Is the Nuclear incident that happened in Russia, still Boreing through the Earth?
139833
I suspect you're referring to the "China syndrome," where a nuclear meltdown could supposedly bore all the way through the earth to the opposite side. This cannot happen. Any meltdown will only bore through the ground until it hits the water table, at which time it will be discharged back into the atmosphere with the steam. Even if there were no water table, the fissile material would stop when it reached the earth's core, since it cannot fight upward against gravity.\n\nThe accident at Chernoybl, if I remember correctly, never even reached the water table. It was controlled by the containment facility.
122937
The world will never be safe. Countries will still try to dominate and subjugate one another.\n\nMutual destruction only limits Nuclear action.  There are pleanty of ground wars going on.
32067
It seems to me that natural disasters take a pretty good toll each year.  Perhaps you need to read the newspaper more often or listen to the news.  It's really amazing the knowledge one can gain by doing these things on a regular basis.  You might be amazed at the number of wars that are in progress, at any given, time around this unfriendly earth of ours.  Yet, the earths population continues to grow.  During WWII, Russia alone lost over 20 million people, yet here we are 60 years later and their population is as robust as ever.  War might resolve population explosion over the short term, but it doesn't take human kind very long to pick up the slack.  The ecosystem on the other hand, does need some immediate TLC.  The Icelanders may have found just the solution to a big part of the problem.  It seems that Iceland has a very short term timetable to convert all of its vehicles to hydrogen power.  Now as I understand it, hydrogen is the mixture of nitrogen and water which causes combustion.  It supposedly is not much cheaper than oil, however it is cleaner. Much cleaner. The problems this could solve are unlimited.  Just think, we could tell the whole middle east to blow itself to hell and take it's filty oil with them.  Sorry, I digress.  In summary, perhaps it is best to let mother nature take over the population issues, frankly I enjoy being there to help correct the problem when mother nature goes too far.
177164
The Chernobyl accident occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). It is regarded as the worst accident in the history of nuclear power. Because there was no containment building, a plume of radioactive fallout drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, UK, and the eastern United States. Large areas of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were badly contaminated, resulting in the evacuation and resettlement of roughly 200,000 people. About 60% of the radioactive fallout landed in Belarus.
983007
I believe Litvinenko was killed by Russia, maybe in conjunction with MI6. Not one other person that ate in that restaurant has been taken ill by Polonium 210. That tells me it was a hit. Since it happened on British soil, B-liar has to take at least some of the blame.
335043
Yes. Here's the proof: There has been talk that the asteroid 1997XF11 will crash into the Earth in the year 2028. The bottom line is that this asteroid poses no threat to the planet Earth in the next century. But, it will pass by the Earth over and over again in the next centuries, so it is worth knowing what our countermeasures are if it ever gets too close!\n\nRight now, they have the technology to divert a comet or asteroid coming towards the Earth. Our rockets and explosives would be sufficient to break apart even a large object of about 1 kilometer in diameter. We would of course need some lead time (10 years would be a nice minimum notice). Blowing up an asteroid or a comet too near to the Earth, would just create a chaotic mess of smaller pieces flying towards the Earth. If we were to discover an object coming towards the Earth with only 1-2 years notice before impact, our technologies might not be adequate. The best we could hope to do would be to evacuate the impact site. So the best plan right now is to continue surveying for Near Earth Objects, so that we will know where these asteroids and comets are in time to prepare any countermeasures that might be necessary.
332248
Look, a 1000 megaton detonation (whether it was due to a nuclear device or due to a meteor impact) would blow the line-of-site atmosphere into space.  We'd all suffer direly if that happened.\n\nA 10,000 megaton (or 10 gigaton) device would locally shatter the crust, and produce a surface wave that would do major damage to the crust all across the world.  Think of a bell: whack it hard enough anywhere and the whole thing rings, and if the whack is hard enough, the temporary standing waves would possibly shatter or crack the bell.  If you don't believe me, look at the Liberty Bell--that crack is (supposedly) due to it being rung hard enough.  Imagine that with the crust of the earth!  Pretty, it ain't.\n\nFrankly, nuclear weaponry is a silly approach to such an effort.  Throw rocks from orbit--you can get nuclear grade energies easily, and you can do it without any radiation.
435465
The Earth is already living on borrowed time. Consider this:\n\nWe're overdue for an E.L.E.* caused by an earth-crossing asteroid.  Geologic evidence point to massive bombardments every 12 million years or so, the last big hit was about 11-12 million years.  It is not only highly probable, but an astromonical surety that someday we will again face this threat. Few people realize how many close calls we have had in that last couple of decades.\n\nThen there's the threat of emerging pandemic viruses that might wipe out a great majority of mankind.  Or a disease which bould wipe out our crops or food and animals.  There is the threat of ecological disaster, which the geological records shows happens in cycles of hundreds of thousands of years. We may be plunged into another Ice Age or face massive global warming.\n\nAnd lets not forget the destruction we bring on ourselves from nuclear weapons.  Guess how many times since 1950 that we've been a hair's breath away from utter destruction?  False alarms and warnings, and tensions number around 20+, and these are just the public ones we know about.  Even in post-Cold War era there was that 1995 incident in Russia, and i could go on.\n\nMy point is, the Universe is a hostile place and we have only scratched the surface of how improbable our continued existence is, according to the odds.  We have beaten the odds, but probability has a way of catching uyp to you.
100632
Hair breadth from utter destruction- too many close calls\n\nOn October 27, 1962, a Soviet submarine officer named Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov reportedly refused to comply with the launch of a nuclear warhead while apparently under attack by a U.S. warship near Cuba.\n\nSeptember 26th, 1983 - Colonel Stanislav Petrov disobeys protocols and fails to launch Soviet Missiles after his early warning system indicated 5 missiles launched by the US at the Soviet Union.\n\nJanuary 25, 1995 - A peaceful scientific rocket is launched off the coast of Norway. To the east, in Russia, radar operators mistake the launch for a nuclear attack by the West. A deadly process -- nearly on auto-pilot -- is triggered. Within minutes President Yeltsin has been alerted of the attack. For the first time in history, the Russian nuclear briefcase is activated.\n\nI believe they're a necessary evil, especially in this age of rogue states and leaders.  The nearness to calamities, however, from false alarms makes them scary, and these are only the enemies false alarms, i wonder how many US false positives there have been since 1950.
898206
I wouldn't really call this breaking news.\n\nThe next issue will be who gets to deal with Iran.  And Russia.  Sorry, but it's true.
387064
I really don't know about the case you are referring to, but it remembered me a recent collision (April 1st, 06) between a Russian satellite and what they think was space debris. Looks as if this accidents will be every time more frequent as the number of satellites and debris increase. \n\nCheck the link to see the news:\nhttp://skymania.blogspot.com/2006/04/collision-knocks-out-satellite.html
548164
Your question is a very good one and everyone here is trying to help. Let me wade in with what I hope is a clear answer or two.\n\nCommercial reactors do not have the configuration to do what a nuclear bomb does: go promptly critical and thus have a large-scale supercritical nuclear explosion. Even Chernobyl (may the 40 or so people who died from it rest in peace) was mostly a steam explosion with a burning of the graphite core. The RBMK reactors like Chernobyl have mostly been shut down now - folks in the former Soviet Union may chime in now as to their status. \n\nModern commercial nuclear reactors (unlike the RBMK design) have large concrete domes called containments over them. The containment structures are designed to hold large amounts of pressure to guard against an accidental release of radiation. Even if the reactor core (part with the nuclear fuel) should become uncovered and thus lose its cooling, the containment will hold most of the radioactive material inside. That is precisely what happened at Three Mile Island. Most of the fuel and fission products were in the containment basement and plated out on the walls.\n\nThe most credible accidents are practiced for often at every power plant. Drills exercise the staff from the control room to the folks who go out into the field to survey for radiation. Those drills are graded not just by the plant, not just by the NRC, but by the county and state. \n\nNuclear reactors do not become nuclear bombs. If you were to take used fuel from nuclear reactors and chemically reprocess it - separating out the plutonium that is made in small amounts in the fuel - you could eventually make a bomb. We do not do reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel in the US. There is a worry that some countries may do that. Of course, that is precisely what the military does do.\n\nMy job? I am a Health Physicist. I teach radiation protection, nuclear physics, and radiation chemistry. In the event of an accident, I read remote monitors and figure out what the pathway the radionuclides are taking out, how much, and what dose might be delivered to the population downwind. My predictions are used to advise the county about evacuation of persons living in a 20 mile radius of the power plant. I have a Bachelors of Science in biology from Baylor University, Masters in Applied Nuclear Science from Georgia Tech, and my PhD work was in leukemia research at Baylor Col. of Medicine. I was part of the Three Mile Island Recovery Team.
205473
Operational nukes, US & Russia are nearly the same; they have the vast majority (90%). \nUS= around 8,000 operational\nRussia= 8,600 are operational\nBritain=200 operational\nFrance=350 oper\nChina=400\nIndia/Pakista= fewer than 100 between them\nIsrael=200-300\n\nThe operational number is dwarfed by the stockpiled number, those that are in reserve or awaiting dismantlement.\n\nIf that's not enough, new experiments being carried out at a particle accelerator called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) could have unthinkable consequences. There, and at other such places, scientists are attempting to recreate the big bang - the event that formed the universe. Some predict that they could cause a black hole which would consume the Earth, others that it could turn Earth into a planet of 'strange' matter, leaving it with no substance, and another possibility is that an explosion would be released from the lab with infinite energy.
1035178
If I'm not mistaken, we've tested a number of 20-megaton nukes before, and the fact that you're able to ask this question means that we've survived that first test. :-)  \n\nAs for how big of a nuke it would take to blow up Earth, a couple of issues you'll have to deal with first is what to do about all of the debris that will settle after the nuke goes off, because as it floats back down because of gravity, then gravity itself will hold down all of the matter upon Earth. As to what it would take to cause the most damage, I've gotten to thinking since the 2004 tsunami that if a well-placed nuke was right on major fault lines either in the ocean or possibly on land (like maybe on the New Madrid fault), the tectonic action resulting from the force of the nuclear blast would be much more destructive than the bomb itself, because the shifting of tectonic plates would then cause damage at a much greater radius from ground zero in the resulting earthquake than would just blast waves in an atmospheric explosion.\n\nMaybe that doesn't answer your question, but it's the best I can figure as I am neither a physicist nor a geologist. :-)
16463
Let me guess, you are Russian? \n\nYes, Russia has a lot of nukes. Since the demise of the USSR, the US has gained the advantage of knowing where a lot of them are. Ironically, as part of nuclear reduction agreements, the US actually PAYS Russia to destroy the agreed nuclear weapons. The operations are constantly overseen by US reps. I know this because I met two of these representatives in Votkinsk Russia. They were there monitoring a factory that was dismantling Nukes. As part of the reductions agreements, Russia can also monitor the US, but I guarantee they aren't paying us for it. \n\nSo which country has the best weapons? I would say that the US has more sophisticated weapons than just plan ol ballistic missiles. Nukes are good if want to blow up entire cities--but that isn't a very feasible idea these days. It just doesn't go over very well politically. \n\nSo all in all, yes, Russia has the nukes. But ever since the end of the cold war, the US has continued spending billion and billions on defense while Russia has really let off on their emphasis on nukes and and other weaponry. Yes, they are still developing and creating new weapons, but just not at the rate of the US.
319522
The tactical nukes are under the 50 kiloton ranges, some as low as .3 kilotons, used for fighting advancing armies, or small targets.  \n\nThe strategic nukes, however, will takeout whole cities and cause widespread contamination, in the 100-500 kiloton range. They've built higher kilotons, but supposedly, they've been stockpiled or disassembled.  One or two strategic nuclear detonations, or even 50 would not cause world-wide contamination, its when you get into a full nuclear exchange, between the US and Russia with 1,000s of nukes going off, is when life would be 'unlivable.'\n\nThe W.H.O. predicted in 1982 that "1.1 billion people would be killed outright in such a nuclear war, mainly in the United States, the Soviet Union, Europe, China and Japan. An additional 1.1 billion people would suffer serious injures and radiation sickness, for which medical help would be unavailable. It thus seems possible that more than 2 billion people-almost half of all the humans on Earth-would be destroyed in the immediate aftermath of a global thermonuclear war. ... would probably be enough to reduce at least the Northern Hemisphere to a state of prolonged agony and barbarism." \n\nCarl Sagan made a case that "a war in which a mere 100 megatons were exploded, less than one percent of the world arsenals, and only in low-yield airbursts over cities. ....would ignite thousands of fires, and the smoke from these fires alone would be enough to generate an epoch of cold and dark almost as severe as in the 5000 megaton case. The threshold for ...The Nuclear Winter is very low."
377216
Russia, then the U.S.S.R., uses graphite based fission reactors, as opposed to the U.S. design.  Human error caused the incident.  The second post to your question is a decent description as to the chain of events.