Europe braces for mobile network blackouts

I think it is all a game of perception. If you think you can muscle your way through, either quickly enough so that no harm is done to your economy/population until your goal is reached or if you perceive a weakness in the opposition, a fear of taking action against you, then you see the move as possible.

I think the line of thought that economic (co-)dependence makes conflict impossible or leads to a more harmonious relationship is probably the gravest error in german foreign strategy. I think it's a reason behind both our relationship with russia and china. But it assumes a rational actor who's concern is the well-being of its people. Putin doesn't care for his people, he cares for power. He want's to increase his power, the stability of his regime etc. He might have employed the same flawed thinking to come to the conclusion that europe won't help ukraine if it's dependent on russian energy.

In reality, economic costs only become apparent after the harm is done. The greatest strategy crumbles if it is build on flawed assumptions.

So it is basically an example of basic knowledge. Something you'd learn in Chapter 1 of an introductory textbook. If you do not know this knowledge it is impossible for you to also know much about nuclear theory. A litmus test if you will.

Now what does this specific test have to do with nuclear energy? I'll be honest that the specific example only has a little, and that's to do with waste. These particles are common forms of radiation and knowing how they interact is important in understanding safety and longevity of waste. (our decay typically comes in the form of alpha, beta, neutron, and gamma)

I do want to be clear though, that this doesn't -- and shouldn't -- stop you from having an opinion. But it should note how strong those opinions should be, as it is naive to have strong opinions on topics you also do not care to learn about the details. This is more what I'm getting at. Strong opinions matched with weak knowledge is a dangerous situation. The key part being the strength of the opinion, not existence.

I also don't think this disqualifies other types of opinions that you can have about nuclear (or other topics). An economist could not have any working nuclear theory knowledge but also be well qualified discussing the cost. But they may also not be well qualified to discuss the cost of decommission or waste without the support/collaboration of someone with working nuclear theory. At least we can recognize that without the combined effort that the opinion is limited in accuracy. (this is also true in the reverse direction fwiw)

So for some signals that may help you navigate this space (these are not absolute, mind you, but there is a tendency).

Pro-nuclear armchair experts tend to hype up thorium, ignore costs, claiming nuclear's issue is only fear, and dismissing the waste issue completely.

Anti-nuclear armchair experts tend to exaggerate the waste issue, ignore developments over the last half century, and pit nuclear against renewables (a position no scientist actually has. Our opinion is that nuclear is a zero carbon energy source and should be _on the table_. Which isn't a strong stance btw).

But mainly I think the issue is that in a world of ever increasing complexity we are also gaining access to large amounts of high level knowledge and internalizing that as expertise. I do think this is a recipe for disaster and we're already seeing the effects of it. We see this commonly in climate discussions. Where even the pro-green people are not always aligned with the scientists albeit substantially closer in alignment than the anti-climate people. But climate is one of the most (if not them most) complex issues humanity has ever faced. Unfortunately complex issues require substantial amounts of nuance and require complex solutions. Which ironically includes political support which is hard to garner without these same high level explanations. I'm not sure there's a good solution to all this tbh.

I mean the cost issues are pretty complex themselves. We've seen that estimates are unreliable because every time we build a new reactor we have to rebuild the entire tooling and supply chain. Westinghouse filed bankruptcy over exactly this issue. So are we discussing building one reactor? A few? Or a hundred? But are we also discussing rolling out a hundred and then not building many again for decades? There's also bureaucratic issues that prevent newer and cheaper reactors from being built. Some of those issues have merit and others don't. I think it is easy to oversimplify the issues here, especially when we mostly get social media soundbites and explanations from news articles that don't consult various experts. I just think it is hard to garner a strong opinion without also having deep knowledge.

I am Brazillian but been following a lot of the events in Europe for a while.

Something a lot people miss, is why Russia is doing what they are doing, many assume they just want to conquer Ukraine "just because", or that it is a purely cultural issue, or that it is Putin personal design.

The major point of contention here is that USA and allies (including NATO and the non-NATO members of Five Eyes) have proven themselves to be very aggressive, there are repeated claims that NATO is defensive, yet a lot of the wars in the past 25 years were started by USA or allies in first place.

So first thing is, yes, Russia has reason to fear USA.

The other problem here is strategic and geographic: Russia border is enormous and in the middle of plains, driving across the border with tanks and reaching Moscow and other major population centers right now is something trivial to do, Russia still didn't recovered properly from WW2 and don't have the manpower to defend such huge border from a land invasion.

When Putin says he is defending Russia survival, he is speaking that literally, Russia border is a major vulnerability.

There are basically three "good" solutions for this problem:

1. Have NATO disbanded or made much smaller. Or join NATO in first place. It is obvious this won't happen and Russia doesn't have the means to make it happen.

2. Conquer surrounding countries until they reach the mountains, that are easier to defend. This of course would result in massive negative repercussions, also a lot of countries that Russia would need to conquer for this joined NATO.

3. Convince somehow the countries between Russia and the mountains, to be neutral and not accept NATO inside them. This way if NATO decided to invade Russia by land, there would be time to mount defenses.

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Russia was basically attempting to do the solution 3 using diplomacy. USA did their best to prevent that, because it would be a victory for Russia and a clear loss from USA point of view. Russia then decided that the option left was force option 3. Attack Ukraine and force them to be neutral.

It ALMOST worked, but the peace talks in march ended being cancelled by the Ukranian side.

So plan became a mix of 2 and 3, conquer some parts of Ukraine and keep trying to convince some "Neutrality" peace.

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The problem now of trying to help Ukraine win, for example by giving them tanks as you suggested, is that option 3 would be gone, and Russia would see themselves forced to use option 2. Russia not declaring war and using "special operation" is meaningful, they are STILL trying to do things semi-diplomatically, but as soon it becomes clear this is impossible, things will be very ugly.

Also Russia has a time limit here, their population is still declining for various reasons (including a cycle where each generation that is descendants of WW2 adults are smaller than the others, Russia demography graph look "wavy" because of this). They must solve the problem of the massive hard to defend border with NATO "now", thus they will get more and more desperate, the next generations will be too small population-wise to defend that border effectively.

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If NATO never had expanded right up the border with Russia, all this would probably been avoided. Yes I know people in the countries that border Russia that joined NATO are happy with NATO and wanted to join, but this doesn't change the fact that NATO members been attacking other countries left and right, and Russia thus has all the right to be terrified of NATO on their giant flat plains border.

Still, NATO did. So what is left now? Ideally NATO should pull back with the condition Russia pull back too, but I think the chance of this happening is close to zero.

What will most likely happen is Russia will keep trying to secure their border by any mean necessary. For NATO this is in a sense a golden opportunity, it means they can keep Russia busy there and grinding themselves to dust as they try to get defensible borders.

But for me that is in Brazil, and I am not pro-Russia, neither pro-USA, I think this is extremely dangerous, because eventually there might be a situation, where the only way for Russia to be safe, is if they turn the the area between their border and the mountains into a wasteland hard to cross, and decide to bomb the shit out of the people there until all that is left is craters and rubble that can be used for defensive purposes.

I see Ukranians having only these paths:

1. Somehow, winning the war without getting bombed to oblivion. (I think the chance of this working is minuscle and not worth attempting for real).

2. Fighting to win and get utterly annihilated eventually, with Russia making sure the country becomes a barrier between NATO and Moscow (unless Russia conquers all of Ukraine first).

3. Cutting their losses, giving Russia some territory that moves the border away from Moscow, and pledging to not help NATO invade Russia in the future.

EDIT: forgot option 4 here, because it is unthinkable, but could happen: Ukraine attempts to win the war because it convinced other countries to actually help them beat Russia, for example with actual boots on the ground... but this would turn into WW3, in this scenario everyone loses.

> Anyway, France is full blown nuclear state ...

... with a fuel cycle that goes through a breeder in Seversk, Russia

... with no long term plan for low radioactive waste and contaminated equipment

... with almost no uranium deposits worth exploiting left

as is true for all of europa