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Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

reuters.com

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Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#181

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

ch4s3 wrote: post #71
scifibestfi wrote: post #61

"Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages." Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and built more.

They also proactively chose in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq to avoid importing more natural from the US. Schroeder and co wanted to reconnect Western Europe to Russia and avoid any dependence on the U.S. I think we now all see who the more reliable partner for Western Europe has been. [edit] if you’re going to disagree, I’d be interested to hear your specific objections. The shift away from US natural gas is…

The difference is that when the US invaded Iraq, Germany complained a bit but didn't do much else, but when Russia invaded the Ukraine, Germany decided to cut Russia off economically. The reason why the US is a "reliable partner" is that German politics is willing to accept American wars. And before we hear any cries of, "Iraq was different," recall that it was an illegal war of aggression that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to large scale torture, and generally caused a monumental societal collapse in Iraq.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#182

Post by sascha_sl »

mrtksn wrote: post #74
scifibestfi wrote: post #61

"Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages." Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and built more.

This place started to think in memes I feel. Every issue comes with the automated arguments, the same ones every time. If the topic is energy someone must write the "they shouldn't have closed those Nuclear power plants, silly environmentalist". Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state and they are having energy issues too, because as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods. Maybe…

> as it turns out nuclear power plants require long regular maintenance periods.

That's because everyone has been operating their PWRs/BWRs way beyond the design lifespan, which would be fine if we didn't just stop building new ones in the past 20-40 years (depending on country) to prevent too many of them needing regular maintenance at once.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#183

Post by systemvoltage »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #179
systemvoltage wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, I get physical mail pamphlets that help me prepare for power outages and what I should do to reduce quality of life. It’s not from PG&E, but our city.

I don't think this part of living in the future was predicted on The Jetsons

Oh my, I didn't realize The Jetsons aired in 1962: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jetsons

Thats 60 years ago. Wow.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#184

Post by m348e912 »

gambiting wrote: post #118
m348e912 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question. How did you get to the logical conclusion that Russia is the most likely party that bombed Nordstream?

To me it's completely obvious - Poland and its 50 million citizens depend on the Norway->Poland gas pipeline for having any gas this winter at all. Blowing up Nordstream is clearly a signal from Russia that if we don't stop pushing back on Ukraine, then that pipeline is next to go. That's how I read it anyway.

I don't agree with your assessment but I upvoted you anyway. Not sure why you were downvoted.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#185

Post by j-pb »

scifibestfi wrote: post #146
j-pb wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

No they were not. Their geolocation and battery technology means it wasn't feasible regardless. It was sabotaged to begin with. No other efforts needed. https://zeihan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/13-globalwinds...

Location? Germany has huge amounts of wind, especially in offshore. Your own map even shows this. We also have plenty of solar, enough that the conservatives introduced a solar installation LIMIT to keep fossil fuel and nuclear competitive.

As for storage, with large enough over-capacity it's really easy to retrofit old coal plants to work off head capacitors, and we have plenty of those.

It's just no good if there is no political will to do it. And the "nuclear narrative" is one of the whataboutisms together with "breakthrough hydrogen tech" to distract from the solutions that are cheaply implementable today.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#186

Post by _trampeltier »

izacus wrote: post #5
_trampeltier wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as far, I know here in Europe. Why should they. For sure, they have batterys for one hour or so. But there is no second electric connection, to a diffrent electric grid. Something like that does not really exist, because our electric grid was not planed in mind for a such situation.

Most main base stations have diesel generators, not second power grid.

Have you ever seen an antenna on a roof somewhere with a diesel generator?

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#187

Post by origin_path »

mrtksn wrote: post #157
scifibestfi wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people are fed up with dangerously incompetent leadership, who literally laughed when warned to not be dependent on Russia for energy. It's not a meaningless culture war. The loss of energy means lower standard of living at best and mass death and famine at worst.

The solution is not obvious, it's obvious only to zealots. It's kind of obvious that the solution is in PHV and wind energy but you can fight it to death with people who would claim that it's obvious that the solution is Nuclear energy. This is not a good discussion, this is fanatics fighting. Anytime someone suggest simple solution to a big problem %99.9 of the time they don't actually have a simple and obvious solu…

Pumped hydro is very limited and most resources are already exploited. Wind energy is not a solution because sometimes it just doesn't appear when you need it.

Nuclear actually is a solution, in the sense that if you implement it, the problem will go away. Renewables are not a solution in the sense that even if you over-implement to an absurd degree, with present technology the problem will sometimes remain.

The people pointing this out are not zealots, they're people with a basic understanding of how electricity works. It's the people who insist against basic physics that renewables can power 100% of the grid that are the zealots, and now we all will pay the price for accommodating their extremism :(

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#188

Post by origin_path »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #103
scifibestfi wrote: post #61

"Russia's decision to halt gas supplies via Europe's key supply route in the wake of the Ukraine conflict has increased the chances of power shortages." Europe's decision, Germany especially, to be reliant on Russia for energy when they could have not shut down nuclear plants and built more.

There is a penn and teller episode where they argued that globalization was creating world peace. Basically, when everyone’s economies are so entangled, they said, nobody would want to go to war because of how expensive it would be. Their model, I think, only works for democracies. When a dictator controls a country, and their quality of life remains unchanged and revolves mostly around delusions of grandeur (like an…

Democracies have often gone to war. The usual formulation is that no two democracies have ever gone to war with each other but this is specious reasoning - it asserts causality without even bothering to speculate as to an actual underlying cause, probably because there isn't one and any attempts to argue otherwise would immediately fall apart. Democracies have been invading, overthrowing and subjugating other countries for a long time.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#189

Post by aiilns »

landemva wrote: post #153
xienze wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe there's no simple answer for energy issues and countries don't simply build or close down power plants over single issue? Well, two things. One, pretty sure the push to shut down Germany’s nuclear plants was a response to a single issue, Fukushima. Two, one simple answer to this particular situation is to assess your energy independence before sanctioning the country you rely on for natural gas. Germany is ge…

> assess your energy independence before sanctioning the country you rely on for natural gas. Trump blurted that to the Germans around 2019. The press brushed it off as "highly misleading". https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/trump-is-exaggerating-german...

> President Donald Trump repeated a highly misleading claim on Friday that Germany will soon depend on Russia for 50 percent to 70 percent of its energy needs.

Then the article spends significant time pointing out that Russian natural gas plays only a small part in Germany's total demands in energy, citing numbers like 20% & 13% and thus Trump's claim is am exaggeration.

And then goes on to say:

> To be sure, Russia also accounted for about 40 percent of Germany's crude oil imports and 30 percent of its foreign coal supplies in 2016, according to IEA. But that hardly makes it an outlier in Europe.

How is that glossed over? Is it just me or - I hate to say it - Trump actually had a point?

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