One can wonder what does it takes for the west to military intervene. Sanctions are a long term plan but it won't save Ukraine.
Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
131–140 of 894 posts
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#132Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#133I do not understand, why are they fighting near the reactor? It only makes sense to keep troops of both sides away from something as dangerous.
I wonder if Russia thinks it gives them a strategic advantage to be able to turn the power on and off at will? (Hypothetically, if they have full control of some city, they can turn the power back on and the people are less likely to revolt.)
This whole situation reminds me of the Mosul dam in Iraq, which was controlled by ISIS for awhile. The dam is kept stable by continuous grouting operations, which I believe were on hold for awhile.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#134I would argue that this is a near equivalence of nuclear war with Ukraine. A well-/mis-placed Russian artillery shell could cause a loss of reactor integrity and meltdown, no? EDIT: according to child comments, a meltdown is unlikely/impossible, but spread of radioactive particles due to a direct strike is possible.
Potentially. I'd worry more about coolant and power (to run the coolant pumps if the plant has to shut down) than about direct hits on a containment structure, but it's not like that won't eventually also cause problems if they keep doing it. This is, so far as I know, the first time anyone has carried out a military attack on an operating nuclear plant. Nobody knows yet how that really plays out. But it looks like w…
>This is, so far as I know, the first time anyone has carried out a military attack on a nuclear plant
The Israelis bombed an Iraqi plant in the 80s I think.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#135Allegedly, Ukrainian firefighters were shot at by Russian troops.
If true, then that’s another war crime to add to the growing list.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#136Safer than the plant at Chernobyl, thankfully, with a real containment building. I'm still worried though.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#137[deleted]
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. It is many orders of magnitude less dangerous. It would potentially cause thousands of deaths, not hundreds of millions . This is true even if a melt down was caused, like Chernobyl, which others have already explained is quite improbable. Chernobyl caused between ~100 and ~16,000 deaths, depending sensitively on how one models the effects of small (sub-natural-background) radiation increases over a large populat…
I am using nuclear war in a literal sense, but I do see how my wording seems sensationalist given historical context.
There is a distinction between nuclear warfare and radiological warfare, which is what this would (arguably) be.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
the danger of radiation has been greatly exaggerated and pales in comparison the existential risk of climate change. even accounting for black swan events like getting hit by an airliner, coal plants emit drastically more radiation than nuclear. it's not a rational risk assessment. making nuclear energy economically unfeasible by mandating that things be drastically overbuilt has doomed us all to climate catastrophe
I don't disagree that nuclear energy is good; I'm pointing out that you're strawmanning. A solar farm doesn't have to be protected from missiles, because if it gets hit with missiles, only it is destroyed. It harms nothing around it, if it gets destroyed or fails in some fashion. If you want to represent nuclear, do it honestly; there are a million reasons why it's a good thing, a weak strawman doesn't help your case…
it's not a strawman. designing to requirements driven by fear and not rational risk assessment can make feasible technology infeasible.
if we designed airliners with a safety factor in line with people's fear of flying and not the actual risk of failure, they would never be able to get off the ground.
yet we require that nuclear power plants tolerate any conceivable failure mode, no matter how unlikely, or dangerous.
that's not rational.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an awfully effective way to distract people from focusing on defending the perimeter of whatever city they're trying to defend
If they were to spring a leak then it would be impossible to hide their activity from the population at home, so my guess is that's something they would try to avoid.
That almost seems irellevant, even if Putin cared what people think (I don't think he does for the most part), he controls almost all of the media in the country. He can just tell people "Ukraine did it" and they can believe him or not, it doesn't really matter.