Free Republic

The Biden administration and the Saudis are reportedly cooking up a deal.Under the terms of the agreement, the Saudis will get nuclear capability, defense guarantees and a terrorist state inside Israel. And what will the United States get? Temporarily lower prices.The Saudis are not offering to boost oil production to bring down prices as a favor to America, but to Biden. And it’s an election quid-pro-quo that may cost millions of Americans their lives.After draining the strategic petroleum reserve ahead of the midterms, Biden has been unable to refill it because his environmentalist allies and the Saudis have kept prices...

HONG KONG, May 2 (Reuters) - A senior U.S. official on Thursday urged China and Russia to match declarations by the United States and others that only humans, and never artificial intelligence, would make decisions on deploying nuclear weapons. State Department arms control official Paul Dean told an online briefing that Washington had made a "clear and strong commitment" that humans had total control over nuclear weapons, adding that France and Britain had done the same. "We would welcome a similar statement by China and the Russian Federation," said Dean, principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Arms Control,...

American is set to get a new fleet of 'doomsday planes' that some have said signal the nation could be preparing for World Ward III. The US Air Forced announced a $13 billion contract to develop craft to replace the aging Boeing planes that are used to protect the president during a nuclear attack. The funds were awarded to Sierra Nevada Corp, which will design a successor to the E-4B 'Nightwatch' that features a mobile command post capable of withstanding nuclear blasts and electromagnetic effects. The project, called Survival Airborne Operations Center, is expected to be completed by 2036. The...

Hardline Iranian parliamentarian and member of Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Javad Karimi Ghodousi tweeted on April 22 implying that if granted permission, Iran could test its first nuclear weapon within one week.[17] Parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee Deputy Chairman Shahriar Heydari stated on April 22 in response to Karimi Ghodousi’s tweet that Iran has no ”intention” to build or use nuclear weapons.[18] Heydari cited Khamenei’s 2003 fatwa as the reason Iran is not seeking to acquire or use nuclear weapons. Heydari stated that Karimi Ghodousi's tweet may have been taken out of context.

You’ve likely encountered films such as Dr. Strangelove, Fail Safe, or WarGames, narratives where the specter of nuclear war looms ominously, often triggered by a mere twist of fate. In my latest work, I delve into the unsettling realm of historical near-misses—moments when a convergence of computer glitches, radar anomalies, or communication breakdowns brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. Each chapter meticulously recounts instances where a stray aircraft carrying deadly cargo narrowly averted disaster or when a malfunctioning missile silo threatened to unleash unimaginable devastation. What sets this exploration apart from conventional historical accounts is its narrative...

The job of commanding a nuclear submarine should go to smart and well-qualified officers. Or at least that's the case in Western navies. Not so in the Chinese navy. Except for engineers, Chinese submarine officers tend to come from military academies with the lowest college-entrance-exam scores, a US military analyst said. This suggests that People's Liberation Army Navy sub commanders are not the "best and the brightest" officers who may be most equipped to cope with the stresses and challenges endemic to submarine warfare. Based on China's college-entrance exam — called the gaokoa — the People's Liberation Army Navy engineering...

In August 1961, during a period when tensions between Washington and Moscow were at a high point, Admiral Konstantin I. Derevyanko penned a letter to Premier Krushchev. His purpose was to alert Krushchev to what the Admiral called the “nuclear romanticism” of the Soviet General Staff. The Admiral’s words still carry the force of logic and common sense and are still worthy of our attention today: Which planet do these people [the Soviet General Staff] intend to live on in the future, and to which Earth do they plan to send their troops to conquer territories?... By this indiscriminately massive...

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid. In Georgia, demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of new electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently. Arizona Public Service, the largest utility in that state, is also struggling to keep up, projecting it will be out of transmission capacity before the end of the decade absent...

Scientists in South Korea have announced a new world record for the length of time they sustained temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius — seven times hotter than the sun’s core — during a nuclear fusion experiment, in what they say is an important step forward for this futuristic energy technology.

Hell on Earth. Washington, DC, Possibly Sometime in the Near Future A 1-megaton thermonuclear weapon detonation begins with a flash of light and heat so tremendous it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend. One hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit is four or five times hotter than the temperature at the center of the sun. In the first fraction of a millisecond after the bomb strikes the Pentagon, there is light. Soft X-ray light with a very short wavelength. The light superheats the surrounding air to millions of degrees, creating a massive fire-ball that expands at millions of...

Japan is stepping up efforts to have local authorities approve the restart of the world’s biggest nuclear power plant, the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa facility north of Tokyo... Next week, Japan’s Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry, Ken Saito, is expected to ask the local governor of the Niigata prefecture to approve the restart of the power plant.. In the wake of the Fukushima disaster in 2011, Japan closed all its nuclear power plants that underwent rigorous safety checks and inspections. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa has been offline since 2012, while the Nuclear Regulation Authority in 2021 barred the plant’s operator, utility Tepco, from operating the...

Three dozen progressive House Democrats, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., voted against a bipartisan bill that would streamline the federal permitting process for nuclear energy development. The House passed the so-called Atomic Energy Advancement Act — which was authored by Reps. Jeff Duncan, R-S.C., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo. — in a 365-36 vote Wednesday evening, with 199 Republicans and 166 Democrats voting in favor. However, all 36 nay votes were cast by progressive Democrats who have pushed green energy and, in the case of Ocasio-Cortez, pushed the Green New Deal. "Nuclear power delivers reliable, affordable, and clean energy to...

A Chinese-born researcher has been arrested for allegedly stealing trade secret technologies developed for the U.S. government to detect nuclear missile launches and to track ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).Chenguang Gong, 57, of San Jose, California, was arrested in San Jose on Feb. 6, prosecutors said.Mr. Gong became a U.S. citizen in 2011. He got his master’s degree in electrical engineering from Clemson University and completed some work toward a doctorate at Stanford University, according to court documents.From January 2023 to April 2023, Mr. Gong worked as an engineer for a research and development...

A new reactor at Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear power plant is now in commercial operation, according to an announcement from Georgia Power, one of the plant’s owners. It is the first new nuclear reactor to start up in the United States since the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Watts Bar 2 was commissioned in 2016. The new 1,114 megawatt (MW) Unit 3 reactor joins two existing reactors at Plant Vogtle, which is jointly owned by Georgia Power and three other electric utility companies. The plant’s first two reactors, with a combined 2,430 MW of nameplate capacity, came online in the late 1980s. Georgia...

The market for Grid-scale nuclear will be dominated by 3 players.This is the year we unofficially abandon climate targets because of the growing recognition they are unobtainable.The world’s lightest element (hydrogen) replaces small modular reactors (SMRs) as the most over-hyped idea but we become more realistic about its appropriate industrial uses.Nowadays, you have to prepare for the unexpected, for the event that seems barely plausible but happens. Such as the way Russia did not conquer Ukraine in a week. Or how the European economy survived without Russian gas. Or how quickly inflation subsided. Or how the Chinese foreign minister disappeared....

'Congress alone has the authority' to breach federal dams, lawmakers write in letter to White House.. The Biden administration is quietly discussing a potentially far-reaching settlement with environmental groups that advocate for tearing down four hydroelectric dams in Washington... ... In the filings, jointly submitted by the federal government and eco groups... However, the filing failed to detail exactly what conditions were included in the secretive package .... We find it necessary to remind you Congress alone has the authority not only to order the breach of the Lower Snake River Dams, but also exclusive authority to direct the study...

The U.S. and 21 other countries want to triple the global generation capacity of nuclear power by mid-century. The pledge, announced at the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, comes as more of the world’s governments say increased use of nuclear power is critical to reduce emissions of carbon and combat climate change. Countries involved are the U.S., Canada, the UK, France, South Korea, and the UAE. Officials have said increasing nuclear power in Europe would help European nations reduce dependence on oil and gas from Russia, while conceding it will require major investment....

Several U.N. Security Council resolutions adopted between 2006 and 2010 required Iran to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) investigation of its nuclear activities, suspend its uranium enrichment program, suspend its construction of a heavy-water reactor and related projects, and ratify the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement. Iran did not comply with most of the resolutions’ provisions. However, Tehran has implemented various restrictions on, and provided the IAEA with additional information about, the government’s nuclear program pursuant to the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), On the JCPOA’s Implementation Day, which took place...

The self-described "gay furry hackers" of SiegedSec are back: this time boasting they've broken into America's biggest nuclear power lab's computer systems and stolen records on thousands of employees. Some of that data has already been leaked, it appears. SiegedSec, which also claimed to have breached NATO's IT security on two occasions this year, said it has now hit Idaho National laboratory (INL), which is run by the US Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy. Employee Social Security numbers, physical addresses, and bank account data are among the information said to have been pinched. The lab has at least...

A Royal Navy nuclear submarine equipped with Trident missiles suffered a huge malfunction that sent it into an endless dive before the vessel was righted moments before the crew faced being crushed by underwater pressure, it was claimed today. The Vanguard class sub had been carrying 140 crew when its depth gauge suddenly failed while on a mission in the Atlantic. It caused a frantic scrabble with engineers managing to stop the submarine and its nuclear reactor from plunging further just moments before disaster struck. The deep sea vessel, carrying Trident 2 missiles, was on patrol when the depth indicators...