A thought about the scheduled June Big Bomb Blast in Nevada

[salin]

First, I will take it as a given (true or not) that it is not a nuclear blast.

Second, I think it is bushjr trying to do a Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt used his money to send the navy half way across the world - forcing the govt to pay to bring them back... but the point was to give the world a show of force/intimidation. Along these lines I think the whole purpose is to try to show how big a bomb (nuke or not) bush has at his fingers - for the same 'international show of power.' Point - it is an expensive act of symbolism.

Now for the thought that struck me on another thread... something I haven't seen raised in the MSM news coverage of the proposed blast (which has been scant coverage, imo.) How far is the proposed blast from Yucca? Is there any danger of damage being done to the already under scrutiny/questions structural stability of the facility that is proposed to be the singular respository for nuclear waste? If there is even an iota of potential problems this is even more symbolic than bushjr/pnacers intend...

Symbolizing, once again, risking the safety of our country for a short term show of strength intended solely for personal/political gain.

[lldu]

1. Yeah, but how many planes

Can transport a 1.2 million pound bomb?

Don't look at the B-1 bomber, or the B-2 bomber. Even the B-52 wouldn't work. Guess they would have to build a big bomber to hold it.

Larry L

[salin]

2. wonder how many bush family members would profit from that?

there is the investment banker side of the family, the ties to Carlyle (though recently it was 'announced' that poppy was no longer affiliated... though didn't mention whether or not he still had financial interests)... and then for good measure the plane's computers will have educational software installed from Ignite!

[Karmakaze]

8. The largest cargo plane in the world...

that holds the world record for heavy lifting is the Antonov 225. It can lift around 250 tons. So I would say it is basically impossible for any conventional 700 ton bomb to EVER be fitted to an aircraft. You would have to nearly TRIPPLE the world record, and I doubt such an aircraft would ever fly simply because of the stresses on the airframe.

Add to that the idea of dropping that weight in one go, and you would probably find the aircraft would tear itself apart, even if it could get off the ground.

[salin]

13. again, I learn from these discussions - possess no background knowledge

so how are they thinking of transporting these weapons? Probably an easy answer - thanks in advance.

[AllegroRondo]

26. Rocket?

thats my first guess.

[Karmakaze]

29. Not a chance...

The largest rockets ever built could not carry even as much as the An225. The Saturn 5 for example could put 120 tons into orbit, yet that is nowhere near large enough for a 700 ton bomb. Besides a Saturn 5 built today would cost over 2 billion per launch.

Multiply that by 17 (the number of Iranian nuclear facilities) and you are talking a VERY expensive strike, even if the rockets required were available.

[AllegroRondo]

30. So about the only thing you could do

is load it on the back of a truck and park it next to what you wanted to blow up?

[salin]

31. lol

Roll it down the street? j/k

[Karmakaze]

40. Nope...

Even the largest trucks in the world can carry far less than 100 tons. So maybe you could load it in THIRTY trucks and park them all next to something, but certainly not in ONE truck.

Even this thing:



Can only carry a max of 320 tons, so you would need at least two of these giants to carry the bomb.

[seabeyond]

3. not to mention we are down wind of them. ???? any info on that

cause i am telling you, i am a bet curious whether it will travel my way and how comfortable i am with this.

[helderheid]

6. I'm in Utah and I'm

:scared:

[seabeyond]

yup. have you heard anything about it??? guess i will have to google

[helderheid]

16. Salt Lake Tribune front page:

http://sltrib.com

direct link:

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_3678364

Snippet:

Test blast in Nevada: A nuclear rehearsal
Pentagon apparently looks for an optimal size of a 'bunker buster'
By Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune

WASHINGTON - A powerful blast scheduled at the Nevada Test Site in June is designed to help war planners figure out the smallest nuclear weapon able to destroy underground targets. And it has caused a concern that it signals a renewed push toward tactical nuclear weapons.
The detonation, called Divine Strake, is intended to "develop a planning tool to improve the warfighter's confidence in selecting the smallest proper nuclear yield necessary to destroy underground facilities while minimizing collateral damage," according to Defense Department budget documents.
Irene Smith, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency, said the document doesn't imply that Divine Strake "is a nuclear simulation." She said it will be used to assess computer programs that predict ground shaking in a major blast.

</end snippet>

[salin]

18. Divine Strake?

Strake? Wooden plank across the bow of a ship? Perhaps refering to the graphic/shape? Divine... God wants us to destroy God's creation?

[helderheid]

23. boggling, ain't it?

[Karmakaze]

4. nah its much more simple than that...

Its a straight forward simulation of a "mini-nuke bunker buster", right down to the tunnel that is being used to simulate a tunnel entrance to a deeply buried bunker. The fact is at the depths most bunkers are built, it would take a large nuke (several dozen kilotons) to do any damage to them because penetrators can only dig down about 20 feet of rock. So what they are testing is whether a smaller nuke targetted at a tunnel entrance can do enough damage to make the bunker unusable.

They will be checking pressure waves in the tunnel, plus how much of the tunnel is collapsed by the 0.7 Kiloton charge. A real nuke of that size would actually throw up a few million cubic feet of fallout to be spread on the winds, but that is far less than the amount that would be thrown up by a nuke big enough to directly target the bunker.

It may be politically effective as a show of force, but it is indeed a REAL test to be used for the design of a "mini-nuke bunker buster" whicht he Bush administration seems to be itching to use.

[salin]

7. Thanks for the info... sounds like it is intended to have a limited

range of impact (in terms of ground and structures in the region.)

Also does point to indicating that the restraints are off (as if this admin has shown much restraint at all) per letting the nuke - even a "limited nuke" - genie back out of the bottle.

[helderheid]

9. that's what I don't get - it has been brought up and voted down

repeatedly. Why waste money on this type of test if they don't plan on going forward making nuclear bunker busters, and yet as I've said, it has been repeatedly voted down?

[salin]

15. signing statement somewhere?

[Karmakaze]

17. Well the problem is, it would NOT be limited.

Testing has shown that to completely contain a 1 kiloton blast, the warhead would have to be detonated at least 200 feet under ground. It is physically impossible for a penetrator made of the strongest materials known to man, to dig below 90 feet of rock, and the best actually made can only go down 20 feet.

So this would actually be a far worse kind of detonation than even Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those two bombs were detonated a mile or more above the surface, ensuring the nuclear fireball did not touch the ground, and thus reducing the fallout to practically nil. That is why those two cities and in fact large portions of Japan around them are inhabitable today - there was no fallout.

But what we are talking about here are subsurface detonations that vent into the atmosphere. Millions of cubic feet of extremely radioactive dust spewed into the air, to drop all over Iran and wherever the winds take it. ONE, would be a major disater. Seventeen, which is the bare minimum to take out all Irans nuclear facilities, would be catastrophic.

This test is, in the end, a disgrace because it indicates the US government and military are seriously contemplating using such weapons.

On edit:

Oh and before anyone gets the idea that maybe the government is doing the test because they think they have found a way to prevent the fireball from venting to the atmosphere, remember that when it was announced, it was announced with certainty that a mushroom cloud would be formed. They KNOW it is going to vent into the air, hence forming the mushroom cloud.

[salin]

21. wow, thanks for clarifying my misconceptions.

sadly there have been report after report regarding Pentagon/WH planners about the "incestuous amplification" of ideas - where all dissent is purged so that any idea that is grasped is agreed with - giving all the self-satisfying belief that it is the best/rightest/only course of action to take.

I go back and forth as to whether or not I believe that they are insane enough to act on Iran. To sane policy planners there are simply too many constraints from a strained military, to a lack of credibility internationally and domestically, to financial constraints, and to the world of instability that would be created (converse to what they seem to believe). These folks have shown us again, and again - that they simply do not acknowledge realities that do not fit their desired actions/ends. Very dangerous.

[Karmakaze]

25. Sorry to harp on, but...

Im a New Zelander with a very strong Anti-Nuke bias :)

One last thin, in case people might have the idea that the US military is hiding the fact that they have somehow found a way to make a penetrator that goes deeper than 20 feet, take not that the depth of this 700 ton test charge is actually 18 feet. They would not be testing it shallower than they can actually get, because the results would not be indicative of a deeper detonation.

I may not be a scientist, but I actually think this test in not gonna teach them anything anyway, well not with real world application, because 700 tons of ANFO is BIG. A nuclear bunker bust would be orders of magnitude more focused, and thus the power of the detonation would also be more focused, as opposed to being dispersed over a larger area.

So as far as I can tell, this is gonna be a pointless excercise which will merely confirm what they already know, but they will fudge the results to try and make it seem like they have figured out a way to use them that is more "safe".

[salin]

28. sounds like a good analysis.

and per the fudging - they do that all the time. See the "Star Wars" technology will work - we hit... oh... it had a homing device... nevermind...

[Marie26]

14. Oh, you mean

the same type of bunker-busters Cheney was planning to use against Iranian nuclear facilities? What an odd coincidence.

[havocmom]

5. Re Big BOOMs & Yucca: Think about The Handmaid's Tale...

... the west has to become a toxic wasteland for them to complete the transformation. It'll give them a place to put all the rabble rousers, dissidents, sick, elderly, weak, and liberals.

OK, I don't really believe that, but damn, life sure seems to be following art with these short sighted corporate whores masquerading as leaders.

:hi: salin. You bring up a good point. It is something those of us in the west wonder about now and then. If all that waste earmarked for Yucca is so damned safe, why don't the execs of the nuke power promoters keep it in their own back yards?

[salin]

11. The short-sightedness, mixed in with 'magical thinking'

you know the kind that denies all dissent, and thus creates policies that are ridiculous because it didn't consider the angles that would have been presented had their been dissent, a dangerous mix.

Not to mention why they haven't moved it yet... oh, all of the objections of those whose states/communities would be passed through in the movement of the waste? Huge talk about that a couple of years ago - and then next to nothing. Dropped for now? Or being done covertly and we have no word of it?

:hi: havocmom!

[SpiralHawk]

10. Saber Rattling

Men in ties comparing saber size.

[havocmom]

12. Ever walk up to one of them and invert the end of their phallic ties?

:evilgrin:

Try it! You'll like it!

[ThomWV]

19. Jesus this is silly. Its a conventional explosion folks

Its a bunch - a whole bunch - of fertilizer and some fuel oil. That's all this is. The world will not take notice any more than they would any other conventional exploion. This is a big fat zero of an event which has no world wide significance what so ever. Two days after the explosion not a soul in the world will give a good shit if it took place or not.

[helderheid]

20. read post 16 before you make a final judgement.

[salin]

22. Hope you are right... I didn't initially pay much attention to the story

but why the big advance news? Why the show? I have come to believe that things are never as they seem with this administration.

[helderheid]

24. from the Salt Lake Tribune article:

" J. Preston Truman, director of the group Downwinders, which represents individuals sickened by radioactive fallout from Cold War-era nuclear tests, scoffs at the Pentagon's suggestion that it is not a nuclear simulation, arguing no military plane could drop a 700-ton conventional bomb.
"It's for one thing and one thing only," he said. "It just says they're still pursuing these stupid, insane weapons."
The nuclear tie-in to Divine Strake test was rooted out by Kristensen and Andrew Lichterman, a nuclear weapons opponent and blogger.
"It's not a step toward nuclear testing. It is nuclear testing. It's just nuclear testing the way it's done today," since actual nuclear tests are banned by treaties, Kristensen said. "

[Karmakaze]

27. It is not the explosion itself...

Its what the xplosion means in regards to US nuclear policy. They are trying to make "usable" nukes. The facists have been itching to drop nuke bombs since they were first used. Now they think they may have the scenario which makes it possible.

A "mini nuke bunker buster" sounds far less dangerous than what we are used to, but in fact they would be far MORE dangerous than even the much larger bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the simple reason that those two bombs did not cause fallout, where "mini nuke bunker busters" will cause huge amounts of fallout, and that fallout, like the radiactive fallout created by Chernobyl, wil not be confined to the target, or even to the taget nation, but will spread far and wide across the globe.

[Cerridwen]

32. Here's a map for ya.

The Yucca Mountain Project is part of the Nevada Test Site. Hmm, isn't the test site where the blast will take place? The locations for nuclear testing are displayed on the map. I hope the rumors I've heard of nuclear waste currently being stored at Yucca are just that; rumors.

Here's the map:



from this site:

http://www.landercountynwop.com/index_Page433.htm

[helderheid]

33. oh that makes me shiver!

[salin]

35. If I read the key correctly, the salmon area

is designated for nuclear (?) and high explosive test. Wonder if that is where it might occur?

[bigtree]

34. good point about the structure under Yucca

I'm thinking about the effect on fissures underground which could carry groundwater into the facility which could then be contaminated.


"The Energy Department has done two studies of water penetration at Yucca Mountain.

The first was conducted by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who concluded that water moves through fissures in the mountain far more quickly than the hundreds of years previously thought. The study found rain water had penetrated the rock in just decades."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002210199_yucca17.html

[salin]

36. any idea what the status of Yucca is currently?

a number of years ago the moving of materials to yucca was halted. Is it still halted? Have they started moving material quietly?

[salin]

37. 2012? Found this recent item for an update:

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=4705714

Key Senator Pushes Bush Administration on Yucca Mt. Bill
March 30, 2006 11:28 PM EST

A key senator said Thursday that he'll likely introduce his own bill if the Bush administration doesn't soon unveil much-anticipated legislation to smooth development of a national nuclear waste dump in Nevada.

Senate Energy Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said he's repeatedly offered to carry the administration bill, which has been promised for months. The legislation is expected to guarantee a source of funding for the Yucca Mountain project and address other problems that have hampered development of a permanent, underground repository for highly radioactive waste.

--- snip---

Yucca Mountain was approved by Congress in 2002 to hold the nation's nuclear waste but has been delayed by political opposition -- including from home-state Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. -- controversies over quality controls and a court-ordered rewrite of radiation protection standards. It's now not expected to open until after 2012, and some lawmakers are increasingly irritated over the delays.

[bigtree]

38. They haven't been able to get past the falsification of the science

The tail end of the story is in the article. Congress allocated more money for research and construction, but there isn't a political atmosphere for them to start moving the waste. That's why they've started to put the whole thing under the banner of national security, arsenal 'refurbishment', and the waste disposal (which they hope would be viewed as a necessary consequence if we all agree on the overall inituitive.

Are they moving materials quietly? I seriously doubt it. You've seen the routes? Most states are terrified at the prospect of these materials rolling across their countryside on rubber and air.

[salin]

39. as someone points out upthread... the local officials

hesitance to either keep the waste, or to allow it to be transported through their state sorta belies the "hey its all safe, no dangers" language oft used when selling the building of nuclear energy facilities.

[bigtree]

41. here's something

http://www.startribune.com/484/story/356294.html