons are widely understood as the ultimate defense against existential threats like invasion, and these experts say the US can maintain that even if it has fewer nuclear weapons.
“We should focus on keeping our nuclear arsenal survivable, safe, secure, and reliable,” said Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “We don’t need to compete with them numerically. It won’t enhance deterrence to do so.”
President George W. Bush announced the US’ withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a major agreement from the Cold War, in 2001. Alex Wong/Getty Images
Francesca Giovannini, executive director of the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, said that while official US-China nuclear talks are frozen, academics and non-governmental organizations are still trying to keep the dialogue flowing.
“These examples come back often in dialogue,” she said. “In China, arms control is increasingly seen as a mechanism devised by the United States to constrain China’s rising military power.”
That has made talk of arms control an increasingly dangerous line for Chinese experts to defend in the domestic debate, Giovannini added.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are 3 Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
It’s got lots of places to run around, and we can chase each other, and hide from our humans, and all the things. … nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and …
Top 10: Nuclear Power Leaders · Jacob DeWitte, Co-Founder and CEO of Oklo · Andre Liebenberg, Executive Director and CEO of Yellow Cake · David D. Cates, …
Most ominously, it could mean Israel’s eventually suffering an Iranian nuclear attack. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Israel’s “Iran nuclear problem …
… nuclear war. Sean Howard, campaign co-ordinator for Peace Quest Cape … Howard said that nearly 80 years later, the threat of nuclear war is “horribly …
‘ Although the Yellowstone caldera’s initial blast would kill thousands in a ‘super-eruption,’ showering multiple US states in ‘pyroclastic flows’ of …
This article describes exactly why ‘deterrence’ is a ‘time constrained’ non-agreement treaty, or pact, but a ‘power-game of thrones’ to instead simply build bigger, more powerful, and more kinds of nuclear weapons of mass destruction. I’ve said it dozens of times in this blog that such an international policy among nuclear armed nations will fail sooner or later, so what is the point of ‘deterrence’ at all? Deterrence is a game played by bullys on grade school playgrounds. Perhaps it delays WWIII for a few more days, months, or years, but at a global financial cost that is almost as destructive as the idea of ‘build but never use’ more powerful nuclear arms, including additions to the popular ‘triad’ concept. The only way to survive nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants is to, as a united world, “do away” with ‘all things nuclear’ . . .
What the hell is wrong with us? I mean wrong with Humanity, of which we are all a part! We say, as Pulitzer Prize winner Mr. Pincus points out clearly in this article, “why do we continue to prepare for a nuclear war that is unwinnable?” It is evidently based on hate and anger by people and their leaders who live behind borders that may vary from one country to another. There seems to be no humanity, tolerance, empathy, or consideration of those who are of a different racial, color, ethnicity, spirituality or religion, financial, nor even a polite acceptance or the slightest of our differences. It boils down to intolerance and hatred. Why the hell is that?
Think of the wonderful life we could all lead if we had no need for anything military, which, if you understand nuclear weapons, makes a huge national military of old irrelevant and useless, especially for territorial ground troops, often commonly referred to as ‘foot-soldiers’. We are capable of killing off each other world-wide in a matter of not hours, but minutes, with today’s “triads” that we and other nuclear nations have developed to one degree or another, yet the nation that pushes the nuclear button 1st will also die in the same short time-frame as the nation(s) they are attacking. ~llaw
A Nuclear War is Unwinnable, So Why Do We Keep Preparing for One?
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America’s Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.
OPINION — “We must prepare for a world where constraints on nuclear weapons arsenals disappear entirely, modernizing U.S. nuclear capabilities today and preparing for future posture adjustments may help incentivize our adversaries to engage in strategic arms control discussions. However, if our adversaries continue to make choices that make them and the world less safe, the United States is prepared to do what is necessary to successfully compete, to deter aggression, and assure our allies in this new nuclear age.”
That was Dr. Vipin Narang, the Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, speaking last Wednesday, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose Project on Nuclear Issues hosted an event for early- and mid-career nuclear experts.
At the Pentagon, Dr. Narang’s portfolio includes nuclear deterrence, and he chairs an international advisory panel to NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group. He also helped form the new Nuclear Consultative Group with South Korea. Dr. Narang is on public service leave from MIT where he served as the Frank Stanton Professor of Nuclear Security and Political Science. He is author of Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Age, and Seeking the Bomb: Strategies of Nuclear Proliferation.
Dr. Narang talked about current trends and how they are affecting future planning in more specific terms than have other Biden administration officials. On Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific area, there is concern about the U.S. facing two peer nuclear powers with Chinese nuclear weapon expansion and Moscow’s developing new nuclear weaponry.
“Absent a change in the nuclear trajectories of the PRC (People’s Republic of China), Russia, and North Korea, we may reach a point where a change in the size or posture of our current deployed forces is necessary,” Dr. Narang said, adding, “There is no need to grow the stockpile yet, but adjustments to the number of deployed capabilities may be necessary if our adversaries continue down their current paths.”
He also reassured his audience that, “We are confident in our current forces and posture today,” and that “we will also abide by the central limits of New START for the duration of the treaty as long as we assess that Russia continues to do so. But in an uncertain world, preserving the option to change course tomorrow requires that we make necessary decisions and investments today.”
It’s not as if the U.S. is standing still. Dr. Narang pointed out that pushed by Congress, the Biden administration is developing a new nuclear sub-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) for which the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, approved $70 million in the fiscal 2025 budget.
Already in the works, is a new tactical nuclear bomb, the B61-13, designed to attack harder- protected, deeply-based or large-area targets, and is intended to replace the B61-7, which has a yield of up to 360 kilotons – the equivalent of 360 thousand tons of TNT.
I want to pause and try to explain, which is almost never done by U.S. officials when discussing nuclear weapons, what such nuclear weapons could do if they are used in warfare.
There was recently an outcry over U.S. 2,000-pound conventional bombs being delivered to Israel for its war in Gaza based on the damage such a weapon could have on the civilian population. Such a bomb contains roughly 945 pounds of explosives.
A single, one kiloton nuclear weapon contains the equivalent power of 1,000 tons of explosives and thus alone has the explosive power of 2,000 of those U.S. 2,000-pound conventional bombs – the ones the U.S. halted giving the Israelis because of the damage they would cause. And that does not include the enormous heat and long-lasting radiation such nuclear weapons also deliver.
Now think of the extensive and long-lasting, widespread damage that would result from use of one B61-13, should its full 360 kilotons ever be unleashed.
Dr. Narang also said, “The growth in the number of Chinese strategic targets alone I think, leads one to the conclusion that a modernization program sized for a completely different security environment may need to be reassessed in sort of the multiple, nuclear challenger world.”
He is referring to the idea that each silo for a new Chinese nuclear ICBM, each mobile ICBM, each strategic submarine, or nuclear-capable, strategic bomber is a target for a nuclear weapon.
That is how the need for additional nuclear weapons gets driven up, because deterrence strategy since the Cold War, has been a numbers game. To deter a nuclear-armed enemy, you had to have enough nuclear weapons to absorb a first strike, and survive with enough of your own weapons to destroy the enemy’s remaining weapons.
Of course, that is why the U.S. and the Russians have so-called triads of delivery systems – land-based ICBMs, strategic bombers and a major portion of their strategic warheads on difficult-to-find submarines, as have the British, French and Israelis. It is also why the Chinese are creating their own triad with a strategic submarine force – as are the North Koreans.
This idea of nuclear weapons only being used to attack a potential enemy’s nuclear weapons arose because neither the U.S., nor apparently the Soviet Union, wanted to appear to be using nuclear weapons to attack enemy cities because that would result in millions of civilian deaths and appear to violate traditional rules of war.
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In fact, that is exactly why atomic bombs were originally created and used — as terror weapons to kill and wound civilians and thus end the war with Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki had some military facilities, but they were also selected as targets because other Japanese cities had already been partially destroyed and thus, the impact of these new atomic bombs would be less dramatic.
Today’s hydrogen bombs are much more powerful than the two atomic bombs used on Japan, so why the U.S. and Russia, which already have thousands of them, would want more is among many questions about the nuclear arms race that is worth asking.
Meanwhile, Dr. Narang last week, voiced concern about “covering” nuclear weapons targets.
“As the security environment continues to deteriorate, and you have the multiple challenger problem, you don’t want to have to rely on triad or strategic forces to deter in the Indo-Pacific,” he said, “especially with the growth in Chinese forces — which would leave strategic targets uncovered.”
The answer to covering China’s non-strategic nuclear weapons, according to Dr. Narang, is “essentially a SLCM-N. It has to be – in the maritime [Indo-Pacific] environment, you can’t have forward land presence [U.S. tactical nuclear-capable fighter-bombers] in the way that we have in Europe.”
In Europe, Dr. Narang pointed out, “We’re completing the modernization of NATO nuclear capabilities through the transition to the fifth-generation F-35 [nuclear-capable, fighter-bombers] and the B61-12 [new nuclear bomb with more accuracy and limited stand-off guidance capability], which are bolstering the military effectiveness and the credibility of the deterrent.”
Dr, Narang described the SLCM-N and B61-12 as “regional capabilities, you know, primarily for regional contingencies.”
What is also underway, is examination and groundwork for, as Dr. Narang put it, “the expiration of New START, if there’s no follow-on treaty and our adversaries continue down this pathway, are we prepared – if necessary, and if the President decides to do so, do we – are we able to potentially, if required, increase the number of deployed strategic capabilities as well?”
Dr. Narang added that, “We don’t need to outpace our adversaries or even the combined number of the adversaries. We do seek a smart, flexible posture that deters, you know, at a strategic level, and assures our allies and partners.”
He went on, “It’s not an unrestrained posture. But I think we are now in the middle of thinking about what a smart posture looks like in a multiple nuclear challenger world where your adversaries have revisionist objectives, they’re modernizing and expanding their arsenals, and you may face them in a collaborative or collusive manner, and you know, what sort of stress that puts on the force.”
On a somewhat positive side, Dr. Narang said at one point, “I think Russia will return to arms control talks akin to whatever following New START will be, when it realizes that an unrestrained, you know, sort of nuclear competition is not in its interest. And I firmly believe it’s not in their interest.”
I hope he is right, not just from the Russian side, but from the U.S. and Chinese sides as well.
My view, as I have often written, is that nuclear weapons have become more diplomatic and/or domestic political weapons, and less weapons to fight actual wars.
The reality is, as leaders of the U.S., Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom said in a joint statement just over two years ago, “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” And they also said that such weapons “for as long as they continue to exist should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war.”
The first statement remains true, the latter has not yet worked out totally as stated.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are 2 Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories (may be duplicates from different publications) available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… all U.S. electricity in 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About half of the United States’ nuclear power reactors (48) …
Citizen movements against nuclear weapons during the Cold War helped significantly reduce nuclear risks. … People who pay attention to nuclear threats …
Australia has never accepted the idea of nuclear power plants on Australian soil, except for the one mentioned in the story, which is a small reactor for medical products, (the USA’s mysterious military project at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is not mentioned), but Australia would be well-advised to always keep themselves ‘clean’ of any future nuclear projects. This article reminded me of the old novel and movie, “On the Beach”, where the last living souls were the only remaining humans left alive after a nuclear accident, apparently in the USA.
I am surprised that “On the Beach” was not mentioned as one of the more important pop culture films of all time. It was, written by Nevil Shute, published in 1957, made into the referenced major movie in 1959, and there have been two other movie remakes of the story in the early 2000s. But the author’s point is well-made — that ‘all things nuclear’ are a liability we do not want to continue to grow because the pop-culture and its horrifying images of the dark side of nuclear power and nuclear war are enough to drive us away. ~llaw
Nuclear power stations are a common sight in Europe — like this one in France — but would be unfamiliar to most Australians. Unsplash: Jametlene Reskp Credits Unsplash licence
Pop culture is likely to be the main way most Australians have learnt about nuclear power. What impact will this have on shaping their views of the technology?
What connects The Simpsons, Doctor Who and HBO’s Chernobyl?
These — along with many other film and television productions — parody, problematise or otherwise show us nuclear power stations in action and, of course, in meltdown.
Such pop culture representations are the closest many Australians will have come to experiencing the nuclear world.
Pop culture has significant potential to influence people’s thinking on important topics. In particular, it informs the frames of reference that people use to form views about controversial issues.
It has likely played a considerable role in shaping the way Australians think about nuclear power, especially given that Australians have very minimal actual experience with nuclear energy.
There is only one nuclear reactor in Australia, in Lucas Heights, a southern suburb of Sydney. However, unlike the plants in The Simpsons and other pop culture examples, it is used strictly for nuclear medicine and research, not to generate power.
While the day-to-day reality of nuclear energy is largely unknown in Australia — unlike countries such as France where nuclear power stations are largely an everyday part of the landscape — one doesn’t have to look too far to find fictitious and potentially misleading references to nuclear power.
Mr C. Montgomery Burns’ nuclear power plant in The Simpsons is the most prominent and longstanding example in pop culture.
Homer Simpson has spent his entire working life in sector 7G of this power plant as (hilariously) its safety officer.
Mr Burns’ plant has gone into meltdown several times, been condemned for literally hundreds of safety violations, caused strange mutations in local wildlife, leaked radioactive waste into the water supply, caught fire and in general simply loomed above the town of Springfield, its two cooling towers marked with the symbol of atomic energy.
Of course The Simpsons is a cartoon with the inbuilt “reset” switch allowing for any scenario to be undone by the next episode.
Chernobyl and other disasters
HBO’s Chernobyl in contrast shows the terrifying irreversibility of an actual disaster in a nuclear power plant.
Chillingly, the Chernobyl plant is back in the news as one of the battle sites in the war between Ukraine and Russia, with Russian troops choosing to dig into the radioactive soil, while their tanks throw red dust from contaminated sites into the air.
In 1979 the film The China Syndromepointed to what might happen if nuclear energy is not managed properly.
This Hollywood drama about corruption, coverup and the danger of meltdown in a nuclear power station came into cinemas just days before the actual nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the United States.
Strikingly, these dramas present the exact same nuclear anxieties and threats as do The Simpsons.
But whereas The Simpsons is a comedy, these other works make it clear that there would be environmental and human disaster if a power plant went into a full meltdown scenario.
In 1991, when the 1986 Chernobyl incident was still fresh, Anglia Television dramatised the murder mystery Devices and Desiresby the British crime writer P.D. James.
Set in and around the fictional Larksoken Nuclear Power Plant, the production filmed on location at the Sizewell Power Station in Norfolk.
The fact the authorities at Sizewell gave permission is surprising as the miniseries takes every opportunity to make nuclear energy look as ominous as it can.
On the soundtrack, warning sirens and the nuclear reactors drone and wail, characters allude anxiously to Chernobyl and the possibility of a meltdown caused by computer hacking. The series even suggests that the actions of a local serial killer may be somehow linked to the effect of nuclear energy on the environment!
Of course, there are no known links between nuclear energy and psychopathic behaviour, but the generally negative attitude to nuclear power seen in popular culture means that outlandish claims and associations can go uncontested, and indeed might even seem plausible.
British television also presented nuclear power stations as places of inherent drama and danger in Doctor Who.
In the 1970 story Doctor Who and the Silurians, a nuclear-powered cyclotron (a type of particle accelerator) went into dangerous levels of overload, posing the same threat that would actually happen at Chernobyl 16 years later: large swathes of the country becoming irradiated.
In these examples the nuclear power is at the service of drama, which extracts tension from the risk of nuclear accidents.
In reality, nuclear power stations have inherent (built-in) safety features. While Chernobyl and Fukishima were famous incidents, they are the only two major accidents in the documented 18,500 reactor years of nuclear-generated power.
Another important consideration is that nuclear weapons, nuclear experimentation and nuclear energy are often conflated in pop culture.
This reinforces the concept of nuclear anything being dangerous to both people and to the environment.
Mutants and monsters
In 1996’s Independence Day, the character played by Jeff Goldblum wants to save the planet and is concerned with things like recycling and scolding people who don’t do so, but baulks at the use of nuclear weapons to destroy the extraterrestrials threatening earth.
Yet the nukes don’t stop the extraterrestrial invaders when deployed and humanity has to come up with a smarter solution to defeat the aliens.
Nuclear experimentation and associated outcomes such as radioactivity also results in ordinary people — or even certain ninja turtles named after Renaissance masters — being given generally helpful superpowers, such as Dr Manhattan in Watchmen and the various reimaginings of Peter Parker aka Spider-Man.
But it also results in uncontrollable monsters such as what we see in the Godzilla films, with Godzilla and similarly awakened monstrous creatures from the deep representing physical manifestations of what happens when humans try to “play God” with nuclear testing.
Nuclear energy has also been depicted as a dangerous and primitive source of energy that will soon become dated.
Nuclear power is thus seen in science fiction as a dangerous 20th century experiment on the way to more genuinely sustainable — and safer — forms of energy.
Such depictions work against the federal opposition’s plan to present nuclear power as a reliable and safe day-to-day energy source and hence clearly differentiate themselves from the Labor government on energy policy.
To get there however, Australians will need to divorce themselves from the predominantly ominous nature of nuclear energy that is presented in pop culture.
But nuclear energy being almost always presented as dangerous, unreliable and experimental assists the narrative of renewables being the safer long-term alternative.
Indeed, pop culture asks us to consider: if somebody as logical as Mr Spock didn’t think that nuclear power had much of a future, should we?
Professor Marcus K. Harmes teaches in the Pathways Program and the Bachelor of Laws at the University of Southern Queensland. His research is focused on science fiction and popular culture (especially Doctor Who), the cultural history of education and education in popular culture.
Associate Professor Michael B. Charles is a member of the Faculty of Business, Law and Arts at Southern Cross University. His current research focuses on infrastructure policy, innovation policy and public values, while the bulk of his teaching corresponds to the pursuit of sustainability, especially in the arena of transport.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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“The Columbia Generating Station is Washington’s only nuclear energy plant.” Want to why the image’s caption says that about the Columbia River Generating Station? There is a major reason, and the reason is called “Hanford”. You can learn a lot about the very sad history of nuclear activity in Washington that will never go away, and has been ongoing since the spring of a 1945 nuclear accident, including much of the area surrounding the plant, nearby communities and the entire Columbia river basin and drainage. The plant was built by the U.S. government to provide plutonium for the Manhattan Project and the two bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Read the well-written article and then go do your homework . . . ~llaw
Spin Control: As state studies ‘modular’ nuke plants, history worth remembering
The Columbia Generating Station is Washington’s only nuclear energy plant. (Courtesy/Energy Northwest)
Sun., Aug. 4, 2024
By Jim Camden For The Spokesman-Review
Proponents of nuclear power, who have been wandering for decades like latter-day Israelites in a desert of public skepticism, might be feeling hopeful about a revival of their prospects.
After all, when the National Republican platform supports expanding nuclear power and the Washington Democratic platform doesn’t come out against it, one might assume a window of opportunity is opening. In the push to reduce carbon emissions that come from burning coal, petroleum products or natural gas to generate electricity, some people are even lumping nuclear into the “green” energy column.
The latest push is for so-called modular nuclear reactors, smaller than the nuke plants built in the last half of the 1900s, with claims that they can be sized to a particular need. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation has been mentioned as a possible home for one or more such reactors. The Legislature earlier this year set aside $25 million for a feasibility study on the devices, which some enthusiastic supporters see as a magic bullet to the world’s climate crisis.
Even some people who doubt that there is a climate crisis – or that if one exists it is not manmade and thus cannot be man unmade – are happy to jump on the modular reactor bandwagon.
This seems to gloss over the fact that despite the reactors’ virtues of carbon-free emissions, pollution from spent nuclear fuel has a half-life measured in geologic time. Well, at least it can be encased, carted away and buried somewhere to become the problem of some future, and let’s hope smarter, generation.
Although a price tag in eight figures seems a bit spendy, a feasibility study is all well and good as long as at least someone compiling it remembers that magic bullets sometimes misfire and blow up in your face.
One previous effort to solve a projected power shortage in Washington with nuclear power did just that in the 1980s.
These days, political and business leaders worry about not having enough electricity to attract new server farms and chip manufacturers, and power our computers and electric cars. In the 1960s and 1970s, utility leaders and government officials worried the rapidly growing Northwest wouldn’t have enough power for new business with their lights and machinery and new homes with more heaters, air conditioners and televisions.
The region had some of the cheapest electricity, but pretty much had exhausted its ability to dam the available rivers to generate more cheap hydropower.
In their search for new sources of affordable power, a group of public utilities hit on the idea of building commercial nuclear power plants at Hanford, which had a history with nuclear power – albeit the kind that primarily made bombs. It also had lots of open space owned by the federal government, and thus not likely to generate opposition from pesky NIMBYs.
One of the early selling points of the plants was that the power was going to be “too cheap to meter.” At one point, nuclear proponents talked of building as many as two dozen nuclear power plants at Hanford.
The first never proved true. The second was wildly overblown, but by the end of the 1970s, a consortium of utility districts known as the Washington Public Power Supply System had embarked on plans to build three commercial reactors at Hanford and – in an apparent effort to spread around the wealth of construction billions – two more at Satsop on the Olympic Peninsula. To cut costs, the two at Satsop and two of the three at Hanford were to be “twins” to save money on design and construction.
The financial, legal and political troubles of that grand scheme have filled books. The Cliff Notes version is that cost overruns and schedule delays made the total plan so expensive that the consortium shut down construction on four of the five plants, defaulted on a then-record $2.5 billion in municipal bonds sold to pay for them and led to the universal pronunciation of the WPPSS acronym as “Whoops!”
Because of rebranding – the consortium eventually changed its name to Energy Northwest and the name of the finished reactor from WPPSS 2 to Columbia Generating Station – there are probably people who have moved to the region in the past few decades who have never heard the Whoops story, and even some longtime residents who have forgotten it.
This is not to say that because of the WPPSS debacle the Northwest should never consider nuclear power. But it should at least be included as a cautionary tale about believing all the hype about a new generation of nuclear reactors in that feasibility study.
It should also be noted that the last time a power shortage loomed, the region solved some of its problem with a series of smaller “fixes.” As prices went up, people put more insulation in their old homes and built less energy-hungry new ones; they switched from electric heat to natural gas and bought more efficient appliances. It wasn’t the panacea that some of the anti-nuke forces touted, but it wasn’t as negligible as some utility experts predicted.
Tick, tick, tick
Deadline for your state primary ballot is Tuesday. It must either be placed in a drop box by 8 p.m. or postmarked by then.
If the latter, and you wait until Tuesday to mail, you should not just stick it in your mailbox with the flag up that morning. You should take it to the post office if that’s closer than a drop box.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 7 categories, with the latest (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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… warfare – some may think the threat from nuclear weapons has receded. But international developments, including nuclear threats from Russia in the war …
