“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 08, 2024

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LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Monday, (07/08/2024)

It amazes me that we aren’t seeing more financial investments news concerning the entire ‘power’ industry, and especially revelations about why the nuclear industry is, as it always has been, based upon little more than hype, propaganda, and the industry’s dreams and fictional industry hubris.

The industry won’t even discuss the availability of future fuel products and how they are mined, milled, refined and how limited the uranium market may be to provide costly U308 and who controls the refining markets. Russia controls about 83% of the entire nuclear market, by the way. A new nuclear power plant without fuel is useless, of course, but at least it is safer . . . ~llaw

Explains why investing in the nuclear power industry is profoundly stupid

Jul 8, 2024

by Aaron Larson

POWER is at the forefront of the global power market, providing in-depth news and insight on the end-to-end electricity system and the ongoing energy transition. We strive to be the “go-to” resource for power professionals, offering a wealth of information on innovative business practices, sound safety measures, useful productivity enhancements, and much more.

Analyst Says Nuclear Industry Is ‘Totally Irrelevant’ in the Market for New Power Capacity

Nuclear power has consistently provided about 19% to 20% of total annual U.S. electricity generation since 1990. It provides significant amounts of electricity in many other countries as well.

According to data from The World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), a total of 414 reactors were operating in 32 countries, as of July 1, 2024. Preliminary data says China generated the second-most electricity from nuclear power in 2023 (behind the U.S.), while France came in third and had the highest percentage share of national power generation from nuclear power at 65%.

Many power industry experts and environmental activists consider nuclear power an important component in the world’s transition to carbon-free energy. Yet, Mycle Schneider, an independent international analyst on energy and nuclear policy, and coordinator, editor, and publisher of the annual WNISR, said, “in [new] capacity terms, the nuclear industry, from what is going on, on the ground, is totally irrelevant.”

Schneider was speaking as a guest on The POWER Podcast and prefaced his statement by comparing nuclear power additions to solar power additions in recent years. “Let’s look at China, because China is the only country that has been massively building nuclear power plants over the past 20 years,” he said.

“China connected one reactor to the grid in 2023—one gigawatt. In the same year, they connected, and the numbers vary, but over 200 gigawatts of solar alone. Solar power generates more electricity in China than nuclear power since 2022. And, of course, wind power generates more than nuclear power in China for a decade already,” Schneider said. Furthermore, he noted, the disparity has gone “completely unnoticed by the general public or even within the energy professionals that are in Europe or often also in North America.”

Schneider said the media often gives the impression that the nuclear industry is booming, but the facts suggest otherwise. “Over the past 20 years—2004 to 2023—104 reactors were closed down and 102 started up,” Schneider said. “But here is important that almost half, 49 of those new reactors started, were in China [where none closed], so the balance outside China is minus 51.”

Some nuclear advocates might suggest that things are changing. They might argue that small modular reactors (SMRs) or other advanced designs are poised to reinvigorate the industry. But Schneider disagrees. He noted that since the construction start of the second unit at Hinkley Point C in the UK in 2019—almost five years ago—there have been 35 nuclear project construction starts in the world. Twenty-two of those were in China and the other 13 were all implemented by the Russian nuclear industry in a few different countries. “Nothing else. Not an SMR here or an SMR there, or a large reactor here or a large reactor there by any other player,” reported Schneider.

Meanwhile, history has shown that the nuclear industry struggles to meet timeline targets. As examples, Schneider noted that on Jan. 1, 2022, 16 reactors were scheduled to come online during the following year. Only seven actually did. In 2023, nine were planned to come online, but only five made it to the grid. This demonstrates how bad the industry is at scheduling—it can’t even predict project completion at a high rate of accuracy during the final year of construction. “How precise could it possibly be if there are predictions for 2030, 2035, 2040, for reactors that don’t even have a [design] license yet?” asked Schneider.

Notably, timelines haven’t always improved on later units. Schneider said the EPR units have demonstrated a “negative learning curve.” Specifically, the first EPR units to enter commercial operation were at the Taishan site in China, which came online in 2018 and 2019. They had a shorter construction time than Olkiluoto 3 in Finland, which started construction about four years prior to Taishan but didn’t enter commercial operation until 2023. Flamanville 3 in France began construction in 2007 and hasn’t yet entered commercial operation. It could end up having a construction period even longer than Olkiluoto 3. To cap it all off, Schneider said the Hinkley Point C EPR units could be even longer than Flamanville 3.

“By the way, you can also show that through the building history of nuclear reactors in France—it’s actually a negative learning curve,” said Schneider. Furthermore, with so few reactors being constructed, learnings are limited.

Schneider noted that the vast majority of new capacity being added to the grid is from solar and wind energy. “These guys are building tens of thousands of wind turbines, and literally hundreds of millions of solar cells, so the learning effect is just absolutely stunning,” he said. “On the nuclear side, we’re talking about a handful. That’s very difficult. Very, very difficult—very challenging—to have a learning effect with so few units.”

Schneider said the nuclear discussion in general needs a “really thorough reality check.” He suggested the possibilities and feasibilities must be investigated. “Then, choices can be made on a solid basis,” he said.

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There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Monday, (07/08/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Analyst Says Nuclear Industry Is ‘Totally Irrelevant’ in the Market for New Power Capacity

POWER Magazine

Some nuclear advocates might suggest that things are changing. … Twenty-two of those were in China and the other 13 were all implemented by the …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

No emergency after Duke Energy nuclear plant sirens go off, Wake County officials say

ABC11

RALEIGH, N.C. (WTVD) — Wake County reported emergency sirens went off at the Duke Energy Harris Nuclear Plant in southwest Raleigh Monday morning …

No emergency after sirens sound at Harris Nuclear Plant, Wake County officials say

CBS 17

(WNCN) — Wake County officials want the public to know there is no emergency, despite sirens going off around the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant …

Monday AM siren at Harris Nuclear Plant is no emergency, Wake County says

The News & Observer

Wake County officials said there was no emergency tied to to the sounding of alert sirens Monday morning at Duke Energy’s Shearon Harris Nuclear …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

No emergency after sirens sound at Harris Nuclear Plant, Wake County officials say

CBS 17

(WNCN) — Wake County officials want the public to know there is no emergency, despite sirens going off around the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant …

No emergency after Duke Energy nuclear plant sirens go off, Wake County officials say

ABC11

(WTVD) — Wake County reported emergency sirens went off at the Duke Energy Harris Nuclear Plant in southwest Raleigh Monday morning. There is no …

No emergency after sirens sound at NC nuclear power plant – WFMY News 2

WFMY News 2

— Sirens went off at a nuclear power plant in Holly Springs, NC early Monday morning, but officials want the public to know there is no emergency.

Nuclear War

NEWS

Putin: No need for nuclear weapons in Ukraine; keeps option open – VOA News

VOA News

“Reliance on nuclear threats and signals is an enduring trend in Russia’s activities amid the war in Ukraine,” said Heather Williams, senior …

The US and Europe would be safer with Ukraine in NATO. Our war games showed why.

Atlantic Council

Both sides had strong incentives to avoid a direct NATO-Russia conflict—one that could result in nuclear war. This finding corresponds with …

Ukraine-Russia war live: Kyiv children’s hospital hit during daytime missile attack | The Independent

The Independent

The hospital was hit amid a Russian barrage that targeted five Ukrainian cities and killed at least 36 people while injuring almost 130 others.

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

US Mayors for Peace Call for Dialogue in a Time of Nuclear Danger – ScheerPost

ScheerPost

The Russian war on Ukraine, with its attendant nuclear threats, and an intensifying array of antagonisms among nuclear-armed governments in …

Putin warns NATO: Don’t provide too much military support for Ukraine | Jefferson City News Tribune

Jefferson City News Tribune

“Reliance on nuclear threats and signals is an enduring trend in Russia’s activities amid the war in Ukraine,” said Heather Williams, senior …

AP: Ukraine war nears most dangerous phase, Putin makes alarming statement – ФАКТИ.БГ

ФАКТИ.БГ

Nuclear threats are one means of signaling the Kremlin’s commitment to winning the war in the hope of deterring Western intervention. Putin said 

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 07, 2024

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ChatGPT & DALL-E generated allegorical image representing the extreme costs and duration of cleaning up a nuclear generation facility when it’s closed.

LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Sunday, (07/07/2024)

The following is an article from 4 years ago when I was Posting under a slightly abbreviated Facebook name that I have saved for posterity to see what has been done about this issue today. The answer is, sadly, nothing; however the problem has only grown severely worse and yet we are irrationally thinking as a global community to make the issue far worse, far more expensive and, incredibly, far more dangerous to all life on planet Earth — of course including our own . . . llaw

ChatGPT & DALL-E generated allegorical image representing the extreme costs and duration of cleaning up a nuclear generation facility when it’s closed.

US Nuclear Site Cleanup Underfunded By Up To $70 Billion

4 years ago by Michael Barnard (See author’s short bio following the articele)

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Headlines out of the UK are pointing out the horrible state of affairs for nuclear generation decommissioning after a committee of Members of Parliament that the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority really doesn’t have a handle on the 17 sites, their costs, or the vendors they selected for cleanup. They are currently projecting $177 billion and 120 years for the full decommissioning, over $1 billion per site. Some of this is due to botched procurement, with two different cleanup vendors stripped of their contracts.

Some US commenters were feeling chuffed, although that’s not a term they would use, that the US was handling things so much better. But the USA isn’t far behind the UK in problems, it just isn’t as public.

Per the World Nuclear Association:

In the USA, utilities are collecting 0.1 to 0.2 cents/kWh to fund decommissioning. They must then report regularly to the NRC on the status of their decommissioning funds. About two-thirds of the total estimated cost of decommissioning all US nuclear power reactors has already been collected, leaving a liability of about $9 billion to be covered over the remaining operating lives of about 100 reactors (on the basis of an average of $320 million per unit). NRC data for the end of 2018 indicated that there was a combined total of $64.7 billion held in the decommissioning trust funds covering the 119 operational and retired US nuclear power reactors.

An OECD Nuclear Energy Agency survey published in 2016 reported US dollar (2013) costs in response to a wide survey. For US reactors the expected total decommissioning costs range from $544 to $821 million; for units over 1100 MWe the costs ranged from $0.46 to $0.73 million per MWe, for units half that size, costs ranged from $1.07 to $1.22 million per MWe. For Finland’s Loviisa (2 x 502 MWe) the estimate was €326 million. For a Swiss 1000 MWe PWR the detailed estimate amounts to CHF 663 million (€617 million). In Slovakia, a detailed case study showed a total cost of €1.14 billion to decommission Bohunice V1 (2 x 440 MWe) and dismantle it by 2025.

[Brief aside: I love the World Nuclear Association, because they are actually honest and report details that contradict their mission. I cite them on Germany’s wholesale electricity prices, which they freely admit are among the lowest in Europe as that country ramps up renewables rapidly and dumps nuclear. They aren’t just a lobbying organization, although they are an industry-funded lobbying association. Unlike the equivalent oil and gas organizations, they seem compelled to be honest and complete, perhaps because being honest and complete usually isn’t so disgustingly horrific for them, just simply bad.]

Back to the thread. The US has collected a bunch of money from operating reactors into a cleanup fund that they acknowledge is underfunded to the tune of billions already. But the industry estimates show that they are collecting under half of what it will actually take to decommission the sites.

There are about 100 reactors in the United States. Assuming they collect the $320 million per reactor (they won’t, as reactors are closing prematurely), they would have a fund of $32 billion. But they need a fund of closer to $70 billion, and they are short regardless. So the US fleet cleanup is going to cost the taxpayer probably closer to an additional $40 billion, if it all goes according to the estimates.

Note that the UK and Slovakia examples show that it usually doesn’t, just as building new nuclear never seems to come in on time or budget. The reality is going to be closer to the European and Slovakian costs, so let’s assume a billion per reactor as a reasonable number.

The US will have maybe $30 billion. They’ll need $100 billion. Yeah, $70 billion is the more reasonable number.

“A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

– US Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen

Of course, this is on top of the $1.6 billion annual tax breaks nuclear plants in the US get, the $10 billion liability insurance cap with the taxpayer holding the bill should a Fukushima-scale disaster occur and the state-level boondoggles like the $1.1 billion Ohio subsidy that came with a side helping of $60 million in bribes.

Nuclear power is going to be the gift that keeps on returning fiscal dividends for a century.

That’s why Brookfield bought the bankrupt Toshiba Westinghouse division, for the long-term, guaranteed decommissioning revenue. SNC Lavalin bought Canada’s CANDU for the same reason, although I’m sure they are at the trough on the Canadian SMR idiocy too.

As a note, the nuclear industry’s cleanup being thrown on the taxpayers’ back is a drop in the bucket compared to the cleanup for coal, oil, and gas extraction and refinement, the majority of which will be funded by taxpayers. In the past, I reported that Alberta’s oil and gas cleanup bill will be $200 billion more than the amount they have set aside. That’s one Canadian province, albeit the worst of the Canadian ones. Doubling that for the rest of the country suggests a $400 billion shortfall for the country around oil and gas. The standard guideline is multiply the Canadian number by 10 for the US, so there’s probably in the range of $4 trillion unfunded oil and gas cleanup in the US. Certainly the nuclear set-aside doesn’t give any comfort that the fossil fuel industry is doing any better. Being $70 billion short on the nuclear cleanup starts to look like chump change when you consider potentially $4 trillion for oil and gas.

---

This isn’t exactly a secret. Nuclear projects always go over budget and over schedule, and there is exactly zero reason to believe decommissioning estimates provided by the industry. So why have jurisdictions been building more nuclear plants, whether at the egregious but at least honest costs of Hinkley, or the massively underestimated but increasingly obvious costs of the Virgil C. Summer and Vogtle sites? Three reasons.

The first is the magic of net present value. That calculates the value of future dollars today given inflation. Just as a thousand bucks bought a lot more in 1990 than it does today, in 2050 it will buy a lot less than it does today. That means that liabilities that will be incurred decades in the future approach zero cost in today’s cost benefit analysis. Can you say generational inequity?

The second is ideology. When really blatantly obvious economic sense gets thrown out the window, you start looking around for irrationality or graft. A lot of conservatives really hate onshore wind because it spoils the views from their manses (UK) or ranches (US) or country estates (Oz). They also think of wind and solar as inadequate hippy shit. They think nuclear is the answer. These are opinions that they formed in the 1970s or perhaps the 1980s, but conservatives have a stronger tendency to not let empirical reality change their mind. So Hinkley, Vogtle, and Summer are a triumph of ideology over reality.

The third is graft. When we start talking about $10 billion or more to build a plant, billions in subsidies, and another billion to take the thing apart, a lot of people start rubbing their hands together and figuring out who they have to bribe now to get a big payoff later. The entire regulatory structure in the two states that had nuclear plants in construction until recently when one was finally put out of the state’s fiscal misery were both structured so that no matter how much the utility spent, it was guaranteed a set profit. If they built a $15 billion nuclear plant, they made a lot of profit off of the rate payers. If they built $2 billion worth of wind and solar instead, they made a lot less money off of the rate payers. It’s dumb as a box of hammers, but it’s part of the reason a lot of utilities love nuclear, and coal-generation carbon capture schemes to boot. They are licenses to print money.

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Outside of China, where they have trained resources who can build nuclear plants who would be mediocre at building wind and solar (which they are building a lot more of) and nuclear plants will displace coal plants, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to build new nuclear. The looming decommissioning debacle is just the icing on the cake.

Wind and solar have proven themselves to be vastly cheaper, completely reliable on grids, and easy to integrate in very large amounts. Their decommissioning costs are trivial. That’s yet another reason why nuclear is dead, but pretending it’s not.

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Michael Barnard

is a climate futurist, strategist and author. He spends his time projecting scenarios for decarbonization 40-80 years into the future. He assists multi-billion dollar investment funds and firms, executives, Boards and startups to pick wisely today. He is founder and Chief Strategist of TFIE Strategy Inc and a member of the Advisory Board of electric aviation startup FLIMAX. He hosts the Redefining Energy – Tech podcast (https://shorturl.at/tuEF5) , a part of the award-winning Redefining Energy team.

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Sunday, (07/07/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Putin warns NATO: Don’t provide too much military support for Ukraine | Jefferson City News Tribune

Jefferson City News Tribune

“Active nuclear deterrence means the possibility of using nuclear … All rights reserved. This document may not be reprinted without the express …

Ukraine vies for NATO membership ahead of the group’s meeting in Washington, D.C.

WVTF

All Things Considered · BBC World Service · Fresh Air · Full Disclosure · Here … KAKISSIS: The West had offered security assurances in the past in …

Ukraine vies for NATO membership ahead of the group’s meeting in Washington, D.C.

Nuclear Power

NEWS

‘Significant Risk Of Failure To Deliver’: Weber Raises Concern Over Micro Nuclear Reactor Projects

YouTube

During a House Science Committee hearing prior to the Congressional recess, Rep. Randy Weber (R-TX) questioned Dept. of Energy Deputy Secretary, …

Gulf Energy supports nuclear power, urges public education on – Nation Thailand

Nation Thailand

Energy giant Gulf says nuclear power safe and feasible for Thailand but govt must communicate effectively. Ratthaphol Cheunsomchit, deputy chief …

Public Vote on Nuclear Power Plant Sparks Debate in Kazakhstan | OilPrice.com

Oil Price

Kazakhstan is holding a referendum on whether to build a nuclear power plant, sparking debate over energy diversification, environmental risks, …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

One dead, one still missing in Lake Erie near Perry Nuclear Power Plant – News-Herald

News-Herald

or log in to your account. Share Button Disabled. Subscribe Log in. emergency siren. (Metro Creative Connection). Author. By Chad Felton | cfelton@ …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Where Putin stands on using nuclear weapons to win Russia’s war in Ukraine | PBS News

PBS

As the war in Ukraine turned slowly in Moscow’s favor this summer, Putin declared he doesn’t need nuclear weapons to achieve his go

The Nuclear Taboo Is a Myth – Lawfare

Lawfare

Public opinion can support the use of nuclear weapons in conflicts. Governments need stronger checks against pushing the button.

Russian State TV Discusses Nuclear Attack on Ukraine – Newsweek

Newsweek

A Kremlin propagandist cited a poll that found a third of Russians do not oppose a nuclear strike on Ukraine amid the ongoing war.

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Where Putin stands on using nuclear weapons to win Russia’s war in Ukraine | PBS News

PBS

“Russian leadership may be assuming it has more at stake in Ukraine than NATO, and nuclear threats are one means of signaling its commitment to …

The Nuclear Taboo Is a Myth – Lawfare

Lawfare

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has similarly warned that nuclear risks are the highest they have been in decades and that the threat is …

Nobel prize winning scientists raise alarm on nuclear war threat – The Australian

The Australian

Nobel prize winning scientists raise alarm on nuclear war threat. Thirty … Their declaration comes after repeated nuclear threats from …

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 07, 2024

1

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LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Saturday, (07/06/2024)

This Post is for as reference for anyone who wants to understand the beginnings of enabling the prolific design, engineering, construction, legalities, safety and security, and operations of licensing of new Small Modular (nuclear) Reactors (SMRs). I have posted the material provided by the IAEA here for the edification and continuing education of public interest (including my own) in what will no doubt be a serious, if not fatal, desire to use nuclear power by individual governments and corporations with individual needs that require individual characteristics of proposed operational nuclear power facilities.

My only comment at this point is that moving forward with such an effort borders on inanity (or even insanity) that could lead us headlong toward new stumbling steps closer to helping ourselves toward self-destruction in more ways than I care to count this evening. I will study the preliminaries here (as I hope some of you will do) and I will respond with my own no doubt very negative thoughts at a future date. ~llaw

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Application of the Principle of Defence in Depth in Nuclear Safety to Small Modular Reactors

INSAG Series No. 28

English STI/PUB/2094 ¦ 978-92-0-121724-0

14 pages ¦ € 30.00 ¦ Date published: 2024

https://doi.org/10.61092/iaea.w9s3-1k5y

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Description

This publication developed by the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group (INSAG) supplements its advice provided in INSAG-10 underscoring application of the principle of defence in depth in nuclear safety for small modular reactors and related emerging technologies. It is intended to stimulate discussion and to promote practical action at all levels to enhance safety of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). INSAG provides recommendations on current and emerging nuclear safety issues to the IAEA, the nuclear community, and the public. The report is intended for use by governmental authorities and by the nuclear industry and its supporting organizations. In particular, the intended audience includes national decision makers for nuclear power programmes using small modular reactors (SMRs), researchers and designers in this field and nuclear and radiation safety experts.

More Information on reusing IAEA copyright material.

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Saturday, (07/06/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

North Koreans got jobs at Fortune 500 companies to fund the nuclear weapons program

WUNC

… nuclear weapons program … All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:30 PM Marketplace. 0:00. 0:00. All Things …

North Koreans got jobs at Fortune 500 companies to fund the nuclear weapons program

KETR

… nuclear weapons program … All Things Considered. Next Up: 8:00 PM Reveal. 0:00. 0:00. All Things …

North Koreans got jobs at Fortune 500 companies to fund the nuclear weapons program

NPR

All Things Considered · Fresh Air · Up First. Featured. The NPR Politics Podcast · Throughline · Trump’s Trials · Wild Card with Rachel Martin · More …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Application of the Principle of Defence in Depth in Nuclear Safety to Small Modular Reactors

International Atomic Energy Agency

In particular, the intended audience includes national decision makers for nuclear power programmes using small modular reactors (SMRs), researchers …

1 Nuclear Energy Stock to Buy Now for Data Center Upside | Nasdaq

Nasdaq

Nuclear energy stocks are gaining attention as tech giants seek reliable, carbon-free power for data centers, with Constellation Energy emerging …

Newbuilds: US NEI Lobbies for Cost Overrun Protection for New Nuclear

Energy Intelligence

The US Nuclear Energy Institute is preparing a proposal in Washington to provide nuclear newbuild protection from project delays and cost …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Putin sees no need for nuclear weapons to win in Ukraine. But he’s also keeping his options open

ABC News – The Walt Disney Company

Since the war began, hawks have urged a revision of the doctrine, which says Moscow could use nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear strike or an …

Jeremy Shapiro, Author at War on the Rocks – War on the Rocks

Full Coverage

Putin sees no need for nuclear weapons to win in Ukraine. But he’s also keeping his options open

AP News

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s message to NATO was simple and stark: Don’t go too far in providing military support for Ukraine, …

What would happen if Russia detonated a nuclear bomb in space? – Washington Post

Washington Post

A mysterious satellite known as Cosmos 2553 has raised concerns that Russia is conducting tests that could lead to a nuclear weapon in space.

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Putin doesn’t need nuclear weapons to win in Ukraine. But he is keeping his options open

AP News

“Reliance on nuclear threats and signals is an enduring trend in … nuclear war over a false launch warning. Hawks urged Putin to move …

Russia Threatens Nuclear Doctrine ‘Amendments’ amid Ukraine War – Newsweek

Newsweek

… threats, while Kremlin propagandists have suggested missile strikes … The threat of Russia resorting to nuclear weapons has hung over the war …

Ignoring the threat | Opinion | dailyitem.com

The Daily Item

Our country and the world face two existential threats, climate change and nuclear war. Climate change is already with us. We must act now along …

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Yellowstone supervolcano eruption could trigger ‘nuclear winter’ and mass deaths – MSN

MSN

Two large reservoirs full of magma exist beneath the Yellowstone Caldera: one that’s about three to ten miles beneath the surface, and another that’s …

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 06, 2024

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LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Friday, (07/05/2024)

The following “Countercurrents” article is a well-stated example of the ‘interim’ between ‘now’ and ‘then’, full of human confusion, uncertainty, dread, and fear we have of the future so long as there is the constant threat of Nuclear War that may only be prevented temporarily by what is called “deterrence”, which, in my opinion, cannot prohibit nuclear war forever because there are financial and technical limits to the constant expansion of nuclear arsenals to keep other nuclear nations at bay. Although the word ‘deterrence’ is not mentioned in the article, the well-described associated problems and weaknesses of ‘deterrence’ are very well covered by the author.

But the only possible way to achieve his valiant point of view and hope for world peace and thereby avoid nuclear war will never happen unless we are trusting enough as independent nations to come together long enough to destroy forever and/or make absolutely inaccessible ‘all things nuclear’ including not only weapons of mass destruction, but also nuclear reactor power generation, which in a war environment, will become themselves weapons of nuclear mass destruction even if we manage to environmentally safely control them, which, in reality, will not be the case.

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And, contrary to the propaganda of industry opinion, uranium is mined, extracted from the earth, no differently than any other non-renewable CO2-belching (coal, oil, gas, etc.) except that the more extensively refined uranium fuel product burns with much less waste of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses, but that is certainly no trade-off for nuclear radiation from nuclear reactors as well as nuclear waste, that is far more poisonous and universally dangerous to human and other life than all the other non-renewable fueled power plants combined. ~llaw

Can we rest assured that just because of the unacceptably high costs of nuclear war and World War III, these will never happen?

in World

by Bharat Dogra

05/07/2024

In the middle of several very serious questions haunting humanity today the one which looms over all others is this terrible one—how high is the possibility of World War 3/ nuclear war and how destructive this will be?

Even those who take an optimistic view of the existing situation do not deny the obvious fact that weapons of mass destruction that exist with just the two biggest nuclear weapon powers (over 10,000 nuclear weapons plus other weapons) have the capacity to destroy most life on earth several times over. They base their optimism mainly on their view that just because the risks of a large-scale nuclear war are so unacceptably high, this will never be allowed to actually happen by the world leadership and no matter how serious the hostilities become, some solution will always be found to avoid a war that has the capacity to destroy all sides.

Can this optimism be accepted? Is this optimism justified? Is this optimism good for reducing worries and tensions of people, or is it likely to prove extremely harmful by creating a false assurance of safety and thereby avoiding much-needed safety steps? Do the actual risks remain unacceptably high?

What is at stake here is so huge—the very survival of life on planet—that even a low probability of an all-out nuclear war should be seen as extremely dangerous. If for example a 5% probability of this existed till about a few years ago, then this was a very serious matter and if this has now increased to about 10% then this is a much more serious matter. If this probability now appears to show a further increasing trend then this makes the situation even more alarming.

On the whole we can say definitely that the probability of a life-destroying nuclear war today is unacceptably high and it shows all the signs of worsening further.

There are two aspects that need to be considered here, firstly the state of world leadership and governance and secondly certain technological factors.

It is extremely unfortunate that when international peace and cooperation are needed more than ever before to avoid the most catastrophic situations, the world leadership has been increasingly exposed in recent times for its glaring failures to achieve such peace and cooperation. In fact it is no exaggeration to say that at a time when the need for moving fast on the path of peace, disarmament and cooperation is the highest, world leadership has been instead moving in the reverse direction, as evident from increasing superpower rivalries and tensions as well as breakdown and non-renewal of important disarmament treaties or agreements.

In addition there are several serious environmental problems which together threaten to disrupt life-nurturing conditions of earth if not checked in time. To resolve these in time, apart from strong community actions, close international cooperation is also needed but this too is denied by increasing big power disputes and rivalries, as well as inability of the most of the rich countries to adopt a caring attitude towards the needs of poorer and most vulnerable countries. This is mentioned here as another example of the failure of world leadership to get its priorities right and resolve the most urgent problems before it is too late.

The most dangerous aspect of increasing irresponsibility shown by the leadership of big powers is their apparent willingness to pursue their rivalries and hostilities in ways that bring them closer to the possibilities of direct war ( in addition to the several proxy wars they have fought and are fighting). Despite warnings by some of their most senior statesmen and diplomats, the USA and its close allies persisted with the relentless eastward expansion of NATO, thereby increasing tensions with Russia. This worsened with a coup in Ukraine assisted by them, followed by pushing Ukraine relentlessly towards increasing hostility with Russia. In the course of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, USA and close allies have increasingly taken decisions that can lead to direct confrontation of Russia with USA and its close allies/ NATO. New red lines have been drawn and crossed several times in the recent past.

The spread of dangerous ideas among elites and the absence of adequate training in commitment to peace makes them more susceptible to pursue irrational hostility rather than peace, and it is from these elites that the most decisive posts are filled and it is these elites that comprise the deep establishment.

Secondly, regarding the technological aspects, the extremely high speed at which nuclear weapons can be made to reach their targets makes it difficult to correct serious mistakes. It is possible in times of high tensions to mistake normal weapon delivery as nuclear weapon delivery and take retaliatory actions. There are possibilities of accidents and misunderstandings that can start a nuclear war.

There is huge irrationality and recklessness involved in perpetually living in a state of being just minutes away from doomsday.

The fact that world leadership sees nothing wrong in living this way year after year, endangering the life of billions of people and other life forms, is further evidence of its glaring failure to protect the most crucial interests of the planet and its life.

The previous two world wars were fought over several years and involved prolonged battles in many countries. World War 3 can take a very different shape as so much harm is caused within just a few days that it cannot continue beyond this. However it will be worse than the previous two world wars taken together as within a few days of nuclear warfare and the resulting nuclear winter most people and other life-forms will die or will be left to die. The actual use of just 10% of the existing stock of nuclear weapons will be enough to achieve such a hugely destructive result. 

It is not just a question of whether the probability of this ever happening is 5% or 10%, more or less. The fact is that by any rational reckoning any probability of this happening even at minimum levels is unacceptable. This is a betrayal by world leadership of their most essential responsibility towards people, towards this generation and the next, towards completely innocent children, towards all forms of life.

Hence it is time for the people of the world to rise, led by women and youth, to create an entirely different world where the probability of such huge destruction by weapons and wars is zero, and where all people can live in peace and cooperate to resolve the most important environmental problems in time and ensure that all people can have creative, satisfactory livelihoods to meet their basic needs on a sustainable basis. In short, the world should be firmly on a path based on peace, safety, environmental protection and justice.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Earth without Borders, Man over Machine and A Day in 2071.

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Friday, (07/05/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

Believing in Nuclear Deterrence and Angels – World BEYOND War

World BEYOND War

… all when you’re talking about nuclear bombs getting through. Interestingly, Barash includes in his book a survey of the data on how people who .

Iran’s nuclear ‘restraint’ is policy rather than technology – JNS.org

Jewish News Syndicate

The inside of an uranium conversion facility just outside the city of Isfahan, about 254 miles south of Tehran, Iran, in 2005. Photo by Getty Images.

1 Nuclear Energy Stock to Buy Now for Data Center Upside – The Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail

Real-time index price for Nasdaq Health Care Index (IXHC), along with buy or sell indicators, analysis, charts, historical performance, …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

List of Norwegian towns considering nuclear continues to grow

World Nuclear News

In April last year, the municipality of Vardø in Finnmark proposed nearby Svartnes as a possible site for a nuclear power plant to Norsk Kjernekraft, …

Top Nuclear Power Countries: India Beats Pakistan, But Where Do US, Russia, China Rank?

Times of India

Top Nuclear Power Countries: Did you know that China is building its nuclear stockpile faster than any other country in the world including the US ..

Nuclear power has an advantage not reflected in its average price. It’s price stability, and for …

Tech Xplore

Much of the debate about nuclear power in the month since the Coalition announced its plan to install reactors in seven states has been about …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Framatome awarded further contract at Swiss plant : Corporate – World Nuclear News

World Nuclear News

Framatome has been awarded a contract by Kernkraftwerk Gösgen-Däniken AG to modernise the reactor protection system in the emergency control …

There will be fewer outage schedules until 3 p.m., significant imports and emergency …

unn.ua

… electricity from the Polish power system on an emergency basis. This will … zaporizhzhya-nuclear–power-plant Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Nuclear War

NEWS

Can We Rest Assured That Just Because Of The Unacceptably High Costs Of Nuclear War …

Countercurrents

What is at stake here is so huge—the very survival of life on planet—that even a low probability of an all-out nuclear war should be seen as extremely …

Nuclear arms race intensified during Trump’s presidency – The Hill

The Hill

… nuclear arms race, and a threat of nuclear war against North Korea, all of which have contributed to the increasing likelihood of nuclear war.

Putin believes Trump is sincere about ending war as Moscow conducts nuclear drills

The Independent

Russian attacks kill two and wound 26 in Ukraine. Russian strikes killed two people and wounded 26 in Ukrainian regions stretching from the south to …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

US Mayors for Peace Call for Dialogue in a Time of Nuclear Danger | The Nation

The Nation

The Russian war on Ukraine, with its attendant nuclear threats, and an … Nuclear Dangers.” This is the 19th consecutive year that the USCM …

Europe Has Avoided the Nuke Question For Decades. No Longer. – POLITICO

Politico

During the Cold War, Europe was terrified by the possibility of nuclear war. … And Putin’s nuclear threats have only grown in recent months; in June …

Nuclear arms race intensified during Trump’s presidency – The Hill

The Hill

… nuclear weapons, and Trump’s return to public threats of nuclear war ― this time against Iran. Given this record, as well as Trump’s all-too .

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Etna in eruzione, fontane di lava ed emissione di cenere dal vulcano – YouTube

YouTube

24:53 · Go to channel. Henrys Fork Caldera: Yellowstone’s Last Caldera Eruption Completely in Idaho. Shawn Willsey•183K views · 18:31 · Go to channel …

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 04, 2024

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Ironically, this is the historical meaning of flying the American flag upside down

LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Thursday, (07/04/2024)

. . . an aside Post today to recognize America’s Independence Day, although one could say there is a common thread to this distress flag and the dangerous use of ‘all things nuclear’ . . .

This is what flying the American flag upside down meant until the Supreme Court guy and his wife hung it up out of context!

But, because of that very same Supreme Court and Justice Alito, this original meaning still holds true; perhaps more than ever . . . ~llaw

Ironically, this is the historical meaning of flying the American flag upside down

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Thursday, (07/04/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

The game theory that led to nuclear standoffs – NPR

NPR

Last week, Vladimir Putin vowed to make new nuclear weapons and consider placing them close to NATO countries … All Things Considered · Fresh Air · Up …

Solar Power is about to Leave Nuclear and all other Energy Sources in the Dust – Informed Comment

Informed Comment

By Peter Martin, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University | –. (The Conversation) – Opposition leader Peter Dutton might …

Ukraine war latest: Anti-Putin Russian group involved in setting fire to Russian warship … – Sky News

Sky News

The attack has killed at least five people and injured dozens more. “Inside, everything is damaged, outside everything is also damaged. I’ve got …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Drone attacks continue near Zaporizhzhia plant : Regulation & Safety – World Nuclear News

World Nuclear News

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has called for an immediate stop to drone attacks in the vicinity of the …

LR report predicts new era of zero-emission nuclear–powered ships – Seatrade Maritime

Seatrade Maritime

Nuclear power could transform shipping by preventing emissions, extending ships’ operating lives, and removing the uncertainties surrounding …

Podcast: How are the USA’s historic new Vogtle nuclear units doing?

World Nuclear News

Southern Nuclear’s Senior Vice President at Vogtle 3 and 4, John Williams, on the achievement of completing the first new US nuclear power units …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Sirens Wail At New Jersey Nuclear Plants, It Was Just a Test, Officials Confirm

Shore News Network

… Emergency Alert System messages if an actual emergency occurs. Residents seeking additional information or the yearly siren testing schedule can …

Amid electricity shortages, emergency aid was received from the EU, today there are …

unn.ua

… emergency assistance from the power systems of Poland and Slovakia. “Today … zaporizhzhya-nuclear–power-plant Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Flight Forced To Make Emergency Landing After Passengers Served Spoiled Food – Channel 10

Channel 10

Flight Forced To Make Emergency Landing After Passengers Served Spoiled Food … Statement From AEMO And CSIRO Regarding Nuclear Power. Statement From …

Nuclear War

NEWS

The game theory that led to nuclear standoffs – NPR

NPR

Meanwhile, here in the US, the government boosted its nuclear weapon spending by 18% between 2022 and 2023. The world is closer to nuclear war than …

N Korea MIRV missile test raises nuclear war stakes – Asia Times

Asia Times

North Korea’s recent test launch of ballistic missiles, with at least one capable of carrying a “super-large warhead”, has raised new alarm in …

Nuclear Weapons and Trilateral Superpower Competition – Global Security Review

Global Security Review

Following the Cold War, there was much intellectual confusion concerning nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy, and why nuclear weapons exist.

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Risks in the nuclear order in the wake of Ukraine war – Firstpost

Firstpost

Risks in the nuclear order in the wake of Ukraine war. During the Cold … They harbour the potential to subscribe to existential threats, real or …

California’s controversial AI bill worries about nuclear war, catastrophic harm

The Indian Express

By safeguarding against the existential threat of AI, critics say that the proposed legislation doesn’t see the wood for the trees.

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

20+ Volcanoes in the USA with Potential for Eruptive Activity – Open Sky News

Open Sky News

A new study reveals that the magma chamber beneath Yellowstone’s supervolcano contains significantly more melted rock than previously estimated.

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 03, 2024

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Solar power is growing so quickly it is set to become the biggest source of electricity on the planet by the mid-2030s, The Economist reports.(ABC News: Clint Jasper)

LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Wednesday, (07/03/2024)

Following up from yesterday’s post concerning contradictory media news, this one is even more convincing because they are from the same category, Nuclear Power, and one follows the other. My point of these Blog Posts (yesterday and today) is to demonstrate how a casual or infrequent reader about the nuclear industry can easily be led down the primrose path by the media, and will totally believe only the one article they happened to casually see and read. So this example is about which platform of energy will save the world, Solar or Nuclear? Both of these articles are in today’s TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS below, but I elevated them to the commentary section to add to my point from yesterday. You will need to click on the links to read the stories and their contrasting contradictions.

To understand the nuclear world of business, you cannot believe everything you read; in fact you should be carefully critical about ‘everything’ you read. Your own and other human and animal life, yes, and plant’s too, may depend on it. Nuclear energy, as with nuclear weapons, is not the answer to our common future. In fact ‘all things nuclear’ may well mean we have no future at all.

NEWS

Article 1: When it comes to power, solar could leave nuclear and everything else in the shade – ABC

ABC

Energy experts – and even Greenpeace – underestimated solar power’s rapid global growth. Now many believe solar is set to become the world’s …

Article 2: 5 Ways Nuclear Can Power The Future – Visual Capitalist

Visual Capitalist

Follow this nightly blog! Educate yourself about “All Things Nuclear”! ~llaw

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Wednesday, (07/03/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

4 questions about the uranium needed for next-generation nuclear reactors – Science News

Science News

Headlines and summaries of the latest Science News articles, delivered to your email inbox every Thursday. But some scientists are raising concerns …

Putin is using Belarus to escalate his nuclear threats – Atlantic Council

Atlantic Council

… Things · Space. Regions. Africa. Sub-regions; All Africa · Angola … all means at our disposal” to defend Russia. “This is not a bluff,” h

Opinion | Despite record of sickness and disease, nuke testing is back – The Cap Times

The Cap Times

Nuclear countries are gearing up to again test bombs with actual … all things, fallout from atomic bombs. I discovered that 1,250 …

Nuclear Power

NEWS

When it comes to power, solar could leave nuclear and everything else in the shade – ABC

ABC

Energy experts – and even Greenpeace – underestimated solar power’s rapid global growth. Now many believe solar is set to become the world’s …

5 Ways Nuclear Can Power The Future – Visual Capitalist

Visual Capitalist

As global electricity demand rises, nuclear power stands out as a leading solution to help ensure a stable and low-carbon energy future.

U.S. Government Helps Nuclear Energy Allies Catch Up to Russia, China – Forbes

Forbes

While two of America’s pernicious rivals—Russia and China—have already deployed one advanced nuclear reactor each, U.S. companies and the …

Nuclear Newswire — ANS – American Nuclear Society

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Duke Energy, county officials to test sirens around Harris Nuclear Plant next week

WRAL.com

Testing is performed in cooperation with emergency officials in Chatham, Harnett, Lee and Wake counties. Since this is a test, local broadcasting …

Nigeria Declares Oil Sector Emergency Amid Efforts to Boost Production | OilPrice.com

Oil Price

Breaking News: · A Nuclear Stock to Consider Even After Rallying 200% · Energy investors are raving about this new resource · Share · Related News.

Amid the shortage, significant electricity imports are planned, outage schedules are planned …

unn.ua

… emergency assistance from the power systems of Poland and Slovakia, the … zaporizhzhya-nuclear–power-plant Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.

Nuclear War

NEWS

Putin is using Belarus to escalate his nuclear threats – Atlantic Council

Atlantic Council

This followed on from Vladimir Putin’s spring 2023 announcement of plans to store Russian tactical nukes on Belarusian territory. By the end of the …

The start of a new nuclear race: International security and humanitarian priorities

Open Access Government

Do we now have more reasons to fear war? The increased rise of spending in 2023. After the end of the Cold War, the spending on nuclear weapons was …

Russia Ukraine war live: Kyiv launches attack on Putin’s Black Sea naval base as 1 killed in …

The Independent

Ukraine reject’s compromise with Putin after Trump claimed to end war in a day – Ukraine Russia war update.

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Putin is using Belarus to escalate his nuclear threats – Atlantic Council

Atlantic Council

If Belarusian officials are now issuing nuclear threats of their own, they are doing so on behalf of Putin. This is very much in line with the …

Amid Iranian threats, Israel must prepare for ‘escalation dominance’ – opinion

The Jerusalem Post

… war – could enlarge the risks of an inadvertent nuclear war. This … nuclear threats directed against its not-yet-nuclear Iranian adversary.

NATO in 2024—Can Its European Members Deter Further Russian Aggression?

The Heritage Foundation

… threat to Europe, and, most concertedly, the Russian nuclear threat. Given Russian actions in Ukraine and its conventional and nuclear threats to .

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

North America’s Most Incredible Volcanoes, Revealed – MSN

MSN

Yellowstone Caldera, Wyoming … Rather than being a towering mountain which can be seen for miles, Yellowstone Caldera is a 30-by-45-mile supervolcano …

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 02, 2024

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Russian Nuclear Power Plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, turned from Provider to Killer

LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Tuesday, (07/02/2024)

How is it possible to rely on media opinion, news, reporting, and advice when virtually every day you witness totally conflicting information and data from all kinds of sources that are written by the seat of an editor’s and his correspondent’s pants? There is no ability amongst all the confusion to sort the ‘wheat from the chaff’.

The following examples are headlines and leadlines from TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS . . . (You see these kinds of opposing stories, even between or among categories virtually every day if you follow this Blogs’ daily posts.) It is living proof that we have no understanding nor knowledge of what ‘all thins nuclear’ are all about at every level of human intelligence. “All Thing Nuclear” is apparently our unrealized and unknown collective ‘death-wish’.

[ Headline #1: Tested and proven: The role of nuclear power in the future energy mix | Marsh

Marsh

[Leadline 1: Nuclear energy is experiencing a resurgence of interest and investment as a resilient, proven, and zero-carbon electricity source. ] Note: Misleading and inaccurate.]

[ Headline 2: You Don’t Want to Live in America’s ‘Nuclear Sponge’ | Opinion – Newsweek

Newsweek

[Leadline 2: The fear that China might increase its nuclear arsenal from some 500 to 1,000 weapons has fueled calls for America to abandon all arms control limits.]

. . . and even though they are , in this case, from different categories of the nuclear world, they are made of the same deadly products. But over and over we see media support for nuclear products on one hand, yet on the other hand we see the doubt, the concern, and the fear of them. How could we love one nuclear product and hate the other? They both share the identical danger to humanity’s future. ~llaw

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Tuesday, (07/02/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

You Don’t Want to Live in America’s ‘Nuclear Sponge’ | Opinion – Newsweek

Newsweek

The fear that China might increase its nuclear arsenal from some 500 to 1,000 weapons has fueled calls for America to abandon all arms control limits …

The Coalition’s nuclear fantasy serves short-term political objectives – and its fossil fuel backers

The Guardian

And it sends a message to every regional community that they might not need to host the new renewable energy grid that is being rolled out. Because if …

Australia’s Nuclear Debate – Bloomberg

Bloomberg

If things go wrong, they can go very wrong, which is why modern nuclear facilities are built … Help©2024 Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Italy ‘could get 22% of electricity from nuclear by 2050′

World Nuclear News

Italy’s Minister for Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, has set out the possible scale of capacity if the country decides …

Another Norwegian town looks to host nuclear plant

World Nuclear News

Norsk Kjernekraft has signed a cooperation agreement with the municipality of Lund on establishing a nuclear power plant in the town in the …

Tested and proven: The role of nuclear power in the future energy mix | Marsh

Marsh

Nuclear energy is experiencing a resurgence of interest and investment as a resilient, proven, and zero-carbon electricity source.

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Nuclear Power and the Climate Emergency – KPFA

KPFA

Nuclear power boosters argue that new technologies have made nuclear reactors cheaper and safer. Scholar and scientist M.V. Ramana calls this a …

Hartsville nuclear plant gears up for hurricane season – WPDE

WPDE

Officials with Duke Energy are preparing the Robinson Nuclear Plant in Hartsville in case of emergencies as hurricane season approaches.

Our Research Shows Russia Wants to Restart This Warzone Nuclear Power Plant

The Moscow Times

… emergency of a nuclear power plant held hostage by military force. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), while permitted to station …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Ukraine-Russia war latest: British charity founder killed ‘in combat against Putin’s troops’

The Independent

Peter Fouche died after getting badly injured ‘in the battlefield’ against Russian forces last week.

Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A re-elected President Donald Trump’s would be much worse. Biden has authorized the largest nuclear weapons budgets since the Cold War, delayed then …

Nuclear Waste, Byproducts From World War II-Era Found In US Lake’s Groundwater – NDTV

NDTV

… War II-era nuclear weapons program. After the war, radioactive waste from downtown uranium plants was transported to the St. Louis airport. Along …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

… risks of nuclear confrontation as a result. Nuclear proposals. The nuclear proposals are a key part of the Project 2025 coalition’s …

Ukraine war latest: US raises threat level at European military bases – Sky News

Sky News

Ukraine war latest: US raises threat level at European military bases; British volunteer medic dies in Ukraine … The Intermediate Range Nuclear …

US State Department responds to Putin’s nuclear weapon threats – MSN

MSN

The United States has already warned Russia about the consequences of using nuclear weapons. Threats from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin are …

 Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Morning Glory Pool Was Blue? (Yellowstone Monthly Update – July 2024) – YouTube

YouTube

… Caldera Chronicles — https://www.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/caldera-chronicles?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=usgs&utm_campaign=nh-volcanoes …

MIL-OSI USA: The hot and cold journey of silica begins in Yellowstone’s rhyolite and ends in …

ForeignAffairs.co.nz

Source: US Geological Survey. Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano …

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUL 01, 2024

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Oklo collaborated with Gensler architects to design the Aurora Powerhouse, aiming for a simplified and streamlined construction capability. (Image by Gensler)

LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Monday, (07/01/2024)

Sometimes it feels like pure financial greed is driving the entire nuclear industry, now including AI, from the the first shovel-full of uranium ore to the high-grade uranium fuel that is dangerously planned to use for operating new nuclear reactors, that could be used by currently non-nuclear countries, terrorists, or other malicious groups, through the careless uncontrolled proliferation of the fuel product, to create and use nuclear weapons of mass destruction against all perceived enemies.

I urge you to carefully read and understand, and then pass along these facts briefly stated here in the following article by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” that nuclear fuel and all other nuclear products are already far and away dangerously out of control and that all it takes is one highly placed madman to start a nuclear war that will end all future wars as well as most all of human and other animal life. Nuclear proliferation will only quicken the doomsday process and/or make the 6th Extinction more likely. ~llaw

Nuclear energy could power the AI boom—but only if proliferation risks are minimized

By Miles A. Pomper, Yanliang Pan | July 1, 2024

On May 10, Oklo Inc., a nuclear energy startup, began trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The chairman of the company is none other than Sam Altman, the CEO of the artificial intelligence leader, OpenAI, that launched the generative AI revolution with the release of ChatGPT late in 2022. The staggering language, image, and video processing capabilities of ChatGPT and other similar chatbots depend on large language models (LLMs) trained through computations of data at unprecedented scale. Computational power has thus become, in Sam Altman’s words, “the currency of the future” and “the most precious commodity in the world.”

The training and use of LLMs require huge amounts of electrical power and cascades of advanced microchips. Altman’s nuclear investment reflects his belief that Oklo’s microreactors can satisfy the future power requirements of AI models. In some ways, the compatibility is intuitive. Large data centers, especially those set up in remote areas with greater land availability, require power sources that avoid both the intermittency of renewables and the fuel delivery requirements of traditional thermal power plants. Such is Oklo’s narrative as it touts recent power purchase agreements with data center operators such as Wyoming Hyperscale.

But the intuitive compatibility between AI and nuclear power does not exempt the latter from traditional concerns about economics and safety, despite efforts by Oklo and other vendors of “advanced” reactors to downplay those concerns. The escalating costs of NuScale’s first VOYGR plant have cast into doubt the economics of small modular reactors, and the US nuclear regulator has yet to endorse the safety of Oklo’s Aurora microreactor, having denied its combined license application in early 2022.

Arguably the most problematic aspect of Oklo’s microreactor concept is the proliferation implications of its fuel cycle. Simply put, Oklo’s concept could increase the availability of fissile materials needed for nuclear weapons and, therefore, the likelihood that bad actors would acquire those materials.

Oklo’s Aurora microreactor uses uranium fuel enriched so that 19.75 percent of it consists of the fissile uranium 235 isotope, compared to the 5 percent low-enriched uranium fuel currently utilized by industry. The higher enrichment level allows the reactor to have smaller cores and longer refueling cycles, but it also means that the fuel is far closer to the level of enrichment needed for nuclear weapons than what is used in traditional power reactors. That means a malicious actor with access to the higher enrichment fuel would be able to produce weapons-grade uranium using less diverted material, in less time, and with lower detectability.

Even more problematic: The Aurora microreactor’s sodium-cooled fast-neutron configuration is ideal for the breeding of plutonium 239, which could be employed directly in nuclear weapons once separated from spent fuel. Indeed, the CFR-600 reactor that the US government claims China is using to produce plutonium for an expanded nuclear arsenal is of the same sodium-cooled fast breeder design. Oklo’s vision is not to make a nuclear weapon but rather to extract energy from the plutonium after it is reprocessed into fresh fuel. But the dual-use potential of Oklo’s technology, the dangerous policy changes it implies, and the ways in which it heightens the risk of diversion throughout the fuel cycle are obvious.

RELATED:

By sending nuclear weapons to the United Kingdom, could the United States be fueling nuclear proliferation?

Oklo is aware of the proliferation hazards of its fuel cycle but has forged ahead regardless, resorting to such euphemisms as “recycling” to downplay the risks associated with reprocessing. The company has also asserted that its method of plutonium separation, commonly known as pyroprocessing, is resistant to proliferation, as it does not produce any pure plutonium streams.

Such claims are technically dubious at best. A US national laboratory study of alternative separation methods found that pyroprocessing provided “only a modest improvement in reducing proliferation risk over existing PUREX technologies,” particularly when it came to state actors. By removing highly radioactive fission products from spent fuel, pyroprocessing nullifies the high radiation levels that provide self-protection against diversion of fissile material, even if the plutonium remains unseparated from the fuel. To be fair, Oklo is partnering with Argonne National Laboratory to develop “advanced sensor technologies” integrated with machine learning algorithms to enhance the detection of diversion within its prospective reprocessing facilities. But augmented material accounting alone will not eliminate proliferation risks. Nor would it mitigate the dangers of a shift in US policy on reprocessing.

Breaking the US no-reprocessing norm. The United States renounced commercial reprocessing in the 1970s on account of its proliferation potential and poor economics. The voluntary move has helped Washington compel its allies and partners likewise to forgo the reprocessing option to help limit the spread of technology that allowed countries like India to develop nuclear weapons arsenals. In this context, Oklo and others’ bid to revive commercial reprocessing with the support of the national labs could convince other countries that reprocessing is necessary for the advanced nuclear energy needed to satisfy the power requirements of critical AI technologies.

The risks to regional and international security are substantial. As an example, successive US administrations have for decades kept ally South Korea’s pyroprocessing ambitions in check. To date, Washington’s example and a bilateral agreement between Seoul and its security guarantor have blocked efforts by South Korea’s nuclear lobby to engage in pyroprocessing and match growing back-end fuel cycle activities in China and long-delayed plans in Japan. A decade ago, when Seoul sought to restructure a bilateral nuclear cooperation agreement so it could use pyroprocessing technology similar to what Oklo proposes, Washington compromised only as far as agreeing to joint studies of the technical, economic, and nonproliferation feasibility of the technology.

RELATED:

Interview with Sneha Revanur, “the Greta Thunberg of AI”

The Joint Fuel Cycle Study produced a final report in 2021 that did little to resolve the policy controversy surrounding the pyroprocessing question. Regional stability is now in flux amid North Korea and China’s rapid nuclear weapons buildups and questions about the degree to which a potential Trump administration might undermine US alliances. Changing US reprocessing policy at this time would create additional risks.

AI and nuclear energy: evaluating risks. As the modern economy increasingly integrates artificial intelligence technologies, their scale and demand for energy will grow. To avoid exacerbating climate change, it makes sense for AI executives like Altman to look at nuclear energy as a potential power source. They should, however, predicate their investment on an honest, deliberate, and transparent evaluation of risks. That means no more euphemisms to cover up the proliferation dangers of reprocessing, plus an objective assessment of whether the technology’s proclaimed benefits truly justify its liabilities.

Silicon Valley’s innovation-driven investment mentality may reward startups like Oklo as the self-proclaimed pursuers of “what’s next in nuclear.” But technological advancement takes place far more slowly and deliberately in the nuclear domain than in other technologies, given the slowness of industrial supply chains and the need for safety, security, and nonproliferation regulations to keep pace. A nuclear vendor cannot afford to “move fast and break things” like a Silicon Valley IT venture, for a nuclear energy company that fails to address the proliferation implications of its technology risks breaking critical guardrails against the existential threat of nuclear war.

To be sure, there are ways to advance nuclear innovation without increasing the risks of proliferation. Many advanced reactor concepts do not entail breeding plutonium or reprocessing spent fuel. Bill Gates’s TerraPower is developing a sodium-cooled fast reactor just like Oklo but has addressed the hazards of its technology by declaring its reactors “will not require reprocessing and will run on a once-through fuel cycle that limits the risk of weapons proliferation.” Additionally, both Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos have invested in the technology of nuclear fusion.

Nonproliferation awareness does not entail a Luddite approach to nuclear innovation. It simply requires that industry exercise its due diligence to innovate responsibly, and that governments create the incentives for doing so. Washington has supported domestic nuclear innovation to restore US technological leadership against Russian and Chinese competition, both as a national security priority and as a means of setting strong global nonproliferation standards. The United States should prioritize support to industry players that have minimized the proliferation risks of their prospective technology. If Washington is serious about competing with Russia and China on its nonproliferation bona fides, it should put its money where its mouth is when it comes to the next generation of nuclear reactors.

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

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

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

A pioneering African-American TV reporter finally gets his due with new biography

Alabama Public Radio

All Things Acoustic · Bama Bluegrass · Classical Music with David Duff … The Soviet Union had deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba, and the threat of …

Nuclear energy could power the AI boom—but only if proliferation risks are minimized

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

A nuclear vendor cannot afford to “move fast and break things” like a … No debate: On existential threats, Biden, Trump, and CNN all largely failed.

The Daily Heller: Monocle Magazine’s Presidential Politics, 1964

PRINT Magazine

… nuclear weapons against America’s Cold War enemies (if necessary). … Keep up with all things PRINT by subscribing to our weekly email newsletter.

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Grossi puts case at World Bank for financing new nuclear

World Nuclear News

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi urges the World Bank and other multinational development banks to start …

U.S. Senate Passes Bill to Boost Nuclear Energy Deployment | Womble Bond Dickinson

Womble Bond Dickinson

… nuclear reactor technologies. This move has garnered strong bipartisan support. Democrats view expanding nuclear power as essential for combating …

Nuclear energy could power the AI boom—but only if proliferation risks are minimized

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The most problematic aspect of a microreactor concept promoted by the nuclear energy start-up Oklo Inc. is its proliferation implications.

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Darlington, more counties to test sirens around Robinson Nuclear Plant – WPDE

WPDE

Because this is a test, local broadcasting stations will not interrupt regular programming to broadcast Emergency Alert System (EAS) messages. Comment …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Iran, Israel Sitting On Atomic Bomb? Nukes, ‘Doomsday’ Jericho To Engulf MidEast …

YouTube

Nukes, ‘Doomsday’ Jericho To Engulf MidEast? Nuclear War Next? 12K views · 6 hours ago #iran #nuclearbomb #israel …more. TIMES NOW. 5.32M.

Ukraine war latest: Putin’s forces fired over 800 glide bombs as infant injured in Russian strikes

The Independent

Multiple injured in Russian attack on Kyiv. Images have shown the aftermath of a Russian strike on the Kyiv that left six people injured, including a …

Nuclear danger is growing. Physicists of the world, unite! – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

… nuclear weapons policies. Meanwhile, the Cold War-era nuclear arms control regime has mostly collapsed, a nuclear arms race led by the United …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

US Military Bases Threat Level Elevated Due to Potential Terrorism Threat – Newsweek

Newsweek

This comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin and senior Russian officials have repeatedly threatened nuclear escalation against Kyiv and its …

Nuclear danger is growing. Physicists of the world, unite! – Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

As a new part of this community, the Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction provides resources, guidance, and opportunities for physicists …

Explaining complex things in simple words: Air terror, nuclear threats from Minsk …

Ukrinform

… war criminals. There is no rational argument against using long-range missiles against them. NUCLEAR THREATS OF OFFICIAL MINSK. The Lukashenko 

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUN 30, 2024

1

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LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Sunday, (06/30/2024)

I don’t know exactly what “brink” means in Irish lingo, but let’s hope it’s not as ‘close’ or on the ‘edge’, or even ‘cusp’ as we Americans define the word. However, the time, effort, and money Russia and other nuclear armed countries, including the USA, insinuates that ‘threats’ and the associated cost of scaring each other half to death in advance will continue to be what they are (deterrent threats, or bald-faced lies) rather than anything called “actionable”. ~llaw

WWIII on brink as Russia advised to ‘demonstrate’ nuclear explosion to ‘scare’ West

A prominent Russian security analyst has called for Moscow to consider lighting a “demonstrative” nuclear explosion to deter the West from further involvement in the Ukraine conflict

• By

John O’sullivan Audience editor

Alessandra Scotto di Santolo

• 08:39 ET, JUN 30 2024
• UPDATED09:14 ET, JUN 30 2024

Latest news from Irishstar.com

Dmitry Suslov, a top figure at the Moscow-based Council for Foreign and Defence Policy, has put forward the idea of Russia carrying out a “demonstrative” nuclear detonation, a move that could prompt the start of World War 3. This alarming suggestion arises as tensions with the West intensify due to Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weaponry against Russian forces.

Suslov’s think tank, known to occasionally sway government policy, made this proposal public shortly after President Vladimir Putin delivered a grave warning to NATO countries. Putin warned that if Ukraine were to employ Western arms for attacks on Russian soil, it could spark a worldwide crisis, reinforcing his point with threats of severe repercussions.

Ukraine’s officials maintain that hitting Russian military sites within Russia using long-range Western missiles is essential for their defence and to thwart air, missile, and drone assaults. Some Western nations have shown sympathy for this view, though the US has not given its backing, reports the Express US.

• Vladimir Putin’s WWIII nuclear stance amid NATO tensions and warning of ‘playing with fire’
• Vladimir Putin’s WWIII nuclear stance amid NATO tensions and warning of ‘playing with fire’

With the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, Russia has repeatedly cautioned that such moves would represent a major escalation, potentially drawing NATO and participating states into an outright conflict and raising the spectre of a nuclear confrontation.

Suslov highlighted the urgency for Russia to take bold steps to deter Western nations from overstepping a crucial boundary. He suggested a non-combat nuclear detonation as a severe caution.

“To confirm the seriousness of Russia’s intentions and to convince our opponents of Moscow’s readiness to escalate, it is worth considering a demonstrative (i.e. non-combat) nuclear explosion,” Suslov penned in the business publication Profil.

Russia declares World War 3 in terrifying broadcast

He went on to describe the potential repercussions of such a move: “The political and psychological effect of a nuclear mushroom cloud, which will be shown live on all TV channels around the world, will hopefully remind Western politicians of the one thing that has prevented wars between the great powers since 1945 and that they have now largely lost – fear of nuclear war.”

This proposal is among the latest from Russian security analysts and legislators who are pushing for a nuclear demonstration to cow the West amidst the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Such talk has set off alarm bells among Western security circles, with worries that Russia may be edging towards carrying out such a test.

For all the latest news straight to your inbox, sign up for our FREE newsletters here.

The Kremlin has not yet issued a statement regarding Suslov’s recommendation. Officially, Russia maintains its nuclear stance as before. Nonetheless, earlier this month, the Kremlin expressed its displeasure with what it views as increasingly hostile Western discourse by initiating tactical nuclear weapons exercises.

In addition to the nuclear test proposal, Suslov recommended that Russia initiate strategic nuclear exercises and issue stern warnings. He suggested that Moscow should notify any country whose weapons are used by Kyiv to attack Russia that it reserves the right to strike targets in that country globally.

He also hinted that Russia might consider using nuclear weapons if such a country retaliated conventionally.

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

There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

1. All Things Nuclear
2. Nuclear Power
3. Nuclear Power Emergencies
4. Nuclear War
5. Nuclear War Threats
6. Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in this evening’s Post.)

Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.

A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Sunday, (06/30/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

The Cold War may be over, but our stalemate on nuclear testing must remain strong

The Hill

Progress on the Navy’s new ballistic missile submarine, the Columbia class, has been disrupted by an inadequate defense industrial base, while the …

The week in parliament: the theoretical impossibility of Tucker Carlson and nuclear tensions …

The Guardian

Far-right provocateur ducks cocktail party, Climate 200 takes aim at fresh electoral targets and Labor MP stumbles into a nest of Nats.

Is the Universe Legible to Intelligence? – Economist Writing Every Day

Economist Writing Every Day

It could be the real advantages are integrating it into workflows by things that are not better GPTs at all. … nuclear, and strong nuclear).

Nuclear Power

NEWS

Bill Gates invests in next-generation nuclear power in Wyoming – Warp News

Warp News

Bill Gates and his energy company TerraPower are starting the construction of an advanced nuclear power plant in Wyoming.

Clean Core Thorium Energy – cleancore.energy

Full Coverage

Bill Gates ‘espouses’ same sentiments as Peter Dutton on nuclear energy

Sky News Australia

… nuclear energy. “Gates has put his money where his mouth is by investing $1 billion in a mob called TerraPower – a startup that’s building a plant …

More nuclear power in the Tri-Cities? Energy Northwest meets with stakeholders for …

The Spokesman-Review

A nuclear power plant turns heat into steam that drives turbine generators to create electricity. Specifically, the company makes “small modular …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

AI players should innovate to save power, not generate it | Mint

Mint

Gorging power and belching carbon dioxide, AI is doing more to worsen the climate emergency than solve it. Nuclear energy is tempting, …

Nuclear War

NEWS

Another One Of Russia’s Nuclear-Proof Transports Just Got Blown Up In Ukraine – Forbes

Forbes

Compared to a golf-cart or dirt bike, a Ladoga is much better-suited for mechanized warfare. It combines the armored hull of a T-80 tank with a 1,250- …

Putin Hints at Changes to Russia’s Nuclear Doctrine Amid Western Tensions

The Media Line

Defying Western attempts to isolate Russia during its ongoing war with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Vietnam earlier this month to …

Putin hints at changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine amid Western tensions – The Jerusalem Post

The Jerusalem Post

Defying Western attempts to isolate Russia during its ongoing war with Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Vietnam earlier this …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

President Vladimir Putin warned the West on Thursday that Russia had weapons that could … – MSN

MSN

… threats created a “real” risk of nuclear war. Everything that the West comes up with creates the real threat of a conflict with the use of nuclear …

WWIII on brink as Russia advised to ‘demonstrate’ nuclear explosion to ‘scare’ West

Irish Star

… threats of severe repercussions. Ukraine’s officials maintain that … nuclear war.” This proposal is among the latest from Russian security .

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Investigating newly discovered hydrothermal vents at depths of 3000 meters off Svalbard

ScienceDaily

Fossils. RELATED TERMS. Mid-ocean ridge · Volcano · North Anatolian Fault · Paralititan · Geology of the Himalaya · Yellowstone Caldera · Earth …

“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”

LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT

JUN 30, 2024

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LLAW’s NUCLEAR ISSUES & COMMENTS, Saturday, (06/29/2024)

International laws, rules, agreements, and pacts mean nothing where nuclear war is concerned no matter how hard we wish that were not so. All we have left to hold nuclear war in abeyance is what we call “deterrence”, meaning each major nuclear armed country spends billions of dollars each year in order to hold a threatened nuclear attack in abeyance through the concept of ‘fear’ and ‘coercion’ (as mentioned in the article) that one nuclear country is more powerful than the others. “Deterrence” cannot continue to work for obvious financial reasons as well as others, and returning to nuclear agreements, et al, is no longer considered because they are always willfully broken by the dishonestly and disloyalty of those in charge. The Russia/Ukraine war is the ‘hotbed’ right now and Putin is the one with the nuclear football as he makes the loudest threats to use nuclear weapons, especially if NATO (and the USA) enter the actual war as defenders of democracy, not as simple financiers and military suppliers.

So it is that we are staring nuclear war, read a disastrous WWIII, in the face if just one of the 9 nuclear armed nations breaks the fear factor of ‘deterrence’ and uses nuclear weapons against an enemy. It takes only one nuclear bomb, because the other side will retaliate with even more, and then the international nuclear war begins almost instantly, never to end, of course, with a victory for any country, but a world of nuclear disaster beyond belief or comprehension. ~llaw

Global Issues

Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal

• OPINION by Andrew Lichterman – Alyn Ware – Yosuke Watanabe (Oakland, California / Prague, Czech Republic / Yokohama, Japan)
• Friday, June 28, 2024
• Inter Press Service

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal

OAKLAND, California / PRAGUE, Czech Republic / YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jun 28 (IPS) – Our three organizations – Western States Legal Foundation, Peace Depot, and Basel Peace Office – all dedicated to the elimination of nuclear weapons, have consistently expressed our concern about the risk of nuclear war escalating during armed conflicts and times of high tension, when nuclear-armed states often make veiled or even explicit threats to use nuclear weapons and prepare for such use.

This has happened, for example, with the governments of India and Pakistan trading nuclear threats during their 2001 stand-off, the U.S. government making veiled nuclear threats against Iraq in 1991 and 2003, and the U.S. and North Korean leaders threatening to strike each other with nuclear weapons in 2017.

We speak out now against the series of coercive nuclear threats that have been made by the Russian government since 2022 in conjunction with its invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Ukrainian territory.

From the start of the full-scale invasion and war in 2022, the government of the Russian Federation has made a series of threats to use nuclear weapons against countries that provide Ukraine with weapons and other military assistance.

Russian officials also have claimed the right to use nuclear weapons to defend territories they have occupied and illegally annexed in the course of the war. These threats have been accompanied by such posturing as the announced deployment of Russian nuclear weapons to Belarus and the highlighting of exercises of Russian nuclear forces in a military district on Ukraine’s borders.

These threats make clear once more a key role of the nuclear weapons possessed by the world’s most powerful states: to make it easier for their governments to pursue aggressive wars and to coerce countries to accept this aggression by exponentially increasing the danger to all who might oppose them.

In 1996, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that the threat or use of nuclear weapons is generally illegal, but did not reach a conclusion, one way or the other, regarding an extreme circumstance of self-defense when the very survival of a state is at stake.

This approach was controversial at the time in the international legal community, with considerable opinion that the threat or use of nuclear arms is illegal in all circumstances. That view has only strengthened in the nearly three decades since then.

Among other developments, the UN Human Rights Committee found in 2018 that threat or use of nuclear weapons is contrary to the human right to life; the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons declared in its preamble that use of nuclear weapons is contrary to international humanitarian law (IHL) governing the conduct of warfare; and a 2011 International Red Cross and Red Cross Movement resolution stated that it is “difficult to envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with” IHL.

Regardless of one’s view of the current state of the law, the population of the Russian Federation faces no threat to its “very survival”. Their government could end its war on Ukraine tomorrow and the Russian Federation would remain a large and powerful state with an immense resource and industrial base, its internationally recognized borders intact.

There is no rationale for the brandishing of nuclear weapons by the government of the Russian Federation other than to leverage their terrible destructive power to advance its war of aggression and conquest in Ukraine.

In January 2022, less than two months before the government of the Russian Federation launched its invasion, that government, together with those of the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and China issued a statement affirming that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”

Then in November 2022, at the G20 Summit in Bali, and again at the September 2023 G20 Summit in Delhi, the leaders and/or foreign ministers of China, France, India, Russia, UK, and USA declared that the “use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is inadmissible.” Yet, the nuclear threats continue.

Amidst a war already involving extensive air bombardment and missile warfare, together with the use of new kinds of electronic warfare that intensifies the fog of war, a nuclear crisis would pose extraordinary dangers. No one should have any illusions that such a crisis could be easily controlled.

The government of the Russian Federation should cease its threats of nuclear use, and issue assurances that it will not use nuclear weapons in the conflict with Ukraine. The United States, France, the United Kingdom, and NATO should issue such assurances as well.

Andrew Lichterman is Senior Research Analyst, Western States Legal Foundation, Oakland, California, USA; Alyn Ware is Global Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Director, Basel Peace Office, Prague, Czech Republic; Yosuke Watanabe is Research Fellow, Peace Depot, Japan Coordinator, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament, Yokohama, Japan.

The Western States Legal Foundation, based in Oakland, California, seeks to abolish nuclear weapons as an essential step in making possible a more secure, just, and environmentally sustainable world; Peace Depot is a non-profit, independent think tank based in Yokohama, Japan. It supports civil society’s peace movements, particularly in the area of nuclear disarmament and military base issues; Basel Peace Office is a coalition of four Swiss organizations and three international organizations advancing effective policies and proposals to achieve a nuclear-weapon-free world.

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There are 6 categories, including a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives, as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links in each category about the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:

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A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.

TODAY’S NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS, Saturday, (06/29/2024)

All Things Nuclear

NEWS

RFK calls Biden-Trump debate ‘sad,’ sees political opening – NPR

NPR

RFK Jr. spoke to All Things Considered about the Biden-Trump debate and … And that’s going to be like a nuclear bomb hitting our economy.

RFK Jr. calls Biden-Trump debate ‘sad,’ sees political opening – WGCU

WGCU

Independent candidate RFK Jr. spoke to All Things Considered about the Biden-Trump debate and what it means for his third-party run for the …

What to know about France’s high-stakes election, where the far right is gaining ground

WUWF

“This normalization strategy means she has broken with everything that scared people about the party,” says French political historian Jean Garrigues.

Nuclear Power

NEWS

U.S. needs major nuclear power expansion to meet rising electricity demand, Southern …

NBC New York

Unit 3’s reactor and cooling tower stand at Georgia Power Co.’s Plant Vogtle nuclear power plant in Waynesboro, Georgia, on Jan. 20, 2023. The …

PPL expands Kentucky nuclear feasibility study

World Nuclear News

… nuclear energy in the state. The Ghent power plant site (Image: PPL). Ghent is a four-unit, coal-fired power plant with a combined net generating …

TVA’s Sequoyah plant offers insight as Kentucky looks at adding nuclear energy

The Paducah Sun

The Sequoyah Nuclear Plant is located outside Chattanooga, Tennessee, and produces enough electricity to power 1.3 million homes. DYLAN PAYNE | The …

Nuclear Power Emergencies

NEWS

Goodhue County passes nuclear emergency simulation despite flooding | News | kimt.com

KIMT

… Nuclear Power Plant in Welch did on the nuclear preparedness test. RED WING, Minn.- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) held a press …

Emergency blackout schedules were introduced in Kyiv this morning due to electricity shortage

MSN

… Offer 0% Interest Until Nearly 2026 · Ad · Bill Gates’ Nuclear Power Dreams. Climate Crisis 247. 62. 41.

Richland Community College hosts emergency drill for Illinois Emergency Management Agency

Herald-Review.com

… emergency management pertaining to an incident at one of the six nuclear power stations,” he said. “It addresses the roles and responsibilities of …

Nuclear War

NEWS

The $91 billion wasted on nuclear weapons last year could transform ecosystem restoration …

Mongabay

Nuclear war would mean climate disruption with devastating consequences. The world would fall under a nuclear winter, be subject to a deadly …

Russia presses its offensive in Ukraine and issues new threats as the West tries to blunt the push

AP News

Slowly but steadily this summer, Russian troops are forging through Ukraine’s outgunned and undermanned defenses along the front line of the …

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal – Global Issues

Global Issues

From the start of the full-scale invasion and war in 2022, the government of the Russian Federation has made a series of threats to use nuclear …

Nuclear War Threats

NEWS

Russia presses its offensive in Ukraine and issues new threats as the West tries to blunt the push

AP News

That, in turn, has brought new threats by President Vladimir Putin to retaliate against the West — either directly or indirectly. The moves by the …

No debate: On existential threats, Biden, Trump, and CNN all largely failed

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

… threats that could, if not properly managed, cripple or even end human civilization. On Thursday evening, discussion of these threats—nuclear war …

Nuclear Coercion: Dangerous and Illegal – Global Issues

Global Issues

” Yet, the nuclear threats continue. Amidst a war already involving … war, a nuclear crisis would pose extraordinary dangers. No one should ..

Yellowstone Caldera

NEWS

Yellowstone quakes explained with beachball diagrams – Ravalli Republic

Ravalli Republic

Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week’s …

ULA needs to launch Vulcan II rocket – La Ronge Northerner

La Ronge Northerner

Yellowstone caldera, sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone supervolcano, is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in…