Adam Weinstein reported today on Gawker that a man “used a boat to access a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear power plant Sunday morning and exchanged fire with a security guard on the plant grounds before fleeing downriver.”
This comes only a week after the first simulated terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant.
Kate Brown in an article for Slate, “Life in a Real Nuclear Watsteland,” writes about contaminated areas of Russia:
The Techa became a flowing radioactive reservoir in 1949 when engineers at the plutonium plant ran out of underground storage containers for high-level radioactive waste. A Dixie cup of this waste could kill everyone in a large ballroom. Compelled by the arms race, the plant director ordered it dumped in the Techa River. The men running the plant didn’t tell anyone about this decision. The 28,000 Russian, Bashkir, and Tatar farmers living on the river—drinking, cooking, and bathing with river water—had no idea. In the 1950s and ’60s special forces resettled most of the 16 contaminated villages on the Techa, but a few villages were too large and expensive to move, so they stayed. Muslumovo is one.
On a bit of a personal note, yesterday I defended my dissertation, “The Apocalypse Archive: American Literature and the Nuclear Bomb.” As I move now toward turning it into a book, the first thing I’m gonna change will probably be the title. Onward toward more nuclear criticism and hyperarchival realism.
My brother just alerted me to this relatively new and ongoing concern of the US Department of Defense: the assured use of space. He was also nice enough to point me toward an article that nicely lays out the global risks associated with space, “Mutually Assured Destruction: Space Weapons, Orbital Debris and the Deterrence Theory for Environmental Sustainability,” published in volume 37 of Air & Space Law. Among the article’s other concerns, Surya Gablin Gunasekara writes: “this article argues that the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction as applied to the space environment and the international space legal framework supply enough deterrence to prevent the widespread use of space weapons without the need for additional international agreements.” This adds a whole new wrinkle to my ongoing thinking about disaster, and further complicates notions of archival destruction because of how vital a role US communication satellites play in the global telecommunications infrastructure.
As Matthew L. Wald reports in yesterday’s New York Times, “All 104 nuclear power reactors now in operation in the United States have a safety problem that cannot be fixed and they should be replaced with newer technology.” This flaw became apparent after the Fukushima meltdown, which the Times reported on here. This is a striking admission, coming as it does from the former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
In the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books Robert Darnton discusses the 18 April 2013 launch of the Digital Public Library of America. As Darnton describes the goals of this project, “The Digital Public Library of America [. . .] is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans–and eventually to everyone in the world–online and free of charge.” Wow, total access to the (hyper)archive for anyone. This is an amazing project.
This is why this blog exists. None of any of this is a good thing. Actors in an apocalypse flick. Hyper. Archival.Realism.
Tensions are continuing to mount between North Korea, its neighbors, and the US. The New York Times reported Tuesday that N. Korea is restarting a nuclear reactor to produce plutonium for weapons. Despite this, and other recent developments, the White House feels its all just blustery bravado. Whatever the bravado, however, the US still moved a missile defense system to Guam, according to The Guardian.
Even my local paper is getting in on the action (via the AP): “North Korea warned early today that its military has been cleared to attack the United States using “smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear” weapons, while the United States said it was strengthening protection in the region and seeking to defuse the situation. Despite the intense rhetoric, analysts do not expect a nuclear attack by North Korea, which knows that the move could trigger a destructive, suicidal war that no one in the region wants. The North is not believed to have the ability to launch nuclear-tipped missiles, but its other nuclear capabilities aren’t fully known.” I am not reassured.
And to make matters worse in the region, the tensions between Japan and China are increasing, as The New York Times also reported that Japan simulated a battle recapturing an island from a clearly Chinese invader. There is obviously cause for concern, as Martin Fackler writes: “Until recently, a simulated battle against Chinese forces would have been unthinkably provocative for Japan, which renounced the right to wage war — or even to possess a military — after its march across Asia in World War II resulted in crushing defeat.”Again, this is cause for considerable concern.
Zack Beauchamp writes “Why You Should Be More Concerned About War With North Korea This Time,” at Think Progress.
CUNY is holding a symposium 8 April 2013 on a topic near-and-dear to my heart: how to think beyond / past / against the current ubiquitous discourse of crisis.
And some striking images of abandoned places.
The Hyperarchival Parallax 