Forward Deployed Nukes in Europe?
Previously in the last article we briefly reported that the three nuclear power plants in the Netherlands had reduced their power output to minimum. This is a technique of lowering the radioactive rods into the cooling pool, reducing heat that boils the water to make steam that turns the electric generators.
Interestingly enough that when the Japanese Fukishima Diechi reactors were inundated by the 60 meters high tidal wave the rods at that plant could not be lowered fast enough. There still remain miles of radioactive landscape that is uninhabitable with little success of clean up. The radioactivity has spread across the Pacific Ocean and now is killing our fishing industry and sea dependant wildlife. All nuclear power plants must be adjacent to seawater, or rivers, to maintain cooling rods stability. This places humanity at risk.
Nuclear power plants exist all over the European landscape, although Germany is shutting theirs down on a permanent basis. The reason for nuclear power plants is that they can produce electricity in vast mega-watt amounts wherein the oil and coal fired plants are less cost effective and of course produce carbon emissions.
Besides producing electricity and jobs, the nuclear power plants produce plutonium and enriched uranium, which of course are used in nuclear weapons. The storage of these elements is extremely difficult to properly store. France uses their own landscape to build and store these deadly elements, other countries by agreement with the United States ship their radioactive elements for storage in the deserts of the United States, namely Nevada, where in a constant battle between the government and Nevada remains over sovereignty of the Federal lands and states rights. The United States has created a vast underground storage area, claiming it is safe. The opposite view is that in ten thousand years will the humans understand what these facilities are and will they open them? Most of these radioactive deadly elements take about 20,000 years to decay to a half-life. That still leaves thousands of years of earthquakes and changes in the landscape to maintain safety for future generations. Perhaps there will be no humans in the future? Who cares?
The current worry, by those who care, is security for the existing and future construction of nuclear reactors. Security is understanding the aging of the plants, the design obsolescence of the plants, the leaking into the ground water, rivers and ocean of radioactivity due to age, Airplane attack (Think 9/11 Twin Towers), meteors, explosives by terrorists, and the list goes on and on. Chernobyl reactors in Russia have laid waste to hundreds of square miles of desolation forever. Again, the problem was cooling the rods and an inept control room staff. What do you do with the radioactive rods (Hundreds) when refurbishing or shutting down a plant?
Considering ISIS brand of terrorism they care not for personal ISIS terrorist lives that plan and carry out horrendous acts of destruction. These radicalized Muslim extremists have their sights set on a nuclear reactor destroying most of Europe, the United States, India, and other nations. They will probably succeed, in time, constructing their own nuclear weapon. ISIS has the money, skilled educated, and dedicated radicals who know how to construct a weapon, much like North Korea, and Pakistan, where such resources are available for money and fundamental ideology sharing.
During the Soviet era Cold War the United States in concert with NATO placed nuclear weapons in “secure” locations hither and yon in Europe, perhaps in Asia also. These weapon secure areas have been penetrated by anti-nuclear demonstrators as recent as 2010 and finding only one Belgium Security guard without a clip for his rifle. Although these “secure” depositories may have upgraded their guards, the fact is that weapons storage from the “Cold War era” is a tempting target for ISIS. The question remains why do we need these weapons in a “Forward Deployed” risky area? We have ICBM’s, Cruise Missiles, Land and Sea Mines, etc. and they are all nuke tipped. We no longer have to rely on close proximity to Russian, North Korean, or anybody’s threats necessitating loading these unguided weapons onto bomber aircraft. The military mindset is one of permanence, and not easy to change. The Commander in Chief at the White House is probably unaware of these risks and is probably leaving such decisions of nuclear design, storage, and all the hundreds of critical decisions to his staff. He has political decisions to make, and in the mean time dance to the Tango, and Wave at the ball games.
Let us not forget North Korea. There appears another blackout of news concerning the information that North Korea alleges to have created its first solid fuel ICBM booster. In the old days of nuclear warfare to launch an ICBM you had to take an hour, or so, to fill the boosters and rocket tanks with liquid fuel. You could be decimated by the time you were filling your rockets for a retaliatory strike. What? No body told you? Anyway, solid fuel is a quantum jump in rocket propulsion, which is ready at the moment in the launcher tube, or platform. We have been using and upgrading our solid fuel propulsion for decades.
This solid fuel propulsion coupled with a thermonuclear (hydrogen) warhead implies that North Korea is ready to go. This is a serious major deterrent for an armed invasion of that country, or even a first nuclear strike. As you will recall most modern, and North Korea is more modern that we are led to believe, has a modern mobile weapons carrier. Most of these movable weapons platforms towed by a tractor-trailer type vehicle are indistinguishable by satellite, and if launched the IF signature is barely traceable as is in Russian technology.
We on the other hand are making headway with the 1940’s Japanese concept of research on Lasers that ” burn ‘em out of the sky”. This concept is in early production and installed on test ships of the US Navy. My only question is when the electrical supply is cut off when engaging a surface combatant, what do you use? This research will place us ahead in weapons defense, as many defense missiles cannot approach the re-entry speed of an ICBM. Laser beam technology puts us ahead of the pack, and is cheaper than missiles, missile upgrades, launchers, maintenance, and manpower. GO NAVY.
God Bless the sons of Abraham, who in the history of religion have spawned Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim religion. It is the interpretation of these religions by many varied sects that cause all the trouble because each sect thinks that they have the supreme answer. Then there is the extreme ISIS. I do not consider them as a religion as they are reminiscent of the ancient Vandals who destroyed everything in their path.
God Bless again,
Old Timer,
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