Tag: Nuke Accident

Do They Know Something We Don’t?

Awhile back some dude stated that in 5 years or so that there would be a war in Europe…..I know many people have been predicting such a situation for many years now but so far they have been just fanciful predictions….

I read today that the nation of Switzerland is modernizing….

Switzerland, long known for its neutrality in global conflicts, is making a major investment in its famous network of bunkers. The country is set to spend more than $1 billion over 15 years to overhaul and modernize public and private shelters, a move driven by security concerns and the war in Ukraine. Starting next year, 200 large bunkers will be upgraded, and fees paid by property developers to fund shelters will rise, the Washington Post reports. Regional governments are also updating aging ventilation and filtration systems, with $1.2 billion earmarked for the work.

Switzerland’s commitment to civil defense is rooted in its history, with a network of roughly 370,000 shelters—enough to secretly assign a spot to nearly every resident. In fact, Switzerland has more bunkers per capita than any other nation, per the Guardian. The shelters, often tucked away in apartment buildings, are designed to withstand nuclear, biological, or chemical attacks. They include reinforced concrete, blast doors, and basic amenities, with requirements like one dry toilet for every 30 people. The country has begun planning for so-called “poly-crisis” scenarios, in which multiple threats hit at once.

Officials also are studying how to keep important services, like schools and businesses, running during emergencies, per the Post. “The economy still has to work during war. That’s what you see in all conflicts nowadays,” said Daniel Jordi, a Swiss civil defense official. He acknowledged the size of the government’s investment. “It’s a huge infrastructure,” he said, “but in the end it’s cheaper than any other measures you could take to protect your population.”

So what do they know that Donny and his band of idiots do not?

The way the US has been stirring the pot of war that has been simmering for decades you would think that civil defense might come up…..so has it?

We cannot depend on FEMA so where do we look for help when the unthinkable happens?

I say no for they are too busy selling their weapons around the world to care about us peons.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That Wayward Missile

By now everyone with a Twitter feed or a TV has heard about the missile accident in Russia…..but in case your rock is not equiped with either of those news sources….I can help……

A deadly explosion rocked the Nenoksa Missile Test Site in Russia last week, and Moscow has offered shifting accounts of what happened. A new report in the New York Times might explain why Moscow is being so cagey: This might have been the region’s worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, though on a much smaller scale. Specifically, US intelligence officials think a nuclear-powered cruise missile exploded just offshore, or at least a prototype of one that is near and dear to Vladimir Putin’s heart. On Sunday, officials of a Russian research institute confirmed that a nuclear reactor exploded, though they did not say it was linked to cruise missile tests. Seven people were killed, including five scientists. The institute says only that they were working on “small-scale sources of energy with the use of fissile materials.”

It’s not just US experts who suspect this involved an experimental cruise missile. A UK scientist tells the Guardian that independent experts think the blast came from the failure of a missile NATO calls the SSC-X-9 Skyfall and Russia calls the 9M730 Burevestnik. Putin boasted of the weapon in 2018, saying its nuclear source would make it virtually unstoppable. However, international nuclear experts have remained skeptical about whether such a missile could actually work. The Times phrases the biq question like so: “Beyond the human toll, American intelligence officials are questioning whether Mr. Putin’s grand dream of a revived arsenal evaporated in that mysterious explosion, or whether it was just an embarrassing setback in Moscow’s effort to build a new class of long-range and undersea weapons that the United States cannot intercept.”

This is a nuclear powered missile….do you know what the means?

We are not talking about a warhead attached….we are saying that the missile has its own nuclear power source.

Maybe you should think about that for a minute.

A flying unshielded nuclear reactor would spew massive amounts of radiation, and that’s if it’s working correctly.

When President Donald Trump heard that Russia’s experimental nuclear-powered cruise missile had exploded, killing seven scientists and causing a major radiological incident less than 300 miles from the Finnish border, he fired off a boastful tweet. “We have similar, though more advanced, technology,” he said. 

This is…not accurate. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States pursued a less advanced version of a similar technology but abandoned the effort before ever launching an actual test vehicle. Nuclear-powered cruise missiles, the Pentagon concluded, are a bad idea. 

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2019/08/nuclear-powered-cruise-missiles-are-terrible-idea-russias-test-explosion-shows-why/159189/

Now what about the US…well I do what I always do…..give you a shot of history….

The US spent a few years looking into something along these lines…it was called Project Pluto…..

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the development of controlled release of nuclear energy (as opposed to runaway reactions in nuclear weapons) seemed to make previously impossible things straightforward matters of engineering. On occasion, it made the unthinkable all too thinkable. Project Pluto, also known as the Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (SLAM), is one of the most extreme exemplars of this epoch. Unlike Project Orion, which envisioned a four thousand ton interplanetary spaceship powered by nuclear bombs, and Project Plowshare, which proposed using nuclear explosions for large civil engineering projects such as digging a new sea-level Panama canal, Pluto/SLAM (which I’ll henceforth refer to as Pluto) was developed and tested to the point where the technology had been proved. Pluto could have been deployed in the 1960s had the project not been cancelled due to financial reasons, competition from rival technologies, and people coming to their senses.

https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/pluto/

The history says it was abandoned in 1964….but after Trump Tweeted what he did are we still pursuing this or did it die in 1964?

Did Trump let slip some state secret that needed to remain secret?

Be Smart!

Learn Stuff!

Class Dismissed!

“Lego Ergo Scribo”

 

Thunderball!

Okay I admit it…I was a huge James Bond fan in my youth…I read all the Ian Fleming books and saw all the movies started with the first one “Dr. No” in 1962 I believe……and was disappointed when Sean Connery left the franchise…..but I digress….I remember the most visually stunning Bond movie at the time “Thunderball”……the trailer may help jog the memory….

https://youtu.be/7JowkFmI1Fo
 
Most of my readers know that I do enjoy a history lesson now and then…..most find it boring but if they knew it all then history is anything but boring.
 
I have waxed nostalgic for a reason…..the story line that SPECTRE has hijacked a plane carrying 4 hydrogen bombs was based a bit on reality….

On January 17, 1966, a B-52 bomber of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) carrying four hydrogen bombs collided with a tanker during mid-air refueling at 31,000 feet over the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain. The tanker was completely destroyed when its fuel load ignited, killing all four crew members. The B-52 broke apart, killing three of the seven crew members aboard.

Three hydrogen bombs were found on land near the small fishing village of Palomares. However, the non-nuclear explosives in two of the weapons detonated upon impact with the ground, resulting in the contamination of 490 acres. The fourth fell into the sea and was eventually recovered intact after a 2½-month-long search.

News stories related to the crash began to appear the following day, and it achieved front page status in both the New York Times and Washington Post on 20 January. Reporters sent to the accident scene covered angry demonstrations by the local residents. The incident had an eerie similarity with the recently released James Bond movie Thunderball, in which SPECTRE steals two NATO H-bombs, which end up submerged on the ocean floor of the Bahamas.

On 4 February, an underground Communist organization successfully initiated a protest by 600 people in front of the U.S. Embassy in Spain. Soil with high radiation contamination levels was placed in drums and shipped to the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina for burial. A total of 5.4 acres was decontaminated, producing 6,000 barrels.

In 2006, Reuters reported that higher than normal levels of radiation were detected in the region. In 2009, the Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos told Secretary Hillary Clinton that he feared Spanish public opinion might turn against the U.S. once the results of the study on nuclear contamination were to be revealed. Earl Wilson was Director for the U.S. Information Service (USIS) in Madrid and was interviewed in 1988.

 
Fascinating stuff…history has lots of these “untold” stories that can stimulate the imagination.
 
Learn Stuff!
 

More On North Korea

First there was the insults and then as quick as falling out of a chair we were making nice with each other and now there is a possibility that there could be peace between the three partners in this deal.

Could there be a reason for the quick turn around of North Korea….other the good intentions that we are claiming as the reason…..

Kim Jong Un on Saturday said nuclear tests would no longer be conducted at the underground Punggye-ri Nuclear Test Facility; a new report from the Wall Street Journal suggests the move may not be as benevolent as it appears. It flags an about-to-be-published study by Chinese researchers who say that much of the facility below Mount Mantap is actually useless following the country’s last detonation, which the seismologists say caused a partial cavity collapse. This isn’t exactly new news: Satellite images taken before and after the country’s sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 show the 7,200-foot-tall Mount Mantap actually lost elevation. Reports at the time suggested “tired mountain syndrome,” which has previously been observed at other nuclear test sites in the US and Soviet Union, was at play.

It essentially means a mountain is under such stress that the collapse of cavities or tunnels is possible. The Journal reports the upcoming study and another published this month provide more evidence that such a collapse did occur. Using data captured by Chinese seismic monitoring stations, they arrived at the same conclusion: that a 6.3-magnitude quake caused by the test led to a collapse inside the mountain that caused a 4.1-magnitude temblor 8.5 minutes later. The second study didn’t comment on whether the facility is still usable, and a commentary at 38 North asserts “there is no basis to conclude” it isn’t. Yes, the “North Portal” might be damaged, but there are two portals “located in more pristine competent rock” that the site believes would be appropriate for testing.
Could this be the reason for the warm and fuzzies that North Korea has for the US?

Closing Thought–23Feb17

There are news stories that are just not important enough to make the evening news….but yet some moronic celeb never has his jersey stolen and it is updated for days…..

In the past I have written about nuclear accidents and other stories that could be a problem for the world in the near future….we all know about Fukashima and that is bout it for nuke mistakes…..but there is nuclear material missing around the world that could make it into a dirty bomb or other weapon….

I try to help my readers stay attuned to these incidents with the hope they they will stay alert and safe…..

I read another report that did not make it into the news…….this time it is Northern Europe……

As mysterious radiation spread over the Arctic and south into Europe last month, conspiracy theorists quickly claimed Russia had restarted nuclear testing at Novaya Zemlya, the Drive reports. But the truth is—probably—a lot less menacing. According to the Independent Barents Observer, a spike in the radioactive isotope Iodine-131 was first measured on the Norway-Russia border in mid-January. But the spike wasn’t made public until later, when it reached France, Science Alert reports. The levels of Iodine-131 weren’t high enough to be a danger to the public, but the isotope is usually connected to nuclear fission, so concern abounded. That concern only deepened when the US, with no explanation, sent its nuclear “sniffing” aircraft to Europe.

Despite the alarm, the radiation bloom probably wasn’t caused by a nuclear explosion. First, there was no seismic activity to go along with the radiation spike. Second, no other radioactive isotopes spiked besides Iodine-131, Motherboard reports. And while a nuclear explosion—or accident—is still a possibility, Norway’s radiation protection agency believes the likely culprit is a pharmaceutical company working with Iodine-131, which is used to treat cancers. It’s still unclear where the radiation originated, with officials only narrowing it down as far as “Eastern Europe,” but medical companies that work with Iodine-131 all have detectors for a leak. So it seems someone out there knows what happened but isn’t talking.

They still no idea where it came from or why…..