Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Just rebranding nuclear power reactors as “Small Modular” (SMRs) or “Advanced” reactors will have no impact on the decline of nuclear power. Their smaller units may cost less but they produce less power.
     They will initially at least double the cost of existing reactors per kilowatt hour. Renewables’ costs will halve again before SMRs can scale. Mass production cannot bridge that huge cost gap. SMRs will not have time to scale before renewables has decarbonized the U.S. grid.
      Even if nuclear power reactors were free, they could not compete. Their non-nuclear parts cost too much. Small Modular renewables are decades ahead of nuclear in exploiting mass-production economies. Nuclear power can never catch up. It is not just a matter of too little, too late. Nuclear power hogs market space, jams grid capacity and diverts investments that more-climate-effective carbon-free competitors that can’t contest.
     In the meantime, SMRs’ novel safety and proliferation issues threaten reduced schedules and short budgets. This means that promoters are attacking bedrock safety regulation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) proposed Part 53 would perfect long-evolving regulatory capture. Staff will be shifted away from end-to-end process from specific prescriptive standards, rigorous quality control, and verified technical performance to unsupported claims, proprietary data and political appointees’ subjective risk estimates.
     Regulatory capture is a termed used to refer to regulatory government agencies being “captured” by the companies that they are supposed to regulate. In the case of the NRC, they have bent or ignored regulations when dealing with nuclear power plant operators. In one case, they even change their rules so that a particular nuclear power plant operator would not violate the rules.
     Even that final abdication of responsibility on the part of the NRC cannot rescue nuclear power. It stumbles even in countries with impotent regulatory agencies and suppressed public participation. Ultimately, physics and human fallibility will doom nuclear power generation. History teaches that lax regulation ultimate causes confidence-shattering accidents. Maybe gutting safety rules is just a deferred-assisted-suicide pact.
     Modern renewable generation keeps rising faster than nuclear power generation ever did in its period of peak popularities. During the period 2010-2020, renewables reduced global power-sector carbon emissions six times more than coal-to-gas switching and five times more than nuclear growth.
     Germany replaced both nuclear and coal generation with efficiency and renewables. In 2010-2020, generation from lignite fell thirty-seven percent, hard coal fell sixty four percent, oil fell fifty two percent and nuclear fell fifty four percent. Power generation from gas rose three percent, GDP rose eleven percent, power sector CO2 fell forty one percent, which met its target a year early with five percentage points to spare.
     Japan energy savings and renewables growth displaced one hundred and nine percent of the electricity lost by nuclear plant shutdowns when adjusted for GDP growth. Its twenty-one operational reactors which have been shut for between ten and fourteen years have lost their market. No country retains an operational need or business case for big “baseload” thermal plants. These plants are expensive, inflexible and now superfluous for reliability.
     Many people in Washington, D.C. continue to claim that “all of the above” must be the response to mitigating climate change. This is not true. The more urgent the problem is, we more we must invest carefully in order to buy cheap, fast, sure options instead of slow, speculative ones. This is the only strategy that will save the most carbon per dollar and per year. Any other course will only make climate change worse.

Ambient office = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 61 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Red onion from Central Market = 106 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 62 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     There is a debate raging over whether protecting the climate will require more nuclear power plants. Saving the most carbon per dollar and per years requires not just generators that do not use fossil fuels but also requires those power sources that are deployable with the least cost and time. So nuclear power is not a solution to climate change.
     Nuclear power supplies about ten percent of global electricity and twenty percent of U.S. electricity. Nuclear power has been historically significant, but the industry is now stagnating. In 2020, its global capacity additions minus its global retirements only totaled about four hundred megawatts. In contrast, renewable energy sources added two hundred seventy-eight gigawatts to the global supply. Renewable energy increased supply and displaced carbon as much every thirty-eight hours as nuclear power did all year. As of early December, the score was minus three gigawatts as opposed to plus two hundred and ninety gigawatts.
     Global investment annually in energy efficiency and renewables is about three hundred billion dollars. Most of this is private capital. However, about fifteen billion to three hundred billion dollars a year is invested in nuclear. Most of that money was conscripted because the investors lost money on the investments. Two hundred and fifty-nine U.S. nuclear power reactors were ordered between 1955-2016. Only one hundred and twelve of these were constructed and ninety-three remain operational. By mid-2017, only twenty-eight of these reactors were competitive in the energy market and did not suffer outages of more than a year.
     Renewable energy sources supplied all global electricity growth in 2020. Nuclear power struggles to maintain its tiny marginal share as its vendors, culture and prospects shrivel. World reactors are an average thirty-one years old. In the U.S., the average age is forty-one years old. In a few years, the retirement of old and uncompetitive reactors will eclipse additions which will tip output into permanent decline. World nuclear power capacity has already fallen in five of the last twelve years for a two percent net drop. Performance of the global reactor fleet has become erratic. The average French reactors in 2020 produced no energy one third of the time.
     China is responsible for most current and projected nuclear growth. However, China’s investment in renewables just about matches its cumulative investment in nuclear power from 2008 to 2020. Altogether, in 2020, in China, sun and wind generated twice nuclear’s output per kilowatt hour. 
     Nuclear power has very bleak prospects because it has no solid business case. New plants cost three to eight times or five to thirteen more per kilowatt hour than unsubsidized new solar or wind power. This means that nuclear power produces three to thirteen times fewer kilowatt hours per dollar and displaces three to thirteen times less carbon per dollar than new renewables. Buying nuclear makes climate change worse. End-use efficiency is even cheaper than renewables and even more climate effective.
     Unsubsidized efficiency or renewables even beat most existing reactors’ operating costs causing a dozen reactors to close over the last decade. Congress is trying to rescue the others with a six-billion-dollar lifeline and durable, generous new operating subsidies to replace or augment state generosity. This joins existing federal subsidies that rival or exceed nuclear construction costs.
     But no case for business means no case for climate mitigation. Propping up uncompetitive assets to keep them in the marketplace blocks more climate effective replacements. Efficiency and renewables save more carbon per dollar. Supporters of new subsidies for nuclear power plants to save the climate have been defrauded.
Please read Part 2 next

Ambient office = 120 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 125 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 125 nanosieverts per hour

English cucumber from Central Market = 94 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 100 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     Ryabkov has emerged recently as a key Russian messenger as President Vladimir Putin presses for Western Security guarantees while facing warnings from the U.S. and its allies to back away from a possible invasion of Ukraine. Ryabkov continues to insist that Russia has no such intention. He repeated a comparison that he made last week between current tensions and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. This crisis brought the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the brink of World War III.
     During the Cuban Missiles crisis, the Soviet Union shipped nuclear missiles to Cuba. When this was discovered by examination of satellite photographs, the U.S. responded by establishing a blockage around Cuba and threatened the Soviets with retaliation if they broke the blockade. After a tense time of negotiation with the world on the brink of war, the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed on terms for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba. What most people did not know at the time was exactly how close the world came to nuclear destruction.
     There was a U.S. picket ship enforcing the blockage around Cuba when a Russian ship crossed the blockage line. The normal procedure for such an event would be an escalation of U.S. forces around Cuba. However, the captain of the U.S. ship told his crew to stand by to see if the Russian ship might be having navigation problems and had crossed the picket line accidentally. After a few tense hours, the Russia ship turned around and sailed out of the blockade zone. They were having navigation problems.
      There was also a pack of Russian submarines in the waters off Cuba. At one point, the Russian subs lost communication with their surface craft. The top command of the sub pack consisted of an admiral, a Community Party official and the captain of the sub that all three were traveling on. Fearing that the forces on the surface were engaged in open warfare, the Admiral and Communist party official decided that they should launch their missiles at U.S. forces. All three of them had to simultaneously turn their key in the control panel to activate the launch of missiles. While two out of three wanted to launch, the captain refused to use his key and demanded that they wait to see if communication could be reestablished with the surface. This did happen and, once again, war was averted.
     Ryabkov stated that there were “indirect indications” that NATO was moving closer to re-deploying intermediate-range missiles. This included its recent restoration of the 56th Artillery Command which operated nuclear-capable Pershing missiles during the Cold War.
     NATO states that there will be no new U.S. missiles in Europe and that it is ready to deter new Russian missiles with a “measured” response that would only involve conventional weapons. Ryabkov responded that Russia had a “complete lack of trust” in the alliance. He said, “They don’t permit themselves to do anything that could somehow increase our security – they believe they can act as they need, to their advantage, and we simply have to swallow all this and deal with it. This is not going to continue.”

Ambient office = 113 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside =83 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 84 nanosieverts per hour

Broccoli from Central Market = 75 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 80 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 72 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
     When I was a kid during the Cold War, we regularly held drills where we would crawl under our desks in case of nuclear attack. I had nightmares about seeing my world dissolve into a radioactive wasteland. I was relieved when the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, assuming that the nuclear nightmare was over. However, as the years went by, the Russians who inherited the Soviet nuclear weapons, became more and more belligerent.
     Russia has been threatening nuclear war for decades. They have flown their nuclear bombers over other countries without warning, sailed their nuclear ships through coastal waters of other countries without notice, and continually bragged about “super weapons” that could not be stopped by antimissile systems. Some analysts say that we are as close to World War III as we have ever been. My childhood monster is back, or it never left.
     Last Monday, the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia may be forced to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Eastern Europe as a response to NATO who they believe are getting ready to move their own nuclear missiles into Easter Europe.
      Ryabkov said that Russia would be forced to take such action if the Western nations refused to join Russia in a moratorium on intermediate range nuclear forces in Europe. Such a moratorium is part of a series of security guarantees that Russa is seeking as the cost of defusing the current crisis over Ukraine where Russia is massing troops and hardware on the Russian-Ukraine border.
    Ryabkov told a Russian news agency that lack of international progress towards a political and diplomatic solution would cause Russia to respond militarily. He said, “That is, it will be a confrontation, this will be the next round.” This is a reference to a possible deployment of nuclear missiles by Russia in Eastern Europe.
     Intermediate-range nuclear weapons are those with a range between three hundred and thirty-four hundred miles. They were banned in Europe under a 1987 treaty between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President Ronald Reagan. This was hailed at the time as a major relaxing of Cold War tensions. By 1991, the two sides had destroyed about twenty-seven hundred missiles.
     Washington withdrew from the pact in 2019 after complaining for years that Russia was violating the treaty. This concerned Russian’s development of a ground-launched cruise missile that Russia referred to as the 9M729 and NATO called the “Screwdriver.” If NATO is correct that Russia has already deployed this system in the European part of the country, west of the Ural Mountain, then the threat issued by Ryabkov is an empty one. This analysis comes from Gerhard Mangott who is an expert on Russian Foreign Policy and arms control at the University of Innsbruck in Austria.
      On the other hand, if the Russian denial of deployment is true, he said, then Russia’s warning is “the final signal to NATO that it should enter into talks with Russia about a freeze-freeze agreement.” He has also said that “If NATO sticks to its current position to not negotiate any deal, then we will certainly see Russia deploy the Screwdriver missile at its western border.
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