For those following, here is Craig’s third update:
I started these updates when there was not a lot of good information available and when the various media outlets were reporting everything but the science, leaving many people confused. There are a lot of good reports out there now, so I’ve felt less of a need to keep up. The New York Times, NPR, and the BBC are doing a great job on all fronts, so you can read as much as you like on your own, but I did have some things I wanted to discuss.
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Here is Craig’s latest update:
The situation seems to have changed a bit since my last update. The emergency cooling system ultimately failed at the Number 1 reactor at Fukushima. In order to prevent the possibility of a meltdown, they’ve decided to flood the containment vessel with salt water and boric acid. The water, as always, is intended to cool the reactor. The salt will corrode all the metal in the reactor over time, so this move means they’ve decided that the number 1 reactor is a loss, which probably has as much to do with the reactor’s age as anything else. The boric acid, on the other hand, is intended to slow the chain reaction further. As the result of a chemical reaction, hydrogen gas began to build up. Hydrogen gas being very flammable, this buildup caused the explosion.
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The following insight comes from Mr. Craig Nelson, a doctoral student in East Asian history at The Ohio State University and a colleague of myself and Mark Rice. Craig’s doctoral research centers on the nuclear power industry in Japan, with a focus on nuclear safety.
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On Tuesday, 6 July in Baghdad, the Department of Defense preferred two criminal charges against Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst from the 10th Mountain Division. Arrested in May, Manning had been held without charges in Kuwait. The charges, consisting of 12 specifications, are under Articles 92 and 134 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. Manning is accused of the unauthorized transfer and possession of classified information in the form of videos, Department of State cables, and a PowerPoint presentation to his personal computer, and then the further transfer of classified photographs, video, and Department of State cables to unauthorized personnel.
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Ocean Guardian drill rig currently operating off the Falklands (MercoPress)
The Deep Water Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is demonstrating to the world the environmental and financial risks accompanied with offshore oil drilling operations. Lost to American audiences amidst the BP gulf disaster was this past Friday’s announcement by Rockhopper Exploration that the Sea Lion oil well north of the Falkland Islands contains an estimated 170 to 242 million barrels of oil, a 42% increase over previous estimates. This field is potentially part of a larger oil field that rivals, and may surpass, the oil fields of the North Sea. Shares for the small oil company have continued to rise all year since the Sea Lion drilling began in April.
Frank Blazich Articles Britain, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Falkland Islands, Falklands, oil discovery, Rockhopper Exploration, United Kingdom
Iran, Turkey, and Brazil signed a joint declaration on 17 May in Tehran in which Iran agreed to ship 2,640 pounds of low-enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey. In exchange, the Vienna Group (Five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) would deliver 264 pounds of 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. If the Vienna Group agrees to the exchange, Iran would be ready to despite the 2,640 pounds of LEU within one month, obligating the Vienna group to deliver the 20% enriched uranium no later than one year. The uranium in Turkey would remain Iranian property but the International Atomic Energy Agency would be able to station observers to monitor the material.
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In Washington on Wednesday, 12 May at the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, hearings were held on “The Future of U.S. Human Space Flight.” Principle among the elements of the Fiscal Year 2011 NASA Budget Estimates is the cancellation of the Project Constellation program, intended to develop a replacement spacecraft and booster vehicles for the space shuttle program. Simply stated, the cancellation of Constellation means the end of the United States manned space program. The alternatives include sending Americans aloft in Russian Soyuz spacecraft or hitching potential rides aboard privately developed commercial spacecraft. At present, only Russia and China have the capability to send men into space, with India and the European Space Agency planning to send men aloft in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
Frank Blazich Articles Constellation program, manned space flight, NASA
In accordance with the terms of the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), the parties to the treaty are meeting this month at the United Nations Headquarters in New York for their five-year review conference. Prior the NPT review, this past April witnessed the United States and Russia signing the New START treaty and the U.S. played host to 46 heads of state for the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. With these recent developments and the continuation of concern over Iran’s nuclear program, this NPT review conference stands to be of interest for the years to come.
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This past Monday, NPR published a brief article about the fate of the C-17 Globemaster III assembly line in Long Beach, California. While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates desires the program to end, Boeing is hunting for foreign buyers to keep the assembly line open and its 5,000 workers employed. Boeing C-17 spokesman Jerry Drelling emphasized the loss of the workers’ technical expertise should production cease:
The workforce here is one of the best in the world. It’s advanced. You close a line like this, you run the risk of losing a lot of those skills sets for a long, long time.
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A recent article in the New York Times proffers that President Barack Obama faces the decision of approving the further development and deployment of a new class of non-nuclear offensive strategic weapons. Deemed the Conventional Prompt Global Strike (CPGS) system, the weapon, delivered by existing strategic weapon systems (missile or air-launched) is designed to deliver a massive conventional explosive globally, striking its target under an hour of launch with surgical precision. The CPGS would theoretically provide the president with a non-nuclear capability to neutralize and destroy imminent threats based on time-sensitive intelligence, for example a potential missile launch or report on the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
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