Category: Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear Power, Meet Blue Screen of Death

No Comments

I’ve written about Bill Gates plans to create a sodium cooled fast breeder reactor before. 

Well, they (Warren Buffet is involved as well) have now selected a location for the prototype reactor.

I have a number of problems with the reactor in addition to Bill Gates’ involvement:

  • Molten sodium will leak, and it is highly flammable, and is potentially explosive. (The history of sodium cooled reactors is universally horrible)
  • The reactor uses 20% Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU), which enriched is enough to make a bomb.  (You can at levels in excess of 10% enrichment)
  • By design, it produces large amounts of Plutonium. (Traveling Wave Reactor)

Needless to say, I am not sanguine:

Power companies run by billionaire friends Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have chosen Wyoming to launch the first Natrium nuclear reactor project on the site of a retiring coal plant.

TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said on Wednesday that the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant was expected to be announced by the end of the year.

Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels to traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

“Regarded by some,” Huh?  

Maybe if your last name is, “Strangelove.”

………

“This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative,” Wyoming’s governor, Mark Gordon, said. “Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy” in Wyoming, the country’s top coal-producing state.

This statement is absolutely false.  The construction of time for reactors is measured in decades, while wind turbines go up in a few months. 

If we need to move now, pretty much any other power source is online faster.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system’s power output to 500MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1bn.

The molten salt energy storage, but using mechanical storage like pumped water is simpler, cheaper, and more efficient.

About the only thing more terrifying than Bill Gates starting up a bunch of nuclear reactors, he’s alreay half way to a bond villain, would be if Comcast were to be running those plants.

This is Completely Insane

No Comments

Boris Johnson and his merry band of blood-thirsty prats have decided that nuclear weapons are an appropriate response to agents of foreign governments hacking systems in the UK.*

This is completely bat-sh%$ insane.

Britain is prepared to launch nuclear weapons if the country was faced with an exceptionally destructive attack using cyber or other “emerging technologies”, according to the integrated defence review.

The stark statement marks a change from existing UK policy, which had been that Trident missiles could only be launched against another nuclear power, or potentially in response to extreme chemical or biological threats.

The new policy says Britain would “reserve the right” to use nuclear weapons in the face of “weapons of mass destruction”, which includes “emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact” to chemical or biological weapons.

It sets the UK in a different direction to the US, where the newly elected president, Joe Biden, had floated the idea during his election campaign of making the “sole purpose” of nuclear weapons to deter or if necessary to retaliate against a nuclear attack.

No further detail was spelled out in the document, published on Tuesday, but analysts said the shift in language was significant. Tom Plant, a director at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said: “This is clearly an indication that the UK government perceives the potential for some combination of novel technologies, in years to come, to rival existing WMD.”

Just imagine what happens if someone starts downloading pr0n using Boris’ Netflix account.

Shall we play a game?

Love to.  How about Global Thermonuclear war?†

And then there is this.

Discussion about Britain’s new nuclear policy unveiled by Boris Johnson, reversing 30 years of modest disarmament since the end of the cold war, dominated the publication of a 100-page integrated review of defence and foreign policy.

It confirmed leaks from Monday night that the UK would allow the cap on its nuclear weapon stockpile to rise to 260 from a target of 180 “by the mid-2020s” – and that the UK would abandon a second pledge to hold a lower number of operational warheads, previously set at 120.

This is a violation of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NNTP) which the UK is a party to.

Defence sources said the decision to lift the warhead cap by over 40% was motivated by a desire to be more assertive about nuclear weapons. “If we have them, let’s not apologise for it, let’s own it,” an insider added.

So this is just all dick swinging.  Lovely.

So now, Boris is the world’s problem.

*As Anna Russell would say, “I’m not making this up, you know.”
†Yes, I know. I am referring to two completely different movies. Get over it.

Stating the Obvious

No Comments

Over at Foreign Policy, they make what should be a common sense observation, that the as a result of the hardball tactics of the US, including proving itself that it will not abide by international agreements that it joins has an obvious effect, that, “Iran Is Starting to Want the Bomb.”

That is what has happened with the DPRK, and now it appears to be happening with Iran:

On Feb. 8, Iranian Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi, in an interview with Iranian state television, made a veiled threat about his country’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. “The supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] has explicitly said in his fatwa that nuclear weapons are against sharia law and the Islamic Republic sees them as religiously forbidden and does not pursue them,” Alavi said. “But a cornered cat may behave differently from when the cat is free. And if they [Western powers] push Iran in that direction, then it’s no longer Iran’s fault.”

………

All these responses misunderstand the real significance of Alavi’s “cornered cat” threat. The whole debate over Khamenei’s fatwa banning nuclear weapons has always been much ado about nothing; it never really mattered in the first place for either side. (The very fact that world powers engaged in marathon talks with Tehran from 2013 to 2015 to verifiably curb its nuclear program in exchange for economic relief confirms as much.) Far more important is what the comment reflects about an ongoing shift in Iran’s thinking about the bomb. Wide swaths of Iranian society, among the public and policymakers alike, seem to increasingly see the weapon not just as an ultimate deterrent but as a panacea for Iran’s chronic security problems and challenges to its sovereignty by foreign powers.

“Foreign powers” means the United States, whose record on following diplomatic agreements with Islamic Republic of Iran is almost as bad as its record on following treaties with American Indian nations in the 1800s. (The US has been blithely ignoring treaty obligations for decades involving pretty much every other nation on earth as well)

If your goal is to keep nuclear weapons out of Iranian hands, then the US needs to re-enter the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

This Is Unbelievably Sensible, and Will Never Be Implimented

No Comments

The Stimson Center has issued a report saying that maintaining deployed nuclear weapons on NATO basis is stupid and dangerous:

The U.S. government is strengthening its nuclear-deterrent posture to reassure allies in Europe, and is moving forward on a number of programs to modernize its arsenal. But last-minute questions are being raised about whether Washington should rethink the use of B61 tactical warheads in Europe, for both strategic and budgetary reasons. On Aug. 1, the National Nuclear Security Administration revealed that it has initiated a B61 refurbishment program, authorizing the start of production engineering, with production to follow from 2020-25. The effort will extend the lives of about 480 B61 warheads, some of which will be based in Europe.

But why, argues nuclear disarmament expert Barry Blechman, cofounder of the Stimson Center. In a new report, he says it is unlikely NATO allies would ever use a nuclear weapon. Predicted advances in Russian and Chinese air defenses are expected to keep tactical fighters at bay. And security for the warheads is costly and problematic. For example, during the recent failed military coup in Turkey, B61s were left at a base without electricity and whose commander was arrested. Blechman says the U.S. should stop buying B61s for use on tactical fighters and remove them altogether from Europe.

The bombs are don’t serve any tactical purpose these days, if they ever did, as as the failed Turkish coup demonstrates, when Incirlik airbase was literally left in the dark after power was cut, they create a real risk of the loss of a nuclear weapon.

The modernization program is  a waste of money that makes us less safe.

Well, this is Reassuring

No Comments

Did you know that there is a bunker at Incirlik air base that contains dozens of nuclear weapons?

With the attempted coup and other recent developments in Turkey, this fills me with a sense of dread:

The U.S. and NATO face serious questions about the wisdom of stationing nuclear weapons in Turkey after commanders at Incirlik air base, which houses potentially as many as 50 B61 thermonuclear weapons, were implicated in the attempted overthrow of President Recep Erdogan.

………

Incirlik is located outside of Adana in southern Turkey, just 100 nm from the so-called Islamic State terrorist group’s headquarters in Aleppo, Syria. Since Turkey agreed to allow counter-Islamic State air operations from the base one year ago, it has become an epicenter for attacking ground targets within Syria.

Now, as Erdogan “purges” his military and police ranks of opposition elements, and as the commander of Incirlik is arrested and replaced, how does America reconcile the fact that a longstanding NATO ally lost control of its military with U.S.-owned nuclear weapons in the mix?

“I can’t remember another time when a base where the U.S. has nuclear weapons was directly involved in a coup, and also where the host government cut off the ability to operate in and out of the base,” says Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists. “The physical protection of the weapons is not the issue because they have their own security unit and backup power, but it’s a precarious situation that requires the U.S. to rethink why it has nuclear weapons in Turkey. The situation is so unique, and it’s evolving so rapidly that this is just not a place you want to have nuclear weapons deployed.”

As an FYI, the B-61 is a “dial bomb”, and it’s yield can vary from 0.3 to 360 kilotons.

And it’s in a country that just had a violent attempted coup which is run by a paranoid megalomaniac who has been given carte blanch by the attempted coup.

Pleasant dreams.

Corruption, Baby, Corruption

No Comments

And the Clinton Crime Family™ continues apace.
You may recall that Hillary Clinton criticized Bernie Sanders for not raising money for the state parties while she did.

Not so much. It was money laundering:

In the days before Hillary Clinton launched an unprecedented big-money fundraising vehicle with state parties last summer, she vowed “to rebuild our party from the ground up,” proclaiming “when our state parties are strong, we win. That’s what will happen.”

But less than 1 percent of the $61 million raised by that effort has stayed in the state parties’ coffers, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest Federal Election Commission filings.

The venture, the Hillary Victory Fund, is a so-called joint fundraising committee comprised of Clinton’s presidential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and 32 state party committees. The setup allows Clinton to solicit checks of $350,000 or more from her super-rich supporters at extravagant fundraisers including a dinner at George Clooney’s house and a concert at Radio City Music Hall featuring Katy Perry and Elton John.

The victory fund has transferred $3.8 million to the state parties, but almost all of that cash ($3.3 million, or 88 percent) was quickly transferred to the DNC, usually within a day or two, by the Clinton staffer who controls the committee, POLITICO’s analysis of the FEC records found.

………

But it is perhaps more notable that the arrangement has prompted concerns among some participating state party officials and their allies. They grumble privately that Clinton is merely using them to subsidize her own operation, while her allies overstate her support for their parties and knock Sanders for not doing enough to help the party.

“It’s a one-sided benefit,” said an official with one participating state party. The official, like those with several other state parties, declined to talk about the arrangement on the record for fear of drawing the ire of the DNC and the Clinton campaign.

In fact, the DNC, which has pushed back aggressively on charges that it is boosting Clinton at the expense of other Democrats, has advised state party officials on how to answer media inquiries about the arrangement, multiple sources familiar with the interactions told POLITICO.

“The DNC has given us some guidance on what they’re saying, but it’s not clear what we should be saying,” said the official. “I don’t think anyone wants to get crosswise with the national party because we do need their resources. But everyone who entered into these agreements was doing it because they were asked to, not because there are immediately clear benefits.”

Some fundraisers who work for state parties predict that the arrangement could actually hurt participating state parties. They worry that participating states that aren’t presidential battlegrounds and lack competitive Senate races could see very little return investment from the DNC or Clinton’s campaign, and are essentially acting as money laundering conduits for them. And for party committees in contested states, there’s another risk: They might find themselves unable to accept cash from rich donors whose checks to the victory fund counted toward their $10,000 donation limit to the state party in question — even if that party never got to spend the cash because it was transferred to the DNC.

But it gets even better: It turns out that The Clinton Foundation set up a dummy corporation in Canada to conceal its finances:

Aides to former President Bill Clinton helped start a Canadian charity that effectively shielded the identities of donors who gave more than $33 million that went to his foundation, despite a pledge of transparency when Hillary Rodham Clinton became secretary of state.

 The nonprofit, the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership (Canada), operates in parallel to a Clinton Foundation project called the Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership, which is expressly covered by an agreement Mrs. Clinton signed to make all donors public while she led the State Department. However, the foundation maintains that the Canadian partnership is not bound by that agreement and that under Canadian law contributors’ names cannot be made public.

 The foundation cited that restriction last weekend in explaining why it did not disclose $2.35 million in donations from the chairman of Uranium One, the subject of an article in The New York Times last week. The article examined how company executives and shareholders had sold a majority stake in the company — and with it a significant portion of American uranium reserves — to an arm of the Russian government in a deal that required the approval of the United States government.

 “This is hardly an effort on our part to avoid transparency,” said Maura Pally, acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation.

 Instead, the foundation said that the partnership was created by the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to allow Canadian donors to get a tax benefit for supporting his work with Mr. Clinton — a benefit that came with the price of respecting Canada’s privacy laws. On Wednesday, the partnership issued a statement citing a legal opinion that “charitable donors have an expectation and right of privacy.”

 However, interviews with tax lawyers and officials in Canada cast doubt on assertions that the partnership was necessary to confer a tax benefit; an examination shows that for many donors it was not needed, and in any event, since 2010, Canadians could have donated to the foundation directly and received the same tax break. Also, it is not at all clear that privacy laws prohibit the partnership from disclosing its donors, the tax lawyers and officials in Canada said.

 The partnership, established in 2007, effectively shielded the identities of its donors — and the amount they gave — by allowing them to bundle their money together in the offshoot Canadian partnership before it was passed along to Clinton Foundation programs. The foundation, in turn, names only the partnership as the source of those funds.

BTW, one of the things that this appears to have covered up is donations associated with a rather smelly deal involving Rosatom, the Russian atomic energy agency, taking over a large Canadian uranium concern.

In addition to donations to the Clinton Foundation, Bill Clinton got paid a lot to give a talk to Russia bankers as well.

OK, so they are money laundering. I get it. You could do this in Delaware, or Nevada, or Wyoming, or Panama, or the Seychelles, or the Bahamas, but Canada? Laundering money through Canada?

Seriously?

That is just perverse, or as Eric Oram said so famously, “Seriously, I don’t even like working here. They are so weird.”

I Called it on the North Korean H-Bomb

No Comments

An alleged picture of their new warhead

11 Weeks ago, the DPRK claimed to have set off a hydrogen bomb.

Most of the experts said that this was not the case, as the seismic data did not show a significantly larger blast than its previous tests, and normally a first time full Thermonuclear (3-stage) device will be big.

At the time, I suggested that it was not a full 3 stage device, but that it was a boosted device, where there is not a whole bunch of fusion, perhaps 5% of the blast.

I suggested that this was important because what a boosted fission device does allow for is a miniaturized warhead, because the additional neutrons from the small amount of fusion allow for a smaller amount of fissile material.

And now North Korea has announced that it has a miniaturized warhead that it has integrated with one of its missiles:

North Korea claims it has the know how and capability to develop a nuclear warhead to equip ballistic missiles. This claim has been substantiated today, by the leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), Kim Jong-Un, presenting a complex spherical object claimed to be the country’s miniaturized thermonuclear warhead.“The nuclear warheads have been standardised to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturising them,” Kim noted during a visit with nuclear technicians that was reported by the DPRK state media today.

It is possible that the new warhead is designed for the Korean KN08 intermediate range ballistic missile that has yet to be tested in flight. Once proven, the missile is expected to boast the range and payload capacity to deliver attacks on US targets in the Pacific and west coast. Kim also stressed that the miniaturised warheads were “thermo-nuclear” devices, echoing the North’s claim that the nuclear test it conducted in January was of a more powerful hydrogen bomb.

………

North Korea’s claim to have successfully tested an H-bomb in January was greeted with scepticism at the time as the estimated yield was seen as far too low for a full-fledged thermo-nuclear device.

However, weapons experts have suggested it may have been a “boosted” fission device, which makes more efficient use of nuclear material and can be made smaller without sacrificing yield.

I wasn’t the only one out there suggesting this scenario, but I was in the minority, and it appears that I nailed it.

I am Calling a Boosted Fission Device

No Comments

The DPRK has claimed to detonate a Hydrogen Bomb, but the seismic evidence would indicate otherwise:

The bold claim by North Korea on Wednesday that it had detonated a hydrogen bomb appeared to fizzle under the intense scrutiny of U.S. physicists and nuclear weapons experts.

 The explosive power detected by earthquake sensors around the world was much weaker than would be expected from a hydrogen bomb, experts said.

 “It was not very big,” said Philip Coyle, the former director of nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site and a longtime U.S. national security official.

 An exhaustive investigation into the test, including sampling air for telltale radioactive particles and studying seismic shock waves, will take weeks. The analysis is likely to confirm the size of the detonation, the type of radioactive fuel it used, how the fuel was produced and the sophistication of its design.

 U.S. experts initially estimated the power of the underground explosion was as small as 6 kilotons, less than the atomic bomb that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

Some basic technical information: There are 3 types of nuclear weapons:

Fission bombs use Uranium or Plutonium to create a bomb.

Boosted fission weapons use small quantities of the isotopes of Hydrogen deuterium and tritium and achieve a minimal amount of fission, but allows for a greater percentage of fusion fission for a given amount of material because the small amount of fusion emits a large number of neutrons, increasing the reaction.

Among other things, a boosted fission weapon can be a lot smaller than a pure fission device.

Thermonuclear (Teller-Ulam) weapons typically have three stages:

  • A boosted fission primary which has a mirror to focus its energy on
  • A mixture of deuterium and tritium which fuses on a large scale, and releases neutrons which
  • Initiate fission in a depleted (U-238) jacket

A pure fission weapon is typically in the 20 kiloton range.

A boosted fission weapon weapon could go up to an upper limit 1 megaton.

The first thermonuclear weapon, “Mike” was 10 megatons, and the largest one ever detonated was the Soviet Tsar Bomba, which was designed to achieve 100 MT, but only achieved 50 MT because the depleted uranium jacket was omitted to reduce fallout.

Theoretically, there is no limit on the size of a Teller Ulam device.

So, on to the analysis.

The first thing to note is that, much like making watches, it is tougher to make a small bomb than it is a large one, so it is highly unlikely that any true thermonuclear weapon would be under a megaton.

Second, it is likely that the DPRK is looking at miniaturizing their weapons, and a boosted fission device would achieve this.

Third, for one to have a practical thermonuclear weapon, you need to have a boosted fission first stage, otherwise, you end up with something like “Mike” which weighed over 80 tons. (Mike used a boosted fission trigger, it was just f%$#ing huge as a result of being the first such device, the fact that it used liquid deuterium, and the associated support and measurement equipment).

So, my not so expert opinion:

  • It’s a big deal, but applies to any nuclear test.
  • It was probably a test of a boosted fission device.
  • It was likely a fizzle, as the seismology shows a relatively low yield.

So, yes, this is a big f%$#ing deal, and I would suggest that a formal exchange of ambassadors and diplomatic recognition, which was agreed to in 1994, might be a good counter move.

In the mean time, I am sure that China, Russia, the US, Japan, and South Korea are analyzing the information, and sampling the air in the region to get more specifics.

    Yes, Dumping the ABM Treaty was Such a Good Idea………

    No Comments

    The insistence that missile defense is not directed at Russia is literally laughable

    Not.

    It appears that in response to the installation of ballistic missile defense in Europe has led Russia to leak plans of a massive nuclear armed torpedo:

    Then came the new U.S. missile defense in Europe. All Russian protests and warnings against stationing such capabilities have not been able to deter the U.S. for proceeding with it. Should the missile defense project go forward Russia will have to invent new means to reintroduce a significant second strike capability. Both sides, Russia says, would be better off by not introducing these new capabilities.

     To strongly send that message the Russian military scientists went back into the archives to find some old crappy idea that could overcome missile defense and be horrible enough in its effects to recreate some deterrence.

     The scientists came back with an odd idea the “human rights activist” Andrej Sakharov once promoted:

    At the height of the Cold War, August 12, 1953 have been produced successfully tested the new Soviet weapons of terrible destructive force – a thermonuclear bomb. One of the creators of the bomb, the newly elected member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, the 32-year-old Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov suggested as a “means of delivery” to use the developed nuclear submarines of project 627, equipping each of them a giant torpedo under the 100-megaton thermonuclear charge (approximately 6000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima). As conceived by the young academician exploding the U.S. coast ocean, these torpedoes were to cause a tsunami of unprecedented power, the height of 300 meters, which would be simply washed off American cities, causing irreparable damage to the United States.

    The planned U.S. “missile defense” systems would have some difficulties hitting such a torpedo.

     Thus the Kremlin decided to reuse this old Sakharov idea to scare the U.S. off from its current “missile defense” course:

    On November 10, 2015 President Putin held a regular meeting with his generals in Sochi to discuss development of the Russian strategic forces. The president used the occasion to complain again about U.S. missile defense plans and to warn that Russia will do whatever it takes to preserve the strategic balance.

    The meeting was filmed (vid) by a major Russian TV station and “just by chance” the cameraman caught a power point page (also at 1:46 min in the video) one of the attending Generals was reading:

    Russian television cameras caught a page in a briefing book describing the development of a new nuclear weapons system called Status-6. It’s nothing less than an underwater drone designed to carry a thermonuclear weapon into foreign ports. If detonated, Status-6 would be capable of dousing cities like New York in massive amounts of radioactive fallout.

    “Massive amounts of radioactive fallout” or, in the old version, a 300 meter high tsunami – choose whatever you like better but you will probably be hit with both.

    I think that this is deliberate leak, intended as a warning regarding the US plans for BMD.

    Certainly the range figures are highly suspect, having a speed of 100 kts, a max depth of 1,000 meters, and a range of 10,000 km.

    That range would require nuclear propulsion, which I do not see as particularly feasible, since using some derivative of Russian thermionic reactors developed for space would mandate a much slower speed, as the output of such a system tops out at a few kW.

    The depth and speed are certainly achievable though, given that the crush depth of the (manned) Alpha class boats appears to be above 1000 m, and the speed of modern heavyweight torpedoes (and I am not counting the supercavitating ones here, those are exclusively short range) are in excess 60 kts, at ranges in excess of 50 km.

    As to the warhead size, the Tsar Bomba had a 50 MT yield, and that was a two stage weapon, with the tertiary stage eliminated because of fallout concerns, though with a weight of 30 tons, I cannot see it on a large torpedo unless its weight could be reduced by about ¾.

    A more realistic scenario, at least to the degree that the end of the world can be called “realistic”, is to place SSBNs relatively close to the US (say 2000-3000 miles), and fire missiles on depressed trajectories, but that is not as “sexy” as some sort of new Russian “super-weapon”.

    Of course, we could avoid such idiocy if the United States as a nation was not so dedicated to maintaining the perception of American hegemony in all aspects of power in the guise of “Exceptionalism”. 

    This serves neither world nor the United States, as evidenced by increases in death rates among middle aged white males in the US.

    This happened in the USSR before its collapse, and the explanation at that time was that excessive military spending was sucking the marrow out of their society, and it appears that this is what is happening in the US now.

    Jeremy Corbyn Goes There

    No Comments

    He just (rightly, IMNSHO) accused Britain’s Chief of the Defence Staff General Nicholas Houghton of attempting to meddle in civilian politics:

    British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn accused the country’s armed forces chief on Sunday of taking sides in the hot button political issue of overhauling Britain’s nuclear weapons program.

    Gen. Nicholas Houghton earlier on Remembrance Sunday, when Britain commemorates its war dead, said he was “worried” by Corbyn’s vow never to press the “nuclear button”.

    Corbyn issued a statement expressing “serious concern” over Houghton’s statement, calling on Defence Secretary Michael Fallon to “take action.”

    “It is a matter of serious concern that the chief of the defence staff has today intervened directly in issues of political dispute,” said Corbyn, who is opposed to a revamp of Britain’s nuclear weapons system, Trident.

    “It is essential in a democracy that the military remains politically neutral at all times,” said the Labour leader.

    Corbyn is right, of course, Houghton’s behavior is unacceptable in a democracy, particularly when juxtaposed with long time rumors of military preparations for a coup in 1974.

    One hopes that Houghton will learn his lesson, and shut the f%$# up.

    It’s Official, Elon Musk Is Now a Bond Villain

    No Comments

    On Colbert last night, Elon Musk, internet tycoon turned electronic car manufacturer turned space entrepreneur wants to colonize Mars, unleashed a literal bombshell:

    The billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors appeared on the second episode of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show last night (Sept. 9) to discuss his various business ventures. Colbert asked him about his plan to send people to Mars, which Musk described as a “fixer-up” of a planet. That led to this exchange:

    “Eventually you can transform Mars into an Earthlike planet,” Musk said. “By warming it up.”

    “With a blanket?” Colbert asked.

    No, Stephen, not with a blanket. With a great number of thermonuclear bombs:

    Musk has publicly supported this idea for a long time, but we’d wager it’s the first time anyone’s suggested it on a late-night talk show. The idea is that the nukes would melt the Mars’ polar ice caps and kickstart a greenhouse effect—similar to the one we’re currently experiencing on Earth—that would quickly make the planet warmer.

    I will make a couple of points here:

    • First, you can get the same sort of effect, sans radiation, by dispersing a few tons of carbon black on the poles.  The increased albedo does the rest.
    • Second, this really is Bond villain nuts. Batsh%$ insane

    An Interesting Perspective on No-Notice Inspections and Iran

    No Comments

    Over at The Intercept, they notice the oft ignored (at least on this side of the pond) fact that the United States used the Iraqi inspection regime in as a way to insert spies into the country:

    Americans and Israelis who hate the new nuclear agreement with Iran are already focusing on one part in particular: It doesn’t authorize snap, no-notice inspections of all locations. Israel’s hard-right Education Minister Naftali Bennett claims the accord is a “farce” because “in order to go and make an inspection, you have to notify the Iranians 24 days in advance.”

     This is not exactly right, but close enough. (Iran’s declared nuclear sites will be under continuous monitoring. If the International Atomic Energy Agency wants to inspect a non-declared site and Iran refuses, Iran has 14 days to convince the IAEA it’s doing nothing wrong without providing access. If it can’t, the commission governing the agreement has seven days to vote on whether to force Iran to provide access, and if it does Iran has three more days to comply. The exact procedure is established in paragraphs 74-78 of the agreement text.)

     For people unfamiliar with the history of arms control generally and in the Middle East in particular, this might seem like a bad deal. If Iran doesn’t have anything to hide, why wouldn’t it allow the IAEA to go anywhere at anytime?

     The answer is twofold:

     First, all countries have things they legitimately want to hide, such as conventional military secrets and the security procedures of their leaders.

     Second, during the 1990s the U.S. demonstrated with Iraq that it would routinely abuse the weapons inspections process in order to uncover such legitimate secrets — and use them to target the Iraqi military and try to overthrow the Iraqi government.

     ………

     By the mid-1990s, Iraq claimed that the U.S. was using UNSCOM as cover for espionage aimed at things that had nothing to do with WMD, such as Saddam Hussein’s location. While the U.S. strenuously denied this for years, it turned out to be true. Moreover, former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter contends that the U.S. attempted to manipulate UNSCOM so that it could be used as a tool in an attempted coup against Saddam Hussein organized by the U.S. in 1996.

     Iraq acted at the time just as the U.S. would if the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons had been infiltrated with “inspectors” who wanted to assassinate Bill Clinton and then showed up at the White House. For instance, when Clinton bombed Iraq in Operation Desert Fox in 1998, one of the justifications he gave was that Iraq had “shut off [UNSCOM] access to the headquarters of its ruling party.” The CIA later discovered that Saddam had in fact been at the party headquarters when UNSCOM arrived, and had stopped UNSCOM from entering “to prevent the inspectors from knowing his whereabouts, not because he had something to hide.”

     Moreover, the U.S. made extensive use of UNSCOM to target Iraq for bombing campaigns. According to Ritter, toward the beginning of the UNSCOM process CIA agents who were part of the inspection team used GPS to record the precise location of sites used for Iraqi military manufacturing — sites that soon afterwards were struck by U.S. cruise missiles. And as the Washington Post reported and the U.S. Air Force later confirmed, the U.S. used UNSCOM’s data to choose targets for Operation Desert Fox, including many that had nothing to do with Iraq’s purported WMD programs. ………

     So while Iran’s recalcitrance may make the U.S. and Israel unhappy, it’s largely the fruit of our own poisoned tree. They will never accept the conditions we imposed on Iraq, and any neutral observer would agree they’d be fools to do so.

    Shades of the alleged “vaccination” program that allegedly identified bin Laden’s hiding place, which has discredited vaccination programs throughout the Islamic world, leading to widespread assassinations of public health workers, particularly in Pakistan.

    Cue the Wingnut Head Explosion

    No Comments

    We have a nuclear proliferation deal with Iran, let the right wing to freak out begin.

    Binyaman Netanyahu, who is arguably the least honest man in Israeli politics,* is condemning this as well, but seeing as how Netanyahu is continuing to ignore the Mossad’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, I’ll put this down to Bibi playing domestic politics.

    World powers have reached a deal with Iran on limiting Iranian nuclear activity in return for the lifting of international economic sanctions.

    US President Barack Obama said that with the deal, “every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off” for Iran.

    And President Hassan Rouhani said the “historic” deal opened a “new chapter” in Iran’s relations with the world.

    Negotiations between Iran and six world powers – the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany – began in 2006.

    The so-called P5+1 want Iran to scale back its sensitive nuclear activities to ensure that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.

    Iran, which wants crippling international sanctions lifted, has always insisted that its nuclear work is peaceful.

    There has been stiff resistance to a deal from conservatives both in Iran and the US. The US Congress has 60 days in which to consider the deal, though Mr Obama said he would veto any attempt to block it.

    The Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, John Boehner, said the deal would only only “embolden” Tehran.

    “Instead of stopping the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, this deal is likely to fuel a nuclear arms race around the world,” he added.

    Israel’s government has also warned against an agreement.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was a “stunning historic mistake” that would provide Iran with “hundreds of billions of dollars with which it can fuel its terror machine and its expansion and aggression throughout the Middle East and across the globe”.

    He said he did not regard Israel as being bound by this agreement. “We will always defend ourselves,” he added.

    The alternative to this deal would have Iran to actually go full bore for a nuclear weapon.

    This is far better than that.

    *Boy, the concept of , “the least honest man in Israeli politics,” is a truly an awesomely mind f%$#ing concept.

    In the Annals of Foreign Policy Cock-Ups, This Ranks Up With Invading Iraq

    No Comments

    It looks like the Obama administration is considering formally placing Saudi Arabia under the US nuclear umbrella:

    Obama administration officials are promising a major strengthening of U.S. defense commitments to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies, possibly including a nuclear commitment to their security, in an intensifying effort to win their support for the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.

     Officials say they hope to reassure nervous gulf Arab states by providing more military aid and training to their defense forces, and by making more explicit commitments to help them repel external attacks.

     The administration is studying whether to make any nuclear assurances, though officials emphasize no decision has been made.

     ………

     The administration’s goal, officials said Tuesday, is to convince the Arab monarchies that U.S. security guarantees will make them safer than if they buy sensitive technology or a nuclear weapon from Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim ally, as the Saudis have privately threatened to do.

    Here’s a thought: make it clear to the Pakistanis that if they sell nuclear technology, and to the House of Saud that if they attempt to buy nuclear technology, that they will never see another American spare part for anything.

    The Saudis, specifically Prince Bandar bin Sultan, created ISIS, and we want to offer them nuclear guarantee to their regime?

    And then there is this bit of insanity:

    “We’re going to be there for our [Persian Gulf] friends,” Obama told columnist Thomas Friedman. “I want to see how we can formalize that a little bit more than we currently have, and also help build their capacity so that they feel more confident about their ability to protect themselves from external aggression.”

    He’s attempting to create coherence in foreign policy by talking to Thomas “The Mustache of Imbicility” Friedman?

    To quote the Matt Taibbi in the Thomas Friedman Pr0n Title Contest, “This ain’t yogurt.”

    This has failure written all over it.

    This Sh%$ Just Got Real

    No Comments

    Thank you Victoria Nuland. You got your coup color revolution you wanted, and now the Russians are making noises about deploying nuclear weapons to the Crimea:

    Russia has the right to deploy nuclear arms in the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine last year, a Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday, adding he knew of no plans to do so.

     “I don’t know if there are nuclear weapons there now. I don’t know about any plans, but in principle Russia can do it,” said Mikhail Ulyanov, the head of the ministry’s department on arms control, was quoted as saying by Interfax news agency.

    Note that it’s about 1500 miles from Sevastopol to Birmingham is around 1500 miles, so if the Russians just stationed an SSBN there with its 6000+ mile range missiles, a launch could be made covering all of Europe on a depressed trajectory giving something around 5 minutes warning.

    Of course, they could also just drive the mobile version of their Topol missile there as well.

    Poking the bear with a stick is not a smart foreign policy move.

    It really does not feel me with confidence that the US Government’s foreign and military policy establishment is filled with people who take hubris to this level.

    This is nuclear weapons, not tiddly winks.

    Indian Boomer Enters Seal Trials

    No Comments

    Speaking or Indian defense upgrades, the first Indian built SSBNs has entered sea trials:

    In a major step in validation of indigenous defence technologies, the Indian built nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine Arihant completed its harbour trials and entered the sea here on Monday.

    Built under the highly secretive Advanced Technology Vessel project monitored directly by the Prime Minister’s Office, the nuclear-powered submarine emerged from the breakwaters of the Visakhapatnam Harbour under the watchful gaze of a low flying helicopter. The 112 metre, 6000 tonne partially submerged Arihant glided into the Bay of Bengal as part of its sea trials, sailing north along the coast before disappearing into the mist.

    The Arihant class is kind of an odd hybrid: It only carries 4 Polaris class missiles or 12 shorter range missiles, and at 6000 tons it’s on the smallish size for a missile boat.

    It is also the first indigenously designed and built nuclear submarine for the Indians, so it represents a big step forward.

    Israel’s Nuclear Armed SSG

    No Comments

    It looks like it’s designed to sit on the sea floor

    It’s the Dolphin II class submarine, and in addition to being really ugly, it has 10 torpedo tubes, 6 of the standard 21 inch (533 mm) size, and 4 with a 26 inch (650 mm) tubes.

    The obvious question is why the Dolphin II might need larger tubes, and the obvious answer is that it is used to launch the Popeye Turbo submarine launched cruise missle, which is alleged to have a 1500 km range, though it could also be used to deploy relatively large mines

    As such, this constitutes a fairly formidable 2nd strike capability with nuclear weapons, along with the ability to launch conventional strikes at a fairly long range.

    When combined with its AIP (Air Independent Propulsion) system, which uses liquid oxygen and methanol reacted into hydrogen, which can allow for the boat to remain submerged for up to a month.

    Of course, this assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons, but this assumes that Israel has nuclear weapons, which it neither conforms nor denies.  (Yeah.right)

    What James Fallows Says

    No Comments

    He notes that with the exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, every justification for war since 12945 has been way overblown:

    5) Threat inflation. As I think about this war and others the U.S. has contemplated or entered during my conscious life, I realize how strong is the recurrent pattern of threat inflation. Exactly once in the post-WW II era has the real threat been more ominous than officially portrayed. That was during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world really came within moments of nuclear destruction.

     Otherwise: the “missile gap.” The Gulf of Tonkin. The overall scale of the Soviet menace. Iraq. In each case, the public soberly received official warnings about the imminent threat. In cold retrospect, those warnings were wrong — or contrived, or overblown, or misperceived. Official claims about the evils of these systems were many times justified. Claims about imminent threats were most of the times hyped.

    He is talking about how Iran is the current Hitler of the week, and how the threat is almost certainly overblown.

    As I would observe, even in the worst case, Iran is not going to give nukes to terrorists, for the same reason that the Soviets and the US never let nukes out of their direct control, and they are not going to launch a nuclear attack on Israel, Hezbollah does just fine in prosecuting their interests in that area, and Israel has a substantial nuclear arsenal (somewhere around the 6th largest nuclear power in the world) which would make an attack suicidal.

    What a nuclear Iran would mean, however, is that the United States would be prevented from acting unilaterally against Iran, which is seen as a disaster for US military and foreign policy.