Ransomwared Nuclear Power Plants Upwind of Major U.S. Cities
By
Duane Thresher, Ph.D. June 6, 2021
On the 77th anniversary of D-Day, in memory of those who
actually fought and died to protect America.
As I emailed to news outlets in the major cities downwind of
the very possibly ransomwared nuclear power plants, in summary
of
U.S. Surrenders
in IT War, Starts Paying Tribute to Russia:
You are aware of the Russian-backed hacking and ransomwaring
of Colonial Pipeline and the devastating effect on the south
and east coast.
The Colonial Pipeline executive responsible for allowing
this is IT incompetent Chief Information Officer (CIO) Marie
Mouchet, whose only education is as a high school teacher.
Before she became Colonial Pipeline CIO several years ago
she was CIO for Southern Nuclear, which operates three
nuclear power plants (currently two reactors
each):
1. Vogtle, near Augusta GA and upwind of Savannah GA,
Columbia SC, and Charleston SC.
2. Hatch, near Baxley GA and upwind of Savannah GA and
Jacksonville FL.
3. Farley, along GA's southwestern border with AL (near
Dothan AL) and upwind of Tallahassee FL.
Marie Mouchet was replaced as Southern Nuclear's CIO by
Martin Davis, who also has no IT education so is IT
incompetent; he only has a bachelor's degree in business
administration. Obviously neither is any match for Russian
hackers, or any other hackers for that matter.
If a nuclear power plant is hacked into, a meltdown like
Chernobyl could be caused, and the Russians are eager to
prove that they are not the only country capable of such a
deadly disaster.
You should know about the following three nuclear power plant
accidents, but may not given the incompetence of the media and
the educational system:
1. Three Mile Island — in Pennsylvania, upwind of
Philadelphia; accident started March 1979.
2. Chernobyl — in Ukraine, formerly the USSR (Russia),
upwind of Kiev, capital of Ukraine; disaster started April
1986.
3. Fukushima Daiichi — in Japan, on the island of
Honshu, where Tokyo is; disaster started March
2011.
I took a course in strategic nuclear war, particularly
mathematically modeling one, when I was at
MIT getting my
B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. This
required learning about radioactive fallout and the effects of
radiation on humans; I also have experience with radiation
measurement equipment like Geiger counters and dosimeters.
Later I did
climate modeling on
supercomputers. This required doing
graduate
work in meteorology, which is what you need to know for
fallout.
A nuclear power plant, specifically one of its reactors in its
iconic containment dome, can't explode like a nuclear bomb,
but can be just as deadly as far as spreading radiation is
concerned. A nuclear power plant is the ultimate "dirty
bomb".
The most important thing about nuclear power plants is cooling
them. That's why they are almost always built near rivers,
lakes, or oceans, instead of in the middle of deserts, away
from population centers. A nuclear power plant's iconic
cooling towers, with steam coming out, do not mean the
reactors are air cooled.
If the cooling fails in a nuclear power plant, the reactor's
fuel rods, which contain radioactive uranium metal, generate
enough heat to melt themselves. Once this "meltdown" begins,
the uranium can melt through the nuclear power plant floor,
into the earth — including the groundwater table —
metaphorically all the way to China; hence the name the China
Syndrome (apparently coincidentally, the movie
The China
Syndrome opened in March 1979, twelve days before the
Three Mile Island nuclear accident).
When a meltdown occurs, much high-pressure steam and explosive
gases (e.g. hydrogen), carrying highly radioactive particles,
are generated. Despite its name, the "containment dome" above
a nuclear reactor cannot contain these. At best they would
have to be vented into the atmosphere and at worst the
containment dome would blow apart, more forcefully venting
them into the atmosphere.
Once in the atmosphere, this highly radioactive cloud can be
carried hundreds of miles by the wind before falling out
... over major cities. Most places have prevailing winds, the
average direction of the wind over the year. In the northern
mid-latitudes, where most nuclear power plants are, the
prevailing wind is from the west ("westerlies"), carrying to
the east. However, weather systems during the year can cause
the winds to go north, south, or even west of the nuclear
power plant.
Radiation sickness is horrible. You would be lucky to get
Ebola and bleed out of every orifice instead.
Coronavirus
should not even be mentioned in the same article with either
of them (I do so here only for illustrative purposes). Even
if you survive the radiation sickness or don't even get it,
there is a very good chance you will get cancer later and die
horribly from that. If the greatly overexaggerated claims
about how deadly coronavirus is scared you, you should be
terrified to death about the very real deadliness of radiation
from a nuclear power plant meltdown.
Fukushima Daiichi is on the east coast of Japan, next to the
Pacific, and the large amount of radiation from it was carried
east out over the Pacific ocean. Otherwise many more would
have been hurt by the radiation. (To greatly reduce the
number of lives lost in World War II in the Pacific, nuclear
bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The
Japanese are thus keenly aware of how deadly nuclear radiation
is.
I lived in
Japan for three years.)
The even greater radiation from Chernobyl was carried hundreds
of miles even to the west of it, causing many cancer deaths,
besides the radiation sickness deaths nearer to
it.
The radiation from Three Mile Island was relatively small, or
Philadelphia would have been greatly affected.
If a nuclear power plant computer system is hacked into, a
meltdown can be caused. All parts of a nuclear power plant
are controlled by a computer system, especially since humans
can't even be near many of these parts. If
hackers
"own" the computer system of a nuclear power plant, they
can cause a meltdown by turning off the all-important cooling
system.
This hacking may already have secretly happened. The
Russians, or any other of America's enemies less IT
incompetent than it is — all of them — may be just
waiting for a good reason to use, and thus expose, this power.
See
Handing
Over America's Electrical Grid to the
Russians.
Once hacked, ransomware could be installed on the nuclear
power plant computer system, just as it was for Colonial
Pipeline. The hackers could demand a ransom of many billions
of dollars and still be ensured of being paid by the U.S.,
which was willing to pay Russian hackers millions for just the
ransomwaring of Colonial Pipeline. See
U.S. Surrenders
in IT War, Starts Paying Tribute to Russia.
Chernobyl was in what used to be called Russia (USSR, which
broke up in 1991) when that deadly disaster occurred, and
still most Americans make no distinction between Russia and
the Ukraine. Chernobyl was and still is a huge embarrassment
to the Russians, making them seem like a technically
incompetent country. There can be no comparison with Three
Mile Island for the U.S. The Russians even today are eager to
prove that they are not the only country capable of such a
deadly disaster.
(Interestingly, one cause of Three Mile Island was IT
incompetent bad programming — the computer system user
interface, which is
what
a website is, did not make it clear to the nuclear power
plant operators, themselves incompetent, that there was a loss
of coolant.)
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) of a nuclear power plant,
or any other company, is the civilian official responsible for
stopping hackers. As explained in
U.S. Surrenders
in IT War, Starts Paying Tribute to Russia and summarized
above, the
IT
incompetent — only trained as a high school teacher
— but
diverse
CIO of ransomwared Colonial Pipeline,
Marie
Mouchet, used to be CIO for Southern Nuclear. Mouchet was
replaced by
IT
incompetent — only has a bachelor's degree in
business administration — but
diverse
Martin
Davis as CIO of Southern Nuclear. Neither
Marie Mouchet
nor
Martin Davis
has any chance of stopping any
hackers. Southern Nuclear will be hacked just like Colonial
Pipeline was, and probably already secretly has
been.
The CIO of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the
government official responsible for stopping nuclear power
plant hackers. The NRC is an independent agency of the
federal government responsible for the safety and security of
nuclear power plants. The NRC may have been hacked in
The
Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach or
Doomsday
II: The Massive Microsoft Email Data Breach
Sequel.
The CIO of the NRC, for the last 5 years (since Aug 2016),
is
David
Nelson, who is IT incompetent. Nelson only has a
bachelor's degree in business management from the University
of Phoenix. Not only is that not an IT education — see
The
Most Important IT Credential: An IT Education in
Principles
of IT Incompetence — it is a fake education. The
University of Phoenix — nothing officially to do with
the City of Phoenix Arizona, although that association was
probably fraudulently intended — is a notorious
for-profit
college providing worthless educations, to employers who
are even a little knowledgeable, and worthless degrees, to
those few who can afford to pay the exorbitant tuition long
enough to get one. The federal government would not provide
educational loans to those attending U Phoenix, so should not
accept an education from it as a qualification for a
government job, particularly one protecting the lives of
millions. Nelson has no other college.
Before
David Nelson
became CIO of the NRC, he was for 2
years (from Feb 2014) CIO of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS is part of the Department of
Health and Human Services (HHS), which was hacked; see
The
Doomsday Microsoft Government Email Data Breach
and
Microsoft
Guilty But Protected by NSA, AB PAC, India, and DelBenes.
CMS oversees the HealthCare.gov website. In fact, David
Nelson was specifically hired as CIO of CMS to fix the
cybersecurity of the HealthCare.gov website. But the
HealthCare.gov website was hacked from its launch in Oct 2013
to Sep 2015 — see
HealthCare.gov
Hacked — while Nelson was CIO of CMS and unbeknownst
to him.
So, David Nelson, the CIO of the NRC, responsible for stopping
nuclear power plant hackers, who could kill millions, has no
college education and has already put at risk millions seeking
healthcare.
The media is responsible for warning the public. That's the
only reason for the freedom of the press clause in the First
Amendment (which, as many are not aware, has other just as
important clauses). There are no rights without
responsibilities. I sent the email at the beginning of this
article to
news outlets in the major
cities near or within about 100 miles downwind of Southern
Nuclear power plants. None responded.
Not only is this because the media is
IT
incompetent, and doesn't understand the dangers, but
particularly for those news outlets near Southern Nuclear
power plants, like The Augusta Chronicle and Augusta's WRDW
TV, they are being paid off with ad money from Southern
Nuclear. Further,
fearmongering
with coronavirus has been hugely profitable for the media,
and they are unwilling to move on even after the Coronavirus
Scare is over due to the vaccine. And of course there is
always celebrity news and "if it bleeds, it leads"
news.
Southern Nuclear, the NRC, and any other company or government
agency who does not want to kill Americans and be destroyed by
IT incompetency should hire
Apscitu Inc. to
consult on IT security.