German pensioner claims to have found ‘Nazi nuclear bombs’
Peter Lohr, 70, says he’s found five metallic objects in Nazi tunnels
Using radar and 3D he claims he can prove two are atom bombsBy
SARA MALM FOR MAILONLINE, 18 May 2016 A pensioner claims he has found Adolf Hitler’s secret atom bombs inside tunnels dug by the Nazis underneath a mountain valley in central Germany.
Peter Lohr, 70, claims to have found five large metal objects in a cave in the Jonas Valley in Thuringia state, of which at least two are ‘atomic bombs’.
Mr Lohr is certain that the objects are weapons of mass destruction manufactured by the Nazis towards the end of the Second World War.
‘The metal’s been lying there for 71 years. At some point it will decay and then we will have a second Chernobyl on our hands’ he said.
The centre of the Jonas Valley was a scene of secret military construction towards the end of the Second World War, with thousands of concentration camp prisoners forced to dig tunnels under the mountains.
It is not known what purpose the tunnels were meant to have as it was never completed.
The tunnel system stretches for miles underneath the mountain, with thousands of caves, bunkers and storerooms, and it is believed that it was intended to be the Alamo of the Third Reich leadership.
The Jonas Valley was liberated by American troops in April 1945, and US authorities have since classified all 1945 documents relating to Ohrdruf for a minimum of 100 years.
This is not the first time rumours of a Nazi nuclear bomb has surfaced.
Last year, a documentary called The Search for Hitler’s Atom Bomb,’ quotes sealed records from Russia and America said to prove the Nazis were close to creating a weapon of mass destruction.
The programme quoted interrogation reports of Nazi scientists, eyewitness account and the records left behind by researchers, many of which were shipped to America after the war.
May 18, 2016
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Nuclear dream becoming nightmare over Hinkley Point C http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Opinion-Nuclear-dream-nightmare-Hinkley-Point-C/story-29269511-detail/story.html By WMN_MartinF May 13, 2016 By ALLAN JEFFERY Some dreams come true; others turn into nightmares. Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has been a dream to many politicians. Is it about to come true?
Margaret Thatcher was one of the first to dream of building Hinkley C. It was to be the second of 10 nuclear power stations she would build, to rescue the country from the menace of those socialist, coal-dependent generators, providing most of the UK’s electricity and too often holding the country to blackout ransom.
Her dream started well! At public inquiry, at Cannington in 1988/89, despite the hundreds of people and organisations arguing against the build, the inspector gave permission to build Hinkley C.
But her dream turned sour as her privatisation of the nation’s nuclear electricity production bankrupted British Nuclear Energy. The government had to bail out the privatised company. Even worse, the world’s largest nuclear accident at Chernobyl occurred, and the radioactive pollution spread over many countries in Europe. Mrs Thatcher gave up on her nuclear dream. Nuclear was too risky and dangerous and too expensive.
The dream passed to the French government. The dream was to sell all around the world hundreds of a new-generation nuclear reactors, of French design: the EPR. Areva designed the reactor and offered the first one to a group of energy hungry companies in Finland, STK.
It would be built in four years, for 3 billion euros.The dream continued well, the French government were going to build another two EPRs in France, China said they would build two, and many other countries showed interest, even the UK.The French then sold the dream to Labour’s prime minister, Tony Blair, convincing him that building the new French-designed EPR reactors would solve all the UK’s energy problems.
A new nuclear renaissance dream started, though this time there would be no long public inquiries. New national energy policy papers would make sure there would be no planning hold-ups, and allow EDF to build the first two EPR reactors at Hinkley.
There councillors were sold on the dream promises of thousands of jobs and the huge amounts of investment spent in the local economy. EDF ploughed on as quickly as it could; delays would increase costs. Local residents would not be allowed to question the dangers of nuclear power.
The councillors started to notice the environmental problems of such a gigantic building project. Lacking the power to challenge, they started to promote it as a dream for the local economy. They encouraged local firms to prepare for the good economic future, and young people a dream future in Hinkley apprenticeships.
Problems then started to occur with the building of this untried and untested new design of reactor. First at Olkiluoto in Finland and then at Flamanville in France, construction problems multiplied, causing long delays and causing costs to double and then treble. Energy companies in Italy, America and the UK pulled out from investing in this disastrous reactor. Western banks and investment funds all started to advise their clients not to invest in Hinkley C.
They realised that the costs of renewables are falling rapidly; the costs of nuclear are rising fast.The nightmare of problems for the funding of the most expensive power station on earth continued. The UK government, lacking Western private investments, reluctantly accepted that Hinkley has to be subsidised. Whether this financing arrangement is legal under European free-market rules is being strongly challenged in the courts.
EDF cannot fund its share of the building cost of Hinkley C, even though the Chinese government is providing a third of the investment building costs. The energy company has large debts and huge cost commitments of its own.Will EDF finally agree to finance the building of Hinkley C? The growing number of problems, constructional, technical, legal, environmental and financial, of building Hinkley C are beginning to change the dream into a nightmare.
The nuclear dreams of many people will turn to disaster, whatever EDF decides on the final investment decision.If the decision is yes, France could lose its national electricity generator and the French taxpayers will rue the day they tried to follow the nuclear dream.If EDF says no, the UK’s energy policy is in tatters leaving the hopes and dreams of politicians, councillors, aspiring businesses and some British trade unions regretting the day they put all their eggs into one nuclear basket, following the Hinkley C dream.
My dreams are coming true. All around the world I see rapidly growing investment into a decentralised, renewable, truly sustainable future for our children.This is article has been abbreviated. The full version can be read at http://stophinkley.org/StopPress.htm Allan Jeffery is assistant co-ordinator at Stop Hinkley http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Opinion-Nuclear-dream-nightmare-Hinkley-Point-C/story-29269511-detail/story.html#ixzz48ZRRn3kS
May 14, 2016
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Declassified: How Israel Misled the U.S. About Its Nuclear Program Ben-Gurion’s mumbling to Kennedy helped delay the Americans’ assessment that Jerusalem was on the verge of building a bom
b. Haaretz, Ofer Aderet Apr 21, 2016 Dimona nuclear reactor’s joint international research projects revealed for first time
Following Haaretz petition, comptroller to publish parts of Dimona nuclear reactor report
Fifty U.S. documents from the early 1960s were declassified by the U.S. National Security Archive on Thursday, shedding light on Israel’s attempts to hide one of its best-kept secrets to this day: details on its nuclear program. The Americans ultimately believed the Israelis were providing “untruthful cover” about intentions to build a bomb.
The documents include papers from the White House, the State Department, the Atomic Energy Commission and U.S. intelligence agencies. The editors are Avner Cohen, a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and William Burr, the head of nuclear affairs documentation at the National Security Archive, which is based at George Washington University in the capital………
The document reveals that at the end of 1961, Washington believed that the reactor’s unambiguous purpose was to create an infrastructure for nuclear weapons.
“The Israelis intend at least to put themselves in the position of being able to produce nuclear weapons fairly soon after a decision to do so,” the Americans said. They expected the Israelis to have enough nuclear material for two bombs by 1965 or 1966.
“The significance of this is that the Americans knew that Ben-Gurion was misleading them,” Cohen says. “They couldn’t or wouldn’t directly accuse him of lying. Maybe they didn’t want to disclose what they knew. It’s clear the intelligence community knew that what Ben-Gurion said and what the inspectors saw in Dimona were far from being the whole truth.”
According to the explanatory notes: “The bottom line is that in 1961 the CIA already knew or understood that the way Israel referred to Dimona, whether through Ben-Gurion or through its scientists, was an untruthful cover.”……….
Ultimately, Israel got what it wanted. The inspectors were duly impressed and their report described Dimona as a reactor for research purposes, not for plutonium production.
April 22, 2016
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Chernobyl: Timeline of a nuclear nightmare http://www.wtsp.com/news/nation-now/chernobyl-timeline-of-a-nuclear-nightmare/138536883 Kim Hjelmgaard and USA TODAY , April 17, 2016
Timeline of a disaster
February 1986:
Ukraine’s Minister of Power and Electrification Vitali Sklyarov tells Soviet Life magazine that the odds of a meltdown at Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant are “one in 10,000 years.”
April 25, 1986:
The plant’s operators prepare to conduct a special test to see how an emergency water cooling system would fare in the event of a complete loss of power.
April 26, 1986:
The test begins at 1:23.04 a.m.
Fifty-six seconds later, pressure builds in the reactor No. 4 in the form of steam. This causes an explosion that lifts a 1,000-ton lid that covers volatile fuel elements. Radiation is immediately released into the air.
As oxygen pours into the reactor, a graphite fire begins. A chemical reaction causes a second explosion, and burning debris lands on the roof of reactor No. 3.
Meanwhile, the engineer responsible for the night shift, Alexander Akinhov, does not yet think the reactor’s core is damaged. “The reactor is OK, we have no problems,” he says. Akinhov subsequently dies from radiation illness.
Thirty separate fires develop. An alarm goes off at a local fire station.
At 1.45 a.m. firefighters arrive. They know nothing about radiation and aren’t wearing any protective clothing. Driver Grigory Khmel later recalls: “We saw graphite lying everywhere. I kicked a bit of it. Another fireman picked up a piece and said ‘hot.’ Neither of us had any idea of radiation. My colleagues Kolya, Pravik and others all went up the ladder of the reactor. I never saw them again.”
At 3:12 a.m. an alarm goes off at an army base deep in the Soviet Union. The general in charge decides to send troops. They arrive in Ukraine’s capital of Kiev at 2 p.m.
At 5 a.m. reactor No. 3 is shut down. Reactors No. 1 and 2 are stopped about 24 hours later.
April 27, 1986:
As more emergency response teams arrive, evacuations begin in a radius of 6 miles around the plant. April 28, 1986:
The Soviet Union publicly admits for the first time that an accident happened but gives few details.
An alarm goes off at a Swedish nuclear plant after the soles of shoes worn by a nuclear safety engineer there test positive for radioactivity. The radiation is traced to Chernobyl.
May 1, 1986:
May Day parades to celebrate workers go ahead as planned in Kiev and Belarus’ capital Minsk despite huge amounts of radiation continuing to be released. Wind, and radioactive clouds, blow back toward Kiev after initially drifting northwest toward Europe. Authorities believe that by holding these celebrations they will prevent panic.
May 14, 1986:
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev talks about the accident live on television. He subsequently mobilizes hundreds of thousands of people, including military reservists from all parts of the Soviet Union, to help in the cleanup.
They become known as “liquidators.” Many will become ill and die from radiation-related diseases.
Gorbachev, in a 2006 memoir, says Chernobyl “was perhaps the real cause of the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
April 18, 2016
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Pakistan veteran recalls shopping trips to nuclear grey markets, http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/pakistan-diplomat-jamsheed-marker-recalls-shopping-trips-to-nuclear-grey-markets/article8456193.ece THE HINDU, KALLOL BHATTACHERJEE , 10 Apr 16 Retired diplomat Jamsheed Marker talks about “meeting characters, genuine and shady, in tiny cafes tucked away in obscure villages deep in the beautiful Swiss and German countryside”.
One of Pakistan’s best-known diplomats has given an unprecedented account of how his country clandestinely built its nuclear arsenal using its diplomatic network in Europe.
In Cover Point: Impressions of Leadership in Pakistan, an autobiographical account of Pakistan’s politicians, retired diplomat Jamsheed Marker, 94, says: “This exercise involved a bit of James Bond stuff, and I remember Ikram and myself meeting characters, genuine and shady, in tiny cafes tucked away in obscure villages deep in the beautiful Swiss and German countryside.”
Mr. Marker served as Pakistan’s Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany between 1980 and 1982, when the meetings took place, which led to Pakistan acquiring sensitive technology from European firms for its nuclear weapons programme.
“The Embassy had a Procurement Department [the nomenclature really fooled nobody] headed by a most able officer of Minister rank named Ikram Khan, who was seconded from our nuclear establishment headed by Dr A.Q. Khan. Ikram was a superb officer, knowledgeable, low-key and efficient, and went about his sensitive job with the combination of initiative and discretion that were its primary requirements,” writes Mr. Marker , revealing how Pakistan sourced technology for its nuclear programme from western markets.
Mr. Marker’s disclosure sheds light on a wide array of willing partners from among firms in Europe which were willing to partner Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons, for a price. Mr. Marker, who worked directly under the supervision of General Zia-ul-Haq, played a peripheral role as the “Procurement Department” operated under a cloak of secrecy.
Mr. Marker, served for three decades in various important embassies of Pakistan, but reached the most successful phase of his career with his back-to-back appointments as Pakistani Ambassador to Bonn, Paris and Washington DC during the tenure of Gen Zia (1977-1988). Mr. Marker said that he admired the way Gen Zia (who became civilian President in 1985) diverted the West’s attention while going all out for giving Pakistan its nuclear weapon. “I maintain a mild, amused contempt for the enthusiasm with which western industrial enterprises, in their pecuniary pursuits, conspired with us to evade their own governments’ law prohibiting all nuclear transfers to Pakistan,” he writes in what is the first account from one of Gen. Zia’s key diplomats on the modus operandi adopted to build the nuclear bomb in Pakistan.
Mr. Marker says the U.S. spy services were aware of Pakistan’s determination to go nuclear and were unable to prevent Gen. Zia.
April 11, 2016
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The US Defense Department has declassified the fact that US nuclear weapons were deployed on Okinawa before the island prefecture was returned to Japanese administration in 1972.
The National Security Archive at George Washington University published on its website on Friday 3 photographs taken of nuclear weapons in Okinawa along with the declassified documents. The institute welcomed the declassification.One photo shows US military personnel working on a Mark-7 atomic bomb at US Kadena Airbase on October 23rd, 1962.
The second photo shows a Mark 28 nuclear weapon before being loaded onto a US Air Force plane.
The third photo shows a Mace B cruise missile loaded with a nuclear weapon. It was deployed in Okinawa from 1961 until 1970. See more at: http://newsonjapan.com/html/newsdesk/article/115407.php#sthash.qsfupVq5.dpuf
February 22, 2016
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How the Soviet Union and China Almost Started World War III The National Interest, Robert Farley 9 Feb 16 Americans tend to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis as the most dangerous moment in Cold War brinksmanship. Despite some tense moments, Washington and Moscow resolved that crisis with only the death of U.S. Air Force pilot Maj. Rudolph Anderson Jr.
Seven years later, in March 1969, a contingent of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers raided a Soviet border outpost on Zhenbao Island, killing dozens and injuring scores. The incident brought Russia and China to the brink of war, a conflict that might have led to the use of nuclear weapons. But after two weeks of clashes, the conflict trailed off.
What if the brief 1969 conflict between China and the Soviet Union had escalated?…….http://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-the-soviet-union-china-almost-started-world-war-iii-15152
February 12, 2016
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The Not-So-Peaceful Atom Bob Rowen accidentally took on corporate nuclear power in the 1970s. Four decades later he remembers what it was like to be Humboldt County’s most infamous whistleblower. North Coast Journal, BY JAPHET WEEKS, 20 MARCH 2008 On a summer day in 1969,Bob Rowen, a nuclear control technician at the Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant, realized that for his employer, Pacific Gas and Electric, the bottom line was everything — it was even more important than the community’s safety.
It wasn’t the first time Rowen, a burly former Marine, had witnessed safety violations at the plant, but it was the first time he had the gumption to record the violation in a logbook, which would eventually be reviewed by the nuclear industry’s then government watchdog the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC).
As for PG&E management, they were getting pretty fed up. Rowen was proving to be a real pain in the ass. Continue reading →
February 10, 2016
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PENTAGON PAPERS WHISTLEBLOWER: KENNEDY RESISTED ‘NUCLEAR CULTIST’ JOINT CHIEFS, Shadow Proof, Published in partnership with MintPress News., 4 Feb 16
MINNEAPOLIS — MintPress News is proud to host “Lied to Death,” a 13-part audio conversation between famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and social justice activist Arn Menconi.
Menconi wrote that these interviews are a “mixture of historical, political science and Dan’s sixty-year scholarly analysis as a former nuclear planner for Rand Corporation.”
For more information on the interview and Ellsberg, see the introduction to this series.
Chapter 5: Vietnam War a ‘foreign-instigated war,’ ‘not a civil war’
In this chapter of “Lied to Death,” Daniel Ellsberg continues to explore President John F. Kennedy’s involvement with the Vietnam War and other military conflicts in Asia, including his resistance to the use of nuclear weapons and ground troops, a topic also discussed in Chapter 4.
The whistleblower revealed that most of the military leadership advising Kennedy were inherited from President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In general, they strongly encouraged Kennedy to commit to the use of ground troops and sought opportunities to use nuclear weapons. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, in particular, who Ellsberg calls “nuclear cultists,” believed that only the use of nuclear weapons would prevent a defeat similar to the one U.S. forces suffered in Korea.
Ellsberg says Kennedy resisted escalation of both the Vietnam War (which he argues could have expanded if Kennedy had committed ground troops earlier, per the Joint Chiefs’ guidance), and America’s covert war in Laos. However, Kennedy resisted the military due to its mishandling of the “Bay of Pigs invasion,” a failed 1961 mission to overthrow Fidel Castro.
According to Ellsberg, the military also repeatedly urged Kennedy to carry out a massive bombing campaign with the aim of cutting off Vietnamese rebels in South Vietnam from Communist weapons and supplies. Ultimately, Ellsberg argues, this would have been impossible: The guerilla forces occupying South Vietnam at the time depended largely on makeshift weapons, many of which had been stolen from U.S. soldiers or adapted from their unexploded munitions.
Ellsberg compares Kennedy’s resistance to committing ground troops to the current conflict with Daesh (an Arabic acronym for the terrorist group commonly referred to as ISIS or ISIL). He says President Barack Obama is under considerable pressure from the military to commit more ground forces in Iraq and Syria. Similarly, Daesh forces often use makeshift weapons or munitions stolen from the U.S.
The whistleblower emphasizes that Kennedy felt forced to accede to some of the military’s demands because his leadership of the country was quite fragile. Although remembered today as a very popular president, Kennedy won by a tight margin, amid widespread electoral irregularities and possible fraud………
Ellsberg remains a sought-after expert on military and world affairs, and an outspoken supporter of whistleblowers from Edward Snowden to Chelsea Manning. In 2011, he told the Chelsea Manning Support Network that Manning was a “hero,” and added:
I wish I could say that our government has improved its treatment of whistleblowers in the 40 years since the Pentagon Papers. Instead we’re seeing an unprecedented campaign to crack down on public servants who reveal information that Congress and American citizens have a need to know. https://shadowproof.com/2016/02/02/pentagon-papers-whistleblower-kennedy-resisted-nuclear-cultist-joint-chiefs/
February 5, 2016
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The day America dropped 4 nuclear bombs on Spain, [excellent photos] Daily Mail, 19 Jan 18 … but the disaster, 50 years ago, has been forgotten by all but its surviving victims
- On January 16 1966, a U.S. B-52 Stratofortress took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in North Carolina
- Bombers were continually flown on 24-hour missions across the Atlantic, to provide the States’ nuclear capability
- It was a routine mission for the crew but then disaster struck over Palomares, Andalucia, as the aircraft refuelled
- Four hydrogen bombs plummeted to earth at horrific speeds, which would have killed millions had they exploded
By GUY WALTERS FOR THE DAILY MAIL18 January 2016 “……the B-52 had overshot and the boom had missed the fuel nozzle in the top of the plane. Instead, the boom had smashed into the bomber with such force that its left wing was ripped off.
Fire quickly spread up the fuel-filled boom and ignited all 30,000 gallons of the tanker’s kerosene, causing it to plummet to the ground. Meanwhile, the bomber started to break up, and the crew did their best to get out of the plane using parachutes.
As for the hydrogen bombs, there was nothing that could be done. In less than two minutes, they would be crashing into the Earth at an enormous speed — potentially destroying much of the regions of Andalucia and Murcia.
What in the name of God are doing, Pepé? Get away from there! This could be dangerous.
Pedro de la Torre Flores’ wife, Luisa
Hundreds of thousands of people could be about to die, and the nuclear fallout would have the capacity to kill millions more all over Europe — not just from radiation poisoning but from cancers for decades to come……..
The nuclear payloads of the four American B28 hydrogen bombs mercifully did not detonate when they landed, even though the conventional explosives in two of the bombs did explode, showering some 500 acres around the fishing village of Palomares with three kilograms of highly radioactive plutonium-239. Continue reading →
January 19, 2016
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Memories of Whistling Past Nuclear Armageddon, NYT By FRANCIS X. CLINESJAN. 2, 2016 No one called it terrorism back then, but the angst of day-to-day existence during the Cold War was chillingly recalled with the release last month of the government’s top-secret nuclear target list for 1959. “Population” was the obscenely brief title of target category No. 275 — population, as in the citizens of major cities who war planners estimated would necessarily die by the millions……..
“Duck and cover” jokes and tight-lipped laughter became the real civil defense in the Cold War. It felt smarter to seek survival in satire like Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” Or in Mort Sahl’s stand-up skewering of Dr. Wernher von Braun, the captured German rocket scientist, who metamorphosed into an American space-age hero. Mr. von Braun said in his best-selling autobiography that “I aim at the stars.” “But,” Mr. Sahl amended, “sometimes hit London,”……..
the notion of nuclear Armageddon reappeared with the discovery by the New York State Assembly during a routine session that the state, in 1963, had actually constructed a bomb shelter with 4½-foot-thick walls and drawn up a list of 700 or so people who would be privileged to survive in it.
The long-forgotten shelter was a quiet, pet project of Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who was also one of the era’s chief promoters of bunkers. Immediately, questions arose among the lawmakers: Why didn’t I know about this until now? More urgently: How do I get on the list?…….http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/opinion/sunday/memories-of-whistling-past-nuclear-armageddon.html?_r=0
January 4, 2016
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their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and “friendly forces and people” to high levels of radioactive fallout.
listed more than 1,200 cities in the Soviet bloc, from Estonia to China, all given graded priorities. Moscow and Leningrad were unsurprisingly priority one and two. Moscow included 179 DGZs and Leningrad had 145 – including “population” targets
Stranger than Strangelove: how the US planned for nuclear war in the 1950s, The Conversation, Paul Lashmar, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, University of Sussex December 28, 2015 Those who have written about the nuclear Cold War remain grateful to Stanley Kubrick for giving us the satirical 1964 film
Dr Strangelove which captures the madness that swept the world for 40 years. The name Strangelove may be overused but the United States has now released a secret file that really does justify the sobriquet: “Stranger than Strangelove”. Almost anodyne in title, Atomic Weapons Requirements Study for 1959 is a truly shocking document, revealing the scale of the holocaust that would have been unleashed in a nuclear war.
Continue reading →
December 30, 2015
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WWII Hero Credits Luck and Chance in Foiling Hitler’s Nuclear Ambitions, By ANDREW HIGGINS, NYT, NOV. 20, 2015 LESUND, Norway — For a man who saved the world, or at least helped ensure that Adolf Hitler never got hold of a nuclear bomb, 96-year-old Joachim Ronneberg has a surprisingly unheroic view of the forces that shape history.
“There were so many things that were just luck and chance,” he said of his 1943 sabotage mission that blew up a Norwegian plant vital to Nazi Germany’s nuclear program. “There was no plan. We were just hoping for the best,” Mr. Ronneberg, Norway’s most decorated war hero, added.
The leader and only living member of a World War II commando team that destroyed the Nazis’ only source of heavy water, a rare fluid needed to produce nuclear weapons, Mr. Ronneberg has had his exploits celebrated in a 1965 blockbuster movie, “The Heroes of Telemark,” starring Kirk Douglas, been showered with military medals and been honored, belatedly, with a statue and museum display in his hometown here on Norway’s west coast.
M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of Britain’s wartime sabotage and intelligence service, the Special Operations Executive, which organized Mr. Ronneberg’s mission, described the raid on a Norsk Hydro plant producing heavy water in Nazi-occupied Norway as a “coup” that “changed the course of the war” and deserved the “gratitude of humanity.”……..
it took years before Mr. Ronneberg came to understand the exact purpose and importance of the job. All the British told him before dropping him onto a snow-covered Norwegian mountain, he said, was that a row of pipes at the Vemork plant needed to be destroyed.
“They just said it was important and had to be blown up,” he said,…….
He added that he knew nothing at the time about nuclear physics, heavy water or the race to build a nuclear bomb. He knew that Britain had lost more than 35 men in a disastrous 1942 attempt to sabotage the Norsk Hydro plant, but he had no idea why it was so intent on disabling a remote mountain facility whose only product as far as he knew was fertilizer…….
Mr. Ronneberg’s raid slowed the Nazi’s pursuit of a bomb rather than delivering a knockout blow. The Nazis worked quickly to rebuild the plant at Vemork, prompting a series of bombing raids by the United States Air Force that infuriated even anti-Nazi Norwegians because of the civilian casualties they caused. The Germans then tried to move all their surviving heavy water in Norway to Germany, but this effort collapsed when Norwegian saboteurs, led by one of Mr. Ronneberg’s team, Knut Haukelid, blew up a ferry carrying the prized cargo.
While long celebrated by foreign, particularly British, filmmakers, the exploits of Mr. Ronneberg and nine other Norwegians involved in thwarting the Nazi nuclear project became widely known in Norway only this year, when NRK, the state broadcaster, ran “The Heavy Water War,” a six-episode mini-series that became a national sensation. The statue of Mr. Ronneberg in front of City Hall here in Alesund was put up only last year to observe his 95th birthday………http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/world/europe/wwii-hero-credits-luck-and-chance-in-foiling-hitlers-nuclear-ambitions.html?_r=0
November 21, 2015
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Top Secret Documents Reveal A NATO Training Exercise Nearly Started A Nuclear Apocalypse With Russia http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/11/12/top-secret-documents-reveal-a-nato-training-exercise-nearly-started-a-nuclear-apocalypse-with-russia-_n_8542766.html The Huffington Post UK | By Thomas Tamblyn
A recently declassified document has revealed that in 1983, the United States and Russia were almost plunged into nuclear war and here’s the real kicker: It would have been completely by accident
The New York Times has, for the first time, shed light on these documents which reveal that in ’83 NATO was planning a massive nuclear-based military exercise.
Unfortunately for the world, the USSR didn’t get that memo and so when it saw that most of the western world’s military were moving into high-alert it assumed that the training exercise was actually a cover for a genuine attack.
It is thought that the exercise could have, at some stages, brought the two countries closer to war than even the famous Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Codenamed Able Archer, the NYT reveals in its exposé of the training exercise that many NATO commanders were seemingly oblivious to the knife edge that they were creating.
Then US President Ronald Reagan rather eloquently described the situation as ‘Really scary’ after reading the briefing documents that summarised how perilously close the situation had become.
The document was finally declassified earlier this month, some 11-years after the request had been made by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Speaking to the NYT about the significance of the event archive director Thomas S. Blanton said: “Turns out, 1983 is a classic, like the Cuban missile crisis, where neither superpower intended to go nuclear, but the risk of inadvertence, miscalculation, misperception were just really high. Cuba led J.F.K. to the test ban. Nineteen eighty-three led Reagan to Reykjavik and almost to abolition.”
What might be the most terrifying piece of news is that before and during the exercise, the Soviets weren’t just using human judgement but were inputting some 40,000 scenarios into a supercomputer in an effort to try and assess how likely a nuclear strike actually was.
Ironically it was the then leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev who summed up the severity of the situation later in 1986:
“Never, perhaps, in the postwar decades has the situation in the world been as explosive and, hence, more difficult and unfavorable as in the first half of the 1980’s.”
November 12, 2015
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Nuclear Shutdown News – October 2015, ObRag, by MICHAEL STEINBERG on NOVEMBER 12, 2015 Nuclear Shutdown News chronicles the decline of the nuclear power industry in the US and beyond, and highlights the efforts of those who are working to create a nuclear free future.
Millstone and Me: 2015…… The Millstone Nuclear Power Plant began operating in 1970. It wasn’t long before its notoriety began too, as its design was similar to Fukushima’s.
During the mid 1970s, the plant’s owner and operator, CT’s Northeast Utilities was running Millstone reactor 1, with defective fuel rods, which resulted in massive releases of radiation into the air and water. The US Nuclear Regulator Commission NRC) knew of these releases, but said they were “within acceptable limits.”
Enter Sternglass Knowledge of these massive releases eventually made their way to Dr. Ernest Sternglass – who had been a nuclear energy proponent who worked for Westinghouse, which was building some of the first US nuclear power plants. One of these was Shippingport in Pennsylvania.
At first Sternglass believed that radioactive emissions from this nuke plant would be too low to harm people. Soon, however, he began to question this. First of all, reported releases from the plant were significantly higher than authorities had predicted.
This led Sternglass to examine vital statistics in populations living near the plant. There he found spikes in cancer rates emerging, as well in other health problems such a infant mortality and birth defects.
When Sternglass reported these findings to his employer, he quickly became persona non gratain the nuclear power industry.
Dr. Sternglass went on to become professor of radiological studies at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
When Sternglass received the information about the Millstone ‘70s radioactive releases, and examined them, he became alarmed. These turned out to be the highest annual releases from a US nuclear power plant with the exception of Three Mile Island during its partial meltdown in 1979.
As with Shippingport, Sternglass analyzed vital statistics in communities surrounding Millstone. Again he found disturbing rises in death rates and infant mortality, as well all cancers and specific ones like leukemia and thyroid cancer.
Dr, Sternglass went public with his findings, and initially they caused quite a stir around Connecticut and New England. There were calls for further investigations and cries for the permanent shutdown of Millstone.
Dr. Ernest Sternglass continued his pioneering work into the effects of radiation on human health, which he reported in his brilliant book Secret Fallout: From Hiroshima To Three Mile Island. Dr. Sternglass died in 2014.
Instead of shutting down Millstone reactor 1, Northeast Utilities started up 2 more reactors. In the1990s chronic mismanagement and harassment of whistle-blowers landed Millstone on the cover of Time Magazine and forced the permanent closure of reactor one.
All its high level nuclear waste, as well as that of the other 2 units, remains on site, making it a massive nuclear dumpsite as well.
Unit 2 turned 40 this year, meaning it has exceeded the years it was designed to operate. Unit 3 will turn 30 next year.
Cancer rates remain high in the region, Dr, Sternglass helped start the Radiation and Public Health Project, which continues his work and has produced studies showing that people living within 50 miles of nuclear plnt are more likely to develop cancer and that after nuclear plants permanently shut down, cancer rates in populations around them begin to fall.
Sources: Millstone and Me: Sex, Lies, and Radiation in Southeast Connecticut; 1998, Black Rain Press.
Radiation and Public Health Project: www.radiation.org http://obrag.org/?p=100956#.VkTv49IrLGg
November 12, 2015
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
history, radiation |
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