LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #539 (02/13/2024)
LLAW’s ‘All Things Nuclear’ #539 (02/13/2024)
“End Nuclear Insanity Before Nuclear Insanity Ends Humanity”
A US F-35A combat aircraft tests an unarmed B61-12 bomb in the Nevada Desert. Source: Sandia National Laboratory (Read the “Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” article below)
LLAW’s THOUGHTS & COMMENTS (02/13/2024)
There is something seriously wrong with our (America’s) sense or concept of peace and morality, and the former president is not the only guilty one, but also our current President has done so, and is continuing to do so! We are a nation that flaunts the idea of nuclear proliferation, not only by ‘tripling our global use of nuclear produced energy” by 2050, but also with Biden’s ill-advised ‘carrot and stick’ program of selling nuclear fuel to other countries to allow them to build their own nuclear powers plants, when common sense tells us that these poorer countries cannot afford to do so, nor do they necessarily want nuclear fuel for any other peacetime purpose, but more likely to barter nuclear fuel or even build their own nuclear weapons. This is doomsday fiction story-book material disguised as factual reality. We humans must come to our senses now, if we are going to avoid self-extinction.
And now, if you read this article, it appears that the Biden administration has approved an even more deceptive and immoral project of potential war - the “nuclear gravity bomb” - which, if you read the most important statement in this article tells you why the headline to this story is so incredibly telling. Or, to make it easier to find it, I will tell you myself, here and now, what that simple single sentence statement has to say:
“That system is based on the principle that this country, to keep itself “safe,” needs to be able to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in less than an hour.”
Need I say more? ~ llaw
Why the Biden administration’s new nuclear gravity bomb is tragic
By Stephen Young | February 13, 2024
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In late October 2023, the Pentagon announced—to the surprise of many, including congressional staffers who work on these issues—that it was pursuing a new nuclear weapon to be known as the B61-13, a gravity bomb.
This is a troubling development for many reasons. First, it is merely the latest in a long line of new nuclear weapons that the United States is building or proposing, in yet another sign that a new nuclear arms race is expanding. In addition, it breaks a promise the Obama administration made to eliminate almost all types of US nuclear gravity bombs, while further undermining President Biden’s pledge to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US security. Most tragically, it further cements an absolute commitment on the part of the United States to retain nuclear deterrence as the centerpiece of its security policy for decades to come. While most of us hope the world can eventually stop relying on the threat of mass murder at a global scale as the basis for international security, the B61-13 moves everyone further away from that day.
Starting from the top, here is the entire, vast set of new nuclear bombs and warheads the United States recently developed or is pursuing:
The Trump administration’s new “low-yield” warhead, deployed on sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) carried by US submarines, with an estimated explosive yield roughly one-third the size of the gravity bomb dropped on Hiroshima. “Low-yield” is a relative term; this warhead could still kill tens of thousands in an instant.
The new, more lethal B61-12 gravity bomb that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recently started producing, after many years of delay (and with each bomb costing more than its weight in gold).
The updated warhead for the stealthy air-launched cruise missile first proposed by the Obama administration, ideally suited to start a nuclear war.
A variant of that cruise missile warhead for a sea-launched cruise missile that a) the Trump administration proposed, b) the Biden administration is trying to cancel, but c) Congress recently required the administration to pursue.
The precedent-setting warhead for land-based missiles that, for the first time since the end of the Cold War, will be made entirely from new components, with nothing being reused except the basic design of the warhead.
The momentous new warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles, the first entirely new bomb since the end of the Cold War, with both the components and the design of the weapon made anew.
The B61-13.
All these new bombs and warheads are just part of a massive rebuilding of the entire US nuclear arsenal, which also includes new long-range, land-based missiles, new submarines, new stealthy, long-range bombers that will carry the new stealthy cruise missiles mentioned above, and major upgrades to the missiles carried by the submarines. The total cost to do all that while maintaining the existing weapons will be well over $1.2 trillion during the next 25 years.
In short, a new nuclear arms race is exploding across the globe, and while the Biden administration has not announced plans to increase the size of its nuclear arsenal (despite bipartisan pressure to do so), it is racing to climb what is often called a “modernization mountain”—a journey that will certainly take longer and cost far more than currently projected, all to produce a vastly oversized nuclear stockpile that everyone hopes will never be used.
The broken promise. There is a second and compounding problem with the B61-13: It breaks a promise made during the Obama administration to eliminate all but one of the types of US gravity bombs. Specifically, to win support for the B61-12—a new guided gravity bomb the Pentagon and NNSA badly wanted—the Obama administration proposed to retire the B61-3, B61-4, B61-7, B61-10, B61-11, and the B83 gravity bombs, trading six weapons for one. Unfortunately, since its inception the B61-12 has faced major cost overruns and years of delays. The NNSA initially said the bomb would cost $4 billion, then quickly raised the tab to $8 billion, while the Pentagon initially estimated it at $10 billion. The actual cost, including work the Air Force is doing, will be as much as $14 billion. The NNSA initially projected it would begin making the bombs in 2017, while the Pentagon said it would be 2022 before work started. The Pentagon was right, with the B61-12 finally entering production late in 2022.
On top of all the cost increases and delays, the associated commitment to retire the six other gravity bombs is changing significantly.
First, it is not clear the B61-11 will be retired at all; planning documents no longer include it as something the B61-12 will replace. That variant is designed to penetrate into the Earth, to attack hardened and deeply buried targets. No administration has ever explained why it was removed from the retirement list; it simply stopped being included on it. Second, the sole bright spot is the B61-10, but oddly so. Although the bomb’s retirement was tied to starting production of the B61-12, the B61-10 was removed from the stockpile in 2016. Apparently, it really was not needed at all, regardless of the B61-12.
More dangerously, the decision to retire the B83—by far the most destructive weapon in the US nuclear stockpile—was reversed by the Trump administration. The B83 has an explosive yield of some 1.2 megatons—or 80 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In a simulation developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS, where I work), dropping one bomb like the B83 on a nuclear facility in Iran would kill over three million people and spread deadly radiation across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India. It is this behemoth that the Trump administration declared its intention to keep “until a suitable replacement is identified.” Fortunately, the Biden administration reversed the reversal, and the B83 is currently on a path to be retired at some point, though the plan for when that will happen is classified. (Unfortunately, election results this year could again change that outcome.)
In the meantime, the Biden administration has announced the B61-13.
Significantly, this new bomb will be based on the B61-7, the most destructive of the B61 variants, with a maximum yield of 360 kilotons, or 24 times more devastating than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Just to remind you, that one bomb killed 70,000 to 140,000 people. In other words, the B61-13 will be massively destructive, accompanied by immense and widespread fallout. In other other words, this is yet another tool for nuclear warfighting—or, more specifically, seeking to win a nuclear war.
That mission should not exist. Indeed, as five of the countries with nuclear weapons—the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom—have declared, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.”
Yet fighting and winning a nuclear war is precisely the goal of developing the B61-13. There are, apparently, specific targets that this more powerful gravity bomb can hold at risk—ones that cannot reliably be destroyed with the B61-12, despite its vastly increased accuracy in comparison to existing gravity bombs. But existing nuclear warheads on submarine-based missiles can already hold those same targets at risk. So the B61-13, it turns out, is just another option to blow up something the Pentagon can already destroy, and many times over. In fact, each US nuclear-armed submarine carries seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
The scope of the mistake. Coming from a Biden administration that pledged to seek to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, with a president who, as a candidate for office, declared his support for the policy that the United States would never use nuclear weapons first in any conflict, the decision to pursue the B61-13 is not only deeply disappointing, but a profound mistake. In short, the B61-13 is yet another sign that the United States intends to make its nuclear arsenal even more deadly and the foundational element of the existing security system. That system is based on the principle that this country, to keep itself “safe,” needs to be able to kill tens or hundreds of millions of people in less than an hour.
On moral grounds, and under international law, that prospect alone should be evidence enough to conclude that such an approach to security is grievously wrong, and that the United States should do everything it can to move away from that system.
But the reality is far worse, because Russia already has and China is now moving toward nuclear arsenals that will give them similar capabilities. Even with their vastly smaller arsenals, the other six nuclear weapons states—the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea—also have the capacity to kill tens of millions of people in hours. That horrible reality is the basis of the world’s security system. If everyone can kill everyone else, and no one can be safe from that threat, then—in the supreme irony of nuclear deterrence—everyone is supposed to be safe.
The mutual assured destruction precept of deterrence theory is ludicrous. For such a system to make sense, it would have to work perfectly and for all time. If it doesn’t, then we are all dead.What human system has ever worked perfectly for any significant length of time? In just one example of far too many, nuclear war was barely averted when a Russian officer refused to go along with two colleagues who wanted to use a nuclear-armed torpedo against US Navy ships harassing their submarine at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As has been noted, it was as much luck as careful choices that avoided the start of a nuclear war that would almost certainly have spiraled out of control.
Rather than develop a new nuclear weapon that adds fuel to a rapidly growing arms race, the Biden administration should launch a concerted effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons. It should publicly announce this intention, invite representatives from other nuclear-armed states to the table, and begin talks about what would be required to eliminate nuclear weapons from Earth. In an ideal world, we could turn the tragedy of the B61-13 into the launching point for a global effort to push for that outcome.
ABOUT THE FOLLOWING ACCESS TO “LLAW’S ALL THINGS NUCLEAR” RELATED MEDIA:
There are 6 categories (including a bonus category at the end for news about the Yellowstone caldera and other volcanic and caldera activity that also play an important role in humanity’s lives) as do ‘all things nuclear’ for you to pick from, usually with up to 3 links to the most important media stories in each category, but sometimes fewer and occasionally even none (especially so with the Yellowstone Caldera). The Categories are listed below in their usual order:
All Things Nuclear
Nuclear Power
Nuclear War
Nuclear Power Emergencies
Nuclear War Threats
Yellowstone Caldera (There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available in tonight’s Post.)
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 (per above). If a category heading does not appear, it means there was no news reported from this category today. There are no Yellowstone Caldera bonus stories available, normally, at the end of this Post.
(A reminder, just in case: 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 (02/13/2024):
All Things Nuclear
NEWS
The head of UN's nuclear watchdog warns Iran is 'not entirely transparent' on its atomic program
Spectrum News
Speaking at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, just across the Persian Gulf, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the director-general of the International ...
Vets say nuclear site made them sick, gov't won't acknowledge they were there - CBS News
CBS News
"All our whereabouts for that period of time is black," Ely said. "We're going places, we're doing things that's beyond the tracking of the military.
The head of UN's nuclear watchdog warns Iran is 'not entirely ... - Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog warned Tuesday that Iran is “not entirely transparent” ...
Nuclear Power
NEWS
Federal money could supercharge state efforts to preserve nuclear power | NC Newsline
NC Newsline
In the coming years, a nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan could become the first in the country to restart operations after ...
Federal money could supercharge state efforts to preserve nuclear power
Louisiana Illuminator
A nuclear power plant on the shores of Lake Michigan could become the first in the country to restart operations after shutting down.
Fukushima nuclear plant operator told to communicate better with the public after leak
NBC News
Safety experts urged Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant's operator to communicate more quickly over incidents such as the leak of ...
Nuclear War
NEWS
Why the Biden administration's new nuclear gravity bomb is tragic
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The updated warhead for the stealthy air-launched cruise missile first proposed by the Obama administration, ideally suited to start a nuclear war. A ...
How should the West respond to a nuclear attack? - YouGov
YouGov
Were Russia to use a small nuclear weapon against a Ukrainian military target, 7% of Britons believe that would be justification for a nuclear ...
Living in a nuclear-curious world: America's weakening grip on non-proliferation | ECFR
European Council on Foreign Relations
As China and Russia expand their nuclear arsenals, US security guarantees are beginning to lose their weight. Now, American allies may start to ...
Nuclear Power Emergencies
NEWS
FP&L: Routine Testing of the Sirens at the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant Scheduled for ... - WQCS
WQCS
It will involve a one-minute sounding of all 91 sirens within the 10-mile St. Lucie plant emergency planning zone. Before and after the sirens sound, ...
Nuclear regulator's worrying findings on Koeberg emergency plans - Daily Maverick
Daily Maverick
Given the ongoing controversy around Eskom's application to extend the life of Koeberg Nuclear Power Station (KNPS) by 20 years past its original ...
Trinidad & Tobago Declares National Emergency after Ghost Ship Oil Spill | OilPrice.com
Oil Price
Nuclear Power · Solar Energy · Hydroelectric · Renewable Energy · Geothermal ... The prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago has declared a “national ...
Nuclear War Threats
NEWS
How should the West respond to a nuclear attack? - YouGov
YouGov
... nuclear threats. With the Russians raising the prospect of nuclear weapons use, how do Britons think the West should react in the event of a ...
Donald Trump's NATO nonsense exposes his 'anti-war' schtick
msnbc.com
Donald Trump's recent threat that he would allow Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” with NATO countries if he's elected president ...
Why climate change is the new nuclear war - The Lawrentian
The Lawrentian
From the end of WWII to the fall of the Soviet Union in the '90s, the fear that plagued Americans—the existential terror that threatened the sanity of ...