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Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

thedrive.com

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Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#41
The discussion of waste and derelict reactors should probably be ignored given the earlier statement that the presence of I-131 means fission took place in the last few days.

As the article states, nuclear explosions are unlikely as we would be hearing about seismic measurements too like in the case of N. Korean detonations.

My bet is on a small accident on a nuclear vessel or another small reactor around Europe (e.g. university research reactors).

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#42
post #5

Watchout, this site is a disgrace... maxes out my CPU, it's just text for fuck sake what are they doing bitcoin mining in javascript?

Opened the site while running NoScript in default deny mode. The text rendered, I read the article, and closed the tab, and it never maxed out my CPU at all.

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#44
post #35
post #4

A rare example where the answer to the headline's questions is not "no," although neither is it "yes."

WOW I'm impressed. I literally never open headlines with rhetorical questions because the rule of thumb for media headlines is that the answer is always 'no'

That principle is encoded as Betteridge's Law of Headlines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did i miss something? The only mention i can see to Trump in the piece is: > There has been some talk about even the US restarting its nuclear testing under President Trump, but this is largely speculation mixed with hyperbole.

> Did i miss something? I guess; Trump is thrown out in the context of speculating about where this isotope is coming from, as if the US might be conducting surreptitious tests on behalf of a nuclear war mongering Trump. Timing is way off though; the first reports appeared before he had any authority. It's a gratuitous mention and overlooks the fact that Trump probably ordered the 135 to Europe to investigate, someth…

RTFA, it agrees with you.

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#46
It's interesting the author mentioned the nuclear generators and whatnot used in lighthouses and for small portable power generation. Those use strontium-90 and other byproducts of nastier energetic fissions which if my amateur nuclear physics brain is functioning correctly don't produce iodine-131. Iodine-131 is a byproduct of uranium-235/238 decay & fission. Since practical fusion doesn't yet exist, iodine-131 can only come from more energetic reactions like U235/238 fission. It's hard to imagine Russia left fissionable uranium abandoned, even in the Arctic.

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#47

I do have to complement the authors of this article. It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise. I'm pleased with the title too; if the article were featured on a mainstream news site in the USA, it would have declared it as a definitive event and give a list of what products to buy from their advertisers.

Doesn't Betteridge's Law mean the answer is "no"?

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#49

I do have to complement the authors of this article. It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise. I'm pleased with the title too; if the article were featured on a mainstream news site in the USA, it would have declared it as a definitive event and give a list of what products to buy from their advertisers.

I feel this vilification of the media is far overblown.

Specifically: I cannot imagine that a quality news site (say the NY Times, Atlantic, or WSJ) would not mention such uncertainty.

More easily provable: I challenge you to find a single article of about a disaster that includes unwarranted product recommendations (i. e. not "authorities are asking citizen to stock water and other necessities in preparation for the hurricane...")

I'd also like to point out that the "mainstream media" is doing an excellent job regarding these reports: not reporting on them. By now, they have certainly seen these reports. The excitement that grips HN and your comment speak to the fact that it would make for excellent clickbait. But there's nothing anywhere.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's alarmist clickbait with "nuclear incident" in quotes that make it appear as a euphemism for a meltdown (otherwise it'd just be a nuclear incident), posted in a series called "The War Zone".

Here are some other issues I find with the article. It's splitting hairs in a way, but I wish people had a bit of an appreciation for the work of professional journalists and editors:

- The article is tagged "nukes" and "atmospheric testing" when it's almost certainly not a nuclear test. Because that would be stupid. And it would have been picked up by seismographs.

- "Because of the low levels of concentration, there is no health risk to the public or the environment, at least on a wide scale." This leaves open the possibility of smaller-scale health hazards, falsely sensationalising the available data. OTOH, "Levels of concentration" is a phrase capable of inflicting some serious health effects among english language teachers.

- "The highly unique aircraft are specifically designed to respond to nuclear incidents—especially those that include the detonation of nuclear warheads." There is so much wrong with this sentence:

  - There's only one WC-135, so the plural is wrong.

  - Everything that's "designed to..." is "specifically designed to..."  

  - Which "nuclear incident that involves the detonation of nuclear warheads" is not described more succinctly as "the detonation of (a) nuclear warhead(s)"?

  - The latter half of the sentence seems designed to fuel speculation 
- "What are WC-135s doing up there?" There's still only one of these in existence (the plural form is used another 4 or 5 times).

- "There has been some talk about even the US restarting its nuclear testing under President Trump..." If this is speculation mixed with hyperbole, do not bring it up! Any mention, no matter how dismissive, just serves to legitimise such speculation. In this case the best argument against it isn't even mentioned: you don't set up a nuclear test in 3 weeks.

- " The Russian submarine K-27 [...] is said to be literally a ticking time bomb." If the evil media conspiracy saves me from such uses of the word "literally", I think I'm ok with their control of my thoughts.

Re: Has There Been a Nuclear Incident in the Arctic?

#50

I do have to complement the authors of this article. It presents the facts and leaves out political rhetoric and noise. I'm pleased with the title too; if the article were featured on a mainstream news site in the USA, it would have declared it as a definitive event and give a list of what products to buy from their advertisers.

I feel this vilification of the media is far overblown. Specifically: I cannot imagine that a quality news site (say the NY Times, Atlantic, or WSJ) would not mention such uncertainty. More easily provable: I challenge you to find a single article of about a disaster that includes unwarranted product recommendations (i. e. not "authorities are asking citizen to stock water and other necessities in preparation for the…

I think it's due to the short attention span of the general population. Most people forget the worst stories about people on the left (think Benghazi, HRC emails...) were broken by "leftist sites" like NYTimes.
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