Shrouded in doubt: safety issues at Russian-occupied nuclear stations in Ukraine
Kate Brown and Susan Solomon: One thing nuclear power plants weren’t built to survive: War. Military strategists commonly target the enemy’s electrical grid. That’s a problem when combat is in a nuclearized country like Ukraine.
Inside the New Safe Confinement at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine in 2021, The structure encloses the radioactive remains of the reactor that exploded in 1986. Russian
forces are now in control of the site. The day Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian forces took control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant.
A week later, flares from Russian artillery lit up the Zaporizhzhia plant; Ukrainian media reported that the Russian army had placed land mines around the plant’s perimeter and was stockpiling arms at both nuclear installations. The army is now pointed at yet another nuclear facility, the South Ukraine plant.
But Russia’s is the first invasion of a country that derives more than half its energy from nuclear power. It stands to reason that Russian generals will seek to capture all 15 active reactors in Ukraine. The Russian army appears to be using the nuclear installations as safe havens, calculating that the Ukrainians will not fire on them, but we can still expect plenty more fearful nights spent riveted to scenes of battles over huge concrete towers and rows of basins filled with radioactive spent nuclear fuel:
It turns out that reactor containment buildings have never been stress-tested for blows from heavy artillery or missiles. Even without a direct hit on a reactor, we are learning of the fragility of nuclear power plants. Normal oversight and operations have essentially been replaced by isolation and disorder.
Workers at Chernobyl have been on the job continuously for more than three weeks. They have no
clean clothes (important for nuclear workers), no real beds, no contact with family, no proper meals or rest.
At the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to a Ukrainian official, Russian soldiers have forced employees into
submission. Employee-hostages — exhausted, hungry and stressed — could make mistakes. So could the untrained Russian military personnel who aregiving the orders. Communication to these sites is largely cut off.
Independent oversight experts cannot enter to verify safe operations or deliver spare parts. Russian diplomats continue to enjoy a privileged role at the International Atomic Energy Agency, despite the war. We have to rely on what the IAEA and the Russian army tell us.
In the past, Soviet nuclear information services specialized in secrecy and mistruths. One of us, while
working on a history of Chernobyl, found that the IAEA had difficulty acknowledging the public health impact of the fallout from the 1986 explosion there. Russian information services again appear to be opaque and untrustworthy. If an accident occurs, we don’t have confidence that rescue squads and firefighters can get to captured nuclear installations to deal with infernos and injuries. Nor can we be sure that we will learn the full extent of the damage and spread of radioactive sources.
Washington Post 18th March 2022
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/18/chernobyl-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-ukraine/
5 USA States selected for target areas for the enemy, in a nuclear war
Despite the criticism, the U.S. appears to be committed to the idea of a nuclear sponge in those five states. The Pentagon plans to spend $264 billion on its next-generation ICBM program, which would upgrade the silos and missiles, and ensure the absorbency of the sponges.
These 5 states were designed to act as America’s ‘nuclear sponge’ https://www.fastcompany.com/90732588/5-states-nuclear-sponge-missile-silos
Since the Cold War, the U.S. has strategically kept missile silos in sparsely populated areas of the country.
BY CHRIS MORRIS, 19 Mar 22,
The ongoing saber-rattling by Vladimir Putin has raised concerns about a nuclear conflict to a level not seen since the 1980s. Nuclear strategists have tried to calm nerves, insisting that the odds of the situation escalating to one that would lead to such a disastrous scenario are remote. Still, António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, acknowledged this week that “the prospect of nuclear war is now back within the realm of possibility.”
Those stark statements have caused some Americans to wonder if they’re in a high-target area. While the overall risk of nuclear war is low, and there’s no telling where Putin will strike in the unlikely scenario that he decides to attack the U.S., people in a handful of states are likely feeling a bit more uncomfortable than folks in other parts of the country.
During the Cold War between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, government officials began to install intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos in the middle of the country, specifically in sparsely populated areas of northern Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, and North Dakota. These were designed to be the first targets in the event of an attack—a “nuclear sponge” that would draw fire away from more urban areas.
(Minuteman missile fields were also once located in South Dakota and Missouri but have since been deactivated. Those in the other states remain active.)
A term like nuclear sponge isn’t reassuring, but the thinking goes like this, as specified by retired General Jim Mattis in his 2017 confirmation hearings for secretary of defense: Because the missiles are buried so deeply in the ground in those areas, enemies would need to commit two, three, or four weapons to take each one out, thus “absorbing” much of the enemy’s arsenal.
Because the silos are located in sparsely populated areas of the Plains, proponents argue that fewer lives are put at direct risk. But the logic of designating an area as a prime attack zone in a nuclear conflict is puzzling to many—and the concept of a nuclear sponge is one that has drawn criticism for decades. In 1978, Dominic Paolucci, a retired Navy captain who served on the Strat-X team that assessed U.S. strategic options in the 1960s, railed against the strategy saying, “It is madness to use United States real estate as ‘a great sponge to absorb’ Soviet nuclear weapons. The objective of our military forces and strategy should be to reduce the weight of any potential attack on U.S. real estate rather than attracting even more.”
There are plenty of other arguments to be made today. Nukes, of course, no longer have to be delivered via ICBMs and can be launched from submarines and bombers. And Russia’s arsenal reportedly has more than 1,500 warheads deployed on strategic long-range systems and almost 3,000 in reserve. That’s more than enough to strike larger cities in addition to saturating the sponge.
Despite the criticism, the U.S. appears to be committed to the idea of a nuclear sponge in those five states. The Pentagon plans to spend $264 billion on its next-generation ICBM program, which would upgrade the silos and missiles, and ensure the absorbency of the sponge for decades to come.
Fears of nuclear war in Europe stoke demand for fancy bunkers
Fears of nuclear war in Europe stoke demand for fancy bunkers, Wink News,
| Author: MEGAN CERULLO / CBS Moneywatch, 20 Mar 22, |
In a matter of weeks, COVID-19 pandemic fears in Europe have given way to another concern that nightmares are made of: the possibility that Russia could use a nuclear weapon.
……. U.S. and overseas manufacturers of residential bunkers say they’ve seen a spike in customer inquiries and orders — a surge they attribute to the war in Eastern Europe and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision late last month to put his country’s nuclear forces on alert.
Gary Lynch, general manager of Rising S Company, a residential bunker builder based in Murchison, Texas, said he recently started receiving inquiries from prospective customers in Italy, Romania, Sweden and the U.K., in addition to the U.S. and Canada…….
“Excellent man caves”
Manufacturers say the pre-fab shelters will withstand exposure to chemical, biological and nuclear attacks. Some use a steel frame strong enough to resist earthquakes and include bullet-resistant doors. The highest-end models — which can cost millions of dollars — may include air filtration systems, solar charging stations, freshwater inlets, waste removal tanks and infrared security.
Rising S makes bunkers in a local factory and ships them overseas. Over a recent 10-day period, Lynch said he got 1,600 inquiries from people interested in an underground shelter where they could take refuge in the event of a nuclear incident. That compares with the two to six calls he normally would have fielded over that same span of time from consumers looking to build a panic room or secure storage spaces for weapons or valuables.
Forty of those customer inquiries led to sales of bunkers ranging in price from $60,000 to around $200,000, including installation.
………… a premium Artemis Protection bunker resembles a luxury apartment, complete with high ceilings, recessed lighting and high-end fittings, along with basic amenities including a living room, shower and television.
……. The nicer bunkers are designed to resemble “an underground mountain chalet,”…….
In another sign of the times, pharmacies in Finland, Norway and Luxembourg have sold out of iodine and potassium iodide pills, which can be used to blunt the effects of exposure to nuclear radiation……… https://www.winknews.com/2022/03/20/fears-of-nuclear-war-in-europe-stoke-demand-for-fancy-bunkers/
Putin set to hold nuclear evacuation drill; moved family to Siberia: Reports
Hindustan Times, 20 Mar 22, ……… Not much is known about Putin’s family members, but since the Russia-Ukraine war started, reports claimed Putin moved unidentified members of his immediate family to a hi-tech underground bunker, which is a whole underground city, in the Altai Mountains of Siberia.
Putin’s Doomsday plan
Kremlin has a Doomsday plan ready and it is no secret. For a nuclear conflict, if any, Russia has Doomsday planes that would be used by Putin and his closes allies to stay above the war. A sky bunker was also under the Doomsday plan but is believed to be not ready yet. All these have been reported by the Russian press earlier and the veracity remains questionable……… https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/putin-set-to-hold-nuclear-evacuation-drill-moved-family-to-siberia-reports-101647744184485.html
“Russian Invasion of Ukraine Spotlights the Dangers of Nuclear Reactors in War,”
https://npolicy.org/russian-invasion-of-ukraine-spotlights-the-dangers-of-nuclear-reactors-in-war-the-national-interest/ March 17, 2022 Nuclear Power Economics and Security, Op-Eds & Blogs, RESOURCE, TOPICS
Earlier this week, in response to Russian assaults on nuclear plants in Ukraine, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for the creation of a specialized Japanese nuclear security force to secure Japan’s nuclear plants against military attack. The governor of Fukui, which hosts Japan’s largest number of reactors, went further: He requested Japan’s defense ministry build dedicated military bases to halt such attacks.
What’s stunning is how sharply Japan’s response to Russia’s attacks contrasted with Washington’s.
Victor Gilinsky and I spotlighted this in the The National Interest piece, “Russian Invasion of Ukraine Spotlights the Dangers of Nuclear Reactors in War.” In it, we note how our Energy Department has been more intent in reassuring Americans about how little radiation was released from the plants in Ukraine than in clarifying what their military vulnerabilities are. As we explain, this penchant for downplaying the military vulnerabilities of nuclear facilities is as old as commercial nuclear power in the United States. The department, in fact, is still keen to export reactors to Jordan, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic, and — until last month — Ukraine.
If we are serious about nuclear security, this has got to change. At a minimum, Congress should follow Japan’s lead and ask the Pentagon to clarify what the military vulnerabilities of civil nuclear plants are and identify what, if anything, can be done to reduce them. Meanwhile, instead of pushing reactor exports to potential war zones, our government and others should tap the brakes.
Russian Invasion of Ukraine Spotlights the Dangers of Nuclear Reactors in War
By Victor Gilinsky and Henry Sokolski, 17 Mar 22,
The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), the predecessor of the Department of Energy, concluded that it was not practicable to build protection for reactors against military attacks. In 1967, it rejected a public request for such protection against Cuban missiles for the Turkey Point reactors in south Florida on grounds that the AEC’s established policy was not to require special design features to protect against enemy attacks. The Court of Appeals agreed with the AEC’s decision in 1968.
“What the Commission has essentially decided is that to impose such a burden would be to stifle utterly the peaceful utilization of atomic energy in the United States,” the Court of Appeals decision said.
Even though a condition for every nuclear plant license is that its issuance is not inimical to the “common defense and security,” the AEC, with the approval of the Court of Appeals, claimed that Congress never intended that to encompass anything having to do with enemy actions.
To read the full article click here.
Danger of radioactive disaster at Chernobyl and other nuclear sites, with exhausted staff, and risk of loss of remote control
The staff, who are still at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, came in on
February 23. The enemy has not allowed any opportunity to change the staff,
who are psychologically and physically exhausted due to the lack of
rotation and the constant pressure caused by armed people.
This can lead to loss of control over the safety of the facility and the inability to
respond to internal and external initial events such as fire, which in turn
can lead to severe radiation effects. In case of a complete power outage,
there is a risk of disabling the safety of important systems and equipment,
in particular: ventilation, heat dissipation, technological, and radiation
control systems.
The possibility of remote control over nuclear and
radiation safety indicators at storage facilities, the New Safe Confinement
facility, and other facilities will be lost. Operators will be unable to
control the level and temperature of water in spent nuclear fuel storage
pools. There are long-lived radionuclides in the spent nuclear fuel
storage, which in case of an accident can get into the Kakhovka Reservoir,
and further along the Dnipro river into the Black Sea. A huge area would be
contaminated by radiation for thousands of years. If there is an accident
with one power unit or one container for spent fuel, depending on the
direction of wind the radioactive cloud will affect Russia, Bulgaria,
Greece, Romania, and other border countries.
Time 17th March 2022
https://time.com/6158274/chernobyl-russia-ukraine-nuclear-disaster/
Renewed worries in Japan about restarting nuclear plants, after 7-4 earthquake near Fukushima
An earthquake has hit Japan just when the country is debating whether to
restart nuclear power plants. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida believes it is
crucial to resume operations. Fresh concerns over nuclear safety will
weaken his case and weigh down utilities stocks.
Four people died on Wednesday night after a magnitude-7.4 earthquake struck northern Japan near
the Fukushima prefecture. It is in this region that a 9.0-magnitude
earthquake and tsunami unleashed a nuclear crisis 11 years ago.
Local utilities are most likely to sustain long-term damage. Shares of Tepco, the
electric utility that operated the devastated Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant, were unmoved by the most recent earthquake. They have been
strengthening this year, ending a two-year long losing streak of more than
60 per cent
Kishida remains intent on restarting nuclear plants. He
responded to earlier safety concerns triggered by Russian attacks on
Ukrainian nuclear facilities with plans for a police unit to protect
Japan’s nuclear plants. But opposition from locals is strong, show
opinion polls. That is understandable given the dire consequences of the
Fukushima meltdown. More than 1mn tonnes of contaminated water is planned
to be released into the Pacific Ocean. The clean-up and damages bill is
more than ¥22tn ($185bn).
FT 17th March 2022
https://www.ft.com/content/eb96f84c-6e95-48d8-abfa-c263ec80f6c5
Safety fears, as Chernobyl nuclear staff tired and stressed.
As Russian troops hold staff at the Chernobyl nuclear plant ‘hostage’,
the mayor of a nearby town warns ‘complete catastrophe’ could be round
the corner. Yuri Fomichev says fuel is running out at the site, including
for back-up generators supplying its safety systems. With the plant being
besieged for three weeks now, food supplies are also becoming scarce, and
the stress of being held at gunpoint could lead to ‘a new accident’, he
adds. His concerns were echoed by the official in charge of a 19-mile
Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl who warned staff were ‘on the edge of
their human capabilities due to physical and emotional exhaustion’.
Metro 16th March 2022
Mirror 16th March 2022
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/fears-chernobyl-in-danger-nuclear-26478660
Chilling warnings that Chernobyl is in danger of a new nuclear accident
because the 100 staff at the stricken plant being kept ‘hostage at
gunpoint’ by the Russians are on the edge of collapse.
Daily Mail 15th March 2022
What next for Ukraine’s nuclearsites and Wylfa and Trawsfynydd?
Dylan Morgan, on behalf of CADNO a PAWB. What next for Ukraine’s nuclear
sites and Wylfa and Trawsfynydd? The war in Ukraine has highlighted the
danger of the rush to build new nuclear power stations in Wales.
Russia’s miltiary attacks on Ukraine have been terrible. However, there is one
frightening fact about this conflict that isn’t mentioned in the press.
This is the first war to be fought on the land of a country that has
operational nuclear reactors.
In fact, Ukraine gets about 52% of its
electricity from 15 nuclear reactors. During the first days of the Russian
invasion, their chosen path into Ukraine to the south from Belarus was
through the exclusion zone around Chernobyl’s old nuclear reactors.
Higher levels of radioactivity have been reported in the area because
Russia’s heavy military vehicles have stirred up dust and mud releasing
radioactivity in to the environment.
Russian forces succeeded to gain
control of the site. Reports are reaching us suggesting that Ukrainian
workers trying to keep the site as safe as possible are under great strain.
It was reported that about 200 of them had to stay there without rest
facilities for the first fortnight after the arrival of the Russian forces.
Within days, we heard about Russian forces attacking the Zaporizhzhia
nuclear site in south east Ukraine. This is the largest nuclear site in
Europe and is the home to six Soviet 950MW reactors. That is, six Wylfa
size stations alongside each other. Luckily, neither the reactors nor the
waste stores there were hit. But great damage was caused to a training
building on the site. Russian soldiers have also captured this site. It is
logical to presume that work conditions there are very difficult for
Ukrainian workers in trying to run three of the six reactors with movement
to and from the site controlled by the Russians. It appears that the 3
other reactors there are not in operation at the moment.
We can only hope
that the names of the other nuclear sites, Rovno (4 reactors), South
Ukraine (3 reactors) and Khmeinitski (2 reactors) don’t become well known
as military targets hit by Russia over the next weeks. Dr Jim Green from
Friends of the Earth Australia warns us about dangers apart from the
reactors themselves in an article in the Ecologist two weeks ago:-
“radioactive reactor cores whether kept in situ or removed from the
reactors – would remain vulnerable, as would nuclear waste stores. Spent
fuel cooling ponds and dry stores often contain more radioactivity than the
reactors themselves, but without the multiple engineered layers of
containment thar reactors typically have.”
Nation Cymru 15th March 2022
Fossil and nuclear energy regimes threaten global security
Opinion: The deadly power of the troika of oil, gas and nuclear energy is unfolding before our eyes
New Brunswick Media Co-Op, by Janice Harvey, March 14, 2022
Vladimir Putin’s terror campaign against Ukraine has pulled back the curtain on the tightly integrated, brittle, and destructive energy regime that fuels the industrialized world. This regime poses an immediate threat to the survival of the people of Ukraine, and the longer-term survival of civilization itself. The deadly power of the troika of oil, gas and nuclear energy is unfolding before our eyes as Ukraine pays the price for a path all our countries have forged.
Energy is a source of two kinds of power – the kind that turns on lights, heats homes, and turns engines and the kind that drives politics. While there are many options for providing the energy services we all need, only some create authoritarian petrostates, transnational corporations with budgets larger than many nations, and billionaire oligarchs. Only some finance wars and inflict gross injustices on those in the paths of rigs and pipelines. Only some emit pollutants that kills millions every year. Only some create deadly wastes that will persist longer into the future than humans have walked on this Earth. Only some turn a conventional missile into a nuclear weapon. Only some destroy the climate that makes Earth liveable.
All these existential threats are associated with the global networks of political and economic power built by transnational energy corporations. Energy policy has long been dominated by ‘iron triangles’ of energy business interests, ‘client’-oriented energy bureaucrats, and captured politicians. Whether it is Putin’s transnational petrodollars, Western Europe’s energy tap line to Russia, or nuclear plants dotting the European landscape, governments and whole countries have become entangled in a dangerous, brittle system that now threatens global security.
The inevitable outcome is the world on a knife-edge.
In the midst of Russia’s oil-financed terror campaign, the international climate science body issued its latest report documenting our collective descent into climate hell. UN Secretary-General Guterres called the report ‘an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.’
Enter the nuclear industry. After languishing for decades in Western countries due to intractable liabilities, and a legitimacy crisis following narrow escapes and full-blown disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, opportunistic nuclear interests have seized on the climate emergency to promote itself as the ‘clean’ energy solution. This falsehood has now been exposed in Ukraine. Every nuclear reactor and nuclear waste storage site is a potential nuclear weapon, minus the blast and fireball. All Putin has to do to wreak radioactive havoc across Europe is target a nuclear facility or two with conventional missiles. Uncontrolled nuclear reactions and wind currents will do the rest.
Yet, the Liberal government’s climate action plan includes pouring hundreds of millions into an industry that would build modular nukes to export around the world, each one a target for a despot or a terrorist. This is all laid out in the federal “SMR Action Plan” that the nuclear industry helped to write, with funding disguised within the $8 billion “Net Zero Accelerator”.
New Brunswick is vying to become the hub for producing this deadly commodity. Nuclear experts from the United States have exposed the security threat inherent in the plutonium feedstock – the stuff of nuclear weapons – that one of the New Brunswick models requires. But even without diverting that fuel into a nuclear weapons program, the plant only needs to exist to be a nuclear target.
The Ukraine catastrophe should be enough to halt nuclear expansion in its tracks. Trading one existential threat (fossil fuel dependency) for another (an even wider network of nuclear targets) is a callous, willful betrayal of the public trust by those politicians enabling it…………..
Political leaders in Canada and abroad have two choices before them. They can deepen domestic and global energy and security vulnerabilities and hasten climate breakdown by building more pipelines, escalating oil and gas production, and enabling the expansion of the nuclear industry. Or they can work towards the elimination of energy as a geopolitical weapon and an existential threat to the civilization. It is up to us citizens to hold them accountable for the choice they make.
Why New Technology Is Making Nuclear Arms Control Harder
The US, China, and Russia are locked in a high-tech race to perfect new nuclear capabilities, rendering some Cold War safeguards obsolete. Defense One, PATRICK TUCKER | MARCH 14, 2022
The risks associated with nuclear weapons are rising once again, the heads of three U.S. intelligence agencies told lawmakers last week, as Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine intensified.
t wasn’t supposed to be this way.
At the end of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush boasted that the United States could now reduce its nuclear forces. But today’s arsenals—and global politics—are much different than in 1991. U.S. leaders face threatening dictatorships in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang, all racing to create new nuclear bombs and ways to deliver them. Technology, it turns out, is making arms control harder, and that’s forcing a big rethink about nuclear deterrence.
Thirty years later, the United States is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on 21st-century versions of the nuclear triad’s strategic bombers, nuclear-powered submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBM. At the same time, China, Russia, and the United States are also developing new types of hypersonic missiles that, maneuvering at more than five times the speed of sound, make Cold War-era ICBMs look like Chrysler Imperials. But these new missiles don’t doesn’t replace the old ones: they just add to the stuff each nation must buy to keep up.
Beyond the delivery systems, today’s nuclear command-and-control systems include a vast network of satellites; sensors, including drone-mounted ones; and computer systems constantly being developed, maintained, and upgraded.
Some argue that while U.S. leaders could have used the post-Cold War era’s peace dividend to dismantle global nuclear arsenals, instead the Pentagon’s own ambitions for newer missile-defense technology forced the rising autocratic regimes of other global powers to respond in kind. Heavy U.S. investment in developing new ballistic missile defense, in particular, prompted Russia and China on their current path to develop highly-maneuverable hypersonic weapons.
Several senior U.S. military leaders declined interview requests for this article; Defense Department leaders keep current nuclear concerns close to their vest. But in 2019, the Air Force released a collection of papers in which leaders already were lodging concerns. In it, Maj. Jeff Hill, said that newly developed U.S. defenses against Russian and Chinese missiles “has led each of these two countries to aggressively pursue its own [highly-maneuverable hypersonic missile] programs. Russia specifically highlights ‘American military-technological advances’ including its ballistic missile defense program as an area of concern in relation to deterrence,” citing the work of Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, one of the foremost Western academic experts on Russian nuclear strategy. His work was published as part of a U.S. Air Force Center for Strategic Deterrence Studies student research project that assessed the influence of hypersonic weapons on deterrence.
All this makes preparing for and deterring nuclear war a great deal more complex than it was during the 1950s and 1960s.
“There’s a number of very fundamental assumptions that we have made over the last 30 years, that really are no longer valid,” said Adm. Charles Richard said at September’s Deterrence Symposium. Richard leads U.S. Strategic Forces, or STRATCOM, which oversees the military’s nuclear arsenal. “After the fall of the Soviet Union and the [U.S.] success in Desert Storm, we achieved a national security environment where, I would argue that, the risk of a strategic deterrent failure, and, in particular, the risk of a nuclear deterrence failure, was low…. We started taking it for granted and forgot all the things that we had to do, from a strategic deterrence standpoint, to get us to that environment to begin with.”
………………… China has since vastly expanded its arsenal; in 2020, Pentagon officials estimated it numbered “in the low 200s,” and could double. It has also built out its own nuclear triad, with nuclear-capable stealth bombers; four Type 094 ballistic missile submarines; and on land, truck-mounted missile launchers
and an estimated 300 completed and planned ICBM silos.
………………And the emergence of a third huge nuclear arsenal complicates deterrence theory, STRATCOM’s Richard said.
“In general, deterrence theory doesn’t really account for a three-party problem. How you do deterrence with three, peer nuclear-capable competitors?” Richard said. “The Cold War was very much a two-party competition.”
Meanwhile, U.S. military planners are changing their definition of “strategic” deterrence, weapons, and attacks. During the Cold War, this almost always referred to nuclear war. But today’s planners use the term to include non-nuclear threats and technologies that could have devastating effects—for example, destroying an adversary’s ability to see an attack coming or respond to it.
“Strategic effects can be much broader than simply ‘nuclear,’ in terms of what could possibly be done in cyber or possibly be done in space, critical infrastructure, information domain, role of allies and partners. All of that, I think, requires a very critical relook,” Richard said.
That nuance is often lost in the contemporary conversation about nuclear weapons and deterrence. In 2018, a New York Times article, “Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyberattacks With Nuclear Arms” sparked frenzied concern that the United States under President Donald Trump was lowering its bar for launching a nuclear strike…………
Future nuclear weapons, including ICBMs, will likely be part of a complex, interconnected digital architecture, and will likely exhibit “some level of connectivity to the rest of the warfighting system,” Werner J.A. Dahm, then-chairman of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, predicted in 2016. His warning came on the eve of a major study by the Air Force to see how trustworthy nuclear weapons would be if they were networked together, a study that was never publicly released.
Super Maneuverable Missiles
Perhaps the biggest change to nuclear deterrence is the appearance of new types of hypersonic weapons. Unlike Cold-War era ICBMs, the new class of hypersonics that China and Russia (along with the United States) are pursuing are steerable, allowing an adversary to target a much wider space with one missile, and making such missiles very difficult to defend against…………………..
any country could use a non-nuclear hypersonic missile to strike its adversary’s nuclear command-and-control targets…………….
The development of these new “invincible” weapons—as Russian leader Vladimir Putin has called them—has triggered a concurrent arms race for new concepts to defeat them. One U.S. answer has been the use of new satellite architectures to watch hypersonics as they proceed along their flight path, in addition to new sensors and object-finding software to spot things like mobile missile launchers.
,…………………………………. https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2022/03/why-new-technology-making-nuclear-arms-control-harder/363135/
UK government now considering extending life of Sizewell nuclear power station by 20 years
UK looking to extend life of nuclear plant by 20 years amid energy crisis, Ft/com 14 Mar 22, Sizewell B in Suffolk was due to be decommissioned in 2035 and can meet about 3% of Britain’s electricity demand
The UK is looking at a 20-year extension of the Sizewell B nuclear power plant on England’s east coast to 2055 as Boris Johnson aims to bolster domestic energy supplies following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The extension is one of several options under consideration as the prime minister draws up a new “energy supply strategy”, which will be published next week against the backdrop of highly volatile international gas prices and an escalating cost-of-living crisis. ……………………….
Britain is set to experience a significant loss in nuclear capacity by the end of the decade as EDF of France and the UK’s Centrica, which own all of the current fleet of reactors, have been forced to close several earlier than planned.
EDF’s 1.2 gigawatt Sizewell B plant in Suffolk, which started operating in 1995 and can meet about 3 per cent of the UK’s electricity demand, is the only one of Britain’s six remaining atomic power plants that will continue generating beyond the end of the decade. Only one new station, the 3.2GW Hinkley Point C in Somerset, is currently under construction. It is due to come on stream in 2026.
Ministers are encouraging investors to build another new plant on a site adjacent to Sizewell B but are also keen for EDF to invest the estimated £500mn-£700mn that would be needed to extend the lifetime of the existing station to 2055.
Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, visited Sizewell in January, where he met EDF directors and some of the workforce. Government officials said Kwarteng was supportive towards EDF, which is “actively exploring” a 20-year extension for Sizewell B and is aiming to take a final decision on the project in 2024, for which UK government approval would be required. “It probably will be extended,” said one official. ……………. https://www.ft.com/content/51d4ff8c-f0c0-4082-8db6-11c031be1420
Chernobyl nuclear plant lacking external power supply
Ukraine’s state nuclear power regulator said on Friday the electricity
supply to the Chernobyl nuclear power station had not yet been restored,
despite Russia’s energy ministry saying it was restored by Belarusian
specialists on Thursday. Ukraine has warned of an increased risk of a
radiation leak if the high-voltage power line, damaged in fighting, is not
repaired to the plant, which is occupied by Russian forces.
Reuters 11th March 2022
Video analysis reveals Russian attack on Ukrainian nuclear plant veered near disaster.
NPR, March 11, 2022: Last week’s assault by Russian forces on the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant was far more dangerous than initial assessments suggested, according to an analysis by NPR of video and photographs of the attack and its aftermath.
A thorough review of a four-hour, 21-minute security camera video of the attack reveals that Russian forces repeatedly fired heavy weapons in the direction of the plant’s massive reactor buildings, which housed dangerous nuclear fuel. Photos show that an administrative building directly in front of the reactor complex was shredded by Russian fire. And a video from inside the plant shows damage and a possible Russian shell that landed less than 250 feet from the Unit 2 reactor building.
The security camera footage also shows Russian troops haphazardly firing rocket-propelled grenades into the main administrative building at the plant and turning away Ukrainian firefighters even as a fire raged out of control in a nearby training building.
The evidence stands in stark contrast to early comments by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which while acknowledging the seriousness of the assault, emphasized that the action took place away from the reactors. In a news conference immediately after the attack, IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi made reference to only a single projectile hitting a training building adjacent to the reactor complex.
“All the safety systems of the six reactors at the plant were not affected at all,” Grossi told reporters at the March 4 briefing.
In fact, the training building took multiple strikes, and it was hardly the only part of the site to take fire from Russian forces. The security footage supports claims by Ukraine’s nuclear regulator of damage at three other locations: the Unit 1 reactor building, the transformer at the Unit 6 reactor and the spent fuel pad, which is used to store nuclear waste. It also shows ordnance striking a high-voltage line outside the plant. The IAEA says two such lines were damaged in the attack.
“This video is very disturbing,” says Edwin Lyman, director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. While the types of reactors used at the plant are far safer than the one that exploded
n Chernobyl in 1986, the Russian attack could have triggered a meltdown similar to the kind that struck Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011, he warns.”It’s completely insane to subject a nuclear plant to this kind of an assault,” Lyman says.
In a news conference on Thursday, Grossi said that he had met with Ukrainian and Russian officials but failed to reach an agreement to avoid future attacks on Ukraine’s other nuclear plants. “I’m aiming at having something relatively soon,” he told reporters in Vienna.
The assault
On March 3, the nuclear plant was preparing for a fight. A news release posted to its website just hours before the assault described the facility as operating normally, with its assigned Ukrainian military unit ready for combat.
The Russian decision to move on the plant was clearly premeditated, according to Leone Hadavi, an open-source analyst with the Centre for Information Resilience, who helped NPR review the video.”It was planned,” Hadavi says, and it involved around 10 armored vehicles as well as two tanks. That is far more firepower than would have been carried by, say, a reconnaissance mission that might have stumbled across the plant by chance.
Just before 11:30 p.m. local time, someone began livestreaming the plant’s security footage on its YouTube channel. The livestream rolled on as Russian forces began a slow and methodical advance on the plant. The column of armored vehicles, led by the tanks, used spotlights to cautiously approach the plant from the southeast along the main service road to the facility.
Around an hour and 20 minutes later, one of the two tanks that led the column was struck by a missile from Ukrainian forces and was disabled.
That marked the beginning of a fierce firefight that lasted for roughly two hours at the plant. Immediately after the tank was disabled, Russian forces returning fire appeared to hit a transmission line connected to the plant’s main electrical substation. The IAEA says two of four high-voltage lines were damaged in the attack. Lyman says that these lines are essential to safe operations at the plant……..
Based on photos and damage assessments by Ukrainian officials and the IAEA, Lyman says that the damage appears to have been to some of the less hardened points within the nuclear plant. Unlike office buildings and elevated walkways, the reactors themselves and their spent fuel are sealed within a thick steel containment vessel that would withstand a great deal of damage.
But he also says that the host of systems required to keep the reactors safe are not hardened against attack. Cooling systems rely on exterior pipework; backup generators are kept in relatively ordinary buildings; vital electrical yards are out in the open; and the plant’s control rooms are not designed to operate in a war zone……………. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/11/1085427380/ukraine-nuclear-power-plant-zaporizhzhia
What a Power Cutoff Could Mean for Chernobyl’s Nuclear Waste.
| What a Power Cutoff Could Mean for Chernobyl’s Nuclear Waste. With no working reactors, there is no risk of a meltdown. But the ruins from the 1986 disaster still pose considerable dangers. The plant’s remaining three reactors were eventually shut down, the last in 2000. The nuclear fuel has been removed from all of them, and the turbines and other equipment that generated power have mostly been removed. With no operating reactors at the plant, there is no risk of a core meltdown as there would be if an operating plant lost power and could no longer circulate water through the reactor. This is what happened at the Fukushima reactors in Japan in 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami wiped out backup power systems. But Chernobyl carries some other risks related to the large amount of nuclear waste on site. If the water in storage tanks got so hot it boiled off, the fuel would be exposed to the air and could catch fire. That, too, was among the risks in the Fukushima disaster. The I.A.E.A. has said that the used fuel assemblies at Chernobyl are old enough and have decayed enough that circulating pumps are not needed to keep them safe. “The heat load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water contained in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal without the need for electrical supply,” the agency said. New York Times 9th March 2022https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/climate/chernobyl-nuclear-waste-power-outage.html |
1 This Month
petition to oppose the rapid increase of space-military industry threatening Jeju Island and the region.
[Petition by April 19th (KST)] Stop the joint military-Hanwha Systems-Jeju Provincial Government Sea Launch!
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/2352741955560
of the week–London Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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