Scandinavian Monitoring Stations Detect Unexplained Radiation Spike over Europe | Hacker News Reader

Scandinavian Monitoring Stations Detect Unexplained Radiation Spike over Europe

iflscience.com

160 pointsfinphil103 comments

Earlier discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23662241

>The 9M730 Burevestnik (Russian: Буревестник; "Petrel", NATO reporting name: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) is a Russian experimental nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile under development for the Russian Armed Forces. The missile is claimed to have virtually unlimited range. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9M730_Burevestnik https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Central_Navy_Testing_Ran...

Exactly the reason we don't have nuclear powered aircraft.

Disasters would be magnified exponentially.

We don't have nuclear powered aircraft because the required shielding was too heavy. Both the US and the USSR tried in the 1950s and 1960s, but the only "successful" program was the Soviet Tu-95LAL which got around the problem by simply omitting most of the shielding, irradiating the crew.

Then the ICBM made the strategic bomber obsolete, and there was no incentive to sink any more money into nuclear-powered aircraft. Concern for safety had little to do with it, especially if you compare it to other occurrences at the time [1]. Now we can build autonomous vehicles that don't care about radiation and can make use of all that power, and that's exactly what Russia is doing.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_aircraft

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid...

>The Soviet Union and later Russia have been uncertain since the 1980s to what extent their ICBM nuclear arsenal is nullified by the United States' anti-ballistic missile system Strategic Defense Initiative,[7] proposed during the Reagan Administration and commonly known as the Star Wars program.[8] This type of weapon flies under the ballistic weapon shield and is part of President Putin's broader program to attempt to re-balance Russian nuclear strike capability.

>Military expert Anton Lavrov in the Izvestia article suggested that the design of the Burevestnik uses a ramjet engine, which, unlike the more traditional propulsion systems for nuclear weapons, will have radioactive exhaust throughout its entire operation.

> Military expert Anton Lavrov in the Izvestia article suggested that the design of the Burevestnik uses a ramjet engine, which, unlike the more traditional propulsion systems for nuclear weapons, will have radioactive exhaust throughout its entire operation.

That statement implies that all ramjets produce radioactive exhaust, which is false.

Interestingly the US was developing nuclear ramjets too, but stopped when ICBMs proved feasible. It's two sides of the same coin; America discontinues nuclear ramjets because they think ICBMs will work; Russia invests in nuclear ramjets because they think ICBMs won't work.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pluto

Yes, but this is some leak from a civic nuclear power station, not some nuclear powered missile. Either from the stone-age Leningrad plant, or maybe from a secret Russian military ship cruising around that time, with a Poseidon (Skyfall) But very unlikely that that ship is nuclear powered. http://www.hisutton.com/Akademik-Aleksandrov.html

Poseidon and Skyfall are two distinct weapons with a shared motivation. Skyfall is a nuclear ramjet powered cruise missile, while Poseidon is a nuclear powered torpedo (in principle an unmanned miniature nuclear submarine with a suicide mission, although probably without hydrostatic buoyancy control.)

Both are motivated by the perception that ABM technology may render ICBMs ineffective.

Old news. Submarine-powered cruise missiles have been for decades Russia's biggest defense weapons against USA' offensive threats. You cannot just defend them. Like the Granit (which most likely was shot at the Pentagon) Those two nuclear powered missiles are not much different, just they can be theoretically be shot off days ahead. The submarine must not hide for weeks near the US coast.

ICBM's are unneeded since the 80ies. That's why they don't have them.

To be clear, a Poseidon is not a cruise missile; it's a torpedo. It has different characteristics from an Oscar class loaded with Granits. Being a torpedo (which doesn't fly) a Poseidon can only attack things on or next to the water (probably ports / coastal cities.) Because a Poseidon is slow (relative to a missile) it seems an unlikely choice for a first strike attack; it's more likely to be intended as a retaliation weapon that's hard to intercept. Russia may also be planning on creating Poseidon "silos" on the seabed of the Arctic Ocean. Possibly related to this, Russia has a single submarine capable of carrying a Poseidon, the K-329 "Belgorod" which is a stretched Oscar-II. It can also supposedly operate as a mothersub for small submarines like the Losharik; the plan may be to use a submarine like the Losharik to install Poseidons on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean to act as a 'Dead Hand' system. However after the Losharik fire, I wonder what their plans are...

The biggest advantage of a Skyfall missile over a Granit is obvious; range. If a Skyfall missile works as they plan, there'd be no need to sneak an Oscar anywhere close to the target, or even use a submarine at all. Furthermore it could strike inland targets beyond the range of a Granit fired from an Oscar sitting in coastal waters. An Oscar would need to sneak it's way up the Mississippi River if it wanted a chance of hitting a target in Nebraska with Granit missiles, which leads into:

ICBMs. With respect to ICBMs you're mistaken. Russia does have a variety of ICBMs and SLBMs still in service with plans for more. They have enough already to easily overwhelm America's extant ABM systems, which are primarily a defense against smaller nuclear threats (e.g. North Korea.) Poseidon and Skyfall are hedges against the possibility that ballistic missiles are rendered truly obsolete by ABM systems, but that scenario hasn't [yet] become reality.

1950's version: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2015/ph241/rossi1/

At one point I'd found someone's doctoral thesis on the subject, but now it's not quickly popping up in searches on Project Pluto or SLAM.

I first learned of Fiona Hill when she testified at the impeachment hearings, and since she sounded very intelligent I went and got her book (which she wrote with Clifford Gabby) "Mr Putin" which, I've learned, is widely considered the best psychological portrait of Putin that exists.

The authors are surprisingly respectful of Putin's methods, especially in the early days. And in the debate over "Is Putin or rational or not" they seem to clearly answer "Yes, he is rational." Especially regarding Crimea, they point out that Putin clearly explained that if the West interfered in the Ukraine, then Russia would have to consider that intervention an offensive action, and make a response, so when the West sided with "pro Western" forces in the Ukraine in 2013/2014, Putin felt that he had clearly warned the West that he was going to respond.

It is useful and interesting to understand some of his motivation.

Having said all that, there is a lot that is disappointing about his inability to pull modern Russia past any of the major failings of the USSR, in particular the lack of transparency. More than ever, Russia relies on oil exports, despite his stated intention to re-industrialize Russia, Putin has not managed to rebuild the economy to the Great Power status that the country held during the middle of the 20th Century. Instead of real progress, what we see is the irritation of a power that knows it has fallen down.

Update from the radiation authority in Finland -

https://www.stuk.fi/-/stukin-helsingissa-ja-kotkassa-havaits...

Translation - very low levels of airborne radioactive isotopes have been detected in the last couple of weeks (Co-60, Ru-103, Cs-134, Cs-137, Zr-95, Nb-95) but they are not high quantities enough to affect normal radiation levels. They do not originate from Finland. The isotopes are the same as used on nuclear power plants and small quantities can be from normal reactor use or maintenance.

You can see realtime radiation levels here - https://www.stuk.fi/web/en/topics/environmental-radiation/ra...

If I had to have a wild guess (could be wrong) I would say it's from the Sosnovy Bor plant near St. Petersburg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leningrad_Nuclear_Power_Plant There is ongoing work to decommission the last Chernobyl style reactors by 2025. Hope it's all going safely!

Not great, not terrible

Completely normal phenomenon

Has anyone seen links to actual spectra from the monitoring organizations' counters?

An example of the sort of thing I'm looking for: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.4853.pdf (see Figure 1)

Yes, probably state sponsored actors in Russia.

Is constructing a device capable of sustaining a chain reaction all that difficult though? We did it in the 40's with a big pile of uranium and some graphite. Could an external thermal neutron source allow you to reduce the size even further? I don't think it will be long before some idiot on youtube creates one in his backyard. There are already communities of folks playing with fusors, which can produce neutrons capable of activating nearby materials.

We've all heard of the radioactive boy scout, and he figured out what he did without youtube and ebay.

So, nothing changed since 1986. I feel like I have a déjà vu.

How can a country be this stupid. Instead of entering modern world without war and trade instead.

They consistently try to destroy everything possible.

Last week a major oil spill, radiation leak now. Previous radiation leak was in 2017 and everyone remembers Tsjernobyl, I hope.

Killing people abroad ( Germany, London)

Invading Ukraine, for saving their naval army

Threatening Europe with fly overs

Meddling with elections and spreading misinformation.

In the mean time, they think they found an ally in China. While Russia is getting pennies on the dollar, losing engineers to China and getting almost zero "promised investments" of China. Lol

They already lost to democratic Europe during the USSR. I'm just waiting till history repeats again somehow

All true, however this is not specific to Russia only. It seems most large powers exhibit bullying behaviour.

USA is only a little better (making up WMD to go to war with Iraq, meddling with elections and democratic process in other countries, spying on allies, etc). Then we have China which is probably yet another category of international bully.

Sadly this is quite expected for global super powers...

Been thinking about that phrase "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" is perhaps better as "power corrupts, absolute power writes the history books".

What about, power corrupts. But in a democracy it's hard to do it in the open ... For long :)

Perhaps you're forgetting that Russia is not a super power.

They can extract cheap oil and try to sell their military equipment.

We'll see how that pans out in the future, while Europe is slowly moving to green energy.

It's just nuts that they are throwing away the opportunity to correctly invest oil/gas money, before it's over.

Certainly not a superpower by these metrics. However, Russia does possess a vast number of WMDs which still puts it superpower category.

The thing about WMD's is that you only need one.

There's no use-case for it in the modern world, except the threat of using it.

Well what if your single one is taken offline? You need at least two, for redundancy :P

1 that is actually working then :p

I believe the grandparent is talking about second strike capability. The idea is to have enough that the enemy can't destroy it all before you have a chance to react. It is possible that one is enough or it maybe that ten is far from adequate. It depends on your threat model.

Not that any of this matters if our threat model includes an enemy who doesn't care if they get annihilated in the reprisal.

Disclaimer: I don't know about any of these things and they are just guesses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_strike

Perhaps that is how you, and other rational people might feel about it, but the psychopaths in charge might very well feel differently, and probably do, if history is any indicator.

WMD's are wonderful for keeping other countries from attacking (but who wants to invade Russia?), but of little use for offensive purposes.

In terms of military tech, Russia is #2. Period. (fast approaching Chinese tho).

Their submarines and missiles are beyond our tech in the US in some aspects (hypersonic missles, Supercavitation torpedos).

I view them like the 3rd opponent in a starcraft 1v1v1 that got smashed early. They can't win the match, but they can decide the winner.

You have to be able to detect a submarine to fire on it and the US is a long way ahead of Russia when it comes to both quiet submarines and passive towed arrays.

In fact the original argument for the super-cavitating torpedo was one based on the premise of killing a submarine that already fired on you that you hadn't detected until it fired on you.

Russia has some showy tech (as you mentioned) but they lack in areas the US was ahead of them in decades ago.

In terms of technology there are other countries with more sophisticated defence capabilties where I am from is one (the UK) is one, much of the technology the Russians export is things they did under the USSR (which definitely was #2 in terms of military tech at that point).

When you get down to it though modern war is force projection and logistics and there no one touches the Americans.

> modern war is force projection

The Russians seem to have projected pretty effectively in Crimea and Syria. They’re not back to their peak but they’re trending up.

Crimea was on their doorstep and Assad already had strong ties to the Russians.

The US Navy and marines are the 2nd largest Air Force in the world, the first been the US airforce.

Russia is clearly a regional power but it is not a superpower except in nuclear weapons but it would cease to exist shortly after using those.

I’ve no dog in the fight, I’m British but the US military is vast, it’s so mind bogglingly big that it’s just taken for granted at this point.

In tonnage of combatants the US navy is larger than the next 8 combined, 6 of who are allies.

It’s crazy how over gunned they are tbh and they spend less as a share of GDP than the Russians do.

Their peek was during the USSR and guess what happened then.

Their focus on aerospace just got nullified by SpaceX.

Their oil/gas is neglecting the accelerated shift from Europe to green energy.

So yeah, they still have military which was way bigger in the past and didn't got them anywhere.

The Ukraine story is not over and I don't think you have any idea why it was done.

It's because their fleet would be rendered useless is they can't control Ukraine and the black sea. And they don't control Ukraine yet :)

They did however already suffer pretty big losses because of it.

Are you talking about their ships that would be rendered unusable by Ukraine in Europe? :)

What use does a fleet have, if it can't go out of the harbor. That would be a very weak position to start with in any game ;)

I wouldn't forget what happened in Japan, when Russia wanted to show their "superior" naval strength.

Russia is on the verge of a demographic collapse as the generation born after the fall of the soviet union comes of age. Their military which relies on huge manpower reserves will have a much smaller pool to draw upon, domestic consumption of consumer goods will shrink, and the costs of public welfare for the elderly is going to grow significantly relative to tax revenues. This demographic shift has already started, and its full effects will be felt this decade. Russia needs to make a lot of unreasonably bold plays right now while it still can if it is to secure its position in the coming years. Oil sales and advanced military technologies are not going to be super useful in the long run, but they reduce Russia's reliance on its large population which is the more imminent threat.

It's generally unsafe to assume counter-intuitive moves are irrational.

That's the thing. And Putin wants Russia to be seen as a world power, so it bullies like one.

Russia could be a great country if they were more democratic, open to criticism, were safer to both foreign and domestic investors and entrepreneurs, etc. They've got tons of resources, tons of opportunities, but I strongly believe their tradition of oppressive regimes (since the Mongols, really) is holding them back.

We also do fine w/ meddling w/ our own elections (Voter suppression) take for instance the fiasco that was the Louisville single precinct during a primary w/ 600k people coming out to vote in just two polling locations in the state.

Then we have our own leaders bullying us into believing masks are for 'wimps', which almost appears like they're trying to weaken Americans (literally make them sick and die) so Russia or China can just walk in and make us fascist and give them a good place in the new hierarchy.

Doesn't hurt that most of American's act like whiny brats and children who just learned the word No, and they do not like it.

My (probably poorly informed) take is that they're compensating for a weak economy by basically waging asymmetric/guerrilla warfare. Using minimal cost techniques to sow the most chaos possible. They may not be able to be strong, but they can make others weaker.

They spend a large % of GDP on military, while their neighbour easily outspends them because of a way bigger economy.

After all, Russia's GDP is similar to only 3 European countries ( I think France, Belgium and Netherlands together is bigger, you can check it in Wolfram Alpha ).

They should just spend it on trade instead. So their population would get wealthier.

Edit: over estimated Russia's GDP. It's even smaller then France alone. Also Germany and Italy are easily bigger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Last time I checked Russia had a smaller GDP than Italy. Hell of a geopolitical presence for such a small economy.

You're correct. I could have just mentioned Germany/France/Italy being bigger by themselves than Russia.

It's even less then I expected. Weird.

Perhaps Wolfram Alpha had different numbers

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: checked. No it isn't, perhaps I was checking military expenditure then since that was what I was comparing a while ago.

Conclusion that I had was that Europe is outspending Russia easily in military.

Using GDP to measure Russian significance is like trying to measure American significance by counting the number of hotdogs consumed - it doesn't matter. Results are what matters.

For the amount that Russia spends on its military, it is able to project exponentially more force globally - it is #2 in the world, period. Meanwhile the the New York Times described the F-35 as "America's Dysfunctional Trillion-Dollar Fighter-Jet Program". Trillions spent on a jet with questionable fighting capabilities. American military leaders themselves don't trust the plane.

> it is able to project exponentially more force globally - it is #2 in the world, period

Is it, though? NATO has 18 aircraft carriers, of those 12 are American, 2 of them are British, and two are Italian. Russia has 1 that is sitting in dry dock for servicing since 2017 and was even further damaged when the dry dock sank[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_aircraft_carrier_Admir...

>NATO has 18 aircraft carriers

That's because Russia never had interest in aircraft carriers, it's just not their military motto, you need Carrier's to attack a Country outside of your reach, witch Russia knew would never be successfully happen against NATO-States, that's why even in the Cold war Russia was always focused on defense.

Yea, that doesn't count as global force projection then, which was the argument a few comments upthread.

You know how big Russia still is? It would even count 'global' if they just stay inside the borders ;)

Russia's army is small compared with it's glory days during the USSR and we all know what happened then.

In these days, Europe easily outspends Russia and it's army IS bigger.

The F-35 is also better than the Su-57 and Russia has no 5th generation fighter :)

Besides that, Russias naval fleet is stuck behind Ukraine. I don't think they like that :)

>The F-35 is also better than the Su-57 and Russia has no 5th generation fighter

Well that's some Marketing blabla, same as that Generation blabla..AND Russia says that the Su-57 is 5th Gen ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth-generation_jet_fighter#R...

Oh and the US is not sure if the F35 is really a 5th gen jet (because lack of supercruise) but the F-22 is one.

Russia's military capabilities are slowly atrophying because the GDP isn't enough to support the footprint. The economy creaks over the massive expenditure, while maintenance is deferred, readiness decreases, and programs and training are halfassed.

Economic capability is fundamental to your ability to field and maintain a military.

Nonsense.

Russia can project its military in adjacent regions, for limited times. It has no blue water navy, its air force is at least one generation behind. Its army has crappy logistics (meaning staying power).

The only areas where it competes at all is in missiles, and even that area is debatable. Its vaunted S-300 and S-400 air defence systems are routinely ignored by the Israelis during airstrikes, as are its shorter range systems.

It has no budget to invest in R&D, and when it comes up with even a remotely interesting system, can only try to buy a few units.

The F-35 is superior to any Russian aircraft flying, including the SU-57. The F-22, a 30 year old design, is still far better than anything the Russians have, or will have in squadron numbers before 2030.

The Armada vehicle line is still a joke, and will probably never be produced in numbers due to budget constraints.

I truly hope you're not an American or any other citizen of a country who is basically doing exactly the same thing. Would be highly ironic to sit and yell about Russia if so.

have you read the article? - no you haven't

"With relatively few sites reporting the radiation increase, identifying its origins is challenging. The RIVM added media reports that it believes Russia is the source are likely based on mistranslations of its Dutch statement, and that "no specific country of origin can be pointed out at this moment."

yet you took the trouble to collect in your post almost every single bad thing you heard about Russia, half of them outright lies, the rest being half-truths, and dump them all here.

This is a fantastically naive. The `modern world` you mention is far from innocent. The Iraq war, the ongoing intervention in Syria, Libya, the struggle to contain China, the whole farce with the Iran nuclear deal. It is absurd you mention the 'modern world' as an absolute positive when that modern world lead by the US caused the death of 500K+ lives in the middle east (Iraq civil war plus ISIS). What is happening with Russia, Europe and China is far more complex and intriguing than your black and white, good vs evil assessment. History is not over yet.

Nothing is perfect. But my statement that "war is made redundant by global trade", still remains.

The problem is that some countries ( eg. China) are not playing by the same rules and limiting exposure to downsides of global trade ( by protectionism) that they still do stupid things ( eg. The problems between China and India currently).

Both countries are not already in a war, because they are trading and it would hurt both economies. It's even mentioned in a recent article of the current conflict.

I'll give you another POV and that is that the UN is pretty new ( 20 years) and the biggest positive change in the last century. There are problems ofc, but that doesn't undermine my statement.

The second biggest change was the fall of the USSR for more democracy. And Russia is still struggling with this after 30 years.

>UN is pretty new ( 20 years)

The UN was established in 1945...you know after that 2. World-war.

>And Russia is still struggling with this after 30 years

Yes, because Russia never had any democracy, its not easy to establish that fast, and 30 Years is a really short time.

Ow lol, serious mistake here. EU is pretty new ( 20 years)

PS. According to current observations. Russia is far from "a democracy".

A lot of the countries that seperated from USSR in 1990 ( even Hungary), are doing a much better job.

You should study contemporary US history and compare :)

Yes but then the US made the first step for a new Atomic Race:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/20/trump-us-nucle...

A retreat from arms control creates a dangerous nuclear reality:

https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

You started a nationalistic flamewar and then perpetuated it. That is seriously not cool. It is not what this site is for. Please do not do this on HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

You already know its from Russia.

More specifically, we know:

- other possible sources in the area have a history of cooperation, so process of elimination is rather suggestive.

- Russia has leaked and not come clean before, so history is also rather suggestive.

But who knows! It has already been a very weird year, anyone want to bet it can't get weirder?

> Russia has leaked and not come clean before

Russia or the USSR?

Same leadership, different labels.

Also true for the US...hi Nixon ;)

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-09/news/us-completes-in...

Two things being bad does not make them equal.

Russia, in 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/world/europe/russia-nucle...

When that USSR anthrax factory started leaking at least it wasn't contagious.

Well, there's very few places in the area where this could come from and Russia has a history of lying like a rug about pretty much everything. So there's that.

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