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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

#231

Post by micromacrofoot »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #179
mwattsun wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was only 4 during the Cuban Missile crisis, but I've talked to people who remember it and this sounds a lot like it.

Others have pointed out that, unfortunately, the threat of nuclear war never really went away, we just got better at ignoring it except at times like this.

At all times there are submarines just floating around out there in various oceans waiting to nuke someone with a ballistic missile. They can operate underwater for 3 months without surfacing. Someone can get a call and press some buttons and just vaporize a town filled with people they have never met. I lie awake at night thinking about this a lot.

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

#232

Post by acdha »

anshumankmr wrote: post #213

Why not sign a pact saying "Nuclear Power Plants are Off Limits. Anyone caught messing around will be court martialled." It's quite naive I know but if you make the consequences very clear and extremely bad for the troops, it might really deter them. Or Russia is implementing a something similar to a scorch= the-earth policy.

Russia signed a pact guaranteeing Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for their portion of the Soviet nuclear stockpile [my misremembering, this was incorrect: and a large amount of money]. You can see how much signatures are worth with Putin.

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

#233

Post by azinman2 »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #193
tailspin2019 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good discussion. Brings some clarity to this and so far it doesn’t sound quite as serious as you might be led to believe given the headlines.

It's reassuring in that meltdown is very unlikely. But who the actual fuck shells a nuclear plant? That's not reassuring at all. It's also against international law.

So it randomly invading a country.

International law doesn’t actually mean very much, especially when the violator is powerful and has nuclear weapons.

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

#234

Post by genewitch »

decebalus1 wrote: post #105
mensetmanusman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most likely ignorance, seems like they have soldiers who still think they are on a training mission. Initiation of an actual radioactive disaster near your own border on purpose…

The 'training mission' trope is as old as the Red Army and it's bullshit. They pulled the same shit in 1956 when they got captured by the Hungarians and in 1968 when they invaded Czechoslovakia: 'We were told it was a training mission'. This is straight-up a survival tactic for the prisoners. They're playing dumb and acting innocent. It's impossible not to know by now where, what and why you are doing in a foreign co…

"peacekeeping" "mission"

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

#236

Post by QuarterReptile »

blagie wrote: post #210
QuarterReptile wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I agree completely (except I think your timeline for troop movements would be a little late). Putin even told us 'your move' when he called the troop movements an exercise. If we had responded forcefully, they would've gone away with nothing to show for it except some new propaganda.

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

#237

Post by vernie »

RickJWagner wrote: post #182

"Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a 'special operation' that is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists. It denies targeting civilians." How very Reuters of them. I should have expected nothing less.

Is that a problem?

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

#239

Post by gpm »

megous wrote: post #82
megous wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I've been watching the video for a while before the fire started, and there was shooting going on towards the building that's on fire from the units stationed between the parking lots. Then there was/is fire. Then presumably firefighters arrived, were not let through and departed away.

Hmm, and the live stream got truncated, now it doesn't have the whole 3h history, but just 1 minute. Damn.

That must be why my attempt at archiving it froze -.-

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

#240

Post by acdha »

AeroNotix wrote: post #206
HL33tibCe7 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Why do you think there's been so much effort to keep Iran and North Korea out of the nuclear club? Once someone has a high probability of having nuclear weapon and the capacity to deliver it, your tolerable options decline sharply. Russia is the worst-case form of that problem since they have many advanced weapons and even if their maintenance standards have been deplorable the odds are far too high that enough would reach their targets to cause death counts in the range of hundreds of millions.
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