It's the clear line in the sand. Putin's not going to cross that line, he doesn't gain anything from it.
Assuming NATO would be willing to use nuclear weapons if he did attack a NATO country. I have far more confidence that Putin would use them than the US would. That asymmetry works to his advantage.
The only country which used them and on actual civilian cities leveling them to the ground is the US. Also, launching nukes is not one person job. His generals need to be mad too for that to happen.
gp was saying that if you blow up the country enough, there's no country left to join NATO.
That's a fair point in general. Exploding all nuclear reactors in Ukraine isn't going to do that though. And, of course, Russia could do much blowing up with conventional weapons, too.
Just one nuclear reactor can be used to create continent wide Red forest. Chornobyl disaster was just an incident without evil intent. Small fraction of nuclear fuel was released into atmosphere. With evil intent, much larger percent of nuclear fuel can be turned into thin dust and released into atmosphere. Larger reactors contain much more nuclear fuel. With evil intent, much more radioactive elements, such as radioactive iodine or radioactive noble gases, can be breed in reactor before blow up. With evil intent, safety systems can be disabled to produce maximal amount of dangerous elements. Depending on time given for preparation and technique used, it can be from 1 Fukushima to 10k Chornobyls. If NATO will give initiative to Russians, they can blow up reactor in good weather, so RF will not be affected, but EU will gone.
Thankfully the reactors are behind the camera streaming the administrative building. Hopefully nothing goes wrong during the takeover. The reactor containment itself is robust, but the potential for human error in a war that keeps escalating should not be discounted.
Internet speculation is that the power plant will be shut down once taken over. Which at least minimizes the ongoing risk of human error. Heck, shutting down is probably a far simpler process than continuing to run - nuclear power plants are designed to be shut down if necessary.
Well, shutting down nuclear reactor is not a simple process — it has to be actively cooled for weeks after being disconnected, which requires power, which you don’t have because you shut it down. So there should be either on-site generators (burning fuel) or external power . That’s why power stations usually have multiple reactors which are serviced on schedule, so it always has some generation happening.
None of it can be relied on during the war.
Shutting down and not having power to cooldown is how Fukushima happened. Emergency shutdown drill is how Chornobyl’ happened
It doesn't surprise me if they believe that considering the ridiculous stream of fantasy being spewed out of Russian leader and media.
anything is possible in war. if Ukraine was on the brink of losing everything and they had nuclear weapons, would they not use them against Russia? that's the whole point. if your state is about to cease to exist, you are desperate. for now, the war has not reached this point. if Ukraine where to try to use nuclear material now they would lose allies. but you don't know what the war will look like in 2 weeks. so I do…
No? Considering the nuclear power plants are in Ukraine, and whichever way the wind blows, it will at a minimum impact Ukrainians. And then you can't know where it will end up - maybe Russia, maybe Germany.
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.
Thankfully the reactors are behind the camera streaming the administrative building. Hopefully nothing goes wrong during the takeover. The reactor containment itself is robust, but the potential for human error in a war that keeps escalating should not be discounted.
Internet speculation is that the power plant will be shut down once taken over. Which at least minimizes the ongoing risk of human error. Heck, shutting down is probably a far simpler process than continuing to run - nuclear power plants are designed to be shut down if necessary.
Given the continuous need for cooling and containment, and within the context of a war, does it really matter if a fission power plant is running or shut down in terms of environmental security?
This has been a real reckoning for me, as somebody who has historically been very pro-nuclear. Quite simply, humanity is too good at screwing things up to harness such a fundamentally powerful and dangerous source of power. It requires a commitment to long lasting peace and stability that we're just not capable of.
My thinking has been that we need smaller decentralized nuclear plants, that can fail without it being cathastrofic, instead of huge centralized plants that "can't fail".
That only makes for more, albeit smaller problems. Each of these is a potential dirty bomb.
If we can make energy storage simple and cheap enough I do not see why nuclear power would have any upside left except maybe for when traveling outside the solar system. Regarding survivability of humanity I have similar fear but my current hope is that while weapons will continue to be more attainable their relevance might diminish. Why fight your neighbor if you have everything you need? But warlords create a probl…
If we can make energy storage simple and cheap enough If you're thinking of big Tesla Powerwall-style batteries, that just kicks the problem ahead by a few years or decades. The materials needed to make those batteries are finite. They will become "the new oil" in N years. Energy storage is going to be a big part of any sane energy future, but it's going to have to make heavy usage of non-battery means: giant flywhee…
The materials in those batteries can be recycled into new batteries indefinitely.