Posted on 08/20/2019 6:44:55 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Breaking news from Russia's frozen Northwest, where a total of four nuclear-monitoring stations have been silenced. The Wall Street Journal says that's twice as many as last week, "heightening concerns among observers that Russia is trying to hide evidence from an explosion at a missile-test site this month."
Some background.
Russia has been developing a nuclear-powered cruise missile, the 9M730 Burevestnik or "Petrel" missile. To be clear, that's a missile powered by nuclear fission, not a missile "merely" carrying a nuclear warhead. On August 8, it's believed that a Petrel exploded during testing, killing five employees of Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy producer. Three others were injured. That we know of.
As the Kremlin is wont to do, they at first downplayed the incident, claiming that the amount of radiation released "was less than that of a medical X-ray." Although as The National Interest noted on Saturday, "the village near the explosion has been ordered to evacuate, raising memories of the Chernobyl incident." The same report casts some doubt whether a Petrel cruise missile was involved at all:
Edward Geist, an expert on Russian nuclear history at the RAND Corp. think tank, cautioned that it is premature to assume that the Petrel was the culprit. “The case that this may be associated with the nuclear cruise missile is pretty circumstantial,” Geist told The National Interest. For example, the site of the accident is a closed Russian military town that is “associated with the testing of all kinds of missiles.”
Perhaps there was an accident involving Petrel. Or, perhaps there was an accident involving another weapon that damaged a Petrel. Or, maybe Russia was testing some other system: among Putin’s much-touted wonder weapons is the nuclear-powered Poseidon robotic torpedo.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
ORIGINAL REPORT HERE FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ( Sorry, it’s behind a pay wall ):
Whatever happened, you can be sure Trump had something to do with it.
I hope so. I want to see more of these “accidents”. Iran, North Korea, the list goes on and on.
A nuclear powered cruise missile...
WTF for? No jet fuel?
I think the accident was pretty bad because when the weapon exploded, the nuclear fuel source went up with it. It would be especially dangerous if the fuel was a form of plutonium.
Moscow Times article
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/4-russian-nuclear-monitors-went-silent-following-rocket-explosion-wsj-a66923
And an exclusive: Exclusive: Russian Doctors Say They Weren’t Warned Patients Were Nuclear Accident Victims
One doctor was reportedly later found to have a radioactive isotope in their muscle tissue.
By Evan Gershkovich and Pjotr Sauer
See Project Pluto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto
The idea is that you get unlimited range and an (almost) unlimited loiter time. If this would ever work, they could be cruising 24x7 and then sent in for surprise attacks. Didn’t work for us when we tested years ago. Too dirty with the radiation. Nuclear engines are just flying dirty bombs waiting for an accident.
I would normally follow Craig Mazin, the creator of HBO’s Chernobyl (and Senator Ted Cruz’s freshman roommate from Princeton) on Twitter - a he is posting a steady flow of articles regarding the matter daily.
but his page is so interspersed with anti-Trump and pro-Hillary liberal nonsense that I can’t bother to pay attention to his take or insights regarding anything! How can he be so clueless about the Soviet style corruptions of our OWN country. Oh wait no, to him that’s Trump! *eyeroll*
Putin’s like a demented MMA fighter running a country.
Combining nuclear reactors and highly explosive rocket fuel:
paging Captain Obvious
If it was another Chernobyl then by now sensors would be triggered in other countries?
I don’t think this is on the scale of Chernobyl, just really embarrassing for Soviet mil.
I am not sure this was a failed project (SLAM aka Project PLUTO)
Excerpt: https://blog.seattlepi.com/americanaerospace/2010/07/12/the-missile-from-hell/
“So it was that on Wedneday, 01 July 1964, Project Pluto was canceled after 7 years of fruitful development. While no airframe was ever built and tested, SLAM technology was applied to a host of subsequent aerospace vehicle developments.
SLAM would truly have been “The Missile From Hell” had it matured to the point of flight. Indeed, the ethical issues concerning the missile’s use were quite sobering. And, owing to Murphy’s Law and its many corollaries, the chances for unintended catastrophe were high as well. Despite the allure of this “technically sweet” solution to a national defense problem, the decision to cancel Project Pluto was ultimately the only correct course to follow.”
I think it came down to the US had an ethical dilemma and it was we can build it but should we. Now the Russians are going to do it/have done it.
That’s the problem with deceptive closed societies. Nobody trusts anything they say .
Norway May Have Found Radioactivity From Failed Russian Missile
We have an “open” society, and I still don’t trust much of what our government (or news media) says...
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