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Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin has given orders to increase the alert level of Russia’s nuclear forces and has made veiled nuclear threats. The blatant aggression against Ukraine has shocked Europe and the world. The war is a tragedy for Ukraine. It also exposes the limits of the West’s … Read more
Vital cooling systems for controlling nuclear waste at the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant are offline, leading to concerns that radioactive waste might escape Physics 9 March 2022 By Matthew Sparkes A drone image of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, taken on 7 March 2022 Russia MOD/EYEPRESS/Shutterstock Fears of a potential radiation … Read more
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has hit the southern port city of Mariupol particularly hard, as new satellite photos show. The Russian military has been besieging Mariupol for a week now, pounding the city with barrages of missiles and artillery. These weapons are hitting civilian as well as military targets; for example, one of Mariupol’s … Read more
Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant and all the facilities in the Chernobyl exclusion zone have been completely disconnected and are now without electricity, Ukraine’s state energy company has announced. Russian forces attacked the defunct nuclear facility on the very first day of the invasion (Feb. 24), seizing it after heavy fighting and taking its roughly 210 staff hostage, Live Science … Read more
SpaceX worked for six weeks to bring Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine ahead of a formal request from government officials of the besieged country. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell shared the news Monday (March 7) at the California Institute of Technology during a talk first reported by SpaceNews. “We had been working on trying to … Read more
Scientific monitoring of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant is being affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine Humans 8 March 2022 By Matthew Sparkes Damage to infrastructure at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology neutron source State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine Scientists monitoring radiation levels at Chernobyl are unable to access their laboratories … Read more
The EU launched a new energy strategy to reduce the use of Russian gas imports just as the UK announced it would phase out such imports, and the US imposed a ban as well Environment 8 March 2022 By Adam Vaughan Pipes at a gas treatment facility in Russia Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images The … Read more
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research. The site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine has been surrounded for more than three decades by a 1,000-square-mile (2,600-square-kilometer) exclusion zone that keeps people out. On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl’s reactor number four melted … Read more
Days after Russia invaded Ukraine, multiple social media platforms—including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube—announced they had dismantled coordinated networks of accounts spreading disinformation. These networks, which were comprised of fabricated accounts disguised with fake names and AI-generated profile images or hacked accounts, were sharing suspiciously similar anti-Ukraine talking points, suggesting they were being controlled by centralized … Read more
Refresh 2022-03-08T03:04:05.879Z Russian space chief trades barbs with astronaut Scott Kelly NASA astronaut Scott Kelly gives two thumbs up while resting up from a 340-day mission to the International Space Station. Kelly and two Russian crewmates landed their Soyuz capsule in a remote area of Kazakhstan on March 2, 2016 (Kazakh time). (Image credit: NASA/Bill … Read more