Category: Proliferation

Nuclear Power, Meet Blue Screen of Death

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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 Unbelievably Sensible, and Will Never Be Implimented

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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

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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.

What James Fallows Says

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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.

Boom

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The DPRK conducts a 3rd nuclear weapons test:

At the United Nations, the desire to impose ever harsher sanctions on North Korea to try to curb its development of nuclear arms and ballistic missiles has long stalled in the face of Chinese opposition — the standard chain of events playing out here again on Tuesday after North Korea said it had carried out its third nuclear test.

Security Council diplomats and the experts who track sanctions enforcement are quick to tick off the contents of a deeper toolbox that could be used to try to corral Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.

They include banning specific, high-tech items used in the nuclear program like epoxy paste for centrifuges; limiting or outlawing some banking transactions; and a far more stringent inspection of ships bound to and from North Korea.

But the sanctions in place are almost exclusively focused on nuclear and ballistic missile activity.

The problem is that we have way too much posturing on both side.

They need to stop setting off nukes, and we need to make a formal exchange of ambassadors.

Good News on the Legislative Front Today

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The repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was signed into law, the Senate passed the START arms control treaty, and a new food safety bill that gives the FDA the power to order recalls passed the house and is heading to the President’s desk.

I still don’t see any gazillion dimensional chess here, but it’s a good day.

BTW, since the bill gives the military fairly broad discretion in how the ban is phased in, I would take even money that separations from the military will be continuing into 2012, because Obama won’t push the military on this.

Russia Will Not Sell S-300 to Iran

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President Medvedev has announced that the Sale of S-300 surface to air missiles to Iran.

Russia has always taken a minimalist approach to obeying UN sanctions regarding the Iranian nuclear, so this is a big deal, particularly since these missiles, with their 400+ km detection range, end up as a formidable area defense system against conventional aircraft, and a formidable point defense system against stealthy targets, at least to the degree that my wild assed guess regarding detection range are justified.

This is a Big Deal

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The US and Russia have signed a treaty calling for a 30% reduction of their respective nuclear arsenals.

This is a very positive development, though it is more timid that I would have liked.

Of course, it still needs a ⅔ vote in the Senate to be approved, and Republican Mike DeMint seems to be determined to be the turd in the punch bowl, and attempt to extract promises for an extensive missile defense installation in Europe, which the Russians consider a deal breaker.

Pretty much everyone who isn’t tied to Bush/Cheney, of both parties, find this a good deal, but considering the fact that many Congressional Republicans sold their souls, and their testicles, to the Bush/Cheney agenda some years back, it should get interesting.

Also, I predict that Joe “Shanda before the Goyim” Lieberman will speak forcefully about his deep concerns regarding the treaty, in the hope of getting lots of face time on the teevee.

Economics Update

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The economic press is touting the fact that consumer confidence hit an 8 month high.

More accurately, they are touting that the jump from 40.8 to 54.9, is the biggest in 6 years….Only, of course, the index is bench marked such that 1985=100, so the number is still crappy.

It’s the same as the Chicago Bank of the Federal Reserve’s April National Activity Index, which is up (Yay!), but this does not mean expansion, it means contraction, just not quite so fast (Awww!).

You know, maybe we can wait to call a recovery until we have a month where the year over year Case-Shiller housing price index does not fall by 18.7%.

Consumers will not spend under these circumstances, and the economy, which is/was 70%+ consumer spending, will not recover.

In any case, be glad we aren’t German, and not just because that means that we aren’t German, because Germany’s GDP fell by 3.8% for the quarter and 6.7% year-over-year, as their export driven economy sputtered.

Meanwhile, in energy and currency land, oil was up on the consumer confidence figures, and the dollar rose as people freaked over the DPRK conducting another nuke test.

If I could predict the actions of the North Koreans, I would make a killing on the futures markets.

A Big Story on the Nuclear Non Proliferation Front

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The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration has requested no funds for the reliable replacement warhead program, which means that Barack Obama has largely eschewed a reeplenishment and update of the US nuclear arsenal.

They are seeking $143 to develop advanced validation methods of existing warheads, but one of the promises inherent in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was that the nuclear powers would gradually denuclearize themselves, and it appears that this is a big step towards this.

Lame-duck-inosis

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I understand that the political appointees in the State Department may wish it otherwise, but the rest of the world understands that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are lame ducks, and they want no part of any of initiatives.

Case in point, the latest IAEA runing on the Syrian nuclear program:

The U.N. atomic agency approved a contested Syrian bid for nuclear aid on Wednesday, overcoming U.S.-led resistance to the project while Damascus is under investigation for covert activity that could lead to atom bombs.

The United States, Canada and Australia mounted last minute objections to a compromise deal on the project but finally joined a consensus in favor since they could not have won if they forced a rare vote by International Atomic Energy Agency governors, diplomats in the closed meeting said.

(emphasis mine)

They matter very little now. On January 20, they do not matter at all.