Russia rejects USA’ s terms for extending the New START arms control treaty
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Russia rejects US terms for nuclear pact, Bunbury Mail, Gabrielle Tetrault-Farber , 21 Sept 20, Russia sees minimal chances of extending the New START treaty with the United States – their last major nuclear arms pact – as it does not accept conditions set out by Washington, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov says. He spoke on Monday after Marshall Billingslea, the US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control, told a Russian newspaper that Moscow must accept a joint agreement with Washington on extending the treaty before the US presidential election in November. “I suspect that after President Trump wins re-election, if Russia has not taken up our offer, that the price of admission, as we would say in the US, goes up,” Billingslea told Kommersant newspaper in an interview.
Ryabkov said that position constituted an ultimatum and lowered the chances of reaching any kind of agreement to extend the deal, which expires in February next year. “We cannot talk in this manner,” TASS news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying. Another news agency, RIA, quoted him as saying the chances of a treaty extension were “minimal”…….. https://www.bunburymail.com.au/story/6935377/russia-rejects-us-terms-for-nuclear-pact/?cs=5461
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Global heating is disrupting the ground in Siberia
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Bizarre Bumps come up in Siberia, The tundra climate of Siberia and Russia have been the victim of climate change and the bumps on the grounds bear its scars https://www.outlookindia.com/outlooktraveller/travelnews/story/70633/siberias-ground-bumps, Trinetra Paul, September 20 , 2020 Over the past few decades, climate change and global warming has had a string of adverse effects on the planet. And the signs of damage are increasing day by day. Siberia has been facing the wrath of this global phenomenon over the years. Now, the ground bears the scars of climate change. The Siberian permafrost (or frozen organic ground) is slowly thawing and this is resulting in huge, bizarre bumps on the ground. Many of the craters formed in between these bumps have been filled with melting water and have transformed into small lakes. The alarming rate at which the ground is thawing is a cause for major concern. The permafrost has frozen grass and shrubs and is a reservoir of greenhouse gases. When the layer thaws, these gases are directly emitted into the atmosphere. The Siberian city of Yakutsk has been standing on a permafrost, the depletion of which will not only be a hazard for the city but also for Siberian climate and weather. Siberia, and most parts of Russia, has witnessed a huge rise in temperatures, heat waves and an early summer with temperatures reaching almost 35 degrees. A large part of it is due to global warming, oil spills, factory leakages as well as increase in eco-tourism. Yes, even friendlier modes of tourism and travel too play a pivotal role in increasing the temperature. The COVID-19 pandemic too has had its share in this. With lack of proper maintenance, devastating Siberian wildfires in May proved to be deadly due to reduced workforce, and gave out large volumes of greenhouse gases. Though eco-tourism is beneficial in creating awareness about indiginous culture, and in creating employment among locals, it also leads to modernisation and artificial (often damaging) development of a place. Nature-based adventures, trails and extreme offbeat destinations are often held accountable for destruction of untramelled areas. Experts says that there must be conscious efforts in de-escalating these ventures. Such tourism must be curtailed, and introduced with buffers like controlling daily visitor numbers, maintaining a tab over timings, and consulting environmental organisations about the best measures to protect the vulnerable areas. Sometimes that may mean not allowing any tourists at all. |
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Russia developing a nuclear-powered missile that can ”attack from unexpected directions”
Russia’s nuclear missile with global reach is capable of attacking from ‘unexpected directions’ https://www.wionews.com/world/russias-nuclear-missile-with-global-reach-is-capable-of-attacking-from-unexpected-directions-327492
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WION Web Team New Delhi, India Sep 14, 2020 Russia is developing a nuclear-powered missile that can fly around the atmosphere for years on end ready to strike at any moment.
This does mark the first time this missile has made the headlines. Last year, this so-called missile was involved with a mysterious explosion in Russia, which reportedly left at least 5 scientists dead. This explosion had also led to a major spike in the radiation levels in the area. Now British intelligence claims that Russia is “pushing the boundaries of science, and international treaties” in developing novel weapons. So what do we know about this cruise missile? Russia calls the missile “Burevestnik” or “Storm Petrel”, while the NATO calls it “Skyfall” Putin first unveiled the Burevestnik on March 1, 2018, claiming that it was invincible. Essentially, it is a cruise missile that features a small nuclear-powered engine. This is the first of its kind, for it can fly long distances for hours or even days. The missile can also exploit loopholes in enemy defence networks. Russian president Vladimir Putin had earlier said that the testing of Burevestnik was going on successfully. The British chief of defence said the missile had global reach and could “attack from unexpected directions”. The mention of this missile came up during the Five Eyes intelligence hub including experts from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. |
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The threatening presence of highly radioactive material in Russia’s sunken nuclear submarines
Do Russia’s Sunken Nuclear Submarines Pose Environmental Danger? There’s radioactive fuel hanging at the bottom of the sea. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a33902569/russia-sunken-nuclear-submarines/ BY KYLE MIZOKAMI, SEP 4, 2020
- Two ex-Soviet nuclear submarines, K-27 and K-159, lie at the bottom of the Barents Sea.
- The wrecked ships still have their radioactive fuel sources aboard, which experts worry could leak into the environment.
- The Russian government has vowed to clean up the wrecks, but the work is not a priority.
Governments and environmental groups are worried a rupture of nuclear fuel supplies could cause a nuclear catastrophe, impacting local fishing areas. The Russian government is working to solve the problem, which some experts are calling a potential “Chernobyl in slow motion on the seabed.
A legacy of the Cold War threatens Russia’s people and environment, potentially irradiating a large portion of the Barents Sea and closing it to commercial fishing. Two Soviet nuclear-powered submarines are sitting on the bottom of the ocean and could unleash their radioactive fuels into the surrounding waters.
The Soviet Union built four hundred nuclear-powered submarines during the Cold War. The vast majority were either scrapped, or still serve with the Russian Navy today. A few subs, however, are trapped in precarious circumstances, lying on the seabed floor with their uranium fuel supplies still intact. The BBC reports on efforts to render two such ships, K-27 and K-159, safe.
The first ship, K-27, was a Soviet Navy submarine prototype equipped with a new liquid metal reactor. In 1968, the six-year-old sub suffered a reactor accident so serious, nine Soviet sailors received fatal doses of radiation. The submarine was scuttled off the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya in 1982 with its reactor still on board.
The second ship, K-159 (shown above before sinking, on original), was a November-class
submarine that served a fairly typical career with the Soviet Northern Fleet before retirement in 1989. In 2003, however, the K-159 sank while in the process of being dismantled, killing nine sailors. The ship still resides where it was lost, again with its reactor on board.
Environmentalists in Norway and Russia are concerned that eventually the reactors on both submarines will break down, releasing huge amounts of radiation.
The effects of these leaks could range from increasing local background radiation to declaring local fish and animals off limits, particularly Barents Sea fishing stocks of cod and haddock, costing local fishermen an estimated $1.5 billion a year.
While Russia’s state nuclear agency, Rosatom, has been tasked with cleaning up the ships, the effort is underfunded, resulting in a race against time (and saltwater corrosion).
THe Arctic’s slow-moving underwater nuclear disaster – Russia’s radioactive trash
 Russia’s ‘slow-motion Chernobyl’ at sea, BBC By Alec Luhn2nd September 2020, ”…………………………. Beneath some of the world’s busiest fisheries, radioactive submarines from the Soviet era lie disintegrating on the seafloor. Decades later, Russia is preparing to retrieve them……….With a draft decree published in March, President Vladimir Putin set in motion an initiative to lift two Soviet nuclear submarines and four reactor compartments from the silty bottom, reducing the amount of radioactive material in the Arctic Ocean by 90%. First on the list is Lappa’s K-159.
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Russia facing huge problem to recover radioactive sunken nuclear reactors, but Putin still plans new ones in the Arctic
Russia’s ‘slow-motion Chernobyl’ at sea, FUTURE PLANET | OCEANS By Alec Luhn, 2nd September 2020 ……….
Minimising risk
Russia, Norway and other countries whose fishing boats ply the bountiful waters of the Barents Sea have now found themselves with a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads. Although a 2014 Russian-Norwegian expedition to the K-159 wreck that tested the water, seafloor and animals like a sea centipede did not find radiation above background levels, an expert from Moscow’s Kurchatov Institute said at the time that a reactor containment failure “could happen within 30 years of sinking in the best case and within 10 years at the worst”. That would release radioactive caesium-137 and strontium-90, among other isotopes.
While the vast size of the oceans quickly dilutes radiation, even very small levels can become concentrated in animals at the top of the food chain through “bioaccumulation” – and then be ingested by humans. But economic consequences for the Barents Sea fishing industry, which provides the vast majority of cod and haddock at British fish and chip shops, “may perhaps be worse than the environmental consequences”, says Hilde Elise Heldal, a scientist at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research.
According to her studies, if all the radioactive material from the K-159’s reactors were to be released in a single “pulse discharge”, it would increase Cesium-137 levels in the muscles of cod in the eastern Barents Sea at least 100 times. (As would a leak from the Komsomolets, another sunken Soviet submarine near Norway that is not slated for lifting.) That would still be below limits set by the Norwegian government after the Chernobyl accident, but it could be enough to scare off consumers. More than 20 countries continue to ban Japanese seafood, for instance, even though studies have failed to find dangerous concentrations of radioactive isotopes in Pacific predatory fishes following the Fukushima nuclear power plant release in 2011. Any ban on fishing in the Barents and Kara seas could cost the Russian and Norwegian economies €120m ($140m; £110m) a month, according to a European Commission feasibility study about the lifting project.
There is no ship in the world capable of lifting the K-159, so a special salvage vessel would have to be built
But an accident while raising the submarine, on the other hand, could suddenly jar the reactor, potentially mixing fuel elements and starting an uncontrolled chain reaction and explosion. That could boost radiation levels in fish 1,000 times normal or, if it occurred on the surface, irradiate terrestrial animals and humans, another Norwegian study found. Norway would be forced to stop sales of products from the Arctic such as fish and reindeer meat for a year or more. The study estimated that more radiation could be released than in the 1985 Chazhma Bay incident, when an uncontrolled chain reaction during refuelling of a Soviet submarine near Vladivostok killed 10 sailors.
Amundsen argued that the risk of such a criticality excursion with the K-159 or K-27 was low and could be minimised with proper planning, as it was during the removal of high-risk spent fuel from Andreyev Bay.
“In that case we do not leave the problem for future generations to solve, generations where the knowledge of handling such legacy waste may be very limited,” he says.
The safety and transparency of Russia’s nuclear industry has often been questioned, though, most recently when Dutch authorities concluded that radioactive iodine-131 detected over northern Europe in June originated in western Russia. The Mayak reprocessing facility that received the spent fuel from Andreyev Bay by train has a troubled history going back to the world’s then-worst nuclear disaster in 1957. Rosatom continues to deny the findings of international experts that the facility was the source of a radioactive cloud of ruthenium-106 registered over Europe in 2017.
While the K-159 and K-27 need to be raised, Rashid Alimov of Greenpeace Russia has reservations. “We are worried about the monitoring of this work, public participation and the transport [of spent fuel] to Mayak,” he says.
Custom mission
Raising a submarine is a rare feat of engineering. The United States spent $800m (£610m) in an attempt to lift another Soviet submarine, the diesel-powered K-129 that carried several nuclear missiles, from 16,400ft (5,000m) in the Pacific Ocean, under the guise of a seabed mining operation. In the end, they only managed to bring a third of the submarine to the surface, leaving the CIA with little usable intelligence.
That was the deepest raise in history. The heaviest was the Kursk. To bring the latter 17,000-tonne missile submarine up from 350ft (108m) below the Barents Sea, the Dutch companies Mammoet and Smit International installed 26 hydraulically cushioned lifting jacks on a giant barge and cut 26 holes in the submarine’s rubber-coated steel hull with a water jet operated by scuba divers. On 8 October 2001, rushing to beat the winter storm season after four months of nerve-wracking work and delays, steel grippers fitted in the 26 holes lifted the Kursk from the seabed in 14 hours, after which the barge was towed to a dry dock in Murmansk.
At less than 5,000 tonnes, the K-159 is smaller than the Kursk, but even before it sank its outer hull was “as weak as foil”, according to Bellona. It has since been embedded in 17 years’ worth of silt. A hole in the bow would seem to rule out pumping it full of air and raising it with balloons, as has been previously suggested. At a conference of European Bank of Reconstruction and Development donors in December, a Rosatom representative said there was no ship in the world capable of lifting it, so a special salvage vessel would have to be built.
That will increase the estimated cost of €278m ($330m; £250m) to raise the six most radioactive objects. Donors are discussing Russia’s request to help finance the project, said Balthasar Lindauer, director of nuclear safety at EBRD.
“There’s consensus something needs to be done there,” he says. Any such custom-built vessel would likely need a bevy of specialised technologies such as bow and aft thrusters to keep it positioned precisely over the wreck.
But in August, Grigoriev told a Rosatom-funded website that one plan the company was considering would involve a pair of barges fitted with hydraulic cable jacks and secured to deep-sea moorings. Instead of steel grippers like the ones inserted into the holes in the Kursk, giant curved pincers would grab the entire hull and lift it up between the barges. A partially submersible scow would be positioned underneath, then brought to the surface along with the submarine and finally towed to port. The K-27 and K-159 could both be recovered this way, he said.
One of three engineering firms working on proposals for Rosatom is the military design bureau Malachite, which drafted a project to raise the K-159 in 2007 that “was never realised due to a lack of money”, according to its lead designer. This year the bureau has begun updating this plan, an employee tells Future Planet in the lobby of Malachite’s headquarters in St Petersburg. Many questions remain, however.
“What condition is the hull in? How much of force can it handle? How much silt has built up? We need to survey the conditions there,” the employee says, before the head of security arrives to break up our conversation.
Nuclear paradox
Removing the six radioactive objects fits in with an image Putin as crafted as a defender of the fragile Arctic environment. In 2017, he inspected the results of an operation to remove 42,000 tonnes of scrap metal from the Franz Josef Land archipelago as part of a “general clean-up of the Arctic”. He has spoken about environmental preservation at an annual conference for Arctic nations. And on the same day in March 2020 that he issued his draft decree about the sunken objects, he signed an Arctic policy that lists “protecting the Arctic environment and the native lands and traditional livelihood of indigenous peoples” as one of six national interests in the region.
“For Putin, the Arctic is part of his historic legacy. It should be well-protected, bring real benefits and be clean,” said Dmitry Trenin, head of the think tank Carnegie Centre Moscow.
Yet while pursuing a “clean” Arctic, the Kremlin has also been backing Arctic oil and gas development, which accounts for the majority of shipping on the Northern Sea Route. State-owned Gazprom built one of two growing oil and gas clusters on the Yamal peninsula, and this year the government cut taxes on new Arctic liquified natural gas projects to 0% to tap into some of the trillions of dollars of fossil fuel and mineral wealth in the region.
And even as Putin cleans up the Soviet nuclear legacy in the far north, he is building a nuclear legacy of his own. A steady march of new nuclear icebreakers and, in 2019, the world’s only floating nuclear power plant has again made the Arctic the most nuclear waters on the planet.
Meanwhile, the Northern Fleet is building at least eight submarines and has plans to construct several more, as well as eight missile destroyers and an aircraft carrier, all of them nuclear-powered. It has also been testing a nuclear-powered underwater drone and cruise missile. In total, there could be as many as 114 nuclear reactors in operation in the Arctic by 2035, almost twice as many as today, a 2019 Barents Observer study found.
This growth has not gone without incident. In July 2019, a fire on a nuclear deep-sea submersible near Murmansk almost caused a “catastrophe of a global scale,” an officer reportedly said at the funeral of the 14 sailors killed. The next month, a “liquid-fuel reactive propulsion system” exploded during a test on a floating platform in the White Sea, killing two of those involved and briefly spiking radiation levels in the nearby city of Severodvinsk.
“The joint efforts of the international community including Norway and Russia after breakup of the Soviet Union, using taxpayer money to clean up nuclear waste, was a good investment in our fisheries,” says The Barents Observer’s Nilsen. “But today there are more and more politicians in Norway and Europe who think it’s a really big paradox that the international community is giving aid to secure the Cold War legacy while it seems Russia is giving priority to building a new Cold War.”
As long as the civilian agency Rosatom is tasked with clean-up, the Russian military has little incentive to slow down this nuclear spree, Nilsen notes.
“Who is going to pay for the clean-up of those reactors when they are not in use anymore?” he asks. “That is the challenge with today’s Russia, that the military don’t have to think what to do with the very, very expensive decommissioning of all this.”
So while the coming nuclear clean-up is set to be the largest of its kind in history, it may turn out to be just a prelude to what’s needed to deal with the next wave of nuclear power in the Arctic…………….https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200901-the-radioactive-risk-of-sunken-nuclear-soviet-submarines
Russia releases previously classified film of “Tsar Bomba” the most powerful nuclear bomb blast E\eve
Russia Releases “Tsar Bomba” Test Footage Of The Most Powerful Nuclear Bomb Blast Ever This previously classified film provides a new and fascinating glimpse into the 50-megaton Cold War nuclear test that occurred nearly six decades ago. The Drive BY THOMAS NEWDICK, AUGUST 24, 2020 The nuclear bomb, codenamed “Ivan,” that was dropped by the Soviet Union over Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961, was the largest device of its kind ever detonated. The monstrous weapon had a yield of around 50 megatons — equivalent to 50 million tons of TNT. Until now, the available imagery of that test has been strictly limited, consisting of short, grainy clips and poor-quality stills.
for “dozens of kilometers” in every direction, the earth has been scorched, most of the snow vaporized, and the few structures that existed above the surface have been obliterated.
Court actions over delays in delivering Russia’s giant nuclear icebreaker line
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Delays in delivering Russia’s giant nuclear icebreaker line sparks lawsuitsDelays plaguing the launch of the Arktika nuclear icebreaker, billed to be Russia’s largest to date, have prompted a number of lawsuits against the ship’s builder as frustrations mount over a series of technical faults thwarting the vessel’s scheduled release. Bellona , August 21, 2020 by Charles Digges
According to the Barents Observer, which cites industry news portals, Atomflot, Russia’s nuclear icebreaker headquarters, has filed three multi-million dollar lawsuits against the Baltic Shipyard, the St Petersburg-based shipbuilder that has forged most of the country’s icebreaking muscle. Details of the lawsuits are sketchy. But the Barents Observer reports that the suits seek nearly $13.5 million in damages over faulty ship systems and overdue part deliveries, all of which have caused the icebreaker project to overshoot its 2017 deadline. The latest of these mishaps involves a 300-ton electric propulsion engine that failed during the Arktika’s sea trials in February, crippling one of the vessel’s three propeller systems. While the breakdown is not related to the Arktika’s nuclear propulsion system, it was nonetheless an embarrassing setback that will ultimately require the engine to be entirely replaced. Russian media now suggest that the Arktika won’t be repaired before 2021. A new series of upgraded nuclear icebreakers are central component of a Kremlin strategy to keep Arctic sea routes open on a year-round basis. Russia has since Soviet times maintained the world’s largest stable of these vessels. But many have been decommissioned in recent years, and Moscow has embarked on renewing the fleet. The target of this effort is the Northern Sea Route, a 5,600-kilometer sea artery joining Europe to Asia, whose frozen shores are laden with fossil fuels and mineral deposits. To stimulate its development, President Vladimir Putin ordered in 2017 that cargo volumes along the passage reach 80 million tons by the middle of this decade – more than double current volumes. The Arktika, and two other icebreakers in its class – the Ural and the Sibir – are meant to lead the way. Each vessel measures up to 173 meters in length and all are powered by twin RITM-200 nuclear reactors, which deliver a combined 175 megawatts of power – making them the most powerful civilian vessels in the world. Atomflot has filed its suits against the Baltic Shipyard in Moscow’s Arbitration court, the Barents Observer reports. In turn, the shipyard is suing one of its own suppliers – the giant Kirov Plant in St Petersburg, which manufactures heavy machinery. The Arktika’s rollout has face previous delays. In March of 2017, turbines produced by a Ukraine-based manufacturer were held up by military tensions between Moscow and Kiev. https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-08-%EF%BB%BF%EF%BB%BFdelays-in-delivering-russias-giant-nuclear-icebreaker-line-sparks-lawsuits |
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Fuel finally removed from Russia’s most radioactive ship
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Dismantlement of Russia’s most radioactive ship reaches milestone https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues/2020-08-dismantlement-of-russias-most-radioactive-ship-reaches-milestone
The Lepse nuclear service ship, long one of the most dangerous Soviet era radiation hazards in Northwest Russia, has finally been emptied of the aged spent nuclear fuel in its holds, marking a major milestone in an international cleanup effort that Bellona helped bring to the fore. August 12, 2020 by Charles Digges The Lepse nuclear service ship, long one of the most dangerous Soviet era radiation hazards in Northwest Russia, has finally been emptied of the aged spent nuclear fuel in its holds, marking a major milestone in an international cleanup effort that Bellona helped bring to the fore. The new developments came in late July, when the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, which is funding the project, announced that the last of hundreds of spent nuclear fuel assemblies had been removed from the ship’s hull and sent away for reprocessing. The fuel removal effort has been one of the most technically demanding nuclear legacy cleanup operations in modern history, representing decades of preparation and the coordination of numerous international partners in often troubled political circumstances. “This has been a technically complex and challenging task given the uncertainties associated with both the conditions of the old storage facility and spent nuclear fuel,” says Balthasar Lindauer, the EBRD’s director for nuclear safety. “Its successful completion advances nuclear and radiological safety in the region, addressing a serious danger to the people and the environment of the Barents Sea region.” The news also marks another giant step toward cleaning up the Cold War’s naval and civilian nuclear debris in Northwest Russia. Early last month, officials at Andreyeva Bay, near the Norwegian border, announced they were just a year from removing some of that site’s most complex spent nuclear fuel assemblies. The Lepse, which was used to unload spent nuclear fuel from Soviet nuclear icebreakers, spent more than two decades languishing at the Atomflot icebreaker port in Murmansk, just four kilometers from the city’s population of 300,000. Its irradiated holds contained 639 spent nuclear fuel assemblies, many of which were damaged when the vessel refueled the Lenin Icebreaker in 1965 and 1967, and defied removal by conventional means. The boat was finally towed from Atomflot to the Nerpa naval shipyard in September 2012, after more than a decade of strenuous and often tedious negotiations among Bellona, the Russian government and financial institutions – most notably the EBRD – geared toward ensuring its disposal. Now, all the spent fuel assemblies from the Lepse have been transported from Nerpa back to Atomflot, from where they will be sent by rail for reprocessing at the Mayak Production Association, Russia’s nuclear fuel processing center in the Ural Mountains. The vessel and its dangers caught Bellona’s eye in 1994, and the organization mobilized to lobby the European Union to allocated funding for its removal from Murmansk harbor and its safe dismantlement. In 2001, Bellona built a dormitory for Lepse’s cleanup technicians, who had before that lived amid the radiation aboard the ship itself. Bellona’s connection to the Lepse runs even deeper. Andrei Zolotkov, the head of its Murmansk office, once worked in the vessel’s radiation safety service back in 1974. “It was there that I worked with the technological water in the cooling tanks, where radiation levels approached some 1 Curie per kilogram,” says Zolotkov. “These are pretty serious radioactivity levels that spoke to the unsatisfactory condition of [the Lepse’s] spent fuel assemblies.” He adds that it took more than a quarter of a century to fully address those dangerous conditions – and countless discussions and seminars. But Zolotkov now says that “the end of the project has become visible.” The Lepse’s dismantlement has been supported by the Northern Dimension Environmental Partnership of the EBRD, whose Nuclear Window program has drawn together funds to address radioactive relics of the Cold War. Aside from the Lepse and Andreyeva Bay, the EBRD manages the Chernobyl Shelter Fund. Funding for Nuclear the Window program have been contributed by Norway, Belgium, Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, France, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as by the European Union. |
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Kremlin Warns The US Of Nuclear Retaliation If Russia Or Her Allies Are Targeted
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Kremlin Warns The US Of Nuclear Retaliation If Russia Or Her Allies Are Targeted , Eurasia Times , 10 Aug 20, By Tim Edwards In a veiled warning to the US, Russia has issued a statement declaring that it will perceive any ballistic missile launched towards its territory as a nuclear attack that will warrant a nuclear retaliation.In an article published in the official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) senior officers of the Russian military’s General Staff, Major Gen. Andrei Sterlin and Col. Alexander Khryapin, stated that since there will be no way to determine if an incoming ballistic missile is fitted with a nuclear or a conventional warhead hence the military will see it as a nuclear attack.
The article follows the publication in June of Russia’s nuclear deterrent policy that envisages the use of atomic weapons in response to what could be a conventional strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure……
The statement is reflective of Moscow’s longtime concerns about the development of weapons that could give Washington the capability to knock out key military assets and government facilities without resorting to atomic weapons.
In line with Russian military doctrine, the new nuclear deterrent policy reaffirmed that the country would not withhold using nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack or aggression involving conventional weapons that “threatens the very existence of the state.”……. The published article maintained that the publication of the new nuclear deterrent policy was intended to unambiguously describe what Russia sees as aggression. https://eurasiantimes.com/kremlin-warns-the-us-of-nuclear-retaliation-if-russia-or-her-allies-are-targeted/ |
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Surprisingly Rapid Increase in Scale and Intensity of Fires in Siberia
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NASA/NOAA Satellites Observe Surprisingly Rapid Increase in Scale and Intensity of Fires in Siberia, SciTech Daily By KASHA PATEL, NASA EARTH OBSERVATORY AUGUST 7, 2020 Abnormally warm temperatures have spawned an intense fire season in eastern Siberia this summer. Satellite data show that fires have been more abundant, more widespread, and produced more carbon emissions than recent seasons.The area shown in the time-lapse sequence above includes the Sakha Republic, one of the most active fire regions in Siberia this summer. The images show smoke plumes billowing from July 30 to August 6, 2020, as observed by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NASA/NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. Strong winds occasionally carried the plumes as far as Alaska in late July. As of August 6, approximately 19 fires were burning in the province……
Estimates show that around half of the fires in Arctic Russia this year are burning through areas with peat soil—decomposed organic matter that is a large natural carbon source. Warm temperatures (such as the record-breaking heatwave in June) can thaw and dry frozen peatlands, making them highly flammable. Peat fires can burn longer than forest fires and release vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. …… “The destruction of peat by fire is troubling for so many reasons,” said Dorothy Peteet of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “As the fires burn off the top layers of peat, the permafrost depth may deepen, further oxidizing the underlying peat.” Peteet and colleagues recently reported that the amount of carbon stored in northern peatlands is double the previous estimates. Fires in these regions are not just releasing recent surface peat carbon, but stores that have taken 15,000 years to the accumulate, said Peteet. They also release methane, which is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. “If fire seasons continue to increase in severity, and possibly in seasonal extent, more peatlands will burn,” said Peteet. “This source of more carbon dioxide and methane to our atmosphere increases the greenhouse gas problem for us, making the planet even warmer.”…… https://scitechdaily.com/nasa-noaa-satellites-observe-surprisingly-rapid-increase-in-scale-and-intensity-of-fires-in-siberia/ |
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Russia will regard any incoming missile as a nuclear attack
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Russia warns it will see any incoming missile as nuclear VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
MOSCOW (AP) 7 Aug 20, — Russia will perceive any ballistic missile launched at its territory as a nuclear attack that warrants a nuclear retaliation, the military warned in an article published Friday. The harsh warning in the official military newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) is directed at the United States, which has worked to develop long-range non-nuclear weapons. The article follows the publication in June of Russia’s nuclear deterrent policy that envisages the use of atomic weapons in response to what could be a conventional strike targeting the nation’s critical government and military infrastructure. In the Krasnaya Zvezda article, senior officers of the Russian military’s General Staff, Maj.-Gen. Andrei Sterlin and Col. Alexander Khryapin, noted that there will be no way to determine if an incoming ballistic missile is fitted with a nuclear or a conventional warhead, and so the military will see it as a nuclear attack. “Any attacking missile will be perceived as carrying a nuclear warhead,” the article said. “The information about the missile launch will be automatically relayed to the Russian military-political leadership, which will determine the scope of retaliatory action by nuclear forces depending on the evolving situation.”……….https://apnews.com/888e0816c6fa7f58b9ad4f1e97993643 |
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Problems with Russia’s hype about “super weapons”- and risk of escalating war
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The Hypersonic Hype and Russia’s Diminished Nuclear Threshold, Jamestown Foundation, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 17 Issue: 116, By: Pavel Felgenhauer, August 6, 2020 President Vladimir Putin used the July 26, 2020, Navy Day and the Main Navy Parade in St. Petersburg to once again promote Russia’s “superweapons,” which will ostensibly give the Russian Military-Maritime Fleet (Voyenno-Morskoy Flot—VMF) “a unique advantage” over its Western counterparts. According to Putin, “The deployment of advanced technologies that have no equals in the world, including hypersonic strike systems and underwater drones, will increase naval combat capabilities” (Interfax, July 26). The Main Navy Parade displayed some 46 vessels. Smaller, satellite parades were also held in six other Russian naval base cities as well as at Russia’s foreign naval base in Tartus, Syria (Militarynews.ru, July 26).
The Ministry of Defense used the Navy Day festivities to announce that the nuclear-powered super-torpedo “Poseidon” is now in its final stages of development and will be soon tested using the specially designed nuclear submarine Belgorod—a modified Oscar II–class cruise missile submarine……… Together with the Poseidon, Russia’s president has been touting the Zircon hypersonic missile, which is also reportedly in its final stages of development. The Zircon, according to Putin, can fly at speeds exceeding Mach 9, with a range of up to 1,000 kilometers. …… The Zircon has been in development since the 1970s and 1980s. It is apparently a weapon specifically designed to strike US carriers or other large, high-value seaborne assets. Aiming the hypersonic missile at land targets would be impractical since its radar is apparently only able to distinguish large-contrast targets on the open sea. ……. its chances of hitting a moving ship directly seem to be remote—a carrier would have moved a mile or two away while the Russian hypersonic missile blindly traverses its distance to the original target (Vpk-news, March 24). The extended-range Zircon thus makes sense only as a nuclear weapon with a 200+ kiloton warhead—an underwater massive nuclear explosion would disable a carrier with shockwave even from a mile or two away. The Russian VMF had not received a new destroyer in 30 years, and it is presently struggling to build frigates like the Gorshkov because Ukraine stopped selling it frigate engines after 2014…….. The main problem with Putin’s superweapons is that they are truly doomsday devices, valuable only for deterrence. The Kremlin is constantly plying the deterrence game by trying to scare the West. But this situation has two dangerous ramifications. First, the nuclear threshold is becoming lower: in any serious skirmish, the Russian navy would either need to go nuclear or risk being sunk. And second, while the Russian leadership believes it has surpassed the West militarily thanks to its dazzling superweapons, Moscow’s threshold for employing military force in conflict situations may also drop further. https://jamestown.org/program/the-hypersonic-hype-and-russias-diminished-nuclear-threshold/ |
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Russia plans removal of its nuclear trash from Arctic waters
Russia to Remove Hazardous Nuclear Objects Dumped in Its Arctic Waters,
The country’s nuclear energy company will over the next eight years lift two submarines and four reactor compartments from the bottom of the Barents and Kara Seas. By The Barents Observer 5 Aug 20, Russia’s state nuclear agency plans to remove several nuclear objects from the depths of Russia’s Arctic waters in an effort to reduce environmental hazards, Rosatom said this week as it presented a clean-up plan for the region.
Russia’s state nuclear agency plans to remove several nuclear objects from the depths of Russia’s Arctic waters in an effort to reduce environmental hazards, Rosatom said this week as it presented a clean-up plan for the region.
From the late 1960s to the late 1980s, about 18,000 radioactive objects were dumped into Russia’s remote northern waters. Most of them present little environmental risk. But some are increasingly seen as a hazard to Arctic ecosystems.
“Rosatom over the next eight years intends to lift from the bottom of Russia’s Arctic waters six objects that are most dangerous in terms of radioactive pollution,” the company’s spokesperson told the state-run TASS news agency.
The company plans to lift the reactors from the K-11, K-19 and K-140 submarines as well as spent nuclear fuel from the reactor that served the Lenin icebreaker.
In addition, two entire submarines will be lifted: the K-27 from the Kara Sea and K-159 from the Barents Sea. While the former was deliberately dumped by Soviet authorities in 1982, the latter sank during a towing operation in 2003.
The K-27 is located in 33-meter depths east of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. It has been described by experts as a potential radioactive “time bomb.” The K-159 is located in 200-meter depths off the coast of the Kola Peninsula.
These six objects represent more than 90% of radioactive sources dumped at sea, Rosatom said………
Lifting the six hazardous nuclear objects will not only be technically difficult, but also very expensive.
A recent report made for Rosatom and the European Commission estimated the costs of lifting these six objects at 278 million euros. That includes the cost of bringing them safely to a yard for decommissioning and long-term storage.
Lifting the K-159 alone is estimated to cost 57.5 million euros. Lifting the K-27 and transporting it to a shipyard for decommissioning and long-term storage in Saida Bay will carry a price tag of 47.7 million euros, the report said.
It’s unlikely that Russia’s increasingly cash-strapped treasury will have the 278 million euros needed for the cleanup.
Several countries have previously allocated billions to assist Russia’s post-Soviet efforts to cope with nuclear waste.
Norway has since the mid-90s granted about 1.5 billion kroner (140 million euros) to nuclear safety projects in the Russian part of the Barents region. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/08/05/russia-to-remove-hazardous-nuclear-objects-dumped-in-its-arctic-waters-a71060
For the nuclear industry, coronavirus is helpful, as nuclear wastes go quietly from Germany to Russia
FoE Europe 25th June 2020, Russia and Germany have taken advantage of the coronavirus crisis to resumeshipping radioactive waste to dump in the Urals and Siberia in northern
Russia.
Germany was exporting radioactive waste from it’s nuclear power stations to
Russia, via the harbor of Amsterdam, they directly organized protests in
the three countries.
and sea of uranium – a waste product of nuclear fuel production by Urenco
Germany – was put on hold. That was before the coronavirus crisis hit.
in March 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns restricted people’s right to protest
in Russia even further, the shipments of radioactive waste were set to
resume.
1.This Month
Saskatchewan First Nations Targeted for Untested Small Modular Nuclear Reactors: Candyce Paul http://nuclearhotseat.com/2020/09/03/480-saskatchewan-first-nations-targeted-for-untested-small-modular-nuclear-reactors-candyce-paul/?fbclid=IwAR3CtbqMu3BPrHUOCAoUueMqfSD0un5NNp2WkVmv7X7Zb1pkaMBtulSYsF8
by Libbe HaLevy | Sep 3, 2020
Join my fight to free Julian Assange and stop US extradition
https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/julianassange/
of the week
The Santa Susana Nuclear Catastrophe Continues
https://www.enviroreporter.com/2020/08/nasas-last-stand-investigation/
Committee for Future Generations
Inter-Church Uranium Committee Educational Co-operative (ICUCEC)
https://climatetippingpoints.info/
Antarctica Nuclear Power Plant Cancer Disaster on Day 1 Says Navy Shipmen
Antarctica nuclear reactor caused many cancers. Several countries insisted the US to clean up the nuclear waste via treaty. 5 On Your Side Investigation in March 2011 revealed at least “438 malfunctions from 1964 through 1972.” Our report found “leaking water surrounding the reactor” as well as “hairline cracks in the reactor liner” and prompted two federal hearings that upheld our report’s findings. The plant was eventually shut down and dismantled in 1972, but in the decades that followed, repeated cancer claims for service-connected disability filed by veterans were routinely turned down or ignored by the Veterans Administration. “There is no question that the water was contaminated,” said Wilborn, who was granted a service-connected disability after a hearing before the Board of Veterans Appeals. The appeals board also found that Wilborn’ s exposure was “grossly underestimated” and “evidence strongly suggests that others may have been exposed to higher levels” as well. Source Ron Reagan http://www.newsnet5.com/news/local-ne…
McMurdo has attempted to improve environmental management and waste removal over the past decade in order to adhere to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty, which was signed October 4, 1991, and entered into force January 14, 1998. This agreement prevents development and provides for the protection of the Antarctic environment through five specific annexes on marine pollution, fauna, and flora, environmental impact assessments, waste management, and protected areas. It prohibits all activities relating to mineral resources except scientific. A new waste treatment facility was built at McMurdo in 2003, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo…
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