I highly recommend this lecture by Finnish army intelligence expert to those looking to understand the deeper roots behind Russia's actions. Lecture in Finnish, but it has English subtitles. Truly wakening stuff, it really helps you to understand the situation much better.
Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
801–810 of 894 posts
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#802Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What element in a battery is destroyed during its lifetime that cannot be recycled?
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#803Earlier quoted context omitted.
One side goes “hey they won’t shoot us if we’re near the plant”. The other side goes “hey no fair”. Things escalate. It’s war, and it sucks.
One side was unarmed civilians blocking the road to the plant for couple days until Russians started to shoot and wounded several civilians.
If you don't move aside when ordered to by a man with a gun, you might get shot.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#804So, 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…
I know I'm steelmanning like a crazy person right now, but a valid reason for Russia to seize those power plants might be to prevent Ukrainians from using them as huge dirty bombs in a desperate last strike.
Nah. They just want control of the power. It's a lot of leverage, and they want to take over the country, so they will need it.
The Ukrainians are fighting for their own land. I don't think that there's a single one of them that would deliberately cause another Chernobyl (remember that they have some experience with what happens when reactors go kablooey).
But they seem to be quite persistent, in not just just rolling over and letting the Russians have their way. I suspect that they've got plenty of other nasty little surprises in store.
One of the things that the last 50 years' worth of guerrilla wars has been, is an object lesson on how to do asymmetric warfare against technologically-advanced, and overwhelming armies.
I suspect that every military in the world has been taking notes.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#805So, 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…
I know I'm steelmanning like a crazy person right now, but a valid reason for Russia to seize those power plants might be to prevent Ukrainians from using them as huge dirty bombs in a desperate last strike.
This is pure propaganda. Ukrainian forces would never do that, which I cannot say about those who oppose them.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#806Earlier quoted context omitted.
How are these things not a civilization ending threat? Nukes can literally kill everything and global warming, if unchecked, will probably do the same long term.
Even if all nukes would go off (spread evenly) they would not kill everybody. The worst case scenario of global worming would not kill everybody. People living north of 40o will survive.
it's not the nukes itself that would kill. it's the nuklear winter. with highly reduced sunlight this planet will become a freezing hell. no plants -> no food
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#807Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know I'm steelmanning like a crazy person right now, but a valid reason for Russia to seize those power plants might be to prevent Ukrainians from using them as huge dirty bombs in a desperate last strike.
This is pure propaganda. Ukrainian forces would never do that, which I cannot say about those who oppose them.
its not out of the question, especially since resistance in its very nature becomes more decentralized and dirty the second the government is weakened or falls.
Take a place like syria, it went from a centralized government to a heap of insurgencies and many sides killing people en-masse.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#808Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "it will still be a small disaster compared to all the causalities that already" Maybe I'm missing something regarding this specific reactor but how is a war that will eventually (hopefully) be over worse than a nuclear fallout that would make large areas unlivable for thousands of years and affect multiple countries and also killing a lot of people.
> make large areas unlivable for thousands of years I think you are over-estimating the cost of this. I contest the use of 'large'. The 30km radius exclusion zone is nothing compared to the surface occupied by deserts, ice floe, or whatever of the many others existing unhinabitable places. > and affect multiple countries and also killing a lot of people. Because the war has been doing that already, at a even larger s…
Do we need more deserts, especially grain lands turned into radioactive desserts?
Russian invasion blocked wheat traffic from Ukraine, so it caused spike in prices for wheat. Just imagine prices for food when Ukraine will be poisoned permanently or occupied by RF, which may perform genocide of Ukrainians second time in less than 100 years. Wastelands are good for wildlife only, because humans are major danger to them.
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#809So, 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…
I know I'm steelmanning like a crazy person right now, but a valid reason for Russia to seize those power plants might be to prevent Ukrainians from using them as huge dirty bombs in a desperate last strike.
Why would they dirty bomb their own land? If anything it's a reason to have already taken some materials offsite to dirty bomb Moscow later. Or for the invaders to threaten dirty bombing if they're about to be driven away (like they're already doing with their nuclear arsenal).
Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
#810Earlier quoted context omitted.
And this is part of why a lot of Germans have always been uneasy with nuclear power.
The German are uneasy because of irrational fear and exaggerated risks. Even if the worst happen at that nuclear power plant, it will still be a small disaster compared to all the causalities that already have happened in Ukraine the last few weeks (you know: the war)
The war has somewhat been going on since 2014, with 15k dead in Donbass, fwiw.