Tag: nuclear weapons

Russia Updating Nuclear Weapon Doctrine Due To Western ‘Escalation’ Of Ukraine War

In the latest worrisome saber-rattling sparked by the US-led proxy war in Ukraine, Russia announced it’s revising its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons, saying a change has been necessitated by “escalation” initiated by the country’s Western adversaries. 

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told TASS that the update was precipitated by an analysis of  “recent conflicts” including “Western adversaries’ escalation course” in the Ukraine war. The revision is “in the advanced stage,” but Ryabkov said it was too early to project when it would be completed, given “we are talking about the most important aspect of our national security.” While there’s been no indication of the specifics, any revision seems certain to lower the threshold for nuclear weapon use — and increase the potential for a global conflagration.  

Per TASS, under current doctrine set forth in 2020, Russia may use nuclear weapons when:

  • An enemy uses a weapon of mass destruction against Russia or its allies
  • Russia has confirmation of a nuclear launch against it or its allies
  • An enemy attacks “facilities necessary for a response” to a nuclear attack 
  • Conventional warfare threatens the existence of the Russian state.  

That last condition of the current doctrine is particularly noteworthy in light of the Ukraine war. As foreign policy realist and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer recently told UnHerd’s Freddie Sayers, 

“There is all sorts of talk in the West about defeating Russia inside Ukraine, wrecking its economy, causing regime change and maybe even breaking up Russia the way the Soviet Union was broken up. This is a country that has thousands of nuclear weapons. If its survival is threatened, it’s likely to use them. So we have this perverse paradox here that most people don’t seem to realize…which is that the more successful NATO and Ukraine are against Russia, the more likely it is that the Russians will use nuclear weapons.”   

Russia launched its so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine in February 2022 with stated goals of “protecting people [in the country’s eastern regions] who have been subjected to bullying and genocide” by the Ukrainian government since 2014, and precluding Ukraine’s joining the NATO military alliance. Over time, the West’s backing of Ukraine has been characterized by gradual escalation in which one previously-ruled-out ratcheting after another has been realized.

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Biden-Harris Dept. of Energy Official Calls for ‘Queering Nuclear Weapons’ as Part of Radical DEI Push

An official in the nuclear security section of the Biden-Harris Department of Energy argued that “queer theory” should be an essential feature of U.S. national security and called for the drastic reduction of America’s nuclear stockpile.

Sneha Nair, who was appointed by the Biden-Harris administration in February as special assistant at the National Nuclear Security Administration, claimed “white supremacy” dominates the nuclear field and that “queering nuclear weapons” as part of the DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) push “is essential for creating effective nuclear policy.” 

“Finally, queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament,” she wrote in April 2023. “Queer theory helps to shift the perception of nuclear weapons as instruments for security by telling the hidden stories of displacement, illness, and trauma caused by their production and testing.” 

Nair also stressed that “DEI principles and advancement must be considered crucial assets for strengthening nuclear security implementation,” adding they would prevent “insider threats.”

“By understanding DEI as a set of values critical to security, and therefore as an element of an effective nuclear security culture, stakeholders can explore how DEI can contribute to stronger security at nuclear facilities,” she said. 

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Zelensky’s Nuclear Gambit Rears Its Head Again

Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador Miroshnik, speaking about the Ukrainian Armed Forces preparing to attack Russian nuclear facilities, urged the U.S. to obtain information from Kiev on this matter. “It would be wise for the White House to inquire with their Nazi protégés about what they are planning and preparing for this time, so there will be no reason later to claim they knew nothing about the upcoming stunt!”

Per RIA Novosti the planned strike against both nuclear power plants is being supervised by the Intelligence Services of the United Kingdom. Large numbers of Western journalists are in Zaporozhye and Sumy to report on the strikes and ensure early spin.

Another report:

‼️🇺🇦 🏴‍☠️ Ukraine intends to strike Zaporizhzhya and Kursk NPPs – sources

▪️The strikes are planned to be carried out on spent nuclear fuel storage sites in the Kursk and Zaporizhia regions, federal media reported, citing security forces.

▪️The Kiev regime plans to attach a warhead with radioactive material – the so-called “dirty bomb”.

▪️According to sources, the warheads were delivered to the Eastern Mining and Processing Plant in the village of Zhovti Vody in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

▪️The purpose of this action is to accuse Russia of committing a nuclear provocation.

❗️A large number of Western reporters have arrived in Sumy and Zaporizhia amid Kiev’s preparations for an attack on the Kursk and Zaporizhia NPPs

❗️Local residents should not panic, our forces are monitoring the situation and keeping an eye on the enemy, including strengthening air defense.

Rvvoenkor

Truthfully, though, I really don’t understand this plan, as it is explained. According to the reports based on some Russian defense insiders, Ukrainians have smuggled nuclear material in the form of a ‘dirty bomb’ somewhere into Dnipro region, and are planning to use it inside of a missile attack onto either the Russian ZNPP or Kursk nuclear power plants. In particular, they plan to hit the depleted nuclear fuel storage casks.

But logically speaking, why would you need nuclear material of your own, if you already plan to hit the storage casks which contain spent fuel rods, if you want to create a nuclear contamination incident? That’s the part I don’t quite understand. I suppose it would create a ‘larger’ incident, plus the dirty bomb would have more “live” material that would create greater contamination, but it’s still strange enough that I would have dismissed it offhand if it weren’t for the fact authentic sources are reporting it, which include Russian Chief of the Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Defense Forces Igor Kirillov.

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Is Ukraine preparing a false flag operation using radioactive warheads aimed at spent nuclear fuel?

Ukrainian forces have begun preparations to target nuclear waste storage sites at a Russian power plant with radioactive warheads and to then blame Moscow, according to intelligence received by Russia.

Kiev’s forces have already struck the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP), Europe’s largest, and started a fire at one of the cooling towers, while accusing Russia of bombing itself.

“Sources on the other side report that the [Ukrainians] are preparing a nuclear false flag – an explosion of a dirty atomic bomb,” military journalist Marat Khairullin said Friday on his Telegram channel. “They plan to strike the storage sites of spent nuclear fuel of a nuclear power plant.”

The special warheads intended for the attack have already been delivered to the Vostochny Mining and Processing plant in Zhovti Vody, in Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region, according to Khairullin.

As possible targets of the attack, Khairullin indicated either the Zaporozhye NPP in Energodar or the Kursk NPP in Kurchatov, noting that the Ukrainian government and its Western backers are “desperate and willing to try anything.”

A security official in the Russian Military Administration of Kharkov Region corroborated Khairullin’s claim to RIA Novosti on Friday. The attack is intended to use radioactive warheads to target spent fuel storage sites at a nuclear power plant, and the ammunition has already been delivered to Zhovti Vody. 

Kiev’s intention is to accuse Moscow of a false flag so it could justify using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, the security official said. The Ukrainian government has received orders from its Western backers to “escalate as much as possible,” he added.

According to the security official, the intelligence came from Ukrainian prisoners of war.

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Russia Says It May Deploy Nuclear Missiles in Response to New US Missile Deployment to Germany

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Thursday that Moscow won’t rule out deploying nuclear missiles in response to the US planning to deploy missile systems to Germany in 2026 that were previously banned by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

“I don’t rule anything out,” Ryabkov said when asked about the possibility of a nuclear deployment.

Ryabkov went on to reference Kaliningrad, the Russian Oblast on the Baltic Sea that’s wedged between Lithuania and Poland and separated from the rest of Russia. He said the territory “has long attracted the unhealthy attention of our opponents.”

Hinting Russia could respond to the US deployment by sending weapons to Kaliningrad, Ryabkov said, “Kaliningrad is no exception in terms of our 100 percent determination to do everything necessary to push back those who may harbor aggressive plans and who try to provoke us to take certain steps that are undesirable for anyone and are fraught with further complications.”

The INF, which the US withdrew from in 2019, prohibited land-based missile systems with a range between 310 and 3,400 miles. The planned US deployment to Germany includes a land-based version of nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles, which have a range of about 1,000 miles and are primarily used by US Navy ships and submarines.

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NATO’s Nuclear Bases Have Poisoned Water and Fish

Nuclear armed air bases at Kleine Brogel in Belgium, Büchel in Germany, Aviano and Ghedi in Italy, and Volkel in the Netherlands have poisoned the environment with PFAS.

Massive fires were intentionally lit in large fire pits at these bases and extinguished with cancer-causing fire-fighting foams during routine training exercises dating back 40 years or longer.  Afterward, the foam residue was typically allowed to run off or drain into the soil. The “forever chemicals” pollute the soil, sewers, sediment, surface water, groundwater, and the air. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) bases regularly tested sprinkler systems in hangars to create a carcinogenic foam layer to coat the expensive aircraft. The sprinkler systems often malfunctioned. The foams were sent to sewers or deposited in groundwater or surface water.

The PFAS-laden foams work miraculously well in putting out super-hot petroleum-based fires, but remarkable technologies may escape our control and imperil humanity.

Two astonishing inventions in 1938 are like Daedalus’ fastening of wings to wax: the splitting of the uranium atom by German scientists and the discovery of per – and poly fluoroalkyl substances, (PFAS) by Dupont chemists in New Jersey.  It’s not a stretch. Both nuclear weaponry and PFAS chemicals are existential threats to humanity. Their development and use are inextricably linked.

Wherever nuclear weapons are found, huge quantities of PFAS foams are ready to be used to snuff out a fire that may cause unimaginable destruction.

Like Pandora’s nightmare, once PFAS is let loose we can’t get it back in the box. We can’t get rid of it. We can’t bury it. We can’t incinerate it. We don’t know what to do with it. Notions of ”cleaning up” PFAS from these practices are largely misguided, propagandistic ploys promulgated by the U.S. military.

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Bipartisan Support for More Genocidal Nuclear Weapons

Whether the president’s name is Obama or Trump or Biden, whether it’s the red team in charge or the blue team, there was and remains strong bipartisan support for “modernization” and “investment” in new nuclear weapons for America. The new Sentinel ICBM, the new B-21 Raider bomber, and the new Columbia-class nuclear submarine may cost America as much as $2 trillion over the next thirty years while making genocidal nuclear war more rather than less likely.

This is insanity.

It’s time for a different path. It’s time for deep cuts in nuclear weapons. Not only to save trillions of dollars but to reduce the chances of a world-ending genocide.

Back in 2017, I wrote the following article on the threat of nuclear weapons to America. Of course, I should have said: the threat of nuclear weapons to the world, to all life on this planet of ours.

It’s time to stop building weapons of mass destruction before we start using them in earnest.

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Trinity and the Parts Left Out of Oppenheimer

Every year at this time I trace the final days leading to the first use of the atomic bomb against two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in August 1945.   In this way the fateful, and in my view, tragic decisions made by President Truman, his advisers, and others, can be judged more clearly in “real time.”  As some know, this is a subject that I have explored in hundreds of articles, thousands of posts,  and in three books, since 1984:  Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton), Atomic Cover-up and my recent award-winner on the first atomic movie, The Beginning or the End.   Now I’ve directed an award-winning documentary. Here’s today’s entry. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for free.

While most people trace the dawn of the nuclear era to August 6, 1945, and the dropping of the atomic bomb over the center of Hiroshima, it really began three weeks earlier, in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico, with the top-secret Trinity test. Its 79rd anniversary will be marked – or mourned today.

Entire books have been written about the test, so I’ll just touch on one key issue here briefly.  It’s related to a hallmark of the age that would follow: a new government obsession with secrecy, which soon spread from the nuclear program to all military and foreign affairs in the cold war era.

In completing their work on building the bomb, Manhattan Project scientists knew it would produce deadly radiation but weren’t sure exactly how much. The military planners were mainly concerned about the bomber pilots catching a dose, but J. Robert Oppenheimer, “The Father of the Bomb,” worried, with good cause (as it turned out) that the radiation could drift a few miles and also fall to earth with the rain.

Indeed, scientists warned of danger to those living downwind from the Trinity site but, in a pattern-setting decision, the military boss, General Leslie Groves, ruled that residents not be evacuated and kept completely in the dark (at least until they spotted a blast brighter than any sun). Nothing was to interfere with the test. When two physicians on Oppenheimer’s staff (though not Oppie himself) proposed an evacuation, Groves replied, “What are you, Hearst propagandists?”

Admiral Williams Leahy, President Truman’s chief of staff – who opposed dropping the bomb on Japan – placed the bomb in the same category as “poison gas.” And, sure enough, soon after the shot went off before dawn on July 16, scientists monitored some alarming evidence. Radiation was quickly settling to earth in a band thirty miles wide by 100 miles long. A paralyzed mule was discovered twenty-five miles from ground zero.

Still, it could have been worse; the cloud had drifted over loosely-populated areas. “We were just damn lucky,” the head of radiological safety for the test later affirmed.

The local press knew nothing about any of this. When the shock wave had hit the trenches in the desert, Groves’ first words were: “We must keep the whole thing quiet.” This set the tone for the decades that followed, with tragic effects for “downwinders” and others tainted across the country, workers in the nuclear industry, “atomic soldiers,” those who questioned the building of the hydrogen bomb and an expanding arms race, among others.

Naturally, reporters were curious about the big blast, however, so Groves released a statement written by W.L. Laurence (who was on leave from the New York Times and playing the role of chief atomic propagandist) announcing that an ammunition dump had exploded.

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Scientists to Biden: Cancel New Nuclear IBM System

More than 700 scientists have called for an end to the United States’ land-based nuclear weapons program that’s set to be replaced after a Pentagon decision to approve the program despite soaring costs. 

In an open letter to President Joe Biden and Congress, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) argued againstthe new intercontinental-range ballistic missile system, known as Sentinel.

“As scientists and engineers, we are acutely aware of the grave risk of nuclear war,” the letter began. “We are particularly concerned about the needless dangers created by the deployment of expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary land-based, intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs).” The scientists said the land-based nuclear weapons are unnecessary because:

“The United States deploys an assured ability to retaliate against a nuclear attack without land-based missiles. Roughly 1,000 nuclear warheads are deployed on U.S. submarines hidden at sea, essentially invulnerable to attack. Submarine-launched ballistic missiles are as accurate as silo-based missiles, quick to respond, and provide more destructive capability than could ever be employed effectively.

Specifically, one nuclear detonation can destroy an entire city; hundreds or thousands of detonations would cause millions of immediate deaths, the destruction of critical infrastructure, and potentially catastrophic climate impacts. The U.S. Navy deploys twelve submarines and is working to replace the entire fleet. Silo-based missiles do not provide any important additional capability.”

The Department of Defense on Monday certified the continuation of the Sentinel project, releasing the results of a review that was legally required when the cost estimate ballooned to “at least” $131 billion earlier this year, which drew the scrutiny of some Democrats in Congress, according to The Hill. 

The Defense review found that Sentinel was “essential to national security,” but 716 scientists, including ten Nobel laureates and 23 members of the National Academies,  disagreed with the assessment. 

“There is no sound technical or strategic rationale for spending tens of billions of dollars building new nuclear weapons,” Tara Drozdenko, director of UCS’ global security program, said in a statement. 

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Problem Plagued Sentinel ICBM Program Will Press Ahead Despite Nearly Doubling In Cost

The U.S. Air Force is pushing ahead with its struggling Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program despite a new projected price tag of nearly $141 billion, close to twice the original estimate, and now years of expected delays. The Pentagon says it has assessed that there are no lower-cost, but similarly capable alternatives to Sentinel, which is expected to replace the existing Minuteman III ICBM as one of the three legs of America’s nuclear deterrent triad.

The Office of the Secretary of Defense announced the results of an official review of the Sentinel program today. By law, per what is commonly referred to as the Nunn-McCurdy Amendment, defense programs that see certain levels of extreme cost growth must be canceled unless various criteria are met. Sentinel’s rising price point triggered a breach of the Nunn-McCurdy statute in January. The Air Force also sacked the top officer in charge of the program last month, but said this was “not directly related to the Nunn-McCurdy review,” according to Defense One.

The Air Force currently has some 400 LGM-30G Minuteman IIIs deployed in silos spread across five states.

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