I plan to write a post on what to expect from the Biden-Putin summit, but here’s a foretaste. Last week I finally said on Twitter, in plain English, what I’ve thought for some time: that nuclear weapons are unusable unless we want to destroy the Earth, so we should say that and explicitly move toward that goal. I didn’t emphasize, but will here, that I am not calling for instant destruction of all nukes, but rather stating elimination as the goal and taking steps in that direction.
So today I was very pleased to see this
And I had to gloat a little.
Open thread!
Tom Levenson
OK. I’m impressed.
That’s a great power you have, Cheryl, and with it great responsibility.
Next up, please call for a global end to barbecue-flavored potato chips. Truly an abomination.
(Wh. is to say: this is great news. I want to leave a better world for my kid; to that end, I want to leave a world, full stop. This helps.)
WaterGirl
@Tom Levenson:
It’s good to have priorities!
zhena gogolia
Thanks, Cheryl!
Cameron
Well, since it’s an open thread…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxdSr0FLYe4
Gin & Tonic
@Tom Levenson: Maybe she can exterminate cilantro as well?
Anyway, does this mean Herman Kahn is being canceled?
Geminid
I find some good stuff on Twitter, and I check out Ragnarok Lobster among others. Aside from his own trenchant observations, he retweets and introduces me to others like Wilson Valdez, Mangy Jay, Cris Evans, and the estimable Sasha Beauloux. Today Mr. Lobster retweeted a certain “Betty Cracker.” Despite her humerous nym, Ms. Cracker was quite serious in her analysis of southern white Democrats who have realigned with the Republican party since the 1970s.
Frank Wilhoit
Einstein (all such anecdotes are apocryphal) is said to have said that he could not guess what the weapons of World War III might be, but that those of World War IV would be stones.
It is now clear that the weapon of World War III will be software.
WaterGirl
@Frank Wilhoit: That’s really interesting!
Geminid
@Geminid: And @SashaBeauloux has a new picture on her Twitter account. Wow! Makes me think Ms. Beauloux may be headed to Georgia to volunteer for Marcus Flowers’ 14th District Congressional campaign. The other day she retweeted a campaign video of Flowers, cowboy hat and all, and asked, “What are they putting in the water down in Georgia?”
craigie
Disagree. Tactical nukes are like Swiss Army knives, useful in all kinds of situations.
(also, Visual box not working for me on Firefox 78.11 on CentOS 7.8)
Mike in NC
Seconded. Although I do sort of like the potato chips with Old Bay seasoning.
Cheryl Rofer
@craigie: Part of the joke/strategy is that NATO didn’t intend to put ground-based nukes in Europe anyway. But it’s good they said it, and it’s a bit of a poke at Russia, which has been testing ground-based cruise missiles.
It’s a nice indicator that they said it, although there’s much more to discuss, some of which I may bring into my Biden-Putin summit post.
dnfree
I don’t know if you agree, but nuclear energy in general hasn’t fulfilled the visions for it in the 1950s and 1960s. Medical uses, maybe. But when I worked at Argonne National Laboratory in the 1960s, I was told that within a few decades electricity would be free because reactor-generated power would be so efficient. At that time, peaceful uses of nuclear energy were all promise, little mention of problems, including disasters like Chernobyl and the necessity of long-term secure and safe storage of waste.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
speaking of great power, Cheryl Rofer’s post to nuclear diner just got picked up by Kevin Drum at his site jabberwocking: https://jabberwocking.com/where-did-the-sars-cov-2-virus-come-from/
taumaturgo
At least Biden is reversing Trumps policy of more nukes, not less by reducing funds allocated by Trump for this purpose in the current budget.
Another Scott
@craigie: Indeed – so many things are!
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Excellent job Cheryl!!
Do India and Pakistan next, please. :-) (Probably have to include China too, as IIRC India pointed to China as a reason why they needed them… :-/)
Cheers,
Scott.
Just Chuck
@dnfree: No modern reactor design is unstable like Chernobyl, and even they had to more or less deliberately sabotage it. Reprocessing is one thing that can be done for spent fuel, though now you have a proliferation problem. Control of uranium deposits (not super common) would become the new geopolitical football.
Meanwhile the sun is blasting us with over a quadrilliion joules every single second.
Ruckus
@dnfree:
It creates a decent amount of power for each large installation.
A positive.
It is very expensive to build, somewhat difficult to run safely, it has a relatively short lifespan of usability, it is inherently a clean process with the exception of the waste, which is a huge problem and costly in several different ways.
Major negatives.
Is it better than the alternatives?
Coal – I’d say yes.
Natural gas – Maybe/maybe not, different costs for sure.
Solar – great in the daytime, most of the time, better the lower the latitude.
Wind – often used in conjunction with solar, better in some areas than others. Offshore great, with the possibility of transmission losses and shipping interference.
Water movement – most of the areas that can be damned already have been, tide movement has some real possibilities in conjunction with wind, solar.
HarlequinGnoll
It’d be interesting to see all the (verbal) fallout to just re-suggest Project PACER as a swords to plowshares reduction program.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Mike in NC: Sorry, but NO. I’m just “meh” about them, but they constitute a basic food group for my beloved husband. He loves all things BBQ. This is why we have oven-broiled BBQ chicken every Sunday for months in the summer.
Matt McIrvin
@dnfree: Technologies have “experience curves” which make them cheaper to deploy as more units get rolled out, from economies of scale, lessons learned, discovery of new methods and principles motivated by demand.
For whatever reason, the experience curve for nuclear power turned out to be shallower than the ones for renewable energy technologies (and even for battery storage). The huge amount of capital required to put up a new nuclear plant still makes it not as cheap as you’d expect from the sheer amount of power those things can put out.