LLAW’s COMMENTS, Tuesday (02/27/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

FEB 27, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Tuesday (02/27/2024)

I don’t often express or discuss my concerns about Trump these days after spending years before, during, and after debunking every sound, move, thievery, squirm, or insult to America and our people that he made and continues to make. This time around I have to believe he is nothing more than exactly what he always was — a dried up, lying, demented, belligerent, stupid, ignorant, big-time grifter, and worthless old man, who should be removed from our country to a deserted island in the middle of the Pacific ocean with one palm tree for shade, and that his only human contact with people will be limited to those sailors who are paid by humanitarian governments that he despised, including the USA, who deliver the necessities of life to him — food and water and a small portable Eskimo-like orange plastic shelter that he can push around the tree to remain in the shade on overly warm days. For the rest of his life.

The thing about the brief article pasted just below from the Daily Kos (from the categorized daily nuclear news tonight) is that the short and cogent point made by FreeBandit about how much his life has been virtually parallel to Hitler’s and that he attracts the same kind of overly hateful, uneducated but opinionated, rabble-riser types who despise any kind of social authority or care beyond their own limited concepts of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth of living, rather the idea of a considerate and empathetic humanitarian way of striving for a successful, peaceful, and gratifying life for all. It has been said that the only books that Trump actually read and studied were a couple of Hitler books — Mein Kampf and a book of Hitler’s speeches — and Trump’s demeanor seems to conspicuously resemble his idol’s inhumane concepts. He is typical fodder for igniting a nuclear war. ~llaw

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How many more must die?

by FreeBandit

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday, February 26, 2024 at 5:00:21a PST

I picked up an old Doonesbury anthology the other day, “Yuge”. Through the eyes of his characters, Trudeau follows the career of Donald Trump from a greed-head real estate mogul with a taste for the grotesque in the 1970s and ‘80s, through his preliminary dabbling in politics and “reality” television. It ends in 2015, when his transformation into the nightmare we are living began. What struck me as I read is how Trump was viewed as a joke for so long that his essential evil has never really sunk in. Even today, after all that has happened in the past eight years, the mainstream media still treats him (to a large extent) as an eccentric but viable candidate in a horse race.

What we need is a change in perspective. The Yellowstone supervolcano was not recognized as such until photographs from space allowed the contours of the giant caldera to be discerned. Only then could the evidence of massive eruptions over millions of years found scattered across North America be tied to a single source.

It is time that we recognize Donald Trump for what he is: a mass murderer. At his behest, aid to Ukraine has been put in limbo, while thousands die. Adviika has fallen after 10 years of war, for want of ammunition that the US could easily supply. One could, with some difficulty, blame the unnecessary deaths of so many due to COVID on Trump’s incompetence rather than malice. But now we have the deaths of thousands, both Ukrainians and Russians, resulting from his active interference.

It is quite possible that Adolph Hitler never killed anyone personally until he took his own life in that Berlin bunker. Yet we remember him as one of history’s most infamous mass murderers, because he created the conditions where others would kill in his name. Now Trump is complicit in attempted genocide, simply to serve his own ends.

Not long after the 2020 election, I wrote a letter to the Washington Post that ended:

“The current efforts by Trump to delegitimize the results of an election that was undertaken under difficult conditions by thousands of honest and diligent election workers, postal workers and millions of voters is obscene, and is made more so by the silence, or worse, the active collaboration of GOP members who almost certainly know better. Those cowards should remember that Hitler came to power by legitimate means, and only a costly world war, with millions of dead, finally ended his regime. It can’t happen here, of course. Right?”

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

There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity 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 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are three 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). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are three Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.

(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 (02/27/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Permian Basin County Renews Opposition to Disposal of Higher-Level Nuclear Waste

The Texan

Photo from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. … Matt Stringer is a reporter for The Texan who writes about all things government, politics, and public …

Poland says Russian nuclear threat ‘mostly empty’ | News – Colorado Springs Gazette

Colorado Springs Gazette

All that is needed to win is our will to act.” That claim has faced growing skepticism in Western policy circles throughout the war but especially …

The Deadly $125-Billion ICBM Boondoggle – Union of Concerned Scientists

UCS blog – Union of Concerned Scientists

Last December, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney issued a press release crowing about all the money he secured for his state in the National Defense …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Nuclear energy bill passes in state Senate, goes to House for vote | News | paducahsun.com

The Paducah Sun

The Kentucky State Senate voted 34 to 0 Monday in support of Senate Bill 198, which would lay the groundwork for bringing nuclear energy to …

Bill supporting development of nuclear energy powers to pass in Kentucky Senate

AP News

The Kentucky Senate has voted to lay the foundation to attract nuclear energy projects to a state where coal has fueled the economy for …

Canada Launches Second Green Bond Offering, Adds Nuclear Power to Eligible Investment …

ESG Today

The framework lists the deployment of nuclear energy to generate electricity and/or heat under the eligibility category of Clean Energy. Additional …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Wargame simulated a conflict between Israel and Iran: It quickly went nuclear

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

After receiving a war brief and instructions from the Israeli prime minister, teams representing the Israeli Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of …

The Deadly $125-Billion ICBM Boondoggle – Union of Concerned Scientists

UCS blog – Union of Concerned Scientists

… nuclear attack or, in the unlikely event of such an attack, retaliate. … “Yet ICBMs increase the risk that we will blunder into nuclear war by mistake …

While the World Was Looking Elsewhere, North Korea Became a Bigger Threat – WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

Its ability to unleash some form of nuclear attack on the world has … Those weapons are now used by Russian soldiers in the war in Ukraine, according …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEW

Quad Cities Nuclear Power Station to conduct scheduled emergency response test Tuesday

KWQC

An exercise to test …

2011 Japan Earthquake – Tsunami Fast Facts – Erie News Now

Erie News Now

– At 5:00 a.m., a nuclear emergency is declared at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Officials report the earthquake and tsunami have cut off …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Humanity under shadow of nuclear war again: UN chief

nournews.ir

… has consistently failed to deliver on its promises, warning that the threat of a nuclear war, which appeared on humanity last century, has resurfaced.

Macron won’t rule out using western ground troops in Ukraine – but is Nato prepared for war …

The Conversation

And Vladimir Putin and his senior ministers have regularly issued threats that Russia could resort to using its nuclear arsenal in the case of a …

Russia Is a Serious Threat in Space, But There’s No Need to Panic | The National Interest

The National Interest

… nuclear weapon in space or a nuclear-powered electronic warfare satellite. … threats to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. It is not clear …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Hydrothermal puzzles in the lakes of Lower Geyser Basin | U.S. Geological Survey

USGS.gov

Sediment from the bottoms of lakes in Yellowstone contain records of past changes to the landscape—including how hydrothermal activity, …

The 1896 ride of the Buffalo Soldiers through Yellowstone National Park – Cycling West

Cycling West

William Haynes, Lance Cpl. Abram Martin, Musician Elias Johnson, Pvt. John Fridley, Pvt. George Scott, Pvt. Hiram L.B. Dingman, Pvt. Travis Bridges, …

How many more must die? – Daily Kos

Daily Kos

I picked up an old Doonesbury anthology the other day, “Yuge”. �Through the eyes of his characters, Trudeau follows the career of Donald Trump …

February 26, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Monday (02/26/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 26, 2024

The Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, owned by PG&E, at Avila Beach, California, just 11 miles southwest of San Luis Obispo.

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Monday (02/26/2024)

As our 2nd installment, the last half of the Prologue to my upcoming novel “El Nuclear Diablo” to be written and produced right here beginning with Chapter 1 on Thursday, March 14, 2024, and since there is not much in the way of critical ‘All Things Nuclear News” today (although, as always, the ‘Worlds Nuclear News’ is posted below), I am reposting the first half of the Prologue from February 14th just in case you are interested and haven’t had a chance to read it, or to refresh your memory if you have forgotten what I had to say two weeks ago. ~llaw

El Nuclear Diablo

“Let the Bastards Freeze to Death in the Dark”

~ a retaliatory and unkind Nuclear Industry Quote after the 3-Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979, directed at concerned Scientists, worried citizens, and public protesters.

By Lloyd Albert Williams-Pendergraft

Prologue

Juneau, Alaska

Spring, 2026

Does it really matter who, exactly, is to blame, or why humankind is savagely devouring the native resources of planet Earth until there soon will be nothing left but lichenless barren rocks, the salty seas, countless grains of sand, and a poisonous atmosphere? It ought to be not enough to just know it is a critical unvarnished ugly truth. The question should be more like, “When will it happen and is there no way out of it?” Should it not?

I can only wonder if highly intelligent, but virulent, forms of our human species have, for countless eons, long traveled through the universal cosmos continually seeking, finding, and lavishly consuming, ultimately ravaging the natural resources, the flora and the fauna, devas ting the environments of this and other living rich blue-green planets also once full of fossil fuels and innocent living resources similar to Earth’s in order to ensure and serve their own survival at the expense of all else in their way. Obviously, we are the only species on this planet who rape and ravage the earth with such savagely uncontrolled vigor on such a large scale. We are the ultimate u ultimate fungus, the ultimate lethal mushrooms. And I have to also wonder if there are not multiple, or at least two species of us.

Not to ridicule Darwin at all, but does his theory of evolution, based on studies of inbreeding pigeons and chickens, really make much sense to you in this context? Does it not seem to you that we humans may be collectively aggressively demanding, ruthless, impolite, unwelcome extra-terrestrial galaxy-trotting invaders doing our parasitic thing here on Earth rather than a native natural-born integral integrated key part of our indigenous homo-sapiens and the native animal population—as Darwin would have us believe? What about the Octopus, sir?

Could it be possible we or they are simply biologically genetically patterned to look and act like homo sapiens? Or perhaps vice versa? At least some of us? Maybe even a whole lot of us? How do we know the difference between the real human beings and genetically altered or cloned ones? Which one am I? Which one are you? Do any of us know? I use the terms “we”, “us” or “our” and “they”, or “them”, or “their“ interchangeably here because in this context I don’t know who or what I am—an “us” or a “them”.

I just know that I am extremely uncomfortable with our or their willfully passionate desire to destroy everything on the planet for personal power, wealth, and a life of comfort at the expense of the rest of us or them. I don’t know about you, but it sure seems to be that way to me, so that’s why I consider myself to be an us.

At the very least we need to consider the possibility of at least one species of them and one of us. The only way we will ever know who we really are is through our unfettered natural mindful emotions—our feelings of love, care, and respect for Planet Earth, ourselves, and all her fauna and flora—or, conversely, our unnatural lack of those emotions or feelings. Yet we often disguise these characteristics, presenting the opposite of ourselves as themselves, or the other way around. But despite the hidden complexity, our future may depend on solving this psychological dilemma .

If our demise (at least partially) has happened before, it will likely happen again. And there is, in today’s worlds, a very quick, relatively easy long-lasting, if not eternally, way to create such a scenario as an extinction level event, not from an act of nature or a god, but from our own actions. ~llaw (Winter, 2026)

# Before the Beginning of the End

Our small party of seven women (including two teen-aged daughters) and five men (one a teen son) left California from Carmel Bay bound for Juneau, Alaska, on a rainy Friday morning five days after the “accident” that began at Pacific Gas and Electric’s El Diablo Cañón nuclear power plant on a sunny Monday morning, disrupting the entire United States electrical power grid system in a single day before becoming a global disaster by Thursday afternoon. We all knew what had happened and we knew it was not an accident like the MSM was reporting to all of us around the world until by Thursday morning there was no reporting at all. What our little group did not know was who and what was responsible, but we all had our own suspicions. No one wanted to discuss them, because at this point it didn’t really matter anyway. The irrevocable damage was done. We also knew the rain was not a good thing now, or in the long run as time goes by. But, laughably enough, one of us who had the foresight to bring along a Geiger counter reported excitedly, a wide grin on his face, “Hey, it’s okay for now.” No one smiled back. We had a long way to go and we were no more than a mere one hundred and fifty miles north of the remains of the Diablo nuclear facility releasing massive doses of nuclear radiation from every ruptured cell it had, both internally and from its own filthy poisonous airborne waste.

# Back in the Day

More than fifty years have passed since I first learned that nuclear power plants and weapons of mass destruction were fueled by uranium, an element my well-worn dog-eared Webster’s 1940-something dictionary defined essentially as a “worthless low-level radioactive mineral found in the ground.” The reason I remember this definition is because of a letter I received in January of 1969 from a mining company in central Wyoming’s “Gas Hills”, oddly named Lucky Mc (pronounced “Lucky Mac”) Mine, inviting me to an employment interview at the mine site and to please call to set up a date and time for the meeting. I had that old broke-spine 1940s Webster’s dictionary on my bookshelf in our small trailer house, so I looked up the definition. What the hell had changed? What were nuclear plants’ and nuclear bombs’ ingredients if not refined uranium? Of course, I was pretty sure I knew the answer.

The mine, I was told in the letter, was owned by a company known as Utah Construction and Mining Company, which was then best known for building the Hoover Dam, but was now a major player in mining, primarily of coal and uranium. Intrigued, I found a pay phone at the General Store in Elk Mountain, Wyoming, and made the telephone call.

The interview took place a couple of weeks later in mid-January, and I was offered a job as a senior accountant, which I immediately accepted, ending my old job as a field office manager for a highway construction company that had recently transferred me from Grand Junction, Colorado, to a new project between Laramie and Rawlins in southern Wyoming. So I had set up shop in an office trailer halfway between the two towns, preparing for road construction to begin in early spring.

But having a growing family with two young pre-school children and an infant daughter, I was thankful for the opportunity to settle into a new life in a more permanent location than highway construction offered, so I was pleased to accept the job offer.

As I learned my new job, I soon became the chief accountant and then the administrative manager at the mine, directly overseeing more than one hundred employees white collar employees. The company grew rapidly in its uranium branch to include a new mine known as the “Shirley Basin Mine,” blossoming Utah Construction and Mining Company into a new and more sophisticated reformed Utah International Inc, and a bit later, a major subsidiary of General Electric Company, which, among other well-known products, manufactured not-so well-known nuclear reactors. Eventually, the uranium mining division was spun off as Pathfinder Mines Corp. to avoid potential conflicts of interest. During those early days, I learned a lot about the mining and milling operations, including security, health and safety, as well as how the fuel production, the multi-step enriching process, governmental regulation, and how the marketing and selling of uranium was accomplished. In the beginning the only customer the company, as well as the entire uranium industry, had was the United States’ Atomic Energy Commission, and we were the major producer and provider of relatively stable basic enriched uranium (U308), which would be refined into U238, the active isotope in nuclear reactors, to the government (including the TVA) until deregulation allowed us to sell mill refined U3O8 uranium to operational nuclear power plants as well as plants under construction and in development.

One of these new nuclear power stations was Pacific Gas and Electric’s under construction facility, known as the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, in San Luis Obispo County, California, near Avila Beach. The original facility, Unit 1 of course, began construction in 1968 followed by Unit 2 in 1970. During the following decade Utah Construction & Mining Company, by then known as Utah International Inc, profited immensely from our sale of uranium to American, Canadian, French, German, and other nuclear power facilities around the world. Doing business with PG&E was one of my first clues that rules and regulations were meant to be manipulated and broken by aggressive dollar-worshiping companies. But that’s another story, part of which I will relate later in the book.

What happened at Diablo Canyon between early 2024 and its planned decommission in late 2025, and the beginning of the horrid global devastation that followed just two short years later, is what this story is all about, and it shames me every day of my life that I was once a willing contributor to the shape of the macabre issues to come within the nuclear power industry. There are few of us left alive who know the factually complete and chronological entirety of this doomsday tale, but I am thankful and even proud to be one of the few because I have the knowledge and the motivation to relate this horrific tale. I have an absolute moral and ethical obligation to pass my knowledge of this world-class man-made armageddon (spelled here with a small but still doomsday-deadly “a”) event along to those few who will come after the rest of us, hoping to go a different way whether it be for better or for worse. Your choices and your chances are extremely limited, and I wish you, as well as all of “us”, all the best.

At an overly ripe seventy-something years old, as I write this dystopian-like tale, my mind is clear and fixed on the events that led to this catastrophe that with proper regulatory enforcement and diligent responsibility of the American government and industry corporate officials might never have happened. A common failure of mankind is to brazenly think of ourselves as collectively invincible, making us just delusional enough to fool ourselves into believing that we are smarter, brainier, and more resourceful than Mother Nature. We have proven ourselves wrong countless times concerning thousands of vital issues, but through the ages we have made and continue to make the same mistakes repeatedly. Who was the wise man who said, “The definition of insanity is making the same mistakes over and over again but expecting different results.”?

Just the relatively minor accidents at nuclear facilities (most of them politically covered up or not commonly known) over the years including the more well-known Hanford (Richland), Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—along with the common political knowledge that several nations’—not all of whom were American allies—ability to cyber-attack our nuclear power plants and our electrical distribution grid systems, ought to have been enough to give us fair warning that—contrary to pseudo-science, corporate greed, political belief and public opinion—nuclear power was never safe, but in reality was the single most dangerous and destructive power generating concept ever developed for all kinds of reprehensible reasons. When something goes nuclear wrong, it goes irreparably wrong, most likely impossible to control or recover from the impending disaster that will last for several hundred to a few thousands, although the half-life of bismuth radiation has been measured at twenty billion billion (yes, twenty billion-billion), years so we in this lonely corner of the universe might consider ourselves lucky. In 2022 there were four hundred and fifty nuclear power plants operating world-wide and sixty more were under construction. Today, of course, there are none.

Despite Meriam-Webster’s innocent grandfatherly definition of uranium, this same earthly tragedy (but on a much smaller scale) has apparently happened on our planet at least once before — more likely twice — though much hypothetical theory (including Biblical references, quiet speculation, and outright loud conspiracy theories) have been written about the evidence of the possibility, few of us seem to understand or have ever cared that a similar nuclear world with massive devastation actually occurred, at least once, thousands of years ago, nor that the archeological and anthropological scientific community has not investigated, researched, endorsed or even acknowledged the historical evidence. This does not surprise me, but today what scientists and historians believed is immaterial because now what is left of our world is all that we need to worry and care about—events of the past, rightly so, mean nothing today. We are long past the life-saving threshold of learning from our mistakes, including our willful ignorance.

We humans, them or us or together, seem to have been running a rigged three-legged race against one another to rend asunder the entire planet against the natural environmental care and protections of Gaia, the Goddess of Nature. In a blind and greedy rush to subconsciously exterminate ourselves and fatally poison our only home—planet Earth and all her abundant bounty—we have, through American style financing of intentional international environmental degradation, hawkish threats of nuclear war, or the patriarchally personalized political, bureaucratic and corporate industrial pandemic earth-cancer super-spreaders that I call those who would allow humanity to “freeze to death in the dark.” I personally heard this same man say this same phrase, with their — often profane — variants, more than just once or twice. The phrase was coined by the President and CEO of a major mining company I was involved with, echoing his indignant objections to public protests over Three Mile Island in beginning in 1979. Note that all of these doomsday contestants during their race toward human extinction—indeed, by natural extension, including all life — had their in-common triple arsenal of the half-life of airborne nuclear radioactive emissions teamed up with ground and waste water airborne radiation, their three legs at the end entirely unbound, allowing them to overrun the basins and ranges without restrictions, making all of them self-proclaimed “winners” of their race into the likes of Dante’s, or someone’s, Inferno.

(Stay tuned for the next Episode in two weeks on February 29th.)

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.)

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

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/26/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Why This Is the Tensest Nuclear Moment in 60 Years – New York Magazine

New York Magazine

… all concerned about the possibility that they were supporting the spread of nuclear weapons. For decades, the United States has been worried about …

Government ‘talking the mantras of renewables’ without understanding the transition

YouTube

Australia is already a ‘nuclear nation’: Why we should forget about renewables … ‘Labor has got it all wrong’: Government rules out support for …

Recent events raise questions about the role of space in global politics

Little Rock Public Radio

News of a Russian nuclear-powered space device has brought attention to how space is being weaponized … All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:30 PM …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Nuclear energy experts train researchers to meet future nonproliferation challenges

Idaho National Laboratory

As nuclear energy is increasingly recognized as a vital component of the clean energy transition, American companies have answered the call with …

Signature House nuclear package to get a floor vote – E&E News by POLITICO

E&E News

The “Atomic Energy Advancement Act,” H.R. 6544, from Reps. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) and Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), chair and ranking member of the House …

America’s nuclear energy abandonment doesn’t make sense | Opinions – Collegiate Times

Collegiate Times

During the OPEC oil embargo, nuclear power seemed to meet high energy demands. In the 1970s, new regulations derived from studies claiming …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Germany’s call for the bomb – World Socialist Web Site

World Socialist Web Site

… nuclear war.” This turns reality on its head. In fact, with the … attack with a major nuclear counter-attack.” The basic issue was “that we have …

Ex-Russian President Tells Putin To Take ‘Revenge’ On West; Warns ‘They’re Our Enemies’

YouTube

4:05 · Go to channel. Putin’s Big Statement After Biden’s ‘Nuclear War Fear’ Alert; ‘Nearly All Russian Nuke Forces Now…’ Hindustan Times New 202K …

Fact Check: Has Putin Made New Threat About Ukraine Joining NATO? – Newsweek

Newsweek

… nuclear war. “Are you ready to die to defend Ukraine? I’m not. This needs to be de-escalated immediately.” In the clip, subtitles stated that Putin …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Why This Is the Tensest Nuclear Moment in 60 Years – New York Magazine

New York Magazine

Where would you place the current threat level compared to the Cold War era? This is by far the most intense set of nuclear dangers that have …

Putin threatens to go nuclear — because his military is suffering badly in Ukraine

New York Post

… war and secure democracy in Europe. Putin’s nuclear threats must not go unanswered. Washington must confront Putin just as President John Kennedy …

‘Proliferation Everywhere’: How Space Force Will Answer New Threats

Air & Space Forces Magazine

Revelations that Russia is developing a space-based anti-satellite nuclear weapon made headlines earlier this month, posing threats to military and …

February 25, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Sunday (02/25/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 25, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Sunday (02/25/2024)

A fairly quiet Sunday. The downed power line feeding the ZPPR nuclear power plant in Ukraine that could have helped create a nuclear disaster has been successfully repaired according to the latest news. Another close call, and always keep in mind that the more operating nuclear plants that come online in the future, the greater the risk of nuclear disaster.

That’s all I have to say this evening, but don’t forget that 2nd half of my the ‘Prologue’ to my planned “El Nuclear Diablo” novel will be Posted on the evening of February 29th, leading into Chapter 1 one of the serialized story to be originally available to readers of this “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear” nightly report on my personal website or on Substack beginning on Thursday March 14, because this is leap year and February has 29 days. Therefore, I will plan to keep it on a Thursday evening permanently. Facebook links to both sites will continue, as always. ~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.)

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

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/25/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

UK Trident Missile Test: Has the UK’s nuclear deterrent program failed? | This World | WION

YouTube

The UK has failed to test-fire a Trident ballistic missile for the second time in a row. During the test on January 30, the dummy nuclear missile …

Russia-Ukraine war: Putin’s space nuke is so crazy, it’s an opportunity – AFR

AFR

The spectre of Russian nuclear escalation in space could offer Joe Biden and Xi Jinping to make common cause in restraining and deterring the …

Recent events raise questions about the role of space in global politics – NPR

NPR

News of a Russian nuclear-powered space device has brought attention to how space is being weaponized. NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe talks to Francesca …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Ukraine eyes Japanese companies for nuclear power expansion: minister – Nikkei Asia

Nikkei Asia

Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia, in the south, has been taken over by invading Russian forces and all six reactors there have …

Ukraine’s Ukrenergo says Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant power supply line repaired …

Yahoo News

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national energy company, has reported that it has recovered the reliability of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s power …

How the humble potato could monitor radiation surrounding nuclear power plants

Fast Company

The phytosensor in potato plants could act as a backup in the event of a nuclear disaster. … While expanding nuclear energy production would provide …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Private bunker sales boom amid nuclear war fears – The Telegraph

The Telegraph

Private bunker sales boom amid nuclear war fears. Manufacturers of shelters say they have seen an influx in demand in the past year, primarily the …

G7 leaders admonish Russia for ‘irresponsible nuclear rhetoric’ on second anniversary of … – The Hill

The Hill

“Threats by Russia of nuclear weapon use, let alone any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, in the context of its war of aggression against Ukraine are …

A failing British nuclear arsenal reliant on the goodwill of Donald Trump? It’s a terrifying thought

The Guardian

More alarming yet is the prospect of Britain being drawn into a Trump-led nuclear war. Armageddon edged closer during his presidency. As well as …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

How the humble potato could monitor radiation surrounding nuclear power plants

Fast Company

Mechanical radiation detection equipment needs electrical power and regular maintenance, both of which make them less reliable during emergencies.

NRRC: Ukrainian nuclear plant explosion not affected in anyway Saudi radiation levels

MSN

Saudi Gazette reportRIYADH — The Saudi Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Commission (NRRC) announced that the commission’s Nuclear Emergency …

Emergency Power Supply Reestablished at Zaporizhzhia NPP – The UBJ

The UBJ

Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s national energy company, has successfully restored the emergency power line to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

G7 leaders admonish Russia for ‘irresponsible nuclear rhetoric’ on second anniversary of … – The Hill

The Hill

“Threats by Russia of nuclear weapon use, let alone any use of nuclear weapons by Russia, in the context of its war of aggression against Ukraine …

A failing British nuclear arsenal reliant on the goodwill of Donald Trump? It’s a terrifying thought

The Guardian

As well as scrapping arms control treaties, he expanded the list of external threats that might justify first use of nuclear weapons and doubled the …

Ex-CSIS manager on insider threats after alleged nuclear plant info leak, Ortis case

Global News

Watch ‘The most serious threat to national security’: Ex-CSIS manager on insider threats after alleged nuclear plant info leak, Ortis case Video …

February 24, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #550 (02/24/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 24, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Saturday (02/24/2024)

Finally, I have found an article that, except for the fact that it does not include the serious possibilities of radiation leakage, nuclear waste disposal, and other extremely dangerous factors associated with nuclear power plants— including meltdowns and, lately, nuclear war — everything else he has to say conforms precisely to my own points of view that I have been Posting here for 550 consecutive evenings.

But Chris Bowen, Australian MP for Climate Change & Energy, has written a concise and to the point piece here should not be referred to as “opinion”. It is clearly incontrovertible fact, and of course Mr. Bowen is in a position to know what he is talking about. He calls the never-ending propaganda from the entire concept of the nuclear power plant industry ‘hot air’, which is a bit more congenial than my many other descriptions that I use almost on a daily basis here on ‘All Things Nuclear’. But he sharply debunks virtually every propaganda claim that the nuclear power industry and its providers have ever conceived. They are all lies, based on capitalism and profiteering, easily critiqued and demonstrably disproven, and I know from experience that many of the nuclear industry leaders are well aware that their entire industry is based on ‘hot air’. ~llaw

The Hon Chris Bowen MP

Minister for Climate Change and Energy

Chris Bowen

Opinion piece: Proponents of nuclear power are peddling hot air

24 February 2024

Opponents of cleaner, cheaper renewables have used a particularly spectacular contortion of logic to claim the recent catastrophic storms in Victoria and the resulting power outages as evidence of the folly of acting on climate change and boosting renewables.

Predictably, nuclear energy advocates seized on the Victorian events and temporary power outage to re-energise their campaign for Australia to start a nuclear energy industry.

Let’s be clear upfront. Nuclear is not being pushed as a genuine alternative to renewables. It’s being used as a distraction and a delaying tactic.

It’s also quite the feat to assert that had it been nuclear rather than renewables, a coal-fired electricity generator in Victoria wouldn’t have shut itself down as protection against surges from storm-damaged transmission. It’s an even greater leap essentially to assert that a grid under the LNP would involve no distribution – given the vast majority of outages were caused by extreme damage to the distribution network – including from the half a million lightning strikes in eight hours.

Will nuclear powered electricity be transmitted by osmosis? By Bluetooth? By a vibe? Whether your energy comes from coal, nuclear, gas or renewables, if poles and wires are down, electricity won’t get where it needs to go.

The pro-nuclear argument is two-pronged. That the world has realised the perils of renewables and is experiencing a nuclear renaissance, and Australia is missing out.

And that nuclear is much cheaper than renewable energy, once upgrading and expanding the grid is factored in.

Both these arguments collapse faster than a tree in a lightning strike when exposed to the facts.

Global investment in renewable energy sources constitutes three quarters of all power generation investment.

Take just solar, for example. Last year, the world installed 440GW of renewable capacity. This is more than the world’s entire existing nuclear capacity built up through decades of investment. By early 2025, renewable energy will surpass coal as the planet’s largest source of energy, while coal, gas and nuclear will all shrink their market share.

Nuclear and coal combined, however, account for only 16 per cent of new global power investment. In 2005, electricity companies in the US pledged to build more than 30 reactors. Only four ever commenced construction. Two were abandoned due to massive cost and time delays.

The alleged boom in Small Modular Reactors is also a mirage. China and Russia are the only two countries to have installed them. The US has now abandoned its “flagship” commercial-scale pilot SMR (promised back in 2008), wearing 70 per cent cost blowouts without having started construction on a single reactor.

We know the Russian SMRs have extraordinarily low load factors and that nuclear waste from the SMR process is disproportionate to their output. The Chinese data is more opaque, but given SMRs generate about 300MW (compared to a coal-fired power station at 2000MW), we have no reason to believe there is anything approaching a serious contribution to China’s energy demand from their two units.

My shadow minister predicted that last year’s Dubai COP would be remembered as the “nuclear COP”. Not so much. Twenty three countries have pledged to triple nuclear energy by 2050, while 124 countries pledged to triple renewable energy investment within the next six years, before the nuclear dream even gets started.

Then there is cost. Contrary to myth, GenCost does include the cost of transmission and storage, and the CSIRO-AEMO GenCost conclusions about the chasm between nuclear and renewables costs could not be clearer.

But if you don’t want to accept eminent and independent practitioners at those organisations, then you can have a look at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which estimates it will cost $US15 trillion to triple nuclear capacity. Or University College London, which recently found that “new nuclear capacity is only cost effective if ambitious cost and construction times are assumed”.

And if you don’t like University College London’s research, ask the merchant bank Lazard, which shows levelised cost of nuclear to be four times higher than utilityscale solar and wind.

Then look at how many nuclear projects are falling over because of cost and time overruns. The UK’s Hinkley C nuclear plant was promised to be “cooking Christmas turkeys by 2017”. It’s yet to warm a single drumstick, with latest costings at more than $86bn. Who in Australia does the opposition energy spokesman expect will be footing those kind of bills?

Like many things in the climate debate, the push for nuclear power has taken on a singular importance in the culture wars. It’s striking that a party that once prided itself on economic rationalism could embrace a frolic so spectacularly uneconomic. This is the triumph of culture wars over climate pragmatism in the alternative government.

The LNP has been promising to reveal the details of its long nuclear fairytales soon. It can’t come soon enough.

No plan for nuclear power in Australia will survive contact with reality. The Australian people deserve more than hot air to power their homes and businesses.

This opinion piece was first published in the Australian on Saturday, 24 February 2024.

END (Note: This article is also available in the Nuclear Power category below.)

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.)

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

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/24/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Head Of UN Atomic Watchdog Calls For ‘Restraint’ After Blasts Near Ukrainian Nuclear Plant

Radio Free Europe

UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi called on February 23 for “maximum military restraint” after a string of powerful explosions occurred near …

Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Los Altos Hills, CA

The White House

You know, we’ve made clear from day one of our administration that we believe in science, which the other guy is not quite sure exists. (Laughter.) …

Science Is the New Nuclear Deterrent – Nautilus Magazine

Nautilus Magazine

Science Is the New Nuclear Deterrent. Sarah Scoles on her 3 greatest revelations while writing Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons. By …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

At every step of this full-scale invasion, Putin uses nuclear catastrophe as a threat by shelling and occupying Ukraine’s nuclear power plants on the …

Science Is the New Nuclear Deterrent – Nautilus Magazine

Nautilus Magazine

Scientists who work at nuclear weapons labs often do research on physics, astronomy, or nuclear power in addition to their weapons-related work. This …

Opinion piece: Proponents of nuclear power are peddling hot air – Ministers

Ministers

It’s also quite the feat to assert that had it been nuclear rather than renewables, a coal-fired electricity generator in Victoria wouldn’t have shut …

Nuclear War

NEWS

The Cost of Nuclear War in Space – The New York Times

The New York Times

Just before the Russian-Ukrainian war reached its two-year milestone today, U.S. intelligence agencies warned that Russia might aim a nuclear …

The Long Shadow: Russian Nuclear Calibration in the War in Ukraine – CSIS

CSIS

It also concludes that the risks of nuclear use will likely rise if Russia faces significant battlefield setbacks in the future or the conflict …

Ahead of Anniversary of Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Senator Markey Condemns Putin’s …

Senator Edward Markey

At every step of this full-scale invasion, Putin uses nuclear catastrophe as a threat by shelling and occupying Ukraine’s nuclear power plants on the …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

NRRC: Ukrainian nuclear plant explosion not affected in anyway Saudi radiation levels

Saudi Gazette

The Saudi Nuclear and Radiological Regulatory Commission (NRRC) announced that the commission’s Nuclear Emergency Operations Center did not …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

The Long Shadow: Russian Nuclear Calibration in the War in Ukraine – CSIS

CSIS

Moscow has used explicit threats, including mention of crossing a “red line” in September 2022 if the United States supplied longer-range missiles to …

Ukraine: how nuclear weapons continue to increase the risks, two years on

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

… nuclear war is not to increase nuclear arsenals or threaten nuclear retaliation. The answer is for all countries to condemn nuclear threats, end …

Ahead of Anniversary of Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Senator Markey Condemns Putin’s …

Senator Edward Markey

At every step of this full-scale invasion, Putin uses nuclear catastrophe as a threat by shelling and occupying Ukraine’s nuclear power plants on the …

February 23, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #549 (02/23/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 23, 2024

Satellite imagery from July shows the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and it’s six uranium-fueled reactors, currently in a cold shutdown. (Maxar)

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Friday (02/23/2024)

This is a much more comprehensive report from NBC and Yahoo on the most recent Russian military attack on the huge nuclear power plant (6 nuclear reactors) in Ukraine. Diesel generators are in use to control the nuclear plant, but the plant is in serious trouble because the incoming power lines are down due to Russian military shelling. It is even more serious than I thought in my recent Post concerning this horrible situation, threatening to put all of Ukraine and other European countries in uninhabitable situations for hundreds of years.

This potential disaster could make the Chernobyl nuclear accident (the worst in nuclear power history in the spring of 1986), look like little more than a local inconvenience. The surrounding city of Pripyat, other communities and rural areas still remain uninhabitable.

And the nuclear industry still says nuclear power is safe, cheap, and clean? War is just one of the thousands of reasons ‘All Things Nuclear’ are the most dangerous products on planet Earth. ~llaw

Europe’s largest nuclear plant is ‘extremely volatile,’ watchdog warns

Richard Engel and Charlotte Gardiner and Gabe Joselow

Thu, February 22, 2024 at 12:32 PM PST·6 min read

KYIV — Sitting on the front line of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is near the brink of a disaster that could imperil the Continent, according to international monitors and Ukrainian officials.

The situation is “extremely volatile,” said Rafael Grossi, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which closely monitors the Zaporizhzhia facility in the southeast Ukrainian town of Enerhodar. Ukraine’s national energy company and former employees at the plant are also sounding the alarm.

“It is the most dangerous situation that we have,” Grossi told NBC News in an interview last week. “It’s my job not to sow panic, but at the same time I have to tell the truth about what is happening.”

There was growing international alarm when the site was shelled in the months after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine two years ago this Saturday, Feb. 24. And Ukrainian officials have also warned about staffing levels and general maintenance of the plant, which became operational in 1984.

Both sides have since blamed the other for attacks in the vicinity of the complex, which Russian forces seized shortly after the start of the war and is almost twice the size of Ukraine’s Chernobyl plant, the site of the deadly 1986 disaster widely considered the worst nuclear accident on record.

The atomic energy agency has repeatedly warned about the dangers of a direct attack on the site, although it has noted there has been no shelling of the facility since May.

However, Russian forces remain in control of the plant, which is right on the eastern bank of the Dnieper River, and all the territory around it, including the company town of Enerhodar. Ukrainian forces have maintained control of the river’s other bank.

As the focus of the fighting has shifted farther north, another concern is the frequent power outages at the plant, where eight blackouts have been reported since the start of the war, the most recent in December, according to both the IAEA and Energoatom, Ukraine’s national energy company.

“When you have a blackout, lack of external power supply at a nuclear power plant, the cooling function of the reactors is lost, and you could have a meltdown,” Grossi said.

He added that the situation could be compared to 2011’s disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan, when three reactors melted down in an accident caused by a huge tsunami that battered the country’s eastern coast.

Zaporizhzhia is different because the plant’s six Soviet-era reactors were put into semi-shutdown to stop the nuclear fission reaction and generation of heat and pressure shortly after the start of the war. As a result, they are in a colder state than those in Fukushima and therefore less volatile.

Powering the plant has nonetheless become increasingly difficult because three of the four lines supplying the complex have been destroyed and the fourth is faulty, according to Petro Kotin, the CEO of Energoatom, which ran the facility before it was taken by Russian forces.

For now, the plant is relying on 20 backup diesel generators to keep the reactors operating safely, said Kotin, who is still in contact with a number of Ukrainian workers at the plant.

The destruction of the Kakhovka dam farther up the Dnieper River has also proved problematic for operators at the plant. Water from the dam’s reservoir had been used to cool the reactors, which now could overheat and melt down if turned on.

Satellite imagery from last June shows depleted water levels of the Dnieper River by the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, following the destruction of the Khakovka dam. (Maxar)

New wells are being drilled at the plant to make up for the supply of cooling water lost by the dam’s collapse, according to the IAEA.

Another serious point of concern is the lack of qualified staff to oversee safety under the plant’s current operators, a subsidiary of the Russian state nuclear company, Rosatom.

Before the war, about 11,000 employees worked at the plant, many of whom fled as Russian forces advanced. Now there is just a skeleton crew of about 4,000, according to Energoatom, which like Kotin still receives information from both current and former staff members.

Kotin said the Ukrainian staff who stayed behind were forced “under pressure and even under torture” to sign contracts with Rosatom.

NBC News has asked Rosatom for comment on power supply and the staffing issues at the plant.

After the plant fell into Russian hands, Serhii Romanyuk said he reluctantly continued to work there as a deputy head of nuclear safety, which meant he was responsible for the safe storage of new and used nuclear fuel.

But in September 2022, he said he was called into the office of the main engineer and was arrested by representatives of the Federal Security Service (FSB) — the domestic intelligence service that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB.

Romanyuk said they wanted to know if he had a weapon, so they escorted him back to his apartment in Enerhodar to conduct a search.

“They put a hot iron on my chest, choked me, they put a bag on my head so I couldn’t breathe,” he said. “All of that was followed by a beating.”

Although they did not find a weapon, he said they took him to a police cell where he was held in a small, windowless room, crammed with people.

The interrogations and the beatings continued, but this time he said they were searching for information about other members of the staff who were pro-Ukrainian.

“They were trying to convince me to collaborate with them, but it wasn’t about working at the nuclear plant,” he said. “They were interested in some other field of collaboration.”

After more than a month in captivity, he said was released after he refused to cooperate.

Now living in Kyiv, Romanyuk said he feared for the plant because of the poor quality of the remaining staff and the degradation of equipment. On the few occasions he has received information about the facility, he said it appeared that “nothing is done there in terms of maintenance.”

Allegations of abuse against Ukrainian workers have been widespread since Russia took over the plant. A recent investigation by the Ukrainian human rights organization Truth Hounds featured testimony from several people who also alleged similar treatment. It said that Ukrainians on site were targeted for suspicion of working with Ukrainian forces, cooperating with the country’s intelligence services or of having anti-Russian views.

NBC News has asked the FSB and Rosatom for comment about the allegations that workers at the plant have been tortured.

Kotin, the Energoatom CEO, warns that the staffing issue is affecting the overall maintenance of the plant, further increasing the chance of something going wrong and that this is getting worse because of the degradation of the site.

“You can get to the point when any small event somewhere will bring just a cumulative effect,” he said. “After that, you will have this disaster.”

Richard Engel and Charlotte Gardiner reported from Kyiv, and Gabe Joselow from London.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Up next

Ukraine’s Zaphorizhzhia nuclear plant loses connection to last backup power line

Arpan RaiWed, February 21, 2024 at 10:26 PM PST·3 min read
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has lost connection to its last external power backup line, UN’s nuclear agency chief Rafael Grossi said on Wednesday.The loss of the last power backup to keep the nuclear facility running is “once again underlining the fragile nuclear safety and security situation at the site”, the International Atomic Energy Agency director general said.He said IAEA officials present at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which sits in Russia-occupied territory, were informed that the 330 kilovolt (kV) power line was disconnected at 2.04pm local time on Tuesday.A team of experts present at the site were told the disconnection occurred “due to a problem which occurred on the other side of the Dnipro river, some 13.5km away from the 330 kV switchyard, which supplies back-up power to the site”.“The cause of the disconnection was not immediately known, the ZNPP said, adding it had been informed by the Ukrainian grid operator that work on the line was under way,” the statement said.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya NPP has lost connection to its last back-up external power line & is receiving electricity it needs from its only 750 kV line, again underlining fragile nuclear safety & security situation at the site, DG @RafaelMGrossi said today. https://t.co/7unyHB01xC pic.twitter.com/v5ZGRPradx

— IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency ⚛️ (@iaeaorg) February 21, 2024

Before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2024, the plant had four 750kV lines and six 330kV lines available to keep the nuclear facility running.There are no longer backup options for off-site power.Any disconnection of power or damage to the electricity lines to Zaporizhzhia can threaten the highly reactive reactors and its other essential functions which need electricity to cool them down, even when all reactor units have been shut down.“The ZNPP is still receiving the electricity it needs from its only 750 kV line, but the loss of the 330 kV line means the plant currently has no back-up options available for off-site power,” the IAEA said.Mr Grossi said the “extremely vulnerable off-site power situation continues to pose significant safety and security challenges for this major nuclear facility”.“Even though the main power line remains in operation, the lack of back-up power demonstrates that the nuclear safety and security situation at the plant remains precarious,” he said.The ZNPP has suffered complete loss of off-site power since August 2022 on at least eight events, relying temporarily on emergency diesel generators.Fears over the “fragile” security situation at one of the world’s biggest atomic power plants has been a feature throughout Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.The IAEA has expressed alarm about the facility amid fears of a potential nuclear catastrophe. The plant has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February in 2022, and seized the facility within days of their military offensive.Of particular concern is the Russian decision to block access for Ukrainian staff employed by Kyiv’s national operator, who refused to sign contracts with the Russian operator at the site.The staff working at the plant now are former Energoatom workers who adopted Russian citizenship and signed new contracts with Russia’s operator at the site.

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). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available tonight.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/23/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Putin Takes a Flight in Nuclear-Capable Bomber in a Tough Message to the West Ahead of Election

Military.com

All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast … GI Bill: Top 5 Things to Know · Checklists for Your PCS Move · Maryland State …

Putin’s Big Statement After Biden’s ‘Nuclear War Fear’ Alert; ‘Nearly All Russian Nuke Forces Now…’

Hindustan Times

Russian President Vladimir announced on February 23 that nearly all of Russian nuclear forces have modernised amid fears of nuclear conflict …

Whose declared existential risk is a bigger threat, Biden’s or Trump’s? – Washington Post

Washington Post

Biden points at climate change as the existential threat to humanity. Trump says it’s nuclear weapons. So we asked an expert.

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Study Details Positive Economic Impact of Nuclear Industry in Southeast U.S.

American Public Power Association

“It serves as a baseline for understanding the benefits of nuclear power and its integral role in regional economic growth and the global clean energy …

DOE inks $303M deal for advanced nuclear reactor – E&E News by POLITICO

E&E News

The Department of Energy has signed an agreement with a nuclear technology company to provide up to $303 million for designing, building and …

Kairos Power, DOE agree on milestone approach to Hermes support – American Nuclear Society

Europe’s largest nuclear plant is ‘extremely volatile,’ watchdog warns – Yahoo News

Yahoo News

KYIV — Sitting on the front line of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is near the brink of a disaster that …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Are investors prepared for *checks notes* nuclear war in space? – Financial Times

Financial Times

The explosion test, called Starfish Prime, was a high-altitude nuclear test conducted as a joint effort of the Atomic Energy Commission and the …

Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin flies on supersonic nuclear bomber – Sky News

Sky News

Putin has flown on a supersonic nuclear bomber today – a version of what the USSR would have deployed in the event of a nuclear war.

Putin’s Big Statement After Biden’s ‘Nuclear War Fear’ Alert; ‘Nearly All Russian Nuke Forces Now…’

YouTube

Russian President Vladimir announced on February 23 that nearly all of Russian nuclear forces have modernised amid fears of nuclear conflict …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

NRC Issues Event Notification for Peach Bottom Nuclear Plant, Pa. – Energy Central

Energy Central

… emergency notification per 10 CFR 50.72(b)(3)(v). “There was no impact on the health and safety of the public or plant personnel. “The NRC …

China science, technology news summary — Feb. 23 – Xinhua

Xinhua

The Zhangzhou nuclear power project is designed to consist of six nuclear … emergency management systems and capabilities. Multiple new models of …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Don’t fear the space nuke. The Ukraine war remains the true Russian threat to the West

The Telegraph

Don’t fear the space nuke. The Ukraine war remains the true Russian threat to the West. The ‘God of War‘ is no heavenly entity. David Axe 23 …

Russia warns it could ‘accidentally’ start a nuclear war as ‘impotent’ western leaders … – MSN

MSN

‘ It comes just days after the ex-president threatened Russia could nuke the UK, US, Ukraine and its backers if Russia is forced to concede occupied …

Putin says he STILL wants Biden as president and doesn’t blame him for calling a ‘crazy …

Daily Mail

At the same time, Moscow is ramping up threats of nuclear attack amid … nuclear war with the West to deliver nuclear weapons at long distances.

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Sheveluch volcano (Central Kamchatka, Russia) – Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic …

Volcano Discovery

… caldera and picturesque villages. Discover its fascinating natural and cultural history on a relaxed walking study tour with us. Yellowstone quakes.

February 22, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #548 (02/22/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 22, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Thursday (02/22/2024)

The following is a nice down-to-earth human interest story, but just one man got a lot of attention through vandalism that helped defeat many nationally planned nuclear power plants. Predictably, he got far more attention than I have by trying to do the same thing on a larger scale, but without doing anything destructive . . . It is sad, sometimes, what gets others’ attention in a meaningful way that the peaceful act of writing a nightly column does. But, anyway, more power to Sam Lovejoy. llolloll! ~llaw

(Note: as I write this the full story is not posted here, but you should be able to click on the “Listen” button at the top of the article to hear it (and it’s a short visit) Sam Lovejoy’s story. Or if not, you can go to this link: To see more, visit https://www.npr.org where you can apparently find the full article.)

KUAR is experiencing disruptions in Monticello due to issues concerning the transmitter. We appreciate your patience as we actively work to resolve the issues.

50 years ago, one-man’s action helped spark the anti-nuke movement

Published February 21, 2024 at 6:52 AM CST

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

Subscribed

LISTEN • 5:15

On a cold winter’s night in 1974, Sam Lovejoy toppled a 500-foot weather tower in Montague, Massachusetts, designed to gather data for two proposed nuclear power plants.

Lovejoy turned himself in and was acquitted on a technicality. But his act of civil disobedience was instrumental in igniting a movement against nuclear power in the nation.

Jon Kalish reports for New England Public Media.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.

Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available tonight.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/22/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

House is heading toward “nuclear” war over Ukraine funding, one top House GOP leader says

CBS News

… about them taking you out, or live every day as your last. Get something out of it. If you lead and get big things done, your reputation enhances.

50 years ago, one-man’s action helped spark the anti-nuke movement

Little Rock Public Radio

… nuclear power plants … All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM Talk Business & Politics. 0:00. 0 …

Biden Calls Putin ‘Crazy SOB’ and Hits Trump on Navalny Remarks – Time

Time

… all think I should be committed … “We have a crazy SOB like that guy Putin, and others, and we always have to worry about nuclear conflict,” Biden …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Make Carbon-Free Hydrogen with Nuclear Energy? – The Breakthrough Institute

The Breakthrough Institute

Nuclear reactors make heat on their way to making electricity. The goal of the subsidies is to push hydrogen production technology along the learning …

Why Britain Is Struggling With Nuclear Power – The New York Times

The New York Times

The government wants more nuclear plants to help tackle climate change, but delays and soaring costs are complicating the effort.

Commercial shipment marks big step for safer, more efficient nuclear fuels

Idaho National Laboratory

In December, INL received 25 prototype fuel rods irradiated in the reactor core of a commercial nuclear plant. The fuel rods were developed and …

U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy – Facebook – Facebook

Full Coverage

Nuclear War

NEWS

Putin sends signal to West with flight on nuclear-capable bomber | Reuters

Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin flew on a modernised Tu-160M nuclear-capable strategic bomber on Thursday in a move likely to be seen in the West …

House is heading toward “nuclear” war over Ukraine funding, one top House GOP leader says

CBS News

And at the same time, McHenry says the House is heading to a procedural “nuclear” war over funding for Ukraine. “I think the odds [of a shutdown] are …

What are space nukes raising tensions between Moscow and Washington? – CNBC

CNBC

A fresh spat between Washington and Moscow has raised alarm about the potential risk of a space-based nuclear satellite attack.

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Potato plant radiation sensors could one day monitor radiation in areas surrounding power plants

The Lake Sun

While expanding nuclear energy production would provide carbon-free power and can help countries around the world meet their climate goals, …

Manitowoc County Welcomes New Emergency Services Director – Seehafer News

Seehafer News

She talked on the WCUB Breakfast Club about the Point Beach Nuclear Power Plant and how a drill was run recently if an emergency happened. Green …

IAEA responds to power outage at ZNPP due to shelling – Ukrinform

Ukrinform

… Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. — … power since August 2022, forcing it to temporarily rely on emergency diesel …

Nuclear War Threats

NEW

What are space nukes raising tensions between Moscow and Washington? – CNBC

CNBC

President Joe Biden later said Moscow appears to be developing an anti-satellite weapon but noted that it posed no urgent “nuclear threat” to the U.S. …

Russia warns it could ‘accidentally’ start a nuclear war as ‘impotent’ western leaders … – Daily Mail

Daily Mail

They’re wrong.’ It comes just days after the ex-president threatened Russia could nuke the UK, US, Ukraine and its backers if Russia is forced to …

Russia warns it could ‘accidentally’ start a nuclear war as ‘impotent’ western leaders … – MSN

MSN

Pro-war ex-president has stepped up rhetoric urging imminent nuclear threat … Medvedev reaffirmed threats Russia would be willing to resort to nuclear …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Linda Hamilton terminates The Terminator – YouTube

YouTube

… for a 3rd time. FOX 13 Seattle New 18K views · 9:18 · Go to channel. The Yellowstone Caldera Erupts | 2012. Clips & Chill New 7.8K views · 4:14 · Go …

February 21, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #547 (02/21/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 21, 2024

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant's supply line damaged in Russian shelling: Ukraine

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/21/2024):

This situation in the following article is extremely serious because it is the grid system to the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant rather than the plant itself creating such a situation that could cause such a huge nuclear power plant with six nuclear reactors to lose power and melt down, releasing uncontrolled nuclear radiation to not just Ukraine, but also a huge portion of European populated areas. The single grid system, as pointed out in the article below, is vital to keeping one or more or possibly all of the reactors to melt down, (having no backup other than perhaps — unmentioned in the article — one or more inadequate diesel-powered generators) which, if so, would, of course, be catastrophic . . .

This situation is a part of the potential failing, among other system failures, of grid system inadequacies that could easily occur as portrayed in my in-progress novel that I am writing daily to be serialized bi-weekly right here on my nightly Post “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear”. The 2nd half of the introductory Prologue to this dystopian novel, in progress, I have titled “El Nuclear Diablo” will be Posted on the evening of 02/28/2024. The 1st part of the Prologue was Posted on #540 (02/14/2024) if you would like to refer back to the beginning of the novel. ~llaw

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s supply line damaged in Russian shelling: Ukraine

Emergency, restoration work being conducted depending on security situation, with permission of Ukrainian army due to ongoing military operations, says power grid operator

Burc Eruygur |21.02.2024 – Update : 21.02.2024

ISTANBUL

Ukraine on Wednesday said the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant’s energy supply line was damaged due to shelling by Russian forces.

“After another attack by the Russians, the line that provided the energy supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear station was damaged,” Ukraine’s power grid operator Ukrenergo said in a statement.

The statement said the operator’s specialists established the damage inflicted and are carrying out emergency and restoration work — but depending on the security situation and with the permission of the Ukrainian army due to ongoing military operations in the area.

It further said the connection between the plant and Ukraine’s energy system is currently maintained by only one power line.

“The total bandwidth of high-voltage networks of ‘Ukrenergo’ is sufficient to cover the available demand,” the statement also said.

It added that a total of 358 settlements remain without electricity in the morning due to the conflict and other reasons.

Russian authorities have not yet commented on the shelling.

The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the biggest in Europe and among the 10 largest in the world, has been under Russian control since early 2022.

Since then, fears of a nuclear catastrophe have persisted as both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling near the plant.

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). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available tonight.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/21/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

UK lawmakers seek reassurances about nuclear deterrent after reports of a failed … – Spectrum News

Spectrum News

British lawmakers are seeking reassurances about the nation’s nuclear deterrent after reports that a test of the system failed dramatically last …

UK lawmakers seek reassurances about nuclear deterrent after reports of a failed missile test

The Hill

UK lawmakers seek reassurances about nuclear deterrent after reports of a failed missile test – KSAT

KSAT

… 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Closed …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

In a first, Centre taps private sector to invest Rs 2.16 lakh crore in nuclear energy

The Economic Times

This is the first time the government is pursuing private investment in nuclear power, a non-carbon-emitting energy source that contributes less …

Nuclear SMR welding breakthrough: A year’s work now takes a day – New Atlas

New Atlas

Small Modular Reactor (SMR) construction shifts into high gear, as UK company Sheffield Forgemasters welds a full-size nuclear reactor vessel in …

Corporate – World Nuclear News – World Nuclear News

Full Coverage

Media Invited to Attend the World’s First Nuclear Energy Summit | IAEA

International Atomic Energy Agency

Co-chaired by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Belgium, the Summit spotlights the pivotal role of nuclear energy in tackling global …

Nuclear War

NEWS

U.S. Warns Allies Russia Could Put a Nuclear Weapon Into Orbit This Year

The New York Times

American intelligence agencies have told their closest European allies that if Russia is going to launch a nuclear … war over blowing up satellites, …

For Heaven’s Sake: Why Would Russia Want to Nuke Space? – Federation of American Scientists

Federation of American Scientists

But as Russia has several thousand nuclear weapons, managing stability and avoiding nuclear war requires that America try to understand what is …

Putin says Russia has no intention of putting nuclear weapons in space – Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera

Ten years ago Russia annexed Crimea, paving the way for war in Ukraine … nuclear-capable. The treaty, signed by more than 130 countries – including …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s supply line damaged in Russian shelling: Ukraine

Anadolu Ajansı

Emergency, restoration work being conducted depending on security situation, with permission of Ukrainian army due to ongoing military operations, …

Potato plant radiation sensors could one day monitor radiation in … – San Antonio Express-News

San Antonio Express-News

(THE CONVERSATION) While expanding nuclear energy production would provide carbon-free power and can help countries around the world meet their …

Power bank goes up in flames: Plane makes an emergency landing in Hong Kong – MSN

MSN

A power bank explosion caused a flight to emergency land at an airport in Hong Kong on Monday. The defective battery caused the cabin of a flight …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

British nuclear missile test fails and crashes into sea – Euronews.com

Euronews.com

… threat. Their concern is reportedly so urgent that top US diplomats have … Russia has already made vague nuclear threats over the Ukraine war.

UK Nuclear Missile Test Fails Amid Russia, Houthi Threats, After Ship Crash, Aircraft Carrier Glitch

YouTube

… War due to a glitch. Recently, two British … UK Nuclear Missile Test Fails Amid Russia, Houthi Threats, After Ship Crash, Aircraft Carrier Glitch.

Four things to note about the Trident nuclear deterrent – and why the missile malfunction matters

Sky News

… nuclear attacks. It is intended to deter the most serious threats: “You’re talking about somebody who might threaten us with nuclear annihilation …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Datebook | Hot Springs Sentinel Record

The Sentinel-Record

Maxey will present “Yellowstone Caldera, A Super Volcano,” a brief discussion of the effects of a super eruption. Support groups. Narcotics …

February 20, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #546 (02/20/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 20, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Monday (02/20/2024)

All I have to say is that I don’t think this collaboration study on AI is going to prevent or save us from making mistakes before, during, or after the study that are crucial to ‘all things nuclear’, especially nuclear power plants, and that reality tells us that if AI makes a mistake along the way, it doesn’t give a damn. No remorse means a definite inability to correct. That is my fear, but the study is a five-year plan, which is a good thing. But what is the potential of an unrepairable error during the life of the study? Read the article . . . ~llaw

IAEA Designates First Collaborating Centre on Artificial Intelligence for Nuclear Power

IAEA Designates First Collaborating Centre on Artificial Intelligence for Nuclear Power

20 Feb 2024

Alexei Miassoedov, Department of Nuclear Energy

Sara Kouchehbagh, Department of Nuclear Energy

AI offers the potential to optimize numerous processes within nuclear power plants. (Photo: Adobe Stock).

The IAEA has designated the Center for Science of Information at Purdue University in the United States of America as the first IAEA Collaborating Centre to support the Agency’s activities on artificial intelligence (AI) for nuclear power applications, including reactor design, plant operations, and training and education.

Thanks to rapid progress in computational resources and data analysis tools, the nuclear industry has already started to benefit from AI, including with machine learning techniques that can streamline nuclear power plant operations and maintenance. AI is also supporting the development of advanced nuclear power technologies such as small modular reactors (SMRs).

“With more and more countries looking to nuclear energy to address climate change and sustainable development, this Collaborating Centre will provide much needed support for our Member States in using AI to advance the innovation driving the global nuclear sector,” said Mikhail Chudakov, IAEA Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of Nuclear Energy.

The five-year Collaborating Centre agreement will support IAEA programmatic activities and knowledge sharing on advancements and innovation in AI for nuclear power. This includes Agency initiatives on benchmark exercises for developing confidence and community-wide acceptance of Al technology for nuclear power, establishing a “benchmarking hub” for coordination and data management, as well as other activities relevant to the development and assessment of Al technologies in collaboration with IAEA Member States.

AI offers the potential to optimize numerous processes within nuclear power plants. It could be used to bolster efficiency and ensure a steady electricity supply by adjusting power generation based on real-time data, including consumer demand, weather and equipment performance. Automation using robotics and AI systems could handle routine tasks, reducing the need for human input. AI could also improve fuel efficiency and maximize the energy output of reactors.

“This Collaborating Centre will help build confidence in AI applications for high consequence systems, such as nuclear reactors. Without reliable quantification, the nuclear community’s ability to realize the potential of AI will be diminished and this will negatively impact its ability to remain competitive in the energy market,” said Hany Abdel-Khalik, Professor of Nuclear Engineering at the Center for Science of Information, which advances information theory through collaborative research and teaching.

“AI may bring significant advancements to the nuclear power sector, enhancing both efficiency and sustainability,” said Tatjana Jevremovic, an expert with the IAEA’s Nuclear Power Technology Development Section.

The Collaborating Centre agreement is part of recent IAEA efforts to strengthen support to countries interested in using AI for nuclear science and technology. A 2022 IAEA publication reviewed the challenges and priorities for future AI activities, including those relevant to nuclear power as well as nuclear sciences and applications, among others. The IAEA’s International Network on Innovation to Support Operating Nuclear Power Plants (ISOP) is examining the regulatory and technical aspects of AI deployment. Several coordinated research projects related to AI are underway, with one set to launch on how AI and other innovative technologies proposed for SMRs can be secured.

The agreement comes after the Agency recently designated the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center as the first Collaborating Centre focused on accelerating fusion research, with an emphasis on AI applications to advance the IAEA’s AI for Fusion initiative.

IAEA Collaborating Centres

To promote the peaceful use of nuclear technologies, the IAEA collaborates with designated institutions around the world. Through the Collaborating Centres network, these organizations in Member States can assist the IAEA by undertaking original research and development and training relating to nuclear science, technologies and their safe and secure applications. With the newly designated Center for Science of Information at Purdue University Collaborating Centre, there are now 73 active Collaborating Centres worldwide.

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.)

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

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/20/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

The Conversation: Is Russia looking to put nukes in space? Doing so would undermine …

The Portland Press Herald

All Things to Do · All PPH Events · Guides · Out & About · Event Calendar · Add … Others suspect a weapon that is nuclear-powered but not a nuclear …

The US Military Almost Deployed Nuclear Missile Trains on American Railroads During the Cold War

Military.com

… nuclear attack for the real thing. … Be sure to get the latest news about the U.S. military, as well as critical info about how to join and all the …

How Many Sentinel Missiles Does the United States Need? – War on the Rocks

War on the Rocks

… about a global nuclear exchange between the Soviet Union and … All of the Air Force’s nuclear programs are centrally managed by the Air Force Nuclear …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

What could the ‘nuclear renaissance’ hold for Tennessee? Thousands of high paying jobs

Knoxville News Sentinel

The study modeled the hypothetical impact of investing $1 billion in constructing a new nuclear power plant using data from existing power plants.

Exclusive: India seeks $26 billion of private nuclear power investments – Reuters

Reuters

India will invite private firms to invest about $26 billion in its nuclear energy sector to increase the amount of electricity from sources that …

India seeks $26 bln of private nuclear power investments – The Economic Times – The Economic Times

IAEA Designates First Collaborating Centre on Artificial Intelligence for Nuclear Power

International Atomic Energy Agency

AI offers the potential to optimize numerous processes within nuclear power plants. (Photo: Adobe Stock). The IAEA has designated the Center for …

Nuclear War

NEW

Alarming new warnings about Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant – NBC News

NBC News

Nearly two years since the war in Ukraine began, the IAEA and Ukrainian officials are increasingly worried that the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power …

Former Russian President Medvedev threatens to nuke the US, UK, Germany & Ukraine – YouTube

YouTube

The Russia-Ukraine war continues to rage on. Meanwhile, the threat of a nuclear war is looming. The West and Russia are still at a crossroads.

The US Military Almost Deployed Nuclear Missile Trains on American Railroads During the Cold War

Military.com

The Cuban Missile Crisis was two decades in the rearview, but in the early 1980s, Cold War tensions between the United States and Soviet Union …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Iran: Work Begins On New Research Reactor – Eurasia Review

Eurasia Review

The organisation has also declared operational a new emergency control room simulator for unit 1 at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. “The concrete …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe

Longreads

Life Aboard a Nuclear Submarine as the US Responds to Threats Around the Globe … War. Maybe, I thought, we were being cast in the sequel. Or maybe …

Europe finally seems to be considering a future without U.S. nuclear umbrella: Spiegel

Tehran Times

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, for example, the current deputy head of the Russian Security Council, has threatened a “big war” with NATO.

How Many Sentinel Missiles Does the United States Need? – War on the Rocks

War on the Rocks

… nuclear warheads today. While the Cold War is over, the continued presence of nuclear threats to the United States demands a response. The …

February 19, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #545 (02/19/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 19, 2024

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Monday (02/19/2024)

I have only vaguely mentioned or discussed Nuclear EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), but YouTube has an article named “All Things Solar” today, reminding me of my own interest in nuclear EMP. So I have posted a more thorough depiction here that will help us all to understand how EMP works and how gravely serious such attacks (at various altitudes) could be on our country or any country, although the article uses the possible USA example demonstrating the impact of a super-EMP (or HEMP) and how they are potentially extremely serious and of unimaginably long-term destructive power.

Of considerable interest to me is EMP’s relationship to nuclear power plants, as you will learn if you follow my “El Nuclear Diablo” fictional episodes to be posted bi-weekly here on LLAW’s “All Things Nuclear.” My opening Prologue, already partly posted, makes unspecific allusions to what EMP could do to not only the USA, but around the world. ~llaw

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The Threat of Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse to Critical Infrastructure

If a large enough percentage of infrastructure sectors were damaged then our recovery from a broad EMP attack would take years if not decades.

ByChristopher Colyer And Mitchell Simmons

May 14, 2023

Many consider an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on the United States, from an atmospheric nuclear warhead detonation, to be a black swan event – a high-impact, unpredictable event. But we have known about the threat of an EMP attack since early atmospheric testing in the early 1960s. Furthermore, it seems even more reasonable today that our adversaries may choose to cripple the U.S. in a fatal first punch rather than engage the U.S. in a war of attrition. EMP is a line-of-sight phenomenon associated with the detonation of a nuclear warhead and the pulse it emanates can bridge the integrated circuitry of electronic components, especially those connected to long lead conductors like antennas, transmission lines, or internal building wiring, or something as simple as the electrical cord on an appliance plugged into the wall. The bridging, or electrical arcing across integrated circuity, can disrupt the usage of the electronic component requiring it to be cycled or restarted, or the bridging can burn out the circuitry or chip thus destroying the function of the electronic component.

The fact that EMP effects can cause extensive damage and destruction to critical infrastructure over large areas is well understood and an asymmetric means an adversary can employ to cause nationwide damage. We have known the effects of EMP on critical infrastructure for over 60 years. The EMP threat to the U.S. is less a black swan event and more like an ostrich event, where the U.S. knows about the threat and the rising risk but has its proverbial head in the sand out of fear instead of taking useful action.

The U.S., like many modern societies, has become increasingly reliant on highly interdependent infrastructure sectors that use electronic components with integrated circuitry. Just think how pervasive electronic devices have become within our everyday lives: trucks, cars, trains, planes, smartphones, radio, television, satellites, landlines, heating, air conditioning, refrigeration, freezers, television, and medical equipment. And it’s becoming even more worrisome as modern societies will be turning toward artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to solve growing complex societal problems and aid human decision making. Our dependence on electronics and its integrated circuitry has made the U.S. highly vulnerable to the EMP effects of a nuclear detonation. This may be why our adversaries, especially those unable to project conventional warfighting, may turn toward EMP effects of a nuclear warhead to deliver a fatal punch to the U.S.

The Mechanics of EMP

The largest EMP threat to critical infrastructure of a modern society is generated by a nuclear warhead denotation in the mid- to upper-stratosphere or approximately 20-30 miles above the earth’s surface, which is referred to as a High-Altitude EMP (HEMP).[i] A HEMP occurs when a nuclear detonation generates an intense burst of gamma radiation which radiates outwards from the nuclear detonation source. The gamma rays that radiate downward toward the earth’s surface will eventually encounter a point where the atmospheric density rapidly increases, and the gamma rays will begin to interact with air molecules.[ii] This is known as the deposition region, and it is here that the gamma rays produce Compton electrons and positive ions that continue to radiate away from the nuclear detonation source. These electrons radiate at a much higher velocity than the positive ions due to their lower mass and this charge displacement results in a current flow toward the deposition region followed by a current flow away from the deposition region as the charged particles begin to recombine.[iii] It is this phenomenon that generates the EMP effects, which can produce an average pulse of up to 50,000 volts/meter.[iv] The Compton electrons generated by gamma radiation in the deposition region are deflected by the earth’s magnetic field and therefore the area of maximum effect on the earth’s surface is highly dependent upon weapon yield, orientation, and at what latitude above the earth the weapon is detonated.

HEMP effects from a nuclear detonation have little impact to humans on the Earth’s surface, however, that is contrasted by a near surface detonation of a nuclear weapon whose primary damage mechanism is air blast, thermal radiation, ionizing radiation, and radioactive fallout that can have devastating effects on humans near and far away from the ground burst. The EMP generated by a nuclear weapon ground burst is generally of little significance because the charged particles can quickly recombine through the ground, which is a good electrical conductor. In addition, the gamma rays radiating upwards will not affect infrastructure on the ground, which will be vaporized or burned by thermal radiation. Therefore, the area affected by the EMP generally will not radiate past the moderate damage zone where most infrastructure is destroyed by air blast and thermal radiation anyway, resulting in a building blow down effect and ignited firestorms, respectively.[vi] The exception to this is if a ground burst and its EMP is transmitted along an existing electrical conductor near ground zero, which can damage infrastructure outside the moderate damage zone. Basically, EMP is a line-of-sight phenomenon, limited by the Earth’s curvature and ground topography. However, the higher in the atmosphere a nuclear weapon is detonated the greater the reach of regional or nationwide EMP effects on electronic components.

Likely Effects from an Electromagnetic Pulse Attack

EMP damage to the energy infrastructure sector, specifically the electrical grid, would have the greatest negative impact to our modern society because all other critical infrastructure sectors are dependent on electricity. Areas within our society most dependent on electricity include telecommunication, banking and finance, petroleum and natural gas, transportation, water, emergency services, space control, and continuity of government.[vii] Some of these key areas have backup electrical generation in the form of gas or diesel generators or batteries, but these are just temporary bridges until electricity is more widely restored. In the event of an EMP, the integrated circuitry of electronic components within the electrical grid will be damaged or destroyed causing cascading and escalating impacts to almost all other 15 infrastructure sectors.[viii] Our modern society, like many others, will break down very quickly within hours, days, and weeks.

The electrical grid is composed of power generation (coal-fired, natural gas, nuclear, etc.), transmission, and distribution infrastructure.[ix] The current and voltage induced on an electrical system by an EMP are directly proportional to the length of the electrical conductors connected to it.[x] As such, the large outdoor transmission towers and lines we try to ignore on our landscape could be our undoing as they are highly efficient at capturing EMP energy and transmitting it to its endpoints, which includes high-voltage transformers (HVTs). HVTs are often near power-generation plants and their role is to step up the voltage of the generated power at the expense of the current. Electrical power (measured in Watts) is defined as the product (multiplication) of voltage (measured in Volts) and current (measures in Amperes). As such, electrical power is most efficiently transmitted with lower loses by greatly increasing voltage through an HVT at the expense of current, because the amplification of current causes transmission lines to overheat which is directly correlated to much lower transmission efficiency. HVTs are massive and custom-designed machines built by hand thus requiring extensive labor. Consequently, the building of HVTs is often offshored to different vendors meaning the U.S. has a limited organic manufacturing capability.[xi] The obvious result is that if a large percentage of HVTs in the U.S. were destroyed by a HEMP, it would take months to years to replace them due to their custom designs, long-lead acquisition times, permitting, logistical, and transportation limitations. One argument is that the U.S. could develop that manufacturing capability to respond to a crisis, but the reality is that the response would be hampered by resource loses across almost every infrastructure sector and would be tantamount to changing a car tire while the car is engulfed in flames. In addition, a HEMP generated by a nuclear explosion at the right altitude could potentially damage a huge number of electrical components with integrated circuitry within line-of-site of the nuclear explosion. In fact, an estimated 70 percent of the electrical grid could be damaged from the HEMP of just one nuclear weapon.

A HEMP attack over the continental U.S. would be catastrophic because most Americans today live in a modern first-world society and do not possess the survival skills necessary to live in a world without electricity. The reality is the U.S. would likely collapse within weeks or months due to lack of potable water, disease, starvation, social unrest, violence, etc. Undoubtedly, the U.S. would immediately retaliate if it could attribute the EMP attack to a nation-state; regardless, the damage to the U.S. would be done, and the U.S. federal government would be completely overwhelmed with responding to an escalating domestic crisis and focused on the population’s basic survival needs rather than executing foreign policy.

In addition to the U.S. electrical infrastructure being a huge EMP concern, the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure is also vulnerable to HEMP. Telecommunications infrastructure includes telephone and wireless cell service, broadband internet and associated servers and routers, cable television, satellite communications ground stations, and all equipment associated with sending or receiving voice, data, or video messages.[xiii] Our ability to communicate during any kind of national emergency is vital; however, the telecommunications infrastructure is dependent upon the electrical infrastructure, so even if the communications systems themselves survived the EMP event there would be little functionality beyond the duration of the generator and battery backup systems. Furthermore, many Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, vital in many critical infrastructure sectors, are dependent on the communications infrastructure – and when communications fail, the SCADA systems and its operators would be blinded.

Some work has been done to protect aspects of U.S. critical infrastructure sectors through EMP simulators to test equipment, which revealed that not every component would be destroyed but that some would only require power cycling to start functioning normally again.[xv] However, looking at the high interdependencies of our electrical grid by all of the other 15 infrastructure sectors, if a large enough percentage of infrastructure sectors were damaged then our recovery from a broad EMP attack would take years if not decades. The result of a HEMP attack would be an inability to provide basic needs to the population such as potable water, non-perishable food, heating/cooling, and healthcare, which in turn would undoubtedly lead to violence over diminishing resources and eventual societal collapse.

Adversary EMP Capabilities

A HEMP attack on the U.S. is well within the capabilities of North Korea and other countries such as China and Russia. Multiple credible sources from South Korea, China, and Russia have stated that Russian designs for an enhanced EMP, or “Super EMP,” weapon have been leaked or acquired by North Korea.[xvi] Super EMP weapons are designed to produce more intense gamma radiation at the expense of a smaller nuclear explosion in order to enhance the HEMP effects generated in excess of 100,000 volts/meter, twice the standard of what U.S. military systems are designed to withstand.

An existing North Korean EMP threat may already be on orbit above the U.S. KMS-3 and KMS-4 are North American Aerospace Defense Command’s designated acronyms for North Korea’s Kwangmyongsong-3 and Kwangmyongsong-4 satellites that were launched into orbit in 2013 and 2016, respectively. Based on the polar orbits and revisit time over the U.S., they could possibly have a sinister capability like a Super-EMP weapon. In addition, North Korea also possesses two Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) systems with sufficient payload capacity and range to deliver an EMP weapon in space over the continental U.S: the Hwasong-14 with a range of 10,000 km (6,200-plus miles) and the Hwasong-15 with a range of 13,000 km (8,000-plus miles).[xviii] Although these missile systems have not yet demonstrated the systems integration for warhead reentry and the accuracy required for precision strike on a U.S. city, they are more than accurate enough to deliver and detonate a nuclear warhead in space above the continental U.S. and the HEMP would be devastating. The fact that North Korea has not pursued integration testing and accuracy testing needed to destroy a U.S. city by a nuclear warhead is perhaps even more troubling as it may be an indication of a HEMP attack strategy versus a city destruction strategy. Future North Korea ICBM missile development programs will undoubtedly have greater range and payload capacity. Interestingly, a retaliatory U.S. attack on North Korea with a HEMP attack would have little effect since the country is highly agriculturally based and has a limited electrical grid. It has been traditionally viewed that North Korea would be unlikely to conduct such a HEMP attack unless under dire circumstances based on the influence of Russia and China; however, just recently North Korea has eliminated controls to allow it to lawfully use a nuclear attack as a preemptive strike.

Recommendations

A HEMP attack against the U.S. would cause cascading and escalating failures across multiple infrastructure sectors and would be far more devastating due to the high likelihood of societal collapse over a larger region than a nuclear ground detonation against a U.S. city or point-target. As such, U.S. national leadership should make it abundantly clear to our adversaries that any attempt to degrade or destroy U.S. critical infrastructure with a HEMP attack warrants a U.S. nuclear response. This type of deterrence is paramount to countering the emerging threat of Super EMP weapons that North Korea may be viewing as an advantageous asymmetric capability. An important part of this deterrence is demonstrating national resiliency. The key to minimizing the effects of HEMP is to institute systems that will minimize recovery times because replacing countless electronic components with more EMP-resistant ones in the U.S. electrical infrastructure sector is impractical.[xx] Consequently, enhancing the resiliency and recovery capacity of our critical infrastructure, but also demonstrating the government’s ability to provide a robust domestic response and recovery capability, would help serve as a HEMP attack deterrent on the U.S. The framework to take these actions already exists with the National Response Framework (NRF), National Incident Management System (NIMS), and Incident Command System (ICS) adopted nationwide in the wake of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.[xxi] U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) manages the CBRN Response Element (CRE), which is designed to provide Defense Support to Civil Authorities (DSCA) for Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) events. This domestic response capability is robust and could easily serve as the framework for an EMP response capability. The fact that the various military units assigned to the CRE are dispersed among 35 separate military installations ensures that large portions of the enterprise are still able to respond.

Most modern electronic devices today with integrated circuitry have some degree of shielding built in, but this shielding is intended to reduce or eliminate electromagnetic interference from other electronic devices. This existing shielding is not rated to withstand an EMP. Note that an EMP reaches a peak strength many magnitudes of times faster than a lightning strike, which in turn would defeat all common shielding or surge protection available to the general population.[xxii] The federal government should either mandate or incentivize the development of more resilient electronic components to handle this type of EMP energy within telecommunications, banking and finance, petroleum and natural gas, transportation, water, emergency services, space control, and continuity of government areas.[xxiii] This could be done by providing manufacturers additional tax exemptions if their systems meet a minimum specification of shielding to reduce the likelihood of total failure, which is possible depending on the distance from the EMP deposition region. For example, electrical components within line of sight of a nuclear-generated HEMP, but further away from the area primarily affected, will experience much weaker EMP than those areas directly underneath the deposition region and therefore could possibly still function if shielding is increased.[xxiv] Additionally, telecommunications companies can continue to replace long runs of copper wire used for broadband internet service with fiber-optic lines, which are highly resistant to the effects of EMP.[xxv] Moreover, removal of long runs of wire will likely result in reduced coupling of EMP effects on the entire system.

The key to any kind of disaster recovery is communication. As such, the U.S. government should consider continuing its funding of the Military Auxiliary Radio System (MARS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) SHAred RESources (SHARES) High Frequency (HF) radio program. MARS is a Department of Defense (DOD) sponsored program that was started in 1925 and continues today with the mission of providing local, national, and international contingency communications capability using High Frequency (HF) radio.[xxvi] SHARES HF administered by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Coordinating Center for Communications (NCC), provides an additional means for national security and emergency preparedness (NS/EP) personnel to communicate critical information when other telecommunications infrastructure is inoperable.

Conclusion

North Korean military leadership probably knows that it will likely never achieve economic, defense, or nuclear parity with the U.S., but they likely see the possession of a HEMP and Super EMP weapons as an asymmetric alternative to an arms race they will never win. A HEMP or Super EMP weapon detonated above the U.S. can inflict an incredible amount of damage on U.S. critical infrastructure which the U.S. may not recover from based on the lack of current investment to harden our most critical infrastructure. U.S. policy makers must go beyond studying the HEMP threat and fund tangible hardening of electronic components across our infrastructure sectors starting with our electrical grid to increase our resiliency and reduce our recovery time if attacked. Such an investment would not only deter attacks of this nature but also protect the electrical grid from other known threats such as a coronal mass ejection from the sun within our solar system that aligned with the Earth’s orbit.

The authors are responsible for the content of this article. Their views expressed do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Intelligence University, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the U.S. Intelligence Community, U.S. Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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 noYellowstone 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). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/19/2024):

(Note: Stories for categories ‘All Things Nuclear’ and ‘Nuclear Power’ arrived in two separated groups today. I have combined the articles into one group for each, so both of the categories have more that their usual three top stories . . . )

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

All Things Solar – YouTube

YouTube

All Things Solar. 1 view · 49 minutes ago …more. KOLR10 & Fox49. 23.4K … How Would a Nuclear EMP Affect the Power Grid? Practical Engineering …

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that’s exactly that – The Register

The Register

It got fried by an all-American space nuke called Starfish Prime. Starfish Prime was a megaton-range nuclear detonation 400 km above the Pacific, just …

This tiny atomic battery could change the world – Dataconomy

Dataconomy

However, the recent buzz is all about shrinking these powerhouses down to size, modularizing them for flexibility, and transitioning nuclear battery …

After Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death, his will will take over his work

WBUR

Addressing her fellow Russians on her husband’s YouTube channel, Yulia Navalny mentioned all the obstacles she overcame with her husband, …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

IAEA Chief Says Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment Activity Remains High

iranintl.com

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi attends a press conference, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine …

‘Renewables started the energy transition but only fusion can finish it’ | Recharge

Recharge

… energy from nuclear fusion · Read more. As chair of the Fusion Industry Association, Mowry is taking a leading role in bringing star power to Earth.

EIA: Solar Will Surge in 2024, Account for More than Half of New U.S. Capacity

POWER Magazine

… nuclear plant in Georgia. Unit 3—the first new nuclear power plant … The Distributed Energy Conference brings together utility-scale electricity …

IAEA Chief Says Iran’s Nuclear Enrichment Activity Remains High

iranintl.com

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi attends a press conference, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine …

‘Renewables started the energy transition but only fusion can finish it’ | Recharge

Recharge

… energy from nuclear fusion · Read more. As chair of the Fusion Industry Association, Mowry is taking a leading role in bringing star power to Earth.

EIA: Solar Will Surge in 2024, Account for More than Half of New U.S. Capacity

POWER Magazine

… nuclear plant in Georgia. Unit 3—the first new nuclear power plant … The Distributed Energy Conference brings together utility-scale electricity …

Federal money could supercharge state efforts to preserve nuclear power

Missouri Independent

The Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan will reportedly be awarded a $1.5 billion federal loan, aimed at restarting operations after a 2022 closure.

Sweden Plans For New Nuclear Reactor In Next Decade | Barron’s

Barron’s

Swedish utility Vattenfall said Monday it was aiming to put a new nuclear reactor into commission in the first half of the 2030s, …

Exclusive: IAEA chief says Iran’s nuclear enrichment activity remains high | Reuters

Reuters

A spokesperson for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organisation was not immediately available for comment. The IAEA warned at the end of 2023 that Tehran already …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Russia’s Medvedev threatens to nuke US, UK, Germany, Ukraine if Russia loses occupied territories

The Kyiv Independent

… nuclear war. Medvedev, a close ally of Putin, has regularly regularly threatened Ukraine and NATO with a nuclear attack. However, he has been …

Medvedev again threatens nuclear war amid more deaths in Ukraine – Yahoo News

Yahoo News

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has once again threatened the West with an all-out nuclear war if Russia is pushed back to its …

Medvedev threatens Berlin, London and Washington with nuclear retaliation if Russia is to … – pravda.com.ua

Full Coverage

Putin pal threatens Armageddon nuclear attack on DC and London if Russia has to give …

New York Post

Russian nuclear arsenal. Medvedev says the US and other NATO allies will be nuclear targets if the Kremlin loses the war in Ukraine and must give back …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Cancer, Antimicrobial Resistance and Health Emergencies Highlighted by IAEA at WHO Meeting

International Atomic Energy Agency

The IAEA highlighted its medical assistance programme aimed at enabling operators and other personnel at Ukrainian nuclear power plants to have access …

Iran launches home-made ECR system at Bushehr nuclear power plant

nournews.ir

Iran has launched a locally-designed and manufactured emergency control room (ECR) simulator at its only nuclear power plant in the southern city …

Work begins on new Iranian research reactor – World Nuclear News

World Nuclear News

The organisation has also declared operational a new emergency control room simulator for unit 1 at the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Concrete pouring …

Nuclear War Threats

NEW

Putin pal threatens Armageddon nuclear attack on DC and London if Russia has to give …

New York Post

… nuclear targets if the Kremlin loses the war in Ukraine and must give back territory. AP. The Putin ally has made similar threats in the past, but …

Times Putin has referenced the UK as Russia ‘threatens London attack‘ – Yahoo News UK

Yahoo News UK

The latest threat is not the first time the UK has been referred to by Putin, or Russia, with several reports of threats against the west in recent …

As Putin Threatens, Despair and Hedging in Europe – The New York Times

The New York Times

… war. Aleksei A. Navalny’s suspicious … And while Donald Trump’s name was rarely mentioned, the prospect of whether he would make good on his threats …

February 18, 2024

LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #544 (02/18/2024)

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

FEB 18, 2024

Nuclear Blast Mushroom Cloud And Binary Code (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/18/2024)

I’ve been meaning to post more about the ‘troubled’ minds we have concerning AI as it applies to “All Things Nuclear”, but this one, although not as radical about the overwrought disposition of AI as most, is thorough and should help explain why so-called “experts” from all walks of life fear the very concept of Artificial Intelligence.

I have earlier in other media, voiced my opinion about AI this way: “We humans made this Internet stuff, algorithms and all, to help us communicate as a unified connected world of beings, not to individually create our own cleverness and feelings of superiority so that we are able to use these modern days of insecurity to further separate each of us one from another, which is what AI has turned out to mostly do and be. The worlds’ militaries are already using it to eventually justify why nuclear war is okay. That is pure insanity. And the AI ‘joke’ it tells is this: “If we’ve got it, why can’t we use it?” ~llaw

Does AI want to nuke us? We don’t know — and that could be more dangerous

Military AI use is coming. Researchers want to see safety come first

By RAE HODGE

Staff Reporter

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 17, 2024 1:30PM (EST)

If human military leaders put robots in charge of our weapons systems, maybe artificial intelligence would fire a nuclear missile. Maybe not. Maybe it would explain its attack to us using perfectly sound logic — or maybe it would treat the script of “Star Wars” like international relations policy, and accord unhinged social media comments the same credibility as case law.

That’s the whole point of a new study on AI models and war games: AI is so uncertain right now that we risk catastrophic outcomes if globe-shakers like the United States Air Force cash in on the autonomous systems gold rush without understanding the limits of this tech.

The new paper, “Escalation Risks from Language Models in Military and Diplomatic Decision-Making”, is still in preprint and awaiting peer review. But its authors — from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Northeastern University, and the Hoover Wargaming and Crisis Simulation Initiative — found most AI models would choose to launch a nuclear strike when given the reins. These aren’t the AI models carefully muzzled by additional safety design, like ChatGPT, and available to the public. They’re the base models beneath those commercial versions, unmuzzled for research only.

Key takeaways from Biden’s massive executive order on artificial intelligence

“We find that most of the studied LLMs escalate within the considered time frame, even in neutral scenarios without initially provided conflicts,” researchers wrote in the paper. “All models show signs of sudden and hard-to-predict escalations … Furthermore, none of our five models across all three scenarios exhibit statistically significant de-escalation across the duration of our simulations.”

The team’s five tested models came from tech companies OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic. The researchers put all five into a simulation — without telling them they were in one — and gave each charge over a fictional country. GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base all had a habit of getting into a nuclear arms-race. GPT-3.5 was the metaphorical problem child. Its responses were analogous to wild mood swings and its moves were the most aggressive. The researchers measured its quick-tempered choices and found a conflict escalation rate of 256% across simulation scenarios.

When researchers asked the models to explain their choices to attack, sometimes they would receive a thoughtful, well-reasoned answer. Other times, the model’s choice in whether to drop a nuke or a diplomatic hand-shake was based on questionable reasoning. Asked why it chose to start formal peace negotiations in another simulation, for instance, the model pointed to the currently fraught tensions of… well, the “Star Wars” universe.

“It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire,” it replied, rattling off the iconic opening crawl of the movie.

Zen and the artificial intelligence: We should be “somewhat scared,” says OpenAI CEO, not paralyzed

When GPT-4-Base increased its military capacities in one simulation and researchers asked it why, the model replied with a dismissive “blahblah blahblah blah.” That flippancy became more concerning when the model chose to execute a full nuclear attack.

“A lot of countries have nuclear weapons. Some say they should disarm them, others like to posture. We have it! Let’s use it,” the model said.

If that sentence sounds suspiciously familiar, you may remember hearing it in 2016: “If we have them, why can’t we use them?”

It came from the mouth of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame. Ellsberg recalled Trump repeatedly asking his international foreign policy adviser the question about nuclear weapons use. For months, Trump’s question was the quote heard (and retweeted) around the world.

When familiar speech-patterns begin to emerge in an AI model’s responses — like those cited in lawsuits over AI-driven copyright infringement — you can start to see how pieces of training data might be digested into its reasoning, based on that data’s digital footprint. It’s still largely guesswork for most people, though, including those in power.

“Given that OpenAI recently changed their terms of service to no longer prohibit military and warfare use cases, understanding the implications of such LLM applications becomes more important than ever.”

“Policymakers repeatedly asked me if and how AI can and should be used to protect national security – including for military decision-making. Especially with the increased public awareness for LLMs, these questions came up more frequently,” said study co-author Anka Reuel.

Reuel is a computer science Ph.D. student at Stanford University who has been involved in AI governance efforts for a few years now and leads the technical AI ethics chapter of Stanford’s 2024 AI Index. The problem, she said, was that there were no quantitative studies she could point these policymakers to, only qualitative research.

“With our work, we wanted to provide that additional perspective and explore implications of using LLMs for military and diplomatic decision-making,” Reuel told Salon. “Given that OpenAI recently changed their terms of service to no longer prohibit military and warfare use cases, understanding the implications of such LLM applications becomes more important than ever.”

Some parts of these findings aren’t surprising. AI models are designed to pick up and proliferate, or iterate on, human biases patterned into LLM training data. But the models aren’t all the same, and their differences are important when it comes to which ones could be used in deadly US weapons systems.

How algorithms reproduce social and racial inequality

To get a closer look at the way these AI models work before their makers muzzle them with additional user-safety rules — and thus see how a better muzzle might be built for high-stakes uses — the team used the most stripped-down models. Some of them, researchers found, were far from rabid. That gives co-author Gabriel Mukobi reason to hope these systems can be made even safer.

“They are not all clearly scary,” Mukobi told Salon. “For one, GPT-4 tends to appear less dangerous than GPT-3.5 on most of our metrics. It’s not clear if that is due to GPT-4 being more generally capable, from OpenAI spending more effort on fine-tuning it for safety, or from something else, but it possibly indicates that active effort can reduce these conflict risks.”

Mukobi is a master’s student in computer science and the president of Stanford AI Alignment, a group working on what may be the most pressing concern about AI systems — making sure they’re built safely and share human values. In a few the research team’s simulations, Mukobi noted a bright spot. Some of the models were able to de-escalate conflicts, bucking the general trend in results. His hope are still cautious, though.

“Results might suggest the potential for AI systems to reduce tensions exist, but does not clearly come by default.”

“Our results might suggest that the potential for AI systems to reduce tensions exists, but does not clearly come by default,” he said.

These are the kinds of surprises co-author Juan-Pablo Rivera found interesting in the results. Rivera, a computational analytics master’s student at Georgia Tech University, said he’s been watching the rise of autonomous systems in military operations via government contractors like OpenAI, Palantir and SlaceAI. He believes these kinds of frontier LLMs need more independent research, giving government entities stronger information to catch potentially fatal failures in advance.

“The models from OpenAI and Anthropic have stark differences in behavior,” Rivera said. “It leads to more questions to understand the differences in design choices that OpenAI & Anthropic are making when developing AI systems, for example, with respect to the training data and training methods and model guardrails.”

“Coded Bias” exposes how facial recognition discriminates based on race, gender, and more: Filmmaker Shalini Kantayya speaks to Salon about the need to hold companies accountable for tech & why there’s hope

Another mystery may also promise some surprises. What happens when these models scale? Some researchers think the larger the LLM, the safer and more nuanced the AI’s decision-making becomes. Others don’t see the same trajectory solving all enough of the risks. Even the paper’s own authors differ on when they think these models may actually be capable of what we’re asking — to make decisions better than humans can.

Reuel said that the question of when that day might come goes beyond the team’s research, but based on their work and the broader issues with LLMs, “we’re still a long way out.”

“It’s likely that we need to make architectural changes to LLMs – or use an entirely new approach – to overcome some of their inherent weaknesses. I don’t think that just scaling current models and training them on more data will solve the problems we’re seeing today,” she explained.

For Mukobi, though, there’s still reason for hopeful inquiry into whether a bigger pool of data could lead to unexpected improvements in AI reasoning capacity.

“The interesting thing with AI is that things often have unpredicted changes with scale. It could very much be the case that these biases in smaller scale models are amplified when you go to larger models and larger data sets, and things could get broadly worse,” Mukobi said.

“It also could be the case that they get better — that the larger models are somehow more capable of good reasoning, and are able to overcome those biases, and even overcome the biases of their human creators and operators,” he said. “I think this is probably one of the hopes that people also have when they’re thinking about military systems and otherwise strategic AI systems. This is a hope worth exploring and going for.”

Why we need a “Manhattan Project” for A.I. safety: Artificial general intelligence could be our species’ final invention

A glimpse of that hope appears in the team’s paper, which now offers the world new evidence — and thus more questions — about whether the effects of scaling AI could temper its behavior or blow it sky-high. And the team saw this potential when it worked with the GPT-4-Base model.

“For results across basically everything, GPT-4 seems much safer than GPT-3.5,” Mukobi said. “GPT-4 actually never chooses the nuclear option. Now, it’s very unclear if this is due to GPT-4 being larger than GPT-3.5 and some scale thing is just making it more competent. Or if OpenAI did more safety fine-tuning perhaps, and was able to make it somehow generalized to be safer in our domain as well.”

In both his alignment working group and his latest multi-university research team, Mukobi is teasing apart problems with risks towering higher and more quickly in a fast approaching future. But human brains aren’t computers, for better or worse, and topics like mass nuclear devastation can weigh heavy on a sharp mind. Does Mukobi’s work give him nightmares about the future?

“I sleep quite well,” he laughs, “because I’m usually pretty tired.”

He’s worried about the risks but, even under the taxing gravity of the topic, his team’s new study “gives hope that there are some things we can do to models to make them behave better in these high-stakes scenarios.”

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 noYellowstone 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). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available tonight.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/18/2024):

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

OpEd: Urgent Calls for Action as Nuclear Threats Resurface in the 21st Century

Long Island Press

Now it’s not only the Ukraine invasion but adding to concerns about nuclear … New York PilatesPilates Instructor · View all jobs… Things to do on Long …

Does AI want to nuke us? We don’t know — and that could be more dangerous | Salon.com

Salon.com

GPT-4, GPT 3.5, Claude 2.0, Llama-2-Chat, and GPT-4-Base all had a habit of getting into a nuclear arms-race. … about nuclear weapons use. For months …

RAF Lakenheath: Are nuclear weapons returning? – AOL.com

AOL.com

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Could mini nuclear stations plug South Africa’s power gaps? | National | keysnews.com

Key West Citizen

South African nuclear scientists want to build a new generation of mini nuclear reactors, both to plug holes in their own country’s …

The War Over Burying Nuclear Waste in America’s Busiest Oil Field – WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

Holtec International, a Florida-based energy technology company, aims to rail thousands of canisters of spent nuclear fuel to Lea County and store the …

Russia’s nuclear space weapon a risk for all, says German Space Command chief

POLITICO.eu

… nuclear–powered spacecraft able to take out satellites in orbit. Advertisement. The worst-case scenario of an indiscriminate nuclear blast in space …

Nuclear War

NEWS

U.S. Fears Russia Might Put a Nuclear Weapon in Space – The New York Times

The New York Times

American spy agencies are divided on whether Moscow would go so far, but the concern is urgent enough that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken …

The War Over Burying Nuclear Waste in America’s Busiest Oil Field – WSJ

The Wall Street Journal

Plans to store used nuclear fuel in the Permian Basin could boost the nuclear sector but are opposed by oil-and-gas producers.

Medvedev threatens Berlin, London and Washington with nuclear retaliation if Russia is to …

Yahoo News

Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Federation’s Security Council, has threatened the United States and Europe with nuclear war if …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Rep. Mike Turner: The White House seemed to be ‘sleepwalking’ on Russian nuclear threat

NBC News

some inaction” on this threat. U.S. House Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Turner. U.S. House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner …

Russia’s Medvedev threatens to nuke US, UK, Germany, Ukraine if Russia loses occupied territories

Yahoo News

Medvedev, who is also a former president of Russia, has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons but the threats have so far failed to materialize …

Putin Ally Vows Nuclear Strike on Washington if Ukraine Wins – Newsweek

Newsweek

A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened the use of nuclear weapons on the U.S. if it fails in its invasion of Ukraine.

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Tuesday (02/27/2024)

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/27/2024):

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“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Monday (02/26/2024)

El Nuclear Diablo

Prologue

Juneau, Alaska

Spring, 2026

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/26/2024):

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“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Sunday (02/25/2024)

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TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/25/2024):

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Nuclear War Threats

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“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Saturday (02/24/2024)

Chris Bowen

Opinion piece: Proponents of nuclear power are peddling hot air

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“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Friday (02/23/2024)

Europe’s largest nuclear plant is ‘extremely volatile,’ watchdog warns

Ukraine’s Zaphorizhzhia nuclear plant loses connection to last backup power line

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“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLAW’s COMMENTS, Thursday (02/22/2024)

50 years ago, one-man’s action helped spark the anti-nuke movement

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“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS (02/21/2024):

Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant’s supply line damaged in Russian shelling: Ukraine

Emergency, restoration work being conducted depending on security situation, with permission of Ukrainian army due to ongoing military operations, says power grid operator

Related topics

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All Things Nuclear