How is it possible to rely on media opinion, news, reporting, and advice when virtually every day you witness totally conflicting information and data from all kinds of sources that are written by the seat of an editor’s and his correspondent’s pants? There is no ability amongst all the confusion to sort the ‘wheat from the chaff’.
The following examples are headlines and leadlines from TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS . . . (You see these kinds of opposing stories, even between or among categories virtually every day if you follow this Blogs’ daily posts.) It is living proof that we have no understanding nor knowledge of what ‘all thins nuclear’ are all about at every level of human intelligence. “All Thing Nuclear” is apparently our unrealized and unknown collective ‘death-wish’.
[Headline #1: Tested and proven: The role of nuclear power in the future energy mix | Marsh
Marsh
[Leadline 1: Nuclear energy is experiencing a resurgence of interest and investment as a resilient, proven, and zero-carbon electricity source. ] Note: Misleading and inaccurate.]
[ Headline 2: You Don’t Want to Live in America’s ‘Nuclear Sponge’ | Opinion – Newsweek
Newsweek
[Leadline 2: The fear that China might increase its nuclear arsenal from some 500 to 1,000 weapons has fueled calls for America to abandon all arms control limits.]
. . . and even though they are , in this case, from different categories of the nuclear world, they are made of the same deadly products. But over and over we see media support for nuclear products on one hand, yet on the other hand we see the doubt, the concern, and the fear of them. How could we love one nuclear product and hate the other? They both share the identical danger to humanity’s future. ~llaw
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There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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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Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
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 fear that China might increase its nuclear arsenal from some 500 to 1,000 weapons has fueled calls for America to abandon all arms control limits …
And it sends a message to every regional community that they might not need to host the new renewable energy grid that is being rolled out. Because if …
Oklo collaborated with Gensler architects to design the Aurora Powerhouse, aiming for a simplified and streamlined construction capability. (Image by Gensler)
Sometimes it feels like pure financial greed is driving the entire nuclear industry, now including AI, from the the first shovel-full of uranium ore to the high-grade uranium fuel that is dangerously planned to use for operating new nuclear reactors, that could be used by currently non-nuclear countries, terrorists, or other malicious groups, through the careless uncontrolled proliferation of the fuel product, to create and use nuclear weapons of mass destruction against all perceived enemies.
I urge you to carefully read and understand, and then pass along these facts briefly stated here in the following article by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” that nuclear fuel and all other nuclear products are already far and away dangerously out of control and that all it takes is one highly placed madman to start a nuclear war that will end all future wars as well as most all of human and other animal life. Nuclear proliferation will only quicken the doomsday process and/or make the 6th Extinction more likely. ~llaw
Nuclear energy could power the AI boom—but only if proliferation risks are minimized
On May 10, Oklo Inc., a nuclear energy startup, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The chairman of the company is none other than Sam Altman, the CEO of the artificial intelligence leader, OpenAI, that launched the generative AI revolution with the release of ChatGPT late in 2022. The staggering language, image, and video processing capabilities of ChatGPT and other similar chatbots depend on large language models (LLMs) trained through computations of data at unprecedented scale. Computational power has thus become, in Sam Altman’s words, “the currency of the future” and “the most precious commodity in the world.”
The training and use of LLMs require huge amounts of electrical power and cascades of advanced microchips. Altman’s nuclear investment reflects his belief that Oklo’s microreactors can satisfy the future power requirements of AI models. In some ways, the compatibility is intuitive. Large data centers, especially those set up in remote areas with greater land availability, require power sources that avoid both the intermittency of renewables and the fuel delivery requirements of traditional thermal power plants. Such is Oklo’s narrative as it touts recent power purchase agreements with data center operators such as Wyoming Hyperscale.
But the intuitive compatibility between AI and nuclear power does not exempt the latter from traditional concerns about economics and safety, despite efforts by Oklo and other vendors of “advanced” reactors to downplay those concerns. The escalating costs of NuScale’s first VOYGR plant have cast into doubt the economics of small modular reactors, and the US nuclear regulator has yet to endorse the safety of Oklo’s Aurora microreactor, having denied its combined license application in early 2022.
Arguably the most problematic aspect of Oklo’s microreactor concept is the proliferation implications of its fuel cycle. Simply put, Oklo’s concept could increase the availability of fissile materials needed for nuclear weapons and, therefore, the likelihood that bad actors would acquire those materials.
Oklo’s Aurora microreactor uses uranium fuel enriched so that 19.75 percent of it consists of the fissile uranium 235 isotope, compared to the 5 percent low-enriched uranium fuel currently utilized by industry. The higher enrichment level allows the reactor to have smaller cores and longer refueling cycles, but it also means that the fuel is far closer to the level of enrichment needed for nuclear weapons than what is used in traditional power reactors. That means a malicious actor with access to the higher enrichment fuel would be able to produce weapons-grade uranium using less diverted material, in less time, and with lower detectability.
Even more problematic: The Aurora microreactor’s sodium-cooled fast-neutron configuration is ideal for the breeding of plutonium 239, which could be employed directly in nuclear weapons once separated from spent fuel. Indeed, the CFR-600 reactor that the US government claims China is using to produce plutonium for an expanded nuclear arsenal is of the same sodium-cooled fast breeder design. Oklo’s vision is not to make a nuclear weapon but rather to extract energy from the plutonium after it is reprocessed into fresh fuel. But the dual-use potential of Oklo’s technology, the dangerous policy changes it implies, and the ways in which it heightens the risk of diversion throughout the fuel cycle are obvious.
Oklo is aware of the proliferation hazards of its fuel cycle but has forged ahead regardless, resorting to such euphemisms as “recycling” to downplay the risks associated with reprocessing. The company has also asserted that its method of plutonium separation, commonly known as pyroprocessing, is resistant to proliferation, as it does not produce any pure plutonium streams.
Such claims are technically dubious at best. A US national laboratory study of alternative separation methods found that pyroprocessing provided “only a modest improvement in reducing proliferation risk over existing PUREX technologies,” particularly when it came to state actors. By removing highly radioactive fission products from spent fuel, pyroprocessing nullifies the high radiation levels that provide self-protection against diversion of fissile material, even if the plutonium remains unseparated from the fuel. To be fair, Oklo is partnering with Argonne National Laboratory to develop “advanced sensor technologies” integrated with machine learning algorithms to enhance the detection of diversion within its prospective reprocessing facilities. But augmented material accounting alone will not eliminate proliferation risks. Nor would it mitigate the dangers of a shift in US policy on reprocessing.
Breaking the US no-reprocessing norm. The United States renounced commercial reprocessing in the 1970s on account of its proliferation potential and poor economics. The voluntary move has helped Washington compel its allies and partners likewise to forgo the reprocessing option to help limit the spread of technology that allowed countries like India to develop nuclear weapons arsenals. In this context, Oklo and others’ bid to revive commercial reprocessing with the support of the nationallabs could convince other countries that reprocessing is necessary for the advanced nuclear energy needed to satisfy the power requirements of critical AI technologies.
The risks to regional and international security are substantial. As an example, successive US administrations have for decades kept ally South Korea’s pyroprocessing ambitions in check. To date, Washington’s example and a bilateral agreement between Seoul and its security guarantor have blocked efforts by South Korea’s nuclear lobby to engage in pyroprocessing and match growing back-end fuel cycle activities in China and long-delayed plans in Japan. A decade ago, when Seoul sought to restructure a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement so it could use pyroprocessing technology similar to what Oklo proposes, Washington compromised only as far as agreeing to joint studies of the technical, economic, and nonproliferation feasibility of the technology.
The Joint Fuel Cycle Study produced a final report in 2021 that did little to resolve the policy controversy surrounding the pyroprocessing question. Regional stability is now in flux amid North Korea and China’s rapid nuclear weapons buildups and questions about the degree to which a potential Trump administration might undermine US alliances. Changing US reprocessing policy at this time would create additional risks.
AI and nuclear energy: evaluating risks. As the modern economy increasingly integrates artificial intelligence technologies, their scale and demand for energy will grow. To avoid exacerbating climate change, it makes sense for AI executives like Altman to look at nuclear energy as a potential power source. They should, however, predicate their investment on an honest, deliberate, and transparent evaluation of risks. That means no more euphemisms to cover up the proliferation dangers of reprocessing, plus an objective assessment of whether the technology’s proclaimed benefits truly justify its liabilities.
Silicon Valley’s innovation-driven investment mentality may reward startups like Oklo as the self-proclaimed pursuers of “what’s next in nuclear.” But technological advancement takes place far more slowly and deliberately in the nuclear domain than in other technologies, given the slowness of industrial supply chains and the need for safety, security, and nonproliferation regulations to keep pace. A nuclear vendor cannot afford to “move fast and break things” like a Silicon Valley IT venture, for a nuclear energy company that fails to address the proliferation implications of its technology risks breaking critical guardrails against the existential threat of nuclear war.
To be sure, there are ways to advance nuclear innovation without increasing the risks of proliferation. Many advanced reactor concepts do not entail breeding plutonium or reprocessing spent fuel. Bill Gates’s TerraPower is developing a sodium-cooled fast reactor just like Oklo but has addressed the hazards of its technology by declaring its reactors “will not require reprocessing and will run on a once-through fuel cycle that limits the risk of weapons proliferation.” Additionally, both Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have invested in the technology of nuclear fusion.
Nonproliferation awareness does not entail a Luddite approach to nuclear innovation. It simply requires that industry exercise its due diligence to innovate responsibly, and that governments create the incentives for doing so. Washington has supported domestic nuclear innovation to restore US technological leadership against Russian and Chinese competition, both as a national security priority and as a means of setting strong global nonproliferation standards. The United States should prioritize support to industry players that have minimized the proliferation risks of their prospective technology. If Washington is serious about competing with Russia and China on its nonproliferation bona fides, it should put its money where its mouth is when it comes to the next generation of nuclear reactors.
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There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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.)
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.
Because this is a test, local broadcasting stations will not interrupt regular programming to broadcast Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages. Comment …
Multiple injured in Russian attack on Kyiv. Images have shown the aftermath of a Russian strike on the Kyiv that left six people injured, including a …
As a new part of this community, the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction provides resources, guidance, and opportunities for physicists …
I don’t know exactly what “brink” means in Irish lingo, but let’s hope it’s not as ‘close’ or on the ‘edge’, or even ‘cusp’ as we Americans define the word. However, the time, effort, and money Russia and other nuclear armed countries, including the USA, insinuates that ‘threats’ and the associated cost of scaring each other half to death in advance will continue to be what they are (deterrent threats, or bald-faced lies) rather than anything called “actionable”. ~llaw
WWIII on brink as Russia advised to ‘demonstrate’ nuclear explosion to ‘scare’ West
A prominent Russian security analyst has called for Moscow to consider lighting a “demonstrative” nuclear explosion to deter the West from further involvement in the Ukraine conflict
Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons (Image: Getty)
Latest news from Irishstar.com
Dmitry Suslov, a top figure at the Moscow-based Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, has put forward the idea of Russia carrying out a “demonstrative” nuclear detonation, a move that could prompt the start of World War 3. This alarming suggestion arises as tensions with the West intensify due to Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weaponry against Russian forces.
Suslov’s think tank, known to occasionally sway government policy, made this proposal public shortly after President Vladimir Putin delivered a grave warning to NATO countries. Putin warned that if Ukraine were to employ Western arms for attacks on Russian soil, it could spark a worldwide crisis, reinforcing his point with threats of severe repercussions.
Ukraine’s officials maintain that hitting Russian military sites within Russia using long-range Western missiles is essential for their defence and to thwart air, missile, and drone assaults. Some Western nations have shown sympathy for this view, though the US has not given its backing, reports the Express US.
With the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, Russia has repeatedly cautioned that such moves would represent a major escalation, potentially drawing NATO and participating states into an outright conflict and raising the spectre of a nuclear confrontation.
Suslov highlighted the urgency for Russia to take bold steps to deter Western nations from overstepping a crucial boundary. He suggested a non-combat nuclear detonation as a severe caution.
“To confirm the seriousness of Russia’s intentions and to convince our opponents of Moscow’s readiness to escalate, it is worth considering a demonstrative (i.e. non-combat) nuclear explosion,” Suslov penned in the business publication Profil.
He went on to describe the potential repercussions of such a move: “The political and psychological effect of a nuclear mushroom cloud, which will be shown live on all TV channels around the world, will hopefully remind Western politicians of the one thing that has prevented wars between the great powers since 1945 and that they have now largely lost – fear of nuclear war.”
This proposal is among the latest from Russian security analysts and legislators who are pushing for a nuclear demonstration to cow the West amidst the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Such talk has set off alarm bells among Western security circles, with worries that Russia may be edging towards carrying out such a test.
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The Kremlin has not yet issued a statement regarding Suslov’s recommendation. Officially, Russia maintains its nuclear stance as before. Nonetheless, earlier this month, the Kremlin expressed its displeasure with what it views as increasingly hostile Western discourse by initiating tactical nuclear weapons exercises.
In addition to the nuclear test proposal, Suslov recommended that Russia initiate strategic nuclear exercises and issue stern warnings. He suggested that Moscow should notify any country whose weapons are used by Kyiv to attack Russia that it reserves the right to strike targets in that country globally.
He also hinted that Russia might consider using nuclear weapons if such a country retaliated conventionally.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)
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.
Compared to a golf-cart or dirt bike, a Ladoga is much better-suited for mechanized warfare. It combines the armored hull of a T-80 tank with a 1,250- …
Defying Western attempts to isolate Russia during its ongoing war with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Vietnam earlier this month to …
International laws, rules, agreements, and pacts mean nothing where nuclear war is concerned no matter how hard we wish that were not so. All we have left to hold nuclear war in abeyance is what we call “deterrence”, meaning each major nuclear armed country spends billions of dollars each year in order to hold a threatened nuclear attack in abeyance through the concept of ‘fear’ and ‘coercion’ (as mentioned in the article) that one nuclear country is more powerful than the others. “Deterrence” cannot continue to work for obvious financial reasons as well as others, and returning to nuclear agreements, et al, is no longer considered because they are always willfully broken by the dishonestly and disloyalty of those in charge. The Russia/Ukraine war is the ‘hotbed’ right now and Putin is the one with the nuclear football as he makes the loudest threats to use nuclear weapons, especially if NATO (and the USA) enter the actual war as defenders of democracy, not as simple financiers and military suppliers.
So it is that we are staring nuclear war, read a disastrous WWIII, in the face if just one of the 9 nuclear armed nations breaks the fear factor of ‘deterrence’ and uses nuclear weapons against an enemy. It takes only one nuclear bomb, because the other side will retaliate with even more, and then the international nuclear war begins almost instantly, never to end, of course, with a victory for any country, but a world of nuclear disaster beyond belief or comprehension. ~llaw
Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All
Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal
OPINION by Andrew Lichterman – Alyn Ware – Yosuke Watanabe (Oakland, California / Prague, Czech Republic / Yokohama, Japan)
Friday, June 28, 2024
Inter Press Service
Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal
Aftermath of attack in the city center of Kharkiv, Ukraine. June 2024. Credit: IOM
OAKLAND, California / PRAGUE, Czech Republic / YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 28 (IPS) – Our three organizations – Western States Legal Foundation, Peace Depot, and Basel Peace Office – all dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons, have consistently expressed our concern about the risk of nuclear war escalating during armed conflicts and times of high tension, when nuclear-armed states often make veiled or even explicit threats to use nuclear weapons and prepare for such use.
This has happened, for example, with the governments of India and Pakistan trading nuclear threats during their 2001 stand-off, the U.S. government making veiled nuclear threats against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the U.S. and North Korean leaders threatening to strike each other with nuclear weapons in 2017.
We speak out now against the series of coercive nuclear threats that have been made by the Russian government since 2022 in conjunction with its invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Ukrainian territory.
From the start of the full-scale invasion and war in 2022, the government of the Russian Federation has made a series of threats to use nuclear weapons against countries that provide Ukraine with weapons and other military assistance.
Russian officials also have claimed the right to use nuclear weapons to defend territories they have occupied and illegally annexed in the course of the war. These threats have been accompanied by such posturing as the announced deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus and the highlighting of exercises of Russian nuclear forces in a military district on Ukraine’s borders.
These threats make clear once more a key role of the nuclear weapons possessed by the world’s most powerful states: to make it easier for their governments to pursue aggressive wars and to coerce countries to accept this aggression by exponentially increasing the danger to all who might oppose them.
In 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal, but did not reach a conclusion, one way or the other, regarding an extreme circumstance of self-defense when the very survival of a state is at stake.
This approach was controversial at the time in the international legal community, with considerable opinion that the threat or use of nuclear arms is illegal in all circumstances. That view has only strengthened in the nearly three decades since then.
Among other developments, the UN Human Rights Committee found in 2018 that threat or use of nuclear weapons is contrary to the human right to life; the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons declared in its preamble that use of nuclear weapons is contrary to international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the conduct of warfare; and a 2011 International Red Cross and Red Cross Movement resolution stated that it is “difficult to envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with” IHL.
Regardless of one’s view of the current state of the law, the population of the Russian Federation faces no threat to its “very survival”. Their government could end its war on Ukraine tomorrow and the Russian Federation would remain a large and powerful state with an immense resource and industrial base, its internationally recognized borders intact.
There is no rationale for the brandishing of nuclear weapons by the government of the Russian Federation other than to leverage their terrible destructive power to advance its war of aggression and conquest in Ukraine.
In January 2022, less than two months before the government of the Russian Federation launched its invasion, that government, together with those of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and China issued a statement affirming that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Then in November 2022, at the G20 Summit in Bali, and again at the September 2023 G20 Summit in Delhi, the leaders and/or foreign ministers of China, France, India, Russia, UK, and USA declared that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.” Yet, the nuclear threats continue.
Amidst a war already involving extensive air bombardment and missile warfare, together with the use of new kinds of electronic warfare that intensifies the fog of war, a nuclear crisis would pose extraordinary dangers. No one should have any illusions that such a crisis could be easily controlled.
The government of the Russian Federation should cease its threats of nuclear use, and issue assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, and NATO should issue such assurances as well.
Andrew Lichterman is Senior Research Analyst, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, USA; Alyn Ware is Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Director, Basel Peace Office, Prague, Czech Republic; Yosuke Watanabe is Research Fellow, Peace Depot, Japan Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Yokohama, Japan.
The Western States Legal Foundation, based in Oakland, California, seeks to abolish nuclear weapons as an essential step in making possible a more secure, just, and environmentally sustainable world; Peace Depot is a non-profit, independent think tank based in Yokohama, Japan. It supports civil society’s peace movements, particularly in the area of nuclear disarmament and military base issues; Basel Peace Office is a coalition of four Swiss organizations and three international organizations advancing effective policies and proposals to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world.
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ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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 two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
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 Russia/Ukraine nuclear disaster can come in two sizes, and that seems to be the strategy of Russia’s way of winning the war with Ukraine, one without war, per se the other WWIII. The 1st and most visibly reported has been the so-called potential “accidental meltdown” of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) which could halt the war instantly without a declaration of nuclear war. The Russian operated plant has been under fire by both Russia and the Ukraine for about two years, and critical meltdowns that could spread lethal radiation to large areas of Europe have been avoided, but the attacks on the plant continue.
The other possibility is nuclear war involving NATO (with the USA directly involved, of course) by actively engaging military weapons with Ukraine’s military. That is the alternative that could suddenly become the straw that begins a WWIII style nuclear war, of which there will be no other kind of nuclear war, or any war, other than a small possibility of Einstein’s ‘sticks and stones’ war, no matter the size of the beginning. Simply put, if one country is fired upon, it will instantly retaliate creating a non-stop war among all the nuclear armed powers.
So the chances of nuclear war are, in fact, not so low as this article might think, but the possibilities certainly exist, even to the extent of WWIII, which would end all future wars and consist of armageddon-like results, leading to a dead world known as the 6th Extinction. As I have been frequently commenting the situation in Ukraine is dangerously close to the beginning of a nuclear war, and nuclear power plants around the world would be involved, too — becoming useful sitting duck weapons of mass destruction themselves wherever they are.
Let me just say that we (humanity) desperately need help from some unknown source to stop this warpath we are on because I, among millions of others, do not believe we are mentally capable of diplomatically resolving the war issues ourselves. Should that help never arrive, or comes too late, our once beautiful blue-green planet may take millions of years, if not longer, to recover enough to allow life to return . . . ~llaw
Prolonging the Ukraine war is flirting with nuclear disaster
The chances of an atomic catastrophe are low but they aren’t zero
For more than two years, the West has been stoking Ukraine’s hopes — with funding, military advice, and more and more advanced weapons — that it could push Russia out to its pre-2014 borders. This is an imaginary outcome that words of fiction will do nothing to achieve.
Equally misguided is the contention by Western leaders that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, he will gobble up more and more of Europe, beginning with Poland and the Baltics. Not only is there no evidence to support this assertion, but also the notion that a Russia that can barely defeat Ukraine would go to war against NATO simply defies logic.
These developments do, however, push Washington into spending more on “defense,” which enriches the arms manufacturers. Earlier this month, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg trumpeted an 18 percent increase in military spending across Europe and Canada in 2024, “the biggest increase in decades,” two-thirds of which goes to U.S. manufacturers.
Meanwhile, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons announced that global spending on nuclear weapons rose 13 percent in 2023, with the U.S. again leading the way. This is happening even though the U.S. already spends almost five times as much as China, its nearest competitor. U.S. nuclear weapons spending over the past five years has increased by 45 percent, trailed by the U.K.’s 43 percent.
The spending announcements coincide with news about the planet sweltering and little is being done to combat global warming. Clearly, we’re too busy fighting each other and spending money on ways to end humanity far faster than global warming will.
As NATO leaders realize that throwing more money into Ukraine alone is not enough to change an increasingly desperate battlefield equation, they have been finding other, more dangerous ways, to escalate in recent weeks. They have not only permitted Ukraine to attack sites within Russia with advanced NATO weapons, they have also assisted in those attacks and have openly discussed sending NATO troops, trainers, and targeters on the ground. The recent attacks on two Russian nuclear warning radar facilities have been particularly irresponsible, bringing us closer not only to full out war, but to nuclear war. And if that is not enough, Stoltenberg recently told the Telegraph that NATO is debating taking additional nuclear weapons out of storage and placing them on standby to prepare for all contingencies.
Russia has responded to these escalations with a series of explicit warnings about the imminence of a broader war and by carrying out provocative tactical nuclear war exercises on its territory bordering Ukraine, with Belarussian participation. The Foreign Ministry said the exercises would send a “sobering signal” that would “cool the hot heads in Western capitals,” making them understand “the potential catastrophic consequences of the strategic risks they are generating.”
Russia then sent warships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, to Cuba, which Western commentators dismissed as a “bluff,” though the U.S. and Canada promptly sent warships into the region. Next, Putin visited Pyongyang and signed a “mutual security” pact with North Korea, committing both nuclear-armed nations to come to each other’s defense if attacked.
These developments heighten the urgency of finding a political settlement for the Ukraine war.
In a recent book titled “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” author Annie Jacobsen details the 72 minutes that unfold after the U.S. detects a North Korea launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile heading for Washington, DC, until the end of the world as we know it. The hypothesized North Korean attack quickly turns into a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, a possibility made even more likely by the Putin-Kim Jong Un agreement. In Jacobsen’s book, the two countries proceed to use a thousand or more warheads to level the other, a prospect that terrified millions of people throughout the Cold War, but which had more recently faded from the public’s consciousness.
Nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia today would bear little resemblance to the American atomic bomb attacks on Japan. Rather than killing a couple hundred thousand people, as Fat Man and Little Boy did in 1945, today’s weapons could kill and injure millions of people, and possibly hundreds of millions. Add to this count the billions around who would starve to death as a result of nuclear winter and subsequent crop failures and you have a recipe for the end of human civilization as we know it.
The concern that Russia could decide to use nuclear weapons if threatened with defeat in the Donbas or Crimea or in a direct war with NATO should not be dismissed lightly. While the U.S. would be less likely to initiate nuclear war given NATO’s conventional superiority, it may respond in kind to Russian use of tactical nuclear weapons. Alternatively, a conventional war between Russia and NATO could turn nuclear.
Arguably, an even more likely scenario than a deliberate start of a nuclear war is a blunder into oblivion, an accidental or miscalculated strike as either side wrongly assumes that it is already or will imminently be under a nuclear attack. This can easily arise due to the “launch on warning” policy that both countries have. Moreover, neither the United States nor Russia has a “no-first-use policy” that would abjure first using nuclear weapons in a crisis, making the miscalculation more likely.
MIT Professor Ted Postol, a former scientific adviser to the chief of naval operations, has warned that Russia’s missile detection capabilities are not as advanced as the ones that the United States has, which he described as a “terrible and dangerous technology shortfall.” Especially, he warns, if nuclear radar facilities are under attack, as they were recently, Russia could falsely assume it is being targeted by nuclear weapons and could unleash the full power of its 5,500+ warhead arsenal. Make that partial, it’s still enough to not only destroy the United States, but the whole world.
Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan jointly stated in 1985 that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Despite leaders of the five original nuclear weapon states explicitly reaffirming this in January 2022 prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many of those same leaders seem to have forgotten these wise words and have recklessly pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war.
As former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev poignantly stated in the aftermath of the greatest previous nuclear crisis, “Peace is the most important goal in the world. If we don’t have peace and the nuclear bombs start to fall, what difference will it make whether we are Communists or Catholic or capitalists or Chinese or Russians or Americans? Who could tell us apart? Who will be left to tell us apart?”
It’s time to change policy on Ukraine and to stop the escalation escalator before it is too late. A Swiss peace conference without Russia or China has done nothing to advance that goal. Nor have the recent G7 meetings in Italy, the NATO pronouncements, or, for that matter, the grandiose war games being conducted by both sides in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Brazil and China recently issued a joint statement, declaring that “dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis.” Their proposal includes a six-point plan for peace, with “no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting, and no further provocation.” China says that the proposal has now received backing from at least 45 countries.
This is a good place to start, as would be an emergency meeting of world leaders that the U.N. General Secretary Antonio Guterres could call for. Continuing to play nuclear roulette is not an acceptable path forward.
Ivana Nikolić Hughes is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and a Senior Lecturer in Chemistry at Columbia University. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.
Peter is a professor of history and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, D.C. He is also the author of numerous books, and co-author (with Oliver Stone) of The Untold History of the United States.
The views expressed by authors on Responsible Statecraft do not necessarily reflect those of the Quincy Institute or its associates.
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This is equivalent to about 10 new nuclear plants with a single reactor each. Southern Company recently opened the first new nuclear plant in the U.S. …
The concern that Russia could decide to use nuclear weapons if threatened with defeat in the Donbas or Crimea or in a direct war with NATO should not …
So, who among us is going to watch the presidential debate tonight and hopefully keep a straight face (somehow, for whatever reason). But underneath all the gaffs and small ‘t’ trump unintended buffoonery and nonsense, the undertone of this debate, which begins at 6:00 (Pacific), may tell us a very dark tale without really listening to the media moderators’ questions and the candidates responses. I will be watching, hoping the most important of all subjects (‘All Things Nuclear’) is a seriously debated issue, so this blog post is a bit earlier than normal. ~llaw
The article below may give us a hint about tonight’s presidential debate, and there is a handy little scorecard for the issues that concern us most here on this blog as well as the . . .
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Most recent presidential debates have avoided much discussion of these existential threats—nuclear war, climate change, and a variety of disruptive technologies ranging from synthetic biology to artificial intelligence—often dealing instead in concocted political conflict and “gotcha” questions. . . .
Is there any debate? This is the existential threat scorecard you need to rate the Biden and Trump matchup
The media chatter in the run-up to Thursday’s very early presidential election debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump has tilted heavily toward matters of style and age. Will Biden be cogent and spry enough to dispel worries about his age? Will Trump display his own presentation problems, turning into a rambling emitter of incomprehensible word-salads who tromps all over debate rules (as he did in the 2020 presidential debate)? On social media, the debate moderators—CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash—have become unwilling storylines of their own, as Trump supporters call the debate “rigged” and a Democratic-leaning “trap.” And when it turns to public policy issues, much of the pre-debate media opining has focused on the usual suspects: the economy and immigration, with a side of abortion.
As important as those three subjects might be, they are, by definition, subordinate to the Bulletin’s concerns—the global threats that, if not properly managed, could severely cripple or even end human civilization. Most recent presidential debates have avoided much discussion of these existential threats—nuclear war, climate change, and a variety of disruptive technologies ranging from synthetic biology to artificial intelligence—often dealing instead in concocted political conflict and “gotcha” questions.
Our handy existential threat scorecard (below) will help you keep track of how often the presidential candidates and debate moderators address the complex technological threats that any president must manage if global catastrophe is to be forestalled. Given the wars in Ukraine and Gaza—along with heightened geopolitical tensions that are sometimes likened to a new Cold War—let us hope we’re all surprised, and your scorecard is full of “x” marks by debate’s end.
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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.
We face a climate emergency and we don’t have time to waste. I want to see Australia ramp up efforts to transition to 100% renewable energy as soon as …
More from yesterday about why the Russia/Ukraine may spark WWIII. And, yes, that’s all it will take is one ‘not-so-little spark’, because there is no such thing. The response will be much more than a spark however; retaliation to a nuclear attack calls for an automatic all-out response. ~llaw
Vladimir Putin sparks WW3 fears as diplomat warns ‘use of nuclear weapons on agenda’
Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated he would be willing to deploy nuclear weapons should Russia’s existence come under threat.
11:35, Tue, Jun 25, 2024 | UPDATED: 11:38, Tue, Jun 25, 2024
Vladimir Putin continues to fuel fears of the ongoing war in Ukraine evolving into a nuclear conflict.
Türkiye‘s Foreign Minister has now warned current tensions could ultimately put “the use of nuclear weapons” on the agenda.
Hakan Fidan said the war in Ukraine is fraught with the potential for further expansion and could develop into a nuclear conflict if a deal is not struck between Kyiv and Moscow.
Speaking to Turkish broadcaster Haberturk, Mr Fidan said: “The cost of the ongoing war for the region and the entire world is very high.
“What is even more alarming is that this risk may grow and expand. It may expand geographically and the potential use of nuclear weapons may be put on the agenda.”
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So it is that I have had to go to my Google News source to locate the disorganized, but fortunately linked, files so I can cut and paste the Digest here, which has taken me about two hours longer than the usual 15-20 minutes that were required before. Needless to say, this is a problem for me and a distressful weakening of Outlook email that Microsoft has been trying, unsuccessfully for years, to get right. Making it even less user friendly software than it was does nothing to enhance their effort.)
There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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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Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)
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.
This is a long time coming for Bill Gates and for Terrapower, isn’t it? Akshat Rathi 00:03:42. Very much so. Founded in 2008 and if all the things go …
… nuclear threat seems possible. Poland’s WWIII fears sees huge surge in soldiers enlisting in army after Vladimir Putin threats · World War III fears …
Responding to the opening sentence/paragraph in this Washington Post opinion article: “Lawmakers took historic action on clean energy last week, and hardly anyone seems to have noticed.” Well, I, sure as hell, noticed! And in my own instantly-considered opinion, it may well be the biggest mistake ever made in American History.”
There are more reasons than I can count, but here are just a few:
Nuclear Energy is not clean energy. It is the most dirty and dangerous kind of energy ever produced by mankind. And we have no idea what to do with the radioactive waste.
Nuclear energy revival will take too long to solve our problem with greenhouse gasses that cause global warming/climate change. We’ve been lying to ourselves about that issue for many years, doing nothing when it could have been controlled by limiting commercial power production from corporate use of fossil fuels, and investing more in renewable energy sources.
Nuclear power plants can more than double the damage from a single nuclear bomb in a war situation, simply by the enemies blowing up the others’ nuclear power plant reactors with a nuclear bomb. (Keep track of the very serious nuclear threats and radiation fears concerning the Russian controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine to get an idea about the potential danger of existing nuclear power in war zones.) There is also the existential threat of terrorism that we are ignoring.
Accidental meltdowns pursuant to operational, mechanical, engineering, and earthquake, flood or other ‘acts of god’ damage similar to or worse than those that we have seen in the past, especially if nuclear power plant standards or reduced in an effort to meet the useless 2050 deadline.
Of course there are many, many, more serious problems, even doomsday type problems, with ‘all things nuclear’. When someone mentions the words “clean” or “safe” or even “financial” next to anything nuclear, I wince and my heart rate jumps to critical for a few seconds. llolloll! The fact is ‘we know not what we are doing’ and there is absolutely no room for the slightest mistake of dealing with ‘all things nuclear’ because we are incapable of using anything nuclear safely. Yet we fail to rid ourselves of the very radioactive refined uranium fuel, and the products that use the fuel, that can and will kill us all right along with most all other life if we continue to use and ignore what nuclear power, nuclear war, or all other things nuclear that are beyond humanity’s knowledge, understanding, and control. ~llaw
Opinion
The stage is being set for an American nuclear power revolution
There’s no telling how much clean energy the United States might produce.
Lawmakers took historic action on clean energy last week, and hardly anyone seems to have noticed.
Congress passed a bill to help reinvigorate the anemic U.S. nuclear industry, with the support of President Biden and 88 senators. Not a single Republican voted against it.
The bill, known as the Advance Act, is precisely the kind of move the government should be taking to fight climate change. It shows that large bipartisan majorities can help protect the planet without giving in to the endless politicking that has killed so many energy reforms in the past.
The act’s purpose is to liberate the nuclear industry from its decades-long malaise. Though the United States produces more nuclear energy than any other country, it has lately been shedding reactors like crazy.
This is because most U.S. nuclear plants are near or past their retirement age. Today, the average commercial reactor in the United States is 42 years old, which is concerning given that their licenses typically last just 40 years (though they can be extended).
Meanwhile, efforts to build new reactors have floundered. Earlier this year, developers fired up a new reactor at Plant Vogtle near Augusta, Ga., but it was the first one built from scratch in more than three decades. And it suffered years of delays and ever-increasing costs, an all-too-common affliction in the industry.
Given such slow progress toward replacing aging infrastructure, the Energy Department has warned that the nuclear industry will keep shrinking. By 2040, the country is projected to produce 20 percent less energy from nuclear power than it does today.
This is alarming because nuclear is our largest source of non-carbon-based energy. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are rapidly expanding, but they are intended to replace fossil fuels. They can’t also be expected to shore up the nuclear industry. And don’t forget, in the next few decades, demand for electricity will only grow.
Meanwhile, the United States is falling behind internationally on nuclear power development. Now that the Vogtle reactor is finished, the number of other projects under construction in the United States is, well, zero. See how this compares with other countries:
The Biden White House has long recognized the problem, and has been trying to inject some adrenaline into the U.S. nuclear industry. The Inflation Reduction Act dedicates billions of dollars to developing new plants and keeping existing ones running. The administration has also dangled hundreds of millions of dollars for any companies that develop advanced nuclear technology, which promises to be cheaper and safer — and to produce less radioactive waste. Critically, the Energy Department has been working to supercharge the production of the enriched uranium needed to fuel advanced reactors.
Now, the Advance Act addresses a key hurdle to nuclear projects: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s arduous permitting process.
The soon-to-be law will enlarge the NRC’s chronically inadequate workforce. It also endeavors to simplify the agency’s permitting process. For example, it will lower the burdensome fees that companies must pay in the review process, helping relatively small, innovative companies enter the market.
It will also direct the NRC to more quickly license nuclear plants at retired fossil fuel sites. This is just common sense: Retrofitting a former coal-fired power plant, which is already hooked up to the electrical grid, could save on construction costs and avoid lengthy siting reviews. It could also return jobs to communities that have lost them. A 2022 Energy Department study identified more than 300 retired or operating fossil fuel sites that could be converted to nuclear.
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There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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.
What is happening at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station in Ukraine during the Russian invasion is simply increasingly the suspense of waiting for a horrible nuclear “accident” that could threaten the lives of much of Ukraine and large areas of Europe. That is one issue that has been ongoing for more than two years and continues to grow more carelessly dangerous as time goes by until now it is at the critical issue point of no return. It is like Nero fiddling while Rome burns, but much, much, worse.
But the Russia/Ukraine war, with the USA and now NATO apparently supporting Ukraine, increasing the threats from Russia’s Putin and others, makes Ukraine a hotbed for the beginning of WWIII, and, if that happens, Armageddon happens. The leaders of nuclear armed nations all know this, but does their seemingly lack of apparent care mean if they cannot have it all, they will take the rest of humanity and other life with them to their final destinations?
This lying world, reeking of the stench of humanity’s hatred for one-another, filling every day to the putrid hilt of wishful but hopeless ‘deterrence’ of nuclear threats that they and we know cannot continue forever, so the answer to my question has two current answers only: 1) unite and remove ‘all things nuclear’ from the Earth’s environment forever, or 2) remain divided and use nuclear weapons, including nuclear power plants, to quickly create the 6th Extinction. ~llaw
IAEA urges halt to attacks on town near Ukrainian nuclear plant
Reuters
Sun 23 June 2024 at 3:47 pm GMT-7·2-min read
IAEA urges halt to attacks on town near Ukrainian nuclear plant
(Reuters) – The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog called on Sunday for a halt to attacks on Enerhodar, a town near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station after drone strikes this week hit two electricity substations serving the area.
The plant’s Russian-installed officials accused Ukraine of staging two drone strikes that destroyed one substation, damaged another and cut power to residents for a time.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made no reference to Ukraine and said the incidents had no affect on the Zaporizhzhia plant’s operations.
But he said the attacks had to stop.
“Whoever is behind this, it must stop. Drone usage against the plant and its vicinity is becoming increasingly more frequent,” Grossi said in a statement on the IAEA website.
“This is completely unacceptable and it runs counter to the safety pillars and concrete principles which have been accepted unanimously.”
Power had been cut to Enerhodar, a few kilometres from the plant, for 16 hours, he said. But neither of the attacks, which occurred on Wednesday and Friday, had any impact on the power lines that the nuclear plant uses to keep operating.
The Zaporizhzhia plant’s Russia-installed management said some “infrastructure facilities” including the transport department and print shop experienced disruptions, but that nuclear safety measures remained fully operational.
Ukrainian officials have made no comment on the incidents and Reuters could not independently confirm the reports.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the attacks exposed Ukraine’s disregard for nuclear safety.
Russian troops seized the Zaporizhzhia plant in the early days of the February 2022 invasion, and Moscow and Kyiv have since regularly accused each other of endangering safety around the facility. It produces no electricity at the moment.
The IAEA maintains inspectors at the station.
Russia launched mass attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in the first winter of the conflict and resumed a long series of attacks in March. Kyiv says the renewed attacks have knocked out half of its energy-generating capacity.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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There are 6 categories, including 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, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about 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.
IAEA Board holds emergency meeting on Zaporizhzhia attacks. 1 / 2. IAEA … But neither of the attacks, which occurred on Wednesday and Friday, had any …
Russia Can Reduce Decision-Making Time For Using Nuclear Weapons If Threats Increase, Lawmaker Says ; Moscow: Russia ; The war in Ukraine has triggered …
A must read far beyond fantasy! I am just finishing up my 2nd full reading (with mindful notes) of Annie Jacobsen’s, perhaps prophetic, book “Nuclear War: A Scenario” of a well-put-together extremely logical nuclear war from years of interviews and working within governmental documents and knowledgeable individuals who have or had a reason to know what they are or were (some have passed away) talking about when it comes to the next war. It will be WWIII and it will be nuclear, and it won’t take very long.
Her book demonstrates and proves without doubt that we humans absolutely fail to understand the earth-shaking news (or the reality) of a nuclear war ending virtually all life on planet Earth within a very short period of time if some leader in some country pushes the 1st nuclear war button. As an informed species we humans are entirely in the dark, unaware of the immanent danger of both nuclear arms and nuclear power plants, and most articles we read from the mass-media editors and writers have no idea that nuclear war today will be like no other war in the history of the world — potentially as dangerous and far more explicitly sudden, asteroid collision over 65 million years ago, as the last (5th) Earth Extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs and other life on Earth before mankind showed up and eventually discovered uranium. We, mankind, are about to cause the 6th Extinction if just one nuclear armed country fires on another with an ICBM carrying a single multi-kiloton nuclear bomb.
We read ridiculously childish uninformed articles every day from the media about how we have reduced the number of nuclear weapons since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, for instance, implying that the world is a safer place now than then, but the article editor or author has no idea that the ‘number’ of nuclear weapons has nothing at all to do with the ‘power’ of nuclear weapons between then and now. And that story, among daily dozens of others with long outdated knowledge and perceptions, is like listening to a ‘goodnight, sweet dreams’ story from a parent when we were small children compared to the reality of it all in our day-to-day nuclear-based waking hours now. Armageddon is a forgone conclusion unless we do an immediate about face and get rid of ‘all things nuclear’ forever with no exceptions, or even more doubtfully, some unknown but intelligent ‘life-force’ comes along and does it for us. ~llaw (Read on . . .)
How often do you think about all the ways the world could end?
As the host of The Gray Area, I find myself engaged in this macabre exercise more than most. We’ve done episodes on runaway AI and climate change and extinction panics. One of the few topics we haven’t covered, however, is nuclear war. Which is surprising because this scenario is near the top of basically every list of existential threats — and now feels newly salient with recent news involving North Korea, Iran, and China.
Annie Jacobsen is a reporter and the author of a new book called Nuclear War: A Scenario. I read a lot of books for the show and this one stuck with me longer than any I can recall. It’s a book that clearly wants to startle the reader, and it succeeds.
Jacobsen walks you through all the ways a nuclear catastrophe might unfold, and she gives a play-by-play breakdown of the terrifying choreography that would ensue in the minutes immediately after a nuclear missile launch.
So I invited Jacobsen on The Gray Area to talk about what a nuclear exchange would really look like and how perilously close we are to that reality. As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Sean Illing
I suspect the image most of us still have of nuclear bombs is the image of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but that was a long time ago. How much more powerful are the thermonuclear weapons we’re talking about today?
Annie Jacobsen
To give you an idea of a thermonuclear weapon, I went to one of the ultimate sources, a 93-year-old nuclear weapons engineer named Richard Garwin, probably the most famous nuclear weapons engineer, physicist, presidential adviser, still alive. Garwin drew the plans for the very first thermonuclear weapon. Its code name was Ivy Mike; it’s on the cover of my book. It was 10.4 megatons.
AD
So consider that the Hiroshima bomb that you referenced was 15 kilotons and then think about 10.4 megatons. It’s about 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs detonating at the same time from the same center point. Garwin explained it to me in the simplest of terms when he asked me to visualize this fact: A thermonuclear weapon uses an atomic bomb as its fuse inside of the weapon. That’s how powerful it is.
Sean Illing
Paint the picture for me, as you do in the opening pages of the book, where you imagine a nuke is dropped on Washington, DC. What happens next?
Annie Jacobsen
So with a 1-megaton bomb on Washington, DC, what happens in the very first millisecond is that this thermonuclear flash expands into a ball of fire that is one mile of pure fire. It’s 19 football fields of fire.
Then the fireball’s edges compress into what is called a steeply fronted blast wave — as dense wall of air pushing out, mowing down everything in its path three miles out, in every direction, because it is accompanied by several-hundred-mile-an-hour winds.
It’s like Washington, DC, just got hit by an asteroid and the accompanying wave. When you think about this initial 9-mile diameter ring, imagine every single engineered structure — buildings, bridges, etc. — collapsing.
There’s also a thermonuclear flash that sets everything on fire and melts lead, steel, and titanium. Streets nine miles out transform into molten asphalt lava. The details are so horrific; it’s important to keep in mind these are not from my imagination. These are sourced from Defense Department documents because the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Department have been keeping track of what nuclear bombs do to people and to things ever since the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings of 1945.
Sean Illing
When all that happens, we’re in what you call “Day Zero,” and then the nuclear winter begins. What does that look like?
Annie Jacobsen
One of the big premises of the book was to take readers from nuclear launch to nuclear winter and the nuclear launch up to Day Zero takes place over this horrifying 72-minute period. As STRATCOM Commander General [C. Robert] Kehler said to me in an interview when we were talking about a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States: “Yes, Annie, the world could end in the next couple of hours.”
AD
So nuclear winter begins in essence after the bombs stop falling and there is a process of mega-fires. The area around every nuclear detonation is going to ultimately result in what is known now as a mega-fire. You’re talking about 100 to 300 square miles of fire per bomb where everything in that area is burning until it doesn’t exist anymore. This is because, of course, there are no first responders anymore. There are no fire trucks, there’s no way to put anything out.
With all of these explosions, 330 billion pounds of soot gets lofted into the troposphere. That is enough soot to block out 70 percent of the sun, creating a dramatic temperature plunge up to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, certainly in the mid-latitudes.
Those areas, for example, from Iowa to Ukraine, that whole band of the mid-latitudes, the bodies of water in those areas become frozen over in sheets of ice. With that temperature drop, you have the death of agriculture and that is why nuclear winter after nuclear war will result in what is now estimated to be 5 billion dead.
Sean Illing
And if I remember correctly, those models also estimated that in places like Iowa and Ukraine temperatures basically wouldn’t go above freezing for something like six years at least. Is that right?
Annie Jacobsen
That’s right.
I was reading Carl Sagan, who was one of the original five authors of the nuclear winter theory, who wrote about how after these bodies of water that get frozen over for years, after they thaw out and expose all the dead people, you then have to deal with the pathogens and the plague. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier during the Kennedy administration, once said to Kennedy when the two of them talked about this, that “after a nuclear war, the survivors would envy the dead.”
Sean Illing
After all the reporting you did, are you confident that there are enough checks and guardrails in place to ensure that we’ll avoid a nuclear exchange if it’s at all possible?
Annie Jacobsen
Let me answer that question with a quote from the current secretary-general of the United Nations, António Guterres, who said, “The world is one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away, from nuclear annihilation.”
Sean Illing
What does that really mean?
Annie Jacobsen
What it means is exactly what he said: that we could just have a mishap. We could have a mishap caused by a misinterpretation. A miscalculation would be one nuclear-armed nation thinking another nuclear-armed nation was doing something that maybe it wasn’t doing.
AD
This gets us into some of the crazy policies that exist on the books, things like “launch on warning” whereby once the United States learns that it is being attacked by an ICBM or a sub-launched ballistic missile, the president then has six minutes to decide how he should respond, with nuclear weapons. That’s what Guterres is talking about when he talks about a miscalculation.
Sean Illing
How much room is there for human agency in these command and control protocols? You always hear people say in presidential elections, “Do we really trust that guy with the nukes?” But is that the right way to think about this?
Annie Jacobsen
You’re raising an existential question that everyone should be raising.
We’ve been living in what some call a 79-year experiment. Yes, you could say, “Deterrence has held all these years.” Never mind the fact that there used to be two nuclear-armed nations, and there are now nine; never mind the fact that you have new technology factors coming into the mix.
Never mind the fact that nuclear saber-rattling has suddenly become acceptable among world leaders. This is astonishing. If you look at history, this was never part of the rhetoric, particularly out of the mouth of a US president, as happened with the former President Trump.
When I began reporting this book, the fundamental question that I was trying to answer was not, “Is deterrence great?” but rather what if deterrence fails? The Defense Department predicates its nuclear arsenal on this idea that deterrence will hold. That is the fundamental assumption. It’s written everywhere. “Deterrence will hold.”
Well, I also found a discussion with the deputy general of STRATCOM talking to his colleagues, not in a classified setting but in a somewhat rarified setting. What he said was this: “If deterrence fails, it all unravels.”
Sean Illing
I think it was former CIA Director Michael Hayden who told you explicitly that this process is designed for speed and decisiveness. It is not designed to debate the decision. On some level, I get that. But the automaticity of the whole process, given the stakes, is more than a little terrifying.
Annie Jacobsen
You better believe it is. And Hayden actually told that to members of Congress. And by the way, I believe that with the rhetoric from the former president, Donald Trump, all that talk about “fire and fury” with North Korea, it worried Congress to such a degree that they issued a number of reports that drilled down on a couple concepts that the public was not clear on.
AD
One of them had to do with what’s called sole presidential authority. So when Trump was saying, “I have a bigger button,” and that kind of rhetoric, Congress released a couple reports making clear that the president of the United States does have sole presidential authority. That means he needs to ask permission of no one to launch a nuclear war — not the secretary of defense, not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and not Congress.
Sean Illing
You write something near the end of the book imagining that the secretary of defense, who’s the acting president in this hypothetical situation, what if this person has a crisis of conscience and wonders, “Is there really any point in firing these bombs and wiping out the other half of humanity?”
And it’s pretty clear that there really isn’t any room for that because the whole logic of deterrence is predicated on the absolute promise that the process is fixed and automatic. That’s what makes it a deterrent. But then again, it imprisons the actors in this process so that they don’t really have any control over it.
Annie Jacobsen
Let me add something because Dr. Glen McDuff of the Los Alamos Laboratory, who is both a nuclear weapons engineer who worked on the Star Wars program during the Reagan administration and has served as the historian at the classified library at the lab. I asked him, “Do you think anyone would defy orders?” And he said, “Annie, you have a better chance at winning Powerball.”
Sean Illing
Is there some near-future where in order to further reinforce the automaticity of this process, we just have AI controlling the whole thing from start to finish?
Annie Jacobsen
I can’t imagine a worse nightmare scenario than bringing AI, or more machine-learning technology, into the mix. There’s an incredible amount of machine learning that is built into the system. For example, the satellite detects the launch and then that data is processed in space. About one-tenth of the way to the moon is where a geosync satellite sits and that data is processed and streamed down to the nuclear command and control bunkers in the United States. This is happening in seconds. But to the idea of putting an “AI” into the mix on the human decision-making level or identifying level, that seems like a recipe for disaster and is a reason why so many of the systems within the triad are still analog, not digital. In other words, they continue to be similar systems to when they were invented decades ago so that they can’t be hacked.
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