While I was on vacation I had the opportunity to read a book titled ” Plutonium ” by Jeremy Bernstein. It’s a book many of the folks on your e-mail list would enjoy. Frank Lock
April 3, 2009 To the Editor: Re “Promises of a ‘Fresh Start’ for U.S.-Russia Relations” (news article, April 2): Twenty-three years ago, President Ronald Reagan and President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of the Soviet Union nearly signed an agreement to abolish nuclear weapons, but American commitment to missile defense killed the deal. It was a fateful [...Read More]
Teaching Nonproliferation is currently under construction! Eventually we hope to become an easy-to-use, practical resource for those who are interested in learning or teaching others about preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. We are building resources for a wide audience; no matter the extent of your nuclear knowledge you will find something useful here. We [...Read More]
From the article
“The results of this analysis are encouraging. We find that a transition to efficiency and renewable energy in the power sector is likely to be less expensive than BAU. Table 1 shows the net costs of the Transition Scenario relative to BAU at four points in time. These are annual costs, not cumulative. The net present value of the 40-year stream of savings and costs is a savings of $83 billion, discounted at 4.8%.”
This damn interesting article from damninteresting.com describes the largest bomb ever built — the USSR’s Tsar Bomb.
The giant fireball reached from ground-level to about 34,000 feet into the air, violently releasing 3800 times more explosive energy than the Hiroshima bomb– equivalent to fifty million metric tons of TNT. One hundred kilometers from ground zero the heat would have inflicted third degree burns. Atmospheric focusing produced areas of destruction hundreds of kilometers from ground zero, including wooden structures which were completely destroyed, and some shattered windows in Finland. The explosion’s atmospheric shockwave traveled around the Earth three times before it dissipated.
Video footage of the bomb with appropriately frightening music is available here.
Nuclearfiles.org has a fantastic and comprehensive collection of course syllabi available for various topics from International Law to Nuclear Strategy.
They’re all available for free here.
Coming soon!
This video from Harvard’s Department of Physics visualizes nuclear fusion with an array of mousetraps! A single neutron (ping pong ball) is dropped on the mass of uranium atoms (mousetraps) causing a chain reaction in which all of the atoms (mousetraps) split and eject neutrons (more ping pong balls). A more technical explanation is available here.
The Economist hosted an excellent debate on the future of nuclear power. Though debate and the subsequent online vote has ended, the content can still be accessed here. Tom Burke of Third Generation Environmentalism writes:
Avoiding the radiological risks associated with civil nuclear power, whether in normal operation or from a catastrophe, is not the main reason the world would be better off without it. Atoms cannot be made to work for peace without making them available for war.
The full debate is available from The Economist‘s website.
The problem of how to warn people to stay away from nuclear waste at first seems obvious: put up some signs and let people’s fear do the rest. But some nuclear waste will remain dangerous for 10,000 years, longer than we can reasonably expect today’s languages and danger symbols to survive. How do we warn people millennia from now of the dangers posed by nuclear waste sites? Mental floss has an interesting article devoted to the topic here.
Michail Hengstenberg, Gesche Sager and Philine Gebhardt have written a fascinating article about the world’s nuclear no-go areas for Spiegel Online.
…disasters like Three Mile Island and Fukushima are not as rare as one would hope. There have been plenty of atomic accidents resulting in significant radioactive leaks, spills and explosions. And the Chernobly Exclusion Zone, for all the attention it gets, is far from the only nuclear no-go area on the planet. A look at some of the worst incidents is enough to demonstrate just how high the price of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons truly is.
Read the rest here.
Hi all,
Thanks to Marko for sharing this video with us.
“A discussion with Georgetown faculty and students on the current situation in Japan and the challenges that lie ahead”
Or, watch on YouTube.
Fondly, Dot
http://www.earthtrack.net/documents/nuclear-power-still-not-viable-without-subsidies
http://facstaff.unca.edu/dsulock/
The first is a report from the UCS on the extent of nuclear power subsidies. We in the nuclear weapons nonproliferation community know of an even more important reason not to do nuclear power, the weapons connection. The second is my homepage wherein lies a powerpoint I made called “Renewable Energy is Sufficient and Affordable.”
