Russia’s Mysterious Nuclear-powered Missile Accident

Jeffrey Lewis 0:15

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:32

I'm Aaron Stein, the director of the Middle East program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Anne Pellegrino 0:36

And I'm Anne Pellegrino, a project manager and research associate at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey.

Jeffrey 0:42

Greetings, Anne and Aaron. I had to change our introduction.

Anne 0:46

We are no longer the only podcast in this space.

Jeffrey 0:51

Yeah, that used to be a joke that we would call it the leading podcast because we were the only podcast. This is all true. And so we meant it to be funny. And now, now there are other podcasts in the space. Plowshares has an excellent new podcast. And more parochially, three of our former interns have a podcast called Big Nuke Energy that Anne, you were just on.

Anne 1:16

I was a guest on episode six. And for those of you who don't know the podcast, I encourage you to go listen to it. It's run by three of our brilliant young women who are here this summer. And they were talking one night and, you know, we're discussing the fact that there's a lack of podcasts in the space, especially for men.

Young people and young women. And they thought, well, we should just make one. And so they are dynamic and smart. And I really enjoyed being a guest on their podcast. And I think whoever came up with their name is brilliant. If you don't know what big nuke energy refers to, just Google Ariana Grande and thank me later.

Jeffrey 2:04

We're going to talk about a different kind of big nuke energy. When you have confidence in a system, and that confidence is perhaps not warranted.

Aaron 2:14

Yes, for listeners, there was an event in Russia, what was it, last Thursday, if I'm remembering correctly, that with hindsight, you could piece together or at least make educated guesses about what the hell happened up here. Up there, excuse me.

Jeffrey 2:29

So there was an explosion.

Aaron 2:32

The explosion...

Anne 2:34

Obviously piqued both of your interests, because what the original Russian article in TASS said about, right, correct, absolutely, we know there was, they, well, they phrased it in such a weird way, they said that there was an explosion of a liquid-propelled engine, and that there had been a spike in radiation, a brief spike in radiation, and now background levels are back to normal.

That's really weird. Yeah, those two things don't go together. No. Like, I legitimately had to, like, rack my brain and kind of, like, I was like, this is probably a stupid question, but, like, I should not, like, there should not be a spike in radiation for, like, a normal missile test or a failed missile test. Like, engines don't just release radiation, right?

Aaron 3:28

You can confirm that there's a test from the CTBTO data that comes out later, or at least an explosion test. Yeah, absolutely. And so then you confirm the explosion.

Jeffrey 3:39

But let me say, the CTBTO detected an explosion around 6 a.m. UTC, 9 a.m. local time, with three seismic stations and an infrasound station. So something definitely went boom.

Aaron 3:54

And then, like, all over social media. And this is where I get involved. So I am being driven at this time. I was going to D.C. that day to the train station. My wife is driving. She's going to drop me off. I am following along with this on Twitter. And then the first images, I believe, on Twitter or social media, or sometime around then, of people in the bunny suits and...

People in the bunny suits taking some of the casualties, or at least people who have been quote-unquote burned, to a local hospital, which raises the mystery about what the hell this thing is.

Anne 4:28

Yeah, and I will, so before we got those images of the, you know, first responders, there were a number of videos that were circulating that purported to show this, like, massive explosion and, like, all this, like, nasty thick black smoke and whatever, and our colleague Fabian, love him to death. My large adult son, Fabian Hinz. He actually was able to determine that all of those images and videos that were floating around actually were from Events totally unrelated, so we kind of got, we were back to kind of grounds, back to the starting point where we did not, you didn't want to say ground zero videos, I didn't want to say ground zero, no, I didn't no, but then, but then after, after that was when we started seeing the Pictures of ambulances, of like a helicopter evacuation, people in the bunny suits.

And so that is certainly not what you would see in a typical kind of explosion. You would not necessarily, you would not need the radiation protection here.

Jeffrey 5:43

Here I want to sing Fabian's praises because, I mean, just the level of dedication he has to social media verification is, He went back through like videos on like what it's like to be a first responder in Archangelisk and found the same ambulance with the same license plate so that he could actually confirm that like, yes, this video is from this place.

And then Michael Dutzman found the company that owned the helicopter used to transport the people who'd been injured. Doesn't exactly tell you that that picture was taken on that day, of course. But it does help demonstrate that, you know, like, we're pretty sure that those pictures were real.

Aaron 6:37

Right, at least the initial imagery. Like, I know that then you guys were able to, it's not very, I mean, for people who follow this stuff, you know, this wasn't the mean feat of OSINT, but able to find the potential testing site where this took place.

Jeffrey 6:53

Yeah, I mean, it's a known... This is a known test site. Russia did a ton of its SLBM, Submarine Launch Ballistic Missile Development, here at this place called Nenoksa, which is outside of Severodvinsk. And the Russians were saying it had been at a missile test site near Severodvinsk. So, you know, this is... It's marked on Wikimapia. There are a bunch of declassified documents.

It's super easy to find that site. You just then have to, like, go get a picture. And you got a picture. We sure did.

Anne 7:25

Yeah, well, so we, before we got the, I think before we looked at the planet imagery, we actually were looking at Google Earth, and we were kind of like, don't really see anything at this site. That indicates like anything happened, and then I was looking, and I realized that this entire like site was in like total disrepair, except for a single test pad, that when Dave went back into the historical plan and imagery, saw that they had constructed a new environmental cover on rails at one of the test pads.

That environmental cover looked suspiciously similar to covers that we saw at the Pankovo and Kasputin Yar test sites where we know the Russians were attempting to test the Skyfall missile. So at that point, we were like, oh, this is probably where they launched the This test from. But then, you know, as kind of information, more information came out in drips and drabs, then there was reports that the test had occurred offshore on a barge.

Jeffrey 8:42

Yeah, I think this is a really important Clarification to make because I think some people are a little confused by the reasoning that we went through. And this is a chance to really talk about some great work Anne did and is too modest to mention.

Aaron 9:01

No, you've got to mention it. I know. Well, I'm going to mention it.

Jeffrey 9:04

This is my job. I'm Anne's hype man here. When Vladimir Putin showed off Russia's nuclear-powered cruise missile in January 2018, he showed a video of one of the attempted flight tests. And we were able to use that video to locate where that test had occurred. So because Anne and I had been following Novaya Zemlya so closely, and because he said it was at the Russian central test site, we started looking around Novaya Zemlya, and it wasn't sort of...

There's this disused area called Pankovo where we were actually able to find the launch site. And, you know, I'm... I'm always annoyed about this because we found it and then we didn't publish it. And then some person on LiveJournal found it and it's like, ah. But at that test site, there was an environmental shelter on rails that we could see in the video.

And there are some blue shipping containers, right?

Aaron 10:13

Yeah.

Jeffrey 10:14

And so once we, the reason we hadn't published it is that we were just going to sit on it and see if we could detect another test before it happened, right? Right. Which is a thing we sometimes do. We don't always publish all our geolocations. In fact, there's one we're sitting on right now. And then we noticed like boats started showing up and shipping containers started moving around.

And at first we're like, oh, it's going to be a test. It's going to be a test. And then instead of a test last summer, they packed it up.

Anne 10:43

They completely wiped the test site clean. We were like, well, that's interesting. And so kind of at the time, my operating theory was that They have yet to have a successful test of this harebrained system. And so maybe they're going back to the drawing board. Like maybe also they, because we know of Pankovo, it's no longer an optimal spot to test out the system.

We were like, okay, well maybe they'll go back to Kasputin Yar. We didn't see them do that. We didn't, Didn't really have any information about where they might go. I don't, I was certainly not expecting them to potentially move the test site to somewhere that was, somewhere that is relatively more populated. But yeah, we totally missed, totally missed this test site and the the preparations, because what was interesting when Dave went back and looked at the Planet imagery of the new test site,

Jeffrey 11:54

The timing of when that rail, the new rail shelter popped up, was about the time it was like a few months after we saw them packing up the Pankovo test site, right? So we knew they had, you know, there's a, there basically we'd seen two of these things, we saw one in Pankovo and one in Kapustin Yar, but we know that they're not going to test a nuclear reactor in Kapustin Yar, it's way too populated, so when they packed up Pankovo, we didn't know where it went, and so this time we're looking at the satellite image of Nanoksa and it's like, oh holy shit, that's where it went, right?

Aaron 12:25

I'm just going to try and summarize this because basically what you saw was what you think were the rail or at least the test site for Putin's Skyfall nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered cruise missile. Correct. Yeah. They pack it up as you guys are sitting on this because you want to get a glimpse of it on the pad, right? Yes, correct.

Right. So then you can say we got one right before the test launch. Because at that point, for listeners of this podcast, they had tested it before, but it had failed, right? Yeah. Yeah. I want to say twice, but I'm going off the top of my head. It was a few times, but I don't think we know the exact number.

We don't know. Let's say, okay, you're right. Yes. No, exactly, a few times. Then they pack it up, as you're watching it, you get all sad, and then all of a sudden you see this similar, very, basically the same looking thing. The rail with the blue containers with the cover at the place where a couple, where... Either before or after, I can't get the timeline straight in my head, the Russians announced that there's an explosion, and there are people who show up with quote-unquote burns, and then we know there's a spike in radiation and people with radiation symptoms.

Jeffrey 13:40

So suddenly the radiation makes perfect sense because we realize that they have moved skyfall testing from Nevaeh Zemlya to this location. Now there has been an engine test at this location that has resulted in an explosion and a fire and apparently a release of radiation. And so it makes perfect sense. Now, I have to say, I think the place people get a little confused is we are not necessarily saying they did a flight test from the launch site.

It's just that the existence of a launch site, probably for future use, tells us what the activities occurring at Ninoxa are. This is where they have shifted Skyfall testing.

Aaron 14:35

Yes, and we'll come back to that later. There's another reason to come back to that. But then this brings us to the satellite imagery, because you see the barge. Because then there are talks that there was the explosion on the barge, or at least a barge was involved. And so you guys got the picture.

Anne 14:52

Yeah. Yeah, Jeffrey got the picture.

Aaron 14:53

Well, there are a bunch of pictures.

Jeffrey 14:56

So there are... Planet actually took three images of this site the day of the explosion. They took one at 6.05 UTC, so right around the time of the explosion, but it's cloudy. Yeah. Although we're seeing if we can surface some information out of that. But then they took two more pictures a couple hours later that are clear.

And although they're only three meter resolution, you can clearly see an offshore platform. And you can see a bunch of ships, which is interesting because there is an exclusion zone around this test site. So you can't just – any ship inside that exclusion zone is there for a reason.

Aaron 15:41

Yes, and I think it's important to describe – because when people – because Chernobyl on HBO, which was a great miniseries – Has made people more aware of the words exclusion zone and bunny suits. But I think what you mean by exclusion zones is they put out a NOTAM, a notice to mariners. A notice to mariners, which I don't know exactly what the acronym is.

A notice to Mariners, which basically is stay out. We're testing something.

Jeffrey 16:06

Yes. And that area is often closed. I mean, it's not like they I think some people reported it like, oh, it's been closed. So it must be super radioactive. And that's not right. It's that it is closed all the time. Or most of them. Point Magoo. Have you ever been to Point Magoo? Sorry, for California. You guys are in California.

I was there last year. I was supposed to go this year to give a talk to the Navy, and my flight was canceled. I was going to take a picture because I think they've got a snark there. Anyway, I've totally been there. Yeah, you can't just roll through with a boat. So when you see ships... Two hours after this event inside the exclusion zone, you have a pretty good idea that those ships were involved in whatever the event was.

Aaron 16:54

And this leads to more open, sorry, I mean, because I always call it ALS, but it's AIS.

Anne 16:59

AIS.

Aaron 17:01

ALS is Lou Gehrig's disease. I know, I know. Look, I screw it up because there are many times trying to get this down. I said ALS. But there's, so the ship is important. In addition to the barge, the ship is important.

Anne 17:15

Right, very important. So this this also played out on social media, and so kind of we were not the only ones to identify the ships, but what we were able to do was, first, we could, he was first in our group, but again it was a thing of someone didn't put it out there first. We had an amazing team, but the thing with working with six or seven people is that putting things out there, there's a lag.

But anyways, Cameron went and looked at his... I think it was through Jane's he looked at some AIS data, and we were asking him, like, what are the names of the ships? What are the names of the ships? And one of the ships is called the Serebryanka. And when he said Serebryanka, my reaction was like, you have got to be f***ing me.

And the reason I had that reaction is because the Serebryanka is a ship that is owned and operated by Rosatom, and it is a nuclear fuel carrier. And we have seen this ship before. We actually saw it hanging around off the coast of the Pankovo test site after one of the failed cruise missile tests up there. And...

We think what happened, or we're pretty sure what happened, is that there were reports that one of the tests was marginally successful. It flew for about 22 seconds before crashing down into the water. We could calculate roughly where that splashdown zone was, and then we happened to see a number of ships, all operated by Rosatom, Chilling in this area, and there had been reports that Russia was conducting a recovery operation, and so we were like, bing bing bing, that's exactly what those ships are for.

So the fact that we now see the Serebryanka in satellite imagery the day of this failed test is another kind of point to support our, you know, what was then our working hypothesis at the time that this was a skyfall test.

Jeffrey 19:35

Right, because that thing is going to have a nuclear, it's going to have a nuclear reactor on it, right? And so if you run that reactor, that's going to be a pretty nasty radioactive cargo and you're going to need something like the Serebryanka to take it. I should say, it's important, the Sarah-Brianka showed up inside the exclusion zone before the explosion.

Anne 19:57

Because it showed up previously to the test, or prior to the test, it wasn't... It was laying in wait for a recovery or whatever. It was not... How do I phrase it?

Aaron 20:15

It trespassed the exclusion zone Before the explosion, therefore it was in the area at a time when nobody was supposed to be in the area, which would indicate, like in the other tests, that it was preparing for a recovery.

Jeffrey 20:30

Right, and that might have been just that they were going to run the engine on the offshore platform, and then when they were done, pack it up and put it on the Serbianca, or the event had occurred much earlier, and then this was part of a recovery operation with some delay. So we don't know.

Anne 20:50

We don't know. We don't know if it actually flew. The exact, exact details of like what caused the explosion is still fairly opaque. We can make some educated guesses about what happened. But right. What I think is one of the most interesting kind of theories that was reported on was that the explosion occurred as they were recovering the debris and as they pulled it out of the water.

Aaron 21:15

How does the barge fit in? I know you guys have mentioned that. It's hard to say. It is hard to say. So, like, I think some of the reports suggest it was tested on the barge. Yeah, that's one hypothesis. Not off the launcher.

Jeffrey 21:26

Right, so that's why I wanted to make that clear at the beginning. We're not saying that because there was a launch infrastructure there that they used it. We're just saying that because there's a launch infrastructure there, it tells us what kind of activities are being conducted in and around there. I suspect, from what the Russians have said...

I mean, I assume the Russians are not... That the Russians are telling something that's like the truth, even if it's not the truth. And so the way they make it sound, it sounds to me like it wasn't a flight test, but it was a static engine test, which would be consistent with the flight test at Novaya Zemlya failed, they packed things up, they brought them to Ninoxa, and they may be testing either changes To the reactor-driven engine, or, you know, it may be...

I mean, we all say this is Skyfall. It may be, you know, son of Skyfall. It may be the program that follows it because Skyfall itself wasn't successful. But I suspect they were either doing a... A kind of test on a barge because they thought something might go wrong, which, you know, in hindsight seems pretty wise. Yeah, if it's on an offshore platform, I don't know how much thrust you would really want to produce.

You know, cruise missile engines only don't produce that much thrust to begin with, but you know, I don't know. But it could have been that, or it could have been that they did some test and they were using the barge as part of the recovery. I just, I don't think we really know. Okay. Well, we have a picture now of the barge, which is all effed up.

I shouldn't call it a barge. It's an offshore platform. I actually don't know if it's floated. Yeah, that's a good point.

Anne 23:07

Well, okay. So the platform, I don't know if you saw this, Jeffrey, but Dave and I were looking at kind of the main port of Severodvinsk. Yeah. And you can very clearly see the barge in port at various times. So it's certainly not a static offshore platform. They drag it in and out.

Jeffrey 23:33

I just wonder if it might be like a jack-up barge where it puts down. You know, I don't know. Barge is probably fine. Thank you for giving me permission to use barge. It's a much more normal word.

Anne 23:43

Yeah, no, I think that that's more accurate.

Jeffrey 23:45

But there are actually now two pictures of it. Planet got one on August 11th that we looked at, which is 70 centimeters in resolution, and you can tell the barge is no longer barge-shaped. And it seems to have some... That's two days after, right? Yeah, three days after. And it has some burn mark, well, it has some discoloration, it looks like burn mark.

Digital Globe got one on the 12th, which is probably about 30 centimeters, so you can see the damage a little bit more clearly. But it, you know, I don't know, something definitely... There was an explosion, and that barge looks like it was the victim of an explosion, so... Is this where we informally red team? No, because we need to talk about the five nuclear scientists.

Aaron 24:31

Then I think it first comes out on Telegram is the names of the five nuclear scientists. And I think they all work for Rosetta. That's right. Because we haven't really published this.

Jeffrey 24:41

And we're telling people, but we're going to keep some of this to ourselves. When the list came out, I think on Sunday, the people at Sarov did an announcement, and so they confirmed it. But that list came out like 48 hours before or something. And we actually tracked down everybody's social media profiles.

Anne 25:05

Again, a Fabian Marvel. And Sarah Bidgood was instrumental. Our two Russia-philes.

Jeffrey 25:16

And, you know, I mean, we're not going to publish them because, like, we wanted to just know if the list was real or fake. But, you know, when you see somebody's wife or mother, like, mourning them... You don't want to treat that disrespectfully.

Aaron 25:31

I agree. But I think the point is that you're able to confirm that the names are accurate and that their corresponding biographies help inform the future.

Jeffrey 25:41

Right. And they worked for the Special Projects Division. So... Of V-N-I-I-E-F, I think I've gotten the... It's... The abbreviations are...

Anne 25:58

I'll look it up. It is the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics.

Jeffrey 26:06

V-N-I-I-E-F. I did get it right. You did get it right.

Aaron 26:10

Yeah, and, you know, I think... It's not ALS.

Jeffrey 26:13

One thing I... We can talk about this for... For the red teaming piece of this, but they did not work for the part that was obviously involved in Borovestnik, which is Skyfall, but they also don't work in, I mean, again, it's the special project, so they would definitely be involved in something new and interesting.

Anne 26:42

I thought it was really interesting that we were able to see a live stream of the funeral and that these people were heralded as heroes. I don't know of any previous instance where Russia has been that forthcoming about... Of incidents like this, I thought that that, I don't, I mean, I just don't know, but I thought that that was really interesting that we could find so much information about these individuals not only through our own searching, but also just because of what the Russians gave us. Yeah, you know, I think this is one of the interesting things that comes out of this, which is

Jeffrey 27:27

The Russians are being more transparent than they were during Chernobyl. But I think they have the same outlook. It's just that they can't do what they did during Chernobyl. You know, in Chernobyl, they don't say a word until Western Europe gets hit with a dose of radiation. And they still try not to say anything. And, you know, the United States actually takes some time to even decide if it wants to try to take a picture of the reactor that might have exploded, you know, which is not even a priority.

And so the information comes out in drips and drabs. And, like, now it's totally different because the radionuclide measurements are, like, way later. You know, you have... The local measurement of radiation, which the local authorities announced, probably, I'm guessing, to the great displeasure of their bosses in Moscow.

Anne 28:20

Yeah, no, actually, because like two hours later, there was another, there was like a Sputnik article that was like, Russian authorities say, just kidding, there was actually no radiation release.

Jeffrey 28:30

And then, you know, there are social media images, right, which is like all the first responders. And just, you know, frankly... What are you going to do? Are you going to tell some mother that she can't write a note about her son at Tsarov who died? What are you going to do? Are you going to throw her in prison?

Come on. So I think they felt pushed. And so unlike Chernobyl, where the U.S. government was the only place in the world with... Photo imaging, right, with satellites that take pictures and you know, they don't know if it's worth tasking a satellite or not, like we just literally emailed Planet and we were like, hey, just so you know, this interesting thing happened, if you want to go take a picture, you can, and you know, they got one on August 11th, and and Digital Globe got one on August 12th, and you know, like, so I think that they don't They have been more transparent than they were during Chernobyl, but I think it's because civil society is dragging it out of them.

Anne 29:35

Yeah.

Aaron 29:37

Well, I would – I mean, I agree with all that. All I would say, and I don't want to take it too far off the main story, is they were – I just think the timeline's been sped up. Which I think is what you said, but I really think that's important to drive home, is that with Chernobyl, it took a couple of days, if I remember correctly, for the radionuclide cloud to move towards wherever it was up in the Nordics, or Sweden.

But here it was literally instantaneous. And then you can't cover up the fact that people have cell phones, and so all of a sudden this is all over social media. And so that reporting cycle is just compressed. So the instinct, I think it's exactly what you said, but like, I just think it's not that they have different instincts.

It's just that the timing has just gotten so fast. But that's a good thing, right? Yeah. No, I'm sorry. But I think the point then comes back to, you know, it sort of all fits together, right? In terms of informing opinions about what the cause of the radiation, what the cause of the explosion plus the subsequent radiation spike is, is that it's some sort of thing related towards the nuclear-armed cruisers.

Jeffrey 30:51

Yeah, I mean, by late last week, our view was that the most plausible explanation is that the Russians said it was a missile engine test. And so the only missile engine that's going to involve appreciable amounts of radiation and is going to require individuals from Sarov to be on site is a nuclear-powered cruise missile engine. You know, it may not be Burevestnik in the sense that Burevestnik may be a technological dead end, so it may be something new.

Mm-hmm. But at least to us, the fact that that's what this test site is for, they knew that whatever was going to be done at the end was going to be radioactive, and so they needed the Sarah-Brianka on-site. The fact that they did it on an offshore platform where they were aware that something bad might happen, assuming it was actually a static engine test and not something else.

I mean, all of that, to me... Pushes us in this direction of thinking that it's a nuclear powered cruise missile. And, you know, we've been, we do our work independently of the U.S. intelligence community. But I think, you know, in the New York Times, it is now a matter of record that that is what U.S. intelligence officials think.

Now, the president also confirmed it, but he probably just saw that on Fox News and doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. Yeah.

Aaron 32:23

Let's pretend he doesn't exist.

Jeffrey 32:25

Right. OK. But I mean. You know, they don't know and we don't know because only really the Russians know. But I think, you know, I think this is the most plausible explanation. Actually, I saw one of our colleagues, Vipin Narang, was getting like. Nitpicked on Twitter where someone said, well, I think there are other plausible explanations, and Vipin was like, I would like to hear them, and the person was like, well, I can't think of any right now, it's like, well, then that's not a plausible explanation, like, like, I'm open to alternatives, but like, we need to hear them. It has been interesting to me the level of pushback on this theory, and also the number of other theories that are floating around Twitter right now.

Aaron 33:15

So, okay, I think the way I would describe this is to use U.S. intelligence language. This gives you a confidence interval, so you would be highly confident, but that doesn't mean that it's absolutely what happened.

Jeffrey 33:29

Yeah, it's 90%, which means we do this podcast 10 times, one time we're going to be wrong.

Aaron 33:34

That's a real thing that does happen, for sure. And there are some alternative explanations. And I think the one that sort of like is being congealed around, which is that it was a liquid engine test with an RTG. You're trying not to say nuclear powered battery? Yes.

Jeffrey 34:01

We love Cheryl Rofer, and she's right. It's not really a battery, but I don't know how to explain it any better. If I called a radio isotope thermoelectric generator, people are going to be like, huh?

Aaron 34:13

It's kind of like a battery. But I think we should run through it. I think we should just go through it quickly about that explanation and why we don't think it's that explanation, but why it could be that, but at a lower confidence interval, right? Right. Or are we just dismissing it?

Jeffrey 34:35

No. Let's go through it. Well, the issue is the... There have been sources in Russia who say that it was an RTG. And so you can't say that that's a ridiculous thing. But I think we can disagree with them. You know, what an RTG is, I just want to call it a nuclear-powered battery so bad. These are used largely in spacecraft.

Resist. And I guess they used them in uncrewed lighthouses, which I didn't really know until I started taking it up. I didn't know.

Aaron 35:17

Oh, no, I remember this. Yes, it was like scenario planning for some sort of simulation back when it was still the Monterey Institute. Yes, yes, yes, they do.

Jeffrey 35:25

Yeah, so these are not reactors. It's just that the heat caused by radioactive decay can be converted into electrical energy. Which is why I think they're like a battery, right? So you have a source that's decaying, which generates heat, and you're turning that heat into electricity.

Aaron 35:46

Yes. And why would it be useful in this type of sort of liquid engine test with the RTG? I don't fully know. Okay.

Jeffrey 36:00

I tried to Google it. You know, there are batteries in systems because they do need electricity for guidance and things like that. I don't think you could get an RTG that would be powerful enough to substitute for combustion in a turbofan engine. I'd be really surprised if you had that much power. That much energy, so, but then that gets to like all the reasons I don't think that this is the best explanation. I mean, they're awesome because they have really long battery lives, so you might do it for that, like, you know, you'll never have to replace the battery in your, in your cruise missile again. I mean, maybe that's the answer, but I, I have my doubts. Okay, well, the reasons I don't find this compelling are, first, I don't understand why the Sarah Brianca would be there.

An RTG does not need a ship like that to carry highly radioactive material. That kind of ship is for a little reactor that you run that then is very radioactive, not a battery. I got to stop calling them batteries. So that's one thing. The Cerebrianca to me makes a big difference. The second is when the Russians themselves talked about the work that these five people did, they compared it to little U.S. reactors that were under development.

The Kilopower Project. Right. So that would be more likely? Yeah. I mean, again, we're assuming the Russians aren't outright lying. They're telling us something like the truth without necessarily telling us the most important things. And again, this is a missile test site. So if you're doing an engine test, you're not going to need... If it truly is an engine test, you don't need an RTG to be involved.

Right. I mean, Russia has cruise missiles with perfectly fine turbofan engines. And you wouldn't test it here. You know, like, again, this is not really that dangerous of a, you know, there's just these are not. Again, these things are commonly used in spacecraft and lighthouses. So the idea that they have gone all the way up to the Arctic and they have gone to this remote missile test site and they have gone out onto a barge and they have the Sarah Bianca sitting there ready to take away whatever it is that they're doing, it just doesn't seem like an RTG to me.

On top of the fact that I can't figure out How that would add to this, so you know, it's, I don't want to completely dismiss it, because there are also aspects of the nuclear-powered cruise missile that strike me as insane and don't make a lot of sense, but it just does not strike me as being the the simplest of the potential explanations.

Anne 39:21

I will interject for a second, because something that I'm having trouble understanding in some of the pushback to the nuclear-powered cruise missile aspect is people are fixating on the liquid fuel component, and they're like, why would they put those two together? Why would you need... Liquid fuel engine for maneuverability, whatever. And my understanding of how the system would work is that the liquid fuel part would be the booster.

And then that would... Yeah, the Skyfall. Sorry. It would pop off. And then because you cannot... If it were a ramjet engine, you can't start... Like that engine, you need to like get it off and running first before that can like kick in. So my, I don't understand why people are like, well, like it wouldn't be liquid fueled.

It wouldn't be like a liquid fueled engine. But like, again, my understanding is that the liquid fuel part would be. Well, there's another possibility.

Jeffrey 40:16

Because I know, you know, for the previous flight, they used a solid booster. So they might use a solid booster. They might use a liquid booster. I, you know, I don't know. You do have to have a booster to get it up to speed. One possibility is and Cheryl Rofer and I were talking about this and I think she did a nice blog post on nuclear diner.

When the U S looked at the open reactor designs where the air is blowing through the reactor, right. Which is undesirable for lots of reasons. Later on in 1965, there was a patent for a fast reactor. And the sodium, right, you use sodium to cool the reactor, right? That's liquefied. And that's what transfers the heat from the reactor to the engine.

And if you do that, then you could call that a liquid propellant. And sodium, as the Japanese discovered at their fast reactor at Manju, molten sodium does bad things when it hits the atmosphere. I love how we laugh at this stuff.

Aaron 41:33

Yeah, so, you know, I... Oh, yeah, it catches on fire.

Anne 41:37

Yeah, it does. Right, so you pull it out of the water and... Oh, oh, that all of a sudden makes a lot of sense.

Jeffrey 41:45

Oh, oh, oh. Well, I mean, look, I don't know that that's what they're doing. I have no idea what they're doing. But, you know, I can make their statement approximately true. And then I think the last thing I would say, which I don't want to make too much of it at this point, but it does look like we have some... Iodine.

Aaron 42:13

Yeah, so... Well, explain to that, because that happened this morning, unless I was late to the party here, so we're recording this on Thursday. Yeah. No, it was this morning. This is Thursday, and this podcast has been going on for a very long time. But it was this morning, this morning in the morning. Okay, hold on. It was this morning.

Where was it they picked up traces of iodine?

Jeffrey 42:40

Northern Norway. Okay.

Aaron 42:43

Okay. Northern Norway, so not sweet, but Northern Norway. And why is that important? Assuming it's accurate, because are we convinced it's totally accurate yet?

Jeffrey 42:57

Well, they detect radioactive iodine a fair amount, and they don't know... Where or why it comes from. It can come from plutonium. It can come from, I shouldn't say plutonium. It comes from radioisotope. It can come from radioisotope production. This is, what's the right way to say this? You know what, I'll do it this way. I'll read you the statement from the DSA, which is the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority.

Tiny amounts of radioactive iodine has been measured in air at our air filter station in northern Norway. The level detected is very low and poses no harm to people or the environment. The sample was taken in the period 9 to 12 August 2019. The measurement result is comparable to earlier measurements. Norwegian monitoring stations detect radioactive iodine about six to eight times a year, and the source is usually unknown.

When no other radioactive substances than iodine is detected, The source is most likely releases from production facilities for radioactive pharmaceuticals containing iodine. At present, it is not possible to determine if the last iodine detection is linked to the accident in Arkangelisk last week. DSA continues more frequent sampling and analysis. So it is a hint of fission, but it is a hint that is not by any means conclusive.

So I would not want to rely on this radioactive iodine measurement to say, ha, I win. It is not anywhere near that strong. It is a data point to be aware of and to wait and to see if more information comes along. As they say, this happens six to eight times a year. And so it's entirely possible that this is one of those six to eight times that it was going to happen this year.

And it has nothing to do with the event. That is a totally plausible thing, but we're waiting to see if there are other measurements that support the idea that there was an explosion and a fire involving some nuclear material.

Aaron 45:21

I think the point is, is because that data point, if there is more information that we're to sturdy it up, and I don't want to sort of... You never want to make assumptions. But it is indicative of an accident, a fission-type accident, and not the RTG-type accident. I think that's the way I'd put it.

Jeffrey 45:44

If we were to get more supporting evidence, then that's where that would push us. And frankly, if we had no detections whatsoever, then that would be a pretty strong argument for it not being a reactor. But Now we have ambiguous detections, so, you know, we just wait. Gotta wait.

Aaron 46:09

Sometimes you gotta wait. You know, sometimes the answer is, I don't know.

Jeffrey 46:12

When I said, you know, if we were at 90% confidence, we'd be wrong one out of ten podcasts, I'm not sure we're at 90% confidence. I think it's the best explanation. But, you know, we'll see.

Aaron 46:28

Yeah, no, I... Yes, and... And I think one of the things that makes this difficult, and this is where I do think we should wrap up, is we all know what Skyfall really is. The best approximation we can come to about Skyfall is an American design that I think now is 60 years old or approaching 60 years old, so there's a lot of open questions, right?

Yeah. Yep. Everybody's doing their best out there, but... You guys took a real big swing at it and did some serious work over there. So kudos to everybody.

Jeffrey 47:03

Thank you. Thanks.

Aaron 47:06

Anything else we need to hit before signing off?

Jeffrey 47:08

No, I'm happy. I think you brought us home. You got us where we needed to be, Aaron.

Anne 47:13

Do we have a happy... Oh, there's no happy note.

Jeffrey 47:16

We have five people killed for no good reason.

Anne 47:20

Happy note.

Aaron 47:21

For something stupid, I mean, look, can I just say something, really, before we sign off? We just analyzed this thing for like 45 minutes, and it's really intellectually fascinating, and we sort of laugh at how crazy some of the stuff is. But I think it's really important to just stop every once in a while and take a breath, and whether or not this was a Skyfall test or not, Skyfall has been tested.

We know this. Putin showed it off. And this thing is f***ing insane. Yep. It's totally insane. Mm-hmm. And we need to recognize, or at least it's really fun doing the open source, and I love it. And I was loving following this. But this whole system is totally bad.

Jeffrey 48:06

Oh, I'm not offended by that. That's how I ended my foreign policy piece, saying like, okay, so then I really want to say this. Let me, let me, let me, yeah, things we should say, things I want to say. The conclusion of my foreign policy piece, which is how I truly feel about this, is... We are drifting toward an arms race with the Russians, if we are not already in one.

And as we are doing it, people like Brett Stevens are cheering it on. And there is this weird nostalgia that has set in about the Cold War. And that nostalgia is based on this idea that because we didn't have a nuclear war, it was somehow all fine. Easier to understand but it wasn't fine lots of people died because when you are involved in an arms race that becomes your top priority and then other things are pushed aside you know like i read the i read this book on the mission the u.s did where the the apollo mission where we went around the moon for the first time And that was a mission that was supposed to be a few months later, and they moved it up because they wanted to beat the Russians.

And I loved the book, but I was so mad as I read it because it's supposed to be this story of heroism, but it's for a totally stupid reason. You know, there is no reason to risk these people's lives. To be the first to go around the moon.

Anne 49:40

Yeah.

Jeffrey 49:40

Right? That's an achievement for all of humanity. It doesn't matter who gets there first. Like, I understand that in a Cold War competition where you're looking at the world that way, somehow that does feel like some kind of advantage, but that was stupid, and we shouldn't look at the world that way. And so when I see the Russians saying, as they did after this test, well, this is the kind of things that happens when you develop new technologies.

It's like, that's why the arms race is stupid, because we are going to sacrifice human beings and our environment and all the stuff we care about. In the service of this competition that serves no purpose. And so I always come back to what Paul Warnke said in Apes on a Treadmill, which, you know, like doomed his confirmation, I guess.

And, you know, probably will ever prevent me ever from being confirmed for anything. But if the arms race is two apes on a treadmill, the only victory in that kind of race is being the first off the treadmill. So, like, this is a stupid missile built for a stupid reason that got people killed for no good reason and is, you know, an environmental catastrophe for no good reason.

Like, we should be smart enough to do something else.

Aaron 50:51

That's not a happy note, but I really felt like it needs to be said.

Anne 50:56

Yeah, it's the most important note to end on.

Aaron 50:59

The whole idea, again, I'm basing this on Pluto, but, like, the whole idea about how Pluto was supposed to work, it's just insane. But now that's a different podcast. But on that happy note, Anne Jeffrey, we finally nailed it. Good job. Good job by you guys. Oh, gosh. It took us a long time to get this podcast out.

We don't know why either. I don't know why.

Anne 51:22

This was a bad one.

Jeffrey 51:24

I was going to make an inappropriate joke. But you know what? I'm learning. I'm learning to restrain myself.

Aaron 51:29

That's the happy note. Yeah, and for listeners who enjoyed it, head on over to patreon.com slash acwpodcast. Students, $3 a month. You get access to Brilliant Pebbles, where we think we had some content last week, to our Slack channel. And if you're not a student, it's just $5 a month, same Slack channel, same Brilliant Pebbles access. This was fun.

I learned a lot. And let's go get a coffee.