I’ve been thinking about various scenarios if one party launches a nuclear attack on another. The one point people neglect to consider is that if a nuclear attack should take out critical infrastructure such as oil refineries, electronic and communications hubs (Silicon Valley for example), there is a VAST industrial apparatus outside of the nuclear-attack zones which would fall into disrepair (for want of supporting infrastructure, spare parts, personnel and the like which would have been sourced from the now-destroyed zones) and make the environment toxic elsewhere. For example, reactors in nuclear power stations will melt down and emit an unimaginable amount of radiation into the atmosphere and the environment. Leaks will spring in offshore oil rigs, leading to millions of barrels of toxic crude oil spewing out into the oceans. This won’t be cleaned up because the equipment and personnel won’'t be available. Really, our modern industrial society is SO complex and so intertwined, that you need the entire human race to be present to power it down and safely decommission it. Murdering large segments of the human population, or destroying key infrastructure and cities, means suicide, or at least a severely diminished life, for anyone who’s left standing.
I saw much the same theory expounded upon by Kim Iverson in her latest video. There are certainly motives and incentives that Poland might do this with the assistance of America.
It will be interesting to see the damaged pipeline and if it can be determined that the damage was caused externally or internally (unlikely) but the PIGS (internal device meant to clean and observe the pipeline. I can’t see Russia actually desiring to destroy this infrastructure but it could be destroyed using internal PIGS carrying explosives and a timer. I think this is very unlikely.
USA is almost certainly involved.
Earthquake caused tidal wave. Power was cut. Emergency diesel generators meant to keep the plant operating for a safe shutdown, we located either at ground level or in the basement and we flooded and damaged.
Cooling pond ran out of water and the reactors went critical.
Had the generators been installed higher than 18m above the ground, they probably would have survived the tidal wave and earthquake and would have mostly averted the nuclear events.
This was a very unfortunate problem. Not all eventualities can be imagined or prepared for. Nuclear power is very useful and would solve many problems around the world but these events, from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukashima scare many people.
Humanity should look to make nuclear power more available and safer. Perhaps other fuels such as Thorium can make it more palatable to the population. We really don’t have any other viable alternative at this time for the power needs that is relatively “carbon neutral”
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Oddly, I find the Fukushima disaster rather comforting for nuclear. This was the absolute worst case scenario…three cores went walkabout. While I would not want to live within several miles of the facility, it also hasn’t led to any major health issues of which I am aware…certainly nothing on the order of the Covid vaccines (or actually, nothing within about 5 orders of magnitude, if not 6) or what a really cold winter without power might do.
So, if we moved to Gen IV pebble bed reactors or some such other safer designs I’m all in favor!
I 1000% agree… this was a worst-case natural disaster for that design and it wasn’t as lethal as some feared. I heard at the time that more people died from the evacuation than directly from the accident.
If we can get over the anti-nuclear hysteria, and reduce the red tape (for development cost and time), maybe we can have some nuclear power in our future. Maybe far higher energy prices will prompt that. Maybe.
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tpuffer
(Not looking for chaos But always prepared for it)
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More people die per year from coal than the TOTAL of people who have died from nuclear. We need a greater awareness of how safe nuclear actually is. I like Michael Shellenberger and his group Environmental Progress. I came across it after reading Apocalypse Never. That is a great read into the goings on of keeping nuclear suppressed and stoking the fire of apocalyptic climate change.
We need a lot of nuclear in order to accomplish semblance of “net zero.” Wasting oil resources on the production of wind and solar components is so short sighted it boggles the mind. That is of course until you look at how much profit there is to be made in wind and solar compared to nuclear for large corporations…
Gas Infrastructure - The New “poison Gas” Of Warfare?
It is said in history books that, in the world wars, gentlemen’s agreements were made not to bomb cities with gas.
Mind, this is not a conventional war that is going on. Since countries can’t openly drop bombs on cities (as they could in WW2) there is more reason to go for the options such as sabotaging underwater infrastructure - and deny having done it. Could even be more deadly than the dropping of poison gas - just not as quick or dramatic.
The past 100 years of history is basically about the US seizing world power and then keeping it by blowing up (or arming insurgents to topple the government of) anyone who stands in the way.
Who thinks this crap up? In a recent speech that must have fallen between nap times, Biden managed to get through these prepared remarks: https://peakprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Biden-democracy-is-now-a-danger-to-democracy-1664555807.4166-800x664.jpg
Did you follow? “Democracy” is at stake and the way we know it’s under threat is because people in various countries are voting for people that Biden’s team don’t approve of.
So to save democracy we’re going to have to destroy democracy. Or something like that…honestly it’s getting hard to follow along.
At any rate, this is dangerous rhetoric, which follows nicely on NATO’
s attack on itself by blowing up the NS pipelines, which was an act so dangerous to world stability I hardly know what to say.
This. Is. Insane.
The people promoting all this are insane. Somebody really ought to do something…
What Biden is doing is engaging in “doublethink.” This is how George Orwell described “doublethink.”
In George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984,doublethink is the act of holding, simultaneously, two opposite, individually exclusive ideas or opinions and believing in both simultaneously and absolutely. Doublethink requires using logic against logic or suspending disbelief in the contradiction.
It is used over and over again in Western culture.
"Vaccines don't stop transmission and everyone must get vaccinated to stop the spread of the disease."
In MA we just had two wind towers taken down. Well, one, but the other is due to come down on the 3rd of Oct and has been prepped. https://peakprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Wind-twoer-comes-down-Falmouth-MA-1664557604.5339.jpg
Installed in 2010 and 2011 the residents of Falmouth, similar to the people on Martha’s Vineyard, didn’t like these newcomers.
Noise complaints and legal actions doomed them. Presumably many of these same complainers would be perfectly fine cramming these devices into your backyard.
That’s how these people tend to roll.
I also presume that after cheering the topplings they retired to a bar to carry on and then speak earnestly about how oil and gas companies should be fined for harming the environment.
Yes, I have lost all respect for context-free bloviators.
You speak like a man who has never used Dilbert’s automated Performance Evaluation Generator! Same thing. You just plug in the buzzwords of the day: democracy, Ukraine, green energy, equity, whatever, and pull the lever. Out comes somthing that passes as a speech, mission statement, or declaration of priniciple. The beauty part is no one listens anymore, and if you gaffe or shake hands with invisible entities a giant Easter bunny rushes out and intervenes.
This is how they seem to think about many things. While I don’t yet fully understand marxist dialectic, it does seem similar or at least as it has been explained to me. For instance we have “anti-racism”, to fight racism you must enact racism, “good” racism, against the “bad” people. For democracy, to fight for democracy you must suppress democracy so you can ensure “good” people of “democracy” are elected, otherwise the “bad” people will get in. For sexism, we must enact sexism to punish the “bad” people (men) and help the “good” people (women, lgbtqia-blah). For free speech, we must limit free speech so we can protect “good” speech from the so called “bad” speech. This same logic is applied ad nauseam in everything they promote. They always say they are doing this to protect the “good” from the perceived “bad”. They are literally driving everyone into a paranoid fear state so they can control/protect them (plandemic anyone?), from the envisioned/imaginary boogieman they have created.
Being brought up with an abusive father I recognized this as a child. Fear is powerful and you can control people through fear. This is all the establishment is doing, control through fear. If people are afraid, they will sacrifice just about anything for “protection”.
Who, of course, if the question of the hour. Somebody "else"? "Us"? Myself? And of course, what to do, and how to do it. Will "elections" give us the opportunity for change and improvement? Military intervention? Seven Days in May? Is there a means of forcing the president to undergo psychological evaluation, and then perhaps removal? OMG- Kamala!? Interesting times....Aloha, Steve
Oh wow! The thought of international travel at this time seems like a risky proposition, so I wonder if you’d actually consider traveling East (coming from a guy who hasn’t renewed his passport in 25 years…). Nobody to tend the chickens, and cats, if the sweetheart and I both travel…I guess you have caretakers in place at HBF. But still, how do others feel about int’l travel? Aloha, Steve
You’re right about an explosion, but did the reactor building explode or did the fuel containment building? I do remember seeing the photos you show and reading about the neutron flashes at the time, but my memory is that these were attributed to the spent fuel going critical, not the reactor. Several reactors overheated and deposited melted fuel on the bottom of their containment vessels.
If the reactor exploded why doesn’t it require (or hasn’t received) the same efforts that Chernobyl did? No concrete dome, no giant sarcophagus. If the containment building exploded the core would be exposed and radiation would continually be spewing out, like happened at Chernobyl. Finding pieces of fuel rods miles away is consistent with the contents of the cooling pond going critical (due to loss of cooling). The rods were blown apart and the reaction ceased.
I don’t think Fukushima is an example of the worst case accident like Chernobyl was. Also, they haven’t figured out how to get the molten cores off the bottom of the containment vessels (several cores melted). The potential for further leakage is nontrivial.
Also, the cost of cleanup is immense. They are projecting it will take 20 years. I don’t believe they will be able to complete the cleanup given the likely trajectory of the Japanese economy. What are the long term environmental issues of those melted cores eventually becoming exposed?
According to Gorbachev, cleaning up Chernobyl is what bankrupted the USSR, not the Afghanistan war. If Japan actually cleans up Fukushima (assuming they can figure out how) it will bankrupt them…