Ambient office  = 83 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 69 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 61 nanosieverts per hour

Blueberry from Central Market = 95 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 65 nanosieverts per hour

        When we talk about nuclear weapons, we usually mean nuclear missiles and bombs delivering megatons of destruction from half way across the globe. While these have been a great threat for decades, there are also tactical nuclear weapons with low yields that are meant to be used on battlefields against troops and armor instead of cities full of civilians.
       There have been designs, some of which were actually built, for nuclear field artillery pieces, nuclear howitzers, nuclear mortars, suitcase bomb, and even nuclear rifles. One problem with these weapons is the need to insure that the explosions they cause will not kill the soldiers who fired them. There have been many designs that were never built because they turned out to be too impractical.
    During the Cold War, the NATO forces protecting Europe from the Soviet bloc were seriously outnumbered by the troops available to the Warsaw Pact, the equivalent of NATO for the Soviet nations. If the Soviets invaded Europe, it was assumed that they would come across the North German Plain. NATO forces would probably have to fall back as they were hard pressed by the invading forces. NATO built nuclear rockets and artillery shells to be used against a Soviet invasion. They also designed but did not build a nuclear landmine in the 1950s.
       The name of the nuclear landmine project was Blue Peacock. It was designed at the Royal Armament Research and Development Establishment (RARDE) at Fort Halstead in Kent in 1954. In July of 1957, the British Army ordered ten Blue Peacocks for use in Germany in case of a Soviet invasion. However, the Ministry of Defense ultimately canceled the order in February of 1958. One reason for cancelling the order was concern about nuclear fallout beyond the battlefield. Another reason was that there would be serious pollical repercussions from detonating nuclear bombs on German soil.
     The first name for the project was Brown Bunny which became Blue Bunny and finally was changed to Blue Peacock. The mine would weigh sixteen thousand pounds. The casing would be pressurized and there were to be tilt switches, both to prevent tampering.      
        There were three trigger mechanisms suggested for the mines. One would be an eight-day timer of some sort. Another would a wire that ran to a detonator that would be located miles away. And, finally, the mine would detonate if anyone tampered with it.
       One of the technical problems that would have to be solved was dealing with cold weather. It was possible that being buried in frozen soil for days might cause deterioration of the electronics that trigger the bomb. There was a suggestion that some chickens could be used to keep the mine warm until needed. They would be sealed into the mine with just enough food and water to last for eight days. 
       The mines were intended for use on the North German Plain. It was assumed that if the Soviets invaded and pushed the NATO forces back, then the Soviet army would quickly build headquarters, supply depots and other things directly above the buried Blue Peacock mines. When the mines under Soviet installations detonated, ten-kiloton nuclear explosions would destroy what the Soviets had built.
      Some amazing and fantastic weapons were developed during the Cold War. The Blue Peacock land mine was just to crazy to even be deployed.

Ambient office  = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 73 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 67 nanosieverts per hour

Orange bell pepper from Central Market = 70 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 90 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 78 nanosieverts per hour

Part 2 of 2 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
       The letter goes on to say that the authors advocate that renewables and nuclear both be part of the energy solution. They say that we need to build a lot of new nuclear reactors very quickly. They say that building sixty-one new nuclear reactors a year could generate enough electricity to replace current fossil energy sources and make us fossil free by 2050. The Solutions Project has individual plans for each of the U.S. states and many nations for the complete elimination of fossil and nuclear power sources by 2050.
      With respect to building sixty-one nuclear reactors, China is planning on sixty new reactors in the next decade and they are one of the nations with a strong commitment to nuclear power. Not one nuclear power plant in the U.S. since the dawn of the Nuclear Age in the 1950s has ever come online on schedule and in budget. The history of global nuclear power construction is littered with canceled projects, massive cost overruns and slipping schedules. Currently the global nuclear industry is hard pressed to construct ten nuclear reactors a year at a of tens of billions of dollars. An attempt to construct sixty reactors a year would quickly flounder in a sea of red ink, lax government oversite, corporate incompetence and greed.
       There are already concerns that the current pool of trained nuclear technicians is shrinking, and retirees are not being replaced. Along with the crash construction program, there would have to be a crash program in training thousands and thousands of new technicians to operate all the new reactors.
       The letter also says that in order to allow for growth in electricity demand and exporting nuclear reactors to many third world countries would require another fifty-four reactors per year to allow the world reduce carbon emission to zero in the year 2050. This would require a total of one hundred and fifteen new nuclear reactors be constructed each year for thirty years. I don’t believe that this is even remotely possible.
       Let us say that maybe one percent of the four hundred and fifty operating nuclear power reactors in the world might have a major accident in the next ten years. That means that four reactors would be at risk. At one hundred and fifty new reactors a year for thirty years, this means about four thousand reactors would be operating in 2050. One percent of four thousand reactors is about forty reactors. So not taking into account improved reactors or problems with hasty and shoddy construction of some of the new reactors, that means that the odds of a major accident would shrink from one in ten years to one a year.
       These numbers are not meant to be exact but to illustrate the point that the odds of a major accident would increase dramatically. A single accident at Fukushima in 2011 almost destroyed the global nuclear industry. A few more major accidents and public opinion would turn violently against nuclear power. Investors would flee and politicians would vote against funding nuclear power.
       I have many other objections to nuclear power that neither I nor the letter writers have mentioned. We can and should fund a massive buildup of renewable power back up by batteries instead of a massive build of new nuclear reactors to fight climate change.
 

Ambient office  =119 nanosieverts per hour

Ambient outside = 79 nanosieverts per hour

Soil exposed to rain water = 77 nanosieverts per hour

Red potato from Central Market = 85 nanosieverts per hour

Tap water = 105 nanosieverts per hour

Filter water = 93 nanosieverts per hour

Part 1 of 2 Parts
       Climate change is threatening human civilization. Predictions of the speed and extent of climate change are becoming increasingly dire. Many solutions have been proposed but one thing is for sure, humanity as a whole will have to endure major and rapid changes in our societies if we are to survive.
       One trend in climate change mitigation discussions that really disturbs me is the number of climate scientists and environmentalists who are turning into supporters of nuclear power. Recently, four prominent climate researchers published an open letter to the effect that massive new build of nuclear power plants is the only way to prevent climate change from overwhelming us. The four authors of the letter are James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley.
       They say that rapid global decarbonization is the only solution to the problem of climate mitigation and I agree. Although there are international agreements of many nations to limit their emissions of carbon dioxide in the future, unless global carbon dioxide release can be sharply curtailed, I fear that our civilization is doomed.
       The global generation of electricity is one of the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions. There are a variety of sources of electrical generation besides fossil fuels which are releasing the carbon dioxide. The letter from the four scientists say that there is no reason to favor renewable energy sources over other possibilities such as nuclear power. They take a rhetorical potshot at renewables by disparaging “cutting down forests for bioenergy and damming rivers hydropower” as being a serious threat to the environment. Interesting that they fail to mention wind, tidal, geothermal or solar renewables.
       The point of the letter is their contentions that “Nuclear power, particularly next-generation nuclear power with a closed fuel cycle (where spent fuel is reprocessed), is uniquely scalable, and environmentally advantageous.” I have spent years studying and writing about nuclear power. I would take strong exception to the idea that nuclear power is “environmentally advantageous.” There are many areas of the world today that cannot be used for any human purpose because they are contaminated by radioactive materials.
       The authors of the letter do admit that nuclear power poses “…unique safety and proliferation concerns that must be addressed with strong and binding international standards and safeguards.” This sounds reasonable until you realize that these “strong and binding international standards and safeguards” are vulnerable to political and economic forces that have no regard for dangers posed by nuclear accidents.
      One of the problems with supporting nuclear power lies in the claim that nuclear power generation does not emit any carbon dioxide. While this is true, it is not the whole store. Estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per watt generated for different power sources over the life span of the generating plants shows that over its lifetime, a nuclear power plants emit more carbon dioxide per watt than hydro, wind or solar power generation. So nuclear power is not “carbon free.”
       Another challenge the letter writers level against wind and solar is that they are intermittent and cannot provide reliable steady baseload power. My response to that is that Elon Musk recently installed a battery system in Australia to store energy from renewables generation and feed it back when power generation stops. This means that intermittent renewable power generation can be part of a baseload system with the addition of batteries. In terms of cost, the battery system cost around sixty-six million dollars and saved forty million dollars in its first year of operation so it will be fully paid off in two years.
Please read Part 2