LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #508 (01/11/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

JAN 11, 2024

A scene from the 2023 Victory Day Parade in Moscow. Source: President of the Russian Federation.

An RS-24 Yars intercontinental ballistic missile on display at the Victory Day Parade in May 2023 in Moscow. Source: President of the Russian Federation.

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

The following article from the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” and author Zachary Kallenborn provides thorough debate points of view concerning the positive or negative concept of banning all nuclear weapons. While I absolutely disagree with the reasoning to not ban nuclear weapons, in a more perfect world of human cooperation it would be a possible answer to keep nuclear war at the present ‘threat level’.

The final two paragraphs in this fine “story”, but drastically overstated regarding the ability of human leadership (the root of the problem) to morally, critically, sensibly and kindly react honorably to each other globally, clearly erases the ridiculous argument this kind of wishful thinking makes in the rest of this well-written and optimistic view (wrongly indicating that a non-nuclear ground WWIII is more dangerous to our future than a nuclear war) , which is why nuclear deterrence, as I have pointed out dozens of times in my nightly Posts here on “All Things Nuclear” will never work because it basic tenet is based on fear rather than respect . . . and for good reason. ~llaw

Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity

By Zachary Kallenborn | January 10, 2024

On January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entered into force with 69 state parties. The treaty aims to ban nuclear weapons, bringing global nuclear weapons arsenals down to zero. Treaty states, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, and other global zero activists that pushed for the treaty frequently highlight the existential harms from nuclear weapons, including in the second meeting of state parties to the treaty. The concern is legitimate. A 2022 study in Nature estimated a nuclear war between the United States and Russia would blast massive amounts of soot into the atmosphere, disrupting the global climate, and causing massive food shortages that could kill over five billion people.

But nuclear weapons are not the only threat to humanity. An asteroid over 1 kilometer in diameter striking the Earth, genetically engineered biological weapons, super volcanoes, extreme climate change, nanotechnology, and artificial superintelligence all could generate existential harm, whether defined as the collapse of human civilization or literal human extinction. To address those challenges, humanity needs global cooperation to align policies, pool resources, maintain globally critical supply chains, build useful technologies, and prevent the development of harmful technologies. Nuclear deterrence—alongside robust international organizations, laws, norms, alliances, and economic dependencies—helps make that happen.

Global governments and organizations aiming to reduce existential risks should support nuclear risk-reduction measures but oppose quick, complete abolition of nuclear weapons. Nuclear abolition creates serious risk of returning to an era of great power conflict, which could drastically increase existential risk. A global war between China, Russia, the United States and their respective allies risks the survival of the global cooperative system necessary to combat other existential threats, while threatening infrastructure necessary for risk mitigation measures and accelerating other existential risk scenarios. As Iskander Rehman wrote in his recent in-depth study of great power war: “Protracted great power wars are immensely destructive, whole-of-society affairs, the effects of which typically extend well beyond their point of origin, spilling across multiple regions and siphoning huge amounts of personnel, materiel and resources… Ultimately, protracted great-power wars usually only end when an adversary faces total annihilation, or collapses under the weight of its own exhaustion.” If the great powers collapse, the global system may collapse with them. Nuclear deterrence can help prevent that.

Nuclear weapons place a cap on how bad great power conflict can become and may deter the emergence and escalation of great power war. If China, the United States, or Russia faced a genuine existential threat, the nuclear weapons would emerge, threatening nuclear retaliation. As Chinese General Fu Quanyou, head of the People Liberation’s Army General Staff until 2002, once said: “The U.S. and Soviet superpowers both had strong nuclear capabilities able to destroy one another a number of times, so they did not dare to clash with each other directly, war capabilities above a certain point change into war-limiting capabilities.” Mutually assured destruction also helps prevent serious great power conflict from breaking out in the first place. During the current war between Ukraine and Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin has used nuclear threats to deter direct NATO involvement and keep the conflict local. The United States might wish to support Ukraine against Russia, but it’s not willing to risk a Russian nuclear strike on New York City or Washington, DC to do more than provide money and material. Removing that deterrence by banning nuclear weapons means a potential return to protracted, global great power war.

To emphasize: Opposing quick, complete abolition does not mean opposing reduction of nuclear arsenals or risk reduction measures like improved crisis management and ensuring human control over nuclear weapons. Massive nuclear war is the most likely scenario for existential harm to humanity in the near term. As the Chinese nuclear arsenal grows, and China potentially aims for nuclear parity with the United States in the coming decades, that problem is going to get worse. Current nuclear weapon strategies depend on targeting adversary nuclear weapons, which means as an adversary builds more nuclear weapons, the United States must build more too. If the United States builds more, so too will Russia and China. Unchecked, nuclear arsenal sizes could quickly spiral upwards, passing the heights of the Cold War when the United States had 23,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union had 39,000.

The risks of great power war. War among great powers increases existential risk in at least four ways. First, the global cooperative system necessary to combat existential threats may be seriously damaged or destroyed. Second, combatants might target and destroy infrastructure and capacity necessary to implement existential risk mitigation measures. Third, military necessity may accelerate the development of technologies like artificial intelligence that create new existential risks. Fourth, a great power war following nuclear abolition could touch off rapid, unstable nuclear rearmament and proliferation.

After World War II, the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and numerous other international organizations were built to stabilize the world and prevent such a global catastrophe from happening again. That cooperative framework allowed for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, enabled global partnerships on biosecurity through the G-7, and facilitated high-level discussions on the risks of artificial intelligence. However, a massive global war would undermine the very foundations of this order, because it would show the economic, political, and institutional ties between nations were never enough to prevent global conflict. Plus, World War III might result in the crippling or destruction of the powerful states and institutions that hold up global governance: China, France, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, NATO, and others. The global community may lose the cooperative institutions necessary for climate change reduction, limiting or controlling risky biological research, prevent the creation and proliferation of artificial superintelligence, and generally defend the planet.

Great power war could accelerate a broad range of technologies that generate new and increase other existential risks. Russian President Putin noted in 2017 that, “[w]hoever becomes the leader in [artificial intelligence] will become the ruler of the world.” A great power war would almost certainly accelerate research, development, and implementation of artificial intelligence. One can easily imagine a Manhattan Project for artificial superintelligence, bringing together NATO’s leading artificial intelligence researchers and organizations to create a superintelligence (or close enough to it) to defend friendly cybernetworks and attack adversarial ones, manipulate adversary decision-making, or create and manage insurgent forces. Although quantum computing is not an existential risk, accelerating development to help break adversary encryption or other military purposes would exacerbate artificial intelligence-related risks, too. Quantum computing offers potentially millions of times more computing power than classical computers, and computing power is a critical resource necessary to train artificial intelligence models. Great power war might also spur massive investment in biotechnologies like genetic engineering to enhance soldier effectiveness. Improvements and proliferation in genetic engineering generate a range of biological warfare concerns from creating new biological warfare agents to making existing agents more harmful.

In a war for survival, infrastructure necessary to mitigate existential risks might be destroyed. Space launch capabilities constitute a prime example: On November 24, 2021, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test from Vandenburg Space Force Base near Santa Barbara, California. If China and the United States were at war, Vandenburg Space Force Base would be a viable and desirable target for Chinese attacks. China has long recognized that the United States military depends heavily on space assets for communication, remote sensing, and position, navigation, and timing. And Vandenburg is home to the Combined Space Operations Center, the Space Force center responsible for executing “operational command and control of space forces to achieve theater and global objectives.” Damaging or destroying the base, including its space launch capabilities, could help China win the war. At the same time, damaging or destroying the base would make it harder for the United States to carry out asteroid deflection research and, depending on timing, prevent the United States from launching a planetary defense mission when an asteroid is inbound.

General loss of state capacity could also draw resources and policy attention away from existential risk mitigation. Research by, Greg Koblentz of George Mason University and King’s College London researcher Filippa Lentzos mapped 69 Biosafety Level 4 laboratories around the world. At these labs, research is conducted on the most dangerous pathogenic material, like the microorganisms that cause smallpox and Ebola. The United States and global community expends significant resources to secure those facilities: President Biden’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget provides $1.8 billion to strengthen biosecurity and biosafety. But in a World War III involving the United States and China, biosecurity may fall by the wayside. Even if the United States prevails, rebuilding Tokyo, Los Angelos, Seoul, or other major cities demolished during the fighting would command tremendous resources, and attention.

Finally, a World War III breaking out after nuclear abolition could trigger rapid, unstable nuclear rearmament and proliferation. The United States, Russia, China, and other nuclear powers would almost certainly realize that nuclear abolition was a mistake and rearm themselves. A post-abolition World War III would also likely demonstrate to many other states that nuclear weapons are necessary to defend their sovereignty. Rapid nuclear rearmament and proliferation could be highly destabilizing, with significant new risks of nuclear war, because new nuclear arsenals may not be accompanied by the necessary crisis communication, secure second-strike, and general deterrence doctrine necessary to ensure stability.

Even if nuclear abolition were achieved, the basic knowledge underlying nuclear weapons would not disappear. Even if all nuclear warheads were dismantled, weapon designs were destroyed, and enrichment facilities closed, the historical and scientific knowledge of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons would not disappear. Nuclear weapons knowledge would need to be retained even in a global zero world to support any monitoring or verification programs aimed at ensuring that a nuclear global zero stays “zero.” That knowledge could provide the seeds for rearmament. So, while nuclear abolition might reduce nuclear-related existential risks in the short-term, abolition might counterintuitively increase nuclear existential risk in the long-term.

Navigating the zone of uncertainty. Effectively managing the existential benefits and risks of nuclear weapons requires two questions to be addressed. First, how many nuclear weapons are minimally necessary to deter great power conflict? Second: At what point does a nuclear war go from just a moral horror and catastrophic loss of life to truly existential harm? Unfortunately, neither answer is clear and requires significantly more modeling and analysis than has been done.

Reducing nuclear arsenals only to the minimum amount necessary to deter great power war requires a nuclear state having sufficient, survivable nuclear weapons to reliably inflict unacceptable harm on an adversary. But how much harm is “unacceptable” will depend on the conflict context, leader personality, domestic and international politics, and other factors. Plus, nuclear forces might be destroyed in an initial nuclear strike; adversary air, missile, and submarine defenses might defeat delivery systems; and nuclear weapons might simply fail to cause expected harm. Finding that right balance will no doubt be hard and change over time, especially with nuclear-relevant emerging and evolving military technologies, but modeling and simulation, red teaming, war games, and similar exercises can all help. Global international organizations, alliances, and complex economic and social interdependence between great powers can also help to ensure nuclear weapons are not the only guarantor of great power peace.

The modeling of global cooling from nuclear war—often called nuclear winter—has been ongoing since Carl Sagan and team raised the concern in October 1983. The results of researchers vary drastically. When looking at the same regional nuclear war scenario, one group of researchers concluded the environmental harms could be globally catastrophic, while the other concluded the climate impact would be minimal. Assumptions regarding how much soot a nuclear war generates, how much soot reaches the upper atmosphere, how food consumption changes, effects on global trade, and the degree to which livestock feed is diverted to human use all affect estimated harm, sometimes drastically.

Unfortunately, political biases and agendas have often colored those assumptions. Fortunately, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine launched an independent study on potential environmental effects of nuclear war to assess the environmental effects and social consequences of nuclear war, including potential nuclear winter scenarios. The committee’s work continues, but the findings should merit significant attention. More generally, the global community should also invest financial, scientific, and computing resources to better assess the climate effects of nuclear detonations, connecting it with ongoing work on modeling climate change. Nuclear war would be a global problem that deserves global attention to understand and mitigate the effects.

The United States and global governments can also take action to reduce the risk of nuclear war causing existential harm by strengthening food security. Because the existential harm of a nuclear war that caused nuclear winter would come primarily through massive starvation, the global community can work together to build new and enhance existing long-term food reserves. In addition, the United States and others should think through and develop post-catastrophe plans for a broad range of extreme events, including nuclear war. For example, the United States could develop plans to use the military for emergency food supply, as in the Berlin airlift, when American and British aircraft delivered 2.3 million pounds of food, and other supplies to West Berlin. The United States and global community should also invest in research and development towards synthetic and resilient food sources like methane single cell proteins. These activities would not just be useful for life after nuclear war, but also enhance food security in the near term and be useful for a broad range of ecological and social disasters.

Of course, the best way to reduce the risks of nuclear war is to ensure it never happens in the first place.

The survival of humanity needs to be a global priority, because humanity’s survival transcends every social, economic, and political issue. What importance is war in the Ukraine, Taiwanese sovereignty, global poverty reduction, or Icelandic fishing rights, when all of mankind is in danger? For better or worse, ensuring human survival means keeping nuclear weapons for their deterrent effects, accompanied by diligent efforts to ensure that they are never used.

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (Especially with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’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 (per above). There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.

(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/11/2024):

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Cancelled NuScale contract weighs heavy on new nuclear – Reuters

Reuters

The failure of a high profile small modular reactor (SMR) contract in the United States has prompted concerns that Gen IV nuclear may be further …

UK unveils plans for ‘biggest nuclear power expansion in 70 years’ – Bennington Banner

Bennington Banner

The UK government on Thursday announced plans for what it said was the country’s “biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to bolster its …

UK releases roadmap to quadruple nuclear energy capacity

World Nuclear News

It said the Civil Nuclear Roadmap “outlines plans for the biggest expansion of nuclear power for 70 years to reduce electricity bills, support …

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Nuclear Arms Buildup Isn’t Just about War. It Also Harms People and Communities.

Inkstick Media

… all operations related to critical materials.” As such, it takes a “comprehensive” approach to what it deems necessary for its strategic …

o9 Solutions Grows Annual Recurring Revenue by 47% in 2023 – YouTube

YouTube

How Would a Nuclear EMP Affect the Power Grid? Practical Engineering•2.7M views … All Things Secured•645K views · 17:48 · Go to channel · How Railroad …

SMRs and the transport challenge – Nuclear Engineering International

Nuclear Engineering International

“All of those conditions would have to be applied to the reactor and that may not be something that’s easy to achieve. That is an immediate challenge …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Russia’s Medvedev warns of nuclear response if Ukraine hits missile launch sites – Reuters

Reuters

The risk of nuclear escalation has hung over the Ukraine war since Russia sent thousands of troops into its neighbour in February 2022. Washington …

Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Nuclear abolition creates serious risk of returning to an era of great power conflict, which could drastically increase existential risk. A global war …

The Looming Threat of Nuclear War | Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen English

Nuclear war is possible but highly improbable. It is possible because the very existence of such weapons and advances in first-strike capability …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

NH safety leaders focus on Seabrook Nuclear Plant’s emergency plan proposal –

The Nashua Telegraph

CONCORD – NextEra’s proposed changes to the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant’s 40-year-old emergency plan has the attention of Safety …

Power plant preparedness exercise held at Florida park – WPBF

WPBF

“We would receive potentially contaminated evacuees from Martin and St. Lucie County in the unlikely event of a nuclear power plant emergency,” said …

Japan’s NRA orders probe on quake damage at Shika nuclear power plant

The Japan Times

1 reactor building of its Shika nuclear power plant in Ishikawa Prefecture. … emergency, in the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 complex suffering reactor …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Russia’s Medvedev warns of nuclear response if Ukraine hits missile launch sites – Reuters

Reuters

… war as an existential struggle with the West. Kremlin critics have dismissed some of Medvedev’s nuclear threats in the past as attempts to grab …

Ukraine war live: Russia arrests former Navalny ally who backs Putin’s war – Sky News

Sky News

… nuclear deterrence”. Mr Medvedev is notorious for making frequent and dire threats to both Ukraine and the West – often invoking Russia’s nuclear …

Ground Force chief warns of combined warfare threat – Tehran Times

Tehran Times

Ground Force chief warns of combined warfare threat. Politics. January 10 … nuclear, social, and cultural dimensions. “The enemies have combined …

January 10, 2024January 10, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #507 Wednesday (01/10/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 10, 2024

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

Perhaps in a ‘limited’ nuclear war a few pockets of humanity could survive and live long enough until a nuclear winter created by the disturbance of the atmosphere and radiation sickness eventually affected human health until even the strongest and healthiest gave in to nuclear radiation and exposure. Some might be able to survive for a few years given enough food and potable water, most likely in caverns or very large caves where radiation would not be strong enough to cause severe illness and death. But, as depicted in the well-done (for its day)1959 movie “On the Beach”, all future human life would be temporary.

But a few shots across the bow nor a militarily confined war is hardly likely to be the kind of war that tomorrow’s nuclear war would most likely be given the concept of a World War III in a scenario where all powerful countries with nuclear weapons of mass destruction would use thousands of nuclear bombs indiscriminately delivered by ICBMs and huge military aircraft, not only to the enemies’ military sites and nuclear weapons silos, but to nuclear power plants along with all major cities, meaning all of humanity would be subjected to immediate or eventual death. Anti-missile missiles would no doubt add to the nuclear heat blasts from collisions with ICBMs as well as severe radiation. Water would eventually be contaminated everywhere as would the air. The two nuclear bombs that killed a quarter million Japanese in the two cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be like comparing firecrackers to dynamite in comparison to today’s nuclear arsenals.

If you have recently watched, or are thinking of watching or re-watching, the movie “Oppenheimer” (which, by the way, is not to be in any way construed as fiction), I beseech you to listen to the last conversation in the entire film when, during an informal outdoor friendly meeting, Oppenheimer and Einstein very briefly discuss the power and damnation of ‘all things nuclear’. Listen very carefully to the last words of Oppenheimer to Einstein at the end of their conversation. I will not mention those words here, but just let me say that they perfectly sum up in just a half dozen words or so the incredible message of the entire film’s definitive point as well as the likely future of humanity. ~llaw

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available at the end of this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/10/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Trump faces a make-or-break moment in the election interference case – Ideastream

Ideastream

Weekend All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM Notes from America with … nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary. James Pearce, representing the …

Cities Most At Risk During Nuclear War: 2 in Colorado and Wyoming – K99

K99

15 Things You Will Definitely Find in a Colorado Home. We can almost guarantee you have everything on this list. Gallery Credit: Tanner Chambers.

HITTING THE HIGH NOTES IN A YEAR OF RECOVERY AND RESURGENCE – VFX Voice

VFX Voice

… nuclear test. … He was really challenging us in terms of how he is now filming things with smaller cameras that are really portable and moving all the …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Countries Pledge to Triple Nuclear Energy by 2050 – ETF Trends

ETF Trends

The demand for nuclear energy is continuing at a rapid pace, and more countries are becoming receptive to its use, as evidenced by COP28.

France’s nuclear power boom may curb regional power emissions – Reuters

Reuters

Nuclear power production in France jumped to its highest levels in three years over the first nine days of January, marking an 18% jump in nuclear …

US seeks to jump-start production of higher-energy uranium now made in Russia | Reuters

Reuters

Nuclear proliferation experts warn that an increased dependency on HALEU around the world could increase proliferation risks because the fuel is …

Nuclear War

NEWS

NJ Cities Most At Risk During Nuclear War – 97.3 ESPN

97.3 ESPN

Although there’s n sign a nuclear war is brewing, two NJ cities made the list of the top 15 US cities most likely to be targeted during a nuclear …

Ukraine-Russia war live: Fire at Russian fuel facility after drone strike – Sky News

Sky News

The White House said last week that Russia had used short-range ballistic missiles sourced from North Korea in strikes against Ukraine, …

North Korea’s Kim defines South Korea as ‘most hostile state’ -KCNA – Reuters

Reuters

… nuclear war deterrent, the state media said. He made the comments as he was visiting munitions factories earlier this week, according to KCNA. Kim …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Seabrook nuclear plant moves to update emergency plans – Seacoastonline.com

Seacoastonline.com

NextEra says its new emergency plans for the Seabrook nuclear plant will improve its response capabilities, but some local leaders have questions.

Crews hold drill in Palm Beach County to prepare for nuclear emergencies – WPTV

WPTV

… nuclear emergency out of the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. In the case of a real emergency, people that might’ve been exposed to radioactive …

Duke Energy to Test Sirens – – Bladen Online

Bladen Online

RALEIGH — North Carolina Emergency Management wants the public to be aware of Duke Energy’s plans to test the sirens at four nuclear plants that …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

War among great powers increases existential risk in at least four ways. First, the global cooperative system necessary to combat existential threats …

The Looming Threat of Nuclear War | Al Mayadeen English

Al Mayadeen English

Yemeni Armed Forces: We will not hesitate to deal adequately with all threats … The Looming Threat of Nuclear War. By Janna Kadri; Source: Al Mayadeen …

Cities Most At Risk During Nuclear War: 2 in Colorado and Wyoming – K2 Radio

K2 Radio

If there was ever a threat of nuclear war these two cities in Colorado and Wyoming would be most at risk … Nuclear Threats: These are the Biggest …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Back-to-Back Earthquakes Shake Yellowstone First Week of 2024 – Wide Open Spaces

Wide Open Spaces

Measuring 43 by 28 miles and formed during three super-eruptions in the last 2.1 million years, the caldera lies over the Yellowstone hotspot, where …

January 9, 2024January 9, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #506 01/09/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 9, 2024

LAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

Tonight, I pass along this entire human interest article to memorialize and impress upon humanity that the world-wide uranium issue does not begin its life/death issues in the manufacturing of nuclear bombs nor the nuclear reactors of nuclear power plants. It begins in the mining, milling, tailings, and inadequate reclamation of the mines it came from, all of which have, can, and do result in the death of innocent men, women, and children (and even wildlife) who live, play, work, and suffer in communities like Uravan, Colorado.

I urge you to read this story because so long as we continue to operate nuclear power plants and build nuclear bombs, submarines, and lord knows what else, this story will be retold forever in mining communities all over the world . . . ~llaw

‘It lives in geologic time’: Nuclear contamination and health risks remain throughout Colorado

How the proposed expansion of a compensation program could impact the state, and the ongoing fight to make it happen

BY: CHASE WOODRUFF – JANUARY 9, 2024 4:00 AM

Buildings at the site of the former Cotter uranium mill, which were later demolished, are pictured in this 2007 photo, with Cañon City seen in the background. (Courtesy of Jeri Fry)

When Jane Thompson moved away from Uravan in western Colorado decades ago, it was still a quiet company town of about 1,000 residents, all of whom had some connection to the uranium mill owned by Union Carbide.

“It was a great place to grow up,” said Thompson, who helps keep the town’s legacy alive as president of the Rimrocker Historical Society. Her grandfather was a miner until retirement. Her father was, too, after her parents married. “They were the second-to-last to leave Uravan when they sent everybody out.”

Today, there is almost nothing left of Uravan, which was closed and leveled beginning in 1985. Former residents raised funds to preserve a boarding house and recreation center on the old town site, but Dow Chemical, which acquired Union Carbide in 1999, burned them down in 2007 due to ongoing contamination fears.

The company didn’t reimburse former residents, who today hold their annual August reunions on an old baseball field turned campground.

“You won’t find too many people that don’t think it was a shame, what they did,” said Thompson, who returned to the area in the 1990s and now lives in nearby Nucla. “I understand that everybody’s afraid of uranium, and everybody’s afraid of radioactivity, and nobody wants that liability. But it did seem like $229,000 up in flames was kind of a waste of money.”

To officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the former town as a federal Superfund site, the razing of Uravan’s last remaining buildings was one of the final phases in a “massive and challenging cleanup” that lasted 20 years and cost more than $120 million.

The mining and milling of radium, uranium and vanadium at Uravan — the town got its name from the latter two minerals — lasted for more than 70 years. But the most famous of them were the several years beginning in 1942, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built facilities there to secretly process uranium as part of the Manhattan Project’s efforts to develop the world’s first atomic bomb.

Uravan and the surviving mining towns nearby, including Nucla and Naturita, are just a few of the many places in Colorado where residents were caught up in — and in many cases bore the risks of — the Manhattan Project’s sprint for the bomb and the nuclear arms race of the Cold War.

An estimated 14% of the uranium oxide, commonly known as “yellowcake,” produced for the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in those years came from mines on the Colorado Plateau in the Four Corners region. Uranium sludge produced in Uravan and other “yellowcake towns” was further processed at a refinery in Grand Junction. The Rocky Flats facility northwest of Denver manufactured plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons for nearly 40 years before long-running environmental concerns and an FBI investigation of its operator led to its shutdown in 1992.

More recently, research has shown that parts of southern and western Colorado were significantly impacted by radioactive fallout from nuclear detonations at the Trinity Test Site in July 1945 and the Nevada Test Site in the 1950s.

It’s an atomic legacy that stretches across much of the American West, and one that’s received fresh attention in the wake of “Oppenheimer,” the 2023 blockbuster film about the bomb’s development.

“That’s put us a little bit in the limelight,” said Thompson.

New scrutiny of the hazards of nuclear materials and radioactive waste, and the failure of federal government and private contractors to mitigate those risks, has followed in the wake of “Atomic Fallout,” an investigation published last year by The Missouri Independent, MuckRock and The Associated Press. Reviewing thousands of pages of federal documents obtained through open-records requests, reporters found that private companies and the government repeatedly downplayed the potential health risks of contamination in the St. Louis region, writing off health risks from exposed nuclear waste leaching into groundwater and neighborhood creeks as “slight,” “minimal” or “low-risk.”

The investigation put new, bipartisan urgency behind a push to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, a 1990 law that established a federal payout program for people who were impacted by atmospheric nuclear tests or employment in the uranium industry.

An expansion of the RECA program was passed by the U.S. Senate in July but was removed at the last minute from a congressional defense spending bill last month. Lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado, have vowed to continue to champion it. The program is set to run out of funding in July.

“Coloradans developed serious health conditions from uranium mining and U.S. testing of nuclear weapons,” Hickenlooper wrote in an X post on Dec. 12. “There’s no excuse to deny these victims the compensation they rightfully deserve.”

RECA and its limitations

Since the federal government began issuing compensation payments under RECA in April 1992, more than 54,000 claims have been filed. Of those, more than 40,000 claims, or about 75%, have been approved, and roughly $2.6 billion had been paid out as of the end of 2022. Payouts for uranium workers is typically $100,000, and for “downwinders” — residents in close proximity to nuclear weapons test sites — $50,000.

Definitively proving that exposure to nuclear waste and radiation caused cancers and other diseases is difficult, but the RECA program doesn’t require that claimants prove causation. They only have to show that they or a relative had a qualifying disease after working or living in certain locations during specific time frames.

As passed by the Senate last year, the expansion of RECA would add eligibility for downwinders from five additional states, including Colorado, and the territory of Guam, and significantly expand eligible regions of three other states, potentially resulting in thousands of additional claimants and hundreds of millions in federal compensation.

With support from Missouri lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of St. Louis, the proposal would also expand compensation for the first time to workers and residents who were exposed to radioactive waste from the Manhattan Project in the St. Louis region.

Some of that waste made its way to Colorado, where it was dumped at the Cotter Corp.’s uranium mill in Cañon City. Nearly 6 million tons of nuclear waste in total are estimated to be buried underground near the old Cotter mill, which was declared a Superfund site shortly after ceasing operations in 1979.

“We call the moms in St. Louis, our sister city, because Cotter contaminated us both,” said Jeri Fry, a Cañon City resident and co-founder of Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste.

Fry’s father, Lynn Boughton, was chief chemist at Cotter’s Cañon City mill for more than 20 years, and turned whistleblower over concerns about the company’s dangerous practices, including contamination of groundwater on the south side of town. Following a Colorado Bureau of Investigation report alleging a pattern of misleading workers and record-keeping violations, Cotter reached a settlement agreement with Colorado in 1983.

Boughton died of radiation-induced lymphoma in 2001. Though tests found more than 600 times the normal level of radiation in his body, a workers’ compensation claim he filed took more than a decade to resolve. An attempted class-action lawsuit against Cotter was dismissed by a judge, and other lawsuits against the company were largely settled out of court.

A 2014 federal health assessment by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry concluded that elevated levels of uranium and molybdenum in drinking water wells near the Cotter site “is a past, current and potential future public health hazard.”

“We had anecdotal evidence through the years,” Fry said. “The survey went out to try and put some legs under that, and some of the things that we found were lots of autoimmune diseases, lots of thyroid diseases, lots of birth defects, cancers, various things like that.”

In the 2000s, activists with Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste successfully fought a proposal to haul more radioactive waste to the Cotter mill site from New Jersey. But to the group’s dismay, cleanup of the site has proceeded slowly. A company that took over the property in 2018 told the EPA last year that it was insolvent and unable to meet its cleanup obligations, raising further concerns for nearby residents.

“These sites require active maintenance,” Fry said. “And if they don’t have enough to cover the maintenance of the sites, then we’re putting these communities at risk.”

Colorado downwinders?

RECA expansion could also allow, for the first time, people who lived in Colorado to file compensation claims as downwinders impacted by the atmospheric nuclear weapons tests conducted at the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas.

Fallout from the roughly 100 aboveground nuclear detonations carried out at the Nevada Test Site between 1951 and 1962 heavily impacted nearby communities like St. George, Utah, where elevated cancer rates were recorded for decades — even after the atmospheric tests ceased.

RECA’s downwinder compensation program covers only claimants who lived in some two dozen counties in eastern Nevada, southern Utah and northern Arizona during the period in question. But evidence has mounted that significant deposition of radioactive material occurred well beyond the downwinder area established by the original legislation — including in Colorado.

A landmark 1997 study by the National Cancer Institute found that exposure to high levels of iodine-131, a dangerous radioactive isotope and byproduct of nuclear fission that has been linked to increased rates of thyroid and other cancers, including at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor disaster site in what is now Ukraine.

Using historical measurements collected at monitoring stations combined with meteorological modeling, the study found especially high levels of radiation exposure across much of the Mountain West and the Great Plains. Additional research estimated that radioactive fallout from the Nevada Test Site could be linked to 49,000 additional cases of thyroid cancer, not to mention other cancers and illnesses.

Colorado’s Gunnison County ranked in the top 1% of U.S. counties in estimated exposure, with an average dose of between 9 and 12 rads — or “radiation absorbed dose,” a measure of the amount of radiation absorbed by a material such as bodily tissue — according to the study. Several other counties in southwestern Colorado experienced an average fallout dose of between 6 and 9 rads, ranking in the top 10%.

Another comprehensive analysis published last year, using even more precise weather modeling, largely corroborated those findings, indicating that Colorado experienced significant fallout from both the Nevada tests and the Manhattan Project’s Trinity test in New Mexico in July 1945.

“Our total deposition density estimates show that there are locations in New Mexico, and in other parts of the United States, including Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and Idaho, where radionuclide deposition reached levels larger than those we estimate in some counties covered by RECA,” the study’s authors wrote.

Unlike some other Western states, including Idaho and Montana, Colorado doesn’t have an organized downwinder community that has lobbied for RECA expansion. A spokesperson for Hickenlooper said his office has asked the Congressional Research Service to better quantify the impacts of a possible expansion on Coloradans, but wasn’t immediately able to identify specific communities or groups in the state who could be newly eligible for RECA under the proposal.

Along with former workers at the Rocky Flats plant, some ex-Cotter employees in Cañon City are covered by a separate federal compensation program, the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program, which was enacted in 2000.

After her father’s death, Fry’s mother successfully filed a claim through that program, and helped a handful of neighbors do the same. But it was a “tortured path,” Fry said, and awareness of contamination risks and compensation programs in the community remains low.

“A lot of people think that this is all old news,” she added. “A lot of people in our community if you ask them, they think, ‘Oh, I thought that was all cleaned up out there.’ Well, there’s 7 million tons of radioactive waste upwind and over the fence from Cañon City.

“And it lives in geologic time,” she added. “It’s going to outlive all of us.”

The Radius series is a collaboration between MuckRock and States Newsroom outlets, including Colorado Newsline, Source New Mexico, Utah News Dispatch, Arizona Mirror, The Missouri Independent, Idaho Capital Sun and The Daily Montanan.

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/09/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta weighs in on Secretary Austin – NHPR

NHPR

… nuclear issues and other areas related to our national security. … Mary Louise Kelly is a co-host of All Things Considered, NPR’s award-winning …

Trump faces a make-or-break moment in the election interference case – WEMU

WEMU

All Things Considered. Next Up: 7:00 PM PubJazz. 0:00. 0:00. All Things … nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary. No former president has ever been …

‘It lives in geologic time’: Nuclear contamination and health risks remain throughout Colorado

Colorado Newsline

When Jane Thompson moved away from Uravan in western Colorado decades ago, it was still a quiet company town of about 1,000 residents, all of whom had …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

EDF Energy plans to extend life of four UK nuclear power plants – The Guardian

The Guardian

French energy company to invest a further £1.3bn in its British nuclear fleet up to 2026.

Boiling Point: A setback for nuclear power – Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

More nuclear energy would absolutely make it easier to confront the climate crisis. I want to be on the record as saying that, for the sake of all …

No takers for Biden’s nuclear bailout – POLITICO Pro – POLITICO Pro

Full Coverage

NextEra wants to consolidate nuclear plant emergency response. NH, MA delegations have …

New Hampshire Bulletin

… response changes proposed by NextEra Energy Resources, which operates Seabrook Station and three other nuclear power plants in Florida and Wisconsin.

Nuclear War

NEWS

A War That No One Wants – Union of Concerned Scientists

UCS blog – Union of Concerned Scientists

Robert Rust is a China Analyst with the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He writes about China’s nuclear weapons program, …

‘On the brink’ of World War III: Tuberville issues dire warning as Iran ramps up nuclear program

1819 News

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Auburn) is warning of another world war after learning Iran ramped up its nuclear program at the same time U.S. …

Nuclear threat rises as Lukashenko announces completion of Russian nuke delivery –

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

Belarus borders three NATO members – Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia – all of whom have been supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. Belarus, …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

NextEra wants to consolidate nuclear plant emergency response. NH, MA delegations have …

New Hampshire Bulletin

According to NextEra Energy spokesman Bill Orlove, the changes “will improve emergency preparedness through better deployment of our highly skilled …

NUCLEAR DISASTER: Palm Beach County To Take Part In Drill – BocaNewsNow.com

BocaNewsNow.com

… emergency at the St Lucie Nuclear Power Plant were to occur. The training exercise will involve simulated response actions by emergency response …

Proposed emergency plan changes at Seabrook Station stir concern – Union Leader

Union Leader

Proposed changes to the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant’s emergency plan have sparked the attention of the state’s congressional delegation …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

North Korea’s WMD Arsenal: Unveiling the Hidden Threat of Chemical and Biological Weapons

The National Interest

North Korea: A Chemical Weapons and Biological Weapons Threat? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s government has threatened nuclear war and kinetic war …

Most Targeted Cities During A Nuclear War – One in Washington – NEWStalk 870

NEWStalk 870

The threat of a nuclear attack is always with us, and fear continues to grow. · Why are these cities considered the most at risk?

Vatican Lists Surrogate Motherhood Among Threats to Global Peace and Human Dignity

rrdailyherald.com

… nuclear and conventional weapons. Francis also listed smaller-scale problems the Vatican considers threats to peace and human dignity. In regards …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Caldera Or Crater…What’s The Difference? – National Parks Traveler

National Parks Traveler

Yellowstone is a caldera. The eruption that occurred 631,000 years ago largely emptied the magma chamber, and the ground collapsed into the resulting …

Sangay Volcano Volcanic Ash Advisory: OCNL EM to 19000 ft (5800 m) | VolcanoDiscovery

Volcano Discovery

List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano. … A total solar eclipse will occur on 14 Dec 2020 and pass over …

Discover the most dangerous volcano United State | Entertainment Unleashed Here

Honk News

The Yellowstone Caldera, located in Yellowstone National Park, spans across Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. It is the volcanic feature formed by the last …

January 8, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #505 01/08/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 8, 2024

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

We who believe and understand anti-all things nuclear and why they must be eliminated now and forever from human use, need to have more active voices in the media. I have written more than 500 Posts in the same amount of days concerning the how all things nuclear, together with nuclear use and waste from it coupled with waste and use of energy from greenhouse gasses is a very straight road to our human and other life’s extinction. The average everyday citizens of the world’s countries, including those with nuclear arms, fail to understand how our lives and life in general are being affected and put at risk everywhere on the planet because a huge majority of us have no idea how these twin threats to humanity’s demise relate to every one of us presently living on planet Earth.

But what is obvious to me is that we as an average group of humans who exist will never make that connection. It’s a huge leap to ‘know’ that just these two human-created products could remove virtually all life from planet. It would be the 6th Extinction in the 4.5+ billion years that the Earth has been here, but the 1st one where humans existed, and shamefully, we will be the cause of it if it happens. Other than world-wide pestilence of an unknown virus, it is doubtful that this would otherwise ever happen, and some life forms would likely not be affected. So to us, at least, the ultimate exterminator is radiation and/or atmospheric asphyxiation. Neither one cares about who or what you are, so when push comes to shove there is no way out once both are entirely out of control, and neither of them dies or goes away on their own.

We have to stop relying on demagogues and other politicians, capitalists, propaganda creators, and preachers. We must turn to educators and scientists, and find the ambition to do our own extended research — especially about ‘All Things Nuclear” if we expect to survive.

What I happen to know after a life of some successes, followed by rocky roads and dead ends, yet all that along with learning and absorbing from my own education, life’s work, effort, research, and knowledge is that the greatest threat to life on planet Earth is uranium and its nuclear power, either for war or peace, and the only way for life to survive here is to join together, reverse our common direction in life, and go back the other way. Nothing ‘nuclear’ will ever take us in that direction. Nor will the continued use of nuclear power plants and other fossil fuel power providers that will continue to temporarily comfort ourselves until they won’t. Either path we follow, forward or in reverse, Mother Nature will eventually have her way. Only one of those paths will include human life. ~llaw

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/08/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Washington Heats Up Nuclear Energy Competition With Russia, China – WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

… all while linking the countries’ energy systems to the U.S. and its allies. … 20 Years Searching for Workouts Taught Me These 10 Things. January 6 …

Inside the Nuclear Fusion Facility That Changed the World | TIME

Time

… about the idea of using controlled nuclear fusion to produce electricity in the 1950s. … all the more potent. Entrepreneurs have embraced that …

Miss America visits to talk STEM, nuclear engineering, self-confidence

Idaho National Laboratory

… about nuclear power and zero-carbon energy. In this respect, she was an … “Nuclear science is all around us,” she said. “You’ve got it right here …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Where Now for Nuclear Power? | City Journal

City Journal

Where Now for Nuclear Power? Despite some major setbacks, the technology remains vital to the nation’s energy future—but the U.S. needs to enact major …

UK to launch HALEU production programme : Uranium & Fuel – World Nuclear News

World Nuclear News

Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Claire Coutinho. said: “Britain gave the world its first operational nuclear power plant, and …

Only a nuclear reactor can make Pueblo “whole” after Xcel Energy closes last coal-fired …

The Colorado Sun

… nuclear power plant, according to a community-based energy committee. “Comanche has been an economic generator for this community for a long time …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Is it conceivable for Russia to use nuclear weapons? – Dhaka Tribune

Dhaka Tribune

However, officials do not appear to believe that the war in Ukraine could lead Russia to use its nuclear arsenal against a NATO state, however furious …

Russia Warned Before the Attack on Ukraine and China, Iran and and North Korea … – CodePink

CodePink

Will the Biden Administration Listen or Will We Have More Wars—Maybe Nuclear? By Colonel (Ret) Ann Wright. On Tuesday, January 3, 204, …

From Lebanon to the Red Sea, a Broader Conflict With Iran Looms – The New York Times

The New York Times

… attack on its nuclear facilities. In the summer of 2023, however, Brett McGurk, Mr. Biden’s Middle East coordinator, quietly pieced together two …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Mass. and N.H. Release Updated Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant Emergency Guides

WHAV

Massachusetts and New Hampshire have both released updated brochures to guide residents in the event of an emergency at the Seabrook nuclear power …

Delegation Seeks Public Forum Before NRC Rules On Seabrook Emergency Plan Changes

InDepthNH.org

… a public forum before making a decision on NextEra’s proposed changes to the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant’s 40-year-old emergency plan.

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Is it conceivable for Russia to use nuclear weapons? – Dhaka Tribune

Dhaka Tribune

All the while, Russian government officials have threatened to launch a nuclear attack, as former President Dmitriy Medvedev did in July when he said …

FM nominee vows to accelerate S. Korea-U.S.-Japan cooperation amid growing N.K. threats

Yonhap News Agency

… nuclear threats from North Korea. North Korea has recently upped the … war and U.S.-China rivalry. The nominee added he will ramp up efforts to …

Pope calls for universal ban on surrogacy in global roundup of threats to peace and … – iHeartRadio

iHeartRadio

… threats to global peace and human dignity … Citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, migration and climate crises and the …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Caldera or crater…what’s the difference? | U.S. Geological Survey – USGS.gov

USGS.gov

Yellowstone caldera is gigantic—about 70 by 45 kilometers (43 by 28 miles). In the language of volcanology, a small collapse—perhaps a few hundred …

Yellowstone’s Seismic Activity In 2023: 1600 Earthquakes, World’s Largest Geyser Slowing Down

Cowboy State Daily

Poland published a geological retrospective of 2023 in the Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles, a weekly blog of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory.

Winter Tourism in Island Park about to pick up thanks to recent snow storms – Local News 8

Local News 8

Last year was historic in terms of snow fall in the Yellowstone caldera and surrounding areas. While this year has had less snow on the ground …

January 7, 2024January 7, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #504 01/07/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 7, 2024

Core Module Of World's First Commercial Small Nuclear Reactor Successfully Installed In Hainan

(Getty Image of a small nuclear reactor under construction in China) . . .

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

The big nuclear news today is from “The Independent” with this story (see full article below in the “All Things Nuclear” category) :

”Nuclear fuel gets £300m boost as ministers say Putin will not hold UK to ransom

UK bids to be first European nation outside Russia to produce crucial uranium needed for the next generation of reactor

The UK is to launch a £300m drive to push Vladimir Putin further out of the global energy market through an investment in hi-tech nuclear fuel.

Ministers will vow to end what they say is Russia’s reign as the only commercial producer of a type of enriched uranium needed for the next generation of reactors.

It comes as the world prepares for the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine next month.

The UK has warned Russia that if casualties continue at their current rate it will have lost over half a million personnel in the conflict by the end of 2024.

The war also triggered a shock in the world’s energy markets leading the government to rethink Britain’s energy security.

Energy secretary Claire Coutinho said ministers would not allow Putin to “hold us to ransom on nuclear fuel”.

“Britain gave the world its first operational nuclear power plant, and now we will be the first nation in Europe outside of Russia to produce advanced nuclear fuel,” she said.

“This will be critical for energy security at home and abroad and builds on Britain’s historic competitive advantages.”

The government says the plans will help build new supplies of affordable and clean domestic power.

It will involve a £300m investment in high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU).

The programme will provide jobs and investment in the northwest of England, as part of plans to deliver a quarter of the UK’s electricity needs through nuclear power by 2050.

Another £10m will be used to develop the skills and sites needed to produce other advanced nuclear fuels in the UK.

Ministers argue the move will help the transition to net zero and will not mean higher prices for consumers.

The UK has agreed with other G7 nuclear partners to reduce global dependence on Russian fuel.”

My thoughts and comments: There are so many holes in this specialized uranium fuel concept that I hesitate to take this story seriously, but the UK must believe they can ‘make it happen’.

First and foremost, Russia already controls well over 80% of the entire world-wide nuclear power plant construction and associated nuclear fuels, including the USA, which ranks a lowly global 4th). This so-called ‘new generation of reactors, which, by the way, remain speculative in their designs including their radiation safety, may never become operational. Russia controls the marketing, availability, and pricing of the HALEU ‘prescription-developed’ fuel for these already controversial more compact power plants. In fact the Kemmerer, Wyoming, TerraPower (founded by Bill Gates) new-generation nuclear power plant, the 1st of its kind, is on a two-year (or perhaps longer) waiting list by Russia’s grip on these specialized fuels, so the experimental plant, like other small modular reactors (SMRs), has been indefinitely idled from even a demonstration mode and, along with the rest of their ilk, may never become operational. This fuel is not manufactured elsewhere, including in the USA. There is a reason for that that the UK seems to be intentionally ignoring.

Russia has its own one-of-a-kind Corporation that goes by the name of Rosatom that not only has virtually cornered the nuclear power market world-wide but also builds and controls all new nuclear weapons of mass destruction for Russia. Rosatom is like the winner of every Monopoly game ever in a version called ‘All Things Nuclear’.

So it is, that Russia, by controlling the market, not only for fuel, but a huge majority of new nuclear plant construction, they control the World Bank market finances, up or down, by their own optional choice, which controls the entire market for all things nuclear. So the UK’s statement about providing low-cost and clean power to consumers is pie-in-the-sky. Also, the term “net zero” tagged to CO2 and other green-house gasses (GHGs) over climate change and global warming is a fancy word for a silly mathematical transition away from fossil fuels.

There are other problems that could possibly never be resolved here that are based on historical and wishful thinking, so I need not elaborate, but I believe Energy secretary Claire Coutinho, who said ministers would not allow Putin to “hold us to ransom on nuclear fuel”. Russia is already doing so in other countries, including the USA.

Lastly: We all should keep in mind that 2050 is two and a half decades into an unknown future . . . ~llaw

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/07/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEW

TBD | Tesla’s Cybertruck Problem | What Next | Daily News and Analysis – YouTube

YouTube

A Grim Warning To ALL Renters: It’s No Longer A Choice. Ken McElroy New 40K … MacroVoices #409 Mark Nelson: All Things Nuclear Energy. Macro Voices …

South Korea says the North has again fired artillery shells near their sea border | NPR Illinois

NPR Illinois

All Things Considered. Next Up: 8:00 PM Planet Money – How I Built This … He ordered the military to use all available means — including nuclear …

“An agreement with the Palestinians is inevitable because they will acquire nuclear w | Ctech

CTech

Conversely, there have been ongoing discussions about Israel’s nuclear weapons for years. … When you look at data, you see all the time that wars …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

As nuclear debate nears, French minister sees potential for 14 new reactors | Reuters

Reuters

France requires more than the six new nuclear plants currently planned and possibly needs to build more than 14 new plants, its energy minister …

U.S. rushes to revive nuclear weapons industry as global tensions mount – Nikkei Asia

Nikkei Asia

Now, this remnant of the Cold War is coming back to life. The U.S. House Budget Committee last June approved the Department of Energy’s draft budget …

Nuclear fuel gets £300m boost as ministers say Putin will not hold UK to ransom

The Independent

UK bids to be first European nation outside Russia to produce crucial uranium needed for the next generation of reactor.

Nuclear War

NEWS

U.S. rushes to revive nuclear weapons industry as global tensions mount – Nikkei Asia

Nikkei Asia

… nuclear security. The U.S. possesses more than 5,000 nuclear warheads, but many of them were manufactured during the Cold War. Plutonium pits …

“An agreement with the Palestinians is inevitable because they will acquire nuclear w | Ctech

CTech

… War and the World Wars. In 1945, the French deeply hated the Germans … nuclear attack. But it’s like the person who falls from the 95th floor …

Nuclear fuel gets £300m boost as ministers say Putin will not hold UK to ransom

The Independent

The war also triggered a shock in the world’s energy markets leading the … putinUkraineRussiaWarNuclear PowerMinistry of DefenceClaire Coutinho …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEW

Japan earthquake causes nuclear power station oil leak – Yahoo News UK

Yahoo News UK

A nuclear power station in Japan has … France 24 Videos. Emergency workers in Japan contend with damaged roads after deadly New Year’s Day quake.

Disaster-prone areas blind to emergency alerts, Japan quake reveals

Korea JoongAng Daily

The Wolsong Nuclear Power Plant in Gyeongju, North Gyeongsang. [KOREA HYDRO & NUCLEAR CORP.] Others point out that nuclear power plants in the country …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

The Resurgence of Nuclear Threats: A Global Security Nightmare

BNN Breaking

However, the overall number of nuclear weapons, although decreased since the Cold War’s peak, remains a potent threat to global security. A …

North Korea to threaten world with ‘supersized’ nukes after sparring with South Korea

Daily Express

Related articles. Kim Jong-un issues chilling nuclear war threat as he vows to step up tests … Xi Jinping’s empty threats exposed as Chinese missiles …

Kim’s powerful sister denies N. Korea fired rounds near border – Space War News

Space War News

At Pyongyang’s year-end policy meetings, Kim threatened a nuclear attack on the South and called for a build-up of his country’s military arsenal …

January 6, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #503 01/06/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 6, 2024

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

Today’s story comes from BNN Correspondents with a timely commentary on what they call ‘humanity’s twin threats’ — a moniker I absolutely agree with. I often say that if one doesn’t end life on our beautiful planet Earth, the other one will, or maybe they will join forces, eliminating humanity and our living partners in unison at the same time. ~llaw

Saturday, Jan 6, 2024

Image by BNN Correspondents

Humanity’s Twin Threats: Nuclear Catastrophe and Climate Change

By: BNN Correspondents

Published: January 6, 2024 at 7:44 am EST | Updated: Jan 6, 2024 at 8:15 am EST

Two formidable apparitions cast long, menacing shadows across the globe: nuclear weaponry and climate change. These existential threats, born from humanity’s unyielding quest for supremacy and relentless industrialization, now hang ominously over our collective future. In the face of these twin dangers, the world teeters between the precipice of unprecedented catastrophe and the potential for unified action.

The Looming Specter of Nuclear Catastrophe

Since the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945, the threat of nuclear warfare has persistently haunted humanity. The destructive potential of these weapons, initially modest, has now ballooned to an unimaginable magnitude. Nine nations now wield the ominous power of nearly 13,000 nuclear warheads, each capable of inflicting cataclysmic damage on our planet.

The modernization of these arsenals perpetuates the risk of a nuclear catastrophe. This possibility is not merely relegated to the annals of Cold War history, but remains a very real and imminent danger. With international tensions simmering and conflicts escalating, the specter of nuclear devastation looms large.

(Read Also: Armenia Braces for Weather Shift: Clear Skies to Rain, Snow, and Strong Winds)

Climate Change: The Slow-Moving Apocalypse

The second existential threat, climate change, is a slow-moving but inexorable apocalypse. Recognized as early as the 19th century but largely ignored until recent decades, the planet’s feverish warming is now impossible to deny. Fueled by the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric greenhouse gases have surged, pushing global temperatures up by nearly 1.5 degrees Centigrade.

Record-breaking weather events – scorching heatwaves, raging wildfires, and devastating floods – have become the catastrophic hallmarks of our era. Yet, the world’s response to this existential crisis has been woefully inadequate. International gatherings like COP28 have consistently failed to extract binding commitments to phase out fossil fuels, despite the urgency of the situation.

(Read Also: ‘Bugs Below Zero’: University of Minnesota Extension Engages Citizens in Winter Ecology Research)

Humanity’s Dual Capacity

These twin threats – nuclear warfare and climate change – underscore a disconcerting paradox about humanity. On one hand, our species has demonstrated remarkable ingenuity, with astounding cultural and technological achievements. On the other hand, we seem to harbor an unsettling capacity for self-destruction, as reflected in our nuclear arsenals and our contribution to climate change.

As we stand at this crossroads, the choices we make will ultimately shape our collective destiny. The challenges are daunting, but so too are the opportunities for transformation and redemption. The question remains: will we rise to the occasion, or will we fall victim to our own destructive tendencies?

Read More

About BNN CORRESPONDENTS

Founded by visionary entrepreneur Gurbaksh Chahal, BNN Newsroom has risen to prominence as a powerhouse in the international journalism landscape. With a global news desk that operates in over 200 markets, BNN provides up-to-the-minute breaking news, sophisticated data analysis, and thorough research to keep audiences informed and engaged. Upholding a commitment to integrity and unbiased reporting, BNN proudly operates a conflict-free platform, ensuring that its coverage remains free from external influences and dedicated to the truth.

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none. The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in tonight’s Post.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/06/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

An Afghan branch of ISIS claims responsibility for a deadly attack in Iran – KERA News

KERA News

The attack Wednesday in southeastern Iran killed 84 people. What does the group want and why did they attack Iran?

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. outlines consequences if Western funds end

Little Rock Public Radio

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, talks with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly about the latest development in the war with …

North and South Korea conduct provocative military drills along their sea boundary – WSIU

WSIU

The rival Koreas fired artillery rounds into the sea as part of provocative drills along their disputed sea boundary Friday, in violation of the …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Washington Heats Up Nuclear Energy Competition With Russia, China – WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

The Biden administration also sees nuclear energy as a way to export reliable green energy, since nuclear–power plants split atoms and don’t burn …

Nuclear power entering ‘boom era’ on traditional energy woes – Yahoo Finance

Yahoo Finance

On today’s installment of Good Buy or Goodbye, nuclear energy is in focus as rising costs and geopolitical tensions put a strain on traditional …

Nuclearelectrica gets EIB funding for tritium removal facility – World Nuclear News

World Nuclear News

Cernavoda is the only nuclear power plant in Romania and consists of two 650 MWe Candu-6 reactors. Unit 1 went into commercial operation in 1996 and …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Containing the North Korean Nuclear Threat will not be easy in 2024 – The Cipher Brief

The Cipher Brief

Kim also called on the military to accelerate war preparations due to the unprecedented anti-North Korea confrontation with the U.S. Kim declared that …

North Korea may surprise world with big nuclear moves

The Korea Times

During a year-end ruling Workers’ Party meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called for “overwhelming” war readiness against South Korea and the …

Humanity’s Twin Threats: Nuclear Catastrophe and Climate Change

BNN Breaking

Since the detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1945, the threat of nuclear warfare has persistently haunted humanity. The destructive potential …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

UN access at Ukraine nuclear plant curbed for safety: Russia – The Times of India

The Times of India

Personnel access to the containment shells is prohibited unless justified or in emergencies. The IAEA chief, Rafael Grossi, stated that experts …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Containing the North Korean Nuclear Threat will not be easy in 2024 – The Cipher Brief

The Cipher Brief

Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joe Detrani warns that the nuclear threat from North Korea is not something the U.S. can ignore in 2024. … War threats …

5 Potential Points for Bipartisanship on Nuclear Issues in 2024

Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation

Since renewing its aggression against Ukraine in 2022, Russia has made regular use of nuclear threats to compel governments supporting Ukraine to …

What To Make Of Kim Jong Un’s Latest Threats of War | Opinion – The Messenger

The Messenger

What to Make of Kim Jong Un’s Latest Threats of War. Published 01/05/24 … threatened that the Korean peninsula is “on the precipice of nuclear war.” .

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Yellowstone Shakes Things Up With Two Earthquakes In First Week Of 2024

Cowboy State Daily

Not Shaking Anything Up. The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory has been monitoring this week’s earthquakes that started with a 3.1-magnitude quake on …

January 5, 2024January 5, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #502 (01/05/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 5, 2024

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

Tonight I want to tell you, even you of the utmost integrity, how worthless laws, constitutions, magna cartas, rules, agreements, contracts, sworn statements, handshakes, and every other form of written, spoken, or physical agreement among nations, territories, states, cities, groups, parties, and two humans such “contracts of honor” actually are.

They are political and financial tools that require the honor of those humans involved at whatever level such an agreement is made — from two major countries or territories down to the handshake between two well-intentioned individual humans — even including marriage for love or sexual purposes. The simplest way to appraise them in both terms of value and honor is to say, “they were made to be broken”. This once-upon-a-time ‘small’ problem with the ‘integrity’ or ‘word’ of men is what every dispute on our free and open planet Earth has always been all about. Such dishonesty of character has always been the problem between and among all aspects of humanity, and it is never going to stop, regardless of how politically or financially binding an agreement is made, nor by whom, so long as the ‘status quo’ remains.

And yet here we are, world(s) divided by political, ethnical, racial, religious, financial, geographical, geological, and otherwise argumentative differences, suddenly facing the prospect of annihilating ourselves with world-wide nuclear war, yet our attempt to resolve it all, even knowing what WWIII means, we continue to worry about our various and sundry past, present, and future “political agreements” that have absolutely no honorable humanitarian sanctity in them at all when we get down to the roots of the problems, basing our entire attempt to live together in peace on man-made absolutely worthless lies and acceptance of propaganda by each and every one of us because we all want to be the ones in control (at every social level) of our single-minded concepts of what “life and life-style” is all about — meaning yours is wrong and ours is right — so let’s destroy each other to prove we were right. There is not, when the chips are down, any such thing as letting adversarial ‘by-gones’ be ‘by-gones’ — in other words, there is no such thing as an iron-clad agreement among human egos, self-importance, and self-aggrandizement at any level.

And who are those elected or self-appointed political leaders we have at the top of each country’s pyramids of finance (aka greed) and power (aka despotism)? They are the ones who fit the definition of what “Capitalism” is all about. It has always been this way, but now it is like the biblical concept of “Armageddon”.

It is also like Pogo has long said, “We have found the enemy and he is us.” It is also, as Albert Einstein wrote in a letter to President Harry Truman, “”I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones“. Of course he knew what the weapons would be even then, and he also knew what the price to humanity (not to mention all other life) would be, too . . .

We have one possible solution of our own to stop this dystopian doomsday from happening — probably in the near future — and that is to band together (the nearly 8 billion of us) as a free people and denounce what these despotic madmen at the top of our earthly countries and societies are doing and somehow do away with them and/or their influence and power. The only other possibility is for some kind of intervention from unknown help because we were not able to take care of these issue(s) by ourselves . . . ~llaw

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none. The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/05/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

A year later, ‘Garden of Tomorrow’ work continues at NBG – YouTube

YouTube

… com is your source for all things Hampton Roads. Stay in the loop about all things family, food and fun! https://www.wavy.com/living-local/

Doomsday: What could drive Israel and Iran to start launching nuclear weapons? | The Hill

The Hill

… about Israel’s nuclear targeting doctrine and the invulnerability of Israel’s nuclear forces. … All. Most Popular. Trump’s lawyer confirms his concern …

Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S. outlines consequences if Western funds end

South Carolina Public Radio

… nuclear power plant, which, as you remember, was illegally occupied … Christopher Intagliata is an editor at All Things Considered, where he …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

How Nuclear Energy in the U.S. Got Its Groove Back, Poised to Soar in 2024

CarbonCredits.com

Enabling Advanced Reactor Licensing. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) finalized its rule to certify NuScale Power’s 50-megawatt power …

Russia Curbs UN Access at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant – The Moscow Times

The Moscow Times

Russia confirmed Friday it had blocked the UN’s nuclear watchdog from accessing parts of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia power plant, but said the …

The Nuclear Energy Dilemma: Climate Savior Or Existential Threat? – Countercurrents

Countercurrents

Others argue that the dangers of nuclear energy—including meltdowns (a credible threat at Zaporizhzhia, a nuclear power plant in Ukraine—Europe’s.

Nuclear War

NEWS

Opinion | The big question for 2024: Can the spread of war be stopped?

The Washington Post

… nuclear weapons. As we think about avoiding future wars, a good guide is President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a heroic commander in World War II and a …

N. Korea fires artillery shells near S. Korean islands: Seoul – France 24

France 24

At Pyongyang’s key year-end policy meetings, Kim warned of a nuclear attack … nuclear war provocative moves”. The military “should rapidly respond to …

Nuclear disasters–in–waiting – Science

Science

Having taken a heavy toll on Ukraine’s ecosystems and water resources, the war with Russia threatens to create a another environmental disaster: …

Nuclear War Threats

NEW

Doomsday: What could drive Israel and Iran to start launching nuclear weapons? | The Hill

The Hill

The principal escalation dangers would be an Iranian use of radiation dispersal weapons or an Iranian rocket attack on Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor …

Can America Defeat So Many Simultaneous Military Threats? – The National Interest

The National Interest

The Biden Administration’s fear of nuclear war is matched only by … Secretary Gates’ assessment that the combined Russian and Chinese nuclear threat …

The North Korean existential nuclear threat – Washington Times

Washington Times

The North Korean existential nuclear threat. Authoritarian axis includes … War threats thwarted. There would be no damage to North Korea outside …

January 4, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #501 (01/04/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 4, 2024

The Necessary Return to Co-Ops . . .

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

So, here we go with series two (#501 to #1,000) of “All Things Nuclear”, which will basically be more of the same, but the commentary material from my self and others will also include more of my own perception of the future of an imaginary existence of what it would be like in a world that had already been reduced to near-extinction by following, not necessarily a nuclear war, but possibly by accidental breeches of commercial nuclear reactors combined with disposal of their nuclear waste that alters the future of how the severely environmentally damaged world of human existence advances in an 11th-hour longevity — or an earthly world of deathly dystopia.

But, as I have previously stated here, I will continue to advocate for “”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity” as a day-to-day current affairs reporting of and commenting on what we are doing wrong and how it will lead to the future I envision if we continue to expand our use of ‘all things nuclear’ including nuclear weapons of mass destruction and how commercial nuclear power plants will become an inclusive arsenal of such weapons.

And over the the next year I will endeavor to finish my already roughly defined “Blue Print” for convincing our Earthly countries and their governments to voluntarily adapt our humanity to come together as a world of cooperation, peace, and community of purpose to modify our international effort to concentrate solely on this mandatory complete and eternal effort including all financial, human culture, political leadership, and corporate purpose to come together in a cooperative structure of common interest to ensure our own survival as well as all other life, and, in fact, Mother Nature herself.

The “Blue Print” will tell us positively how we can do this, and why we must do it as an old-fashioned localized commercial organizations back then, but globally expanded to a world-wide international Co-Op now, and negatively, on the other hand, the, at least for-now, fictional story of what human and other life will become if we don’t. One will be presented as the most difficult task humanity has ever come together to undertake. The other will be a fictional futuristic dystopian view of how life on planet Earth leading up to the 6th Extinction (to which we are already well on the way). ~llaw

Thanks for reading All Things Nuclear! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/04/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Dissecting Kim Jong Un’s plenum speech on North Korea’s 2024 plans – Ep. 323 – YouTube

YouTube

… all things DPRK — from news to extended interviews with leading experts … Nuclear Weapons, Launch Spy Satellites. Hindustan Times New 163K views.

More Nuclear: Crucial for Clean Energy Future – The Daily Signal

The Daily Signal

… that is where nuclear energy comes in. Not only … Already, the United States’ 94 nuclear power reactors generate around 18% of all U.S. electricity.

Mark Nelson: All Things Nuclear Energy – Macro Voices – Macro Voices

Full Coverage

Take one experimental climate project. Add nuclear. – POLITICO

Politico

Add nuclear. By CARLOS ANCHONDO. 01/03/2024 06:00 PM EST. An artist’s … things to watch in 2024. Read them all here. ‘Line in the sand’ for net …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Japan earthquake casts cloud over push to restart nuclear plants | Reuters

Reuters

“The Japanese public is still generally less positive toward nuclear power now than they were before the Fukushima disaster,” analysts at Rystad …

Inspectors denied access to parts of Ukraine nuclear plant -IAEA | The Mighty 790 KFGO

KFGO

(Reuters) -The head of the U.N. nuclear power watchdog said on Wednesday his inspectors had been denied access to parts of Ukraine’s …

Small modular reactors accelerate nuclear energy initiatives despite regulatory and supply …

American Journal of Transportation

Nuclear energy produced by small modular reactors (SMRs) and microreactors, which can be easily installed and relocated, are gaining traction …

Nuclear War

NEW

Doomsday: What could drive Israel and Iran to start launching nukes? – The Hill

The Hill

The principal escalation dangers would be an Iranian use of radiation dispersal weapons or an Iranian rocket attack on Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor …

South Korea, US conduct week-long firing drills near North Korea border | Reuters

Reuters

… nuclear arsenal and grow attack capabilities to “pacify the South.” The North called the joint firing drills “reckless war manoeuvres” and mocked …

Russia-Ukraine war at a glance: what we know on day 680 – The Guardian

The Guardian

Nuclear watchdog says Zaporizhzhia inspections hampered; biggest prisoner exchange of the war; family returns to Ukraine under home rebuilding …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Policy Obstacles to Natural Gas Delivery Pose Winter Danger – Catalyst

Catalyst – Independent Institute

… energy emergencies during extreme weather. … She covers the electrical grid, energy regulation, nuclear power issues, and other free-market energy …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Dealing With the Unprecedented Military Threats Facing the United States | RealClearDefense

RealClearDefense

… nuclear threat. In June 2023, White House National Security Advisor … The Biden Administration’s fear of nuclear war is matched only by its …

Proliferations Rising Threat – RealClearDefense

RealClearDefense

… threats of opportunistic aggression” and raise the risk of future … nuclear weapons to defeat NATO in war, if a loss is likely. Read Full Article …

US Renews Protection for Former Secretary of State, Aide Over Iran Threats – VOA News

VOA News

… threats from Iran. The State Department notified Congress late last … nuclear deal in 2018. Iran has blamed both for the killing of Soleimani …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory calls 2023 geological activity ‘relatively calm’ – Buckrail

Buckrail

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK — As the books close on 2023, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) is looking back at the year’s geological …

Yellowstone’s Quiet Year: 2023 Sees Low Seismic Activity and New Geological Insights

BNN Breaking

Yellowstone Volcano Observatory summarizes geological activity in Yellowstone National Park for 2023, highlighting low seismicity, subdued geyser …

January 3, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #500 (01/03/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 3, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS:

Holy Cow! Tonight is my 500th Post here on “All Things Nuclear”, all in 500 consecutive nights. I’ve thought of taking a night or two or a week off, but my ardor for getting this information, knowledge, and hope for the future (particularly as extensions of daily nuclear news from the top daily media stories) captured from my personal Google “service bureau” AI gathering of stories that fit into the 5 nuclear categories, plus the Yellowstone Caldera bonus category, which I just could not do without for personal reasons. This Post has come a long way since that first night, and I suspect it will continue on to new horizons.

Nothing on planet Earth would please me more than to never feel the necessity to write this Post again because the World(s) have finally caught on to the idea that blowing each other up and that playing Russian roulette with nuclear weapons of mass destruction and commercial nuclear reactors is the most insane concept for the future we have ever dreamt up. And we are ignorant enough to think that such a risk will solve our Global Warming/Climate Change problems that will actually continue to go on and grow from now until hell freezes over if we don’t learn to consider what we are doing to ourselves, our innocent partners living here, and to Mother Earth as well — and all at the same time. We are rapidly preparing for out own extinction, which, when it begins to happen, will take everything Earth has to offer away from us, and we have no place else to go, of course. Are we going to blame our living planet for ‘failing’ us? Probably.

In our consciences and our hearts, too, we know we are doing the wrong thing, but we seem, for whatever reasons, to think we can ‘overcome’ our own fouling of our own nest, but we refuse to change our ways for the worst possible reason — the one where we believe we are comfortable, well-fed, warm, and will remain so forever without bothering to consider the disruptive essence of what is staring us in the face. That makes us all guilty of creating our own demise, not to mention the unintended domino-falling demise of all else, including our life-giving planet Earth. Shame on us! ~llaw

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none. The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/03/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Nuclear fusion for dummies: The energy breakthrough that could change everything – MSN

MSN

Click through to get a straightforward explanation of everything you need to know about this new form of nuclear energy that may be the world’s …

German Musings About a European Nuclear Deterrent | RealClearDefense

RealClearDefense

His call in 2010 for withdrawing all nuclear weapons from Europe fundamentally challenged France’s status as a nuclear power, causing massive …

South Korean opposition leader is stabbed in public | Boise State Public Radio

Boise State Public Radio

All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM The Daily. 0:00. 0:00. All Things … nuclear crisis and the Fukushima earthquake and nuclear disaster. See …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Nuclear power winning supporters, but restoring the industry could take more than we think

Wyoming Tribune Eagle

CASPER — Nuclear energy appears to be having a moment. The U.S. and 21 other countries at the climate talks in Dubai last month made a …

Financial Smoke Signals and the Rise of Nuclear Energy – The Breakthrough Institute

The Breakthrough Institute

Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), hailed this as a historic milestone, emphasizing the …

Op-Ed by Miss America/Heather Reams: There Is No Clean Future Without Nuclear Energy

Senator Capito

Not only is it a reliable, proven technology, but it is also clean, producing zero carbon emissions. Already, the United States’ 94 nuclear power …

Nuclear War

NEWS

The global nuclear order is under strain – The Hindu

The Hindu

Following the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the two came perilously close to launching a nuclear war, both U.S. President John F. Kennedy and …

One Man’s Fight Against the Madness of Missiles – IDN-InDepthNews

IDN-InDepthNews

He drafted Robert McNamara’s plans for nuclear war– McNamara was secretary of defence during the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy.

Russian Military Executes Putin’s Vow; NATO Nation Scrambles Jets As Missiles Batter Kyiv’s Arsenal

YouTube

Russia-Ukraine war: Russian missiles attack homes near Kyiv, cause widespread damage | WION … Threat of nuclear war intensifies after Putin’s new …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

How do TVA’s nuclear plants prepare for emergencies? | Know Your Knox

Knoxville News Sentinel

Every two years, federal regulators come to East Tennessee to grade a full-scale emergency response drill at TVA’s Sequoyah and Watts Bar nuclear …

Photovoltaics may increase safety in nuclear power plants – PV Magazine

PV Magazine

The researchers noted that the emergency load at the TRR facility is currently being provided by a 450 kW diesel generator located on the north side …

Nuclear Officials Issue Warning for Cracked Pipes at South Carolina Plant – The Stock Dork

The Stock Dork

Federal regulators have adjusted the severity of their warning regarding cracks in a backup emergency fuel line at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

NTI Seminar: Putin’s War and Putin’s World with Rolf Mowatt-Larssen

The Nuclear Threat Initiative

Ernest J. Moniz. Co-Chair and Chief Executive Officer, NTI · The Nuclear Threat Initiative. Build a Brighter Future. Join us to address threats and …

UK: Starmer outlines Labour’s militarist agenda, including use of nuclear weapons – WSWS

WSWS

… threats and the capabilities needed.” He continued, “With war in Europe and increasing threats further afield, we have all been reminded of the …

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Turkey to block two British Royal Navy ships intended for … – Sky News

Sky News

Air raid sirens are sounding across eastern and southern Ukraine due to the threat of Russian airstrikes. In messages posted on Telegram …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Earthquakes, geyser activity in Yellowstone National Park slowed during 2023, data show

Idaho Capital Sun

Unlike the earthquake activity, ground deformation and most geysers, Yellowstone Volcano Observatory scientists were definitely not calm in 2023.

Rare, endangered Mexican wolf spotted in New Mexico national park – FOX Weather

FOX Weather

The National Park Service announced a rare sighting of the endangered Mexican wolf at Valles Caldera National Preserve … Yellowstone National Park …

January 2, 2024

LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #499 (01/02/2024)

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JAN 2, 2024

LLAW’s THOUGHTS :

Tonight’s big story seems to be about whether a one-man authority can and/or will have the courage or the power (authority or otherwise) to start a nuclear war. Since I have not yet read the media article(s) below, I will offer my own common sense thoughts about such a question, which is absurd to even be asked to do so in a half-way sane world of humanity. But, that is not the kind of world we are all living in, so the question can be said to be a valid one, which gives me chills to even consider because we should never be living in this kind of world. But we are, and it is the pure insanity of a kind of insanity that caused me to use the everyday subtitle phrase for this nightly Post twice in the same sentence: ”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

We are not afraid to mindlessly dabble, no matter how errantly, in the insanity of nuclear power or nuclear war either, and some of us are quite proud of the apparent enormous courage we have within our forebrain to believe that both major uses of “all things nuclear” are good things — in the eyes of a very sick kind of humanity. And, on the bravery side of it all, we have long (perhaps always) fought wars against our adversaries no matter how poorly conceived the ‘need’ for war may have been. We take great pride in our wars and idolize the brave men and women who have fought in them and we grieve and honor them in untimely death, but what good has any war ever done for the good of all humanity and our Earth Mother herself? That is one side of the insanity I’m talking about, but the other is ‘nuclear’ insanity.

The word nucleus, altered later to the ‘ar’, or ‘nuclear’, probably was first used in 1841 as meaning the ‘center’ of something – say like a biological ‘cell’, but such a word was never considered as an important or significant part of much of anything until the French word ‘nucléaire’ began to be used for high ranking military generals in 1912 then followed by the physics generated term ‘nucleus’ of an atom and that it first described or accounted for the power of an atom in 1914, and then the concept of an ‘atomic’ bomb came along in 1945 for an atom’s destructive power (creating explosive heat) and the idea for an atomic bomb was born along with the concept of nuclear reactors for energy. That is a rather short and quick trip to the popularity of ‘all things nuclear’ today. I have actually been alive for all but the first 27 years of the ‘nuclear’ definition and a few years longer than the words ‘nuclear’ and ‘atomic’ have been used for power or destruction. That gives me pause, and should also make us also stop and think. The fact is, we have no idea what we are dealing with when one considers the ‘greater scheme’ of things — e.g. how our sun creates fusion and so we think we can too. That is where my concept of nuclear insanity enters the language of mankind in a huge and literally destructive way.

And then there are the addled minds and fingerprints of human insanity, believing that ‘all things nuclear’ are beneficial to mankind and that we can use them all to provide a better world for all of us, yet we have no idea of the consequences of just what the slightest error in judgement, engineering, construction, health and safety precautions, operational requirements, and, indeed, the ultimate future of using power and destruction we know virtually nothing about or how to even dispose of it as we create highly dangerous radioactivity, nor consciously what happens to us after going to war with our enemies that cannot help, all by itself, but be turned back on ourselves. That is the human insanity at the forefront of our dysfunctional brains. We can’t think clearly about things we know nothing about, but we are so proud that we we were smart enough to discover them, so they must be good for us, and they sure can keep us warm and our enemies at bay, so why worry about anything else?

And yet egomaniacal power-crazy money-worshipping men in political leadership positions around the world with absolutely no scientific understanding of what they are considering doing, are (by some of us) considered qualified to simply press the nuclear button? There is no man alive, were he clinically sane, who would even consider doing such a thing — even if he had millions or billions of supporters encouraging him to do so . . . but I suspect there are more than one of them in the nuclear-weapons countries who would feel dictatorially or authoritatively and insanely benevolently endowed with empowerment, and, with a great show of heroic courage, egotistically self-inclined to press the button while wearing his custom made goatskin gloves while declaring WWIII. ~llaw

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none. The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:

Thanks for reading All Things Nuclear! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/02/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

3 spy satellites, recon drones, nukes on North Korea’s 2024 threat list

Interesting Engineering

… all physical means and forces, including nuclear force, in case of … nuclear and ballistic missile programs since its first nuclear test in 2006.

Opinion | The president’s nuclear capabilities – The Washington Post

The Washington Post

Nuclear weapons are in all cases governed by a two-person rule. As far … Opinion|Nikki Haley explains what other things were about! 3. Opinion|I’m …

Nuclear power winning supporters, but restoring the industry could take more than we think

The Sheridan Press

… Nuclear Energy. “Now all of that is being painfully rebuilt, but it takes time, and until we fix those things I’m afraid we’ll continue to see …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Nuclear power winning supporters, but restoring the industry could take more than we think

The Sheridan Press

An illustration shows the TerraPower and GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Natrium technology, which features a sodium fast reactor combined with a molten …

Nuclear energy – Financial Times – Financial Times

Full Coverage

Carbon-Free Energy Is the Name of the Game: Renewables, Nuclear Poised for Growth

POWER Magazine

Solar, wind, and nuclear power, as well as battery storage systems, are the obvious winners as the world aims to decarbonize energy systems.

‘No abnormalities’ reported at Japanese nuclear plants following earthquake

World Nuclear News

Japanese nuclear power plant operators have reported some minor damage, but no public safety issues, following the 7.6 magnitude earthquake which …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Casualties reported as Ukraine hit by wave of strikes after Putin …

Sky News

Ukraine is enduring more strikes today, including a combined missile and drone attack on Kyiv. Poland has responded by putting two pairs of F-16 …

Opinion | The president’s nuclear capabilities – The Washington Post

The Washington Post

No one human being should have the sole and singular authority to start a nuclear war that could eradicate mankind. As the law stands, the …

Military technology is outpacing our diplomatic capacity | The Hill

The Hill

It was not long ago when adversaries, recognizing their interests in avoiding nuclear war, engaged in arms control negotiations to provide for …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

NRC issues report on emergency generator at South Carolina nuclear plant

Daily Energy Insider

… emergency diesel generator at the V.C. Summer nuclear power plant in Jenkinsville, S.C.. NRC classified its finding as “white,” which reflects low …

Powerful quake rocks Japan, nearly 100000 residents ordered to evacuate – Reuters

Reuters

… emergencies. Kanazawa resident Ayako Daikai said she had evacuated to a … Hokuriku’s Shika plant in Ishikawa, the closest nuclear power station …

Duke Energy Progress to test sirens near Brunswick Nuclear Plant – WECT

WECT

Broadcasting …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

N. Korea’s Kim orders military to prepare for possible ‘war‘ | Macau Business

Macau Business

International, MNA | North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wrapped up the year with fresh threats of a nuclear attack on Seoul and orders for a military …

Russian media urges Putin to attack British warship – UK Defence Journal

UK Defence Journal

… nuclear war to want to respond other than strong words and threats to a ‘British’ problem. Probably very short sighted but I could see it happen …

North Korea’s Kim says military should ‘thoroughly annihilate’ US, South Korea if provoked

ABC News

… nuclear threat. “The Republic of Korea is building genuine, lasting peace through strength, not a submissive peace that is dependent on the …

”End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :

Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity

ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/11/2024):

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‘It lives in geologic time’: Nuclear contamination and health risks remain throughout Colorado

How the proposed expansion of a compensation program could impact the state, and the ongoing fight to make it happen

BY: CHASE WOODRUFF – JANUARY 9, 2024 4:00 AM

RECA and its limitations

Colorado downwinders?

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/08/2024):

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UK bids to be first European nation outside Russia to produce crucial uranium needed for the next generation of reactor

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/07/2024):

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Humanity’s Twin Threats: Nuclear Catastrophe and Climate Change

The Looming Specter of Nuclear Catastrophe

Climate Change: The Slow-Moving Apocalypse

Humanity’s Dual Capacity

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/06/2024):

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (01/05/2024):

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