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Nuclear modernisation, cyber operations, raise a dilemma for nuclear deterrence

 As the character Dr. Strangelove makes clear in the eponymous classic movie, nobody is frightened of capabilities that are kept secret.

 Nuclear capabilities must be revealed to be useful for deterrence. Nuclear deterrence works because nuclear weapons states can deliberately reveal their nuclear capabilities and thus signal the potential consequences for crossing red lines. By contrast, offensive cyber operations against sensitive targets cannot be revealed if they are to be useful at all. 

Digital Strangelove: The Cyber Dangers of Nuclear Weapons, https://www.lawfareblog.com/digital-strangelove-cyber-dangers-nuclear-weapons By Jon Lindsay Thursday, March 12, 2020,  : This post article is part of a series exploring the findings and recommendations of the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Cyberspace is the most complex sociotechnical system ever created, while nuclear weapons are the most destructive military tools in history. They are increasingly entangled in ways that we do not fully understand. Partly this is due to a lack of information—cyber operations and nuclear weapons are both highly classified realms. Partly this is due to the increasing complexity of interactions, which are hard to model. Yet the greater challenges, perhaps, are political.
Nuclear command, control and communications (NC3) is the nervous system of the strategic deterrent. NC3 enables critical informational functions such as early warning and situation monitoring, operational planning and assessment, strategic decision-making and tactical force direction. Commanders aim to ensure that weapons are always available for authorized use and never usable without authorization. There is some tension between these requirements, insofar as a highly alert posture to ensure usability increases the risk of accident, and some close calls resulted during the Cold War.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in NC3 and strategic stability among academics and arms controllers. This new wave of concern has been prompted, variously, by revelations about U.S. operations allegedly targeting Iranian enrichment and North Korean missile tests; concerns about interactions with artificial intelligence or social media; and fears of inadvertent escalation due to cyber-nuclear interaction or the entanglement of nuclear and conventional forces.
As the Defense Science Board recommended in 2013, “[I]mmediate action to assess and assure national leadership that the current U.S. nuclear deterrent is also survivable against the full-spectrum cyber … threat.” NC3 modernization also features prominently in the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review. The U.S. Air Force has, accordingly, designated NC3 as a weapon system (AN/USQ-225), which consists of as many as 160 different systems. Upgrades of NC3 to leverage digital technology have the potential to improve reliability and accountability. It is a truism, however, that complexity is the enemy of cybersecurity. Greater reliance on software components offers convenience and flexibility at the price of new logical failure modes that are difficult to model. The interactive complexity of digital components, sophisticated weapons and demanding deterrent postures could increase the chance of accidents and unintended consequences.
Yet there is another category of problems that is in some ways more insidious. Covert capabilities, like offensive cyber operations, may create strategic incentives for actors to act deliberately in ways that could undermine the stability of deterrence. For example, the U.S. had a covert program of electronic warfare options targeting Soviet NC3 in the Cold War. These options might have helped to limit the damage the Soviet arsenal could inflict in a nuclear war, but they could not be revealed to the Soviets for the sake of deterrence. As the character Dr. Strangelove makes clear in the eponymous classic movie, nobody is frightened of capabilities that are kept secret. Indeed, the Soviets learned about the American program through a well-placed spy in NATO and changed their communications protocols.
This problem is even more acute today. Nuclear capabilities must be revealed to be useful for deterrence. Nuclear deterrence works because nuclear weapons states can deliberately reveal their nuclear capabilities and thus signal the potential consequences for crossing red lines. By contrast, offensive cyber operations against sensitive targets cannot be revealed if they are to be useful at all. Cyber actors deliberately conceal or obfuscate their cyber capabilities and operations because compromise would enable the target to patch or take countermeasures that mitigates the capability. This cyber commitment problem is one reason why cyber is ill suited for coercive bargaining. This is most problematic for offensive cyber operations designed for nuclear damage limitation and counterforce missions, which must be prepared well in advance in strict secrecy.

The crucial strategic conundrum, therefore, is how to manage the interaction of two domains with dangerously opposed strategic characteristics. If opponents do not agree on the balance of power in a crisis bargaining situation, for whatever reason, bargaining is more likely to fail. Offensive cyber operations targeting NC3 create just such an information asymmetry. Cyber capabilities that are needed only in the event that deterrence fails can thus make it more likely that deterrence will fail in the first place. Precisely because cyber conflict takes place below the threshold of armed conflict, the dangerous combination of offensive cyber operations and NC3 can, in effect, lower the nuclear threshold.

What is to be done? The cybersecurity of every segment of the NC3 enterprise must be assessed, to include NC3 interactions with the broader cyberspace environment. It is important not to limit analysis to technical penetrations, as social engineering or blackmail targeting operators, administrators or their families cannot be ruled out. Defense in depth for NC3 systems should include redundant communications, error correction protocols, isolation of critical systems, reduced reliance on complex software where possible, avoidance of software monocultures vulnerable to class exploitations and active network security monitoring with a threat-hunting counterintelligence mindset.

Translating defensive capacity into deterrence requires taking the additional, and politically difficult, step of advertising NC3 redundancy and resilience to potential adversaries, even in a cyber-degraded environment. Perhaps the most important thing to be done is to sensitize operators, nuclear policy makers and allied counterparts throughout the NC3 enterprise to the risks of cyber-nuclear interaction. Human interpretation and intervention will be the key to mitigating many of these scenarios as they emerge. It is thus important for governments to develop and exercise concepts and methods for noticing and evaluating the likelihood of different types of cyber-nuclear risks as they emerge in various scenarios.

The truly difficult policy questions concern the use of offensive cyber operations targeting foreign NC3. Coordination among stakeholders is more difficult because tailored cyber options, and nuclear warfighting plans generally, are highly classified in special access programs. It is precisely this level of security that gives rise to the cyber commitment problem described above. Moreover, it may be completely reasonable, or even desirable, to have just such options for damage-limiting warfighting scenarios or counterforce preemption in the event that deterrence fails. Yet it is critical that policymakers and commanders make a mindful decision about the strategic benefits of cyber options and the risks of deterrence failure they may entail. These are hard policy questions without clear technical fixes.

March 14, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, Reference, weapons and war | 1 Comment

Deceit and Dark Money -Ohio’s nuclear subsidy saga 

Dark money dominated Ohio’s nuclear subsidy saga ENERGY NEWS NETWORK, Kathiann M. Kowalski, March 5, 2020  

FirstEnergy Solutions paid nearly $2 million to at least one group, but most other data remains hidden.

After-the-fact filings show that FirstEnergy’s generation subsidiary paid nearly $2 million to Generation Now, one of the special interest groups that orchestrated ads, political donations and other efforts behind Ohio’s nuclear and coal bailout.

But legal loopholes make it harder to find out the total spent and who else was behind xenophobic advertising, dueling voter petitions, alleged intimidation and other claims of foul play. And none of those actions fully disclosed who was behind them.

The scant public filings that are available show additional connections to FirstEnergy Solutions (now Energy Harbor), as well as the law firm of an outspoken legislator who has long fought the state’s clean energy standard, and others with high-level political influence.

House Bill 6 gutted Ohio’s renewable energy and energy efficiency standards while putting ratepayers on the hook for nearly $1 billion in subsidies for nuclear power plants, plus an additional amount for aging coal plants. Multiple groups spent heavily to promote HB 6 and prevent a referendum on the law following its passage.

In some cases, nonprofit and for-profit organizations funded each other or shared the same spokesperson. Groups active in the HB 6 campaign also had links to some of the same lobbyists and consultants who acted for companies that stood to benefit from HB 6, or unions with workers at their plants. But only limited amounts of funding could be traced.

ON ORIGINAL – INTRIGUING INTERACTIVE DIAGRAM HERE _ shows interrelationships of individuals and groups Continue reading →

March 7, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, politics, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Big Oil Big Soda and plastically polluted Planet Earth.

“They really sold people on the idea that plastics can be recycled because there’s a fraction of them that are,”..“It’s fraudulent. When you drill down into plastics recycling, you realize it’s a myth.” …… “Recycling delays, rather than avoids, final disposal,” the Science authors write. And most plastics persist for centuries. …….

We are all guinea pigs in this experiment, as plastics accumulate in the food web, appearing in seafood, table salt, and ironically even in bottled water. Many plastics are mixed with a toxic brew of colorants, flame retardants, and plasticizers. 

PLANET PLASTIC, How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades, Rolling Stone, By TIM DICKINSON, MARCH 3, 2020   

Every human on Earth is ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week. These tiny pieces enter our unwitting bodies from tap water, food, and even the air, according to an alarming academic study sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature, dosing us with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to cancers, hormone disruption, and developmental delays. Since the paper’s publication last year, Sen. Tom Udall, a plain-spoken New Mexico Democrat with a fondness for white cowboy hats and turquoise bolo ties, has been trumpeting the risk: “We are consuming a credit card’s worth of plastic each week,” Udall says. At events with constituents, he will brandish a Visa from his wallet and declare, “You’re eating this, folks!”

With new legislation, the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2020, Udall is attempting to marshal Washington into a confrontation with the plastics industry, and to force companies that profit from plastics to take accountability for the waste they create. …….

The battle pits Udall and his allies in Congress against some of the most powerful corporate interests on the planet, including the oil majors and chemical giants that produce the building blocks for our modern plastic world — think Exxon, Dow, and Shell — and consumer giants like Coca-Cola, Nestlé, and Unilever that package their products in the stuff. Big Plastic isn’t a single entity. It’s more like a corporate supergroup: Big Oil meets Big Soda — with a puff of Big Tobacco, responsible for trillions of plastic cigarette butts in the environment every year. And it combines the lobbying and public-relations might of all three………

Massive quantities of this forever material are spilling into the oceans — the equivalent of a dump-truck load every minute. Plastic is also fouling our mountains, our farmland, and spiraling into an unmitigatable environmental disaster. John Hocevar is a marine biologist who leads the Oceans Campaign for Greenpeace, and spearheaded the group’s response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Increasingly, his work has centered on plastics. “This is a much bigger problem than ‘just’ an ocean issue, or even a pollution issue,” he says. “We’ve found plastic everywhere we’ve ever looked. It’s in the Arctic and the Antarctic and in the middle of the Pacific. It’s in the Pyrenees and in the Rockies. It’s settling out of the air. It’s raining down on us.”

More than half the plastic now on Earth has been created since 2002, and plastic pollution is on pace to double by 2030. At its root, the global plastics crisis is a product of our addiction to fossil fuels. The private profit and public harm of the oil industry is well understood: Oil is refined and distributed to consumers, who benefit from gasoline’s short, useful lifespan in a combustion engine, leaving behind atmospheric pollution for generations. But this same pattern — and this same tragedy of the commons — is playing out with another gift of the oil-and-gas giants, whose drilling draws up the petroleum precursors for plastics. These are refined in industrial complexes and manufactured into bottles, bags, containers, textiles, and toys for consumers who benefit from their transient use — before throwing them away. Continue reading →

March 7, 2020 Posted by | 2 WORLD, environment, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, spinbuster | Leave a comment

The world’s Big Oil giants now turn to plastics to grow their industries

PLANET PLASTIC, How Big Oil and Big Soda kept a global environmental calamity a secret for decades, Rolling Stone, By TIM DICKINSON, MARCH 3, 2020

March 7, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, climate change, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties | Leave a comment

No advantage in ‘new’ back-to-the-future nuclear reactors for Australia. Is the real motive military?

It is a spurious argument to say any reactor type will reduce Australia’s power industry high level nuclear waste when we produce zero at the moment.
only a devotee of nuclear power would see any advantage in introducing any type of nuclear reactor to Australia. Unless the real motive for such a reactor is a military motive. If so, the O’Brien Committee and the government need to come clean on that.
The waste from the very first molten salt fuelled and cooled reactor, as we saw in the previous post, continues to cost US taxpayers money 60 years later.
The sub text of the picture admits that nuclear industry cannot keep going in the way that it has done since the days between 1945 and now. The industry would disappear if it did not “modernise”.  
Seeing as there actually no new concepts, why not look again, in desperation, at the rejected designs of the past?

Part 2 of A Study of the “Report of the inquiry into the prerequisites for nuclear energy in Australia” Australian Parliamentary Committee 2020.       The Industry Push to Force Nuclear Power in Australia    nuclearhistory    2 Mar 2020 https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/103698880/posts/2607926791  In progress, first draft, incomplete.

The Parliamentary Committee recommends, in part, the following: Recommendation 2

The Committee recommends that the Australian Government undertake a body of work to progress the understanding of nuclear energy technology by:

  1. Commissioning the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), or other equivalent expert reviewer, to undertake a technological assessment on nuclear energy reactors to:
    1. produce a list of reactors that are defined under the categories of Generation I, II, III, III+ and IV;
    2. advise on the technological status of Generation III+ and Generation IV reactors including small modular reactors;
    3. advise on the feasibility and suitability of Generation III+ and Generation IV reactors including small modular reactors in the Australian context; and
    4.  formulate a framework to be used by Government to monitor the status of new and emerging nuclear technologies.The first item of the recommendation – for ANTSO to compile of reactors according to each one’s status within the table of Generation – 1 to 4 might be a good idea, for many of the Generation IV reactor designs were first envisaged and trialled in the 1950s and 1960s before being discarded. Whereas, at the present time, and since the time the US Department of Energy sought ways of halting the decline of nuclear power’s percentage contribution to global energy supply in the 1990s. For that is the time that the idea of resurrecting old designs and calling them new and “Generation IV” and re marketing them first arose

The waste from the very first molten salt fuelled and cooled reactor, as we saw in the previous post, continues to cost US taxpayers money 60 years later.

In 2014 the Brookings Institute published an essay by Josh Freed entitled “Back to the Future, Advanced Nuclear Energy and the Battle Against Climate Change”. This essay is available to read at http://csweb.brookings.edu/content/research/essays/2014/backtothefuture.html The cover illustration is very interesting.

The titled cover includes the disclosure that the nuclear industry sees a future for previously discarded, old reactor designs. It shows a nuclear reactor sitting below sea level, protected by a combined Dyke / Causeway for levitating vehicles. Huge waves threaten the Dyke, vehicles, reactor and giant Science Woman, who is watching on with skilled impartiality. In the distance, buildings taken straight from the cartoon “The Jetsons” appear. The illustration is also, actually, a reinterpretation of the events which occurred in March 2011 at Fukushima. The sub text of the picture admits that nuclear industry cannot keep going in the way that it has done since the days between 1945 and now. The industry would disappear if it did not “modernise”.

The fission industry is dying as more and more competition arises in the form of alternative technologies in the energy generation technology market. Even Fusion research continues to make inroads toward the goal of successful and economic power generation, but it still a few years off. The 1930s fission patents of Szilard are long in the tooth and actually, in terms of economic energy production has always been a failure. Kick started by governments, the standard designs are trusted by fewer and fewer people, especially throughout Asia. Westinghouse Nuclear, GE Nuclear, Toshiba Nuclear are all bankrupt. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd is broke, Sellafield is broke and a growing cleanup cost liability.

So increasingly, the industry needs a unique selling point, something new and radical, something that solves the old nuclear problems. It needs a product which never fails or spills radioactive materials into the biosphere, it needs a product that will not fail because the grid goes down for a few days, it cannot melt down, catch fire like Windscale, Monju and Fermi 1 did.

Seeing as there actually no new concepts, why not look again, in desperation, at the rejected designs of the past? The essay by Josh Freed (his real name) mentions a company called Transatomic. In contrast to the contents of the Freed article, which claims the old new reactor envisioned by Transatomic run on nuclear waste, Transatomic make no such claim. They state that their proposed reactor would run on liquid uranium fuel. As per the original 50s/60s design. They claim that the Molten salt reactor would create less weight of high level waste.

Because the waste would be continuously removed from the reactor. he corporate website for Transatomic is here: http://www.transatomicpower.com/the-science/ And this, from their web site, is precisely what they promise: Molten salt reactors like Transatomic Power’s are fueled by uranium dissolved in a liquid salt. The fuel is not surrounded by cladding, making it possible to continuously remove the fission products that would otherwise stop the nuclear reaction. The liquid fuel is also much more resistant to structural damage from radiation than solid materials – simply, liquids have very little structure to be damaged. With proper filtration, liquid fuel can remain in a molten salt reactor for decades, allowing us to extract much more of its energy.” end quote. They claim their reactor design produces half the nuclear waste of a comparable conventional light water reactor.

This still does not solve the high level nuclear waste stockpile. It adds to it. Given the competition nuclear power has in the modern world, given that the need for ‘baseload’ energy is now shown to be nonsense, what would 1 or 2 small modular molten salt reactors add to Australia? Would they merely replace coal fire powered generation? SA has not had coal fired electricity for some years now. A combination of solar, wind and storage in SA means SA is a net electricity exporter to the Eastern States. We have back up of gas fired generation which very rarely needed.

Sadly for Transatomic, Green Tech Media state the following at https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/transatomic-to-shutter-its-nuclear-reactor-plans-make-its-technology-public announced the following in 2018:

“Transatomic to Shutter It’s Nuclear Reactor Plans, Open-Source It’s Tecnology.

The startup backed by Peter Thiel won’t be able to build its advanced reactor designs—but it’s making its IP available for others to carry on the work.” Source: Jeff St. John, 25 Sept 2018.as given above.

This gift to the world by Transatomic occurred at the time in Australia when various people began a bombastic and highly enthused campaign to convince Australians that Molten Salt Reactors, fuelled with either Uranium or Lithium or nuclear waste, were Jesus Mark 2. “We’ll Save Yer, just like we did in the Cold War. Solar and batteries are for whimps. We Can’t have solar and wind power in Australia, its a threat to Queensland Coal. Let’s nuclear instead and all make a quick a buck with IP”.

Funny that. Talk about drumming up business prospects and investment funds, and in 2020, floating a float on the back of sympathetic and one eyed Parliamentary Inquiry!

Double or Nothing?

The promise made by Transatomics is that molten fuel/molten salt reactors made with modern techniques will reduce by roughly half the amount of high level nuclear waste generated per unit of power generated. However, at the current time the amount of high level nuclear waste (ie, fission products -the transmutation products described in Szilard’s 1930s patents) and the release of the gaseous forms of these substances into the atmosphere, generated by Australian electricity generation is ZERO.

So the introduction of Molten Salt Reactor into Australia for electricity production will RAISE the production of high level nuclear waste from this activity by 100%. It won’t half, it won’t double, it will increase by x grams per watt. It is a spurious argument to say any reactor type will reduce Australia’s power industry high level nuclear waste when we produce zero at the moment. And if Australia continues on its non nuclear path, that zero rate of power related high level waste will remain zero forever. So where is the advantage for Australia in introducing power reactors in the civilian sphere?

I am led to believe that it will take between 10 – 20 years for any Australian nuclear power reactor to come on line from the time it is approved. By that stage the competition from other forms of low carbon power production will be much, much more severe than it is now. And today, in my opinion, only a devotee of nuclear power would see any advantage in introducing any type of nuclear reactor to Australia. Unless the real motive for such a reactor is a military motive. If so, the O’Brien Committee and the government needs to come clean on that. Not that they will. Such an admission is likely to be impossible for several reasons. Besides, no nuclear industry is free to fully disclose the corporate production and disposition of “special nuclear materials”.

So, I suppose in the end the Committee recommend ANTSO compile a list of reactor types and nominate the current industry PR terms for each type. For the Generational types (1 through IV) have actually very little to do with the chronological order and date range over which each type first manifest as a prototype. The small World War 2 German reactors, of which there were many, are little known, and the US ALSOS project has not disclosed that much about them. Germany had at least 4 reactor programs, 7 ways of enriching uranium. Japan had an Army fission project, a Navy fission project, an Air Force Fission project. All were formally abandoned, ironically , in July 1945. Germany was able to enrich uranium.

This is ancient history, but the world remains fairly ignorant I think, as to which reactor type is the safest, most economic, most reliable and so on. So far, all I have heard from the nuclear industry is PR manufactured originally by the US Department of Energy which relabelled the various reactor designs originated in the US according to a “Generation Number” which is completely detached from the chronological sequence in which they occurred.

In World War 2 Germany was working on heavy water reactors. Does that mean Hitler’s heavy water reactors were Generation III+ ? Of course not. They were Gen 1. As was the Canadian heavy water reactor of World War 2 which supplemented the US plutonium production at Hansford. If the Candu reactor is Gen III+ I’m Father Christmas. What the US DOE is doing with its naming is using marketing techniques to sell old concepts as new ideas.

Car companies do the same when naming cars. Makers of garbage trucks send salesmen around to Council depots extolling the virtues of the Gen IV 2 ton rubbish truck, complete with compactor, a tilt tray and 8 track stereo sound. And Depot managers get given toy model rubbish trucks they sit on their book cases to show how technically astute they are in the field of garbage.

Same deal here. It’s a no brainer. Yet, start collecting lists from ANSTO Mr. O’Brien. Great idea sir. It’ll keep you off the streets for awhile.

March 3, 2020 Posted by | AUSTRALIA, Reference, spinbuster | Leave a comment

Busting the lies of the Australian Government about “new” nuclear reactors

The core propositions of non-traditional reactor proponents – improved economics, proliferation resistance, safety margins, and waste management – should be reevaluated.

Before construction of non-traditional reactors begins, the economic implications of the back end of these nontraditional fuel cycles must be analyzed in detail; disposal costs may be unpalatable………. reprocessing remains a security liability of dubious economic benefit

Non-traditional” is used to encompass both small modular light water reactors (Generation III+) and Generation IV reactors (including fast reactors, thermal-spectrum molten salt reactors, and high temperature gas reactors)

March 3, 2020 Posted by | politics, Reference, spinbuster, technology | Leave a comment

Nuclear testing left a signature of radioactive carbon all around the world

When Linus Pauling accepted the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his campaigning against hydrogen bombs, he said that carbon 14 “deserves our special concern” because it “shows the extent to which the earth is being changed by the tests of nuclear weapons.”
If people’s teeth have a very low level of radiocarbon, it means that they were born well before Castle Bravo. [thermonuclear atom bomb test] People born in the early 1960s have high levels of radiocarbon in their molars, which develop early, and lower levels in their wisdom teeth, which grow years later. By matching each tooth in a jaw to the bomb curve, forensic scientists can estimate the age of a skeleton to within one or two years.

Even after childhood, bomb radiocarbon chronicles the history of our body.

Your Inner H-Bomb  Nuclear testing left a signature of radioactive carbon all around the world—in trees and sharks, in oceans and human bodies. Even as that signal disappears, it’s revealing new secrets to scientists. The Atlantic, Story by Carl Zimmer, 2 Mar 20, 
“…… Among the isotopes created by a thermonuclear blast is a rare, radioactive version of carbon, called carbon 14. Castle Bravo and the hydrogen-bomb tests that followed it created vast amounts of carbon 14, which have endured ever since. A little of this carbon 14 made its way into Clark’s body, into his blood, his fat, his gut, and his muscles. Clark carried a signature of the nuclear weapons he tested to his grave.
I can state this with confidence, even though I did not carry out an autopsy on Clark. I know this because the carbon 14 produced by hydrogen bombs spread over the entire world. It worked itself into the atmosphere, the oceans, and practically every living thing. As it spread, it exposed secrets. It can reveal when we were born. It tracks hidden changes to our hearts and brains. It lights up the cryptic channels that join the entire biosphere into a single network of chemical flux. This man-made burst of carbon 14 has been such a revelation that scientists refer to it as “the bomb spike.” Only now is the bomb spike close to disappearing, but as it vanishes, scientists have found a new use for it: to track global warming, the next self-inflicted threat to our survival. ……. Continue reading →

March 3, 2020 Posted by | ANTARCTICA, environment, radiation, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Castle Bravo bomb and its effects on the soldiers, and on the planet

Your Inner H-Bomb, Nuclear testing left a signature of radioactive carbon all around the world—in trees and sharks, in oceans and human bodies. Even as that signal disappears, it’s revealing new secrets to scientists. The Atlantic, by Carl Zimmer, 2 Mar 20, 

In the morning of March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb went off in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. John Clark was only 20 miles away when he issued the order, huddled with his crew inside a windowless concrete blockhouse on Bikini Atoll. But seconds went by, and all was silent. He wondered if the bomb had failed. Eventually, he radioed a Navy ship monitoring the test explosion.

“It’s a good one,” they told him.

Then the blockhouse began to lurch. At least one crew member got seasick—“landsick” might be the better descriptor. A minute later, when the bomb blast reached them, the walls creaked and water shot out of the bathroom pipes. And then, once more, nothing. Clark waited for another impact—perhaps a tidal wave—but after 15 minutes he decided it was safe for the crew to venture outside.

The mushroom cloud towered into the sky. The explosion, dubbed “Castle Bravo,” was the largest nuclear-weapons test up to that point..

It was intended to try out the first hydrogen bomb ready to be dropped from a plane. Many in Washington felt that the future of the free world depended on it, and Clark was the natural pick to oversee such a vital blast. He was the deputy test director for the Atomic Energy Commission, and had already participated in more than 40 test shots. Now he gazed up at the cloud in awe. But then his Geiger counter began to crackle.

“It could mean only one thing,” Clark later wrote. “We were already getting fallout.”

That wasn’t supposed to happen. The Castle Bravo team had been sure that the radiation from the blast would go up to the stratosphere or get carried away by the winds safely out to sea. In fact, the chain reactions unleashed during the explosion produced a blast almost three times as big as predicted—1,000 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb.

Within seconds, the fireball had lofted 10 million tons of pulverized coral reef, coated in radioactive material. And soon some of that deadly debris began dropping to Earth. If Clark and his crew had lingered outside, they would have died in the fallout.

Clark rushed his team back into the blockhouse, but even within the thick walls, the level of radiation was still climbing. Clark radioed for a rescue but was denied: It would be too dangerous for the helicopter pilots to come to the island. The team hunkered down, wondering if they were being poisoned to death. The generators failed, and the lights winked out.

“We were not a happy bunch,” Clark recalled.

They spent hours in the hot, radioactive darkness until the Navy dispatched helicopters their way. When the crew members heard the blades, they put on bedsheets to protect themselves from fallout. Throwing open the blockhouse door, they ran to nearby jeeps as though they were in a surreal Halloween parade, and drove half a mile to the landing pad. They clambered into the helicopters, and escaped over the sea.
As Clark and his crew found shelter aboard a Navy ship, the debris from Castle Bravo rained down on the Pacific. Some landed on a Japanese fishing boat 70 miles away. The winds then carried it to three neighboring atolls. Children on the island of Rongelap played in the false snow. Five days later, Rongelap was evacuated, but not before its residents had received a near-lethal dose of radiation. Some people suffered burns, and a number of women later gave birth to severely deformed babies. Decades later, studies would indicate that the residents experienced elevated rates of cancer.  ……….https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/03/how-nuclear-testing-transformed-science/607174/

March 3, 2020 Posted by | PERSONAL STORIES, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA’s nuclear insurance places the big responsibility on the tax-payer

February 27, 2020 Posted by | business and costs, Legal, Reference, USA | Leave a comment

Reprocessing is NOT a solution to the nuclear waste problem

February 22, 2020 Posted by | Reference | Leave a comment

Secret research by U.S. Navy revealed effects of nuclear radiation on animals

February 20, 2020 Posted by | environment, radiation, Reference, secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Plutonium-affected U.S. airmen, cancers, deaths, and a new legal ruling

The Palomares disaster occurred on Jan. 17, 1966, when an American B-52 bomber on a Cold War patrol exploded during a midair refueling accident, sending four hydrogen bombs hurtling toward the ground. They were not armed, so there was no nuclear detonation, but the conventional explosives in two of the bombs blew up on impact, scattering pulverized plutonium over a patchwork of farm fields and stucco houses.

Plutonium is extremely toxic, but it often acts slowly. The alpha-particle radiation it gives off travels only a few inches and would not penetrate skin. But inhaled plutonium dust can lodge in the lungs and steadily irradiate surrounding tissue, gradually inflicting damage that can cause cancer and other ailments, sometimes decades later. A single microgram absorbed in the body is enough to be harmful;  according to declassified Atomic Energy Commission reports, the bombs that blew apart at Palomares contained more than 3 billion micrograms.

February 13, 2020 Posted by | health, incidents, legal, PERSONAL STORIES, politics, Reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear power went backwards in 2019, and the outlook is bleak

Jim Green, RenewEconomy, 11 Feb 2020  

https://reneweconomy.com.au/nuclear-power-went-backwards-in-2019-and-the-outlook-is-bleak-61834/

Nuclear power went backwards last year with the permanent shutdown of nine power reactors and the startup (grid connection) of six. Startups were concentrated in Russia (three) and China (two), with one in South Korea. The shutdowns were spread across eight countries.

Worse still for the industry – much worse – is the paucity of reactor construction starts. There were just three construction starts in 2019: one each in China and Russia, and Bushehr-2 in Iran which faces an uncertain future. No countries entered the nuclear power club in 2019 (construction starts or grid connections).

The average age of the global reactor fleet passed 30 years in 2019. That’s an old fleet, increasingly prone to accidents, large and small; increasingly prone to extended outages and thus increasingly uncompetitive in electricity markets.

As a result of the ageing of the reactor fleet, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) anticipates the closure of up to 139 GW from 2018‒2030 – more than one-third of current global capacity of 395 GW (including idle reactors in Japan). Based on IAEA figures, the industry will need about 10 new reactors (10 GW) each year just to match shutdowns.

The industry did indeed average nearly 10 construction starts from 2008‒13. But the number has sharply declined in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster and catastrophic cost overruns. There were more construction starts in 2010 (16) than in 2016‒19 combined (15).

This table captures the birth, mid-life crisis (Fukushima) and death of the nuclear power mini-renaissance:

6-year period 2002-07 2008‒13 2014‒19
Construction starts 24 59 26
Average 4.0 9.8 4.3

Diana Ürge-Vorsatz, Vice-Chair of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group, notes in the foreword to the World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2019: “Trend indicators in the report suggest that the nuclear industry may have reached its historic maxima: nuclear power generation peaked in 2006, the number of reactors in operation in 2002, the share of nuclear power in the electricity mix in 1996, the number of reactors under construction in 1979, construction starts in 1976. As of mid-2019, there is one unit less in operation than in 1989.”

The number of power reactors under construction has been falling slowly but steadily in recent years, from 68 in 2013 to 46 as of Jan. 2020 (52 according to the IAEA).

The Era of Nuclear Decommissioning

Currently, nuclear power reflects two contradictory dynamics. The earlier mini-renaissance is evident but will subside by the mid-2020s. The Era of Nuclear Decommissioning is in its infancy (with nine reactor closures, historians may mark 2019 as the beginning of this qualitatively new era) and will be in ever-sharper focus by the mid-2020s.

The Era of Nuclear Decommissioning will be characterised by a decline in the number of operating reactors; an increasingly unreliable and accident-prone reactor fleet as aging sets in; countless battles over lifespan extensions for aging reactors; an internationalisation of anti-nuclear opposition as neighbouring countries object to the continued operation of aging reactors; and escalating battles over and problems with decommissioning and waste disposal.

Until such time as the rot sets in, the nuclear industry can console itself with these 10-year figures indicating a marginal increase or decrease depending on whether reactors in long-term outage (most of them in Japan) are included or excluded. Including reactors in long-term outage is “misleading” and “clearly ridiculous” according to former World Nuclear Association executive Steve Kidd, because many of them may never operate again.

Year Number of operable reactors Capacity (GW)
31 Dec. 2009 437 371
31 Dec. 2019

Including reactors in long-term outage

Excluding reactors in long-term outage

  

442

415

  

392

~366

Pro-nuclear spin

So how are the nuclear industry and its supporters responding to the industry’s miserable state? Mostly with denial and delusion.

Here are the ‘top 6 nuclear power achievements‘ of 2019 according to the executive editor of POWER magazine.

1. World’s first EPR nuclear power plant enters commercial operation with the Sept. 2019 commencement of commercial operation of the second of two EPR reactors in Taishan, China.

The original 2013/14 startup dates for Taishan 1 and 2 were missed by five years due to construction problems and safety concerns (including the extraordinary Creusot Forge scandal in France). Excavation work for the Taishan reactors began in 2008 and construction of the two reactors formally began in 2009 and 2010. China General Nuclear Power Corporation acknowledged a cost increase of 40 percent for the two Taishan reactors to US$11 billion. As a result of delays and cost overruns, the market for EPRs in China has all but evaporated.

The EPR reactor under construction at Flamanville, France, is 10 years behind schedule: construction began in Dec. 2007, the planned startup date was 2012, and EDF now says that commercial operation cannot be expected before the end of 2022. The current cost estimate of €12.4 billion (US$13.7 billion) is 3.8 times greater than the original estimate of €3.3 billion (US$3.6 billion).

The EPR reactor under construction at Olkiluoto, Finland, is 10 years behind schedule: construction began in April 2005, startup was anticipated in 2010, and startup is now scheduled in 2020. The current cost estimate of about €11 billion (US$12.2 billion) is 3.7 times greater than the original €3 billion (US$3.3 billion) price tag.

The estimated combined cost of the two EPR reactors under construction at Hinkley Point, UK, including finance costs, is £26.7 billion (US$35.0 billion) (the EU’s 2014 estimate of £24.5 billion plus a £2.2 billion increase announced in July 2017). A decade ago, the estimated construction cost for one EPR reactor in the UK was almost seven times lower at £2 billion. The UK National Audit Office estimates that taxpayer subsidies for Hinkley Point will amount to £30 billion (US$39.4 billion), while other credible estimates put the figure as high as £50 billion (US$65.6 billion).

Undeterred, POWER magazine claims that a 6-unit EPR project in India will be the world’s largest nuclear power plant “if completed as planned”. It would be a miracle if the project is completed as planned; indeed it would be a minor miracle if it even begins given funding constraints.

2. World’s first ACPR-1000 nuclear power plant begins commercial operation in China

Grid connections of ACPR-1000 reactors in China in 2018 and 2019 mark a significant achievement. But the broader picture is highly uncertain. There has only been one reactor construction start in China in the past three years. The number of reactors under construction has fallen sharply from 20 in 2017 to 10 currently. No-one knows whether or not the Chinese nuclear program will regain momentum. Wind and solar combined generated nearly double the amount of electricity as nuclear in 2018.

3. Akademik Lomonosov connects to grid

Estimated construction costs for Russia’s floating nuclear power plant (with two 32-MW ice-breaker-type reactors) increased more than four-fold and eventually amounted to well over US$10 million / megawatt (US$740 million / 64 MW). A 2016 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency report said that electricity produced by the plant is expected to cost about US$200 / MWh, with the high cost due to large staffing requirements, high fuel costs, and resources required to maintain the barge and coastal infrastructure.

The primary purpose of Russia’s floating nuclear power plant is to help exploit fossil fuel reserves in the Arctic – fossil fuel reserves that are more accessible because of climate change. That isn’t anything to celebrate; it is disturbing and dystopian.

4. Vogtle nuclear expansion progresses

Construction of the twin-AP1000 project in the US state of Georgia began in 2013 and the planned startup dates were April 2016 and April 2017. The project is 5.5 years behind schedule and it is unlikely that the revised completion dates of Nov. 2021 and Nov. 2022 will be met.

In 2006, Westinghouse claimed it could build one AP1000 reactor for as little as US$1.4 billion. The current cost estimate for the two Vogtle reactors – US$27‒30+ billion – is 10 times higher.

The Vogtle project only survives because of mind-boggling, multi-billion dollar taxpayer subsidies including US$12+ billion in loan guarantees, tax credits and much else besides. Westinghouse declared bankruptcy in 2017, largely as a result of its failed AP1000 projects in South Carolina (abandoned after the expenditure of at least US$9 billion) and Georgia, and Westinghouse’s parent company Toshiba was almost forced into bankruptcy and survives as a shadow of its former self.

5. NRC approves Clinch River nuclear site for small modular reactors (SMRs)

6. NuScale’s SMR design clears Phase 4 of NRC review process

But who will pay for SMRs? Industry won’t budge without massive taxpayer subsidies. A 2018 US Department of Energy report states that to make a “meaningful” impact, about US$10 billion of government subsidies would be needed to deploy 6 gigawatts of SMR capacity by 2035.

And the pro-nuclear authors of a 2018 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science argue that for SMRs to make a significant contribution to US energy supply, “several hundred billion dollars of direct and indirect subsidies would be needed to support their development and deployment over the next several decades”.

The prospects for SMRs are just as bleak in other countries.

And as the AEMO/CSIRO GenCost 2019-20 report notes, SMRs in Australia would be 2-4 times more expensive per kW than wind and solar.

Dr. Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and editor of the Nuclear Monitor newsletter.

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