Month: October 2024

South Korea unveils its most powerful missile

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

““If North Korea attempts to use nuclear weapons, it will face the resolute and overwhelming response of our military and the (South Korea)-U.S. alliance,” President Yoon Suk Yeol told thousands of troops gathered at a military airport near Seoul. “That day will be the end of the North Korean regime.”
“The North Korean regime must abandon the delusion that nuclear weapons will protect them,” Yoon said.

During the ceremony, the South Korean military displayed about 340 military equipment and weapons systems. Among them was its most powerful Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile, which observers say is capable of carrying about 8 tons of a conventional warhead that can penetrate deep into the earth and destroy underground bunkers in North Korea. It was the first time for South Korea to disclose that missile.

The U.S. flew a long-range B-1B bomber during the ceremony in an apparent demonstration of its security commitment to its Asian ally. South Korea also flew some of its most advanced fighter jets.

Since taking office in 2002, Yoon, a conservative, has put a stronger military alliance with the U.S. and an improved trilateral Seoul-Washington-Tokyo security cooperation at the center of his security polices to cope with North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. In recent years, North Korea has performed a provocative of missile tests and threatened to use nuclear weapons preemptively in potential conflicts with South Korea and the United States.

Last month, concerns about North Korea’s bomb program further grew after it published photos of a secretive facility to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. It was North Korea’s first unveiling of a uranium-enrichment facility since it showed one at the country’s main Yongbyon nuclear complex to visiting American scholars in 2010.

South Korean officials say North Korea will likely try to further dial up tensions with provocative weapons tests ahead of the U.S. election to increase its leverage in future diplomacy with a new U.S. government. Experts say North Korea likely thinks an expanded nuclear arsenal would help it win bigger U.S. concessions like extensive sanctions relief.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/01/south-korea-unveils-its-most-powerful-missile-00181809

Bret and Eric Weinstein: Brothers in Fraudulence

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

One of the key examples of wokeness gone mad was a ludicrous exaggeration of what actually happened. Bret Weinstein acted like white people were forced or harassed off campus on a particular day to commemorate black issues when in reality a group of people not sanctioned by the college had this idea and there was no official pressure for whites to not attend on that day, and anyone could just ignore that group’s idea if they wanted to. At least according to Professor Dave…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGcpUxl_9Vg

Noah Smith is too down on nuclear energy

Posted on by ajk1311@gmail.com

“Noah acknowledges, in passing, one particular provision of the existing nuclear regulatory framework on the United States that’s very important: radiation is held to the As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) standard, which makes it essentially impossible for nuclear to be cost-competitive.
Suppose I had a design for a cost-effective nuclear reactor, and I said I should be allowed to build it, because electricity is good and air pollution is bad. The regulator is going to look at it and say, “Well, that reactor seems awfully cheap to build, why not add a bunch more features to make the radiation levels even lower?” And then I will say, “That would be hideously expensive in a way that is net bad for public health, because it leads to more burning of fossil fuels and worse air pollution.” But the regulator comes back and says, “We’re not using a cost-benefit framework, we’re using ALARA.” And I say, “That doesn’t make sense, coal ash is radioactive — you are creating more radiation by raising my costs.” And the regulator says, “I don’t regulate coal plants, I regulate you — ALARA!”

As Jason Crawford writes, “any technology, any operational improvement, anything that reduces costs, simply gives the regulator more room and more excuse to push for more stringent safety requirements, until the cost once again rises to make nuclear just a bit more expensive than everything else. Actually, it‘s worse than that: it essentially says that if nuclear becomes cheap, then the regulators have not done their job.”

This is a deeply dysfunctional regulatory paradigm, and it reflects the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s origins in 1974 legislation that was explicitly motivated by a belief that the old Atomic Energy Commission was too friendly to the industry.

In 2019, Congress passed the Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act, which, among other things, “requires the NRC to develop new processes for licensing nuclear reactors, including staged licensing of advanced nuclear reactors.” The hope of NEIMA’s proponents was to change 45 years of the NRC fundamentally being an agency that says “no” to stuff and make them into an agency that would create a regulatory pathway under which new kinds of nuclear reactors could be licensed and built. And after several years, the NRC did get around to writing the new rules for SMRs, but they came up with an even longer and more cumbersome regulatory process.

Earlier this summer, the ADVANCE Act reiterated Congress’s determination for the NRC to change.

But the NRC staff, to the best of my knowledge, fundamentally does not believe that America’s elected officials genuinely want them to make it faster and cheaper to build nuclear reactors. And one reason they don’t believe it is that even though the Biden administration says lots of pro-nuclear stuff, has plenty of pro-nuclear appointees, signed the ADVANCE Act, and has done a lot to help with SMRs in terms of financing, they still coughed-up an NRC nominee who basically supports the status quo. You need a team of political appointees at the agency who are willing to both drive change and also personally take the heat when change makes people mad. You can’t “just use nuclear, bro.” You need to put people in place to actually drive specific policy change in a way that will let the industry grow and work.

And of course, even if you did that, it might not work.”

https://www.slowboring.com/p/noah-smith-is-too-down-on-nuclear