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Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

reuters.com

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Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#201

Post by kypro »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #148
Thaxll wrote: post #131

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.

The risks of nuclear war from a NATO militarily intervention are far too high to even consider it. I’m sorry to say, but there is really nothing that could happen in Ukraine that would be bad enough for us to accept the risk of nuclear annihilation.

If NATO got involved my guess is that the chance of an all out nuclear war would increase to near 100% because Russia can not win a conventional war with NATO which means nukes would need to be deployed to level the playing field.

Once one Nuke is fired it's likely they'll all be because the only real defence against a nation using nuclear weapons against you is to try to wipe them out before they wipe you out.

In this situation hundreds of millions would be likely die directly from the attack and a similar amount would probably die from starvation shortly after as the global economy collapses and crops fail on mass.

There's just no situation that this is something we'd even want to consider. As much as I'd love NATO to be able to intervene it's just not possible. The best we can do is put pressure on Russia and show other nations that this is not acceptable and not in their national interest because of the harsh economic consequences.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#202

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

andbberger wrote: post #139
caslon wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It's far less rational to keep building expensive and unsafe generation when cheaper and safer generation is already available - and can be built more quickly.

And that's before equivalent spending on research, plus tax breaks and subsidies.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#203

Post by nomel »

bastawhiz wrote: post #171
paxys wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those. Destroying critical infrastructure like power plants and radio towers is a common step on the invading a country checklist. Of course considering this was a nuclear plant, one should hope that they were careful enough to limit the damage to prevent nuclear fallout.

Causing a nuclear incident in a place you want to occupy is profoundly stupid.

You're making a pretty serious assumption that they're doing something haphazard rather than something calculated and planned. What's your reason for first assuming incompetence?

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#204

Post by hinkley »

andbberger wrote: post #91
caslon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If an unprotected solar farm gets hit by a plane, some property damage happens. If an unprotected nuclear reactor were to get hit, we all know what would happen.

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

That may be true for the number of actual plants we have, but public sentiment against nuclear is why we don't have 10, even 100 times as many plants as we do now. If you start shifting decimal points two positions to the right, and diminishing the distance between plants, between plants and critical habitat, by an order of magnitude (separation is square root of density per area), those numbers aren't quite as rosy.

100 might sound like hyperbole, but if, somehow, nuclear was guilt-free power, we'd be using at least twice as much power as we currently do. Eventually that much waste heat becomes its own problem (requiring more cooling to 'deal with')

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#205

Post by eric_b »

smrtinsert wrote: post #125

I am absolutely livid and terrified for the state of the world right now.

Consider that there have been terrible things happening to people throughout the world, every day, for years. This is bad, of course, but I'd caution you that you're letting the media dictate your emotions. Did you feel this mad during the (still ongoing) Syrian conflict? How about when Russia invaded Georgia? Or the first Ukraine invasion in Crimea? In all three cases the threat of nuclear war was probably as high as today. And the atrocities during this war so far pale in comparison to those other three. And that's just conflicts involving Russia. Over the last few years there have been unspeakable atrocities committed across the continent of Africa - that make this look mild.

It's not that this is good or acceptable, but if you're just now getting mad, or just now seeing humans for what they're truly like, then perhaps this is a good lesson and an important milestone in the maturation process. Human nature has not changed so much over the last 80 years. It's good to be reminded of that, though the reminders are difficult.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#206

Post by AeroNotix »

HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #148
Thaxll wrote: post #131

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.

The risks of nuclear war from a NATO militarily intervention are far too high to even consider it. I’m sorry to say, but there is really nothing that could happen in Ukraine that would be bad enough for us to accept the risk of nuclear annihilation.

So any time a tin pot dictator wants to do whatever they want they just claim they'll use nukes and we let it ride?

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#207

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

joshuajill wrote: post #151
estro0182 wrote: post #9

I 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.

Loss of coolant can have effects on the reactor and/or the spent fuel pool or container if there is such in the facilities. Any of these could go critical very quickly and ignite/explode. But based on what happened in Fukushima, critical electrical/cooling systems and backups would have to be damaged in order to pose catastrophic risk. While this is unlikely I'll probably lose some hours of sleep on this. I very much…

Apparently current prevailing winds would spread fallout through Russian-held areas in Donbas and Crimea.

Not exactly a brilliant strategy - unless you're deranged and really don't care about your people.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#209

Post by AeroNotix »

merpnderp wrote: post #161
Thaxll wrote: post #131

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.

How can anyone intervene when Russia has 6,400 nuclear weapons? It will provide no comfort in our final moments to know Russia is facing the same fate.

Speak for yourself.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#210

Post by blagie »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #178
01100011 wrote: post #26

God damn, is the Russian army really this stupid? Is this an act of desperation, ignorance or spite?

My best mental model for the leadership of Russia's Ukraine invasion is an abusive parent who can't get his kid to bend to his will. Repeated failed attempts cause the parent to become more emotional, destructive, and out of control of himself, so we've gone from just an unprovoked invasion with airport attacks, attacks on radar sites, and occupation of the exclusion zone; to trying to assassinate Zelenskyy and start…

Right now, the trick would be to drop a line of bombs on that stalled convoy heading for Kiev, and to establish a no-fly zone. That would turn the tide of war. I don't think that's more likely to risk nuclear retaliation than actions we'll be forced into in two weeks. It is more likely to risk nuclear retaliation than simply moving NATO troops into Ukraine two weeks ago.

As with COVID, we seem to always do too little too late.

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