Ramanisblog

Tag: Soviet Union

  • Top 5 Worst Nuclear Disasters.Videos.

     

     

    Windscale Fire, Great Britain

     

    Chernobyl, Soviet Union (now Ukraine)

    April 26, 1986

    INES Rating: 7

    Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

    The Chernobyl nuclear accident is widely regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. It is the only nuclear accident that has been classified a “major accident” by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

     

    During a routine test, the plant’s safety systems were turned off to prevent any interruptions of power to the reactor. The reactor was supposed to be powered down to 25 percent of capacity, but this is when the problems began. The reactor’s power fell to less than one percent, and so the power had to be slowly increased to 25 percent. Just a few seconds after facility operators began the test, however, the power surged unexpectedly and the reactor’s emergency shutdown failed. What followed was a full-blown nuclear meltdown.

     

    The reactor’s fuel elements ruptured and there was a violent explosion. The fuel rods melted after reaching a temperature over 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit. The graphite covering the reactor then ignited and burned for over a week, spewing huge amounts of radiation into the environment.
    About 200,000 people had to be permanently relocated after the disaster. IAEA reported in 2005 that 56 deaths could be linked directly to the accident. Forty-seven of those were plant workers and nine were children who died of thyroid cancer. The report went on to estimate that up to 4,000 people may die from long-term diseases related to the accident. Those numbers are a subject of debate, however, as the Soviet Union did much to cover up the extent of the damage. The World Health Organization reported the actual number of deaths related to Chernobyl was about 9,000.

    Kyshtym, Soviet Union (now Russia)

    Sept. 29, 1957

    INES Rating: 6


    The Soviet Union was also home to the second-most disastrous nuclear accident, at the Mayak Nuclear Power Plant near the city of Kyshtym. IAEA classified the event as a Level 6 Disaster, which is a “serious accident.”

     

    Soviet scientists were frantically trying to catch up to the Americans after World War II when they began construction of the Mayak nuclear facility. Soviet nuclear knowledge had many holes, so it was impossible to know whether some decisions made in the construction were safe. As it turned out, many of those decisions seriously compromised the plant’s facility.

     

    Initially, the plant’s operators simply dumped the nuclear waste into a nearby river, before a storage facility for that waste opened in 1953. The storage facility began to overheat, and a cooler was soon added, but it was poorly constructed.

     

    In September 1957, the cooling system in a tank containing about 70 tons of radioactive waste failed, and the temperature started to rise. This caused a non-nuclear explosion of dried waste. There were no immediate casualties as a result of the explosion, but the IAEA found there had been a significant release of radioactive material into the environment. The radioactive cloud spread out for hundreds of miles to the northeast.

     

    The Soviet government released little information about the accident, but was forced to evacuate 10,000 people in the affected area after reports surfaced of people’s skin literally falling off. The radiation is estimated to have directly caused the deaths of 200 people due to cancer.

    Windscale Fire, Great Britain

    Oct. 10, 1957

    INES Rating: 5

    Image credit: Getty Images

     

    Great Britain’s first foray into nuclear energy had been successful for several years before the Windscale fire occurred in 1957. Operators noticed that the reactor’s temperature was steadily rising when it should have been decreasing. They originally suspected the equipment was malfunctioning, so two plant workers went to inspect the reactor. When they reached the reactor, they discovered it was engulfed in flames.

     

    At first, they did not use water, because plant operators were worried the flames were so hot the water would break down instantly, and the hydrogen in the water would cause an explosion. But their other methods to put out the fire did not work, and so they turned on the hoses. The water was able to put the fire out without an explosion.

     

    It is estimated that 200 people in Britain developed cancer because of Windscale, half of them fatal. The exact number of fatalities is hard to come by because the British government attempted to cover up how serious the fire had been. Prime Minister Harold Macmillan worried the incident would embarrass the British government and erode public support for nuclear projects. It’s also difficult to put an exact number on the deaths because radiation from Windscale spread hundreds of miles across northern Europe.

    Three Mile Island, United States

     

    March 28, 1979

     

    INES Rating: 5

     

    Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

     

    Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976,

     

    The United States’ most disastrous nuclear accident took place at the Three Mile Island Plant near Harrisburg, Penn., the state’s capitol.

     

    It all began with a simple plumbing break down. A small valve opened to relieve pressure in the reactor, but it malfunctioned and failed to close. This caused cooling water to drain, and the core began to overheat. The machines monitoring conditions inside the nuclear core provided false information, so plant operators shut down the very emergency water that would have cooled the nuclear core and solved the problem. The core began to overheat, and reached 4,300 degrees Fahrenheit. The water nearly reached the fuel rods, which would have caused a full meltdown of the core. But the nuclear plant’s designers were finally able to reach the plant operators several hours later to instruct them to turn the water back on, and conditions stabilized.

     

    “Not only were there issues with training of operators, but management for both the plant and NRC did not know how to approach this kind of emergency and to communicate with the public,” said Burnell.

    The NRC determined that no one had died of causes related to the incident at Three Mile Island, but found there might be one excessive cancer death over a 30-year period as a result of radiation. Only one person outside of the nuclear plant was found to have any radiation in his system after the incident.

     

    Three Mile Island had a profound impact on the public’s attitude toward nuclear energy. In the 30 years since Three Mile Island, not a single nuclear power plant has been approved for development.

    Tokaimura, Japan

    Sept. 30, 1999

    INES Rating: 4

     

    Japan’s most disastrous nuclear accident took place over a decade ago just outside Tokyo.

     

    A batch of highly-enriched uranium was prepared for a nuclear reactor that had not been used in more than three years. The operators had not been trained in how to handle uranium that was so highly enriched. They put far more uranium into the solution in a precipitation tank than is allowed. The tank was not designed for this type of uranium.

     

    Only when the tank was drained of the solution could the critical reaction be stopped, but by then, it was too late for two of the three operators working with the uranium, as they died of radiation.

     

    Less than a hundred workers and people who lived nearby were hospitalized for exposure to radiation, and 161 people who lived within 1,000 feet of the plant were evacuated, according to the World Nuclear Association.

    http://news.discovery.com/tech/top-five-nuclear-disasters.html

     

  • Transparency and Governanace.WikiLeaks

    Logo used by Wikileaks
    Image via Wikipedia

     

     WikiLeaks has embarrassed the Governments the world over by its exposure of Foreign Relations details of  many a country.

    As has been pointed out ,there has been wilful wrong doing,outright lying,dressing up of information , deals within deals  by Nations.

    Also there has been special interest groups for whom there was a specific agenda to be carried out and the leaders have done their bidding.

    It also exposed the crassly crude descriptions of world leaders by those in authority.

    Does this mean one should ensure all documents relating to foreign relations be in the Public Domain?

    Answer is Yes and No.

    Those details the exposure of which might be a National Security Threat may be with held.

    (this begs the question.who decides on what National Security is ?

    This can be addressed separately.)

    Other than this, all documents must be in the Public Realm,especially relating to natural Resources sharing, Exports, Duty cut backs Corporates)

      In a Democracy such as India, the Opposition Parties have a Duty to perform in eliciting the information on the Floor of the Parliament .

    Unfortunately they don’, for they know they have to face same fate when they come to power and they also have things to hide.

    Take Bofors issue,Musharraf failing to sign the Agreement,bringing into the open Black Money stashed abroad.

    Finally it all comes to Leaders of Integrity and Honesty, which, now  ,is at a premium.

    WikiLeaks is neither the Russian Bolshevik party nor the American Democratic party. Nevertheless WikiLeaks is readdressing the issue which was left open at the end of the First World War: is diplomatic secret in the people’s interest? Both Trotsky and Wilson moved their agenda forward to some limited extent: the Soviet Union soon became a harsh dictatorship and transparency was so despised under Stalin that even the map of the Moscow underground was a classified document. The practice of publicity had better luck in the United States and in other Western countries. Transparency and accountability started to be common sense in consolidated democratic regimes although state secret still exists and diplomacy is still covered by the seven veils of classified documents. Even in the most democratic countries, secrecy in international affairs continues to be justified by the need to protect the state’s integrity and to guarantee citizens’ security and these aims prevail over the need to guarantee transparency and freedom of expression.

    Through WikiLeaks world public opinion was informed of numerous violations of humanitarian law in Afghanistan, of false reports on the legitimacy of the military intervention in Iraq, of the exaggeration of the weapons of mass destruction held by Saddam Hussein. This core information has been peppered with hundreds and hundreds of more exciting but less relevant gossip about political celebrities. Not surprisingly, those holding the secrets have reacted furiously against the leaks, have made what efforts they can to prevent further leaks and threatened retaliation against those who provided the information, those who published it and even those who dared to read it. The prize for the most furious reaction goes to Congressman Peter King, who wanted WikiLeaks to be declared a foreign terrorist organization. These reactions are certainly comprehensible but not justified. If there is the need to fight a war, the citizens, the taxpayers and even more the conscripted should clearly know the reasons for spilling blood on the battleground. Otherwise, as Noam Chomsky correctly pointed out, “government secrecy is to protect the government from its own population”.

    Until now WikLleaks’ revelations have not provoked major damage to intelligence mechanisms, either in Afghanistan or anywhere else. It may always be that such revelations can harm and identify specific persons, making their actions and their information services known to malicious people. Excessive transparency can in principle be dangerous for a few individuals, and it should be balanced with the need to protect the privacy of individuals. At the expense of violating the privacy of many individuals, WikiLeaks has allowed public opinion to know that public offices have been used for private purposes, that false information has been released with the explicit aim of diverting public attention, that crimes have been committed without liability. Looking at the outcomes so far produced, it can be argued that the violation of privacy has been minimal compared to the relevance of the information provided to public opinion.

    An instrument like WikiLeaks has proven to be helpful not only in making governments and their officials more accountable. It has also proved very useful to check and control the business sector. We have already seen that WikiLeaks has started eating into banking secrecy, with the publication of the greatest tax dodgers’ lists by a banker that worked in Cayman Islands on behalf of the Swiss bank Julius Baer. In this case, it would be difficult to claim that confidentiality on tax evasion and money laundering should be protected in deference of privacy. It is somehow surprising that some Courts, rather than using the occasion to prosecute financial crimes, have preferred to be on the side of the banks and requested that leaked documents should be removed from the public domain.

    WikiLeaks raises a more general point that needs to be addressed: is there any effective filter between the load of information leaked out and what is actually published? WikilLeaks today has been a pioneer and it is carrying out an important public function, but it is probably inappropriate that an unaccountable private organization holds so much power. The opportunity to publish classified document has traditionally been a prerogative of all media, but there is no media, to date, that is solely devoted to releasing classified documents. This puts WikiLeakes in a league by its own.

    The responsibility to monitor the transparency of geopolitical relations, of financial flows and of other sensitive information should be put in the hands of organizations that are themselves fully transparent and accountable. The empirical research carried out by One World Trust on the accountability of inter-governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and of business corporations has often provided counter-intuitive results, indicating that institutions such as the World Bank are more transparent than institutions such as the WWF International.# Paradoxically, WikiLeaks risks being an organization more secretive than those whose documents it publishes. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” said Juvenal and today we can wonder: “Who will assure the transparency of those who generate transparency?”

    http://www.opendemocracy.net/daniele-archibugi-marina-chiarugi/wilson-trotsky-assange-lessons-from-history-of-diplomatic-transpar?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=201210&utm_campaign=0

  • Ronald Reagan-He Still Matters.

    Reagan was ridiculed at the time of his assumption to office as a simpleton with no grasp of things,a cowboy.

    But his commitment to US is unquestionable, his views are straight forward, he shot straight, communication simple and he achieved more than what others could not for US.

    You may agree with him deride him but you can never ignore him.

    It was hard to know what about Reagan, who was elected in 1980 as a bristling anti-communist, offended the foreign policy establishment more: his harsh rhetoric consigning the Soviet Union to the ash heap of history or his scorn for the prevailing doctrine of mutually assured destruction. State Department bureaucrats who tried to censor his speeches, most notably his 1987 Berlin ultimatum to Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down this wall,” threw up their hands when Reagan proposed to eliminate nuclear weapons altogether. Even among his White House staff, admiration for the President’s achievements was mingled with a faint whiff of condescension. “He knows so little and accomplishes so much,” marveled Robert McFarlane, the third of Reagan’s six National Security Advisers.

    Reagan was a sharply polarizing figure. His job-approval rating bottomed out at 35% halfway through his first term. Yet he left Washington more popular than when he first took office, a feat unmatched since Dwight Eisenhower. That’s not all the two men had in common. “You know why I like you, Ike?,” Winston Churchill asked the wartime commander who had labored, more or less harmoniously, alongside Bernard Law Montgomery, Charles de Gaulle and Franklin D. Roosevelt. “Because you ain’t no glory hopper.” True to form, in the Oval Office, Eisenhower displayed a paperweight that read, in Latin, “Gently in manner, strong in deed.” Equally revealing was the plaque Reagan placed atop his presidential desk. “There is no limit to what a man can do, or where he can go,” it proclaimed, “if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”

    Reagan’s modesty set him apart in Washington even more than in Hollywood. As the media succumbed to Gorbymania, Gorbachev’s American counterpart laughingly conceded center stage to the Soviet leader, reminding fretful handlers that he had once shared the silver screen with such notorious camera hogs as Wallace Beery and Errol Flynn. With equal sangfroid, Reagan professed not to care what “history” would say of him, on the eminently logical grounds that he wouldn’t be around to read it. Scholars and journalists will more than compensate for his indifference. Acknowledging the economic turnaround that occurred on Reagan’s watch, they’ll weigh over 16 million new jobs and a successful war on inflation against (then) record deficits and a deregulatory binge that saddled his successor with a ravaged savings-and-loan industry.

     

    For decades to come, students of the Reagan era will debate Margaret Thatcher’s assertion that her American ally won the Cold War without firing a shot. Nearly as intense is the argument swirling around the arms-for-hostages deal known as Iran-contra, a bizarre enterprise born of administrative neglect, wishful thinking and Reagan’s all-too-human desire to rescue his countrymen brutalized by their Middle East captors. Under more benign circumstances, Reagan didn’t hesitate to poke fun at the supposed confusion in his White House, conceding, “Our right hand doesn’t know what our far right hand is doing.” That he could laugh at himself was a source of reassurance to Americans who had lived through a series of failed or tragically shortened presidencies. Not the least of Reagan’s accomplishments was to refute popular doubts, widespread in 1980, that the office had grown too demanding for any one individual to master.

    By his own acknowledgment, Reagan arrived in Washington with a script. Indeed, by running in 1980 on a clearly articulated platform of less government, lower taxes, fresh incentives for entrepreneurship and a massive military buildup to counter Soviet expansionism, he could legitimately claim an electoral mandate for what he called his New Beginning. The actor in Reagan instinctively understood that successful leaders don’t just speak to us; they speak for us. Certainly, no one who heard his husky-voiced tribute to “the boys of Pointe du Hoc” 40 years after they scaled the walls of Hitler’s Fortress Europe is likely to forget the experience. But it was in unscripted moments, far more than any of Michael Deaver‘s made-for-television stagecraft, that Reagan showed his essential self. Above all, on March 30, 1981. In taking an assassin’s bullet and cracking wise in the shadow of death, he displayed qualities of character only hinted at on the campaign trail. The grace and grit he exhibited that day marked the genesis of Reagan’s enduring bond with the American people, including millions who never voted for him.

    http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2044565,00.html#ixzz1DBd1cJiu