Several months ago (in April), I wrote about the obstructionist mess in electoral politics in the US leading to a ‘search for a man on horseback‘–the belief that someone like Donald Trump could sweep in on a steed and (metaphorically, one hopes) swing a sword a few times and bring us to a new age of American greatness. That article also contained a warning about the many Black Swans circling, and I specifically called out the Civil War in Ukraine. Here’s the prognostication (links should still work):
…(as Dr. Helen Caldicott points out recently), any escalation of our funny little proxy almost-war in Ukraine is by definition a nuclear war–Ukraine has 15 active nuclear power reactors, and any disruption of the power grid would lead to meltdowns. Those disruptions aside, someone targeting a reactor with a few stray rounds of artillery would almost certainly set events in motion that would make Chernobyl look like ants at a picnic.
I hate it when I have a chance of being right about stuff like this.
As it turns out, Ukraine didn’t need a few stray rounds of howitzer ammo to put them in danger of meltdown of one of their 15 nuclear power plants. All it took was an act of sabotage. Per fellow blogger Robin Westenra—
In an eerie reminder of a possible nuclear catastrophe, a senior Ukrainian energy official revealed that the attack on transmission towers that cut off the delivery of electricity from Ukraine to Crimea also created an emergency situation at nuclear power plants…
The apparent act of sabotage in Ukraine’s Kherson region forced an emergency power unloading at several Ukrainian nuclear power plants, which can be extremely dangerous, according to the first deputy director of Ukraine’s energy company Ukrenergo, Yuriy Katich…
Russia’s Crimea was forced to switch to autonomous reserve power after transmission towers in the adjacent Ukrainian region were blown up, causing a blackout. Meanwhile, the repairs were delayed by Right Sector and Crimean Tatar“activists” attempting to block crews from getting to the scene. None of the groups have accepted responsibility.
People might remember that one of the apocalyptic predictions from the scientists who inform the Near Term Human Extinction movement is that a crash of the economic system would lead to an interruption of power that keeps the 400+ nuclear power plants in the world from having their fuel melt down. The potential for this is covered on Guy McPherson‘s blog. The big issue is that the vast majority of Nuclear Power plants are storing hundreds of tons of ‘spent’ fuel that must be constantly cooled so that the uranium inside doesn’t melt down into unquenchable fires. Michael C. Ruppert had said that Fukushima alone was a human extinction event, and he have been right. But if somebody doesn’t let the technicians in Ukraine repair the electrical grid and put those plants back online, it’s a moot point. We’ll have plenty of meltdowns to deal with in short order.
Again, hoping I’m wrong.
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