moonbuggy

This is a quick virtual tour of Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor, demonstrating their nuclear capabilities.

Hooray for having six secret floors of weapon production equipment hidden underground, I suppose. 🙂

(19.7meg Flash video)

‘U.S. stocks had a tough week with the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffering its worst one-week point drop in five years, but a group of meditators promise their good vibrations will send the index past 17,000 within a year.

A group called the Invincible America Assembly made that claim and more Friday, insisting they have America’s prosperity under control and their positive vibes will bring fewer hurricanes and better U.S.-North Korean relations.

Through group transcendental meditation the assembly — which has 1,800 people meditating daily in Iowa since it was formed in July 2006 — releases harmonious waves which benefit all aspects of U.S. life, spokesman Bob Roth told Reuters. [..]

The group takes credit for, among other things: the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaching a record high of 14,022 last week, unemployment rates falling to a six-year low at 4.5 percent, and North Korea shutting down its nuclear reactor.’

‘A strong earthquake struck central Japan, killing at least eight people, injuring hundreds and causing a fire and radioactive leak at the world’s biggest nuclear power plant.

The 6.8-magnitude quake levelled buildings, derailed trains and buckled roads after it struck about 10 miles off the coast of Niigata yesterday. The local media reported that four elderly women and a man were crushed to death by falling buildings and at least 800 people were hurt, some seriously. [..]

The quake, which hit just after 10am local time, also started a fire at the No 3 reactor of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa light-water nuclear plant, the largest nuclear complex in the world. A spokesman for the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) said there was a “small leak” of radioactive water from reactors 3 and 6 into the sea but denied the reactor was ever in any danger. “The radiation was well within safe limits,” he said.’

‘US investigators posing as businessmen were easily able to obtain a licence to buy enough nuclear material to make a small “dirty bomb”, Congress has heard.

The team, who set up a bogus company, said the operation exposed serious flaws in the way the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approves licences.

It took only four weeks and some phone calls and faxes to get the document.

The NRC says it has already taken steps to address the problem. The sting was carried out at the request of Congress.

Investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) said they had not even had to leave their desks to acquire the licence.’

‘A factory that makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors had a spill so bad that it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three incidents in all of 2006 serious enough for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to include in an annual report to Congress. After an investigation, the commission changed the terms of the factory’s license and said that the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes.

But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped “official use only,” meaning that it was not publicly accessible. [..]

[..] The letter from the congressmen says the agency’s report suggests “that it was merely a matter of luck that a criticality accident did not occur.”’

‘The first publicly available pictures have emerged of China’s new Jin-class nuclear-powered submarine, which is capable of firing intercontinental ballistic missiles against the US.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons analyst for the Federation of American Scientists, spotted the new submarine while reviewing photos of north-eastern China that had been snapped by a commercial satellite for Google Earth.

The photos taken late last year show the submarine alongside a pier at the Xiaopingdao Submarine Base south of the city of Dalian.’

‘Illegal networks selling nuclear technology to the highest bidder on the black market are posing a greater threat than ever, an expert has warned.

A speaker at non-proliferation talks in Washington said technology essential for enriching uranium was now freely available on the black market.

Others said that efforts to tackle the problem were tepid and in disarray.

The conference also raised concerns that the issue has receded from the non-proliferation agenda.’

Followup to Did NASA Accidentally “Nuke” Jupiter?.

(13.1meg Flash video)

see it here »

‘American cell phones can already check e-mail, surf the Internet and store music, but they could have a new set of features in coming years: the Department of Homeland Security wants them to sense biological, chemical and radioactive material.

Putting hazardous material sensors in commercial cell phones has been discussed in scientific circles for years, according to researchers in the field. More recently, the idea gained support among government agencies, and DHS said publicly in May that it wants businesses to start coming up with proposals. [..]

S&T spokesman Christopher Kelly said the theoretical system’s strength would lie in the sheer number of sensors. The cell phone sensors might be less sophisticated than highly advanced ones some developers are fitting into hand-held models, but they would make up for it in what Kelly called “ubiquitous detection.”’

‘Nuclear power stations will be banned in Western Australia by legislation aimed at thwarting the prime minister’s nuclear push, Premier Alan Carpenter says.

Mr Carpenter announced the new legislation at the WA Labor Party state conference.

The legislation will prohibit the construction or operation of a nuclear facility, the transportation of certain material to a nuclear facility site and the connection of nuclear generation works to electricity transmission or distribution systems.

Mr Carpenter said new technology was the answer to climate change challenges not nuclear power.’

‘President Vladimir Putin yesterday declared that a new arms race and cold war with the west had begun and announced that Russia would retaliate against US missile defence plans in Europe by pointing its missiles at European cities. [..]

On missile defence, Mr Putin said that if the Bush administration installed elements of a missile shield in eastern Europe, Russia would retaliate by training nuclear missiles on European targets. Russia has not specifically aimed its missiles at Europe since the end of the cold war but, asked if it might do so again if the US missile shield went ahead, Mr Putin said: “Of course we are returning to those times. It is clear that if a part of the US nuclear capability turns up in Europe, and, in the opinion of our military specialists will threaten us, then we are forced to take corresponding steps in response.”

“What will those steps be? Naturally, we will have to have new targets in Europe.”‘

‘The United States and Russia have agreed on a plan to accelerate installation of radiation detection devices at 350 Russian border crossings so the system to prevent nuclear smuggling is fully operational by 2011, U.S. officials said on Friday.

“This announcement is a major cooperative step in counter-proliferation work in Russia,” which contains a major portion of the world’s nuclear material, said Will Tobey, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration, a part of the U.S. Energy Department.

“It will help us prevent smuggling into and out of the region,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Russia identified more than 480 cases of illicit trafficking of nuclear and radioactive material in 2006. While U.S. officials said these cases were not believed to involve weapons-grade nuclear material, the number of cases underscores the scope of the problem.’

‘After the disaster and subsequent decontamination efforts, the Soviet government established boundaries for the newly created Chernobyl Exclusion Zone encompassing portions of Ukraine and Belarus. The Zone is located within 30 km of the station and access is strictly controlled by the Ukrainian and Belarusian governments and militaries. What follows are my impressions of the Ukrainian sector of the Zone as it existed in June 2006, 20 years after the disaster.’

Here’s some footage shot after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the nearby town of Pripyat, very shortly before everyone was evacuated.

The radiation levels are so high that in some parts of the film you can actually see radiation hitting the film and leaving a mark. [I assume this would be alpha or beta particles from airborne radionuclides, because I don’t think gamma photons would have enough energy to upset the film like that.]

(13.2meg MPEG)

see it here »

This is a choose your own adventure type game.

Watch out for the manticore.

(1.4meg Shockwave)

‘Tony Blair has reiterated his backing for nuclear power as the government prepares to unveil its energy strategy.

Plans to build more nuclear power stations are expected to be among the proposals in the Energy White Paper.

An expansion of energy efficiency and renewable sources such as tide and wind power will also be detailed.

The PM says nuclear power can “underpin the security of our energy supply” but opponents say it is dangerous and will reduce investment in renewable sources.’

‘Russian prosecutors say they will refuse to extradite Andrei Lugovoi, charged by Britain in the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko, to London because of a constitutional ban.

Earlier Tuesday British officials said they wanted to bring Lugovoi before a British court and charge him with the “extraordinarily grave crime” of murdering Litvinenko in London last November.

“I have today concluded that the evidence sent to us by the police is sufficient to charge Andrei Lugovoi with the murder of Mr. Litvinenko by deliberate poisoning,” Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald said in London.

Litvinenko, who was a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin and had been granted political asylum in the UK, died in a London hospital last November, several weeks after he was poisoned with polonium-210.’

Followup to Radioactive killer was discovered by doctors only hours before death.

This is a review of nuclear criticality accidents made in 2000 by the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

There’s 158 pages of cool technical stuff.

(3.7meg PDF)

‘Cold fusion, the ability to generate nuclear power at room temperatures, has proven to be a highly elusive feat. In fact, it is considered by many experts to be a mere pipe dream — a potentially unlimited source of clean energy that remains tantalizing, but so far unattainable.

However, a recently published academic paper from the Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWAR) in San Diego throws cold water on skeptics of cold fusion. Appearing in the respected journal Naturwissenschaften, which counts Albert Einstein among its distinguished authors, the article claims that Spawar scientists Stanislaw Szpak and Pamela Mosier-Boss have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LENR) that can be replicated and verified by the scientific community.’

‘In October 1957, after several years of successful operation, the workers at Windscale noticed some curious readings from their temperature monitoring equipment as they carried out standard maintenance. The reactor temperature was slowly rising during a time that they expected it to be falling. The remote detection equipment seemed to be malfunctioning, so two plant workers donned protective equipment and hiked to the reactor to inspect it in person. When they arrived, they were alarmed to discover that the interior of the uranium-filled reactor was ablaze.’

‘The Kursk sailed out to sea to perform an exercise of firing dummy torpedoes at Pyotr Velikiy, a Kirov class battlecruiser. On August 12, 2000 at 11:28 local time (07:28 UTC), the missiles were fired, but an explosion occurred soon after on Kursk. The only credible report to-date is that this was due to the failure and explosion of one of Kursk’s new/developmental torpedoes. The chemical explosion blasted with the force of 100-250 kg of TNT and registered 2.2 on the Richter scale [1]. The submarine sank to a depth of 108 metres, approximately 135km (85 miles) off Severomorsk, at 69°40′N, 37°35′E. A second explosion 135 seconds after the initial event measured between 3.5 and 4.4 on the Richter scale, equivalent to 3-7 tons of TNT [2]. Either this explosion or the earlier one propelled large pieces of debris far back through the submarine.’

With images.

‘Russian military pilots have described how they created rain clouds to protect Moscow from radioactive fallout after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986.

Major Aleksei Grushin repeatedly took to the skies above Chernobyl and Belarus and used artillery shells filled with silver iodide to make rain clouds that would “wash out” radioactive particles drifting towards densely populated cities.

More than 4,000 square miles of Belarus were sacrificed to save the Russian capital from the toxic radioactive material.’

‘Russia began construction of its first floating nuclear power plant Sunday, and plans to build at least six more despite long-standing environmental concerns that they are vulnerable to accidents at sea, Russian news agencies reported.

Russia justifies the program as a way of bringing power to some of the country’s most remote areas, also saying some of the plants could be sold to other nations.

The head of Russia’s atomic energy agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, said the plants will be safe.’

‘Birds in Chernobyl choose to nest in sites with lower levels of background radioactivity, researchers discover, but how they can tell remains a mystery.

Anders Møller at Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris, France, and Tim Mousseau at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, US, erected more than 200 nest boxes in the Red Forest, about 3 kilometres away from the nuclear reactor that exploded in 1986.

Using these artificial nests, they studied at the nesting habits of two species of birds – the great tit Parus major and the pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca – between 2002 and 2003.’

‘Try to absorb as much of the radiation as possible with your groin region. The current world record is 5 minutes, 12 seconds.

If you’ve become a radiation mutant with a deformed hand, remember to close the window. No one wants to see that. [..]

Survive a biohazard attack by first standing, then begging on your knees, then rolling over and playing dead. [..]

If you see colors in the sky, grasp your throat and pretend to choke yourself. Girls go for that. [..]

Your telephone may be a practicing physician. Look for a phone with no numbers on it.’

‘I met god the other day.

I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?

Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.

Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!

It all started on the 8.20 back from Paddington. Got myself a nice window seat, no screaming brats or drunken hooligans within earshot. Not even a mobile phone in sight. Sat down, reading the paper and in he walks.’

‘The Bush administration selected a design Friday for a new generation of atomic warheads, taking a major step toward building the first new nuclear weapon since the end of the Cold War nearly two decades ago.

The military and the Energy Department selected a design developed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California over a competing design by the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.

The decision to move ahead with the warhead, which eventually would replace the existing arsenal of weapons, has been criticized as sending the wrong signal to the world at a time when the United States is assailing attempts at nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran and striving to contain them.’

‘Three Arab states in the Persian Gulf would be willing to allow the Israel Air force to enter their airspace in order to reach Iran in case of an attack on its nuclear facilities, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Siyasa reported on Sunday.

According to the report, a diplomat from one of the gulf states visiting Washington on Saturday said the three states, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, have told the United States that they would not object to Israel using their airspace, despite their fear of an Iranian response.’

‘On 17 July 1962, a caravan of scientists, military men, and dignitaries crossed the remote desert of southern Nevada to witness a historic event. Among the crowd were VIPs such as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and presidential adviser General Maxwell D. Taylor who had come to observe the “Little Feller I” test shot, the final phase of Operation Sunbeam. The main attraction was a secret device which was bolted to the roof of an armored personnel carrier, a contraption called the The Davy Crockett Weapon System.’