Comics

Nuclear Man

Nuclear Weapons: 20 facts they don't want you to think about

Nuclear weapons: 20 facts they don't want you to think about

(Politicians and their Armageddon machines)

 Nuclear arsenals - who wants them? A coterie of politicians.

Why do they want them? - For the illusion of power and to feed their egos.

How do they keep them? - By fostering a culture of fear.

How do they do that? - By positing a Threatening and Unknown Future.

 There are 5 primary nuclear weapons states (and four others from proliferation). The politicians of these 5 nuclear states put the future of the citizens of all the other 187 states of the UN at risk as well as their own citizens because of their insistence in keeping their nuclear arsenals.

In no case have the citizens been asked if they want these arsenals.

The reason these politicians want these Armageddon weapons is because they believe it gives them stature and power; makes them players; gets their feet under the top table. For this perceived personal benefit they are prepared to put the survival of the human race at risk.

Nuclear arsenals are the ruthless tools of power-fixated individuals.

 In order to keep their arsenals, these individuals must keep the citizens in ignorance. We have a vague dread of these things and what they can do. Humanity has a residual group memory of the unspeakable suffering of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But this is very scary. We don't want to think about it. And that suits the power junkies just fine. Ignorance is power – for the junkies - but not the citizens.

If the truth about nuclear weapons was known there would be millions demonstrating in cities round the world. The arsenals would be dismantled. (By ‘known' is meant really known; not just an idea in our heads. Known in the way we know a loved person has died or we have been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease).

The effects of nuclear explosions on people defy the imagination and our ability (and willingness) to contemplate such degrees of human suffering. But how can we make rational judgements if we do not face the nightmarish facts?

 Reciting facts will not ensure the necessary degree of knowing. But it is a start – the basis for critical evaluation.

 So here are 20 facts they don't want you to think about:-

 There are at least 23,000 nuclear weapons1 in existence: sufficient to wipe out the entire human population of the planet many times over.

 Of the 23,000 nuclear weapons in existence around 2,500 are on High Alert2. This means they are ready to be launched at a moment's notice.

 The missiles delivering nuclear weapons to their target travel at faster than 1000 miles in 4 minutes3.

 The only way our armed forces have of knowing if a nuclear attack is in progress is through an electronic early warning system. This system, like all electronic systems, is subject to malfunction.

 When the electronic warning system signals that a nuclear attack is in progress the military chiefs of staff have a matter of minutes to decide if the warning is true or false.

 If the chiefs of staff instruct the Prime Minister/President that an attack is in progress he has a matter of minutes to decide if this information is reliable and to press the button launching a retaliatory strike.

 Central London would be utterly destroyed by a single megaton bomb.

 One such bomb would, due to the blast alone, cause 98% deaths from Westminster to the City of London and from Lambeth to Marylebone.

 A modelled attack on Detroit (when the population was 1.32 million) predicted that a single 1 megaton bomb exploded above the city would cause up to 630,000 deaths and injuries from blast alone. 83% of the population would be immediately killed or injured. Many of the remaining population would die or suffer terribly from the effects of radioactive fallout.

 One 5 megaton nuclear bomb has as much explosive power as all the explosives used in the second world war.

 If a nuclear power station or nuclear waste disposal site were the target of a nuclear attack it has been estimated that the resulting contamination would cover an area nearly 3 times that of Wales.

 Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki referred to the pain and suffering as ‘indescribable' and ‘hell on earth'. Eventually some survivors of Hiroshima arrived in hospital elsewhere. Such was their degree of suffering that when a nurse entered the ward they screamed for her to kill them.

 There have been various crises since 1945 when the world came within a hair's breadth of nuclear war. Our luck will run out. The system is held primed at all times.

 In one crisis a single man saved the world from destruction. If Stanislav Petrov, in 1983 had told his Russian superiors that his electronic monitors were signalling a massive nuclear attack from the US there would have been a global nuclear war. He did not tell them and the signals turned out to have been due to a malfunction.

 A nuclear war would cause a blanket of particles in the atmosphere that would blot out the sun's rays and result in the death of the vegetation on which life depends. This would be in addition to the death to people, animals and plants caused by the explosive power, the radiation and the shockwaves.

 Each of the weapons carried on the UK Trident submarine is 7 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb which killed 140,000. The UK Trident submarine carries 16 Trident missiles. Each missile can contain 3 No. 100 kiloton weapons. A single submarine is designed to carry over 300 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

 The nuclear weapons on a single Trident submarine can destroy over 40 million people (extrapolating from Hiroshima).

 The UK nuclear arsenal alone has the destructive power to destroy over 80% of the 195 capital cities of the world.

 We in the UK have 4 Trident submarines; our ally, the US, has 14.

 Trident renewal will cost the taxpayer 97 thousand million pounds yet it is totally useless in opposing any real existing threat.

 We ignored the threats from the banking system until the first banks started to collapse. Then we took emergency action.

We are behaving in the same way with the immeasurably more dangerous nuclear weapons arsenals. If we wait till the first nuclear weapons are launched no emergency action will help the millions of dead and dying. Our power-obsessed politicians will have done their irretrievable worst.

 1.  http://www.abolition2000uk.org/Blackaby 8 final complete with cover.pdf

2.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-alert_nuclear_weapon

3.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:James_Kemp/Trident_missile

Jim McCluskey

September 2010

…………….

 

 

About the Author

Jim McCluskey is a UK peace activist and author of 'The Nuclear Threat: Intolerable and Avoidable'. He is a director of International Lawers for Accountability and Peace (INLAP)

What man made materials and structures are used to produce nuclear energy?

What man made materials and structures are used to produce nuclear energy???

Despite all the cosmic energy that the word "nuclear" invokes, power plants that depend on atomic energy don't operate that differently from a typical coal-burning power plant. Both heat water into pressurized steam, which drives a turbine generator. The key difference between the two plants is the method of heating the water. While coal plants burn fossil fuels, nuclear plants depend on the heat that occurs during nuclear fission, when one atom splits into two.
There are several components common to most types of reactors:

Fuel. Usually ceramic pellets of uranium oxide (UO2) arranged in Zirconium steel alloy tubes to form fuel rods. The rods are arranged into fuel assemblies in the reactor core.

Moderator. This is material which slows down the neutrons released from fission so that they cause more fission. It is usually water, but may be heavy water or graphite.

Control rods. These are made with neutron-absorbing material such as silver, cadmium, hafnium or boron, and are inserted or withdrawn from the core to control the rate of reaction, or to halt it. (Secondary shutdown systems involve adding other neutron absorbers, usually boron in the primary cooling system.) This controls the average temperature and allows extra fuel to be added for a extended time between refueling.

Coolant. A liquid or gas circulating through the core so as to transfer the heat from it. In light water reactors the moderator functions also as coolant.

Pressure vessel or pressure tubes. Usually a robust steel vessel containing the reactor core and moderator/coolant, but it may be a series of tubes holding the fuel and conveying the coolant through the moderator.

Steam generator. Part of the cooling system in Pressurized Water Reactors where the heat from the reactor is used to make steam for the turbine. Some reactor designs, called Boiling Water Reactors, do not have S/Gs but instead allow boiling in the reactor core to produce steam for the turbine.(Largest part in a PWR)

Containment. The structure around the reactor core which is designed to protect it from outside intrusion and to protect those outside from the effects of radiation in case of any major malfunction inside. It is typically a meter (3ft.) thick concrete and steel structure designed to be air/water tight to prevent any leak to the environment in the worst case Loss Of Coolant accident.

Most reactors need to be shut down for refueling, so that the pressure vessel can be opened up. In this case refueling is at intervals of 1-2 years, when a quarter to a third of the fuel assemblies are replaced with fresh ones. The CANDU and RBMK types have pressure tubes (rather than a pressure vessel enclosing the reactor core) and can be refueled while still generating electricity by disconnecting individual pressure tubes.

If graphite or heavy water is used as moderator, it is possible to run a power reactor on natural instead of enriched uranium. Natural uranium has the same elemental composition as when it was mined (0.7% U-235, over 99.2% U-238), enriched uranium has had the proportion of the fissile isotope (U-235) increased by a process called enrichment, commonly to 3.5 - 5.0%. In this case the moderator can be ordinary water, and such reactors are collectively called light water reactors. Because the light water absorbs neutrons as well as slowing them, it is less efficient as a moderator than heavy water or graphite.

Practically all fuel is ceramic uranium oxide (UO2 with a melting point of 2800°C) and most is enriched. The fuel pellets (usually about 1 cm diameter and 1.5 cm long) are typically arranged in a long zirconium alloy (zircaloy) tube to form a fuel rod, the zirconium being hard, corrosion-resistant and permeable to neutrons. Up to 264 rods form a fuel assembly, which is an open lattice and can be lifted into and out of the reactor core. In the most common reactors these are about 3.5-4.0 meters (12ft.) long.
The uranium 235 in these pellets absorb slowed down (moderated or thermal) neutrons, becoming unstable U-236 which splits, creating; heat, gamma, neutrons, and fission fragments. The heat generated can be calculated from the mass loss in the fission process equal to the famous equation E=MC squared, also known as binding energy. The energy released from a single fuel pellet is equivalent to the energy released burning 1 ton of coal.
The links below have some excellent detailed information and graphics about nuclear power. I hope this helps you to de-mystify nuclear power, it really isn't that complicated, and is a safe, reliable, environmentally friendly, economical, energy source.

Superman IV: Superman vs Nuclear Man full uncut fight