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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

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently Ukrainians have surrendered now. What a nerve wrecking situation. In the heat of the moment deciding when is the right time to surrender. Probably the smartest decision of the day.

Same happened in Chernobyl. Workers in the plant granted the free pass and were allowed to keep running the plants. The young soldiers just can't do it and is in their most interest to keep the plant operations safe. A figth inside a nuclear plant can't be win and starting it would be a moronic disaster. Even the dumbest soldier is aware of that. But is still a risk. People does not act rationally in a war. If it con…

Nuclear power stations don't go boom so even if a war was raged inside a power station it wouldn't take out half of Europe.

What could happen is safety systems could be compromised causing a meltdown and that would carry the risk of spreading radioactive matter to the local environment. And if the local environment gets sufficiently contaminated then weather patterns, sea tides, etc could spread the radiation much further. But it's a slow risk (when compared to a nuclear weapon) so it is still possible to contain the damage to within a few miles, which I acknowledged is still bad but a much better outcome than half of Europe being contaminated.

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

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, propaganda and political lies is certainly not confined to Russia or backwater dictatorships. In America you also had that president's opponents concocting lies and peddling insane and baseless conspiracy theories for years about him colluding with Putin to hack the election and other such nonsense. That was even more infantile and simple than the propaganda that comes out of Russia.

Quoted post unavailable.

You ever wonder about people who fall for baseless conspiracy theories about stolen elections? How could they possibly fall for these politicians and other assorted nutjobs telling them the election was stolen, without ever providing the evidence? Dumb uneducateds! They're nothing like us enlightened intellectuals.

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

#693
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

Iraq was a terrorist state full of abuses

Russia is a terrorist state full of abuses invading a peaceful democratic country.

This is incomparable.

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

#694
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A no-fly zone is no justification for nuclear escalation. Internationally, the only justification for a nuclear attack is in retaliation to another nuclear attack. That is it. Putin has made it clear that he will also launch a nuclear attack in case of an "existential war", which means a war where Russia itself is being attacked with the purpose of conquering or destroying it. A no-fly zone is not that. There is no r…

> Putin has made it clear that he will also launch a nuclear attack in case of an "existential war", which means a war where Russia itself is being attacked with the purpose of conquering or destroying it. Are you sure about that, to the point of risking the continuity of the species and all of our modern civilizations upon that? If one can claim that the Jewish population in Ukraine is actually Nazis and have many o…

I absolutely do understand the reluctance to escalate, and I share it. I don't want that war to escalate at all; I want to de-escalate. Away from bombing civilian targets.

And I understand that western countries are reluctant to impose a no-fly zone out of fear that Putin has gone insane and might resort to nuclear escalation, but I think the risk of him resorting to nuclear escalation already exists if he can't have his way with Ukraine. And there are a lot of Russians who strongly disagree with this war and would probably support a no-fly zone.

I fully admit that if Putin has indeed gone nuts and isn't merely playing games, then we have to trust the Russian military in control of the missiles to do the right thing, but I think that trust is also warranted; many Russian soldiers already don't want to fight, and I'm sure the more competent commanders are well aware that a nuclear attack would be suicide.

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

#695
post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Putin has made it clear that he will also launch a nuclear attack in case of an "existential war", which means a war where Russia itself is being attacked with the purpose of conquering or destroying it. Are you sure about that, to the point of risking the continuity of the species and all of our modern civilizations upon that? If one can claim that the Jewish population in Ukraine is actually Nazis and have many o…

I absolutely do understand the reluctance to escalate, and I share it. I don't want that war to escalate at all; I want to de-escalate. Away from bombing civilian targets. And I understand that western countries are reluctant to impose a no-fly zone out of fear that Putin has gone insane and might resort to nuclear escalation, but I think the risk of him resorting to nuclear escalation already exists if he can't have…

> And I understand that western countries are reluctant to impose a no-fly zone out of fear that Putin has gone insane and might resort to nuclear escalation

No, the fear is that Putin is basically sane and operating under something like normal great power expectations despite his crimes of aggression, and thus will not attack NATO countries for fear or nuclear retaliation, but will escalate against NATO countries if they intervene directly against him, potentially and quickly leading to nuclear war.

If they thought Putin was insane, the marginal risk between aiding Ukraine and intervening directly would be less, not more.

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

#696
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.

Quoted post unavailable.

There were world-wide protests against that war [0]. You might consider that many of the people commenting here will have been involved in those protests, or are otherwise well aware that the justifications were a huge flight of fantasy. That doesn't mean that current news from the Russian media isn't also a huge flight of fantasy.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...

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

#697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same happened in Chernobyl. Workers in the plant granted the free pass and were allowed to keep running the plants. The young soldiers just can't do it and is in their most interest to keep the plant operations safe. A figth inside a nuclear plant can't be win and starting it would be a moronic disaster. Even the dumbest soldier is aware of that. But is still a risk. People does not act rationally in a war. If it con…

Nuclear power stations don't go boom so even if a war was raged inside a power station it wouldn't take out half of Europe. What could happen is safety systems could be compromised causing a meltdown and that would carry the risk of spreading radioactive matter to the local environment. And if the local environment gets sufficiently contaminated then weather patterns, sea tides, etc could spread the radiation much fu…

> So tell me, how does a rbmk reactor explode?

Edit: This is a joke based on TV series Chernobyl. A Chernobyl reactor did infact explode and the logic was that it exploding was impossible there for it did not explode.

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

#698

Nope. We are not surrendered and have no plan to do that. Tell that to your Russian friends.

Who's we? You're telling us that you're surfing HN in the trenches?

He's quite obviously Ukranian. He could just be a regular civilian, like you and I.

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

#699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This wouldn’t have happened if the world stopped buying oil and gas from Russia and used more energy from nuclear power plants.

Right, if only the world would have thousands of nuclear plants more, the danger of one blowing up in a war would decrease substantially.

What kind of sick mind one needs to have, to push this anti nuclear bullshit when the real issue is a fucking fascist invasion of Russia into Ukraine? For fucks sake..

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

#700
post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A no-fly zone is no justification for nuclear escalation. Internationally, the only justification for a nuclear attack is in retaliation to another nuclear attack. That is it. Putin has made it clear that he will also launch a nuclear attack in case of an "existential war", which means a war where Russia itself is being attacked with the purpose of conquering or destroying it. A no-fly zone is not that. There is no r…

> Putin has made it clear that he will also launch a nuclear attack in case of an "existential war", which means a war where Russia itself is being attacked with the purpose of conquering or destroying it. Are you sure about that, to the point of risking the continuity of the species and all of our modern civilizations upon that? If one can claim that the Jewish population in Ukraine is actually Nazis and have many o…

Putin has never claimed that the Jews in Ukraine are Nazis.

He is claiming that the Neo-Nazi units of the Ukrainian military operating in the south of the country, who harbor Nazi tattoos and whose flags represent the Black Sun and the rune used as the symbol of the "Das Reich" SS division, are probably Nazis. The Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant mentioned, in his manifesto, that he had visited those guys.

Last year a UN resolution was motioned to condemn Nazism and Neo-Nazism. Only two countries voted against: the United States and Ukraine.

This doesn't justify any war of aggression, of course, but you cannot pretend that there is no Nazi problem in Ukraine either.

Of course he is not claiming that the Jews in the government in Kiev are Nazis, because that would be absurd, but it's pretty clear that they are tolerating Nazis in the military for very cynical reasons (they're actually very effective fighters and are employed to fight the separatists in the Donbass region).

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