A modern detonator (left) is much smaller than a 1940s-era detonator. Credit to: Los Alamos National Laboratory (from the article)
LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS WE FACE TODAY AND THEIR RISKS FOR TOMORROW
Since the financial news media simply cannot stop talking about AI/Nuclear merging together and what a “great” idea it is, but since I absolutely disagree, I decided to post a more educational story today while the constant stories about AI/Nuclear and investor money fill the “LLAW’s All Things Nuclear” media pages . . . This article, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, surprised me because I had thought that nuclear detonators were huge triggers that took large mechanical force for impact nuclear weapons, or high voltage electronic triggers(for airborne nuclear bomb denotations.
Obviously the nuclear weapons systems of detonating nuclear bombs has come a long way since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in August of 1946 . . . ~llaw
Small but mighty
Los Alamos National Laboratory serves as the production agency for all detonators.
December 9, 2024
A modern detonator (left) is much smaller than a 1940s-era detonator. Credit to: Los Alamos National Laboratory
“Extremely small and extremely important.” That’s just one of the ways Los Alamos National Laboratory’s Detonator Manufacturing Office leader Jim Shipley describes the detonators that the Lab builds. Los Alamos is the only place in the country that manufactures detonators for nuclear weapons.
Because different weapons use different types of detonators, Los Alamos currently manufactures seven different types of detonators simultaneously. Five of these types were designed at Los Alamos, and the other two were designed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
In 2023, the Lab delivered more than 3,000 detonators to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees all aspects of nuclear weapon design, maintenance, and production. “The detonators are built in lots of a few hundred and it typically takes about a year to build a full lot of detonators,” Shipley says.
After building a lot, the team pulls a certain number of detonators out to test them. “The tests ensure they meet the specifications, which are highly exacting as we are a production agency building parts for the nation’s nuclear stockpile,” Shipley says.
Shipley describes the products his division makes as “crucial.”
A nuclear weapon detonates in a carefully choreographed sequence in which detonators trigger the high explosives surrounding the plutonium pit at the core of the weapon. The resulting explosion causes the pit to compress and implode, initiating a nuclear reaction.
The first step of this process begins when an electrical charge or a laser (depending on the type of detonator) within the detonator produces a shockwave that triggers a small amount of included explosive material. This detonator explosive then triggers the larger quantity of high explosives surrounding the pit.
“The way detonators work is fascinating,” says Shipley. “The physics is so complex, and the timescales are so short.”
The Lab is exploring the merits of using detonators that use optical energy instead of electricity to set off the internal explosion. By using radiation at a specific wavelength, an optical detonator removes the hazard posed by electrical initiation and reduces the risk of accidental detonation.
However they are initiated, the detonators, the explosives inside them, and the explosives surrounding the pit must all work together to ensure a successful nuclear reaction. Because of this, the scientists who design and produce detonators work closely with the scientists who design and produce explosives. Conveniently, those scientists work at Los Alamos as well, which makes collaborating easier for everyone involved, according to Margo Greenfield, High Explosives Sciences and Technology group leader.
“We collaborate closely with the Detonator Production team,” Greenfield says. “We provide the explosive, we conduct studies of how the detonators and the explosives are aging, and we work together to solve problems.”
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, to Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Nuclear War Threats
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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LLAW’s NUCLEAR WORLD NEWS WE FACE TODAY AND THEIR RISKS FOR TOMORROW
The following “Newsweek” article may be one of the most optimistic views I have read recently about the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Russia/Ukraine war —especially considering that nuclear power plants are already a part of this war — both in Ukrain4 and Russian territories. To me, that means this is already a nuclear war, complete with the innocent citizens who may be potentially “starved and frozen to death in the dark” (to paraphrase an old 3-Mile Island nuclear industry slogan ridiculing the danger of the accident and denying obvious reality at the time).
The author, Dan White, presents three scenarios in his story that present a weak and indecisive Putin, but also acknowledges his “habit of distorting the truth.”, which prompts me to think of a 4th scenario that is not mentioned at all in the article, but we all know it is the most serious scenario of all. And that is the coming involvement of re-elected U.S./ president Trump, who is also careless with the truth, beginning in late January. He was, during his 1st presidency, partially responsible for Putin’s invasion creating the current edition of the Russia/Ukraine war, and has foolishly claimed that he can “end the current war in “one day” after taking office. What the hell does that mean? To me, it means that he will support Putin’s Russia over the young Ukraine democracy. Trump’s time frame to end the war is also an outright nonsensical lie, of course
So it is, that Putin will most likely do nothing more than he is already doing to Ukraine until Trump is sworn in and then we can all shake in our boots to see what will happen next. I don’t know about nuclear weapons of mass destruction joining the fray, but I’m nervous as hell that it will . . . and that will be the beginning of the end. ~llaw
3 Signs Show if Putin Is Getting Serious About Using Nuclear Weapons | Opinion
Published Dec 09, 2024 at 12:04 PM ESTUpdated Dec 09, 2024 at 12:12 PM EST
Russian nuclear saber-rattling, which has threatened the world since the start of the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, recently reached a fever pitch in the wake of authorizations for Ukraine to use Western long-range missiles to strike Russian territory. On Nov. 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law expanded criteria for the use of nuclear weapons, reserving “the right to consider a nuclear response to a conventional weapons attack” and to consider “any attack by a non-nuclear country supported by a nuclear power as a joint attack.” Two days later the Russian military punctuated these threats with a dramatic demonstration of its potential to deliver a massive nuclear response by launching an “Oreshnik” intermediate-range ballistic missile at Ukraine.
The moves have been hailed by Russian hawks such as Sergey Karaganov, who has long argued for a preemptive strike on the West using “God’s weapon” to save civilization from the “anti-human ideology” of liberal democracy. While high on menace these actions have ultimately been low on substance. Putin’s latest nuclear threats do not represent a fundamental change in Russia’s nuclear posture. Not yet at least.
It would be a mistake to dismiss Russia’s nuclear threats entirely. There are conditions under which Putin, like the leader of any nuclear power, would authorize a nuclear strike. The actual circumstances under which Putin might consider it almost certainly remain narrow despite the newly revised policy. These exact conditions can’t be discerned by analyzing official statements alone. Such statements are easy to make, and easy to retract, especially for Putin who has a habit of distorting the truth. Analysis is better directed toward identifying ways in which Putin might adopt what Nobel laureate and Cold Warrior Thomas Schelling has described as “commitment strategies,” which could bind him to a decision to use nukes.
People look at a Yars nuclear missile rolling on Tverskaya street during the Victory Day Parade rehearsals on May 2, in Moscow, Russia. Contributor/Getty Images
Credible commitments, whether in marriage or in nuclear war, require a surrender of alternatives. Despite his bluster, Putin has not shown a willingness to truly constrain his decision making and continually exhibits great creativity in escalating the war in Ukraine by other means, such as involving North Korean troops. This flexibility could change, and attention should be paid to three possible scenarios in which Putin might raise the stakes by deliberately closing off non-nuclear options.
The first scenario is a decision by Putin to handcuff himself to automatic nuclear responses to specific actions by Ukraine or the West. Russia’s new nuclear doctrine has lowered the threshold for considering using nuclear weapons but still does not provide definite criteria for their use. Putin has himself never committed to nuclear retaliation as an option of first resort either. He has always provided himself flexibility by framing threats with cryptic language, such as warning of “consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.” Adopting more direct threats of “you do this, we respond with nukes,” would give Putin less room to back down.
A second, more dangerous commitment Putin could make is to take the decision to use tactical nuclear weapons out of his hands entirely and delegate the authority to battlefield commanders. This move would require taking low-yield nuclear warheads out of storage and mounting them on bombs or missiles for use as a battlefield weapon, a more complicated and dangerous process than it would first appear. The readying of nuclear weapons would incentivize a NATO preemptive strike to eliminate them—a reasonable move considering Russia’s repeated insinuations of possible nuclear attack on European capitals, and the difficulty of intercepting missiles once they are fired. To deter possible preemption, the Russian military would likely raise the readiness of its more powerful strategic nuclear forces. These escalatory moves would be mirrored by NATO, which would have to prepare to respond first in the event of a general nuclear exchange. The high potential for all of this to get out of hand makes any decision to decentralize control of nuclear weapons a credible step toward their actual use, not a bluff.
Finally, Putin could greenlight new nuclear testing as a way of rolling back norms around nuclear weapons. That Putin has not yet taken even this relatively minor step toward breaking the nuclear taboo indicates a broader strategic rationale for abstaining from nuclear use. At the top of these bigger strategic considerations is a need to retain the favor of major international partners such as India and China. Both countries have vigorously expressed their opposition to Russian nuclear use. Bucking the interests of his most valuable partners to resume nuclear testing, would indicate a determination by Putin to win the war at any cost, and represent a step toward making nuclear weapons one of the means for doing it.
Russia’s provocative actions provide unsettling reminders that the risk of nuclear war resulting from its invasion of Ukraine is real. But so far Putin has avoided committing himself to policy options that would make nuclear use a real likelihood.
Dan White is a Program Associate at The Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.
The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS are also added below by category, to Monday’s news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS STORY TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
This article will help explain my negative statements in yesterday’s posts about the risks involved in the concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI), referring to its development by humans for humans, as “the blind leading the blind”. The threat of AI applies in all things nuclear — especially relevant to nuclear power plants and nuclear war management. This well-written article does not ignore the nuclear reactor power operational threats that exist in much the same manner as with nuclear weapons.
It is well known that AI could eventually put the human being itself along with our input and common-sense influence aside and create its own superhuman like intellectual and physical functions, including robotics that are far superior to humanity in both physical and mental capacity that could reduce our species to a minor life-level of living organisms. Or even worse — exterminate us . . . ~llaw
Beyond Human-in-the-Loop: Managing AI Risks in Nuclear Command-and-Control
On Nov. 16, U.S. and Chinese leaders met on the margins of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Lima, Peru, jointlyaffirming “the need to maintain human control over the decision to use nuclear weapons.” This declaration echoes a joint document submitted by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States during the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty review process in 2022.
With countries increasingly prioritizing military applications of AI, integrating AI into nuclear weapons systems is becoming a distinct possibility, especially as nuclear arsenals undergo modernization. While some nuclear-weapon states have emphasized the importance of maintaining human oversight and control over decisions to employ nuclear weapons, it is too early to take a victory lap. Avoiding a “Skynet” scenario, where AI takes independent control of nuclear weapons, does little to reduce the real risks of unintended nuclear launches.
AI holds the promise of enhancing the performance and capabilities of nuclear command, control, and communications systems, which form the backbone of nuclear decision-making. However, if integrated with haste and without adequate risk assessment, safeguards, and redundancies, such integration could dramatically heighten the risk of unintended nuclear escalation. Escalation risks can arise from altered decision-making dynamics, accelerated processing speeds that outpace human supervision, or insidious errors that can propagate undetected through complex systems — regardless of whether humans remain in the decision-making loop.
To prevent nuclear calamity and ensure the responsible use of AI in nuclear command-and-control, states should move beyond mere prescriptive commitments to human oversight. Reducing the risk of unintended nuclear escalation requires a governance framework that establishes a quantitative threshold for the maximum acceptable probability of an accidental nuclear launch as a uniform safety benchmark. Valuable governance lessons can be drawn from civil nuclear safety regulation, in particular what regulators refer to as the “risk-informed” and “performance-based” safety governance approach. Applying these principles to nuclear command-and-control systems requires moving beyond the simplistic human-in-the-loop prescription to focus on assessing the system’s safety performance. The objective is to assess the quantitative likelihood of an accidental nuclear launch with a particular configuration of AI and non-AI subsystems and to ensure that that likelihood remains securely below an acceptable threshold.
AI’s Impact on Nuclear Risks
Assessing how AI can impact the nuclear domain and contribute to unintended escalation is no easy task. The current limited understanding of the behavior of AI models, their rapid and unpredictable advancement, and the complexity and opacity of nuclear systems and subsystems that feed into the decision-making process make this discussion largely speculative. Despite this, it is still possible to foresee how states might consider implementing AI as part of broader efforts to modernize aging nuclear arsenals based on existing nuclear postures and states’ desire to gain a strategic advantage.
For instance, Gen. Anthony J. Cotton, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has pointed to AI’s potential to automate data collection, streamline processing, and accelerate data sharing with allies. Similarly, officialstatements and documents from other nuclear powers often frame AI as a tool to assist human decision-makers to make faster and more informed decisions, beyond the nuclear domain.
In principle, AI’s ability to analyze vast amounts of data from diverse sources is well-suited to identify threats quickly, analyze sensor data, automate the identification of objects, and evaluate potential courses of action. However, AI introduces a number of significant risks due to the inherent limitations of today’s advanced AI models.
First, AI is unreliable. Today’s AI can confidently generate false information that can lead to flawed predictions and recommendations, ultimately skewing decision-making. This phenomenon is termed “hallucinations.” Examples include a large language model generating incorrect facts about historical events, or a vision model “seeing” objects that are not there. Second, the opacity of AI systems — known as the “black box” problem — makes it difficult to fully understand how an AI system reaches its conclusions. This lack of transparency undermines trust and reduces the utility of AI in high-stakes environments like nuclear decision-making, where transparency is crucial. Third, AI systems are susceptible to cyberattacks, creating opportunities for adversaries to compromise the integrity of nuclear command-and-control systems. Finally, current AI models struggle to align outputs with human goals and values, potentially deviating from strategic objectives. The high-pressure environment of nuclear decision-making, combined with limited response time, exacerbates these dangers, as decisions may rely on inaccurate, opaque, compromised, or misaligned information.
Despite the declarations of some nuclear-armed states to maintain human control in nuclear decision-making, not all of them have explicitly committed to this, leaving room for grave consequences due to misunderstandings or misinterpretations of countries’ intent. But even if all nuclear states made similar declarations, there is no simple way to verify these commitments. Moreover, human–machine interaction itself can introduce severe risks. Operators may place excessive trust in an AI system, relying on its outputs without sufficient scrutiny, or they may distrust it entirely, hesitating to act when speed is critical. Both situations can skew decision-making processes even when AI systems function as intended. All of these limitations persist even when states maintain human oversight.
Further compounding these risks is the uncertainty surrounding AI’s future advancements. While current limitations may eventually be resolved, new risks could also emerge that remain unpredictable at this stage.
The Precedent of Civil Nuclear Safety Regulation
While the risks of AI-integrated command-and-control may seem novel, the management of nuclear risks with severe consequences for public health and safety is not a new challenge for governments. Indeed, the principles of risk-informed, performance-based, and technology-neutral regulation — drawn from the governance of civil nuclear safety — may usefully apply to the nexus of AI and nuclear command-and-control.
In the United States, the process of “risk-informing” the regulation of nuclear safety began with the 1975 Reactor Safety Study. This quantified the risks of accidents and radioactive releases associated with nuclear power generation using probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques such as event trees and fault trees. Simply put, these techniques map out the various sequences of cascading events, including system failures, that could ultimately lead to an accident, allowing the probabilities of various consequences to be quantified.
Prior to the quantification of risks, regulations were based primarily on prescriptive and deterministic requirements. For instance, regulators prescribed multiple redundant safety features to prevent certain foreseen accidents without explicitly considering the likelihood of any given accident sequence. After the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expanded its research into the more extensive application of probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques. This was recommended by investigations after the accident, culminating in a 1995 policy statement and subsequent plans to “risk-inform” the commission’s safety regulation.
Meanwhile, industry pushed for the more extensive use of performance-based regulation giving the licensee greater flexibility in determining how to accomplish a defined safety goal. Rather than specifying what safety features must be included in the reactor design, a performance-based regulatory requirement would simply establish a quantifiable safety outcome. In its public communication, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission illustrates its performance-based approach using a skydiving example. In this case, the regulator would institute a “performance requirement” that “the parachute must open above an altitude of 5,000 feet” without specifying whether that outcome should be ensured with a rip-cord or an automatic activation device.
Guided by the qualitative safety goal that nuclear power plant operation should not contribute significantly to individual and societal risks, by 1986 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission had defined a measurable benchmark that “the overall mean frequency of a large release of radioactive materials to the environment from a reactor accident should be less than 1 in 1,000,000 per year of reactor operation.” That benchmark has since been refined into more operationalizable standards.
In recent years, as diverse and novel reactor concepts emerged, it became clear that many safety features prescribed for traditional reactors were no longer applicable. Regulators have therefore prioritized the development of technology-neutral regulations allowing greater flexibility in how reactor designs could satisfy safety performance benchmarks. In this context, the probabilistic-risk-assessment techniques and performance-based regulatory approach developed over the decades have proven critical for ensuring the adaptation of safety governance to technological advancement.
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
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Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
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LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
I have posted two, perhaps contradictive, news stories from today’s LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA. The 1st is a non-controversial report from “World Nuclear News” (wnn) about Meta/]Facebook sending requests for proposals (RFPs) to potential nuclear power provider partners in their future AI development . The requests are for 1 to 4 GW (gigawatts) of nuclear produced power, which is a tremendous amount of power at either end of the request, probably meaning that Meta/Facebook has no idea how much power they will need by 2030, but apparently that seems to be okay with them so long as they have contracts for their nuclear power needs.
According to the 2nd article by “Environment Maine” with researchers from the 100% Renewable Energy, Environment America Research & Policy Center and The Public Interest Network explains why Meat/Facebook’s requests are “misguided”. I would also say they are premature (for reasons that may be considered sinister, including those from the previous technology companies Microsoft, Google and Amazon.
My personal concerns about the future of AI and its absolute control over ourselves have be redoubled . . . If there is such a thing as the “blind leading the blind”, this is it. ~llaw
Facebook owner Meta seeks up to 4 GW nuclear capacity
Wednesday, 4 December 2024
Meta is the latest tech company to seek nuclear as an energy source for its growing data needs as it seeks proposals for as much as 4 GW of nuclear capacity in the USA by the early 2030s.
Data centre operators are seeking clear, and 24/7 power sources (Image: Generic data centre representation)
The company, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp among its brands, is releasing a request for proposals “to identify nuclear energy developers to help us meet our AI innovation and sustainability objectives”.
The target is between 1 and 4 GW of new nuclear generation capacity in the USA. “We are seeking developers with strong community engagement, development, and permitting, and execution expertise that have development opportunities for new nuclear energy resources – either small modular reactors or larger nuclear reactors,” the notice announcing the request for proposals (RFP) says.
It adds “we are taking an open approach with this RFP so we can partner with others across the industry to bring new nuclear energy to the grid”. Qualification to be considered closes on 3 January with initial RFP proposals due by 7 February.
In a blog post providing further background, it says: “We are looking to identify developers that can help accelerate the availability of new nuclear generators and create sufficient scale to achieve material cost reductions by deploying multiple units, both to provide for Meta’s future energy needs and to advance broader industry decarbonisation. We believe working with partners who will ultimately permit, design, engineer, finance, construct, and operate these power plants will ensure the long-term thinking necessary to accelerate nuclear technology.”
Meta says that nuclear energy is more capital intensive, takes longer to develop, has more regulatory requirements and has a longer operational life so “we need to engage nuclear energy projects earlier in their development lifecycle and consider their operational requirements when designing a contract. And, as scaling deployments of nuclear technology offers the best chance of rapidly reducing cost, engaging with a partner across projects and locations will allow us to ensure that we can deploy strategically”.
The decision of the Facebook-owner to bring on its own nuclear energy supply follows in the footsteps of fellow tech giants Microsoft, Google and Amazon, and is the result of the vast energy needs required for huge and growing data centres with artificial intelligence developments set to push those energy requirements even higher. As with renewables, nuclear provides carbon free power, but crucially it also provides that power round-the-clock, which is a key requirement of data centres.
STATEMENT: Meta misguided in calling for massive nuclear energy scale-up
Media Relations Specialist, The Public Interest Network
BOSTON — Meta announced a request for proposals (RFP) on Tuesday, asking energy developers to respond with plans to build 1-4 GW of new nuclear generation capacity to be delivered in the early 2030s. The tech giant wants to use the power for data centers to support energy-intensive artificial intelligence (AI).
The agreement comes on the heels of other large technology companies expressing interest in nuclear. In October, Google announced a partnership with California’s Kairos Power, to buy energy from small nuclear reactors starting in 2030, and Amazon announced that it signed agreements to support the development of new nuclear energy projects. Earlier this fall, Microsoft inked a deal with Constellation Energy that aims to restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant.
Energy-intensive computing is projected to drive a surge in electricity demand after nearly two decades of little to no new growth. Already, this projected increase is prolonging America’s dependence on dirty energy. Polluting coal and gas fired plants are having their lives extended, new gas plants have been proposed, and there’s interest in reopening additional previously shuttered nuclear plants, such as Palisades in Michigan.
Environment America Research & Policy Center’s Senior Director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, Johanna Neumann, issued the following statement:
“The long history of overhyped nuclear promises reveals that nuclear energy is expensive and slow to build all while still being inherently dangerous. America already has 90,000 metric tons of nuclear waste that we don’t have a storage solution for. Do we really want to create more radioactive waste to power the often dubious and questionable uses of AI?
“In the blind sprint to win on AI, Meta and the other tech giants have lost their way. Big Tech should recommit to solutions that not only work but pose less risk to our environment and health.
“Data centers should be as energy and water efficient as possible and powered solely with new renewable energy. Without those guardrails, the tech industry’s insatiable thirst for energy risks derailing America’s efforts to get off polluting forms of power, including nuclear.”
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Under the partially raised concrete and steel lid of a silo, a vast intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) peeks out. But the missile is a replica, …
… threatened by multiple foes including Russia, the head of the armed forces warned. Admiral Sir Tony Radakin said “wild threats of tactical nuclear ..
LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
Anyone who doubts this well-summarized and very, very, important message from the Arms Control Association (ACA), is up in the night with no visible understanding of not only the future of the United States, but also the veritable future of life on planet Earth itself, including virtually all life.
This incredibly dangerous nuclear world situation is the most critical subject that exists in the world today, yet it was never a (or THE) most important issue facing the next U.S. president and his or her administration during the presidential campaign. And Trump was the most illogical human being — the most unstable, mentally erratic, thoughtless, and emotionally dangerous individual to hold the most powerful and important job in our country.
And he is backed by a proposed authoritarian agenda called “Project 25” that built our country’s future around this ‘shoot-from-the-hip loose cannon’ of a man who has so many character flaws, including being a convicted criminal, that he cannot begin to command or control a deviant and dangerous world that we are facing point blank right in from of our faces. ~llaw
Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Global nuclear dangers are growing, and international peace and security are at severe risk. In January, the second presidential administration of Donald Trump will be tasked with managing a complex array of nuclear weapons-related dangers, some of which were partly of his own making and all of which will be difficult to address. Trump’s proposed solutions to these challenges were hardly explained, let alone debated, during the 2024 campaign cycle.
The war in Ukraine and the risk of escalation: Perhaps the most critical foreign policy variable will be whether and how Trump pursues his ambitious goal to impose a deal that halts the ongoing war being waged by Russian President Vladimir Putin against Ukraine but would lead to major territorial concessions to Russia. A ceasefire likely will not come swiftly, and if it does, it will shape very profoundly the European security environment for years to come.
As Putin pushes to gain additional territory ahead of any talks, he may try to employ new or more lethal weaponry and use nuclear coercion to try to gain some advantage. Trump, as U.S. President Joe Biden, should refrain from issuing nuclear threats of his own and instead join other global leaders to condemn threats of nuclear first use as inadmissible.
Heading off a three-way nuclear arms race. All major nuclear-weapon states are spending tens of billions of dollars modernizing their nuclear arsenals. Talks on nuclear arms control remain stalled. With the last remaining agreement limiting the Russian and U.S. arsenals due to expire in February 2026, an era of unconstrained nuclear competition looms.
In response, congressional Republicans and the authors of the Project 2025 plan want Washington to spend even more than the current $756 billion, ten-year price tag for nuclear modernization in order to increase the number and diversity of the arsenal. Such a buildup would reverse 35 years of Russian-U.S. reductions, is not necessary to deter nuclear attack, would divert resources from other defense and human needs, and would prompt China and Russia to match any U.S. increase.
Trump and his team have not offered a plan for constraining Russia’s strategic arsenal, and some Republicans may lobby Trump to withdraw from the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Instead, Trump could try to achieve what Biden could not: a simple, informal deal with Putin pledging each side to maintain the existing caps on their strategic nuclear arsenals as long as the other does. This would allow the U.S. nuclear enterprise to focus on maintaining the existing force, buy time for formal talks to limit strategic, intermediate, and tactical nuclear weapons and the systems that carry them, and forestall a costly arms race that no one can win.
Maintaining the global test ban. No state except North Korea has conducted a nuclear test explosion in this century, the United States has not tested since 1992, and the world is more stable as a result. For the United States, nuclear explosive testing is technically and militarily unnecessary. A generously funded and proven Stockpile Stewardship Program maintains the existing U.S. warhead types.
Nevertheless, Trump’s former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien proposed a resumption of U.S. nuclear testing in Nevada, which would violate the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Project 2025 calls for reducing the time necessary to resume nuclear testing to six months or less. Any such move would be a self-inflicted nuclear policy disaster that would open the door to Chinese, North Korean, and Russian testing and blow apart global nonproliferation efforts at a time of heightened nuclear danger.
Stopping a nuclear-armed Iran. Since Trump withdrew from the successful 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Tehran’s leaders have restored their capacity to produce weapons-grade nuclear material and reduced access to international inspectors who are needed to guard against nuclear breakout.
Iran’s new president has offered to engage in talks that could lead to action-for-action steps to deescalate tensions, which could help move Iran further away from the nuclear threshold. But most advisers in Trump’s circle want to double down on the failed “maximum pressure” sanctions policy of Trump’s first term to force Iran to back down or help Israel try to destroy parts of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Such action would make Iran’s acquisition of the bomb in the future far more likely. Last month, Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Tehran would withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if the United States and others sought to snap back international sanctions through the UN Security Council before October 2025. Iran’s nuclear knowledge cannot be bombed away. Any setback in its nuclear infrastructure would be temporary and likely lead Iran to pursue a clandestine bomb program.
The risk of nuclear war, nuclear arms racing, and nuclear proliferation is already greater than at any point since the Cold War. In the months ahead, the new Trump administration will make key choices that could determine whether the situation improves or deteriorates. It will be essential that responsible members of Congress, responsible Western and non-nuclear-weapon states, and civil society campaigners help steer toward a safer course.
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
… all things Trump | Dec. 5, 12 p.m. ET. Register Now >>. Sections. Search … (Bloomberg) — Meta Platforms Inc. is seeking as much as 4 gigawatts of new …
Now, Newsweek has looked at Scientific American’s previous fallout maps of a nuclear attack on missile silos in the U.S. heartland—Colorado, Wyoming, …
… emergency at one of the three operating nuclear power plants still under Kyiv’s control. Support UP or become our patron! energyIAEA. Advertisement:.
… attack Russia – in other words, the US and UK. Putin’s nuclear threats and the use of the Oreshnik missile were reported with alarm around the world.
Map Shows Safest US States to Live During Nuclear War · Inside America’s Nuke-Proof Bunkers As Russian Threats Drive Demand · Vaping Map Shows States …
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LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
Referring to the Russian attacks on Ukraine’s nuclear power facilities as “Terrorism” rather than “War: is interesting, especially considering that it’s what Ukraine is calling the nuclear power conflict aspect of the war in this Article . But the point is well-made here, regardless, and the term is probably a way to try to soften the implications of potential nuclear war for the USA and NATO while a new and volatile USA administration takes over the ultimate power of the West.
It may well be a verbal ruse to calm Trump’s tendency to ‘shoot from the hip’, but it won’t prevent him rom remaining on the wrong side of the actual war. Much of the weak Ukrainian war support from the USA cannot have been ignored by the softball method of the Biden administration, which boomeranged as a more weak western support operation than, no doubt, even Russia expected, However, the ‘unapproved’ missile strike by Ukraine into Russia’s belly has made the war an even greater nuclear threat from Russia’s leader.
But the word ‘terrorism’ itself is the kind of conflict that invites a different style of ‘war — one that any country or even a territory can play. And that could increase the world’s attacks on nuclear power plants everywhere, including the USA, no matter the eventual outcome of the real Russia/Ukraine war regardless of Trump’s future influence on Putin.
In any case, Ukraine, and therefore the entire free world, is in jeopardy of losing or maintaining their democracies or republics, allowing authoritarian governments to increase global terrorism in a world-wide movement to control nuclear power as a way to subjugate the masses even moreso than they already are. And financial greed, along with control of both nuclear power facilities and uranium (nuclear fuel) that could become more valuable than gold or paper money because a whole new industry has become the new pillar of global wealth and ‘the bomb’ is right there beside the cash to keep the rest of us quiet and nervously content. Trump’s new administration will fit right in . . . ~llaw
Russian Energy Terrorism Poses Significant Threats in the Short and Long Term If Not Stopped
After more than two months in which Ukrainians enjoyed an unrestricted electricity supply, on November 17 Russia launched a “massive attack” on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. There is reason to believe that the Kremlin will continue to put pressure on Ukraine’s energy system this winter. But the West also faces severe consequences and should be gravely concerned about Russia’s energy terrorism.
The November 17 attack was the tenth large-scale attack on Ukraine’s energy system in 2024. The previous attack, on August 26, was the largest attack on Ukraine’s energy system in history. In between those two attacks, Russia carried out dozens of local strikes, primarily targeting power distribution facilities in front-line regions. The most recent wide-scale attack occurred on November 28.
As winter approaches, many are trying to guess what form Russia’s energy terrorism might take going forward, especially in view of a possible decrease in support from Ukraine’s allies next year. However, in this case, winter is not the only input into Russia’s strategic calculations. Russia plays a game that is long and broad, and increasingly transparently directed beyond Ukraine’s borders. How the West reacts—or fails to do so—is a major vector in the Kremlin’s planning.
Russia’s Motives in Conducting Energy Terror
Russian air strikes clearly aim beyond merely damaging Ukraine’s power infrastructure and economy. These attacks are probably linked to foreign political changes and are intended to sow panic among Ukrainians and disillusionment with the course of the war—perhaps enough to cause Ukraine to sue for peace.
Social media bots, believed to have been coordinated by Russians, were already calling for Ukraine to capitulate back in 2022. Russia has further pumped up disinformation efforts by putting it out that Russian attacks did not cause rolling blackouts, Kyiv did, because—according to the disinformation narrative – the government wanted to export more electricity to Europe at higher prices, and therefore restricted the power supply to Ukrainian housholds.to bring in more revenue. These false claims are similarly intended to fuel citizens’ anger against the government and divide Ukraine.
In the larger geopolitical picture, however, when planning these attacks, Russia almost assuredly considers foreign affairs and political developments, both domestic and abroad. Russia needs to undermine the West’s trust in Ukraine and the West’s belief that Ukraine can go on resisting.
The change in the U.S. administration will be the most significant foreign development that the Kremlin monitors in the coming months. Before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, Russians may seek to attack Ukraine’s power system severely enough to create the impression that the country is destined for ruin. In September, during the presidential race, Donald Trump said Ukraine had already been demolished. Any major attacks resulting in significant power cutoffs in Ukraine over the next two to three months could strengthen the erroneous impression that Ukraine is buckling and lead to a drop in Western aid—an eventuality the Kremlin would welcome.
For these several reasons, Russia is likely to intensify its attacks on Ukraine’s power system. After a pause, it has collected enough missiles, and winter attacks are more psychologically harmful to the population than summer attacks. The Kremlin has opportunity to further degrade the situation in Ukraine, but the moment the new U.S. administration comes to power will be telling. If the White House believes the situation in Ukraine to be hopeless, its actions in regard to Ukraine may favor Russia’s interests.
What If the West Fails to Act to Stop Russian Energy Aggression Against Ukraine?
A null reaction to Russia’s energy terrorism will not produce good results for the West either. Neglecting Russia’s energy terror can be expected to have immediate, direct results for the West and strengthen Russia strategically.
The greatest present hemispheric threat is a potential nuclear facility accident. Attacks on the transformer substations connecting Ukrainian nuclear power plants with the rest of the power system could lead to uncontrollable processes in the nuclear reactors. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed that Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, a key link in the power system, pose a growing concern over nuclear safety.
The Zaporizhzhia NPP is the most vulnerable, and the most worrisome. Europe’s largest NPP, it is located in Russian-controlled territory, and part of its grounds has been converted to a military base for Russian forces and for storage of explosives. The plant is connected to the Ukrainian grid and needs an uninterrupted power supply to maintain reactor cooling. Further attacks on or degradation of the plant would result in widespread blackouts.
Even European countries with good relations with the Kremlin will suffer from power outages in Ukraine caused by Russian air attacks. Hungary and Slovakia, for example, depend heavily on oil and gas transit from Russia through Ukraine and are not eager to see disruptions of Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
There should be no illusion that if Ukraine experiences blackouts, it will try to keep the oil and gas transit going instead of citing force majeure as a reason to halt such supplies.
How the Kremlin Views and Dares the West
If the West does not respond vigorously to stop the Kremlin’s energy terror, the Kremlin will perceive such restraint as a weakness and believe it is free to act similarly against other states in the future.
It’s likely the Kremlin already believes the West is weak. Russia still uses Western components to produce its missiles and drones, and Western components were detected in North Korean missiles used to attack Ukraine as well. So the Russian perception is that Ukraine’s allies may help repair the power system but are unable to clamp down sufficiently, through control of supply chains or third party-sales of components, to stop or reduce Russia’s ongoing energy attacks by cutting off supplies—perhaps the most efficient way to bring about a near-term reduction in attacks.
A lack of response from the West will, by default, cede Russia a free hand to attack the power systems of other states, especially those bordering Russia and Belarus. The West should not be surprised if some “unrecognized” drone attacks power stations in the European countries close to Russia and Belarus.
On a grim note, some European states may not view negatively waves of labor migration from Ukraine in the event of energy supply interruption. In the Czech Republic, for example, Ukrainian refugees contribute more money to the national economy than they receive in support. Germany, the EU country that has taken in the most Ukrainian refugees, encourages more to enter the labor force. Labor shortages in different countries mean that the arrival of Ukrainians from an energy-stricken country need not be viewed as a threat but as an opportunity.
By Constraining Russian Attacks, the West Bolsters Its Own Security
Force is the only language the Kremlin understands. Ukraine should be supported not only directly, with weapons and energy system supplies, but with effective restraint of Russia to prevent or reduce future attacks on the Ukrainian power systems. By taking that step and mounting something more than a null response, the West can take significant steps toward ensuring its own security and stability.
The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the author and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.
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(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Surging demand for AI has sparked a race to secure supplies of nuclear power … All Things with Kim Strassel · Potomac Watch Podcast · Foreign Edition …
All Things Considered · Today’s Schedule · All Radio Programs · Printable … NH News NuclearSeabrook Nuclear plantEnergyTransmissionElectricityelectric …
Given that conventional nuclear plants can be very challenging to site and permit, there’s been a lot of talk about installing small modular reactors …
LAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
So, those who are wealthy enough or important enough believe they can go underground to survive, and perhaps some of the underground shelters could provide protection for a short time, but for how long is a short time begs the very question of survival — and even its meaning or definition.
An all out global nuclear WWIII would decimate the earth’s environment for years to come and would provide an inhospitable “Nuclear Winter” that could last for generations of humans, so, I have to wonder, why would anyone want to live in an underground nuclear shelter when most everything on the surface of planet Earth has been destroyed to mere rubble, including human and other species. Food and water resources would be gone, meaning that underground living at best would eventually be subject to death from starvation and related health issues.
I remember some of the concern and even the panic that prompted moving underground during the Cold War and particularly the Cuban missile crisis when we went through this same issue, but all but a few of of our species prepared to brace themselves by going about their lives in a ‘so what’ way, relying on “hope” that our respective “leaders” would come to their senses, and it happened that they did and there was no permanent harm done and life went on as normal.
Today’s danger of nuclear war is much greater than back then because there are more nations brandishing nuclear weapons of mass destruction this time around, but I don’t know that the level of our collective fear is any different than it was then. Perhaps that is partly because we are more psychologically conditioned to other ‘crucial’ or ‘critical’ demands on our time that we don’t seem to worry about such a thing as a nuclear World War III. ~llaw
Inside America’s Nuke-Proof Bunkers As Russian Threats Drive Demand
Published Dec 02, 2024 at 12:56 PM ESTUpdated Dec 02, 2024 at 1:33 PM EST
Fears that the Russia-Ukraine conflict may soon spiral into a global, nuclear confrontation have driven Americans’ interest in underground bunkers as a means of surviving future catastrophes.
While perhaps seen by many as a remnant of the Cold War, a market has emerged for modernized fallout shelters equipped with the amenities of a typical American home. Those in the bunker trade spoke to Newsweek about the industry’s latest trends, and the motivations driving their clients—including executives from listed U.S. companies—to plan for apocalyptic scenarios.
One such example is Survival Condo, a 15-storey, 20,000-square-foot bunker in northern Kansas capable of housing and sustaining 75 individuals for over five years. Refashioned from a decommissioned government missile silo, which the company says was designed to “survive a direct nuclear strike,” Survival Condo assures its clients that they will enjoy unrivaled protection from any future disaster on American shores.
Larry Hall is the owner of Survival Condo, having purchased the silo in 2008 for $300,000, and told Newsweek that interest in his business often piques in response to significant global events. “We see periodic increases in the interest level for our bunkers that mirror world concerns,” Hall said. “COVID was a good example and during the past nine months the election and specific global hot spots support that observation.”
Hall said that traffic on his site had risen over the past few months—”nuclear” emerging as one of the most searched terms—and chalked this up to the Ukrainian conflict. The primary concern expressed by prospective clients, he said, was “the fear of Putin escalating the war with Ukraine by using tactical nuclear weapons.”
Cory Hubbard is the co-owner of DEFCON Underground Mfg., a company specializing in underground bunkers and bomb shelters for clients across America.
Like Hall, Hubbard said that interest in the company had spiked as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war. “When the Ukraine war first started I’d say call volume went up several [hundred] percent,” Hubbard told Newsweek, adding that there was also a noticeable uptick “whenever Putin mentioned nuclear anything.”
However, he said that interest in the company’s shelters tended to increase alongside any kind of “big world event,” and that customers may be seeking a shelter for numerous reasons besides war with Russia.
As the online forums of self-described preppers make clear, bunkers and other disaster-related provisions are not reserved solely for end-of-the-world scenarios, and may be made in anticipation of extreme weather events, domestic political upheaval, or another world-halting pandemic, events collectively referred to by the community with the acronym SHTF—scenarios in which “s*** hits the fan.”
Aside from protection against Russian nukes, Hall said that Survival Condo’s prospective customers were also motivated to seek his services by the possibility of a conflict between Israel and Iran, tensions between China and Taiwan, fears over domestic terrorism by “undocumented migrants,” as well as the possibility of another pandemic sweeping the country.
Hall is preparing to open another facility in Tescott, Kansas, which promises to offer protection against everything from solar flares and meteor storms to civil unrest and deadly pandemics. His company also offers custom bunker designs for those hoping for a nuke-proof shelter of their own, rather than the flagship condominium facility.
With price tags in the millions, Hall admits that his company’s luxury offerings are “not for everyone,” but told Newsweek that Survival Condo had been approached by several notable, affluent individuals and groups seeking security against whatever the future may hold.
“One interesting development is that we have had an increase in inquiries from some tightly held companies that have expressed the desire for a complete facility for their company,” Hall said. “The requests are for a hybrid design, nuclear-hardened bunker that would have several floors for a backup data center and luxury living quarters for the company owners.”
While he could not disclose the specific companies in question, Hall said that several such requests came from “crypto and crypto mining” firms, some of which are publicly traded.
“Most people just call looking for a bunker and need to have things explained to them,” Hubbard said of his clientele. “There is a lot that goes into how and why the shelters are made and designed. Most people have no idea what it actually takes.”
Besides food and supplies to outlast whatever disaster has swept the country, he said that many underestimate what is needed for a truly nuke-proof bunker.
“Fallout shelters or actual bomb shelters typically require four to six feet of dirt on top of them to handle the radiation from a nuclear blast,” he said, adding that entrances to these shelters must also be designed “with certain angles” to protect against radiation.
A classroom located inside Survival Condo. Survival Condo’s owner, Larry Hall, said that one of the benefits of the condominium facility was the ability to interact with other families and individuals. Survival Condo Projects
Hall said an underappreciated aspect of his company’s fallout shelter was the communal aspect and the daunting, alternative prospect of outlasting a calamity with only a handful of individuals by your side.
As well as the mandatory provisions—redundant sources of electricity and water and medical supplies—Survival Condo offers an indoor spa, pool and workout facility, as well as a theatre and classroom for adults and children to mingle in the post-disaster period. Hall said that clients found these luxuries particularly beneficial during the pandemic, as many sought refuge in the bunker.
“COVID was a test case that our existing owners told me that they underestimated the benefit of being able to have conversations with other adults about the global situation and to bounce ideas with,” Hall said. “Most of our clients have children, and the ability of the kids to all play together during COVID in our protected environment was a huge plus for the parents.”
(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Suddenly it was all about emergency deployments to Germany. … Nuclear retaliation is not quite the same as nuclear warfighting, but it deploys all the …
While perhaps seen by many as a remnant of the Cold War, a market has emerged for modernized fallout shelters equipped with the amenities of a typical …
The threat they pose is immediate and real. It leaves us to grapple with the central truth of the nuclear age: The sole way for humanity to survive is .
By now, he has made so many threats to do so that most observers believe he has just been bluffing. Putin’s most recent threat came in response to the …
It is not surprising then that ideas about impending disaster, nuclear war or collapse, whether financial, economic, environmental or societal, all of …
They will do little to turn the tide of the war. So why are we taking the chance? “Like many Russia-watchers”, I believe the nuclear threats are empty …
LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
Our nuclear-armed world leaders are quickly losing whatever s left of their minds about the possibility and even probability of nuclear war exterminating life on planet Earth. You really mean the USA is or was actually considering providing Ukraine with nuclear weapons in order to “deter” Russia from continuing its non-nuclear missiles. We actually believe that would work? For more than one day? Fight fire with a bigger fire? How stupid are we? How self-aggrandizing are our power-addicted leaders?
Why would any world leader and their political and military stooges think that escalating war is a way to avoid nuclear war — especially in today’s nuclear world? Yet, according to this truncated story, such a plan is or was considered as a way to avoid additional non-nuclear missile attacks on Ukraine and its nuclear power plants. As I wrote yesterday, Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian citizens in such a way as this is a war crime as well as a ‘crime against humanity’. Humanity has, apparently, lost track of what the word ‘crime’ even means —Trump’s reelection proves that — but also as well as a definition for “humanity”. Such words as ‘peace’, ‘forgiveness’, ‘friendship’, ‘care’, ‘heart’, ‘kindness’, ‘love’, and most of all, if only, ‘empathy’ come to mind.
In today’s worlds of old and all the way up until today mankind has fought tooth and nail, but with the advent of nuclear weapons and nuclear power, we cannot continue fighting to settle our differences. There is only only one way to solve our insane global hatred problem to survive as a species, and that is to actually universally unite as the humanitarian, peaceful, and considerate human beings that we only “pretend” to be today . . . ~llaw
China Warns of Nuclear War Risk in Ukraine
Published Nov 29, 2024 at 9:47 AM EST
00:52
Biden Admin Calls On Ukraine To Lower Draft Age To Boost Military Ranks
China has renewed its warnings over the potential use of nuclear weapons in the Russia-Ukraine war, in response to recent speculation about the possibility of the U.S. stationing them in the embattled country to deter future Russian aggression.
“China is paying close attention to the nuclear risks triggered by the Ukraine crisis and has reiterated time and again that nuclear weapons should not be used and nuclear war must not be fought,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said during Thursday’s regular press conference.
She’d been asked to respond to last week’s New York Times report citing anonymous U.S. officials who floated returning nuclear weapons to Ukraine as part of discussions on deterring a third Russian invasion after an eventual negotiated ceasefire.
Damaged cars in the courtyard of a destroyed building after a missile attack in Odesa, Ukraine. China has denounced any nuclear escalation in the Ukraine-Russia war. Oleksandr Gimanov/AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine once inherited the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal, including approximately 1,900 strategic warheads, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Kyiv agreed to relinquish these weapons in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., U.K., and Russia.
“Under the current circumstances, all parties need to remain calm and exercise restraint,” Mao said. “Joint efforts are needed to cool down the situation through dialogue and consultation to reduce strategic risks.”
Newsweek reached out to Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department with written requests for comment.
China has sought to position itself as a neutral player in the Ukraine conflict, now in its 33rd month. However, the country has consistently avoided labeling Russia’s 2022 invasion as such and has provided Moscow with substantial economic and diplomatic support.
Trade with its northern neighbor and purchases of Russian oil and gas have soared. Meanwhile, Beijing has amplified the Kremlin’s narratives while censoring anti-war criticism of Vladimir Putin on Chinese social media platforms.
China has also deepened military cooperation and diplomatic ties with the Kremlin, framing the relationship as a counterweight to U.S.-led global dominance.
The Biden administration’s recent decision to allow Ukraine to use U.S.-provided Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) to strike targets within Russian territory has reignited fears of escalation.
However, analysts have argued that the risk of a nuclear response from Russia is overstated.
Subscribed
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
By now, he has made so many threats to do so that most observers believe he has just been bluffing. Putin’s most recent threat came in response to the ..
The concerns faded for some officials as Putin did not act on his threats … nuclear force or other deadly tactics outside the war zone.
IAEA Weekly News
29 November 2024
The 2024 IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Science, Technology and Applications and the Technical Cooperation Programme got underway in Vienna, Austria, this week. Read the top updates and stories published on IAEA.org.
An IAEA team of experts has concluded an International Physical Protection Advisory Service mission in Zimbabwe. The mission, conducted at the request of the Government of Zimbabwe, took place from 18 November to 29 November 2024. Read more →
Ukraine’s three operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) reduced their electricity generation this morning following renewed attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure that further endangered nuclear safety during the military conflict, Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said. Read more →
IAEA Member States have adopted a declaration recognizing the important role of nuclear science, technology and applications in addressing current and evolving global challenges. The declaration was unanimously adopted at the IAEA Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Science, Technology and Applications and the Technical Cooperation Programme in Vienna this morning. Read more →
Nuclear science and technology play a significant role in improving the lives and well-being of people worldwide, especially in the fields of health, food and agriculture and the environment. Read more →
The 2024 Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Science, Technology and Applications and the Technical Cooperation Programme will take place on 26-28 November 2024 at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna, Austria. Read more →
See Al Jazeera article below for description of image and photo credits.
LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
Some say, “all is fair in love and war; other’s say attacking civilians in war is a violation of International Laws. This attack on Ukraine by Russia, as well as many others, leaves little doubt that Russia is violating international and other laws against humanity, but who is going to do anything about it? The answer, of course, is nobody.
According to Ukraine’s military and ministry, this is the 11th attack this year on civilian electric power sources, and a million people are said to be without power from this latest missile barrage from Russia.
The following is from the article:
Breach of international law . . .
“The ministry said it was the 11th massive Russian attack on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure this year.
Catriona Murdoch, director of the starvation and humanitarian crisis division of Global Rights Compliance, an international human rights foundation, said Russia was breaching international law with attacks on the energy system.
“Russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are not just acts of war – they are crimes that deliberately target and terrify the civilian population, leaving millions vulnerable,” she said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.
“[The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants] in relation to such attacks on energy during the winter of 2022, perpetrators must be held accountable for this second wave of attacks which are a violation of international law,” Murdoch added.”
So it is, as I see it, that nuclear power plants are part of nuclear war, as the Russia/Ukraine war has demonstrated multiple times. There has also been an attack by Ukraine’s military on a nuclear power plant in Russia, which must fit into this same International Law.
Mankind’s inhumanity to mankind must somehow be stopped forever if mankind is to survive, but there is no power except humanity itself to end this never-ending inhumane world-wide treatment of ourselves. We need help from somewhere unknown if we are to survive and it certainly will never come from our political and military leaders of the nuclear-armed countries around the world . . . ~llaw
Putin threatens Ukraine with new missile as Russian barrage hits power grid
Russian missile attacks have been reported across Ukraine, with emergency power outages affecting more than one million people amid freezing temperatures.
Ukraine analyses new Russian missile wreckage as Moscow threatens to escalate conflict
Published On 28 Nov 202428 Nov 2024
Updated:
8 hours ago
President Vladimir Putin has said 100 drones and 90 missiles were launched at Ukraine over the past two days “in response to strikes deep” inside Russia as he threatened to hit Kyiv with a new missile.
Putin was addressing a meeting of a security alliance of former Soviet countries in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana, on Thursday after Ukraine said Russian missiles targeted its power infrastructure.
He also addressed Russia’s use of the Oreshnik intermediate-range ballistic missile last week on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
Putin told the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) summit that Russia has begun serial production of the nuclear-capable weapon, and the Ministry of Defence was currently selecting more targets in Ukraine for strikes with the new missile.
Those targets could include “decision-making centres” in Kyiv in response to Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory with Western weapons, he added.
In the event of a massive use of the Oreshnik, the force of the strike “will be comparable to nuclear weapons”, he threatened.
A State Emergency Service member checks part of an intercepted Russian cruise missile in an unknown location in Ukraine [Handout/Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine via Reuters]
Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said on Thursday that the country’s power infrastructure came “under massive enemy attack” prompting the national power grid’s operator to introduce emergency power cuts amid freezing temperatures.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack a “despicable escalation”, accusing Russia of using cluster munitions.
“In several regions, strikes with cluster munitions were recorded, and they targeted civilian infrastructure,” he said in a post on Telegram. “This is a very despicable escalation of Russian terrorist tactics.”
“This is especially important in winter when we have to protect our infrastructure from targeted Russian attacks,” Zelenskyy added.
Cluster munitions have killed or wounded more than 1,000 people in Ukraine since Russia launched its all-out war in February 2022, the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC) said in its annual report in September.
They also pose a long-term risk since many fail to explode on impact, effectively acting as landmines that can explode years later, the CMC noted.
Russia and Ukraine are not among the 112 states that are party to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, which bans the use, transfer, production and storage of cluster bombs.
A girl stands next to her house damaged by a Russian missile strike on the outskirts of Odesa, Ukraine [Nina Liashonok/Reuters]
Reporting from Kharkiv, Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig said the attack seems to be Russia’s “largest in recent months”.
“The Ukrainian air defences have been in action to intercept some of those missiles, but there are reports of residential buildings being hit in Kharkiv as well as debris falling in areas of the capital, Kyiv,” he said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia fired 91 missiles and 97 attack drones, adding that 79 of the missiles and 35 of the drones were intercepted.
At least some of the weapons hit their targets, Ukrainian officials said.
“Power facilities in several regions were damaged,” the Ukrenergo national power grid electricity operator said, adding that it had introduced emergency blackouts across the country.
Authorities in the Lviv and Kyiv regions said critical infrastructure sites had been hit.
People take shelter inside a metro station during a Russian military attack in Kyiv, Ukraine [Alina Smutko/Reuters]
There have been power outages in Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipro and Donetsk regions, according to Ukrenergo, as temperatures across the country dropped to about 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit).
The CEO of the Yasno energy supplier, Serhii Kovalenko, subsequently said there were emergency blackouts all over the country because of the attacks.
More than a million customers in Ukraine’s west, hundreds of kilometres from the front lines, were without power.
“As of now, 523,000 subscribers in Lviv region are without electricity,” chief of the western region, Maksym Kozytskyi, said on social media.
Regional officials said at least 280,000 others were cut off in the western Rivne region and another 215,000 in the northwestern Volyn region, which also borders Poland, a European Union and NATO member.
“Power engineers are working to ensure backup power supply schemes where possible. They have already started restoration work where the security situation allows,” the Ministry of Energy said.
Breach of international law
The ministry said it was the 11th massive Russian attack on Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure this year.
Catriona Murdoch, director of the starvation and humanitarian crisis division of Global Rights Compliance, an international human rights foundation, said Russia was breaching international law with attacks on the energy system.
“Russia’s systematic attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are not just acts of war – they are crimes that deliberately target and terrify the civilian population, leaving millions vulnerable,” she said in a statement sent to Al Jazeera.
“[The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants] in relation to such attacks on energy during the winter of 2022, perpetrators must be held accountable for this second wave of attacks which are a violation of international law,” Murdoch added.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
Nuclear has been a big topic lately. The Biden administration wants to triple nuclear … Heard on All Things Considered. Nuclear energy may be seeing a …
All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM World Cafe. 0:00. 0:00. All Things … WOODS: Even if Mike’s company Kairos does succeed in eventually building …
The concerns faded for some officials as Putin did not act on his threats but remained central to how many in the administration weighed decisions on …
LLAW’s NUCLEAR NEWS TODAY & THE IMPACT ON OUR FUTURE
Why do we continue to delve into energy solutions that we don’t understand and some, like nuclear fusion, have long been scientific experiments, most all negatively unsuccessful that can’t possibly be in a “Race Against Time” that will save us from fossil fuels if we continue to demand more electrical power all around the globe. Our nuclear power plants (that operate on a much simpler process called ‘fission’) are not going to solve the fossil fuel problem either because we are also grasping for uranium fuel (which is, in the geological science, a fossil fuel, too, and though nuclear fission not only produces small amounts of greenhouse gasses and uranium mining, milling, and refining are well-known polluters, it all ads up to dealing with nuclear waste and, even worse, radiation — the most dangerous natural resource of them all. Have not nuclear bombs and the looming potential of nuclear war proven that to mankind? I guess not, but I do not understand why not . . .
So there is, logically, no “race” to save humanity from our own greedy power-starved electrical world to save us from our own ‘race’ to eventual extinction. That is, if nuclear war doesn’t do us in first. The only ‘race’ among fusion’s experimental scientific laboratories would be to see who creates successful fusion first, which may never happen for all kinds of reasons. But as “Popular Mechanics” and author Caroline Delbert points out quite well, we maybe wasting our available collective time. ~llaw
In the Race Against Time for Fusion, a New Reactor May Break the Final Barrier
Still, the hope of limitless energy clashes with the realities of scientific hurdles.
The science news ecosystem repeats unfounded claims about nuclear fusion.
OpenStar’s reactor has an unusual design, but it’s just as unproven as all the others.
Their reactor has a central magnet inside a sphere of plasma, instead of a traditional donut.
A recent spate of nuclear fusion announcements have covered an emerging fusion reactor in New Zealand. The company behind this reactor, OpenStar, claims to have the only viable path to producing energy using nuclear fusion in the near future.
Their unusual design comes from a 20-year-old experiment that began at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). But nuclear fusion has become a very crowded house, and almost all the startups are linked with prestigious universities like this. Is OpenStar’s idea really going to break through the noise? We don’t have enough information yet, and repeating these claims does not help science.
The kernel of news from New Zealand-based OpenStar is that their experimental reactor, named Junior, has achieved first plasma. To be clear, this is not a step toward producing energy using nuclear fusion—it’s almost the opposite. All fusion reactors require an extraordinary amount of construction and power before they can predictably turn a cloud of (usually hydrogen) gas into a hydrogen plasma. This involves electrical current, powerful electromagnets, and so on.
First plasma, as a milestone, only shows that your fusion reactor was constructed and plugged in correctly. There are countless more milestones that need to be hit on the way to energy production, and OpenStar promises these in the next six years. But along the way, they’re not opposed to celebrating milestones equivalent to kindergarten in a school where no student has made it even to ninth grade—nor are they alone in doing so. Fusion companies do this all the time, and the echo chamber of fusion news sites repeats the story, often just rephrasing a press release and repeating claims without the context that there have been a dozen similar claims in the last five years.
So, what makes OpenStar different within this crowded and echoing field? That, at least, has a concrete answer. It’s all in the shape. Most of the active fusion reactor experiments around the world are tokamaks, but OpenStar’s is not. A tokamak is a toroidal (donut-shaped) chamber where a stream of plasma is held in place (and away from the walls of the tokamak) by electromagnets. As plasma is heated, it becomes too hot for traditional containers and materials to hold it, so the magnetic fields keep it contained. Those magnetic fields also keep the plasma as condensed as possible to encourage the charged atoms to fuse.
IEEE Spectrum recently reported on OpenStar’s choice to “ditch the traditional doughnut-shaped design.” Instead of a surrounding structure of magnets, their design has one central magnet and an overall spherical shape. That magnet must be a superconductor for the design to work, and for that to function as necessary, it must be chilled to near absolute zero using ongoing and expensive equipment. For their demonstration, they precooled the magnet to ensure an 80-minute window of operability before it grew too warm—something that likely won’t be practical when using a fusion reactor to produce energy, when the cost of bringing the reactor down from fusion temperature and back up again could cost many thousands of dollars in labor, electricity, and other resources.
That central magnet—which the team at OpenStar says will include batteries in order to help it function longer—sits in the midst of a plasma stream that will reach over 100 million degrees Celsius. If all of this works (which is an enormous, unproven “if”), the design of the reactor has the potential to be more efficient and powerful than tokamak designs.
But, again, none of this has ever worked. Everyone’s timelines and milestones are still speculation.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’a ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
(Please note that the Saturday and Sunday NUCLEAR WORLD’S NEWS — unedited —are added to Monday news posts in order to maintain continuity of nuclear news as well as for research for the overall information provided in “LLAW;s All Things Nuclear”.)
There are 7 categories, with the latest addition, (#7) being a Friday weekly roundup of IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) global nuclear news stories. Also included is a bonus non-nuclear category for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity around the world that play an important role in humanity’s lives. The feature categories provide articles and information about ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links with headlines concerning the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (Note: There is one Yellowstone Caldera bonus story available in today’s Post.)
IAEA Weekly News (Friday’s only)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (in the above listed order). If a Category heading does not appear in the daily news Digest, it means there was no news reported from this Category today. Generally, the three best articles in each Category from around the nuclear world(s) are Posted. Occasionally, if a Post is important enough, it may be listed in multiple Categories.
He continued, “Yet I must comment on the nonsense: 1) The very threat of transferring nuclear weapons to the Kyiv regime can be considered preparation .
