Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter explains why a Russian victory is inevitable, and what it costs the West to refuse to accept this. William Scott Ritter Jr. is an author and pundit, and a former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector. Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist and activist from Montreal, Quebec. In 2020, Dimitri ran for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. This interview was recorded Nov. 4, 2022.

Scott Ritter on Russia Wanting “A Soft Landing”; 200K Troops Entering SMO; A Nuclear Plant in Poland
COMMENT By: Luke Strawwalker: I worked in a nuclear power plant in the southern US, so I’m somewhat familiar with the technology, plus I’ve studied nuclear power for years. First a little background on nuclear plant operations and safety issues. Basically, a nuclear reactor is just another way to boil water. All power plants pretty much boil water into high-pressure steam and use that steam to spin a turbine, which spins a massive dynamo generator to produce electricity.

Conventional power plants burn coal, oil, and natural gas, or even focus sunlight into a working fluid loop like molten salt to boil water into steam. A nuclear plant uses a nuclear core made up of thousands of fuel assemblies allowed to make a chain reaction to split atoms, releasing an enormous amount of energy.

This energy is then removed from the core by various working fluids (from old air-cooled reactors to boiling water reactors to pressurized water reactors) which transfer the heat to boilers to create steam, or to the turbine directly. The cooled working fluid (usually demineralized water) is returned to the core to cool it in a continuous loop. The core chain reaction is controlled by inserting control rods into the core to absorb neutrons and limit the reaction by controlling heat output.

One of the biggest differences between a nuclear power reactor and a conventional fossil fuel-fired plant is that when the fuel is shut off, the heat generation stops in a conventional plant. In a nuclear plant, when the reactor is scrammed, the control rods are pushed rapidly into the reactor, absorbing neutrons and stopping the chain reaction, BUT atomic decay continues, which releases heat and energy for a considerable time after the chain reaction stops.

SO a nuclear power plant MUST be cooled for a long period of time even after the reactor itself is shut down, for weeks. To accomplish this, electricity is required, to run all the coolant pumps pumping water into the reactor, injection pumps to keep the water level in the reactor core pressure vessel at the proper level (which is important for water-cooled reactors as water is also a moderator of neutrons, important to keep the reactor nuclear chain reaction operating properly).

If the water isn’t constantly circulated, it will quickly overheat and begin to melt down, water will break down into oxygen and hydrogen gas, which can explode. The electricity comes from a gigantic diesel backup generator built into the plant, usually next to the turbine building, or nearby.

Fukushima was a result of sheer stupidity. Japan is one of the most seismically active countries on Earth, so tons of earthquakes and undersea earthquakes spawn tsunamis… That presents a ton of special issues and considerations that must be addressed properly in plant design and location.

What was TOTALLY stupid about Fukushima was, they built the power plant at too low an elevation too close to the beach, so any tsunami was likely to swamp the plant and severely damage it. What was worse, the diesel backup generator was basically built in the plant’s BASEMENT, so that any tsunami damaging the plant would swamp the diesel engine, filling it with water, and preventing it from running, thus ensuring the plant would be deprived of electricity needed to run the pumps and operating system.

The control room and operating system are equipped with battery backups, BUT this isn’t meant to operate the plant for extended periods, only long enough to get the backup generator up and running. So needless today, the plant was fatally flawed from the start, and all due to basic stupidity.

Fukushima was also a boiling water reactor (BWR) which is cheaper to build but less safe design than pressurized water reactor designs (PWR’s). So long as the plant is located properly and operated properly (which was the cause of the Chornobyl disaster– operators attempting to cool the reactor after a scram using rotational energy stored in the turbine to generate electricity.

Which was insufficient and led to insufficient water being pumped and faulty readings on the water level in the core causing a hydrogen buildup, core excursion (uncontrolled nuclear reaction generating enormous energy, and subsequent explosion that blew the reactor apart, and insufficient containment building construction allowing the massive uncontrolled release of nuclear contamination.