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U.S. military’s newest weapon against China and Russia: Hot air balloon

The Pentagon is quietly transitioning high-altitude balloon projects to the military services.

By LEE HUDSON, 07/05/2022  https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/05/u-s-militarys-newest-weapon-against-china-and-russia-hot-air-00043860

The Pentagon is working on a new plan to rise above competition from China and Russia: balloons.

The high-altitude inflatables, flying at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, would be added to the Pentagon’s extensive surveillance network and could eventually be used to track hypersonic weapons.

The idea may sound like science fiction, but Pentagon budget documents signal the technology is moving from DoD’s scientific community to the military services.

“High or very high-altitude platforms have a lot of benefit for their endurance on station, maneuverability and also flexibility for multiple payloads,” said Tom Karako, senior fellow for the International Security Program and Missile Defense Project director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The Pentagon continues to invest in these projects because the military could use the balloons for various missions.

Over the past two years, the Pentagon has spent about $3.8 million on balloon projects, and plans to spend $27.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to continue work on multiple efforts, according to budget documents.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is working on its own hypersonic weapons program, despite Wednesday’s failure of the latest test.

A bright spot for the U.S. is the balloons may help track and deter hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.

February 14, 2023 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Magnitude 4.9 earthquake hits Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture

No tsunami is expected

Esraa Esmail/ Rola AlGhoul, WAM (Emirates News Agency), February 13, 2023

 An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 4.9 occurred off Fukushima Prefecture at around 10:01 am Wednesday, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

No tsunami is expected, according to the agency. The epicentre was off the coast of Fukushima Prefecture, and the focus was about 50 kilometres deep.

The quake measured 4 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, and Soma and Namie, Fukushima Prefecture.

February 14, 2023 Posted by | Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The half billion nuclear kitty litter incident

  by Brian Nitz “…………………………. imagine being the person who caused a nuclear accident by ordering the wrong kitty litter?

It happened in February 2014 at a nuclear weapons waste processing facility for the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Anyone involved may be trying hard to forget that it ever happened. The confusion began with a typo in a request for “kitty litter/zeolite clay.” (Zeolites can also be used in energy storage as I wrote here).

At some point this was replaced with kitty litter (clay). This was further transformed into an order for organic cat litter, specifically the sWheat Scoop brand which the manufacturer claims is 100% wheat. Now while the word organic has a folk meaning to environmentalists and hipsters at your local cafe, to chemists it means something more specific……………………………

Don’t try this at home

Green Prophet recently covered the possibilities of using Zeolite for energy storage and this amazing mineral has many more tricks up its sleeve. But while it might seem obvious that anything capable of detoxifying cat pee would be equally effective for nuclear waste disposal, this isn’t necessarily true.

The problem with using 100% organic wheat-based organic kitty litter for your nuclear waste disposal instead of zeolite (non-clay) kitty litter has to do with its reactivity and flammability when confined in a barrel with plutonium, americium, uranium and nitrate-based processing chemicals when compared to zeolite. It doesn’t help that all of this takes place deep underground in an abandoned salt mine where there is much more salt and nuclear waste than there are people to watch it.

So the problem wasn’t discovered until barrel #68660 burst, releasing radiation into a ventilation system. It is believed that several hundred nuclear waste barrels were contaminated with the wrong kind of kitty litter. The cost of the cleanup is said to have been more than half a billion.  https://www.greenprophet.com/2023/02/kitty-litter-nuclear/

February 14, 2023 Posted by | incidents, USA | Leave a comment