Be sure to watch the 2024 Doomsday Clock adjustment tomorrow morning if you can! It is live on Facebook beginning at 7:00 a.m. Pacific Time. I have read that the clock will be reset to 2 minutes to midnight, but given the ‘deterrence’ challenges and the verbal threat conflicts going on the past few weeks, perhaps the time will stay the same 90 seconds to midnight. We shall see tomorrow . . . ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
The plans for nuclear energy are focussed on small modular reactors (SMRs), which are attracting growing global interest due to their ability to meet …
The operator says electricity supply for the spent fuel pools and other important facilities is secure as it has emergency diesel generators and power …
… war in Ukraine is driving militarization and increased support for NATO nuclear … Threats to use nuclear weapons are not very credible,” Erästö said.
In the 1960s, gentle, pot-smoking hippies believed that a new society could be created, a world filled with peace. The belief that nuclear weapons have changed human nature and made world war impossible, the author, Ward Hayes Wilson, writes, is essentially the same claim those hippies made. Photo credit: Wikiwatcher 1 via Wikimedia Commons.
(See the story, clearly in tune with my own heart, by Ward Hayes Wilson following my personal perspective and comments . . .)
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS :
If we laughed at the hippies in the 1960s, why the hell are we not laughing at the polictal concept of ‘deterrence’ — the concept that nuclear weapons will never be used beyond ‘threat’ level. The ‘60s hippies’ reasoning was no different than the highest levels of nuclear-armed governments today.
For about a year and a half now, I have been preaching each and every night to the multitudes that ‘all things nuclear’ must not only be abolished but also demolished or buried deep underground where none of it can ever be recovered for future use. There are millions of others who feel the same way I do, of course, but the problem is few of us take any positive action toward making that enormous effort to achieve the purpose. It can be done, but it takes a brave new world of a globally united human society to make it happen. I have defined in many other Posts how that could be accomplished. But will we ever listen? And will we ever learn? Do we not understand “reality”?
I have already written in a previous Post my rebuttal to Mr. Kallenborn’s article, and I become more pessimistic about our collective future as time passes, but I will continue on until I know in my heart that such a possibility of eliminating ‘all things nuclear’ will never happen. ~llaw
Following Article courtesy of “The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” and the author:
A response to Kallenborn: Why realism requires that nuclear weapons be abolished
In a recent piece in the Bulletin(“Why a nuclear weapons ban would threaten, not save, humanity”), Zachary Kallenborn argued that a ban on nuclear weapons would create serious risks, including unrestrained great power war and a hindering of global cooperation. He asserted that continuing to maintain small nuclear weapons arsenals for the foreseeable future is sensible.
What is troubling about this assertion is not so much that Mr. Kallenborn is wrong, but that he seems to have strayed from reality. Mistakes in a discussion about nuclear weapons policy matter because roughly 4.2 billion people depend on those policies for their safety and survival. With so much at stake, the discussion about nuclear weapons demands the highest levels of seriousness and an unflinching insistence on realism. Mr. Kallenborn has missed that mark in at least one important regard.
Nuclear weapons prevent all-out war? Kallenborn writes, “Nuclear weapons place a cap on how bad great power conflict can become and may deter the emergence and escalation of great power war.” In the world of nuclear weapons advocates, this is a common claim, viz. that nuclear weapons prevent large-scale existential wars similar to World War II. For example, John Lewis Gaddis a highly regarded historian of the Cold War, puts it this way: “As the means of fighting great wars became exponentially more devastating, the likelihood of such wars diminished, and ultimately disappeared altogether.”[1] In other words, “great” wars have disappeared altogether, and nuclear weapons are the reason.
This claim is essential for those who wish to keep nuclear weapons. After all, if nuclear weapons can stop World War II-type wars, then it is safe—even necessary—to keep them. If, on the other hand, they can’t, then all-out wars are more likely (because people wrongly think that nothing can go wrong as long as nuclear weapons are present). And when one occurs, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable.
Unfortunately, the faith in the peace-inducing powers of nuclear weapons is wishful thinking. Wars are decided by human beings, and as the history of our civilization demonstrates—Winston Churchill once called it “the dark lamentable catalog of human crime”—human beings have deep-rooted urges to make war. It is not pleasant to insist on this portrayal of human nature, but the stakes require that we be brutally honest with ourselves. We have been fighting wars with dogged persistence for at least 6,000 years. As President John F. Kennedy put it, “[T]he human race’s history, unfortunately, has been a good deal more war than peace.”[2] Every era of history and region of the world has experienced war with disheartening regularity. There are sometimes pauses and respites—sometimes for even a hundred years—but the lust for war always reemerges.
American philosopher William James explained the persistence of war this way, “Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won’t breed it out of us.”[3] War is a tenacious part of our behavior. If humans were to suddenly give up fighting wars, it would be a monumental change—a revolution in human behavior. Losing our taste for war would be to surrender something central to our natures—like renouncing our predisposition for religion, our love of beauty, or our tendency to overeat.
There’s no doubt that the risk of using nuclear weapons can restrain thoughts of war … sometimes. But can the “magic” of nuclear weapons dissuade us forever? Nothing else has. The hopeful (and somewhat naive) belief that nuclear weapons will always prevent all-out wars ignores one important fact: The evidence that supports this claim—the last 78 years—amounts to only 1.3 percent of the evidence. The other 5,928 years tell a different story.
Let’s get real. The claim that nuclear weapons have somehow permanently suppressed the heretofore unquenchable desire for war is not a realist position. Typically, it is idealists who optimistically say that we can change the world by simply changing our hearts. Idealists believe that changing human nature overnight is possible. For example, in the 1960s, gentle, pot-smoking hippies believed that a new society could be created, a utopian world where people would live in communes and value love above all other things. And with this new emphasis on love, there would naturally come a world filled with peace. And we could all hold hands and sing.
If you stop and think about it, the belief that nuclear weapons have changed human nature—what Kallenborn asserts—is essentially the same claim those hippies made. Nuclear believers say that the urge to make savage war has at last been overcome. They say we can now live in peace forever. Our darker, primitive natures will never again overwhelm our sensible, rational brains. There will be no more all-out wars. And they say this utopia of peace has already arrived (just without the singing). But rather than the power of love, it is a tool—a piece of technology—that has wrought this magical transformation.
Sadly, nuclear weapons have not transformed our warlike natures into calm and peaceful ones. Unbridled war, fought with savage abandon, is still likely, perhaps even inevitable. If you doubt that anger and violence are stalking the world, read some headlines. Around the world are sudden fires of passion that leap up first here, then there. War is raging in Europe and the Middle East. With so much hatred around as fuel, is there much doubt that a war that engulfs many nations and many peoples is far off? If you don’t think so, at least some of your neighbors do. An International Red Cross survey asked millennials in 2019 if they thought a worldwide war similar to World War II would happen in their lifetimes. More than 58 percent of respondents in the United States said yes.[4]
The belief that large-scale war has been banished forever by nuclear weapons is nothing more than a dangerous fantasy. All the evidence of history and everything we know about ourselves tells us that our warlike natures cannot change overnight. (That is the sound of genuine realism talking.)
Claims that we can change human nature are unsurprising in the mouths of gentle, pot-smoking hippies. On the lips of nuclear weapons proponents, they are realist heresy. The fact that nuclear weapons advocates can call themselves realists and at the same time claim that nuclear weapons make all-out wars impossible shows that they do not understand the assumptions that underlie their own position. Their “realism” is nothing of the kind.
The problem with relying on nuclear deterrence is that if it can’t be perfect—and perfect for all time—then it is too dangerous to rely on. Who’s to say that nuclear deterrence isn’t like a pressure cooker—able to hold off savage wars for a time, but when the top blows off at last, the destruction will be all the more far-reaching because it was held in for so long? Because of our primitive, warlike natures, nuclear weapons have to go. There are no safe hands for nuclear weapons. That is a reality that we all ignore at our own peril.
[3] William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” in War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, ed. Leon Bramson and George Goethals (New York: Basic Books, 1964), p. 23.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 5 categories (plus a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and others that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 linked most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (Especially with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual appearing order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera(There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated links is listed below by nuclear Category (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
In the world of nuclear weapons advocates, this is a common claim, viz. that nuclear weapons prevent large-scale existential wars similar to World War …
Threatening a nuclear war of annihilation is one of Moscow’s favorite sports. High level Russian nuclear threats are commonplace. This is particularly …
List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano. Quakes Felt · Quakes Felt. See quakes that people felt in the last …
LLAW’s COMMENTARY: (Foolhardy or Just Plain Foolish)
There is a substantial difference between a foolhardy person and one who’s just plain foolish. One is just heedless or reckless, the other is just misguided or naïve, but in the case of those who advocate for nuclear power or even nuclear arms are just plain ignorant or stupid. They are utterly unwise fools. Even those, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller, James B. Conant, and even a couple of U.S. Presidents – Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Harry S. Truman – who were directly involved in the “Manhattan Project” as they developed the first atomic bomb, knew better than to advocate for or believe in the purpose of the bomb, or to even support nuclear war, so what is it that makes the industry, the politicians, the bankers and corporations, and even the ignorant and foolish general public believe that ‘all things nuclear’ is a sound idea today based on the fake propaganda from an industry that has been wasting away and failing for years oddly recovering somehow – especially when the entire planet is faced with nuclear war that is more than capable of ending all life on Earth.
Even the original concept (perhaps) was to develop but use nuclear weapons only as a deterrence from war means nothing these days nor did it in the summer of 1945 when the USA dropped two atomic bombs on of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Deterrence is hardly iron-clad and and deterrence agreements these days are being ripped to shreds before our eyes. The U.S. and seven or eight other countries are back in the wishful thinking deterrent business of an arms race, suddenly building bigger and more devastating bombs than ever before instead of demanding a planet with no nuclear weapons, nuclear power plants, or anything else nuclear at all. Destroying all things nuclear before all things nuclear destroys us (paraphrasing a JFK speech during the Russia/USA nuclear armed ICBM standoff in October of 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Deterrence is just another silly political word, signifying nothing about the reality of the looming possibility of nuclear war, and you’d better believe that existing nuclear power plants will also become nuclear weapons of mass destruction, but the difference the countries who built them will have them used against themselves. North America, including Canada, has far and away the most nuclear power plants, most of them on or near the East Coasts of both countries.
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As Albert Einstein said in his always prophetic and straightforward way, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” And just let me say for emphasis, it is highly doubtful that after WWIII their will be anyone left to wield a stick or throw a stone. What the hell is humanity thinking? Our leaders must be crazy!
And just why are the rest of us following along their doomsday path to oblivion and the 6th extinction? If 4 or 5 billion (over half) of us take to the Internet and say with conviction to these ignorant, crotchety, and foolish old men and their sycophants and cronies, “Not NO, but, “HELL NO!”, demanding a united one-world people without boundaries of any kind, including country, racism, religion, and pointless genocide. Nelson Mandela said it well in 2020: “Our world is divided into wise people and fools. And fools divide themselves by race, color, gender, or religion.” ‘Nuff said,” ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
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. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Q: What do you think about the future of nuclear disarmament? A: The goal of nuclear disarmament is clearly under strain. The nuclear-armed states are …
… nuclear war. According to Express, Vladimir Solovyov … The discussion on Russian state TV, led by figures like Solovyov, frequently involves threats ..
So, what is this supposedly brilliant idea and ultimate usefulness of tripling nuclear energy production by 2050 as a silly long-term carrot and stick program? Its sole function has to be to bamboozle and pacify the common people for the next quarter century, who depend on their governments to bear some kind of responsibility and deliver some degree of actual honesty to the facts about global warming, climate change, and reducing CO2 levels that humans and other life can live with. There is only one way to slow it down or stop its growth, and more nuclear power plants are the very worst possible solution.
It appears to be that, since we are not willing to do away with the actual culprit, meaning the entire fossil fuel industry and sycophants, that we once claimed needed to be, er, had to be, replaced by solar, wind, hydro, geo-thermal, and other clean-air power plants. So now at this year’s COP28 climate summit, especially the USA, is coming on whole-hog claiming nuclear power plant capacity will be tripled by 2050. I guess we have forgotten that uranium (the fuel for all nuclear products including power plants and military weapons of mass destruction) is also a fossil fuel, albeit refined to a lower level of CO2 emissions. But uranium is not only still a CO2 contributor like coal, oil, gas, etc., but it is also by far the dirtiest and most dangerous commercial fuel on the planet, being far more destructive and dangerous whether long-term, yesterday, today, or tomorrow than all the other fossil fuels combined. Its fuel and its waste is highly radioactive, which instantly makes it infinitely more dangerous than CO2 alone.
According to today’s news from the “The Spokesman-Review”, “The U.S. will lead a push [actually, a mere ‘pledge’ to be signed on December 1st, meaning nothing] at the COP28 climate summit to triple the amount of installed nuclear power capacity globally by 2050, marking a major turnaround for the controversial technology at the climate negotiations.” That would seem to me to be impossible, and here is another impossibility: “the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions/carbon neutrality by or around midcentury,” There is no such thing as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and carbon neutrality is a moot point because we have no idea what carbon neutrality will be tomorrow, much less mid-century. This statement contains nothing but deceptive ‘buzzwords’ that make the average citizen happy because he has no idea what these words mean, but they sound good to him. It is what I call propaganda that others would call ‘hogwash’ or ‘bullshit’.
The text of the “Spokesman Review” article:
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“U.S., U.K. to push pledge to triple nuclear power by 2050 at COP28
By John Ainger, Rachel Morison and Akshat RathiBloomberg
The U.S. will lead a push at the COP28 climate summit to triple the amount of installed nuclear power capacity globally by 2050, marking a major turnaround for the controversial technology at the climate negotiations.
The declaration will call on the World Bank and other international financial institutions to include nuclear energy in their lending policies, according to a document seen by Bloomberg News. The U.S. will likely be joined by the U.K., France, Sweden, Finland and South Korea in the pledge to be signed Dec. 1 in Dubai, according to people familiar with the matter.
That will be followed a few days later by a nuclear industry commitment to triple generation resources from 2020 levels, said one of the people, who asked not to be named because the information isn’t public.
The countries recognize “the key role of nuclear energy in achieving global net-zero greenhouse gas emissions/carbon neutrality by or around midcentury,” a draft of the declaration says. “Nuclear energy is already the second-largest source of clean dispatchable baseload power, with benefits for energy security.”
The declaration is the latest sign of shifting sentiment toward nuclear power, which doesn’t produce carbon dioxide emissions, but has often been criticized over the waste it generates, the cost of building plants and potential security issues. Support has gained traction especially as clean back-up for renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The countries will also commit to new technologies, such as small modular reactors.
“Nuclear is 100% part of the solution,” John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, said at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum last week. “It’s clean energy.”
The United Nations’ 28th Conference of the Parties, known as COP28, will take place in the United Arab Emirates, which is the only country in the Arabian Peninsula with a nuclear power program. It’s not clear if the hosts will sign.
The two-week summit due to start on Nov. 28 will include a “global stocktake” to track how far off course the world is to keeping global warming below 1.5C and what more needs to be done to close the gap. A report from the UN Tuesday showed that emissions are set to rise 9% by 2030, compared to 2010, putting the world potentially on course for warming of 2.8C.” End of Article
But, hey, if nuclear powered plants are too expensive and dangerous, which they are, we have other great ideas for ending global warming, including atmospheric style adjustable “venetian blinds” sunshine reflectors sprayed in the stratosphere to shade us from the heat of fossil fuel CO2 emissions, which means the fossil fuel industries could go on forever commercially selling their power plant products, except they will have nobody to buy it. llolloll! ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
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. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
For years those secret scientists didn’t actually have any plutonium to study—it had to be painstakingly produced. “Almost everything was theoretical, …
North Korea’s missile programme, as well as its nuclear weapons, have been banned by the UN Security Council rulings, which also imposed sanctions on …
… nuclear- or climate-induced) that the clock’s founders had designed it to prevent. Russia · Nuclear weapons · Vladimir Putin · Ukraine · Nuclear war …
… war, calling the remark a threat to the world. At Monday’s long-planned … Iran’s UN Ambassador Amir Iravani told the conference the nuclear threats …
… nuclear and missile threats. In the statement, the defense ministers … nuclear weapons to protect the South in case of a North Korean nuclear attack.
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #449 (11/13/2023)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
LLOYD A. WILLIAMS-PENDERGRAFT
NOV 13, 2023
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
On this Monday evening after a long Veterans’ Day holiday, it is a good time to update where I am on my “Blue Print” concept for destroying all things nuclear before all things nuclear destroys us along with most all other living critters on planet Earth. If you’re not familiar with the “Blue Print” plan that I have described in earlier Posts, I’m sure you will be aware of it at some point in the not too distant future. I will be updating information much more frequently as I work, along with others, toward the final draft over the next few months. And then we will submit the concept to the eight nuclear possessing governments around the world employing the USA as the designated leader. I have successfully done this, of course on a much, much smaller corporate scale, one time before back in the Reagan rein with the Department of the Interior, and we were successful. So I know, essentially or basically, how to go about presenting this issue to a government that can be forced to listen. And the United States’ government is where I intend to begin. If we are successful then, we will have a strong base to pass the “Blue Print” along to other countries.
Up until recently this has been a personal impossible pipe dream that I know how to construct and make happen, and though I will need help to perfect the “Blue Print” from everywhere, I know where to find that help when the time comes. But for now the basic idea you need to know involves changing our international concept of the corporate profit ideal (Capitalism), at least until the job is done, from manufacturing or producing commercial products for greenbacks and money-bags full of profits to the sole purpose of paying for and saving our planet (and us) from creating our own extinction.
The effort, from our normal viewpoint won’t look all that much different than now because many of of our present commercial businesses will still be producing and making much of what they have always produced and made - say producing food, clothing, housing, transportation, electricity, etc. as they’ve always done, but you won’t be paying them for it and the corporations won’t be profiting from it because, of necessity, all financial capital and monetary exchange or transactions will be controlled by what I call “The Organization” (of which each and every one of us will be a part) that will act and operate much like an old fashioned Farmers’ Market or a Co-Op controlling all financial transactions with all expenses and former profits going toward the cost of destroying all things nuclear, which essentially amounts to putting the uranium that fuels all things nuclear along with all of its supporting facilities (like nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons for instance), nuclear-related equipment (like reactors), and buildings or constructs containing nuclear reactors, and nuclear waste, for example. “Destroying” means putting all of everything nuclear or related to it back in the deep underground where uranium was mined, burying it forever back where it came from - never to be dug up again. It is a mammoth project and the expeditious need for it to be done immediately rather than sometime later will be the soul objective of us all. (I know that sounds insane, but insane or not, it must be done and done quickly if we are to survive.)
There is also one other important issue that must be solved to make this happen. We need objective and honest leadership and help - the kind of help that has no alternative or deviant ideas about how to ‘beat the system’ individually and profit from the “Blue Print” beyond the day it goes into effect until the day it is over and done with. (And it may be that, when the last day arrives and the dust clears, those kinds of grifters and carpetbaggers will no longer be acknowledged nor admired as nations’ leaders.) We presently have leaders and corporate presidents in all countries who know how to ‘play the game’ and find ways to ‘cheat’ the system for personal gain. For the “Blue Print” to work, such attempted personal greed must never happen. If that seems impossible, and it may be, then we will all end up as dust in the wind of the 6th Extinction. It may be that the help we need may come from an unexpected place. ~llaw
ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
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 inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There are three Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
NuScale Power Corp. share price … It’s easy to over-interpret the death of small modular reactor firm NuScale’s Idaho project, but it nonetheless has …
Load-shedding distributes demand for electrical power across multiple power sources and is used to relieve stress on an energy source when demand for …
… nuclear and missile threats, South Korea’s defence ministry said. The Tailored Deterrence Strategy (TDS) is aimed at countering North Korea’s nuclear …
… caldera, and Ijen. Yellowstone quakes · Yellowstone quakes · Latest earthquakes under Yellowstone volcano. List and interactive map of current and …
The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war:
We’re pausing our live coverage
We’re pausing our live coverage of the war in Ukraine for now – but here are the key developments you may have missed over the weekend.
Russian forces intensified attacks on positions in eastern Ukraine.
In Bakhmut, Moscow is attempting to regain lost territory, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces wrote on social media at the weekend.
“Toward Bakhmut, the Russians have become more active and are trying to recapture previously lost positions. Enemy attacks are being repelled,” Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi said.
Ukraine also reported Russian troops are attempting to surround Avdiivka, south of Bakhmut, which is considered to be a stronghold.
Elsewhere, Russia has shelled Kherson, in the southwest of Ukraine, officials claimed, 62 times across the weekend, injuring four civilians.
On Sunday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Ukrainians to prepare for new waves of Russian attacks on infrastructure over winter.
“Russia is preparing for Ukraine. And here, in Ukraine, all attention should be focused on defence, on responding to terrorists on everything that Ukraine can do to get through the winter and improve our soldiers’ capabilities,” he said in his nightly address.
The warning came after Ukraine claimed Russia fired its first missile strike on Ukraine in almost two weeks.
There have also been reports over the weekend, from The Washington Post, claiming a Ukrainian officer coordinated the attack on the Nord Stream pipeline – which carries gas into Europe from Russia – though the officer in question denied any involvement.
Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near Avila Beach, California owned by PG&E
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
The above image of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant may remain as my masthead for quite sometime because it is very much like the proverbial “Canary in the Coal Mine”. I have been following PG&E’s merciless “accidental” terrorism on California’s human population throughout the State (living next door in Nevada) for several years, and this aging nuclear power plant may very well be PG&E’s last and most devastating accident of all. A nuclear accident at that! With PG&E running the ‘show’, what could possibly go wrong
The Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant is old, dating back to the ‘1970s, and has leaked radiation recently because of cracked containment walls. The plant is scheduled for decommissioning, shutdown, and to be mothballed in 2025, but the State of California and the Federal Government has decided to extend the old plant’s life by providing several billion dollars to ‘ensure’ it’s safety and continued operation. To me, knowing the ownership’s history, this is obviously a huge mistake on the part of both the state and the federal government.
In later Posts I will have more to say about this particular power plant and selected others around the planet. They all need to be shut down, destroyed, and part by part and piece by piece put back in the same ground where their nuclear fuel (uranium) came from.
Considering their history of ‘accidents’, neglect, and incompetence, the future possibilities could be disastrous beyond belief. What has PG&E done wrong in the past to make such a prediction? Let me count just a few of the ways of many disasters caused by PG&E. ~llaw
(Summarized, edited, and abbreviated from cited reports,)
PG&E Disasters:
1. Groundwater contamination in Hinkley, California
From 1952 to 1966, PG&E dumped “roughly 370 million gallons” of chromium 6-tainted wastewater into unlined wastewater spreading ponds around the town of Hinkley, California. PG&E used chromium “one of the cheapest and most efficient commercially available corrosion inhibitors” at their compressor station plants in their cooling towers along the natural gas transmission pipelines.
PG&E did not inform the local water board of the contamination until December 7, 1987, stalling action on a response to the contamination.The residents of Hinkley filed a successful lawsuit against PG&E in which the company paid $333 million— the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history. The legal case, dramatized in the 2000 film Erin Brockovich, became an international cause célèbre. By 2013, PG&E had cleaned up 54 acres, but it is estimated the remediation process will take another 40 years.
2. Metcalf sniper attack
(Included here for evidence of PG&E’s extended reputation of illegalites)
On April 16, 2013, a team of gunmen opened fire on the Metcalf transmission substation in Coyote, California. The attack damaged 17 high-voltage transformers, causing more than $15 million in damage. The team also cut a fiber-optic telecommunications cable owned by AT&T. PG&E and AT&T offered a $250,000 reward for anyone who had information leading to the arrest of the culprits, however, they were never found. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that it was not domestic terrorismand The Department of Homeland Security claimed they had evidence that it may have been an ‘inside job’.
3. Wildfires
PG&E equipment has often been the cause of wildfires in California. PG&E has been found guilty of criminal negligence in many cases involving fires. These include the 1994 Trauner Fire a substation fire in San Francisco in 1996, the 1999 Pendola Fire, a San Francisco substation fire in 2003, the Sims Fire and Fred’s Fire in 2004 an explosion and electrical fire in San Francisco in 2005, the 2008 Rancho Cordova Gas Explosion,[ the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion, 2014 Carmel Gas Explosion,[ 2015 Butte Fire, 2018 Camp Fire, among others.[
Approximately 40 of the 315 wildfires in PG&E’s service area in 2017 and 2018 were allegedly caused by PG&E equipment.
PG&E was on probation after being found criminally liable in the 2010 San Bruno fire.Following that fire, a federally appointed monitor initially focused on gas operations, but his scope expanded to include electricity distribution equipment following the fires in October 2017. A separate case involved allegations the utility falsified gas pipeline records between 2012 and 2017, and as of January 2019 was still being considered.
4. Wildfire Liability
State law follows a principle of “inverse condemnation” for wildfire liability, which means that utilities are held responsible for damages resulting from any fire caused by their equipment, even if their maintenance on equipment and surrounding vegetation was done to standards. This policy resulted in $30B of liability for PG&E from the 2017 & 2018 fires and drove it to bankruptcy proceedings. In July 2019, a new $21 billion wildfire trust fund was created to pay for damages from future wildfires, started with a 50-50 balance of utility and customer monies and also reduced the liability threshold for utilities to where customers must prove negligence before companies are held liable.
5. Sierra blaze
On June 19, 1997, a Nevada County jury in Nevada City found PG&E guilty of “a pattern of tree-trimming violations that sparked a devastating 1994 wildfire in the Sierra”. “PG&E was convicted of 739 counts of criminal negligence for failing to trim trees near its power lines—the biggest criminal conviction ever against the state’s largest utility.
6. San Bruno, California explosion
View of the San Bruno fire on September 9, 2010 at 11:31 pm PDT
On the evening of September 9, 2010, a suburb of San Francisco, San Bruno, California, was damaged when one of PG&E’s natural-gas pipelines that was “at least 54 years old, 30 inches (76.2 centimeters) in diameter and located under a street intersection in a residential area “…exploded sending a “28-foot section of pipe weighing 3,000 pounds flying through the air, fueled by blowing natural gas”.[235] The blast created a crater at the epicenter and “killed eight people and injured nearly five dozen more while destroying about 100 homes” The USGS reported that the shock wave was similar to a 1.1 magnitude earthquake. Following the event, the company was heavily criticized for ignoring the warnings of a state inspector in 2009 and for failing to provide adequate safety procedures. The incident then came under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). On August 30, 2011, the NTSB released its findings, which placed fault for the blast on PG&E. The report stated that the pipeline that exploded, installed in 1956, did not even meet standards of that time. Even in the years following the disaster, PG&E failed to implement legally mandated safety procedures aimed at preventing similar disasters.
7. Butte Fire
In September 2015, the deadly and destructive Butte Fire ignited in Amador and Calaveras counties. It killed two people and destroyed hundreds of structures. An investigation found PG&E responsible for the fire after a gray pine tree came in contact with one of their powerlines.
8. October 2017 Northern California wildfires
In October 2017, PG&E was responsible for their own lines and poles starting 13 separate fires of the 250 that devastated Northern California. These fires were caused by “electric power and distribution lines, conductors and the failure of power poles”. Pending further investigation, the following fires have been confirmed by CAL FIRE investigators to have been started by PG&E equipment:
On December 2, 2016, in Fruitvale, Oakland, California a fire broke out in a former warehouse that had been illegally converted into an artist collective with living spaces known as Ghost Ship. 80-100 people were at an event in the space and 36 were killed. The plaintiffs claim that the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction. A civil case was put forward against PG&E, alleging blame.
In August 2020, PG&E settled a civil lawsuit for 32 of the victims, out of the 36 who perished in the fire.] The amount of the settlement was undisclosed, but it was limited to the amount available under PG&E’s insurance coverage for the year 2016.
9. Tubbs Fire
The Tubbs Fire was a wildfire in Northern California during October 2017. At the time, the Tubbs Fire was the most destructive wildfire in California history, burning parts of Napa, Sonoma, and Lake counties, inflicting its greatest losses in the city of Santa Rosa. Suspicion for the cause of the fire fell on PG&E, but the company seemed to be cleared of responsibility in this incident after Cal Fire released the results of its investigation on January 24, 2019, upon which news the company’s stock price jumped dramatically. On August 16, 2019, the judge ruled that the trial can proceed “on a parallel track” because “it advances the goals of this bankruptcy.” After the judge’s ruling, the company’s stock price sank by 25%.
10. Camp Fire (The worst of them all)
In November 2018, PG&E and its parent company were sued in the San Francisco County Superior Court by multiple victims of the Camp Fire – the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. The Camp Fire destroyed more than 18,000 buildings, including 14,000 homes, being particularly devastating to poorer residents. Approximately 90% of the population of the town of Paradise, California as of June 2020 remains dispersed in other parts of the state and the country. The lawsuit accused PG&E of failure to properly maintain its infrastructure and equipment.
The cause of the fire, as indicated by PG&E’s “electric incident report” submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission, was a power failure on a transmission line on November 8, just 15 minutes before the fire was first reported near the same location. Later investigation revealed that a “broken hook may have allowed a piece of electrically charged equipment to swing free and come close enough to the tower to arc, providing the spark that ignited the blaze.
. . . and the heat goes on . . .
11. Dixie Fire
On January 4, 2022, CalFire determined that “the Dixie Fire was caused by a tree contacting electrical distribution lines owned and operated by Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) located west of Cresta Dam.” CalFire forwarded the investigative report to the Butte County District Attorney’s office, the same federal office that prosecuted PG&E in 2018 following the Camp Fire.
ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
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 inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one bonus Yellowstone Caldera story available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse to develop on-orbit high-power electricity generation in future space missions. Nov. 6, 2023. Nuclear power may provide …
It’s crucial to make electricity production carbon neutral as quickly as possible. Is nuclear power the new game changer for achieving this ambitious …
Comments678 · Russia’s star-wars weapon can hunt anything that flies | S-550 for India? · The Fall | The Russians Destroyed The Officers Of The 128th …
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
An Analogy to Today’s World(s): Day Five of American Indian Heritage Month, 2023:
It is hard to believe that the American Indian Wars lasted off and on for over 300 years – from 1609 to 1924.
Yet now we are facing war over an entire planet called Earth, a massive futile and fatal concept of nonsensible wars with nuclear weapons of mass destruction. There is something desperately wrong with the whole concept of one man’s homeland being invaded by another man’s desires, mercilessly taking dominion over the weaker man’s territory that was never theirs. But power, greed, and domination seems to be our natural way of life. In order for humanity and other life on planet Earth, we must forget the eons of the past come together in unity and live as one. ~llaw
This link provides some of the history of a not so beautiful story:
The link is set as a cut and paste link only because it may be sensitive to some folks . . .
ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
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 inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one bonus Yellowstone Caldera story available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
… all digital platforms. It includes a publishing platform, viz. www … Trump: This Is What ‘We’re Going To Do Things Immediately Within 24 Hours’ If I …
“End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity”
LLAW’s COMMENTARY: Republished from October 13, 2023 . . .
The Doomsday Clock remains set at its most critical level in history by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists” . . .
“The clock hands are set by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”, a group formed by Manhattan Project scientists at the University of Chicago who helped build the atomic bomb but protested using it against people. The time of the clock is currently 90 seconds to midnight”. Midnight represents “Doomsday.
You can follow the world news concerning “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” at my daily Posts on both my website at LLAW’s WORLDS @albertlloydwilliams.com and/or at Substack to keep abreast of the world-wide nuclear situation, trends, threats, issues, and what could be done to prevent nuclear radiation from creating a dystopian world – or worse yet, a man-made 6th Extinction on planet Earth. Time is of the Essence. ~llaw
ACCESS TO MEDIA: Whenever there is a 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 inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There are two bonus Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: When linked the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will rarely happen.)
“End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity”
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LLAW’s COMMENTARY: So the Biden Administration and the U.S. Military wants to manufacture a nuclear bomb that is 24 times more powerful than the two we used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, to end WWII in 1945. There is really no way to compare “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” to today’s nuclear weapons because they are two different kinds of bombs. We already have bombs that are hundreds and even thousands of times more powerful than the atomic bombs we dropped on Japan. So it seems to me the media ought to do what real journalists used to do and that is to check out the ‘facts’ before writing a story that should embarrass the whole media industry with its ignorance, not to forget the inane words of our government. If that’s what Biden or some military general or anyone in his cabinet actually said, then what they said is okay from a journalistic viewpoint – but we need to point out that whoever said such a thing is laughably wrong, and take the time to tell us why.
But that’s not the most important issue, or so it seems to me. The real issue is: “Why on Earth is anyone anywhere building more nuclear weapons?” There is already enough nuclear weaponry to destroy everything on the planet several times over. We have learned, during the Russia/Ukraine war that nuclear power plants will make incredibly powerful nuclear weapons as well. All we have to do is drop a nuclear bomb on a nuclear power plant and we’ve go two weapons of mass destruction for the price of one. What the hell is wrong with humanity?
We ought to be well on the way toward destroying ‘all things nuclear’ rather than moving closer every day to destroying ourselves, which we are evidently absolutely bent on doing. For what reason do we want to do that? As a long-time employee in the nuclear industry, I am in the process of writing a ‘blueprint’ that provides a way for us to come together as a species by destroying everything nuclear and dumping and burying it all back in the open pit mines where uranium originally came from, including not only the nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, but also all of the world(s)’ weapons and power plants and storage facilities together with every other product that belongs to the family of uranium and the nuclear buildings and facilities that exist as soon as physically possible so that no one will ever again be allowed to have anything to do do with anything nuclear.
It can be done, and it must be done, or sooner or later humanity will commit world-wide genocide (it doesn’t matter whether it’s because of nuclear war with bombs designed to be weapons of mass destruction or the failure to understand that our nuclear power plants are nuclear weapons of mass destruction as well. What do we do with the nuclear waste? Dump it all in the oceans as Japan is being allowed to do right now? We can’t let that happen.
We are all essentially freshmen to the idea of understanding nuclear energy and how to clean up the global mess we have already made and each day it gets worse and more prolific while we clamor for more of it without even understanding what to do with the left overs or how to avoid accidents that are actually unavoidable because anything can cause a nuclear accident whether such accidents are man-made or Acts of Nature. A clue for us all is what we’ve done to cause climate change and global warming and all those ridiculous ways about how to save ourselves from CO2 that we continue to insanely pump into the atmosphere while knowing that greenhouse gasses, left unchecked will eventually kill us in a similar way as radiation poisoning. The writing is there profanely written on the walls of every power plant and every refinery – not just fossil fuel (uranium, by the way, is a fossil fuel as well) but every nuclear power plant and every nuclear reactor, too.
It is my hope that, since we are too proud, ignorant, or stupid to take it upon ourselves to do away with ‘all things nuclear’ that there will be intervention from somewhere by someone or something with enough common sense to not allow us to destroy planet Earth right along with ourselves, even though there is another way, if there is enough time left before the ultimate day arrives, to do it ourselves. But it would require the voluntary cooperation of all humankind around the human world(s).
Such is the purpose of this daily Post. We seek a unique world(s)-wide borderless effort for humanity to come together as a planet Earth community in order to save our ken from self-destruction and inevitable extinction if we fail to unite in a single direction peacefully and purposefully. Stay tuned as we make a diligent effort to convince war-mongering world(s) to trade in their weapons for a world of unity and felicity. It will only happen if we can bury the hatchet from now into the undefined infinite future. We all need to join the cause to save ourselves from each other. ~llaw
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ACCESS TO MEDIA:
Whenever there is a 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 links is listed below by nuclear Category. There are three bonus Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will rarely happen.)
_________________________
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
From Gaza to the Pacific, All Oppression Is Connected – Inkstick Media
“End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity”
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LLAW’s COMMENTARY: The following opinion piece is from LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” #425 (10/20/2023), intended to provide background commentary to those who follow our new media outlets unrelated to our former daily Posts (more than a year of them, but only a few will be reposted for this purpose). They will be helpful for new subscribers to follow some of the issues and opinions. There are also several technical Posts that describe how uranium mining, milling, refining, and finally reactor fuel, and waste that will provide new subscribers with a high level understanding of how the nuclear power plant industry operates. Oddly enough it is not significantly different than the military process of building a nuclear bomb, except instead of a nuclear reactor, the military builds a nuclear bomb.
The commentary from October 20 begins here:
What possesses us humans, who in truth know nothing about (or don’t care about) the mayhem and weaknesses of the major nuclear industries – principally known as 1) creators of nuclear weapons of war and 2) as commercial providers of costly, dangerous, and unreliable nuclear generated electricity. We continue to lie to ourselves (or at least listen to and accept the propaganda) that anything nuclear is of sound technology, good for us, cheap, safe, clean, and will last forever, when it is none of the above?
And now we are apparently considering moving (or adding to) ‘All things Nuclear’, of introducing nuclear warheads into outer space. Does that mean when one country’s leaders decide to ‘nuke’ another all it has to do is let the earth do the flying and when the target country is directly beneath them, simply electronically open the satellite’s Bombay doors and drop their bombs with no danger of retaliation – at least from the ground. Wow, that would make the ICBM (missile) obsolete as well as military aircraft! Also, obviously, then, once one country is busy planning on doing that, the rest of the nuclear capable ones will follow instantly in an arms race, many of which we have been going through for eons. It is a ridiculous joke we have played on ourselves since the stone age!
So it is the grand effort of ‘do unto others before they do unto you’ technology that goes right along in typical human warlike stupidity. What if we could just learn to love (or at least honor) one another, shake hands, destroy and bury all of this genocidal nuclear technology, and spend our resources (money) on taking care of the entire human race and our only home instead of trying to eliminate us and our Earth.
Do these ‘pillars of political and corporate power’ know something we don’t know about our future or of planet Earth’s? llolloll! Of course not, unless they, too, are being directed and advised by a higher and more powerful life form! But I doubt such a ‘higher’ life form would deal with humanity in such a potentially violent way. All we are doing is playing a foolish and childish game of playground tag that will end up in what we are referring to in advance called, “The 6th Extinction”.
The last extinction was caused by a meteorite colliding with planet Earth (65+ million years ago) long before humans entered the picture, and after Earth regenerated Herself with living organisms (and eventually humans) She returned to a special place in the cosmos where living things could live, reproduce, and prosper, and we humans became a part of it all.
But, now, looking back just a few centuries, it is plain to see that we cared, not about our only home, but only about what we could take for ourselves, and now the process of ‘playing god’ is instilled in us to the point that we seem to believe that we are superior to Mother Nature, and that we can plunder, pillage, rape, kill, as humans, human parasites or animalistic epiphytes, leaving only a vast wasteland behind even unto the precious oceans and our priceless atmospheres. We are, as Pogo inferred, our own worst enemies. And the hell of it is, we seem to have no presence of mind to change our ways by turning away from approaching oblivion. ~llaw
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ACCESS TO MEDIA:
Whenever there is a 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 links is listed below by nuclear Category. There is one Yellowstone Caldera story available in this post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.
(Just a reminder: If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will rarely happen.)
____________________
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
America’s strategic nuclear posture review is miles off the mark | The Hill
to supply nuclear fuel for the Dukovany nuclear plant, eliminating dependence on Russia for such fuel. Tags. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All …
October 31: Pentagon pursues new nuclear bomb. Rockets strike Israeli hospital 4 times.
NewsNation
Happy Halloween, the celebration of all things spooky and the semi-official beginning of the 2023 holiday season. The Federal Open Market …
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Nuclear Power
NEWS
3 energy companies compete to build a new nuclear reactor in the Czech Republic – WOKV
By Philip Ingram MBE, former colonel in British Military Intelligence and NATO planner
In July, the then Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov said that he “believes that Ukraine will win the war by next summer and could be admitted to NATO in July 2024”.
The reality of what Ukraine has really achieved on the ground would suggest this was an overly optimistic assessment – but who is winning?
In early June, Ukraine launched its long-expected counteroffensive against the Russian defences having had some significant successes in late 2022 taking back huge areas of ground around Kherson in the northeast and then Kherson in the east of the country. They had tied Russia up around Bakhmut, exhausting the Wagner fighters to the point where they had to be withdrawn from the front line.
With the delivery of fresh Western-trained troops, equipped with Leopard and Challenger tanks, Bradley and Marder infantry fighting vehicles, HIMARS and 155mm artillery, the expectation was they would punch through Russian defences like a hot knife through butter and reach the coast with the Sea of Azov in a few short months.
HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)
HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)
However, they lacked air superiority, attack helicopters, sufficient air defence and, most significantly, enough combat engineering assets to enable the extensive Russian defences to be breached in any significant way. In reality they lacked sufficient troops, tanks, artillery, missiles, and infantry fighting vehicles as well. The went too early against the delivery timetables of Western equipment.
The Russian defences delayed and slowed the Ukrainians down. The Russian use of attack helicopters and well-planned defences showed the vulnerability of Western armour and stopped the Ukrainians making significant progress, meaning that at the start of the autumn mud season, the conditions for Reznikov’s winning remain a long way off.
An emboldened Russia even counterattacked the Ukrainians near Avdiivka in the Donetsk Oblast, but only after receiving 1,000 containers of ammunition and equipment from North Korea.
The current territorial picture in Ukraine has not changed much since June.
Today’s Image of Interest:
EXPRESS.CO.UK
Supervolcano could be ‘gearing up to explode’ with consequences explained
LLAW’s “ALL THINGS NUCLEAR”
