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Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

reuters.com

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Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#241

Post by adventured »

godelski wrote: post #233
sascha_sl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is something I never understand about the anti-nuclear crowd. There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear but most often the ones used are not that great.[0] I mean we could talk about the expense of them and that they require long-term investments, making them not attractive to bureaucrats and political leaders, which led to the situation of extending lifetimes, losing knowledge, and increasing maintenan…

Expense is also not a good argument.

Nuclear power should be subsidized as necessary for the exact same reason healthcare is: energy security is a critical matter.

A nation like Germany for example could easily afford to have many more nuclear power plants and be pushing that much more energy over the borders to the rest of the EU in exports. They could do a lot to further the EU's energy security, given their fiscal and engineering capabilities. Their main reason for not doing it (fear) is heavy in emotionalism, irrationality.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#242

Post by cinntaile »

landemva wrote: post #225
cinntaile wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will likely keep some coal plants online longer than was originally planned, so that is definitely a thing. They even restarted some plants to reduce their current dependency on Russian gas.

There have been logistics issues getting coal to the plants. It feels like energy production followed the manufacturing motto of "just in time" instead of stockpiling the input coal. This lack of resilience was unnecessary.

It is an ad hoc solution to the current situation so I'm not surprised it's not exactly smooth sailing. It doesn't help that they recently shut down some of their reactors, they could have at least kept them open until the situation stabilized.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#243

Post by godelski »

aiilns wrote: post #189
landemva wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Is it just me or - I hate to say it - Trump actually had a point?

I'm not sure why people are afraid to say this. He has literally said everything under the sun. You throw enough darts and you're bound to eventually hit the board. Supporters just focus on the hits and don't pay attention to the misses, but this isn't different from any populist (I mean look at Musk. If you keep predicting that autopilot is a year away you'll eventually be right and that's all we'll ever remember)

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#244

Post by drran »

origin_path wrote: post #187
mrtksn wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 peop…

Cheap long time storage methods, like "Sand battery"[0], can change the equation.

[0]: https://polarnightenergy.fi/sand-battery

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#245

Post by cinntaile »

brabel wrote: post #236
colinmhayes wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20. There were plenty of reasons to be skeptical that russia would turn off the tap. There's always counterparty risk when importing things, the US could also decide to cut europe off from LNG if they wanted.

Russia has only turned off the tap after Europe had already turned off every possible economical tap flowing in the direction of Russia, so in a sense, Europe did it all by itself. Sure, it's the right thing to do for Europe as no one want to help Russia sponsor the war on Ukraine... but that doesn't change the fact that Russia wouldn't just turn off the tap without Europe turning highly hostile to it and basically l…

This is not true, Russia started reducing output last summer. Before their invasion of Ukraine.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#246

Post by godelski »

landemva wrote: post #226
aiilns wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

He has been shown to have been correct on this. I think he was also correct to ask Europe to fund NATO on their own. As USA taxpayer, I don't want to pay for it. Europeans know where they live and their history.

This is a bit tricky and I don't think many consider it. One of the leading theories for peace in Europe is the lack of militarization in Europe. Countries with standing armies are more likely to go to war with one another. So we got the rise of superpowers and where better to place that superpower than across an ocean and in an area with few contested borders and not thousands of years of history of fighting? I mean it seems the other approach is akin to what China did. Just be successful in conquering the region.

Obviously this point is _highly_ debatable but it is worth consideration. And it is not like the US hasn't benefited from the military industrial complex. Though I do think the funding structure could be reworked or we at least acknowledge that this is what is happening.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#247

Post by glaucon »

godelski wrote: post #233
sascha_sl wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is something I never understand about the anti-nuclear crowd. There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear but most often the ones used are not that great.[0] I mean we could talk about the expense of them and that they require long-term investments, making them not attractive to bureaucrats and political leaders, which led to the situation of extending lifetimes, losing knowledge, and increasing maintenan…

>don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta- particle.

I don't know the difference between a beta+ and beta- particle so please tell me, why would my, positive to some degree, views on nuclear energy be more valid if I did ?

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#248

Post by brabel »

rr888 wrote: post #100
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.

Russia and Germany have been at war for centuries. The last few decades when their economies became co-dependent was a blissful peace. Beware the long term consequences of buiding a new wall between them.

It's too late... the scene is already set up for the next big war.

We're in a situation where the hate between both sides is very close to the surface, no one is trying to hide it anymore.

All that's needed now is one excuse... as it happened so many times before, for centuries... one small thing - an important figure murder, a bomb that lands on the wrong side of the border (accidentally?)... the destruction of NordStream, which I thought would be enough to start a full scale conflict with Russia, but for some reason hasn't yet (though it remains to be seen). It's very clear that what we're seeing today looks exactly like what we saw just before other large wars: a mostly regional conflict that serves as a proxy conflict between the bigger players causes the hostile rethoric on both sides to grow more and more, until the population not only supports a conflict, but demands it. Whether or not the news are telling the truth (which anyone who was there in previous situations like this, including Iraq not so long ago, knows is full of lies and uncontested half-truths from both sides) doesn't even matter anymore. It's a matter of time, you can be sure of that.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#249

Post by m348e912 »

landemva wrote: post #167
mc32 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're going with that speculation then we could also speculate there is a small likelihood someone doesn't want someone else get cold feet and Kapitulieren in the middle of a bitter cold winter.

No options now to turn on the pipeline. I recall USA sabotaged a USSR pipeline way back in 1980s. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2004/02/27/r...

The way the article reads it's not clear if the US sabotaged software that was ultimately stolen by the Russians and used on pipelines or if the US intentionally and covertly transferred the flawed technology through more legitimate channels.

Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

#250

Post by adventured »

cinntaile wrote: post #177
ch4s3 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

LNG is more expensive than Russian gas so it makes or made economic sense to do that.

> LNG is more expensive than Russian gas so it makes or made economic sense to do that.

It only made sense if one pretends that Russia is not Russia.

To get there you'd have to forget to take into account all of the factors, namely that Russia's culture will always bring it back to trying to conquer its smaller/weaker neighbors.

Risk is a factor when considering economic security. Whether something makes economic sense must include that factor or it's a garbage calculation. The EU widely ignored this obvious risk regarding Russia. It has been obvious what Putin was for at least 15-20 years. And anybody that missed it after 2014 is an outright fool. I remember reading about his moves to strip the Russians of human rights in the early days of his reign and it was quite clear what he was doing and what direction he was going (standard Russian authoritarian), all of this is the natural culmination. I don't believe the EU was taken by surprise by Putin's choices, they merely wanted their cake and wanted to eat it too (for as long as possible), which is pretty typical behavior. Now they get to pay for that willful mistake.

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