Polynesians exposed to fallout from France’s nuclear tests in the South Pacific have a slightly increased risk of developing thyroid cancer, a study suggested on Monday that used declassified military data for the first time.
France carried out 41 atmospheric nuclear weapon tests in French Polynesia between 1966 and 1975, exposing residents to fallout which has been a source of lasting friction between Paris and residents of the Pacific archipelago.
The study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, used risk modeling to estimate that the nuclear tests were associated with between 0.6 percent and 7.7 percent of thyroid cancers in French Polynesia.
Putin also said that Russia would suspend its participation in a treaty aimed at keeping a lid on nuclear weapons expansion. The so-called New START Treaty was signed by Russia and the U.S. in 2010. It caps the number of long-range nuclear warheads they can deploy and limits the use of missiles that can carry atomic weapons.
Putin said Tuesday in a major address that Russia was not fully withdrawing from the treaty yet. He said Russia must stand ready to resume nuclear weapons tests if the US does so.
Nine military officers who had worked decades ago at a nuclear missile base in Montana have been diagnosed with blood cancer and there are “indications” the disease may be linked to their service, according to military briefing slides obtained by The Associated Press. One of the officers has died.
All of the officers, known as missileers, were assigned as many as 25 years ago to Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to a vast field of 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos. The nine officers were diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, according to a January briefing by U.S. Space Force Lt. Col. Daniel Sebeck.
Missileers ride caged elevators deep underground into a small operations bunker encased in a thick wall of concrete and steel. They remain there sometimes for days, ready to turn the launch keys if ordered to by the president.
Decades-old US silos holding Minuteman III missiles that have been a key nuclear deterrent since the 1970s will be assessed by robots that can crawl straight up walls.
A year ago, astronomers discovered a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) lasting nearly two minutes, dubbed GRB 211211A. Now, that unusual event is upending the long-standing assumption that longer GRBs are the distinctive signature of a massive star going supernova. Instead, two independent teams of scientists identified the source as a so-called “kilonova,” triggered by the merger of two neutron stars, according to a new paper published in the journal Nature. Because neutron star mergers were assumed to only produce short GRBs, the discovery of a hybrid event involving a kilonova with a long GRB is quite surprising.
“This detection breaks our standard idea of gamma-ray bursts,” said co-author Eve Chase, a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “We can no longer assume that all short-duration bursts come from neutron-star mergers, while long-duration bursts come from supernovae. We now realize that gamma-ray bursts are much harder to classify. This detection pushes our understanding of gamma-ray bursts to the limits.”
As we’ve reported previously, gamma-ray bursts are extremely high-energy explosions in distant galaxies lasting between mere milliseconds to several hours. The first gamma-ray bursts were observed in the late 1960s, thanks to the launching of the Vela satellites by the US. They were meant to detect telltale gamma-ray signatures of nuclear weapons tests in the wake of the 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union. The US feared that the Soviets were conducting secret nuclear tests, violating the treaty. In July 1967, two of those satellites picked up a flash of gamma radiation that was clearly not the signature of a nuclear weapons test.
The protests in China have had no impact on Beijing’s ambitions of world domination. On Tuesday, Chinese jets violated South Korea’s Air defence zone. A Pentagon report further claims China will have 1,500 nuclear warheads by 2035. Priyanka Sharma reports.
Nuclear arsenals remain large enough to fundamentally shift the Earth system in the blink of an eye.
The U.S. and Russia have recently agreed to hold talks on the New START Treaty, and the only accord left regulating the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world. While this is undoubtedly good news, we must not allow it to lull us into complacency. Global events this year, most notably in Ukraine, have raised fears of a nuclear conflict to levels not seen since the cold war. More than 10,000 nuclear warheads remain in the world, and the Kremlin’s language regarding weapons of mass destruction has become increasingly threatening in 2022.
Russia is LOSING the War against Ukraine and has RETREATED from the Key Town of LYMAN which it has held since May and was used as a Supply & Transport HUB for the North of Ukraine. In Direct Response one of President Putin’s RIGHT HAND MEN has Urged Russia to Launch LOW YIELD NUCLEAR STRIKES on Ukraine. In this video I provide full details of the latest situation, as well as providing on update on the NORD STREAM Pipelines, European Gas SUPPLY and details of what a Low Yield Nuclear Bomb is. Finally I provide my view on the implications of the current situation for both Russia & the GLOBAL ECONOMY.
Once the first artificial super intelligence is created it will help us recursively improve ourselves and then the post human millennium will begin.
Thinking this will prevent war, the US government gives an impenetrable supercomputer total control over launching nuclear missiles. But what the computer does with the power is unimaginable to its creators.
