LLAW's "ALL THINGS NUCLEAR" #463 (11/27/2023)
End nuclear insanity before nuclear insanity ends humanity"
LLAW’s COMMENTARY:
As a species we are allowing ourselves to be attacked by ourselves from virtually every possible irresponsible angle the human mind can divine or devise, and none of it is genuinely helpful to any kind of life on planet Earth, but we simply don’t seem to understand or care that we all may be dead tomorrow — or a week, a month, a year, over even a decade from today — dragging all other life on Earth over the proverbial cliff right along with us. The following article from today’s “Bulletin”, published by the Union of Atomic Scientists incorporates other related human activities that exponentially add to the nuclear and atmospheric danger we are facing today that can only end up destroying life on planet Earth. It is like a tangled web purposely weaved to create the 6th Extinction!
And for what? I cannot help but ask! (I do know the answer to the question. Do you?) There is a whole world of sensible people out there trying to tell you, including me. I have offered a brief summary of my thoughts and opinions following the article. ~llaw
“A new “all-hazards” approach for reducing multiple catastrophic threats”
By Rumtin Sepasspour | November 24, 2023
D. Dibenski, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Each of the various pathways to global catastrophe presents its own winding course of possibilities. Nuclear weapons, climate change, pandemics, advanced technologies, and space weather might appear as fundamentally different threats. However, they are not disconnected. They branch out from common drivers like geopolitical competition, economic growth, and technological advancement. The terrains for tackling the various threats are also similar, presenting shared challenges and features.
These routes don’t end in vastly different destinations either. Global catastrophes ultimately harm the same societal functions, among them critical infrastructure, health systems, food supply, and governance continuity.
An effective and efficient method for reducing catastrophic risk would use an “all-hazards” approach, tackling the risk holistically by capitalizing on characteristics or conditions shared among the threats. This can be achieved by managing threats as a whole and finding common themes between them. A two-pronged approach, the tactic will save energy and resources by fighting multiple threats at once, giving humanity a better chance at reducing overall global catastrophic risk.
Catastrophic risk in its entirety. Not uncommon in emergency management, an all-hazards approach recognizes that various sources of risk are not siloed. But as a research topic or policy matter, global catastrophic risk is typically seen through a threat-specific lens.
The main, and most obvious, benefit of an all-hazards approach is that it can treat multiple catastrophic scenarios at the same time. For example, alleviating tensions and competition between countries could reduce risk from nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, as well as from artificial intelligence and other dual-use technologies.
A more subtle but equally important benefit of an all-hazard approach: It provides a failsafe for unknown or underestimated risk. Nuclear weapons, pandemics, and artificial intelligence risk receive a lion’s share of effort from global catastrophic risk research and advocates. These existential threats are assessed as more likely or impactful than others. But what if the assessment–including potential pathways or time frames–is wrong? And what if humans haven’t yet created or discovered the threat that wipes them out? Preventing and preparing for all catastrophes collectively circumvents human misjudgments and uncertainties.
Overarching policy manages risk as a whole. In practice, an all-hazard approach to global catastrophic risk policy can be achieved via two angles. The first takes a risk-management point of view. This approach involves several steps: governance, understanding, prevention, preparedness, response, communication, and collaboration. Each of these steps overarches not just one but a whole range of threats.
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Let’s take risk governance, for instance. These structures, decision-making processes, and policy guidance would direct and coordinate government action on global catastrophic risk. For example, risk experts and the House of Lords of the United Kingdom have proposed a national “chief risk officer” to oversee government efforts for extreme risk.
National risk assessments in many countries already receive the all-hazards treatment. And the United States is delivering a holistic assessment of existential and global catastrophic risk under the Global Catastrophic Risk Management Act of 2022. Further government action could look to study, analyze, assess, monitor, and warn about this level of risk.
Preparing for global catastrophe can capitalize on an all-hazards approach. Here, policymakers can focus on the systems that make humans weak or vulnerable. Food security in a catastrophe has received significant attention from some researchers. However, building resilience in political, societal, infrastructure, and health systems will also be critical to survival across multiple catastrophic scenarios.
Governments will also need to consider how they collaborate and communicate with stakeholders. Engaging with citizens, the private sector, civil society, and other countries is critical to reducing collective risk. For example, proactive yet careful communications—like the Swedish Government’s If Crisis or War Comes pamphlet—can alert citizens to extreme risk and spur action.
Finding common themes. The second angle for an all-hazards approach is thematic. These themes, or policy areas, are those that cut across multiple threats and hazards. Addressing how these policy areas intersect with global catastrophic risk would be a powerful strategy.
There are nine primary cross-cutting areas: international relations and foreign policy; politics and governance; security and defense; economics and finance; natural resources and the environment; infrastructure and the built environment; health and healthcare; knowledge and information; technology and innovation; and society and culture.
Risk is driven by these different areas. For example, security or economic factors can lead to the risk that emerges from artificial intelligence, climate change, and weapons of mass destruction. The push for advances in knowledge, technology, and innovation drive risk from dual-use technologies, while stoking the vulnerabilities of societies and governance.
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Reducing how these factors drive or exacerbate risk could be critical to preventing a threat from arising in the first place.
The intersections just described also work in the other direction: These policy areas are affected by global catastrophic risk. National security and economic development are severely hampered by global crises. Critical infrastructure, such as energy grids and telecommunications networks, could face catastrophic collapse. And the normal operations of government would be disrupted.
In this case, building preparedness and resilience would reduce the impact of a global catastrophe. The challenge, and opportunity, with cross-cutting policy is how one area weaves its way through the risk.
Food, for example, is relevant across many threats. As a risk driver, food contributes to climate change via greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss through land clearing, and naturally occurring pandemics via zoonosis. Food systems are also vulnerable to global catastrophes. Extreme climate change and abrupt sun-blocking scenarios, such as nuclear winter and impacts from near-Earth objects and volcanic super-eruptions, could greatly and suddenly reduce global food supplies.
Taking the fight on, together. There’s plenty of work needed to make an all-hazards policy a global reality. The first steps involve identifying the common drivers behind multiple threats and agreeing to the critical systems that are vulnerable to catastrophic risk.
To bring experts from each of the threats together so they map the shared landscape of risk will require resources, forums appropriate to such efforts, and mechanisms for creating concrete plans. And advocacy groups must translate this holistic understanding of global risks into practical options for governments to consider.
Tackling each of the threats on their own can feel daunting, so considering all of them together might seem an insurmountable challenge. However, the power of an all-hazards approach is that it re-conceptualizes a variety of daunting problems into a shared—and vincible—opponent. It would not be fighting different battles but fighting the same battle on multiple lines.
By embracing an all-hazards approach, researchers, advocates, and policymakers from each of the threat domains can discover what binds them together and tackle their shared challenges. Instead of lone warriors facing their respective Goliaths, they can join forces and beat all their foes with a single stone. (End of Story)
My thoughts about this article are, of course, that “risk management” is a buzz-phrase, and the only way out of our extinction dilemma is ‘risk elimination” because risk management still assumes ‘risk’; therefore it can’t possibly work even though the unification of the intertwined ‘risk issues’ as a tool may help unwind the tangled web that is leading us to our collective graves, but is important and helpful only if we have a common leadership politically, militarily, and a mindfully common agreement of necessity in a united world that chooses peace over war and love over hate. We must have a world where we all can live as one.
Those collective human issues must be resolved first. Otherwise the ‘management’ issue, which I am presently working on in a proposal to the U.S. government concerning destroying ‘all things nuclear’ that I call the “Blue Print” that leads to a world(s)-wide cooperative (think of the old co-ops where we were all involved in managing and pricing the same markets) concept that makes us all part of the ‘management’ rather than special interest groups with opposing agendas like countries, nations, corporations, banks, religions, racial and language conflicts or discrimination (like using the word “between” when meaning the word “among” in the above article), and all other human contradictory attitudes, beliefs, concepts, ideas, and intentions. Otherwise, it is all just more of the same with different artwork painted over the same canvas scene used over and over and over unto life’s extinction. ~llaw
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING 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 links is listed below by nuclear Category. There are two Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in this Post. If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today.
(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 (11/27/2023):
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
Forty years after 'The Day After,' rethinking war and nuclear weapons through film - WGBH
WGBH
Forty years ago this week, ABC Television aired a film that harnessed Americans' very real fear about a possible nuclear attack amid the Cold War.
Ansys Enables NuScale Power to Develop Advanced Nuclear Technology - PR Newswire
PR Newswire
Cloud Computing/Internet of Things · Computer Electronics · Computer Hardware ... All rights reserved. The works owned by NuScale Power, LLC may not be ...
French Nuclear Startup Seeks €150 Million for Reactor Prototype - Bloomberg.com
Bloomberg.com
Examining all things climate, ranging from the biggest environmental ... Naarea, which stands for Nuclear Abundant Affordable Resourceful Energy for All ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
Nuclear's uncertain role in the shift away from fossil fuels is seen as critical and very contentious
CNBC
Co-hosted by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the COP28 presidency, the event will “announce the IAEA Statement on Nuclear Power,” according ...
Redeveloping retired coal sites into nuclear plants could benefit the planet and economy
Utility Dive
According to new research, repurposing the infrastructure of a retired coal plant for new nuclear generation could both assist in meeting clean energy ...t
Second large Polish nuclear plant gets approval
World Nuclear News
Poland's Ministry of Climate and Environment has issued a decision-in-principle for the country's second large nuclear power plant.
Nuclear War
NEW
Forty years after 'The Day After,' rethinking war and nuclear weapons through film - WGBH
WGBH
Forty years ago this week, ABC Television aired a film that harnessed Americans' very real fear about a possible nuclear attack amid the Cold War.
China-US battle over Taiwan would be 'a war too many' for world right now: Expert
Anadolu Ajansı
... War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones,” highlighting the most powerful deterrent of wars: nuclear weapons.
Main power line to Europe's largest nuclear plant cut amid ongoing combat in Ukraine
ExchangeMonitor
It is the latest in a string of power disruptions to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which sits directly on the frontlines of Russia's war in ...
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
Main power line to Europe's largest nuclear plant cut amid ongoing combat in Ukraine
ExchangeMonitor
Ukraine's Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant lost its main power ... An emergency diesel generator also started operating to supply reactor ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
West's concerns over expansion of war in case of pressure against Iran's nuclear program
Tehran Times
The most obvious example is the Agency's indifference to the nuclear threat to Gaza during the recent crisis in the occupied territories. When the ...
Nuclear Arms Control architecture is collapsing - DailyNews
Daily News
non-nuclear Ukraine and Israel vs non-nuclear Hamas, along with the growing nuclear threats from North Korea. ... The destruction by thermonuclear war ...
The secret nuclear bunker built to protect 450 VIPs if UK were to be bombed - Daily Express
Daily Express
Renewed interest in one of the most 'secret' sites skyrocketed after Vladimir Putin's threats about nuclear warfare. ... nuclear war. So we've had lots ...
Yellowstone Caldera
NEWS
Lidar data shed new light on “hidden” geological hazards near the northern entrance ... - USGS.gov
USGS.gov
These high-resolution topographic data are revealing new details of the landscape never seen before for this area. Yellowstone Caldera Chronicles is a ...
Krakatau Volcano (Sunda Strait, Indonesia): Renewed Eruptive Activity, Sudden Powerful ...
Volcano Discovery
Krakatau volcano. Caldera 813 m (2,667 ft.) / Anak Krakatau: 189 ... List and interactive map of current and past earthquakes near Yellowstone volcano.