Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #69 Even MORE Fun With Science: Earthquake Weaponry

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Dur­ing World War II, Win­ston Churchill observed that, in wartime, truth is so pre­cious that it should, at all times, be attend­ed by “a body­guard of lies.” For decades, the Unit­ed States and U.S.S.R. researched the pos­si­bil­i­ty of manip­u­lat­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, includ­ing earth­quakes, as weapons of mass destruc­tion. This type of weapon­ry was the focus of a treaty between the two super­pow­ers nego­ti­at­ed in the late 1970s. Yet, despite a grow­ing body of evi­dence that seis­mic weapon­ry may very well be a fact of life in the late 1990s, offi­cial­dom con­tin­ues to down­play that omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty. This pro­gram explores that evi­dence. In addi­tion to exam­in­ing evi­dence of the exis­tence of seis­mic weapons and/or research into such weapons, the seg­ments high­light the research of Niko­la Tes­la, who used mechan­i­cal res­o­nance to cause a small earth­quake in New York City in 1896! After dis­cus­sion of a press con­fer­ence giv­en on April 28, 1997 by Defense Sec­re­tary William S. Cohen, in which he says that “ter­ror­ist nations” are cur­rent­ly devel­op­ing means of trig­ger­ing earth­quakes, vol­canic erup­tions and dis­as­trous weath­er events, the pro­gram reviews some of the his­to­ry of the Cold War research and devel­op­ment of seis­mic weapons. The broad­cast also touch­es on the Japan­ese Aum Shinrikyo’s attempt to use Tesla’s dis­cov­er­ies to devel­op tec­ton­ic weapons and their pro­fessed belief that the Kobe earth­quake was caused by the Unit­ed States.

Discussion

2 comments for “FTR #69 Even MORE Fun With Science: Earthquake Weaponry”

  1. http://www.timesunion.com/business/energy/article/APNewsBreak-Iran-s-reactor-said-damaged-by-quakes-4575745.php

    APNews­Break: Iran’s reac­tor said dam­aged by quakes
    By GEORGE JAHN, Asso­ci­at­ed Press
    Updat­ed 3:53 pm, Tues­day, June 4, 2013

    Sev­er­al coun­tries mon­i­tor­ing Iran’s nuclear pro­gram have picked up infor­ma­tion that the coun­try’s only pow­er-pro­duc­ing nuclear reac­tor was dam­aged by one or more of sev­er­al recent earth­quakes, with long cracks appear­ing in at least one sec­tion of the struc­ture, two diplo­mats said Tues­day.

    Iran is under U.N. sanc­tions for refus­ing to stop nuclear pro­grams that could be used to make weapons, even as it insists it has no such plans.

    Its Bushehr nuclear plant is not con­sid­ered a pro­lif­er­a­tion threat. But some nations are con­cerned about how safe it is. Iran has refused to join an inter­na­tion­al nuclear safe­ty con­ven­tion and per­sis­tent tech­ni­cal prob­lems have shut the plant for lengthy peri­ods since it start­ed up in Sep­tem­ber 2011 after years of con­struc­tion delays.

    Reports of the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency in Feb­ru­ary and May said the agency had been informed by the Ira­ni­ans that the facil­i­ty was shut down, with­out spec­i­fy­ing why.

    Kuwait and oth­er Arab coun­tries are only a few hun­dred kilo­me­ters (miles) away from Iran’s Bushehr reac­tor, which is on the Per­sian Gulf coast, and are par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about the safe­ty of the Russ­ian-built reac­tor. Sau­di Ara­bia men­tioned Bushehr as a safe­ty con­cern on Tues­day at a ses­sion of the Vien­na-based IAEA’s 35-nation board.

    But Iran insists the plant is tech­ni­cal­ly sound and built to with­stand all but the largest earth­quakes unscathed. Offi­cials in Tehran reas­sured the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty after the quakes struck in April and ear­ly May that the facil­i­ty was undam­aged.

    The diplo­mats referred to recent restrict­ed infor­ma­tion gath­ered from the site in ques­tion­ing that asser­tion. They told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press that one con­crete sec­tion of the struc­ture devel­oped cracks sev­er­al meters long as a result of the quakes on April 9 and April 16.

    Both diplo­mats are from mem­ber coun­tries of the Vien­na-based Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency, which mon­i­tors Iran’s nuclear pro­gram. They demand­ed anonymi­ty because they are not allowed to divulge con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion.

    One of the two said that the cracks seen were not in the vicin­i­ty of the reac­tor core, which con­tains high­ly radioac­tive fuel. But he said that the infor­ma­tion avail­able was lim­it­ed to one sec­tion of the reac­tor, mean­ing dam­age else­where could not be ruled out.

    He declined to go into details, say­ing that could jeop­ar­dize the sources.

    Asked about the reports, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief del­e­gate to the IAEA, said, “I know noth­ing about Bushehr.”

    Iran is the only coun­try oper­at­ing a nuclear pow­er plant that has not signed on to the 75-nation nuclear safe­ty con­ven­tion, which was cre­at­ed after the 1986 Cher­nobyl nuclear dis­as­ter.

    While IAEA inspec­tors occa­sion­al­ly do inven­to­ry of nuclear mate­r­i­al at Bushehr they do not have a man­date to con­duct safe­ty inspec­tions.

    IAEA chief Yukiya Amano sug­gest­ed send­ing in experts after the quakes was a good idea, but an IAEA offi­cial, who also demand­ed anonymi­ty because his infor­ma­tion is con­fi­den­tial, said no such vis­its took place.

    A mod­er­ate quake struck near Bushehr May 6, pre­ced­ed by two more pow­er­ful tem­blors in April includ­ing one of 7.7 mag­ni­tude. Iran­ian offi­cials say the Bushehr plant, south of Tehran, was built to with­stand quakes up to mag­ni­tude 8.

    Because it’s not a mem­ber of the inter­na­tion­al safe­ty con­ven­tion, “there are ques­tions about the day-to-day safe­ty at the instal­la­tion,” said Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endow­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Peace.

    Con­cerns about Bushehr’s safe­ty have been com­pound­ed by its loca­tion in the wake of Japan’s 2011 earth­quake and tsuna­mi that crip­pled the Fukushi­ma reac­tor and result­ed in huge radioac­tive spills.

    Iran is locat­ed in a zone of tec­ton­ic com­pres­sion where the Ara­bi­an plate is mov­ing into the Eurasian plate, leav­ing more than 90 per­cent of the coun­try criss­crossed by seis­mic fault lines.

    Nine quakes that hit Iran in the last decades were over mag­ni­tude six includ­ing a 2003 tem­blor that killed at least 26,000 peo­ple in the city of Bam. Sci­en­tists say more fault lines are wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered and more major quakes are only a mat­ter of time.

    Iran is not prone to tsunamis. But a severe earth­quake alone can crack pro­tec­tive con­tain­ment ves­sels that keep radioac­tiv­i­ty inside reac­tors. Earth­quakes can also knock out the pow­er, crip­pling cool­ing sys­tems that pre­vent reac­tors from over­heat­ing and pos­si­bly explod­ing.

    Posted by Vanfield | June 5, 2013, 9:53 am
  2. @Vanfield: Inter­est­ing sto­ry, and I do hope no civil­ians were killed.

    Posted by Steven L. | June 5, 2013, 6:35 pm

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