Party like it’s 1999
Unfortunately, the Cold War is not over. The US just pulled out of an arms control agreement with Russia. Russia is still an expansionist power that invades peaceful neighboring countries and takes their land. (Just as it invaded Poland in 1939.)
Russia is also the sort of incompetently ruled country that gave us Chernobyl. On the other hand, you might argue that this is all in the past. But is it? Here’s Bloomberg:
The failed missile test that ended in an explosion killing five atomic scientists last week on Russia’s White Sea involved a small nuclear power source, according to a top official at the institute where they worked.
The men “tragically died while testing a new special device,” Alexei Likhachev, the chief executive officer of state nuclear monopoly Rosatom, said at their funeral Monday . . . .
The blast was the latest in a series of deadly accidents that have damaged the Russian military’s reputation. Massive explosions earlier last week at a Siberian military depot killed one and injured 13, as well as forcing the evacuation of 16,500 people from their homes. In July, 14 sailors died in a fire aboard a nuclear-powered submarine in the Barents Sea in an incident on which officials initially refused to comment. A top naval official later said the men gave their lives preventing a “planetary catastrophe.”
Russia’s worst post-Soviet naval disaster also occurred in the Barents Sea, when 118 crew died on the Kursk nuclear submarine that sank after an explosion in August 2000.
Thanks for preventing a planetary catastrophe.
This time . . .
If there’s one silver lining to the planet going downhill fast, it’s that the media no longer obsesses about issues like Singapore banning chewing gum. Now I long for the silly trivia of the 1990s.
Tags:
12. August 2019 at 11:38
Look here! [RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA]
Not there! [CHINA]
12. August 2019 at 11:49
“A top naval official later said the men gave their lives preventing a “planetary catastrophe.””
Yeah, right.
12. August 2019 at 14:55
If the nuclear reactor on the submarine failed, everyone on board would have died along with some fish nearby. That is the extent of this “near planetary disaster.”
The movie K-19 had the same silliness at the end when words appeared explaining that the radiation would have spread to New York City, thereby triggering a nuclear war. The amount of radiation that would have been released was *tiny*, less than the tiny amount at Fukushima.
12. August 2019 at 15:09
Todd, That was my reaction too. On the other hand, the Russian military certainly has the ability to create a planetary catastrophe, as does ours. But hey, what could go wrong? It’s not like they are incompetent.
12. August 2019 at 17:06
Todd,
The power plant of the submarine likely wasn’t the only nuclear thing aboard that could go off in the case of an inconveniently located fire. Combine this with Russia’s bragging about a cobalt bomb, designed to permanently contaminate all of North America to make it uninhabitable pretty much forever… that would fit the bill of “planetary”.
12. August 2019 at 17:10
Some links on the cobalt bomb
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb
https://www.businessinsider.sg/putin-doomsday-status-6-nuclear-weapon-2018-3/?r=US&IR=T
12. August 2019 at 17:11
No mbka, that is complete fiction on all three accounts. I like fiction, but we have to keep it separate from reality.
12. August 2019 at 17:17
“Silly trivia from the 1990s”. As distinct from a British school calling the police because a student talked about wargaming.
https://www.youtube.com/attribution_link?a=r8KmDSeZ6aU&u=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOUrAfp2A1bw%26feature%3Dshare&fbclid=IwAR3lgofeUldUcvhBcUNg_sXH5jC7xdUlhEPMYVcLdHe84TDJaG8zkOYtCWI
12. August 2019 at 17:22
Also, Stephen Schwartz is the sole source of the Business Insider article that you linked to. He is a journalist with no science background and makes serious errors in that article about radioactivity. Sadly, journalists quote journalists all the time on science topics.
12. August 2019 at 18:49
Hey, you write what you gotta if it makes you feel better and allows you to continue to keep your eye on fast-changing monetary conditions. Long bonds at record-lows today. Four alarm.
13. August 2019 at 02:26
“Russia is still an expansionist power that invades peaceful neighboring countries and takes their land. (Just as it invaded Poland in 1939.)”
Wrong on every single count.
“Russia is also the sort of incompetently ruled country that gave us Chernobyl.”
…which happened on the Ukrainian/Belarussian border.
As though the U.S. has had no accidents involving missiles or nuclear power.
13. August 2019 at 05:13
Todd,
“Also, Stephen Schwartz is the sole source of the Business Insider article that you linked to.”
For crying out loud, that story was on international news when Putin proudly announced it himself, that’s how I knew about it. Not from Business Insider. I just linked to the Business Insider article as a random example.
The idea to the cobalt bomb is 70 years old anyway.
Harding,
the USSR (Russia’s former colonial empire) was indeed ruled from Russia and well, it probably IS the only country to build commercial nuclear reactors covered by nothing but a corrugated iron roof. Had it had a concrete containment like western reactors, the radioactivity release from the same kind of accident would have been orders of magnitude lower, e.g. the partial meltdowns at Harrisburg or Fukushima, where evacuations took place even though the contamination was far lower. Not to mention that Chernobyl was only picked up when Scandinavian (!) authorities thought their own reactors were broken because of the spike in radioactivity they observed. The Russian empire couldn’t be bothered to tell anyone, or maybe they didn’t know yet themselves. Don’t tell me it didn’t happen that way, I was in Western Europe at the time and I remember exactly the sequence of events. Incompetent, and criminally negligent, that’s the Russian empire alright.
13. August 2019 at 08:46
Lorenzo, Yes, silly trivia still exists, but now we have serious problems as well. I haven’t seen any recent articles worried that Singapore’s chewing gum laws showed it was an authoritarian state. Have you? How would such an article come across today?
Brian, Can you name any other blogger who does as many posts on monetary conditions as I do? Just asking.
Ten year bond yields have fallen to these levels many times during the long expansion. I’m not a chicken little that predicts recessions every time bond yields plunge. I’m someone who correctly points to the need for easier money, when it is called for. Like right now.
Harding, You said:
“As though the U.S. has had no accidents involving missiles or nuclear power.”
It’s hilarious how defensive you are. In case you didn’t notice, I’m viewed as increasing “anti-American”, and never even hinted that the US was not a part of the problem. Trump officials walked away from arms control.
13. August 2019 at 09:28
@ssumner:
“Ten year bond yields have fallen to these levels many times during the long expansion.”
Really this is the third time, after bottoming in July 2012 and July 2016 (what is it with summer?)
13. August 2019 at 13:28
For crying out loud, that story was on international news when Putin proudly announced it himself, that’s how I knew about it. Not from Business Insider. I just linked to the Business Insider article as a random example.
—
But the random example gets a lot way off about what a cobalt bomb could do and what radiation after a nuclear blast can do.
The Wikipedia page explains why a cobalt bomb wouldn’t ‘destroy the world’ or ‘half of America’
They are nasty bombs, though.
13. August 2019 at 17:02
Todd,
we don’t know and hopefully never will, what a cobalt bomb could do – my original point was that the “planetary catastrophe” was a technological possibility. It doesn’t need to be the entire planet.
And, as they say, it’s the intent (of causing continental scale, if not planetary, harm) that counts, something that Russia has proudly declared themselves.
14. August 2019 at 15:52
Scott: I wasn’t actually disagreeing with you. The “silly trivia” nowadays manages to have quasi-totalitarian implications, so not good at all …
17. August 2019 at 17:40
What kind of moron calls the Soviet Union the “Russian empire”? It was the anti-Russian empire.