LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #450 (11/14/2023)
LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #450 (11/14/2023)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
If the “Scientific American” can say it, I sure as hell can too! My mission, as always is to convince the human population to wake up, understand, and realize the critical nuclear war situation we are in and to convince a majority of us to stand up and put a stop to it. I am daily reaching to at least a third of the earth’s human population who can read my Posts via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. This Post is also on Substack and my website, and will be even more available as I locate the connections I need to accomplish what need not be a failed effort but unless there is soon to be a strong popular movement toward destroying “All Things Nuclear” all things nuclear may well destroy us, creating Earth’s 6th Extinction. Yes, it is that serious . . .
Today I am Posting an editorial article from “Scientific American” that describes, in part, what I have been warning the human population about in my nightly Posts for the last year and a quarter. I have also mentioned this incredibly poor decision by the U.S. government and its military previously in my own Posts.
The editors of this upscale periodical publication report in their headline and leadline nearly all that needs to be said if the world’s People population would simply open their eyes and pay attention to what we are on the verge of doing to our planet Earth as well as ourselves and all other life on our only home: ~llaw
The U.S.'s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary
The U.S. should back away from updating its obsolescent nuclear weapons, in particular silo-launched missiles that needlessly risk catastrophe
And then there is this: “Perfectly poised to refight the cold war, these overhauled bombs will waste $1.5 trillion and threaten life on Earth for the century to come.”
I would have said this in a more dark and urgent way by not putting an extended timeline on the awaiting disaster. The disaster could happen, as nothing more than the U.S.’s announced plans could begin to happen as early as tomorrow morning.
The Text from Scientific American:
DECEMBER 1, 2023
4 MIN READ
The U.S.'s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary
The U.S. should back away from updating its obsolescent nuclear weapons, in particular silo-launched missiles that needlessly risk catastrophe
BY THE EDITORS
December 2023 Issue
Defense
This article is part of “The New Nuclear Age,” a special report on a $1.5-trillion effort to remake the American nuclear arsenal.
The U.S. is planning to modernize its unwanted, unneeded and unsafe nuclear triad of land-, sea- and air-based weapons. Perfectly poised to refight the cold war, these overhauled bombs will waste $1.5 trillion and threaten life on Earth for the century to come. We should rethink this miserable folly rather than once again squandering our wealth while driving a new arms race.
As detailed in this issue of Scientific American, this plan to burn money while imperiling the world has been widely criticized in nuclear policy circles. “Russia and the United States have already been through one nuclear arms race. We spent trillions of dollars and took incredible risks in a misguided quest for security,” former U.S. defense secretary William J. Perry wrote in 2016 as the plans first materialized. “There is only one way to win an arms race: refuse to run.”
Although the Biden administration canceled proposed Trump-era sea-launched missiles, the U.S. nuclear arsenal still bristles with some 3,700 weapons, around 1,700 of them deployed for military use and the rest in storage overseen by the Department of Energy. This quantity is more than enough to threaten the destruction of humanity and Earth's biosphere—and it is only a fraction of the world's total, leaving out Russia's similarly large stockpile and smaller ones in China and other nations. Lowering the numbers and thus the risks of these weapons is a responsibility the U.S. and the Soviet Union first recognized at the end of the 1960s, and this goal should drive military and political decision-making now.
Instead the U.S. is sleepwalking into an ill-considered and little-discussed resurrection of its three-pronged cold war nuclear forces. Meanwhile China is expanding its own arsenal (to one-fourth the size of the U.S.'s). New submarines, missiles and planes, all designed to fit into a military strategy first conceived before the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, will by 2050 leave the dead hand of the past steering us into another century of pointless risks. In this future, a mistake or misjudgment could exterminate humanity, as nearly happened repeatedly throughout the cold war. We are simply fortunate, nothing more, to have survived the hundreds of false alarms that rang over those decades.
At the center of the government's proposal is a $100-billion bid to fill 450 nuclear silos in five inland states with hundreds of new nuclear missiles set to launch on hair triggers. Built before submarine-launched missiles became large, accurate and untraceable, these relics are now justified as a “nuclear sponge” to absorb a Russian attack on the U.S. Why plant a $100-billion nuclear “kick me” sign on the country's breadbasket?
We cannot store the nuclear waste we have now, never mind the additional waste that will result from building these missiles. The so-called nuclear sponging mapped in this month’s issue [see “Sacrifice Zones”] would kill up to several million from radiation exposure, with hundreds of millions in North America being at risk of exposure to lethal fallout. Even a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan would kill tens of millions worldwide and cause global famine—but how can the U.S. argue for other nations to disarm while burnishing its own nuclear sword in such a heedless fashion?
We aimed this Damoclean sword at ourselves during the cold war when we produced 70,000 of the plutonium “pits” that trigger thermonuclear warhead explosions. Weapons tests of these blasts have left every part of Earth's surface contaminated with plutonium, with hotspots such as the Rocky Flats in Colorado and the Hanford sites in Washington State still requiring tens of billions of dollars for cleanup. Faltering efforts to restart pit production for the nuclear-modernization effort have cost $18 billion to $24 billion, much of it wasted, and, by the admission of weapons officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, they don't even seem to be immediately necessary.
Why are we risking so much when the lessons of the 20th century are so clear? In the words of the 1991 START Treaty that capped the cold war, “nuclear war would have devastating consequences for all humanity ... it cannot be won and must never be fought.” Disregarding Russia's inability to turn its nuclear arsenal to military advantage while being bombarded by Ukrainian drones, our political class has fumbled away hard-won wisdom about the deadly futility of the arms race. We are recapitulating the dangers the world turned away from decades ago.
Who today benefits from disinterring the arms race? Only defense-industry shareholders and military contractors near silos in North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Nebraska. This, in a nation where we have just doubled child poverty out of a refusal to help lower-income families. Surely it would be cheaper, safer and smarter to build factories or universities or research labs in these places, construct low-cost housing next to new engineering or biomedical campuses there, and watch them boom, in a good way, for the next century at a fraction of the silo-overhaul price tag. The 900 nuclear missiles onboard U.S. submarines will meanwhile deter the feared nuclear first strike the obsolescent land missiles were meant to discourage at the dawn of the cold war.
“A worrisome new arms race is brewing,” United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said in September. “This is madness. We must reverse course.” We agree. The only real way to use nuclear weapons is never. They should exist only in numbers large enough to deter their use by others, which they already abundantly do, with not one warhead more.
ACCESS TO “LLAW’s ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
Whenever there is an underlined link to a Category media news story, if you press or click on the link provided, you no longer have to cut and paste to your web browser, since this Post’s link will take you directly to the article in your browser.
A current Digest of major nuclear media headlines with automated inks is listed below by nuclear Category. There are three Yellowstone Caldera stories available in this Post. The latest Sky News coverage of the Russia/Ukraine war is available at the end of the other categorized Posts.(Just a reminder: When linked, the access to the media story will be underlined. If there is no link to a media story of interest you can still copy and paste the headline and lead line into your browser to find the article you are seeking. Hopefully this will never happen.)
Today’s nuclear world’s News:
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
Duke Energy says cancellation of first commercial small nuclear project won't affect its NC plans
WHQR
Weekend All Things Considered. Next Up: 6:00 PM A Way With Words. 0:00. 0 ... The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recently approved NuScale's design for ...
Inside the $1.5-Trillion Nuclear Weapons Program You've Never Heard Of
Scientific American
According to an air force spokesperson, 17 samples taken at Warren tested positive for PCB, but all were below acceptable levels. ... things will happen ...
What Radioactive Fallout Tells Us about Our Nuclear Future - Scientific American
Scientific American
At this pace, by 2080, all 4,000 nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal will have new nuclear pits installed. ... things. This is why we take sometimes ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
NuScale CEO defends modular nuclear plants after project cancellation - Reuters
Reuters
The CEO of NuScale defended his small, modular nuclear reactor business on Tuesday, saying work continues in the U.S. and two other countries ...
The future of nuclear power is smaller, more modular - YouTube
YouTube
WRAL Investigates dives into the future of power production coming to North Carolina. The real question remains: What will happen to my power bill ...
Russian nickel miner wants nuclear power for Arctic plant - The Barents Observer
The Barents Observer
Nornickel starts talks with Russia's state nuclear energy company Rosatom on the building of a small-scale nuclear power station in Norilsk.
Nuclear War
NEW
Nuclear Attack Worst-Case Scenario Would See 90% of Americans Wiped Out - Newsweek
Newsweek
As if nuclear strikes on U.S. cities weren't potentially damaging enough, an attack on America's missile silos would kill millions due to acute ...
Five Works That Imagine Nuclear War and Its Aftermath | Tor.com
Tor.com
Their purpose is not to forestall nuclear attack but rather to document it, providing vital information that survivors (civilians, military staff, and ...
The U.S.'s Plans to Modernize Nuclear Weapons Are Dangerous and Unnecessary
Scientific American
Perfectly poised to refight the cold war, these overhauled bombs will waste $1.5 trillion and threaten life on Earth for the century to come. We ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
South Korea and members of the US-led UN command warn North Korea over its nuclear threat
AP News
... nuclear ambitions and threats ... nuclear weapons to protect the South in case of a North Korean nuclear attack.
South Korea and members of the US-led UN command warn North Korea over its nuclear threat
ABC News
... nuclear threat. Defense officials from South Korea, the United States and other nations have warned North Korea over its nuclear ambitions and threats.
Nations Condemn Israeli Minister's Comments About Dropping Nuclear Bomb on Gaza
Time
... war, calling it a threat to the world ... Iran's U.N. Ambassador Amir Iravani told the conference the nuclear threats ...
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
Steamboat Geyser Rare Eruption in October - Jackson Hole Radio
Jackson Hole Radio
Another aspect of Yellowstone's geological monitoring is ground deformation. GPS stations in the Yellowstone caldera showed a return to subsidence ...
Plant Health As A New Effective Monitoring System For Volcanic Activity
Nation World News
... Yellowstone Caldera, Wyoming, US, to determine their reaction to hydrothermal activity (circulating fluids around the magma source are hot water ...
New Insights into the Impact of Volcanic Activity on Plant Health - CityLife
CityLife
The research, led by Robert Bogue from McGill University, focused on the Tern Lake thermal area within the Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming, U.S. By ...