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[martinuzz]

Wildfires in the radioactive woods around Chernobyl are filling the air with radioactive smoke from burned vegetation.

Now it's not uncommon for wildfires to take place there during spring and summer, but the difference is that they now go unchecked, with no fire services or fire planes able to reach the sites under Russian occupation.

Meanwhile, Russia and Japan are now at war. Or well they have technically still been at war ever since WW2, but Russia now decided to end the peace talks about the lingering territorial dispute about some small islands.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan strongly protested the decision.

[Starver]

Right I concede that - what I don't understand is why more populations don't band together to overthrow governments that do that.

Perhaps, to paraphrase the old saying that ends "...and then they came for me", when a person likes their government and has no sympathy for the nay-sayers against it, then why complain? It's only those who are already complaining who have a reason to object, and they are already doing so.

(Yes, there are probably fringes of "I disagree with you, but support your right to raise your point", but polarising social-engineering probably digs into the middle-ground and deliberately sweeps as many of those in that position away from the considerate centre to more clear Us or Them camps, to be coddled/handled appropriately.)

Just a thought. Not a seriously studied answer.

[LordBaal]

Obviusly the Russians haven't played Command and Conquer 3 to know how going against Japan will end up for them.

[martinuzz]

I doubt it will lead to actual military aggression though, it's more just a Russian response to the sanctions supported by Japan.

[Starver]

With sanctions against Russia, I was already thinking about Musk possibly getting a lot more business in the satellite delivery sector.  But when I consulted the lists, I'm not sure how much slack he can/would pick up.

[...] A Russian launch of a OneWeb pack is scheduled for 4/Mar (iffy, now?)

[...]

[1] Tricky, OneWeb. Bought into by the UK government, perhaps for a jury-rigged post-Gallileo capability thanks to Brexit, but largely launched by Russian rockets, or at least payload-tops. There's got to be some friction in that arrangement, now.  [...]

Update on these particular aspects of my prior rambling: SpaceX has been signed up to launch some OneWeb constellations, possibly before the end of the year, in leiu of the now jointly unavailable/undesirable/unwilling Soyuz rides. Terms unknown. But really the only option open to OneWeb, at least until LauncherOne and New Glenn get up to speed, is to use the same company as is currently doing its own constellation launching.

[martinuzz]

The Russian army has plundered and demolished the newest laboratory on the Chernobyl site. The laboratory processes nuclear waste.
Highly radioactive samples are now in the hands of Russians, according to the Ukraiian authorities.

So yeah, don't be surprised if Iran finds themselves in the possession of plutonium now.

[da_nang]

The lab is recent, the plutonium is old.

Any large quantity of Pu-239 in the reactor would have sat there long enough to be poisoned with Pu-240. You'd be back to isotope separation.

[voliol]

Why would Russia not already have nuclear waste, or is it some very special kind Russian/Soviet labs could not have produced along with all those bombs? And how does Iran tie into this?

[martinuzz]

Plausible deniability, accusing Ukraine of selling it, you name it.

"our Syrian recruits must have taken it".

Iran ties in because in response to the sanctions, Russia withdrew from the renegotioations of a nuclear treaty with Iran, basically ending them.

EDIT: Zelenski says the Russians are preparing a large offensive and they are using the nuclear exclusion zone as staging area.
Well, at least it's a relief that the war criminals will die of radiation cancer in a few years. /s

[Starver]

Why would Russia not already have nuclear waste, or is it some very special kind Russian/Soviet labs could not have produced along with all those bombs?

Plausible deniability, accusing Ukraine of selling it, you name it.

There's a certain amount of isotope-fingerprinting/back-extrapolation that can be done, should it be needed, to find the source of any particular mix according to known details about the (re)processing that produced a given sample of material. At least enough to make it hard to pass off easily-available Russian material as something that supposedly Ukrainian in origin.

Though I'm not sure this was more than opportunistic, on the basis that any material that was secured away might be worth something to someone. Possibly more imagined value than the understood dangers of handling it, depending upon who actually got tasked to liquidate those assets, under orders by who else.

[martinuzz]

Yeah, there's also the possibility of this being done by random troops that think they can make a profit by selling dirty bomb material to the highest bidder.
The UN should step in with a international peacekeeping force and take over nuclear sites, because obviously, neither Russia nor Ukraine are capable of basic security of nuclear material at this point.

[Lord Shonus]

Why would Russia not already have nuclear waste, or is it some very special kind Russian/Soviet labs could not have produced along with all those bombs? And how does Iran tie into this?

If you've read The Sum Of All Fears, you may remember the sequence where they are able to ID the bomb that destroyed Denver as being made from American plutonium (originally stolen by Israel, who then lost it), allowing the protagonists to realize that it wasn't Russia's fault.

The ability to do that isn't fictional - you can determine a lot about the reactor type (and, often, even the exact reactor) used to manufacture plutonium from various ratios of trace isotopes. This is, in fact, one of the things that has kept proliferation in check, becuase if any of the nuclear powers tried sneaking weapons to their proxies, those weapons cpuld easily be traced.

All that said, da-nang is quite correct. Any weapons-grade plutonium Ukraine might have is too old to be fissile. The agreement in which Ukraine foreswore nuclear arms had monitoring clauses.

[scriver]

So what use could it have? Poison?

[Starver]

There's always that. Or just salting a site with 'proof' of mishandled material, if not a false flag usage. But the "oooh, shiny!" factor (perhaps literally, though it tarnishes in air) is potentially the biggest attraction.

Once a state like Russia is assumed to have an actual devious plan, though, it's probably beyond the ken of simple interpretation. If they need to muddy the waters (for long enough for it not to matter, especially in a do-or-die attempt to make you the ultimate gatekeeper over any attempt to investigate) they could do far simpler things than rely upon what may end up being a relative McGuffin.

I'm sure any of the usual State customers for the 'hot' plutonium would also have the expertise to know that it's not a gift without problems. For physical and political reasons.

And, from The Peacemaker (1997), "I'm not afraid of the man who wants ten nuclear weapons, Colonel. I'm terrified of the man who only wants one."

[martinuzz]

So what use could it have? Poison?

A dirty bomb would render a city uninhabitable for years, until all buildings have been torn down, the top 1m of soil of the city dug out and disposed, and a new city built in it's place.
The advantage of a thermonuclear explosion over a dirty bomb is that it already takes care of the 'tearing down buildings' part of that. /s