Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

cbc.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 99 posts

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#81

Post by stefan_ »

dgrr19 wrote: post #76
stefan_ wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also of course claims > In the wake of the attack, which took out three of the four conduits forming the pipelines, energy prices surged. which is trivially disprovable, not least because the pipelines were not transporting any gas and hadn't for a while . They are too busy writing fiction they don't bother to verify even the most basic things.

> not transporting any gas and hadn't for a while yeah, "a while" = 1 month. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/nord-stream-1-eu... "the most basic" aka cnn

What's the theory here? Traders were expecting the pipeline that had been dead for a month to come back to life, so when it exploded in dramatic fashion, their false hopes were dashed and caused a nonexistent surge?

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#84

Post by jacknews »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #10

[flagged]

Yes the OP article and this whole argument seems like whitewash to me - a ragtag team of Ukrainian divers on a vacation charter yatch that doesn't even have sonar... planting 4 large explosives precicesly, at 80m depths?

nope

Any criminology surely starts with motive, and then means and opportunity. Who had a motive to destroy these pipelines? Who had the means?

Could it be America, who would cut off Russia as a supplier to Europe, and step in to replace them, given their ample fracking supplies looking for a market? And who certainly have the means for such an operation. Out of all the suspects, America certainly had most to gain, and most capability.

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#85

Post by zarzavat »

K7J6H5G4 wrote: post #49
zarzavat wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those claims were by Hersh who has a …mixed record. I can believe that the US was involved. I strongly doubt that Norway was involved, it would have poisoned relations with the EU.

"I strongly doubt that Norway was involved, it would have poisoned relations with the EU." So... Maybe that's why they won't admit it?

The relationship between Norway and the EU is like the relationship between Canada and the US, except that Norway is way more subservient.

Norway has a system that has been called “fax democracy”, where it has to accept EU laws have supremacy over Norwegian laws, without any veto or democratic representation.

That is not the position of strength from which to launch a sabotage attack on the EU’s largest and most powerful member.

The chances of Canada attacking US infrastructure is zero. The chances of Norway doing the same to Germany is even less.

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#86

Post by nradov »

throwup238 wrote: post #5
greenavocado wrote: post #4

While technically possible, carrying a 500 kg payload at depths beyond 50 meters is extremely challenging and would typically involve commercial diving teams, saturation diving techniques, or the use of ROVs. Handling a 500 kg payload is more feasible at shallower depths due to lower pressure and shorter decompression requirements. At 30-50m depths, the challenges increase, and more sophisticated equipment (e.g., lif…

> While technically possible, carrying a 500 kg payload at depths beyond 50 meters is extremely challenging and would typically involve commercial diving teams, saturation diving techniques, or the use of ROVs. Those conditions would be challenging during the day, but what about at night? That seems downright impossible without a huge professional operation, not some poor maintained pleasure boat. The closest equival…

Visibility is bad in the Baltic Sea. At 80m depth there's not much ambient light so little difference between day and night.

Once the pipeline has been located, the divers can just go straight down and up the anchor line. There's no need for them to navigate, or follow a guideline like in cave diving.

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#87

Post by nradov »

greenavocado wrote: post #4

While technically possible, carrying a 500 kg payload at depths beyond 50 meters is extremely challenging and would typically involve commercial diving teams, saturation diving techniques, or the use of ROVs. Handling a 500 kg payload is more feasible at shallower depths due to lower pressure and shorter decompression requirements. At 30-50m depths, the challenges increase, and more sophisticated equipment (e.g., lif…

You are arguing against a strawman and I don't think you know much about tech diving. No one has claimed that the divers set a 500kg charge on a single dive. The recent articles have claimed that several hundred kg (no exact amount) of explosives were used across several pipelines, so obviously they weren't all taken on a single dive. The boat crew could have clipped a bag of explosives to the anchor line and let it sink down on its own without even using a lift bag.

The stories claimed that six people were on the boat, with others involved on land. The investigators have only named one suspect. So I don't know why you would think it bizarre that only one arrest warrant was issued. (I hope they all get away with it.)

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#88

Post by nradov »

audunw wrote: post #46
0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, describing a gas pipeline which already wants to explode. You just need to provide the ignition. You do not want to make a second attempt, but something more modest seems like it would have been just as effective.

Do the pipelines want to explode? How high is the pressure? There’s no oxygen there so the gas itself won’t explode. The pipeline must be fairly heavy duty to handle pressure and rough conditions on the seabed. And punching a small whole is probably not enough as it could potentially be fixed?

Pressure inside a natural gas pipeline would typically be something around 1000psi (70bar). They are built from a strong steel pipe surrounded by a layer of concrete. If you beach both layers with an explosion then the pressure of the contained gas may cause a larger structural failure in that pipe section. As others have pointed out, the natural gas in the pipe wouldn't literally explode, just burst out.

Anything can be repaired if you have enough money but obviously that won't be done until the political issues are settled.

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#89

Post by nradov »

voytec wrote: post #44
anovikov wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work with gas pipeline, especially not with undersea ones. They scale down terribly poorly, becoming incredibly expensive to build and operate per bcm/y if made thinner/"smaller" to have many of them for redundancy. Also too long, equally well attacked at any point, thus impossible to defend, and impossible to fix once attacked (saltwater getting inside -> pipes are wrecked after a few days, long before they…

My point is that you don't need gas specifically, but energy. Find ways to get energy without dependency on gas if the source is unstable.

You need gas specifically if you want to have a chemicals industry that uses natural gas as a feedstock.

https://cen.acs.org/business/Germanys-chemical-industry-surv...

Re: How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline?

#90

Post by nradov »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #10

[flagged]

Seymour Hersh's story has never been independently verified, and several of his "facts" have already been debunked from open sources. He obviously didn't even do basic fact checking. He might have a few parts right but overall I wouldn't take it seriously.
Post reply on HN