"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…
Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
251–260 of 436 posts
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#252Earlier 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.
I am not aware cial, usually shipped in bulk and very easily stored, was ever delivered JIT. But whatever, JIT was already the reason why the chip supply from Asia to overseas car factories was disrupted, at least according to certain people without the slightest clue of how JIT works. Or supply chains in general...
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#253I can understand why that'd happen. Where I live, in France atm, there's one cell tower around. And when it's down, it's down. I know because in June there have been one hour of electrical blackout about once a week and, well, our smartphones weren't working anymore. I don't even bother with an UPS or a 4G router for my network: when there's no electricity, nothing is working anymore anyway.
Stuff that keeps working for a few hours: the Kindle, tablet and local files on the laptops. So there's that.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
There is T-Mobile equipment on my building. They are connected to the diesel generator circuit (shared with the elevator) and have battery backup.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#255Earlier 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…
> There are plenty of good arguments against nuclear but most often the ones used are not that great.
I suspect that the cost-based anti-nuclear arguments aren't really meant for the crowd that understands budgeting or long term planning, since the arguments tend to highlight numbers out of context. It's really meant to create short, stand-alone soundbites that could be repeated in social media posts and news articles.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#256Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Question: could Russian disinformation have played a role in germanys policy here? As a German, no, that was quite voluntary. People like me completely agreed. I only woke up on 24 February. I'm from East Germany, speak some Russian, and have been to Russia a few times, and to Ukraine too, for months actually. I did not care about the Krim annexation either. I think because it was peaceful, and because I did not se…
Ok so you explained your love affair with Russia. Thank you for that, very insightful and courageous. But why the hate of nuclear? Was there a lot of propaganda in the media how dangerous it is? I really don’t understand it. It gives clean energy independence almost for free!
The Chernobyl disaster was a big part of it. I wasn't old enough back then, but my parents told me how people were told to not play outside with the children, not to drink milk, eat things and so on. No one really knew what was going on. That fear has always been a big part of the anti-nuclear movement here in Germany.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't have to believe that every government in the West is lying about it. You just have to believe that one government (the one who did it) is lying, and the rest don't know because they weren't told.
You don't even need one government to lie; you only need a small portion thereof. And if you did it right, you could have setup this whole procedure ages ago and then have complete deniability.
You don't even need a small portion to lie, you can just take them at their word: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-german-chancellor-nord-st...
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#258"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…
I’d be interested to see that documentation if you have it handy.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem of relying on Russia for energy was obvious. Indeed. Always found it strange that Germany didn't see a problem with relying on Russia for their main energy source.
Motivated reasoning. Cheap energy is extremely attractive, so seemingly obvious downsides can be swept under the rug.
I think this is very human reasoning.
People laugh at Preppers and call them crazy for taking prudent preparedness steps as insurance against future risks. It's a very human thing to do.
During the early days of COVID, some people started coming around to preppers being not-so-crazy-after-all, which lasted for precisely a few months before the toilet paper returned and preparedness being an acceptable idea left mainstream thought.
Expediency and lifestyle will always trump prudence in the human mind. It's the primary reason we will eventually exterminate ourselves, regardless of the specific existential risk we succumb to. The Great Filter is no great mystery.
Re: Europe braces for mobile network blackouts
#260Earlier 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.
To me, it's completely obvious the truth is the exact opposite. I feel like only someone who is no longer thinking rationally can claim that Russia would blow up their own pipeline and make it impossible, even after hostilities cease (yes, they will cease one day, they always do... or are you still hostile to Germany?), to get billions and billions of easy Euro flowing down on its coffers.
If you know history you should understand that a "small" even like this, in a highly volatile situation like we have now, could easily trigger an irrational war no one can win to start. I would think that Putin knows that very well, so it's not imaginable to me that he would risk.
Could someone who feels so strongly against Russia, given all the news we're being fed daily in the West, actually want NATO to enter this conflict directly to finally "destroy" the enemy (which seems to be the only thing that will make Putin give up on Ukraine's East)?? I feel like, given responses like yours, that's exactly what's going on. You believe Putin is so murderous that he would just blow up one of his country's main sources of income, which he supported (against American strong opposition) for so many years, just "to send a signal" he will blow up Poland's main source of energy if the West doesn't back off... I can totally see someone who believes that also believes the only acceptable thing to do right now is to start a full scale war against Russia.... which would be so disastrous to humanity that, once we look back before that happened, we will wish we had just had the balls to freaking sit down with the Devil himself and have a talk and resolve our issues if that would've prevented Armagedon.