Another final warning in Russia

The map shows the site of the massive 1908 meteor explosion.
The 2013 meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, to the west near Kazakhstan.

I don’t believe in a god that puts mankind at the top of her priorities. Also, unlike a lot of scientists, economists, politicians and other so-called rational thinkers who say we need nuclear because it has a low carbon impact, I don’t see it written in the stars anywhere that we have been promised all the energy we want for the maintenance of our present lifestyles. We cannot rationalize further destruction by just crying (boohoo), “But we need the energy!”

Even though I don’t believe in signs from god, if I did, I would surely take this week’s meteorite explosion over Russia as a final warning to mankind to change its ways. Let’s just say that if there were a god who cared to communicate with us, but she was somehow unable to speak because of a cosmic language barrier, a sign such as this visitation from space would be just the thing to deliver the message. With the entire globe to choose from, why this part of Russia?

from Mashable.com 

Russia was the best place to do it because the meteor blast drew attention to the much more destructive 1908 Tunguska meteorite explosion in Siberia. At the same time, the location of the recent event was over the once-secret nuclear weapons facilities located around the city of Chelyabinsk. The Chelyabinsk-40 nuclear facility (now called Mayak), 72 km northwest of Chelyabinsk, was in 1957 home to one of the worst radiological disasters in history. The area is still contaminated and still has many nuclear facilities and nuclear waste sites. The message should be clear. If a similar meteorite explosion should strike any of the hundreds of sites that store nuclear waste above ground, a disaster worse than Fukushima or Chernobyl is possible. 
   This week's incident also makes us wonder how the Soviet government would have reacted if a meteorite explosion had happened over Chelyabinsk during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As it was this week in the post-Cold War context, some witnesses to the explosion said their first thought was that WW III had started.
   The various national and international agencies that manage nuclear safety have thought of every possible hazard that could strike nuclear facilities. They build walls to protect from tsunamis, design reactors to withstand earthquakes, and containment structures to withstand aircraft crashes, but they have no defense against meteorite impact. They will admit there is no defense, but the risk is considered to be so small that it is worth taking. This week it doesn't seem so small.

All meteorite impacts since 2300 BC. Javier de la Torre created 

this map using data from The Meteoritical Society. 

You can view the map in interactive form here.

The Chernobyl explosion was enough of a final warning for me to turn anti-nuke, but it seems that other members of the human race need a few more hints. The Fukushima catastrophe happened, but still many people think we can take heed of the “lessons learned” and safely manage a few hundred nuclear powered steam turbines, and all their waste, forever. What Fukushima taught me was that the low probability thing that wouldn’t happen can happen tomorrow. Anyone who has ever bought a lottery ticket has come to the same conclusion, only with an optimistic expectation of an equally low probability.

Perhaps the human race has over-indulgent parents willing to give us

more than one "final warning." But patience has its limits.

This week an over-kind fate, or god, if you prefer, handed us another “final warning” that we ignore at our peril. A 300 kiloton meteor explosion occurred right over Russia’s legacy of nuclear production, in the country that was previously blasted with the Tunguska meteor event. A message? Naaaah. Just a coincidence, right?

Further reading:

Charles Digges. Before the bombs go off: The environmental and health consequences of nuclear weapons production. The Bellona Foundation. December 27, 2012.