Out-of-control wildfires scorch Texas Panhandle and prompt shutdown of nuclear weapons facility
The Financial Tiimes reports
Leaked Russian military files reveal criteria for nuclear strike
Doctrine for tactical nuclear weapons outlined in training scenarios for an invasion by China
Criteria for a potential nuclear response range from an enemy incursion on Russian territory to more specific triggers, such as the destruction of 20 per cent of Russia’s strategic ballistic missile submarines.
“This is the first time that we have seen documents like this reported in the public domain,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “They show that the operational threshold for using nuclear weapons is pretty low if the desired result can’t be achieved through conventional means.”
This is… interesting, but essentially a nothingburger. In the sense that this is exactly the sort of scenario tactical nukes (and the doctrines of using them) are designed for.
Force Red invades force Blue’s territory. Red can’t be stopped (at least not soon enough in terms of time and/or loss of territory) by conventional means. Blue uses tactical nukes to stop/impede Red. The “how soon is too soon” depends a lot on logistics and terrain. Is it an option to just fall back, wait until the invading forces have overextended their logistics train and ideally exposed their flanks, and then start a counteroffensive? How fast can sufficient reenforcements get where they are needed? And so on.
During the Cold War, in Europe NATO had about 400 to 450 km between the North Sea and the German/German border to play with and an intercontinental logistics train. Consequently, there were a lot of tactical nukes conveniently stored on or near the assumed battle grounds and a low threshold in the doctrine to use them.
It was always a given that every military that has tactical nukes has similar doctrines for using them.
ETA (2024-03-01):
Additional information, links:
Not just in the arctic, but also at the former test sites in the Pacific due to rising sea levels.
Especially the Runit Island Dome.
We should use nuclear power, they said, there is not real environmental impact, they said… its’ clean energy, they said…
They also said it would be too cheap to meter.
Plant Vogtle has entered the chat…
Amateurs…
Yeah, quite frankly, the whole thing felt amateurish…
There was a point in time when I was willing to entertain the idea that nuclear power was an option, possibly the only practical option to get where we needed to be.
That time was maybe 20 years ago.
It’s too late to be of use now. Takes too long.
I’d also argue that when shit goes wrong, it goes catastrophically wrong, so there are better options out there to move us away from fossil fuels…
We in Ontario 
have studied this (since 2019) and are forging ahead to be leaders in SMRs. The application for a license to construct went in during 2022 and in 2023 we boldly announced our plans. Expect a public hearing on the application for that license this year!
We are going to boldly prove you are right! /s
When we built the 25MW NPD station it took from 1954 to 1962 to get it done. I think those 8 years are still record time here.
