secrets,lies and civil liberties

“ZATO” Russia’s many closed cities, – some site of nuclear accidents

Russia’s closed cities hold the secrets to global nuclear disasters you’ve never heard of https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-24/russia-closed-cities-hold-secrets-to-global-nuclear-disasters/11437734

By Lauren Beldi The lack of information from the Russian Government following the deadly explosion on August 8 has some questioning whether the situation might be worse than originally thought.

Key points:

There are at least 40 closed cities in Russia, officially known by the acronym ZATO
Some have also been home to some of the world’s worst nuclear incidents
President Vladimir Putin is trying to encourage more Russians to move to closed cities

But it makes sense why Russia might be vague on the detail.

Both the city near the accident site, Severodvinsk, and the one where the victims were buried, Sarov, are “closed cities” — highly controlled areas that house the country’s most important weapons sites.

The Government does not want outsiders knowing what goes on there, especially when accidents happen.

And when accidents do happen in closed cities, like a radioactive explosion or an outbreak of anthrax, Russia has a long history of covering them up.

Russia is far from the only country to have closed cities, but it does have a lot of them.

It’s thought there are about 40 closed cities in Russia, though it’s suspected there are others whose very existence is highly classified.

First established in the 1940s, closed cities — officially known by the acronym ZATO in Russian — are most often associated with either military installations or major research centres and are used to house employees and their families.

For example, Sarov, where the five scientists killed in the explosion were buried, is the site of a nuclear weapons design facility.

It’s been a closed city since 1946, when it was renamed Arzamas-16 and its location was removed from all unclassified maps.

The movement of people and information in and out of these cities is highly restricted, and residents are often not allowed to disclose where they live to outsiders.

“There’s levels of security inside levels of security, it’s like a series of concentric circles,” Kate Brown, MIT Professor of Science, Technology and Society, told the ABC.

“And when you have those it is easy to gloss over problems, perhaps cover up accidents, there’s not a lot of ways for information to get out.”

The nuclear disaster you probably haven’t heard of

While Chernobyl and Fukushima might be synonymous with nuclear disasters, that might not be the case for Kyshtym.

It was the third most-serious nuclear accident ever recorded, and it happened at the Mayak facility in the closed city of Ozyorsk, in Russia’s Ural Mountains, in 1957.

A cooling system in a radioactive waste tank broke down and the rise in temperature resulted in an explosion that released an estimated 20 million curies of radioactivity into the environment.

During the Chernobyl explosion, about 50–200 million curies of radioactivity was estimated to have been released.

The Kyshtym disaster contaminated an area up to 20,000 square kilometres, known as the East-Ural Radioactive Trace, and thousands of people near the plant were evacuated.

But the Soviet government didn’t publicly acknowledge the accident until 1989.

The incident was happening at the time of the Cold War so it was also an attempt by the Soviet authorities to prevent the news from reaching the outside world,” Alexey Muraviev, a specialist in Russian strategic and defence policy at Curtin University, told the ABC.

But the area had been contaminated even before the Kyshtym disaster, when high-level radioactive waste from the production of plutonium at Mayak had been intentionally dumped into the nearby Techa river.

“They put about 3.2 million curies into that small river, and the people who lived downstream drank from it, swam in it, ate from it, fished in it, watered their crops in it,” Professor Brown said.

Twenty-eight communities live down that river, several tens of thousands of people, and they didn’t tell anybody that they were putting high-level waste [in the river].”

Mayak now serves as a reprocessing plant for spent radioactive fuel.

In October 2017, a network of monitoring sites picked up a cloud of radioactive material, Ruthenium-106, above Europe.

In a report published just last month, a team of scientists say the most likely source was a fire or explosion at Mayak that occurred during the reprocessing of spent fuel to create enriched caesium for an Italian laboratory.

Russia’s nuclear energy agency continues to deny anything happened at Mayak in 2017, but at the time, the Russian Meteorological Service admitted there was “extremely high contamination” in the air around the Ural mountains.

And it’s not just nuclear accidents that happen at closed cities.

In 1979, spores of anthrax leaked from a biological weapons facility in the closed city of Sverdlovsk and killed at least 68 people, many of whom were civilians from a nearby ceramics plant.

The Soviet government blamed the deaths on the consumption of contaminated meat, and it was only in 1992 that then-president Boris Yeltsin publicly linked the anthrax outbreak with the military facility.

While some have a bad safety reputation, there’s a big reason why Russians might want to move to a closed city: they’ve historically gotten the best of everything.

As part of the privileges of working on important, secret and dangerous processes, residents are promised a higher standard of living and better resources.

During the Soviet era, those who lived in closed cities were spared the austerity of other parts of the country.

“So there were no problems with, for example, food supplies; people could buy anything they wanted,” Dr Muraviev said.

“They also provided better living conditions, so people who would work at closed cities would be guaranteed state funding accommodation and so on.”

The reputation of the living standards and privileges of those cities meant the jobs that would allow you to move to one were highly sought after.

“This is an important element, otherwise it sounds like [closed cities] are like a giant concentration camp,” Dr Muraviev said.

And according to Dr Muraviev, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been actively trying to restore the glamour of the country’s remaining closed cities.

“Back in the 1990s those privileges kind of really lapsed, so there were no incentives anymore, but now they’re sort of back on the agenda and the Government is really pumping funds into these cities,” he said.

“That’s part of [Mr Putin’s] strategy to rebuild Russia’s national security as well as rebuild Russia’s national defence capability.”

And as far as the risks go of moving to a secretive town next to a nuclear facility or a military installation?

Dr Muraviev said the people who chose to move to closed cities knew what came with the job.

“They understand risks associated with it and they’re not just doing it for money; they’re also doing it for the idea of making Russia safe,” he said.

August 24, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Reference, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Trumped Up: Wiki cables show Australia thinks Iran is not the aggressor,

Trumped Up: Wiki cables show Australia thinks Iran is not the aggressor, Michael West, by Prof. Clinton Fernandes — 23 August 2019 Wikileaks cables reveal Iran presents no threat to Australia and little threat to the US. Instead, clear intelligence from the US, Australia and Iran confirms Iran, although portrayed as aggressive, has pursued a defensive military strategy. Clinton Fernandez reports.

This week, Australia announced it would send military forces to patrol the Persian Gulf alongside Bahrain, Britain and the United States. “Iran’s unprovoked attacks on international shipping,” required nothing less, according to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The US had previously withdrawn from the so-called “Iran nuclear deal,” known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and imposed sanctions against Iran. Iran went to the International Court of Justice, asking it to rule on the legality of these sanctions. In a unanimous decision, all 15 judges of the International Court of Justice – including American judge ad hoc Charles Brower – ordered the United States to ease some sanctions against Iran………

Iran: a Clayton’s threat

Exactly what kind of threat does Iran pose? And how does the United States view its own conduct? Diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks in 2010 provide revealing insights into these questions. The cables written by American diplomats in Australia are especially revealing because the two countries have a very close relationship in a number of spheres.

This doesn’t mean the US sees Australia as vital; the relationship is heavily asymmetrical, with Australia going out of its way to demonstrate its relevance, as its decision to send military forces to the Persian Gulf illustrates. Combined with evidence given by the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies to the US Congress, a clearer picture of Iranian motives emerges…….

US intelligence confirmed that Iran’s defence was low in comparative terms, was aimed specifically at defence rather than aggression, and sought to deter an invasion long enough for diplomacy to set in. If it ever developed nuclear weapons, they would be remain part of a deterrence strategy. ……

Australian cables show Iran no rogue state

The leaked cables show that Australia’s intelligence agencies also acknowledge that Iran seeks a deterrent. During discussions with the United States in 2008, Australia’s intelligence analysts appeared to take a calm view of Iran’s nuclear program, saying it fell “within the paradigm of ‘the laws of deterrence.’” It was “a mistake to think of Iran as a ‘Rogue State,’” according to Peter Varghese, then the Director-General of the Australian Office of National Assessments……… https://www.michaelwest.com.au/trumped-up-wiki-cables-show-australia-thinks-iran-is-not-the-aggressor/ Clinton Fernandez is Professor of International and Political Studies, UNSW Canberra, and author of “Island off the Coast of Asia: Instruments of Statecraft in Australian Foreign Policy”.

August 24, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Iran, politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Bitcoin Hackers Charged As Nuclear Power Plant Security Compromised

Bitcoin Hackers Charged As Nuclear Power Plant Security Compromised https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/08/23/bitcoin-hackers-charged-as-nuclear-power-plant-security-compromised/#148c22252735
Davey WinderSenior Contributor, 23 Aug 19, Illicit cryptocurrency mining isn’t usually associated with state-level security compromises. Then again, Bitcoin hackers don’t often target nuclear power plants. Yet according to a report on the Ukrainian UNIAN news website, that’s exactly what happened at South Ukraine’s second-largest nuclear power plant, south of Kiev in the city of Yuzhnoukrainsk.

What was found during the nuclear power plant raid?

Detectives from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) searched the Yuzhnoukrainsk nuclear power plant on July 10. During the raids, two bespoke cryptocurrency mining hardware rigs were seized from office 104 in the plant’s administrative wing, along with fiber-optic and network cables.

Coindesk has reported that, on the same day, “a National Guard of Ukraine branch uncovered additional crypto mining equipment at the same nuclear plant. In this search and seizure, 16 GPU video cards, seven hard drives, two solid-state drives and routers were uncovered.” This was at the barracks of the National Guard tasked with protecting the plant. The Russian international television network RT has said that “the people who were supposed to be defending the highly dangerous piece of Ukrainian infrastructure could well have been behind the scheme.”

How was the nuclear power plant security compromised?

The UNIAN report, via Cointelegraph, stated that the cryptominers “compromised the nuclear facility’s security via their mining setup internet connection,” and “ended up leaking classified information on the plant’s physical protection system.”

According to a ZDNet report, the SBU is investigating the incident “as a potential breach of state secrets due to the classification of nuclear power plants as critical infrastructure.” As well as the apparent intent to misappropriate electricity and internet resources to mine cryptocurrency, the SBU is also investigating other lines of inquiry. One of these being whether the mining rigs could have been used to access the network to steal classified security data relating to the nuclear power plant.

August 23, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Kremlin cover up on weapon tested, and radioactive contamination?

Russian radiation detectors ‘go dark’ after mystery explosion
The mysterious shutdown of four nuclear monitoring stations after a fatal blast at a military site has fuelled fears of radioactive contamination. news.com.au 22 Aug 19

Russian officials have dismissed concerns, declaring on Tuesday the country had no obligation to share its data with the CNTBTO — raising fears of a Kremlin cover up on the type of weapon involved and the extent of contamination.

Elevated radiation levels — of up to 16 times the average — were detected 40 km away in the city of Severodvinsk in the aftermath of the event, according to The New York Times.

President Vladimir Putin said on Monday there was no risk to the public, although officials have yet to disclose how much radiation was released………

US National Nuclear Security Administration former deputy William Tobey said it was “at least an odd coincidence” Russian sensors stopped transmitting data about the same time as the explosion occurred.

“Power outages, other failures, can knock down a particular place, but if more than one site is out, it would seem that that is a less likely explanation,” Mr Tobey said.

Russian authorities have offered changing and contradictory information about the explosion fuelling speculation about what really happened and what type of weapon was involved.

While the Russian Defense Ministry said no radiation had been released in a rocket engine explosion, officials in the nearby city of Severodvinsk reported a brief rise in radiation levels.

The contradiction drew comparisons to Soviet attempts to cover up the 1986 explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the world’s worst nuclear disaster.

In his first comments on the explosion, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that it hasn’t posed any radiation threat. Putin added that experts are monitoring the situation to prevent any “unexpected developments.”

He didn’t say what weapon was being tested when the explosion occurred, but described the

test as a “state mission of critical importance.”…….

The Russian military said the explosion killed two people and injured six, while the state nuclear corporation Rosatom acknowledged later that it also killed five of its engineers and injured three others.

Rosatom said the explosion occurred on an offshore platform during tests of a “nuclear isotope power source.”……

Rosatom’s mention of a “nuclear isotope power source,” led some observers to conclude that the weapon undergoing tests was the “Burevestnik” or “Storm Petrel,” a prospective nuclear-powered cruise missile first mentioned by Putin in 2018 and was codenamed “Skyfall” by NATO.

US President Donald Trump backed that theory in a tweet last week, saying America is “learning much” from the Skyfall explosion.

The US worked to develop a nuclear-powered missile in the 1960s under Project Pluto, but the idea was discarded as impractical and risky. Mr Tobey said Russia’s apparent revival of the concept raises significant risks.

“Effectively, Russia is thinking about flying around nuclear reactors,” he told AP.

“The very idea of this system is, I think, a risky system. It probably poses more risk to the Russian people than to the American people. If it crashes, it could spread radiation.”

Nuclear expert Michael Krepon, who co-founded the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan public policy research body, said it was not surprising that Russia might take steps to conceal its activities because “they just can’t accept transparency when it comes to screw ups”.

“This weapon poses a danger first and foremost to the people who are working on it,” Mr Krepon said.

“It’s dumb, it’s stupid, it’s expensive, and there are so many other ways that you can deliver nuclear weapons long distance. The more Putin advertises this system, the more he’s likely to be embarrassed by it.” https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/military/russian-radiation-detectors-go-dark-after-mystery-explosion/news-story/4ab6ce7b4b3926379381a9a7d20baab3

August 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Two victims of mysterious Russian missile blast ‘died of radiation sickness’

Two victims of mysterious Russian missile blast ‘died of radiation sickness’ , By Will Englund and Natalia Abbakumova, SMH, August 22, 2019 Moscow: Two of the Russian specialists killed in the explosion at a White Sea missile testing range died not of traumatic injuries from the blast itself but of radiation sickness before they could be taken to Moscow for treatment, the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta has reported.The paper cited an unnamed medical worker who was involved in their care. “Two of the patients did not make it to the airport and died,” the person said. “The radiation dose was very high, and symptoms of radiation sickness grew every hour.”

Their bodies were taken to the Burnazyan Federal Medical and Biophysical Centre in Moscow, a leading institution in the fields of radioactive and nuclear medicine.

The explosion occurred on August 8, on a sea-based platform off the village of Nyonoksa, in Russia’s far north. Rosatom, Russia’s atomic agency, said a device employing “isotopic sources of fuel on a liquid propulsion unit” was destroyed. Few additional details were provided…….

The doctors and nurses were made to sign nondisclosure agreements stating that information about the incident is a state secret. A doctor told Novaya: “They don’t understand what a state secret is and what the scope of this secret is and that makes the staff very nervous.” …….

Four sensors in various locations across Russia that are in place to monitor compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty stopped reporting information shortly after the explosion, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but at least one has since resumed.

An independent news website, Znak.com, quoted an unnamed nuclear expert as suggesting that the explosion does not pose a health threat to the general population but that the sensors may have been turned off to prevent disclosure of particular isotopes that would give clues as to the nature of the device being tested on the White Sea.

An editorial in the newspaper Vedemosticriticised the lack of information from the government. “The authorities offer one answer to all the questions: The radiation level in the area of the blast is not excessive, the rest is not your business,” it read. “The authorities’ apparent unwillingness to present all necessary information about what happened and its consequences to society and international experts begets only new suspicions that someone is hiding something.” https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/two-victims-of-mysterious-russian-missile-blast-died-of-radiation-sickness-20190822-p52jiu.html

August 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | health, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Russia Tells Nuclear Watchdog: Radiation From Blast Is ‘None of Your Business’

Russia Tells Nuclear Watchdog: Radiation From Blast Is ‘None of Your Business’ Daily Beast , Barbie Latza Nadeau, Correspondent-At-Large 08.20.19 Russia has told the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization that the nuclear-reactor explosion at a White Sea missile test site in early August is none of their business.

The news came as two additional Russian monitoring stations designed to warn about nuclear radiation threats have gone silent after the mysterious Aug. 8 blast at the site this month, according to The Wall Street Journal. Four monitoring stations are now down, which is alarming experts who suspect Russia is attempting to cover up what really happened and keep details about the weapon being tested under wraps. ….. HTTPS://WWW.THEDAILYBEAST.COM/DONALD-TRUMP-DEFENDS-TRADE-WAR-WITH-CHINA-I-AM-THE-CHOSEN-ONE

August 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Authorities Seize Crypto Mining Equipment from Nuclear Power Plant

Authorities Seize Crypto Mining Equipment from Nuclear Power Plant, https://www.coindesk.com/authorities-seize-crypto-mining-equipment-from-nuclear-power-plant Ukraine’s top law-enforcement and counterintelligence agency uncovered crypto mining equipment on site at a nuclear power plant.According to local media reports, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) confiscated six Radeon RX 470 GPU video cards, a motherboard, power supplies and extension cords, a USB and hard drive, and cooling units installed in the South Ukrainian Nuclear Power Plant on July 10.

All of the equipment was located in a single office, No. 104, in the administrative wing separate from the power facility, from the state-owned Energoatom enterprise.

The power plant is registered as a state secret and outside computer equipment is not authorized to enter the property.

The same day, a National Guard of Ukraine branch uncovered additional crypto mining equipment at same nuclear plant. In this search and seizure, 16 GPU video cards, 7 hard drives, 2 solid-state drives and router were uncovered.

GPUs have fallen out of favor in the crypto mining community, as more specialized equipment has come to market. It is unknown what type of cryptocurrencies were being mined. The SBU did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Reportedly, activists with the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance formed a flash mob organized under the #fuckresponsibledisclosure in 2017, to raise concerns over security issues at Energoatom.

August 22, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment

Nuclear monitoring stations went mysteriously quiet after Russian missile facility explosion

Nuclear monitoring stations went mysteriously quiet after Russian missile facility explosion, By Barbara Starr and Ryan Browne, CNN August 19, 2019 Four Russia-based nuclear monitoring stations that monitor radioactive particles in the atmosphere have mysteriously gone quiet after an August 8 explosion at a Russian missile testing facility, an explosion that has sparked confusion and concerns about possible increases in radiation levels, according to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

CTBTO is an independent body which watches for nuclear weapons testing violations with over 300 monitoring stations around the world. Both Russia and the US are signatories to the treaty.

The two Russian radionuclide stations, called Dubna and Kirov, stopped transmitting data within two days of the explosion, the organization said.

“According to our routine global procedure, the CTBTO contacted the Station Operators as soon as the problems started. They have reported communication and network issues, and we’re awaiting further reports on when the stations and/or the communication system will be restored to full functionality,” a spokesperson said.

In addition, a senior CTBTO official tells CNN that stations in Bilibino and Zalesovo went silent on August 13.

“Experts continue to reach out to our collaborators in Russia to resume station operations as expediently as possible,” the official said.

The organization has 80 radionuclide stations around the globe which “measure the atmosphere for radioactive particles,” it says, adding that “only these measurements can give a clear indication as to whether an explosion detected by the other methods was actually nuclear or not.”

US officials believe the deadly explosion was caused during testing of the nuclear propelled Russian missile SSC-X-9 which NATO has designated the code name of “Skyfall.”

The missile is believed to use a nuclear reactor to help power its flight, giving it the ability to fly for longer periods than a conventional missile.

The explosion at the missile site, which resulted in the death of five Russian military scientists, has been the subject of intense speculation as Moscow has provided few details about the incident, with the Kremlin only saying that “accidents happen.”

The mysterious disruption to the radionuclide stations, which track radioactive particles in the atmosphere, comes as Russian officials have given contrasting accounts about the level of radiation released in the explosion.

Local authorities reported a brief spike in radiation following the incident but Russia’s Defense Ministry said radiation levels were normal.

Russian authorities also called off the evacuation of a village in northern Russia near the site of the suspected failed missile test, Russian state news agency TASS reported last week.

Last week, the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority said that “tiny amounts of radioactive iodine” had been detected at an air-filter station, one week after the mystery-shrouded explosion…….https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/19/politics/nuclear-monitoring-stations-russian-missile-facility/index.html

August 20, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Australian investigative journalist Mark Davis explodes the myths around Julian Assange

CN LIVE! Mark Davis Wikileaks Revelations

While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.

WikiLeaks’ threat to the powerful was recognised and every effort was, and is, being made to criminalise anonymous leaking, which would be akin to criminalising Gutenberg’s printing press, but there is not much chance this criminalisation will succeed.

It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.

Media dead silent as Wikileaks insider explodes the myths around Julian Assange, Michael West, by Greg Bean — 16 August 2019 – It is the journalists from The Guardian and New York Times who should be in jail, not Julian Assange, said Mark Davis last week. The veteran Australian investigative journalist, who has been intimately involved in the Wikileaks drama, has turned the Assange narrative on its head. The smears are falling away. The mainstream media, which has so ruthlessly made Julian Assange a scapegoat, is silent in response.

Greg Bean likens the revolutionary work of Julian Assange to that of Johannes Gutenberg who invented the printing press. Government reaction, 580 years later, is similarly savage.

Five hundred and eighty years ago, Johannes Gutenberg introduced the printing press to the world. That single act created a free press which gave birth to the concept of freedom of speech. The two are inextricably linked; printing is a form of speech.

Gutenberg’s invention started the Printing Revolution, a milestone of the 2ndmillennium that initiated the modern period of human history including the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution, and began the knowledge-based economy that spread learning to the masses.

Such mass communication permanently altered the structure of society. Removing control of information from the hands of the powerful and delivering it into the hands of the disempowered…….

From paper revolution to digital revolution

Today in 2019, 580 years since Gutenberg unleashed his printing press, the powerful are still trying to put the free press and freedom of speech genie back in the bottle.

Their present strategy is to make their knowledge, the element that is the key to retaining authority, as it was in Gutenberg’s day, secret, even Top Secret, and criminalising any action that reveals these secrets to anyone outside their circle of authority.

One of the ways this has been achieved is by enlisting the very core of what should be the free press, granting them almost monopoly rights to information dissemination and transmission and in exchange attaining for themselves the guarantee that their secrets will not be revealed.

Media concentration and control

In the US today, it is estimated that five dominant media organisations have almost total control of information transmission to the entire 325 million Americans. While the Internet was meant to democratise the transmission of information we see a few giant technology companies, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, have near total control of what is seen and shared.

The situation is even worse in Australia with two or three media companies and the same technology giants having control. And the Government of Australia has granted them ever wider market access to extend their monopolies. As an aside, it’s both funny and ironic that the Turnbull Government last increased the capacity for Australian media to further consolidate and then Malcolm Turnbull was deposed by that same media for being insufficiently sycophantic to their wishes.

But in 2006, something akin to the arrival of Gutenberg’s press appeared that would threaten the tightly held master’s control as surely as Gutenberg’s press threatened autocratic control in 1439.

That something was a technology suite, from WikiLeaks, that protected the anonymity of individuals who leaked the secrets of corruption that powerful governments preferred to keep hidden.

The strategy was quite elegant in its simplicity. WikiLeaks recognised that organisations and governments can only succeed if they can communicate their instructions to the operational workforce. If the instructions are legal and legitimate, this can be done publicly and with no need to hide any of these instructions.

What have they got to hide?

If however, the instructions entail illegal or illegitimate actions, then the only way these can be communicated to the entire workforce is as secrets. And to ensure they remain secret the organisation or government must impose a penalty on anyone who breaks that secrecy and divulges the information to person not authorised to see it.

The very act of defining something as secret and restricting its dissemination is a clear indicator that the actions or events are very likely illegal or illegitimate. Imposing penalties on those who disseminate these secrets outside authorised channels is another indicator of illegal or illegitimate actions or events.

Authoritarian regimes, murderous military organisations, human rights breaching spy agencies, polluting or corrupt organisation, mind control religious cults, and many more examples are available where their ability to continue with the illegal or illegitimate actions or to hide past events all must utilise secrecy and impose punishment on leakers to ensure that secrecy.

WikiLeaks destroyed that ability. Anonymous leaking of illegal or illegitimate actions or events destroys the ability of corrupt organisations to continue being corrupt.

That undermines their authority and control. And that’s what WikiLeaks introduced to the world — a mechanism and technology that was as pivotal to educating, enlightening, and promoting corrective action as was previously achieved by the creation of Gutenberg’s printing press.

WikiLeaks destroyed the masters in virtually every realm by providing the means to expose knowledge worldwide. The genie was out of the bottle.

Imagine the master’s anger.

A drastic response

Their strategy however, as exposed in a document leaked by WikiLeaks, outlined how WikiLeaks uses trust by protecting the anonymity and identity of leakers and concluded that damaging or destroying this trust would deter leaking; defame Assange and WikiLeaks to kill the threat posed by anonymous leaking.

For 12 years, since 2008, that is exactly what powerful organisations, powerful media and government, powerful military and corrupt corporations have been doing. They are trying to destroy the public’s trust in Julian Assange and, by so doing, destroying the trust in WikiLeaks and ensuring this mechanism of educating the world fails.

Slowly, instance by instance, the malicious and deceitful smears of Julian Assange’s character have been exposed for what they are; an effort to destroy trust in a system of anonymous leaking that will educate everyone. As an example, on Thursday, August 8, 2019, at an event in a pub in Sydney, Mark Davis, a multi-Walkley award winning video journalist destroyed the smear that Assange was cavalier; cavalier that is about the risk of death of informants whose names appeared in documents in one of the sets of releases.

Davis said that, not only was Assange quite worried about the risk, but that The Guardian and New York Times journalists showed little if any worry. The video is here. It is quite remarkable.

As well as these smears, numerous torturous actions were visited on Assange, aimed at achieving not just his discrediting but also to break him mentally and physically.

Assault on human dignity

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, recently wrote a damning articlepublished on the United Nations Human Rights website describing the situation in detail and comments, “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said. “The collective persecution of Julian Assange must end here and now!”.

Sydney based Clinical Psychologist Lissa Johnson has also written about the treatment of Julian Assange ( link ) and the complicit actions of many who turn a blind eye.

“At this democratic crossroads, although establishment media have signalled their reluctance to support Espionage Act charges, in the knowledge they could be next, many nevertheless appear willing to act as instigators of torture, inciting publics to morally disengage, so that states can continue persecuting Julian Assange,” wrote Johnson. “Every act of ‘journalism’ that buries crucial information, and every utterance that vilifies or dehumanises Julian Assange, or sanitises his abuse, is complicit.. “.

Bring Julian Assange home

It’s time to bring Julian Assange home. Torturing and punishing him has never been legitimate and serves absolutely no purpose.

It’s time to recognise that anonymous leaking is here to stay and promote the world changing benefits that this system of mass education will deliver.

How can I be sure anonymous leaking is here to stay? Like Gutenberg’s printing press, WikiLeaks is not a one-off unit, it is a model for how to approach and overcome an issue. Many printing presses were built after Gutenberg revealed the concept and they were soon powered, automated and churning out printed material in huge volumes.

The same has happened with Julian Assange’s concept of a mechanism and technologies that can support anonymous leaking. A group called The Freedom of The Press Foundation, founded among others by Daniel Ellsberg, the man famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers that exposed the lies about the War in Vietnam, created a freely available WikiLeaks-like system called SecureDrop that is now in use by many news organisations.

And a number of these SecureDrop implementations are multi-national and so shield the recipient from AFP-style raids as they exist out there … somewhere … out of AFP and Australian authority reach … out of the reach of any other nation attempting to clamp down on anonymous leaking.

The WikiLeaks style anonymous leaking genie is out of the bottle and is not going back in.

Vive la revolution! https://www.michaelwest.com.au/media-dead-silent-as-wikileaks-insider-explodes-the-myths-around-julian-assange/

August 17, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | civil liberties, investigative journalism, Reference | Leave a comment

Russian doctors kept in the dark about patients being nuclear accident victims

Russian Doctors Say They Weren’t Warned Patients Were Nuclear Accident Victims
One doctor was reportedly later found to have a radioactive isotope in their muscle tissue. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/16/exclusive-russian-doctors-say-they-werent-warned-patients-were-nuclear-accident-victims-a66896

By Evan Gershkovich and Pjotr Sauer 16 Aug 19, Five hospital staff workers, including senior doctors, told The Moscow Times that FSB agents had their colleagues sign non-disclosure agreements.The three injured men arrived at the hospital around 4:30 pm, naked and wrapped in translucent plastic bags. The state of the patients made staff suspect they were dealing with something very serious. But the only information they had at the time was that there had been an explosion at a nearby military site around noon.

“No one — neither hospital directors, nor Health Ministry officials, nor regional officials or the governor — notified staff that the patients were radioactive,” one of the clinic’s surgeons told The Moscow Times by phone this week. “The hospital workers had their suspicions, but nobody told them to protect themselves.”

The hospital was Arkhangelsk Regional Clinical Hospital, a public healthcare center in Russia’s far north, and the day was last Thursday, Aug. 8. After the explosion, radiation spiked to as much as 20 times its normal level for about 30 minutes in the region’s second largest city of Severodvinsk. Russia’s state nuclear agency Rosatom has reported that the accident killed five of its staff members.

Russian authorities are keeping the circumstances surrounding the explosion shrouded in mystery. With government agencies releasing information piecemeal amid a mass of contradictions, the state’s response to the accident echoes its behavior after Chernobyl, the catastrophic 1986 nuclear accident in then-Soviet Ukraine.

Official reaction has included initial denials that radiation spiked at all, and an announcement four days after the accident that the village of Nyonoksa, close to the military site, would be evacuated. Authorities later denied that they had ever ordered villagers to leave. The lack of information has led to confusion among locals, who reportedly scrambled to buy up all of the iodine, a chemical used to limit harm to radiation exposure, in the Arkhangelsk region.

They are not the only ones who have been left confused and demanding answers. Four male doctors at the Arkhangelsk hospital — two in senior positions — and a medical worker told The Moscow Times that its staff have been left shocked and angered by the events that took place. The doctors spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a period of heightened attention by Russian security services.

While none of the doctors worked directly with the patients in question, they all attended a briefing at the hospital on Aug. 12 by a deputy health minister for the Arkhangelsk region and are in constant communication with colleagues who did treat the victims, they said. The doctors said that all staff who worked with the patients directly were asked by Federal Security Service (FSB) agents on Aug. 9 to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevent them from talking about what happened.

“They weren’t forced to sign them, but when three FSB agents arrive with a list and ask for those on the list to sign, few will say no,” said one of the senior doctors.

The Moscow Times was unable to speak with any of the doctors who tended to the three patients or obtain a copy of the reported non-disclosure agreements.

But the versions of events that the five men recounted are identical. They also concur with two additional anonymous accounts published on Aug. 15 — one from a female doctor at the hospital in a local news outlet, Northern News, and one in a local chat group on the popular Telegram messenger.

All seven of the accounts express pointed frustration with the authorities for keeping medical staff in the dark about the risks they were facing.

“The staff is furious to say the least,” said one of the doctors who spoke to The Moscow Times. “This is a public hospital. We weren’t prepared for this and other people could have been affected.”

“Still, everyone did their jobs professionally,” he added.

All of the accounts also ask why state personnel exposed to radiation would be sent to a civilian hospital, rather than a military one, in the first place. The doctors who spoke to The Moscow Times said they and their colleagues had prepared a thorough list of questions for Health Ministry representatives who visited on Aug. 12 to clarify the staff’s concerns, and not a single one was answered clearly.

The Health Ministry, the FSB, the Arkhangelsk’s governor’s office and the Arkhangelsk Regional Clinical Hospital did not respond to requests for comment for this article.

Rather than answers, the doctors were offered a trip to Moscow for tests. All four doctors said that about 60 of their colleagues, including four or five paramedics who had transported the patients to the hospital, took up the offer. The first group flew to Moscow hours after the meeting with the Health Ministry representatives, they said.

According to three of the doctors, including both senior sources, one of the doctors flown to Moscow was found to have Caesium-137 — a radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of the nuclear fission of uranium-235 — in their muscle tissue. One of the sources said the affected doctor had told him so directly, though he was not informed about the amount or concentration of the isotope found.

The affected doctor declined a request for an interview.

“[The person is] beaten down emotionally, but physically seems to be fine, for the moment,” the doctor who spoke to The Moscow Times said, describing his colleague.

The doctors said that after two groups flew to Moscow the rest of the flights were cancelled. They also said after the results had come back radiation experts were flown to Arkhangelsk to carry out the tests there instead.

Yuri Dubrova, an expert on the effects of radiation on the body at the University of Leicester in the U.K., said by phone that the patients brought to the hospital most likely had high doses of the isotope on their skin. The level of danger for the Arkhangelsk doctor all depends on how much the person was exposed to, Dubrova said.

“If the dosage wasn’t very high, the person should be able to fully recover within a week if they are given clean food and water,” he said.

But Dubrova also noted that the lack of information is what would have put the doctor in harm’s way.

“Exposure to Caesium-137 is quite preventable — all you need to do is wash the patient really well,” he said. “But the doctors were made vulnerable to radiation because they hadn’t been told what had happened.”

According to the doctors, the operating theater, located on a third-floor wing of the hospital, was sealed off until Aug. 13. They said that Russia’s consumer safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor and the Emergency Situations Ministry inspected the hospital over the following days.

The doctors also said Rospotrebnadzor representatives have told staff that the hospital is now safe.

Last Friday, Aug. 9, the Baza news outlet, which has close ties to Russia’s security services, reported that men injured during the blast had been brought to a Moscow clinic for radiation sickness treatment. The outlet published a video of a convoy of police cars and ambulances travelling through the Russian capital.

According to three of the doctors, two of the three patients that were treated at the Arkhangelsk Regional Clinical Hospital didn’t even reach Moscow, dying en route to the airport.

They said that security services officers who visited the hospital on Aug. 9 recovered and deleted all of the information about the incident that was in the hospital’s records.

“It’s as if the event no longer exists,” one of the doctors said. “With no documentation the staff couldn’t try to take anyone to court, even if they wanted to.”

He added that some of his colleagues who travelled to Moscow had done so to try to gather evidence to prove the accident happened.

“When all of our colleagues are back in Arkhangelsk, we will sit down and discuss what we should do next,” another doctor said, noting that so far the staff is strongly considering appealing to the prosecutor general.

“Every rule was broken,” he added. “Why were these patients brought to a civilian hospital and not a military one? Why were staff not told to implement proper safety measures? Why were paramedics allowed to transfer them without wearing the right protective gear?”

The events bring to mind a chilling scene in the recent HBO miniseries ‘Chernobyl.’ When the first patients arrive at a local hospital after the accident, doctors begin treating them without protective gear. One cautious nurse explains that their clothes should be burned, but the doctors are depicted handling the toxic items with bare hands.

“It’s exactly like the show’s creator said,” one of the doctors said, referring to a tweet from Craig Mazin three days after the Severodvinsk explosion. “Thirty-three years later and our government hasn’t learned a thing. They keep trying to hide the truth.”

August 17, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Confusion and secrecy following Russian explosion, backflip on evacuation of village

Russian military orders village evacuation, then cancels it, following explosion that killed five nuclear scientists, Secrecy surrounding an explosion that killed five nuclear scientists and caused a spike in radiation levels has sparked fears of a cover-up in Russia, with authorities backflipping on orders to evacuate a nearby village. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-14/russian-nuclear-explosion-mystery/11411470

Key points:

Medics who treated victims of an accident have been sent to Moscow for medical examination
Russia’s state weather service said radiation levels spiked in Severodvinsk by up to 16 times
Many Russians spoke angrily on social media of misleading reports reminiscent of Chernobyl

The explosion took place on Thursday at a naval weapons range on the coast of the White Sea in northern Russia.

State nuclear agency Rosatom said the accident occurred during a rocket test on a sea platform.

The rocket’s fuel caught fire after the test, causing it to detonate, it said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies.

Two days later, after a spike in radiation levels was reported, Rosatom conceded the accident involved nuclear materials.

On Tuesday (local time), the Russian military ordered residents of the small village of Nyonoksa to temporarily evacuate, citing unspecified activities at the nearby navy testing range.

But a few hours later, it said the planned activities were cancelled and told the villagers they could go back to their homes, said Ksenia Yudina, a spokeswoman for the Severodvinsk regional administration.

Local media in Severodvinsk said Nyonoksa residents regularly received similar temporary evacuation orders, usually timed to tests at the range.

Russia’s state weather service said radiation levels spiked in the Russian city of Severodvinsk, about 30 kilometres west of Nyonoksa, by up to 16 times following the explosion.

Emergency officials issued a warning to all workers to stay indoors and close the windows, while spooked residents rushed to buy iodide, which can help limit the damage from exposure to radiation.

‘People need reliable information’

Many Russians spoke angrily on social media of misleading reports reminiscent of the lethal delays in acknowledging the Chernobyl accident three decades ago.

US experts said they suspected the cause was a botched test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile commissioned by President Vladimir Putin.

Boris L Vishnevsky, a member of the St. Petersburg City Council, told the New York Times that dozens of people had called asking for clarification about radiation risks.

“People need reliable information,” Mr Vishnevsky told the Times.

“And if the authorities think there is no danger, and nothing needs to be done, let them announce this formally so people don’t worry.”

The five scientists that died in the explosion were buried Monday in the closed city of Sarov — which houses a nuclear research facility and is surrounded by fences patrolled by the military.

While hailing the deceased as the “pride of the atomic sector”, Rosatom head Alexei Likhachev pledged to continue developing new weapons. “The best tribute to them will be our continued work on new models of weapons, which will definitely be carried out to the end,” Mr Likhachev was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.

Medics who treated victims sent to Moscow

Medics who treated the victims of an accident were sent to Moscow for medical examination, TASS news agency cited an unnamed medical source as saying on Tuesday.

The medics sent to Moscow have signed an agreement promising not to divulge information about the incident, TASS cited the source as saying.

US President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Monday the United States was “learning much” from the explosion and the United States had “similar, though more advanced, technology”.

He said Russians were worried about the air quality around the facility and far beyond, a situation he described as “Not good!”

But when asked about his comments on Tuesday, the Kremlin said it, not the United States, was out in front when it came to developing new nuclear weapons.

“Our president has repeatedly said that Russian engineering in this sector significantly outstrips the level that other countries have managed to reach for the moment, and it is fairly unique,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.Mr Putin used his state-of-the nation speech in 2018 to unveil what he described as a raft of invincible new nuclear weapons, including a nuclear-powered cruise missile, an underwater nuclear-powered drone, and a laser weapon.

Tensions between Moscow and Washington over arms control have been exacerbated by the demise this month of a landmark nuclear treaty.

August 15, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Donald Trump caught in a rather serious lie about USA’s “more advanced” nuclear missile technology

Trump tries to brag about ‘advanced’ US nuclear technology and gets immediately called out https://www.indy100.com/article/trump-nuclear-cruise-missile-advanced-technology-russia-explosion-national-security-9055336

14 Aug 19,by Conrad Duncan Donald Trump was immediately shut down by experts after he suggested the US had “more advanced” nuclear missile technology than Russia.

On Thursday, five Russian nuclear engineers were killed in a rocket engine explosion, which is thought to be linked to tests for a nuclear-powered cruise missile announced by Vladimir Putin in March 2018.

In his typically tactless style, Trump shared his thoughts on the explosion yesterday by claiming the US was “learning much” from the blast and had even more advanced technology.

Trump’s tweet caught the attention of national security experts because it meant one of two things:

Trump had just revealed a secret US nuclear-powered cruise missile programme
He was bluffing about a missile programme that the US does not have

It doesn’t exactly take, ahem, a rocket scientist to know that both of those explanations are quite bad.

For example, Michael McFaul, who worked both for the US National Security Council and as Barack Obama’s Ambassador to Russia, had no idea what Trump was talking about.

Michael McFaul @McFaul

We have similar technology? Nuclear-powered cruise missiles? I wasn’t read into that program when I worked at the National Security Council. Can anyone shed more light?

Other experts on nuclear weapons couldn’t find public evidence for Trump’s claim either.

Joe Cirincione @Cirincione

This is bizarre. We do not have a nuclear-powered cruise missile program. We tried to build one, in the 1960’s, but it was too crazy, too unworkable, too cruel even for those nuclear nuts Cold War years

David Burbach@dburbach

It is a bad idea for the President to tell the world the U.S. has secret nuclear powered super-weapons and that we’ve been lying about that for years. Especially if we don’t actually have them, which we almost certainly do not.

Stephen Schwartz @AtomicAnalyst

If the United States truly has a “similar, though more advanced” nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile in development, it must be a highly classified program because there’s nothing on the public record. So are you baselessly boasting or divulging secrets?

In fact, there was once a programme to develop a nuclear-powered cruise missile during the Cold War, called Project Pluto, but the US abandoned it because it was believed to be too dangerous – potentially creating missiles for which there was no known defence.

So if the US does have “more advanced” technology than Russia on this, the president should definitely not be tweeting about it. Of course, there’s a good chance that Trump is bluffing again about matter that he doesn’t fully understand. It wouldn’t be the first time.

August 15, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Putin’s silence on mysterious radiation accident

Russia nuclear leak: Mysterious footage of hazmat officials escalates radiation panic https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1164125/Russia-nuclear-leak-radiation-Putin-iodine-hazmat

CHILLING footage from Russia has intensified fears of a nuclear radiation accident after ambulances were spotted lined with protective chemical sheets and hospitals workers were seen wearing hazmat suits.

By OLI SMITH, Sun, Aug 11, 2019 Russian President Vladimir Putin has remained silent, amid growing speculation that a nuclear missile accident has caused a dangerous radiation leak at a naval base. The Kremlin have confirmed that a “rocket engine explosion” at the Archangelsk base in northern Russia killed five people and injured three. Last night, Russia’s nuclear energy agency Rostam admitted that they had been involved in the aftermath of the incident, raising concern of a radiation leak.

Rostam added that the explosion took place during the testing of an “isotope power source”.

The official said five of its employees had died as a result of the accident and three more were being treated for burns.

However, the extent of the incident and threat of radiation has not been disclosed, amid growing global concern.

The Archangelsk naval base has been placed under emergency lockdown for a month, with the nearby White Sea also closed to commercial shipping.

A sudden radiation spike detected in the region following the explosion prompted the initial speculation that the incident was related to a nuclear missile test.

The radiation level was recorded as 20 times higher than the normal level in the nearby city of Severodvinsk.

This has been reinforced by chilling footage filmed in the aftermath of the incident.

One video showed hospital workers wearing hazmat suits while they loaded the injured into an ambulance. Another terrifying video revealed a security escort of ambulances transporting the injured to Moscow.

In this footage, one of the ambulance is clearly coated in a chemical protection film.

A defence ministry source said that the worker’s clothes had been burned as soon as they were hospitalised with suspected radiation. Experts have linked the incident to the testing of the new nuclear-powered cruise missile Burevestnik mentioned during a speech by Vladimir Putin last year.

Local people have reportedly been urged to take precautions against radiation, with children from local kindergartens taken indoors after the blast.

There has also been a rush to buy iodine in Russia’s far north.

Russian expert Dr Mark Galeotti said the incident was “clearly a bigger issue than the Russians are letting on”.

He told the BBC: “Despite what the Kremlin have said, there must have been some sort of radiation leak – and they want people to not just stay out of harm’s way, but also don’t want people coming to the site with Geiger Counters.”

August 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | incidents, Russia, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

Stifling democracy- Australia’s National Radioactive Waste Management Facility Taskforce is even more repressive than UK’s

Cumbria Trust 11th Aug 2019 The Guardian has reported that residents in Southern Australia, who face having a nuclear waste storage facility imposed on them, are being forced
to sign an excessively restrictive code of conduct if they wish to attend
community meetings. This prevents them from taking notes, repeating certain
views expressed in the meeting, or trying to take part in the committee
discussions.

This appears to go well beyond the steps required to maintain
an orderly meeting, and serves to suppress democratic accountability. While
the last search process in Cumbria, MRWS, didn’t go to such extreme
lengths, there were some unnecessary restrictions which obstructed local
democracy. Specifically, executive members of the borough councils, and
cabinet members of Cumbria County Council, were told that they could not
give any public indication of whether they were minded to vote for the
process to proceed to the next stage. This ‘predetermination’ rule
allowed senior councillors to completely avoid public scrutiny on the
matter.

https://cumbriatrust.wordpress.com/2019/08/11/australian-troubles-with-community-engagement/

August 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, civil liberties | Leave a comment

Nuclear fuel carrier “Serebryanka” is still at anchor near Russian military test site

Nuclear fuel carrier “Serebryanka” remains inside closed-off waters near missile explosion site

Authorities confirm mysterious brief radiation spike a few hours after the missile engine blast, but the source of release is still unknown. Greenpeace Russia demands greater transparency. Barents Observer, By Thomas Nilsen, 9 Aug 19,

It is still a mystery what prompt the jump in radiation and why the nuclear fuel carrier “Serebryanka” is still at anchor in the closed-off waters a few nautical miles outside Nenoksa military test site in the White Sea.

It was Thursday at 9 am a missile engine exploded at the naval test range west of Severodvinsk.

Radiation levels were several times higher than background for about half an hour around noon on Thursday, according official data from a paper published by the Nuclear Safety Institute of the Russian Academy of Science. The data is based on the public automated monitoring system in Severodvinsk with eight sensors in town and at the Zvezdockha shipyard.

While normal background in the town with a population of 190,000 is around 0.11 µSv/h (microsivert per hour), the levels measured at the monitor on the Lomonosov Street near Lake Teatralnoye peaked at 2 µSv/h, nearly 20 times higher gamma radiation than normal. That, though, is still way within permissible levels for population exposure.

Radiation increase peaked between 11.50 and 12.30 local time and was back at normal levels at all location by 14.00, head of the Civil Protection Department of the administration in Severodvinsk, Valentin Megomedov, told regional news agency in Arkhangelsk 29.ru on Thursday.

Interesting, the information about the increased radiation, first published on Thursday at 14.23, was removed from the city authorities’ portal Friday afternoon and is now just a dead-link. One user at a blog forum saved a copy of the original message, regional news-site 7×7 journal reports.

Russia’s Defense Ministry was shortly after the explosion informing media that no “dangerous substances” were released to the atmosphere and that the radiation level is “normal.”

Nenoksa is about 25 kilometers northwest from Severodvinsk (about 45 km by road). The military testing area is closed for outsiders. A few mobile video- and photos, however, have appeared on social media.

Scary photos

Some photos published by Mash internet news-channel show emergency services personnel in radiation protection suits coming out of a helicopter, checking the surroundings with what appears to be a Geiger counter, before a injured person is transferred to a waiting ambulance.

Two people died in the explosion, while seven were injured and brought to hospitals in Severodvinsk and Arkhangelsk, according to official sources, quoted by TASS news agency.

Sent to Moscow hospital

A unconfirmed Telegram message says six of the injured are diagnosed with radiation exposure and were transferred with two planes to the Burnasyan Federal Medical Biophysical Cente in Moscow.

A tweet posted Friday shows a film of the victims being transported in ambulances. The text reads: “The drivers of the ambulances are dressed in chemical protection suits and the cars are wrapped in film… The victims of the explosion test in Severodvinsk were brought to Moscow. … Well you understand.”

Greenpeace wants openess

“2 µSv/h in Severodvinsk might mean that the levels at the location of the incident, which is tens of kilometers from Severodvinsk, were even higher, and this increase might mean that beta- and alpha radionuclides were released into the atmosphere,” says Senior Nuclear Campaigner with Greenpeace Russia, Rashid Alimov to the Barents Observer.

He now calls for transparent information from authorities.

“Information on radionuclides present in the air, fall-out, in samples of soil and research into external and internal doses in the settlements closer to the place of discharge should be made public,” Alimov says.

Greenpeace has appealed to Rosportrebnadzor, Russia’s consumer watchdog, to establish how high the radiation has risen and whether it pose a health risk to people.

High demand for iodine

In Arkhangelsk, more than 60 kilometers east of the explosion site, pharmacies reported about extra high demand for iodine on Thursday, 29.ru reports. Journalists from the agency visited 15 pharmacies and noted great demand for iodine, some even sold out, apparently due to the news about the explosion.

No radiation measured in Norway

In Norway, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA) says in a press release Friday evening that the agency has reasons to believe the incident in Arkhangelsk [region] caused releases of radiactivity. DSA first said it had not got any official information about releases from Russia.

None of the Scandinavian measurement stations for radioactivity have seen anything unnormal, the agency says, but underlines that the monitoring will be intensified.

The village of Nenoksa is only one kilometer from the boundaries to the naval test site and some three kilometers from the shoreline of the closed area. A video from the time of the accident might indicate that the explosion happened near the shore and some media also reported that the explosion happened on a missile test from or onboard a barge close to the shore.

Secrecy

Many details of the accident at the naval test range remain unclear. The Defense Ministry says the cause of the accident was an explosion while testing a liquid propulsion system, and the explosion triggered a fire.

Nenoksa is well known for testing naval ballistic missile engines and cruise missiles of various types. There are, however, no logic reasons for any such missiles to have a source of radioactivity, unless it is an industrial source of radioactive Cobalt or Cesium in use for one or anther research reason during the testing.

If so, traces of the isotope(s) should be easy to discover.

After the fatal explosion, port authorities in Arkhangelsk informed all civilian vessels on the Dvina River basin and in the White Sea that the waters north of Nenoksa is closed-off to shipping for the coming month.

“Serebryanka“

One ship, though, stayed at anchor inside the close area for more than 30 hours until it slowly started to move Friday afternoon: the special radiological service vessel “Serebryanka”

Serebryanka” has been at anchor a few nautical miles north of Nenoksa since before the explosion Thursday morning.

The ship belongs to Rosatomflot and is normally at port at the base for nuclear-powered icebreakers in Murmansk. In the 1980s and very early 90s, “Serebryanka” was used to transport liquid radioactive waste from the Atomflot facility in Murmansk to dedicated dumping areas in the Barents Sea.

In recent years, the ship has transported liquid radioactive waste from Atomflot to a treatment facility in Severodvinsk, as well as operated between Nerpa and Skhval naval yards on the Kola Peninsula and Atomflot in Murmansk. The ship has also transported containers with spent nuclear fuel from the closed-down naval base of Gremikha.

More interesting, the “Serebryanka” was sailing the waters west of Novaya Zemlya at the time after it is believed that Russia carried out a flight test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile (NATO name SSC-X-9 Skyfall) in November 2017.

Barents Sea

As reported by CNBC, the missile crashed and was lost at sea shortly after launch from the temporary facilities at Pankovo south of the Matochin Shar at Novaya Zemlya. According to The Diplomat, “Serebryanka” was likely taking part in the recovery operation last summer.

The flight path starts at Pankovo, continues over shore for the first few seconds, then turn north over the waters at the inlet of the Matotchkin Shar dividing the northern and southern islands of Novaya Zemlya, before continuing towards the Sukhoy Nos, which is believed to be the impact area for the test, the Barents Observer reported at the time.

The last test shooting of the Burevestnik missile at Pankovo took place in February 2018 and the facility was dismantled and shiped away during last summer.

One problem, it appeared, was the presence of American WC-135 special-purpose aircraft frequently flying the easter Barents Sea close to Russian airspace. The WC-135’s mission is to collect samples from the atmosphere for the purpose of detecting and identifying radionuclides.

The White Sea area on the other hand, is Russian airspace. Since October 2018, satellite images show that a new construction has been erected at the Nenoksa test site, which resemble the facilities removed from Pankovo on Novaya Zemlya.

“Serebryanka”, which left port in Murmansk towards the White Sea on August 4th, could have been in the area to either transport the missile or to pick it up from the sea after testing.

The Burevestnik missile is equipped with a small nuclear reactor.

If the missile fuel that exploded at Nenoksa site happened while testing a nuclear-powered cruise missile which uses a propellant engine in the start, radioactivity could have been released from possible damages of the small reactor.

The existence of the nuclear-powered cruise missile was first made public by President Vladimir Putin in his annual speech last year, as reported by the Barents Observer.

The President sent a clear message to the United States. Russia has developed new missiles and an underwater torpedo that would be immune to ballistic missiles shields and other means to stop a nuclear attack.

“Nobody has anything like this,” Putin said simultaneously as a video film of the test shooting from Novaya Zemlya as well as an animation was displayed on big screens. One of the screened weapons Putin presented was the new nuclear-powered cruise missile.

………https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/security/2019/08/severodvinsk-authorities-confirm-mysterious-brief-radiation-spike-after-missile

August 10, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Russia, safety, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

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