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

reuters.com

411–420 of 894 posts

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

#411
post #133

I 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…

I'm thinking maybe their long-range plan is to turn the reactor off and then damage it in some way that it can never be used again without rebuilding from scratch. Russia's main export is fossil fuels, and it's in Russia's economic and strategic best interest for Ukraine to be dependent on them for energy. Nuclear enables Ukraine's energy independence, and thus can't be tolerated.

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

#412
post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every country has its propaganda and lies, but they're generally couched in half-truths. It's truly remarkable how the Russian flavor of misinformation sounds just like a pathological liar making up wild bullshit that nobody could possibly take seriously. That's been a tradition for decades, as far as I know.

I mean… Trump was lying about how many electoral votes he got. It was easily verifiable. Also such a stupid lie because he did have enough electoral votes to win the election anyway. But still! He fabricated that number. He was also truly in pathological liar territory.

I'll take the downvotes too. We had a president who idolized Putin and still praises him to this day. If we think this sort of thing can't happen here, or aren't clear eyed about the threat he and his enablers still pose, we are in even more danger.

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

#413
post #368
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't surprise me if they believe that considering the ridiculous stream of fantasy being spewed out of Russian leader and media.

Every country has its propaganda and lies, but they're generally couched in half-truths. It's truly remarkable how the Russian flavor of misinformation sounds just like a pathological liar making up wild bullshit that nobody could possibly take seriously. That's been a tradition for decades, as far as I know.

Unfortunately America has just shown us that it too can advance a wildly inappropriate and simply stupid individual to the highest levels of power.

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

#414
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is fighting to survive an attack by the other. This statement, while true, changes denotation depending on the scale at which you view this conflict. If you view it as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the existential threat is to Ukraine. If you view it as a conflict between Russia and NATO, the existential threat is to Russia.

Did I miss something today? Did NATO deploy troops into Russia or Ukraine?

If you want to achieve victory, you must understand your enemy as well as yourself. The Russian attitude towards NATO expansion into Ukraine can be roughly viewed from an American perspective as well equivalent as the old Warsaw Pact attempting to bring Mexico into their treaty. Or, at least, this is part of the explanation used to frame it as an ‘existential threat’ for Russia. This, combined with a somewhat precarious economy based largely on fossil fuel exports and the fact that in some sense Putin serves at the pleasure of the group of oligarchs, and only as long as they can earn. This combo of circumstance makes it pretty easy to guess at how we got here, and frankly how easy it was to provoke. Unfortunately for Putin, and fortunate for pretty much everybody else, at this point, it appears that outside of complete and total victory and annexation of Ukraine, it looks like he loses no matter what.

Putin is a ham-fisted dictator, and the world will be better off without him, but his motivations here aren’t mysterious.

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

#415
post #368
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't surprise me if they believe that considering the ridiculous stream of fantasy being spewed out of Russian leader and media.

Every country has its propaganda and lies, but they're generally couched in half-truths. It's truly remarkable how the Russian flavor of misinformation sounds just like a pathological liar making up wild bullshit that nobody could possibly take seriously. That's been a tradition for decades, as far as I know.

Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, noted that people more easily believe colossal lies, totally out of whack with reality, exactly because, well, who would say such a wild thing if it were not the terrible truth?

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

#416
post #282
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody shelled a nuclear plant. Russian forces drove into the parking lot of a nuclear plant, had two RPGs fired upon them from an administrative building and fired machine guns back at the administrative building. There were fires and after some time the fighting was sorted out and firefighters put out the fire.

All headlines are about Russians shelling a nuclear plant. You can say that's fake news, but at least provide a shred of evidence (like any article?). > KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station. https://apnews.c…

I watched the same livestream the AP is screenshotting. There weren't any signs of "shelling". There were two RPG blasts, and then later on tracer rounds fired back towards the source of the RPG blasts.

Edit: Saw an explanation that media journalists are probably mistakenly identifying the lighting flares launched in the video as shelling. They're way too slow moving to be shells or explosive rockets.

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

#417
post #162
post #15

"BREAKING: Ukraine's energy ministry claims firefighters have been fired at while trying to put out fire at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant" https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/149954992461016678...

Imagine being in a fire fight while fighting a fire. Two enemies simultaneously.

Imagine being in a fire fight while fighting a fire. Two enemies simultaneously.

Happens in Chicago. I assume it happens in other big cities, too.

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-firefighter-sh...

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

#418
post #121

Live stream from plant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYUT36YGOh8 Automated Radiation Monitoring system: https://www.npp.zp.ua/en/safety/arms

Yeah, and here's the current meteorological data: Air temperature 0 ℃ Wind N Wind speed 0 m/s Relative humidity 0 % Atmospheric pressure 0 mm Hg ... I hope that low pressure isn't from a vacuum bomb. with the HN meme of AWS status pages reporting everything fine while AWS is down, here we have good evidence we cannot rely on this website reporting reliable data. Here is the European Commission Radiation Map: https://…

I wrote a cron job that scraped the npp.zp.ua data every 15 mins for the past day. It is changing and doesn't seem offline. You think it's updating the date/time correctly and just cycling over old data?

https://imgur.com/a/GsBb1Oy

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

#419

So, aside from the obvious nature of messing around with Nuclear generating station being an idiotic move. From a tactical move for Russia - clearly they want the generating station offline to cause further chaos in Ukraine and that it supplies 1/6 of the power I believe(?). Was the generating station fighting to say online / not surrender or did Russia just show up guns blazing? It's clearly a tactically important s…

Isn’t one major problem with nuclear is that it’s hard to shut down when you don’t need it? Hopefully they understand that

Russia most likely designed and built that reactor and the others in the country, back when it was part of the Soviet Union. I think it's safe to say they fully understand and are capable of operating nuclear reactors like it.

edit: Construction started on it in 1980. This is a Soviet designed and built reactor. Russia should have no problem maintaining it.

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

#420
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

USSR was a Protocol 1 signatory, but Putin withdrew from Protocol 1 in 2019. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-warcrimes-conventi... This is either a plan for malice or it's incompetency, either way it's not good.

Whether or not Russia is a Protocol I party doesn't particularly matter here as the war crime at issue is viewed now as a matter of customary international law and is explicitly within the jurisdiction of the ICC; Rome Statute Article 8, 2.(b)(iv)

The same ICC the USA has a law on the books to invade the Netherlands if it charges US troops? Russia isn’t a signatory either. It’s edifying to observe that only the losers ever get tried for war crimes. A major nuclear power may fail to win a war, but it can’t lose one except if everyone loses.
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