Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest
reuters.com
reuters.com
It's clearly a tactically important source of energy for Ukraine.
Also - wouldn't it just be easier for Russia to destroy the substations nearby? I assume there would be some problems with all that excess power being generating if the substations were blown. The whole thing is pretty nuts.
I can't imagine being the ISO trying to balance the grid or ISO equivalent of the grid over there right now (amongst other impossible jobs/positions people are in Ukraine right now).
Starting back up after is the slow part.
Which, in the case of a controlled manual shut down shouldn't be a problem.
EDIT: I would also like to ask if you can recommend some source where curious layman with no knowledge of physics could learn a bit more about this.
The new designs are built with the expectation that power can be cut off. The new design shut themselves off passively without any damage (that we know of) when the power is gone.
It's a reasonable criticism to make, but I think it tends to be a bit overblown. Modern reactors have redundant layers of systems to prevent such a disaster from occurring. In the ~60 year history of nuclear reactors Fukashima is the only time this type of failure has happened (Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were very different), and even then it was due to a cascading series of problems:
* In hindsight it was a really poor idea to locate a nuclear plant by the ocean in a region known for strong earthquakes and tsunamis.
* The backup generators flooded because they were located in the basements, another poor decision for an area at risk of tsunamis.
* TEPCO had additional generators and batteries on site within 6 hours of the earthquake, which was in time to prevent a meltdown, but they were unable to connect them to the plant's electrical system (I don't recall the details of why).
It's also worth mentioning that this is only a problem with large reactors. Smaller designs like those used in ships and submarines still have decay heat, but the reactor core is physically smaller so that it doesn't contain enough isotopes to cause a meltdown. Many nuclear advocates believe that we should be building more nuclear plants with smaller reactors for this reason as well as smaller reactors being easier to operate without getting into a dangerous state.
As far as reading, I highly recommend Atomic Accidents by James Mahaffey [0]. It's very well written, aimed at a total layman, and covers basically everything that has gone wrong since we as a species started seriously messing with nuclear materials in the 19th century.
edit: Construction started on it in 1980. This is a Soviet designed and built reactor. Russia should have no problem maintaining it.
This is what the last report from the republican majority senate intelligence committee wrote [0]:
> It is our conclusion, based on the facts detailed in the Committee's Report, that the Russian intelligence services' assault on the integrity of the 2016 U.S. electoral process[,] and Trump and his associates' participation in and enabling of this Russian activity, represents one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats to American national security in the modern era.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Intelligence_Committee_...
> "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
> "[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment."
> “Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations,” Mueller wrote. “The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.”
> "the President engaged in a second phase of conduct, involving public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate with the investigation."
https://www.factcheck.org/2019/04/what-the-mueller-report-sa...
In case it's not obvious, the point of obstructing justice is to prevent facts from coming out.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/obstruction-justice-mueller-repo...
The idea he colluded with Putin to hack the election was always an utter baseless fantasy. There was no evidence for it ever. Not from Mueller, not from Schiff, not from 17 intelligence agencies. It was a conspiracy theory.
That's not a strategic lie, that's a pathological lie. That's someone who simply cannot tell the truth.
That election was 2004 of course. Reagan got 58.8% in 1984, so two decades prior (decades as you noted).
Obama got 52.9% in 2008. And prior to that for a Democrat? More than two decades prior, wherein Jimmy Carter barely scratched out a majority popular vote at 50.08% in 1976.
Lyndon Johnson of course got 61% in 1964. The monster that put us deep into Vietnam and wrecked the country got the highest popular vote percentage for the Democrats in the past century.
The two highest in modern US history, Lyndon Johnson and Nixon. What does it say about the people of the 1960s and 1970s? It says a lot of terrible things about their ability to judge character and make rational decisions.
However these numbers are quite interesting. Some people attribute Nixon’s second election to his promise of withdrawing from Vietnam and one can easily blame the war for the problematic 1968 election for the democrats. LBJ was probably even gonna be the first sitting president to loose in a primary before he announced his non-bid.
I’m guessing the 1964 for election he was pretty much just riding the popularity of the recently assassinated John F. Kennedy. (Plus the war hadn’t escalated at this point).
However the significant bit here is the fact that Bush was re-elected despite lying about the reasons going to war.
He could have left a great legacy, but his addiction to power has become his ruin. And quite possibly that of Ukraine and Russia.
...this time.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226224717/https://ria.ru/20...
Yes, I agree that it's pretty nutty. It's just that to actually verify that we have to do a bit more work, like you suggested; otherwise we might just be bullshitting ourselves.
The idea that you are somehow immune to this is unsustainable - I'm sure avid Putin fans feel the same, after all they have access to Google too.
It's just that we are privileged to live in a relatively free societies, where bias is self imposed groupthink as opposed to mandated by the government.
For an extreme version of this in action, you can see the early reporting in the American media of the Iraq invasion.
You are right that we also have filters inside our brains. But just like with the outside filter, we can make some efforts to get around them. Even if our efforts don't always lead to perfection.
That's not at all to say we're doomed to be brainwashed; along what you're saying, with conscious awareness, effort, openness to reassess, and honesty (first and foremost to oneself) we can better ourselves and the social groups we're each part of.
IIRC, the correct term is disinformation, and I believe the idea (at least sometimes) is more akin to "jamming" than any kind of persuasion (e.g. encourage passivity because it's too much effort to sort out the truth from the lies).
Completely off-topic, but what a strangley formatted document. The pages of the PDF are 9x8 in.
Russians know they are and have been lied to, but the culture is to keep going anyways, because that's how things have been done since forever.
I looked into this, and found this blog post [1]. The comments are quite interesting, but the main post points out this isn't much different from English. In English we use synonyms for truth/true (e.g. authentic, factual, legitimate, etc) and lie (e.g. fabrication, falsehood, misrepresentation, disinformation) with different meanings too.
Maybe we shouldn't use vocabulary of a language to draw/imply further conclusions about a culture.
Same can be said about the west. What matters is that there is free press, call it "picking your favorite lies", but it makes a big difference.
That does not say anything about English speaking people other then their language is rich and can express nuance.
The cost may be millions of Ukrainian lives, so this all comes down to how much the Ukranian people is willing to endure for their eventual independence.
If Russia wants to use Nuclear weapons then they only need to enter the codes. That would probably be the final straw for western powers putting boots on the ground though.
Seems a popular strategy as it acts as a seed for those who don't question, it provides plenty of false arguments to raise when debating an issue.
Putin doesn't have to occupy the country to "win", all he has to do is set them back to the dark ages and make everyone (who can) flee.
He can't be allowed to get away with this. Ukraine needs a "no fly zone" ASAP
Why? Nuclear disaster is bad, but how would it ensure that a country can _never_ join NATO or the EU?
Ukraine already had the Chernobyl disaster on their soil, and I don't see that one as keeping them out of either organisation _forever_.
And, of course, Russia could do much blowing up with conventional weapons, too.
However: for a nuclear power like Russia, blowing up nuclear reactors only makes sense if they can make it look like an accident.
Otherwise: just use your nukes.
> Why? Nuclear disaster is bad, but how would it ensure that a country can _never_ join NATO or the EU?
> Ukraine already had the Chernobyl disaster on their soil, and I don't see that one as keeping them out of either organisation _forever_.
And didn't the EU pay a lot of money to help them build a new containment building for it?
It's a bizarre leap to say a nuclear disaster would disqualify a country from joining NATO or the EU.
2:1
Both USA and USSR nuked themselves a whole lot more when testing nuclear weapons. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests
Doesn't matter too much for the point I made in any case:
If a nuclear disaster were to happen in Ukraine now, NATO and EU would also not blame it on Ukraine.
If you think they might not, because ethics and morals, then the deterrent's value is discounted by your percentage of doubt.
He has a difficult time winning the war already, he’d never be able to win if he pulls in more countries.
As always, apply the Falsifiability principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
> the Kremlin said that Mr. Putin had told his French counterparty
> that his main goal was “the demilitarization and neutral status of Ukraine.”
> Those goals, the Kremlin said, “will be achieved no matter what.”
The only English source I could find quickly was this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/europe/putin-macron...
Russia is desperate to deter EU/USA from involving itself more in the war, and the only way it can do that is by treating to escalate to nuclear war.
But that threat is only effective if people actually think that you will do it, so they must play this so that they seem crazy enough to start a nuclear war.
It's a bit like someone blackmailing you for money for something illegal you did together, only way to get you to pay is to show that they are really willing to expose your secrets, even if they might be exposed also. And once you believe them and start paying they will continue to demand money from you.
Edit: by your terminology I would consider Ukrainians to be crazy. This a good thing and the reason why I’m rooting for them. They’re the underdog. The rational thing for them to do was to capitulate as soon as the invasions started. It takes a “crazy” level of conviction to the do the irrational thing here.
We need to not normalize the idea of a no fly zone, no matter how gut wrenching watching this war gets.
Putin just moves the line wherever he wants and you will keep dancing around it. This naive thinking really needs to die already.
Putin has made it clear that he will also launch a nuclear attack in case of an "existential war", which means a war where Russia itself is being attacked with the purpose of conquering or destroying it.
A no-fly zone is not that. There is no reason for Russia to escalate to nuclear, except for Putin's vengeful ego. Because everybody knows that if Russia goes nuclear, it would be the end of Russia. Everybody in the nuclear chain of command knows this. Even if Putin is actually insane enough to order a nuclear attack (he might be, I don't know), anyone of any competence in the military will ignore those orders, because it would end their country and kill their family. (Although you could ask whether there is anyone of competence left in the Russian military; Putin seems to replace competents with loyalists, and the incompetent execution of the attack on Kiev doesn't inspire much confidence here.)
And if Putin's vengeful ego will make him order a nuclear attack, then losing this war will probably do that anyway, whether or not NATO or EU had anything to do with it. And there is no way Putin can win this war. Ukrainians have made clear that they will continue to fight, no matter what. If Kiev falls, they will continue to fight. Any city that Russia takes, will be Ukrainian again the moment they leave. For Ukrainians, there is no surrender possible to a man who wants to enslave them. If this war continues, it can only become a massacre. Putin would have to kill every single Ukrainian, and I'm starting to believe that he would. It would be another holocaust.
I think a no-fly zone is the only option.
Are you sure about that, to the point of risking the continuity of the species and all of our modern civilizations upon that? If one can claim that the Jewish population in Ukraine is actually Nazis and have many of their citizens believe it even as the economy is collapsing, i doubt that justifying even greater crimes against humanity or other horrible actions is out of the question.
It breaks my heart to see that bullies like Putin are allowed to largely get away with what's going on (apart from support for Ukraine by the international community, though that's essentially funding a proxy war and civilians and the culture at large will still suffer immensely), but you also have to understand the reluctance of other countries to escalate.
And to prevent anyone dismissing the above arguments due to my biases towards the western perspective, i've seen people on /r/russia attempt to justify their military's actions by recalling past actions of western regimes. Just to be clear, i condemn all actions like this, regardless by whom they're perpetuated: two wrongs don't make a right. Humanity should learn to talk, though i fear that there are irreconcilable differences as well.
And I understand that western countries are reluctant to impose a no-fly zone out of fear that Putin has gone insane and might resort to nuclear escalation, but I think the risk of him resorting to nuclear escalation already exists if he can't have his way with Ukraine. And there are a lot of Russians who strongly disagree with this war and would probably support a no-fly zone.
I fully admit that if Putin has indeed gone nuts and isn't merely playing games, then we have to trust the Russian military in control of the missiles to do the right thing, but I think that trust is also warranted; many Russian soldiers already don't want to fight, and I'm sure the more competent commanders are well aware that a nuclear attack would be suicide.
No, the fear is that Putin is basically sane and operating under something like normal great power expectations despite his crimes of aggression, and thus will not attack NATO countries for fear or nuclear retaliation, but will escalate against NATO countries if they intervene directly against him, potentially and quickly leading to nuclear war.
If they thought Putin was insane, the marginal risk between aiding Ukraine and intervening directly would be less, not more.
He is claiming that the Neo-Nazi units of the Ukrainian military operating in the south of the country, who harbor Nazi tattoos and whose flags represent the Black Sun and the rune used as the symbol of the "Das Reich" SS division, are probably Nazis. The Australian terrorist Brenton Tarrant mentioned, in his manifesto, that he had visited those guys.
Last year a UN resolution was motioned to condemn Nazism and Neo-Nazism. Only two countries voted against: the United States and Ukraine.
This doesn't justify any war of aggression, of course, but you cannot pretend that there is no Nazi problem in Ukraine either.
Of course he is not claiming that the Jews in the government in Kiev are Nazis, because that would be absurd, but it's pretty clear that they are tolerating Nazis in the military for very cynical reasons (they're actually very effective fighters and are employed to fight the separatists in the Donbass region).
Not directly, no - but by induction, probably.
NATO fighter jets attacking Russian aircraft & SAM sites would likely be used by Russia to justify strikes against the airfields those NATO planes operate from. So then you have Russia attacking airfields in NATO countries. Already that's terrifying because you have missiles launched by Russia flying at, say, Germany - and you don't know until they hit if they're nuclear, chemical, conventional, or what. Next step you probably have NATO counterstrikes on Russian land. That puts you right on the edge of nuclear scenarios very fast. No world leaders should even remotely be considering going there.
Neither the US nor Russia accept this premise.
We absolutely need to keep pushing for a no-fly zone and enforce it. This is now the world's war, and has reached far beyond the politics internal to Russia and Ukraine.
In fact, we went direct fairly regularly, but only in circumstances where we (or they, or, in a few cases both) maintained superficial (not always really plausible, as both sides would often protect the fiction to avoid escalation) deniability.
That is why, for instance, radio intercepts of North Korean pilots in the Korean War showed they tended to switch from Korean to Russian a lot under stress.
The surrounding war environment, the stressed operators, etc mean that any of these failures are now more likely. It is reaonsable that external power will not be available, it is possible the gen sets will fail, it is possible the operators will do something stupid.
To put it simply, warfare is not a design basis accident for current light water reactors like VVER-800.
It only takes a couple of seconds to shut down a reactor. https://qr.ae/pGdkkv
Once the chain reaction is shut down - there is basically no way for the reactor to come alive (chain-reaction-wise) again on its own - not even if it's being bombed, shelled, etc. And run-away super(prompt)critical reactions are not even possible with this reactor design. These reactors are water-moderated - which means that water is used to slow down neutrons to increase their reaction probability. As the reactor heats up, the water gets less dense (even if it is still a liquid) making it a less effective moderator - this density decrease is enough to passively/automatically keep the reactor in a shut-down state. Residual decay heat from radioactivity of the fission byproducts post-shutdown is enough to damage the reactor internals for several days - hence the need for active cooling post-shutdown.
I've seen lots of crazy-exaggerated news reporting on how "bad" or "dangerous" this entire situation could be. It's not good, but neither is the war in Ukraine. It's not even remotely possible for this to be anything like Chernobyl, and I think unlikely to be nearly as bad as Fukushima (which in the grand scheme of the Tsunami - wasn't really that bad). In the war context, I don't think this nuclear plant situation is particularly notable beyond it providing a large fraction of Ukraine's power.
I am a nuclear engineer FWIW.
The chain reaction can be shut down in a matter of seconds. However, the reactor continues to generate a huge amount of heat for weeks afterwards. It's not as much heat as a fully-running chain reaction, but it's still enough to cause a catastrophe if cooling is not kept running - we're talking multiple megawatts of heating here. The cooling requires an external power supply. It was the failure of this external power supply that caused the problems at Fukushima.
There are newer reactor designs that are specifically engineered to be capable of cooling themselves on shutdown without an external power supply. However, most reactors in the world do not have that capability.
The Ukrainians are fighting for their own land. I don't think that there's a single one of them that would deliberately cause another Chernobyl (remember that they have some experience with what happens when reactors go kablooey).
But they seem to be quite persistent, in not just just rolling over and letting the Russians have their way. I suspect that they've got plenty of other nasty little surprises in store.
One of the things that the last 50 years' worth of guerrilla wars has been, is an object lesson on how to do asymmetric warfare against technologically-advanced, and overwhelming armies.
I suspect that every military in the world has been taking notes.
If they are going to “find” evidence to support Putin’s claim of an offensive Ukrainian nuclear weapons program supported by the US, presumably it will be at one of Ukraine’s actual nuclear reactors.
While it's not a hard limit on propaganda, actually having physical control makes a story about such a find more plausible.
It seems awful transparent, when they do this “false flag” stuff, but I think they are playing to a domestic audience.
I think the US managed to get and share enough intelligence to forestall most effect of the false flag stuff they wanted to use for international justification, leaving them with basically “But NATO...” on that front.
At the same time, the solid international opposition and the sanctions impact make the domestic propaganda front more critical, and there's a lot more that they can do on that front given the degree of control they have over domestic information channels.
The real-time visibility of the domestic propaganda probably further aggravates the international situation, but I think they probably have written that off except direct intervention, which they think, probably correctly, is deterred by their nuclear arsenal.
Take a place like syria, it went from a centralized government to a heap of insurgencies and many sides killing people en-masse.
But yeah, it was a stupid theory, too bad I cannot delete it anymore. At least it triggered better theories in this thread, though.
For example, China Nuclear Corporation tries to buy Russian part of nuclear fuel facility almost built in Smolino[0], central Ukraine.
Flares ~1:36 ago.
These timestamps relative to ~1715 PST.
But, there is no shortage of work for that investigation.
Quite simply, humanity is too good at screwing things up to harness such a fundamentally powerful and dangerous source of power. It requires a commitment to long lasting peace and stability that we're just not capable of.
> we’re not capable of
I don’t think so, either. This sentiment tends to be met by the techno-futurists on this site with swift downvotes, though, so is not a popular one to espouse here. Nevertheless I believe it to be true based on the evidence at hand: humanity is too short-sighted to prevent its own doom.
I believe nuclear power is essential to the survival of humanity. I also think you are likely correct: humanity cannot be trusted with nuclear power. If true, this is yet another data point against our survival.
Regarding survivability of humanity I have similar fear but my current hope is that while weapons will continue to be more attainable their relevance might diminish. Why fight your neighbor if you have everything you need? But warlords create a problem of their own because they seem to exist to attain superiority for its own sake.
One word serves to explain why what you imagine won’t happen in time: profit. More specifically: oil profits.
If we can make energy storage simple and cheap enough
The materials needed to make those batteries are finite. They will become "the new oil" in N years.
Energy storage is going to be a big part of any sane energy future, but it's going to have to make heavy usage of non-battery means: giant flywheels? Pumping water? I don't know.
But energy can be stored by pumping heated water to deep wells in the bedrock for example or you can use excess power to generate hydrogen and feed it back to the grid via fuel cells when needed. All of this is doable, but also slow to build and currently expensive.
This is not an argument against recycling batteries, by the way. Chemical batteries are a big part of the future, and we should recycle them. But let's not be glib about any of these choices.
The existential problem with oil is climate change, not finite resources.
Clearly this line of logic is not working, seen in Ukraine. At some point there is a person with enough power who wants to fight just because they can. Essentially humanity is at mercy of random power-hungry sociopaths to not bomb the nuclear power plants.
It can't be a very large percentage.
I would like to be wrong.
Global warming is a threat that will have tons of negative impact. But is it really "civilization-ending"?
There are the typical threats (which assume society remains more or less stable) such as ecosystem collapse leading to food shortages etc.
Then the non-typical threats. It is hard to predict what an unstable society will do, and some of those choices could be civilization ending.
We've built an extremely fragile massively interdependent system. It is conceivable that the US power grid could go down, and due to supply chain issues could not be restored in < 5 years. Unlikely, yes, impossible, hardly.
Is that enough to end civilization? How would we distribute food, assuming we have it?
Plenty of cases of lost civilizations in America, Asia and Africa linked with desertification and climate going unstable
Global warming is not a civilization-ending threat. Even nuclear war is not a civilization-ending threat, outside a few places in the Northern hemisphere. I could be wrong about both of these claims. But you could be as well, and you're taking an extremely pessimistic view based on what you know, which is not the whole picture.
The worst case scenario of global worming would not kill everybody. People living north of 40o will survive.
Then Saddam lit thousands of oil wells on fire as a big fuck-you to the miltary coalition arrayed against him, more oil than would be set on fire by any nuclear war. The cooling effect was detectable, but hardly serious.
We also know that it causes an extinction event, since it was one of the effects of the K-t extinction event 60 million years ago. It is the one that killed the dinosaurs, and many more: A huge number of species, including almost any large land animals, dies. It is unlikely that homo sapiens would survive this time.
But most of the harm at Chernobyl was from the explosion. There is nothing in a molten salt reactor that makes them any safer than Chernobyl if the reactor containment is breached.
Massive amounts of highly radioactive particles will be ejected into the atmosphere in exactly the same way as happened at Chernobyl.
Molten salt advocates will say "yes, but what could possibly breach the reactor if there is no meltdown". Well we almost saw the answer to that today.
Do they somehow stop the risk of artillery? Because to be absolutely clear: that's what the risk here was.
https://theconversation.com/nuclear-power-why-molten-salt-re...
Progress, for the most part, can’t be given.
It is hopeful that Ukraine is having some real success fighting back and for the most part without an external force coming in and trying to do it for them.
As if it were so easy!
And why not criminals while we’re at it?
Sounds like utopia.
The desire for power might be baked into humanity at a deep level.
I think we confuse the direction of causality a bit here. People in power tends to be those that want power. To get a powerful person you only really need one person who wants power. I think it's a false conclusion to think that people in general seek power.
I don’t know how many people would be able to resist the One Ring if it was within their reach.
Currently, it is disguised as politics and capitalism.
Nothing to it - piece of cake. Forget about millennia of human history.
It is, but the reckoning for me is how a single dictator among billions could make so much harm. So it is not enough that humanity is 99.9999% fine. We need fail-safes for things going terribly wrong, and in this particular scenario, having an autonomous colony outside of Earth or underground on Earth could be one such.
Is that all? We can get that done with a new app I think.
However, abandoned oil refineries and other chemical plants are also toxic nasty messes for potentially hundreds of years, too.
It would be catastrophic but much more localized. Fallout from Chernobyl went around the world several times, poisoning most of the humans alive or being made at the time (not to mention the rest of the biomass)
The dam breaks killed and hurt magnitudes more people.
> Not at a dangerous level, say more than eating a banana.
Born 1986 in Germany and I got a rare metabolism illness that only ~2000 more people have, all born around June/July/August in 1986 in Western and Middle Europe with some exceptions distributed around as late as born in September and October. But the Spring of 1986 was probably just a famous year for pregnant women eating exceptionally many bananas I guess?
At least I agree that dams killed more people than that specific event. But wait till you see the numbers for fossil fuels ...
Fossil fuels, and especially coal, have worse impact in total but they are typically more diffuse. So I left them out of the discussion.
Are people able to move back into the Chernobyl fallout zone in the next few thousand years? No.
[1] See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di....
[2] The model assumes that any amount of radiation is harmful and estimates the harm of low doses as a corresponding fraction of the harm of large doses. Empirical evidence is unclear, at best, but it functions as worst-case estimate.
> In 2009, the New York Academy of Sciences published a book Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment. A team of European scientists led by Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to Russian Presidents Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev, assembled over 5,000 research studies, most written in Russian and not previously published.
> The results were staggering. Yablokov’s team estimated that just in the first 20 years after the Chernobyl meltdown, some 986,000 deaths attributable to it occurred, many in parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. The percent of children living in these areas considered in good health plunged from 80% to 20%. Rates of certain cancers soared, including childhood thyroid cancer in Ukraine (20 times higher) and Belarus (200 times higher). Rates of disease in covering many organs in the body all increased in areas closest to Chernobyl.
> Yablokov’s team indicated that the number of casualties would continue to grow, well after publication of the book.
However, its methodology and rigour have been criticised [3]. As I am not an expert in this area I cannot evaluate the source directly, but several general heuristics apply. The source is a single book. (I am aware that the book claims to rely on numerous non-english sources, but I do not believe that they make the same claims.) The book relies on observational epidemiological data, which is generally hard to get right, and dose-response curves seem to be not analysed (seeing a relationship between doses and effect sizes is a good way to exclude spurious correlations). Finally, since the article mentions Yablokov's prior occupation I will also note that he founded and lead the Soviet chapter of Greenpeace, an organisation with a strong anti-nuclear position.
So I do not think that this is strong evidence. (But as I said earlier, I do currently consider it weak evidence.) In any case, the book claims one million deaths, not multiple millions, and only a fraction of those is attributed to thyroid cancer.
[1] https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/02/russian-takeover-of-...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110419144513/http://www.strahl...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl:_Consequences_of_the...
> The IAEA/WHO have often sought to justify their dismissal of eastern European epidemiological studies by citing questionable scientific practices: but epidemiology is not an exact science, and the same shortcomings exist in western studies uncriticised by the IAEA. The IAEA also point to shortcomings with pre-Chernobyl Soviet cancer registries, but cancer registries in western countries had similar issues at that time.
Indeed, where is the criticism for the IEAE and WHO applying a very selective "conservativism" about epidemiological research, much like big tobacco and DuPont? They're the reason nuke fanboys make risible claims like "< 100 people died because of Chernobyl" and don't get laughed out of the room.
Pointing out that the author was affiliated with Greenpeace without noting the systemic bias of nuclear organizations against epidimiological data is questionable.
If the same thing happens to a nuclear power plant the area can't be lived in for millions of years.
Some people have been squatting in the Chernobyl exclusion zone for decades now, and are still alive. See eg https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/04/17/chernob...
I wouldn't want to live there myself, and cancer levels might be slightly higher than normal.
I'm not sure if there is a higher level of cancer. But I grant you that we can assume that.
It's not pretty, but it's also not something that prevents people from living. Remember when everyone used to voluntarily increase their risk of lung cancer by crazy amounts? Back when everyone smoked? Civilization still persisted.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Exclusion_z...
Even if the worst happen at that nuclear power plant, it will still be a small disaster compared to all the causalities that already have happened in Ukraine the last few weeks (you know: the war)
Maybe I'm missing something regarding this specific reactor but how is a war that will eventually (hopefully) be over worse than a nuclear fallout that would make large areas unlivable for thousands of years and affect multiple countries and also killing a lot of people.
I think you are over-estimating the cost of this. I contest the use of 'large'. The 30km radius exclusion zone is nothing compared to the surface occupied by deserts, ice floe, or whatever of the many others existing unhinabitable places.
> and affect multiple countries and also killing a lot of people.
Because the war has been doing that already, at a even larger scale: thousands of civilians killed, many wounded, millions displaced. That's already worse than the consequences of a nuclear meltdown.
Usually nuclear power plants are located close to cities and populated areas and not in the middle of the desert or uninhabited ice fields.
> That's already worse than the consequences of a nuclear meltdown.
In the short term yes, but on a time scale that's longer than a few years I think you'll quickly realize that a meltdown is worse. Will the same war go on in 50 years? Probably not, but the radiation will be...for thousands of years.
Russian invasion blocked wheat traffic from Ukraine, so it caused spike in prices for wheat. Just imagine prices for food when Ukraine will be poisoned permanently or occupied by RF, which may perform genocide of Ukrainians second time in less than 100 years. Wastelands are good for wildlife only, because humans are major danger to them.
Land location isn't fungible, though. That 30km radius exclusion zone is (was?) much more valuable land than some random patch of desert or ice. Being near other settled land, and having access to infrastructure, food, etc. is important. Taking valuable land like that and making it uninhabitable is much worse than it just being a random patch of sand in the middle of some desert somewhere, or a big piece of ice floating in an arctic region.
Additionally there is the whole thing about the dangers of an accident and the cost for insurance against it. The cost of building and maintaining a somewhat secure reactor and the later cost of dismantling it and storing the additional waste.
Nearly all these costs for externalities were not factored into the price of energy. Calculating in all these costs mskes renewable energy look more than interesting. And also makes the question of storing excessive energy an interesting case. But governments/lobbies argue for cheap (read subsidized) nuclear, while not factoring the same subsidiaries into energy storage for renewables.
Investing into the future with a broad renewable energy and storage infrastructure program could ensure not only less dependency on Russia (for oil or gas) but also have a positive impact on the topic of climate change.
On the other hand. The German/European dependency on Russian gas and Russias dependency on the money from the sale of said gas was done to reduce the risk of war. The idea being that both sides could loose too much in the case of war and that would act as a deterrent. Even during the height of the Cold War Russian gas flowed towards the western world (aka Europe/Germany).
Additionally there is the whole thing about the
dangers of an accident
- As a species, we've been running hundreds of nuclear reactors (440 currently) for a while now.
- Their cumulative track record is (very roughly) "one Chernobyl every 25 years."
- The cost of a Chernobyl-scale incident is that it renders a region uninhabitable and kills several hundred people.
- With plants getting safer and safer, we might reasonably expect the risk to be more like "one Chernobyl every 50 or 100 years" for modern plants.
- Waste storage is obviously a challenge. The US has apparently produced enough nuclear waste "to cover a football field about seven yards deep." (64,000 metric tons)
That is steep but manageable.
Relative to fossil fuels, this is less-bad by orders of magnitude. It is regrettable (to put it laughably mildly) that the Fukushima and Chernobyl regions are no longer inhabitable, but fossil fuels have pushed us to the point where everything near the equator is going to be uninhabitable soon.
As for the waste issue, again, compare it to the alternatives. 64,000 cumulative tons of nuclear waste in America's history versus 6,500,000,000 tons of CO2 emissions last year. Obviously a ton of nuclear waste is not directly comparable to a ton of CO2 emission, but at least nuclear waste can be collected and sequestered. It is a local problem, not one that irrevocably poisons the entire planet.
Yeah, green energy sources are better than nuclear, for sure, and maybe fusion will save our butts eventually. But we need energy in the meantime. We should use the least-bad thing until we get something great, and nuclear is the least-bad option by such a ridiculous margin that it's not even funny.
> The cost of a Chernobyl-scale incident is that it renders a region uninhabitable and kills several hundred people.
There are quite a few interesting numbers regarding Chernobyl:
31 deaths, for example, is an official figure. But the credits for the TV series also state that estimates of deaths would vary between 4,000 and 93,000 victims.
A bit more about the numbers and some additional estimations:
The environmental organization Greenpeace estimates the total number of dead as a result of the Chernobyl accident at 93,000.
Kate Brown, a professor at MIT, considers up to 150,000 deaths realistic for Ukraine alone.
The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) says Chernobyl caused 50,000 to 100,000 deaths and up to 900,000 disabled.
34,499 rescue workers died, according to the Ukrainian Commission for Radiation Protection. However this figure is considered to be wrong because there is usually no such precise information on this scale. So the number just seems to be doctored to look more precise than is possible at estimations like these.
So now we can pick and choose to support our ideology. I don't pick and chose, but state that there are quite a few nuclear reactors that sit in areas way more densely populated with massively more inhabitants in the zone of imminent danger.
So any extrapolation from Chernobyl numbers (whichever one selects) would need to factor this into their argument imho.
Edit: One question ==>
> Waste storage is obviously a challenge. The US has apparently produced enough nuclear waste "to cover a football field about seven yards deep." (64,000 metric tons)
Does this number include the parts of the reactor buildings being contaminated?
>
For a 1.3MW reactor block the amount of highly contaminated material will probably be in the range of 3000 to 5000 metric tons.
For the US with around 96 active reactors (2020) this would imply something (back of a napkin calculation) 280,000 to 470,000 metric tons of additional waste on top of burned nuclear fuel. Depending on the peculiarities of the reactors and so on. I know there are error margins.
Highly contaminated material that needs to be secured for thousands of years.
This is a multi generational cost factor for our generations convenience. For the ability to burn electricity like there is no tomorrow.
Today the lower half (poorer half) of US population is living a live that would enable the US to reach Paris Climate goals. The same applies roughly to most western/northern countries.
People like me in the upper income half are the culprits so to speak (statistically speaking).
I am curious, though, to how many people die due to the normal, continued operation of coal plants (both from mining and from the plant's actual operation). Is that something we can quantify with a reasonable degree of accuracy (like to a rough order of magnitude)?
Because even if we have a Chernobyl every 25 years that kills 150k people and gives another million some sort of disability, we have to acknowledge that operating coal plants -- as a "normal" part of their operation -- kills people too. I don't know if they are better or worse than the "amortized" 6k/year killed by nuclear in our estimate here. But it's certainly not zero.
And beyond that, burning fossil fuels destroys ecosystems, causes extinction of various animal species, and, if we do not arrest the affects of climate change, will kill millions of people due to its various effects. (Arguably, this has already killed lots of people during extreme weather events linked to climate change.) Maybe 150k people dead every 25 years in a nuclear disaster is, unfortunately, a "bargain" in comparison.
If we could scale up renewables at the same rate we could scale up nuclear, then it'd be a no-brainer: choose the former. But it's not clear that we can meet our energy needs with renewables today, even if there was a giant, global push to go fully renewable on a short time scale. Maybe it's better to risk nuclear power incidents in the medium term than continue to vomit fossil fuel byproducts into the atmosphere. But of course the general public will never make this kind of decision rationally; ultimately most of these are political decisions.
A few peoples actually go to the borders or the stations to help the refugees arriving. Do that. At least you leave an impact.
We'd actually have some accidents sometimes. Either we'll get good at handling it, or we will give up on nuclear. Better than pooling all the risk, lowering the probability, but keeping the same expected destruction. With the centralized approach it's too easy to act like there's zero risk.
That gave me pause for thought that our governments and institutions just might be up to the task of running something like nuclear. If you understand the physics and engineering, then nuclear done right is a no brainer. I have less faith in us doing it right that I did in the past.
Add to that the huge capital costs, and the trendlines in renewables + storage capital costs... it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything nuclear that doesn't fundamentally change the economics. And so far every attempt at that (eg SMR) has failed rather definitively.
If Putin wants radiation everywhere, he has thousands of nuclear warheads which can do that.
The risk of nuclear fallout is still relatively "localised", however that risk is dwarfed by the cost of disrupting centralised power production. A few nuclear plants are easy targets in the event of a war.
Distributed solar and concentrated solar w/molten salt seem like good options.
The day people start bombing nuclear power plants we'll be deep in ww3 already and we'd be fuck regardless
Automated Radiation Monitoring system: https://www.npp.zp.ua/en/safety/arms
It’s a Geiger counter. It’s cheaper than having an oscilloscope, which wouldn’t be “understated” either.
We'll see if it actually ships; seems lots of people have the same idea right now.
Fukushima disaster levels were 400,000 μSv/h at peak. Short term dose of 10,000 μSv causes radiation sickness but probably not death. Beyond that it gets worse.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model
However this model is contested. And the analysis on the cancers incidence in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Chernobyl seems to indicate that this model is flawed. The exact model is difficult to estimate because of the low number of extra cancer is lost in the noise.
What rubbish. This looks like Putin found a way to tactically deploy dirty nukes within the West’s red lines.
The time between Russia being the second country to use nuclear weapons and our current concept of countries becoming totally irrelevant would be measured in minutes.
Having said this he might still do it.
AFAICT, the person you were responding to wasn’t talking about a nuke being used against NATO forces.
If "tactical" nukes are a thing why hasn't anyone used them since 1945? Seems like they could have been handy in Syria or Afghanistan. There's no shortage of examples of nuclear powers going to war with non-nuclear non-NATO countries in the last 77 years. None of them involved nukes in any capacity.
You say that nobody will went crazy when a tactic nuke will be used against RF army. Right?
Can you draw the line, please? When this war between two nuclear states will be nuclear, if even use of tactical nuke is not enough for you?
No idea what salami tactics means.
A tactical nuke used against Kharkiv would certainly lead to either a Ukrainian dirty bomb strike against Moscow and or a NATO intervention. Why would Russia stop at one nuke when fighting NATO? For each tactical nuke against NATO you would expect at least one in return, or worse a megaton +x% for megaton exchange.
This spirals into full nuclear war very quickly once one side believes that they are going to lose without strategic weapons, or one side believes they have been or will be the victim of a strategic attack.
Speaking of, how long until the country with all of the old Soviet weapons facilities decides to re-enter the nuclear club?
[1]Budapest Memorandum was not fulfilled, so Ukraine regain their status of nuclear state.
If Putin decides to escalate to nukes as a final act of failure then the de-escalation would be the complete annihilation of Russia as a country. In minutes.
The idea of getting away with a tactical nuke strike is insane.
to strengthen their negotiation position "We give you back X, you give back Mariupol"
> complete annihilation of Russia as a country
you think US would die for some village in Ukraine? They were plenty of US politicians and generals which were against nuclear umbrella for West Germany.
If the Ukrainians can push Russians back why wouldn’t they do the same everywhere? Crossing the border becomes an act of aggression, only Russia has acted aggressively here. Everyone else is trying to avoid conflict.
If Russia detonates a nuke in Europe the entire country will be obliterated immediately.
Given the widespread reports during this war of Russian equipment in poor condition, I've been thinking about this possibility for a while:
* Putin fires tactical atomic weapon at some empty plot of Ukrainian land, and announces it as a "demonstration" of Russian might.
* The weapon is a dud.
I'm not sure whether this outcome might not be worse in the long run, in terms of geopolitical stability, than if the weapon performs as expected!
[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/ukrain...
Maybe the steam just vents? Or bypasses a turbine? Hopefully it can operate without being connected to the outside, but I’m not sure.
The same as any other power plant: the generator is automatically shut down by its safety systems (if it didn't shut down, the generator would overspeed and violently break apart). Once the generator shuts down, the safety systems for the reactor itself should either automatically shut down the reactor too, or somehow bypass the steam to the generator and reduce power to idle (I thought they would always shut down, but recently there was a failure on the generator of the nuclear power plant near where I live, and the reactor went to idle instead of shutting down, so it seems nuclear power plants have this mode too).
The issue is what happens after a shutdown; as seen at Fukushima, the cooling pumps in the reactor need external power for a couple of days until the decay heat reduces enough that passive cooling is sufficient. Without power from the outside, the emergency generators take over; if these are damaged or out of fuel, and backup generators can't be brought by truck from outside after a couple of hours, disaster happens.
The classical excuse (see Operation Opera) is that it is part of an enemy weapons program from an enemy intent on nuking you. It would only be a small step from current propaganda for Russia to make this claim, having recently added the claim of an offensive Ukrainian nuke program to their propaganda.
According to the website above.
I think “officials” are reporting increased levels, but if the website source above is good, I’m not seeing high values. I didn’t look at Wayback, so it could be “increased”, thus my comment for reference.
Air temperature 0 ℃ Wind N Wind speed 0 m/s Relative humidity 0 % Atmospheric pressure 0 mm Hg
... I hope that low pressure isn't from a vacuum bomb.
with the HN meme of AWS status pages reporting everything fine while AWS is down, here we have good evidence we cannot rely on this website reporting reliable data.
Here is the European Commission Radiation Map: https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/
And here a volunteer map from Geiger counter manufacturer GQ Electronics: https://www.gmcmap.com/
Here is the statement from the Nuclear Agency in Ukraine:
On March 1, 2022 at 11:40 as a result of rocket impact, the communication network of Zaporizhzhya NPP was damaged. As a result, the Automated Radiation Monitoring System (ARMS) of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant lost its full functionality and stopped the transmission of data to the international radiation monitoring network IRMIS. IAEA has been informed about the incident.
Do you know if these really show a significantly different pressure effect from conventional bombs?
I saw a chart showing a fatter tail on the shockwave, but it wasn't really that dramatic. I'm curious because I can imagine all kinds of vacuum effects in my mind's eye, but this is also informed by a _lot_ of the now-doubtful PR-style efforts on selling these things in years past.
I think any monitoring system close enough to see 0 mm Hg pressure will have been destroyed by the shockwave before it could report that complete vacuum.
Don't trust the radiation monitoring system, the actual monitoring system has been destroyed by a rocket impact three days ago.
The monitoring system has been shot down on 1 Sep.
Here is the statement from the Nuclear Agency in Ukraine:
On March 1, 2022 at 11:40 as a result of rocket impact, the communication network of Zaporizhzhya NPP was damaged. As a result, the Automated Radiation Monitoring System (ARMS) of the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant lost its full functionality and stopped the transmission of data to the international radiation monitoring network IRMIS. IAEA has been informed about the incident.
This statement, while true, changes denotation depending on the scale at which you view this conflict. If you view it as a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the existential threat is to Ukraine. If you view it as a conflict between Russia and NATO, the existential threat is to Russia.
Putin is a ham-fisted dictator, and the world will be better off without him, but his motivations here aren’t mysterious.
Moscow from Latvian border: ~620 km
Not to mention full control of a Black Sea (and therefore entrance to Mediterranean) coastline with multiple ports. As well as a major agricultural products. As well as a huge transit country for Russian energy pipelines.
Except the farm land. But it’s not 1444 — trade is vastly more profitable than agriculture nowadays.
It’s for the gas pipelines, but 100 year perspective. Sure.
But when they were accepted Putin didn't feel strong enough to do anything about it.
Russia has been advancing it's "sphere of influence" political theory, whereby independent countries with that "sphere of influence" don't get the right to make their own alliances. That "sphere of influence" includes all Eastern European countries that border on Russia at least.
It hasn't been widely reported on, but the initial demand that led to this war was that NATO withdraw all infrastructure install in post 1997 expansions:
Russia published two lists of demands — for Washington and for NATO — the latter calling for the removal of all NATO military infrastructure installed in Eastern European countries after 1997, effectively attempting to rework the consequences of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, which left Russia weakened for years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/17/ukraine-russ...
I think you could say in the wider scale it can be interpreted as an existential threat to Putin's Russia?
Second, no, it is definitely _not_ a total war. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_war for background.
Third, the theoretical threat of NATO is not so much to Russia: I agree that NATO is not a threat to Russia. However I do also see that NATO and EU are a threat to Putin's long term vision for a renewed Russian Empire.
To be clear, I agree that this vision is bogus and that a threat to a bogus vision is not a valid excuse for a war.
Please also be careful with accusing people of being fascists or Nazis. Putin and his predecessors in the USSR employed the same tactic. And whether anyone does or does not fulfill the textbook definition of a fascist is besides the point here.
(1) Not WMD like chlorine, or nuclear, of course, nor biological weapons except coronavirus released by accident from Vector lab in Siberia on Sep 16, 2019, just conventional weapons designed to maximize damage to civilian infrastructure.
Glad we agree.
> Second, no, it is definitely _not_ a total war. See
It’s a total war.
> Third, the theoretical threat of NATO is not so much to Russia: I agree that NATO is not a threat to Russia. However I do also see that NATO and EU are a threat to Putin's long term vision for a renewed Russian Empire.
By this logic all conflicts are both sided. England is equally justified in bombing India because they “threatened” the British empire by rejecting being under its power.
> Please also be careful with accusing people of being fascists or Nazis. Putin and his predecessors in the USSR employed the same tactic. And whether anyone does or does not fulfill the textbook definition of a fascist is besides the point here.
I’m well aware of the importance of being precise and cautious with this term and I chose it carefully.
https://twitter.com/spectatorindex/status/149954992461016678...
Then there was/is fire. Then presumably firefighters arrived, were not let through and departed away.
https://twitter.com/AlexandruC4/status/1499552200867164180?t...
In some other universe there's a title from a complementary newspaper; "Russian soldiers fired for firing on firefighters fighting fire at nuclear plant".
edit: posts from head of the Zaporozhye Regional State Administration Alexander Starukh - looks like for 20m firefighters were not let through. Is that because they were fired upon? I don't know. He writes they are there working now though.
Happens in Chicago. I assume it happens in other big cities, too.
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/chicago-firefighter-sh...
This kadyrov is totally mad, they introduced Sharia law in their chechen republic, and putin doesn't want to interfer with this madness, as he fears to provoke them and also needs them for his military adventures...
https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/03/4/7328011/ Zelensky made an announcement, if the power station explodes, then that's the end for Europe, the thing is six times bigger than Chernobyl.
Things like the (non-existent) molten salt reactor try to reduce the risk of a runaway meltdown, but do nothing to stop the danger if the reactor itself is broken open.
Putin installed Kadyrov.
"On 2 March 2007, following Putin's nomination of Kadyrov as Chechen president, the Chechen parliament approved the nomination." Wikipedia
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Chechen_War
[2] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-chechnya-judge-flees-wife-abd...
https://twitter.com/bnonews/status/1499555239351005194?s=21
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499555095817728023?s=21
"According to Andrey Tuz, spokesman of the press service of the nuclear power plant, there is no threat of radiation spread."
What a nerve wrecking situation. In the heat of the moment deciding when is the right time to surrender. Probably the smartest decision of the day.
One of the channels that broadcasts (24/7) stream which is mentioned in the message above + periodically posted short clips of the news
Link to ICTV stream through ERR: https://jupiter.err.ee/otse/eri6
About the ICTV channel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICTV_(Ukraine)
About ERR's decision: https://news.err.ee/1608518996/err-adds-current-time-ukraini...
For context, access to ERR's own Russian news site was blocked in Russia a few days ago.
But is still a risk. People does not act rationally in a war. If it continues for a lot of time any depressed 19yo soldier could say I'm sick of this, decided to suicide and destroy half of the EU with him. The objective of probable Ukrainian genocide has been upgraded to possible European genocide as a bonus.
On the other hand, Putin seems to crave for another countries joining the war so he can "show the nazis" to Russia.
What could happen is safety systems could be compromised causing a meltdown and that would carry the risk of spreading radioactive matter to the local environment. And if the local environment gets sufficiently contaminated then weather patterns, sea tides, etc could spread the radiation much further. But it's a slow risk (when compared to a nuclear weapon) so it is still possible to contain the damage to within a few miles, which I acknowledged is still bad but a much better outcome than half of Europe being contaminated.
Edit: This is a joke based on TV series Chernobyl. A Chernobyl reactor did infact explode and the logic was that it exploding was impossible there for it did not explode.
So yes nuclear plants can explode extremely violently and that can disperse huge quantities of radioactive material. They’re not nuclear detonations as in an atomic warhead, but the consequences can still be catastrophic and as at Chernobyl the fallout can be similar to that from a nuclear weapon. In fact when scientists in Russia initially detected the radiation from Chernobyl they at first assumed there must have been a nuclear explosion if done kind.
+ It's not the fission material that explodes (like in a bomb)
+ The explosion is relatively small
+ Radiation is then dispersed to the wider area via atmospheric or tidal conditions (like smoke drifting) rather than as a direct result of the explosion
All points I was making too.
> but the consequences can still be catastrophic and as at Chernobyl the fallout can be similar to that from a nuclear weapon
I never said there wouldn't be radioactive fallout nor that it wouldn't be catastrophic. I said it's a slower risk (days rather than seconds), easier to contain (relatively speaking) and it wouldn't take out half of Europe.
You're not actually disagreeing with anything I've stated despite phrasing your comment as if it were a correction.
Chernobyl was caused by several days of mismanagement. It wasn't something that happened over night. Fukushima took more than 24 hours after the tsunami for the first hydrogen explosion and the others were several days later. And it was a week after the tsunami before the situation escalated into a meltdown too.
To be clear: I'm not saying waging a fight inside a nuclear power station isn't a dangerous and stupid thing to do. What I'm saying is it's not comparable to a nuke exploding.
Chernobyl was a very unique situation though. They almost engineered that disaster to happen with the mistakes that they made. We've learned a lot since then too. That all said, you do make a very strong argument with your next sentence:
> It's plausible to imagine a few artillery shells into a plant's cooling system could lead to a similar chain of events.
Indeed. That is a very good point.
By the way, I never say that I was concerned by an explosion blowing half of the continent, but the effects on Germany for example, were measurable and still last. We shouldn't be so naive as to ignore the risk.
I think that your prevision of just a few miles, enough so Putin will have this safe perimeter, is too much optimistic
> I never say that I was concerned by an explosion blowing half of the continent, but the effects on Germany for example, were measurable and still last.
Your comment is very misleading then if that's what you meant:
"If it continues for a lot of time any depressed 19yo soldier could say I'm sick of this, decided to suicide and destroy half of the EU with him."
^ that reads to me like a pretty instant cause and effect, which a nuclear meltdown is not. If you were talking about over a prolonged period with no decontamination nor mitigation efforts put in place, then it really was not clear from your comment. And I'd argue that is a result of far more than just the actions of a depressed 19 year old soldier in isolation.
> I think that your prevision of just a few miles, enough to Putin have this safe perimeter, is too much optimistic
You're now conflating accident with intention. If Putin intentionally wants to contaminate half of the EU then that's a whole different argument to an accident happening during a capture of a power station or a depressed solder committing suicide (which was the original context you defined and the context I was responding to)
I'm not trying to dispute that the risk of contamination if one damages a nuclear power station is both significant and worrisome. I'm just saying it's not an instant effect (as your post implies) and thus measures can be taken to contain the worst of it to relatively a localized area.
Anyway, I think we both agree that nuclear power stations don't make good war zones :)
None of it can be relied on during the war.
Shutting down and not having power to cooldown is how Fukushima happened. Emergency shutdown drill is how Chornobyl’ happened
And not being informed of well-known (in higher Soviet echelons) serious reactor flaws, like the grafite on the rods being inserted into the reactor core initially spiking the fission process significantly.
Also if it's online, the electricity needs to go somewhere: any disruption to the electrical grid and it'd have to go off - probably at a bad time. Better to go through the shutdown in a planned manner while the outside situation is (relatively) stable.
Then again, a 5700MW resistor might require a bit of cooling.
If you disconnect the load, you need to stop putting steam through the turbine and dump it somewhere else (i.e. a condenser). All steam turbine plants (including coal) have something similar.
The power would not be dumped into a resistor: the power would be dumped in form of heat with the turbogenerator disconnected from steam. I expect that you can "just" dump it in the condenser and use the standard cooling of the condenser to dump it into the local body of water. If that's insufficient, one can dump steam from the secondary loop into atmosphere (which necessitates adding water there). You can play with a vver-1000 simulator and see how many of these things work; the simulator whose manual I'm citing above can be easily found on the internet.
Since Ukraine is no longer connected to the Ex-Soviet power grid, it is now an isolated grid and has to generate all electricity domestically. That's why the Ukraine is trying to create an interconnection with the EU grid as quickly as possible.
Blown up nuclear power plants are equal opportunity weapons.
Ukraine is not a nuclear state as it does not have nuclear weapons.
Since we have both technological expertise and practical means (from uranium ores to delivery systems), it’s a matter of time.
The former nukes belonged to the USSR and only they had the codes to arm them.
No idea, I haven't seen any. Another thing Russia inherited from USSR war nukes as well as debt.
edit (I misspelled): from USSR was nukes
The conclusion part made me think that the subject was negociated between constituant parts in the devolution treaty. However the paper does highlight that the UN is under ever more pressure for rule-based functioning and transparency, so who knows.
Personally if it were me, I'd rather try and get Russia's membership or voting rights suspended, based on the fact that article 4 states that the UN is for peace loving nations. In the current climate this has a chance of passing in the general assembly, where the veto can not be used. Russia has evoked article 41 'right of self-defense' but that seems problematic.
Another question is if you want to exclude Russia. It sets a precedent, and erodes the position of the UN if not (near-) unanimous. The previous vote had 144 out of 193 voting against Russia, with only 5 against (Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, etc)
https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...
You'd still be prevented by NPT (which Ukraine is part of) like all other non-nuclear states, even without the Budapest Memorandum.
speakers seem informed
edit: seems like you just asked for a source, I misread the comment chain
But who the actual fuck shells a nuclear plant? That's not reassuring at all.
It's also against international law.
International law doesn’t actually mean very much, especially when the violator is powerful and has nuclear weapons.
> KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces pressed their attack on a crucial energy-producing Ukrainian city by shelling Europe’s largest nuclear plant early Friday, sparking a fire and raising fears that radiation could leak from the damaged power station.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-a3092d8e476949...
So let's treat any information coming out from them as such and wait 1 day for more accurate accounts to come in.
Despite any inaccuracies due to the "fog of war" or even propaganda, the basic facts of this unprovoked invasion are more than enough to justify NATO intervention.
I'm not sure how you read that as me advocating for NATO involvement.
But I disagree with your assertion that the reason to not let them into NATO has gotten stronger, I think this invasion shows that the reason to let Ukraine in to NATO has gotten stronger.
The reason has gotten stronger because if we let Ukraine into NATO now, that obligates NATO to defend them, which makes this into WW3. That would be extremely bad for humanity on a much, much larger scale than Ukraine represents. NATO is not a tool for humanitarian aid.
Obviously we wouldn't let Ukraine into NATO now during a conflict, but if this conflict somehow ends and Putin withdraws then I think there's a strong case for giving them NATO membership. Letting Ukraine join NATO later is a deterrent from another invastion, letting them join NATO today is just the start of WWIII
But I also think it would be a horrible idea to get into a direct war with Russia.
Edit: Saw an explanation that media journalists are probably mistakenly identifying the lighting flares launched in the video as shelling. They're way too slow moving to be shells or explosive rockets.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30549210
The experts on there are NOT concerned. At least yet.
Lots of scope for misinformation and panic here (understandably) as it’s a live developing story, but I don’t think we all need to retire to our bunkers just yet.
Would urge caution about reading too much into this until we have a bit more info. Rushing to try and interpret live radiation levels and talk of “this escalates to nuclear war” is a bit premature.
If true, then that’s another war crime to add to the growing list.
You don't do war crimes unless you expect to get away with it, which means either you're fighting a war that more powerful nations don't care about, or you expect to win it.
Putin can't win against NATO but he can make both sides lose.
I used to think he was rational and only minorly evil, but now I'm not so sure of the rationality... and clearly he's more than minorly evil.
There probably is a tactical advantage from the Russian side to putting out the idea that Putin has gone crazy.
Or he really has gone crazy. We can't really know but the fog of war spreading to social media does not seem like a great development.
What other explanation is there for invading a European country with close ties to the USA and NATO -- one claim for the invasion is that Putin was worried that Ukraine would join NATO, if they are that friendly to NATO, then he must have known that NATO would help fight.
Putin thought he would win quickly, get troops to lay down arms and overthrow the government. For whatever reason he was wrong, it seems clear this is what was expected but pushback has been more effective. Probably in no small way because organizing the logistics of such a large operation is hard and has not gone smoothly.
This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZLhRP01jz8 seems like a possibility.
> one claim for the invasion is that Putin was worried that Ukraine would join NATO, if they are that friendly to NATO, then he must have known that NATO would help fight.
Well, look at what's happened. Look at what has happened previously in Crimea, look what happened in the Ukraine separatist regions before. Look at what is happening now. He would not necessarily have to be totally irrational to believe objectives could be achieved there.
I think it's the later - Putin is not going to lose this war since he's racking up hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars of damage and compensation for injury/death that Russia would have a hard time paying for if he admits defeat.
1) The West has already weaponized the law. It is currently operating on the Latin American dictator model of "for my friends, anything; for my enemies: the law!".
2) The United States strongly opposes the ICC treaty and does not accept its jurisdiction overs its nationals and is even willing to use military force to free any of its nationals should the ICC ever try to enforce jurisdiction over an American[1]. In similar, but less violent terms, Russia withdrew from the ICC back in 2016.
So my point is, why would Russia care what some court with no jurisdiction says? It's already obvious it won't matter. The West is already going full Treaty of Versailles on them - so what difference does it make? There is little credibility left for the West, either in terms of rule of law or moral authority to be telling anyone what is right or wrong.
This is something that most of the world sees by now, but the West is comically unable to look in the mirror and see this and I'm afraid they will only notice when it's too late. It's absurdly self-destructive but the West consider it "winning", yet the history books will almost certainly mark this as the most obvious inflection point where the West lost the plot.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...
Westerners, that are scrutinizing every single move of Russia today, ignored every time it was pointed out that the U.S. was waging a proxy war in Ukraine for 8 years.
The Minsk agreements, mediated by NATO members, were NEVER applied, and there have been 14000 deaths in the Donbass war since 2014. All the while, U.S. politicians have been publicly gloating that they "are fighting Russia in Ukraine". Their involvement in this is clearly documented -- except Westerners do not even care to look.
The current act of freezing the assets of the Russian state -- completely arbitrary thievery -- just sends the following message to outside governments that have seen this unfold: the West is not to be trusted.
This is either a plan for malice or it's incompetency, either way it's not good.
Doesn't matter for ICC jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Ukraine, because Ukraine, while not a state party, has acceded to voluntary ICC jurisdiction for war crimes and crimes against humanity on its territory from 21 November 2013 forward. (If you are relying on Wikipedia, it seems to systematically omit mention of voluntary jurisdiction.)
> And as Russia can veto a U.N. Security Council resolution referring a crime to the ICC
A UNSC resolution is not required; for cases where the ICC would have jurisdiction, it can begin investigations on the initiative of the prosecutor with permission of the ICC judiciary, or on referral of a state party (which need not be directly involved.) After the ICC prosecutor announced the intention to seek permission for an investigation, based on both a completed preliminary examination which found sufficient indication of ICC-covered war crimes and crimes against humanity before the recent escalation, as well as additional concerns arising from the recent escalation on his own initiative, but noted that a state-party referral would streamline the process, 39 state parties to the Rome Statute submitted referrals relating to the situation in Ukraine to the ICC.
So what?
Russia (like the USA btw) does not acknowledge the jurisdiction of the ICC. The dictator in Moscow (and his minions) will just laugh at any conviction from there.
https://www.iaea.org/news?type=3243 ("Press releases")
Once one Nuke is fired it's likely they'll all be because the only real defence against a nation using nuclear weapons against you is to try to wipe them out before they wipe you out.
In this situation hundreds of millions would be likely die directly from the attack and a similar amount would probably die from starvation shortly after as the global economy collapses and crops fail on mass.
There's just no situation that this is something we'd even want to consider. As much as I'd love NATO to be able to intervene it's just not possible. The best we can do is put pressure on Russia and show other nations that this is not acceptable and not in their national interest because of the harsh economic consequences.
Thankfully, that has been thought of and, as much as possible, planned for.
How do you decrease the incentive for a preemptive strike? By building your nuclear arsenal so that it can survive one. There are 3 main things that help achieve this:
(1) Put your nukes somewhere where even a direct hit from an enemy nuke will not destroy them. That's why missile silos are underground.
(2) Hide your nukes. The enemy can't take out your nukes if they don't know where they are. Fixed-location nukes are bad at this. Mobility is good, but road and rail are not the best forms of mobility. Nukes in planes are better. Nukes in submarines are really good.
(3) Have lots of nukes. If the enemy can destroy 90% of your nukes with a preemptive strike but 10% of your nukes would still easily be enough to wipe them out, then a preemptive strike still doesn't achieve its goal. One way to increase nukes cheaply and effectively is with MIRVs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_independently_targeta...), which means one missile has multiple nuclear warheads that can independently hit different targets.
Basically, all this was thought out pretty thoroughly during the Cold War. The well-known acronym MAD stands for Mutually-Assured Destruction, and the importance of the assured part has not been overlooked.
Source: needed a government credit in college, took a class that was all about nuclear deterrence theory.
And why the US and especially Israel is so against Iran having nuclear weapons, to the point where Israel would attack Iran militarily, to stop them.
... But now that the opportunity to trap Putin in a quagmire has presented itself, it does seem to be ready to flood the region with weapons. Had it done so at any point in the preceding eight years, war might well have been avoided.
Which leads me to think that avoiding war was never the goal.
The turnaround time on this sort of thing does not favor the aggressor.
To Russia, Ukraine is a core interest, and thus they're the most likely to escalate to tactical nuclear weapons if NATO intervenes and Russia starts losing.
With a NATO country, that calculus changes, and if for some crazy reason Russia actually attacked a NATO country, we would have a good chance of being able to fight back and expel Russia's attack without the war going nuclear, because Russia has far less interest in winning that war, as existing NATO countries aren't core interests to Russia.
The Baltic states (former Soviet Union states) might be
Russia's core interest should be preventing the end of the world. If Putin is rational, he will never initiate a nuclear war. If he is irrational, he will not stop with Ukraine.
I don’t know if NATO would respond to a nuclear attack on Kyiv. Would NATO attack knowing the destruction of London/Paris/NYC/etc would be almost guaranteed?
First of all, if Putin wanted to level Kiev he could do it with conventional bombs and artillery. Nuclear weapons are not needed.
But second of all, *why* would he want to flatten Kiev? Why don’t you read his goals in his own words? https://web.archive.org/web/20220224024154/http://en.kremlin...
He says he sees Russians and Ukrainians as one people and wants to unify them. No, I’m not defending him, I oppose war in all circumstances.
But it’s important to understand that he’s not some evil maniac out of a comic book that wants to kill everybody, he has actual goals.
And besides taking pieces from your neighboring country, waging long shadow war in Donbas, telling everyone how Ukraine is not really a country anyway and then invading doesn't really seem such a great plan for unifying nations.
As far as I understand relations before Russians and Ukrainians were pretty OK before 2014 events. With his own actions Putin has made a country that has roughly 1/3 of the population of Russia mostly against him. Healing these wounds and relationships will take decades even once the war ends.
All the sudden all these Curtis LeMay types are coming out of the woodwork trying to drum up nuclear war.
We know Russia has ran information campaigns on social media in the past so it seems pretty irrational to believe they aren't running campaigns when actually at war.
Everyone should take what they think they know about the situation with a huge grain of salt. It is totally irresponsible to read a news headline that may or may not be correct and then from that headline extrapolate that it is time to go to DEFCON 1.
"Putin taking Estonia isn't as bad as nuclear annihilation."
"Putin taking Berlin isn't as bad as nuclear annihilation."
"Putin taking DC isn't as bad as nuclear annihilation."
What if he just goes, "I'm invading western Europe now too, and if you fight back I launch the nukes"? Do we just roll over and say that it's better to surrender than fight?
I have far more confidence that Putin would use them than the US would. That asymmetry works to his advantage.
I’m sure Putin doesn’t have a big red launch button on his desk, but between the US and Russia, who do you honestly think will have an easier time getting those missiles launched? The guy who mixed up Ukrainians and Iranians during a speech last week or the guy who ordered an invasion of a neighboring country? My money is on Putin.
Hopefully we never find out.
He doesn't really gain anything by nuking everyone if they help Ukraine either, but that's the threat regardless.
In this case pressure to keep the west from becoming directly involved.
Would that hold up if you insert "anywhere" instead of "in Ukraine"? I am not so sure that e.g. the Baltics would be protected by NATO if Putin invades.
The only exit that isn't a destructive spiral out of control is the one where Putin is no longer in power.
1. NATO Article 5 invocation, i.e. an armed attack on a NATO nation
2. or a disaster so terrible that the security of Europe requires that NATO enter the war i.e. a nuclear reactor meltdown<
3. a NATO ally such as Poland deciding to enter the war on Ukraine's side.
An NATO Article 5 invocation is the most likely. Russia is taking heavily loses due to NATO arms shipments to Ukraine. To reduce these arms shipments Russia must either bomb the shipments near the border or control the border. Both of these could result in an accidental attack on Poland. Russian bombers often have difficulty navigating and use unguided bombs. If they stray into Polish airspace they make be shot down. If Poland decides that war with Russia will happen sooner or later, they make choose to enter the war on Ukraine's side sooner when Russia is least prepared.
It is not the job of the west to be world police
https://twitter.com/inteldoge/status/1499542139155398659?s=2...
The danger here is if these were still operating at power when the Russians rolled in and residual heat is not removed because operators have fled or the power gets cut then the core(s) will melt. Melting cores generate hydrogen gas which then explodes. Also, there is probably a large quantity of spent fuel on site, some of which needs active cooling as well.
1) Russians have been conquered a lot and are very insecure
2) They're part Mongols and inherited fear and lies as state of being
3) Russians only respect strong Tsar and let the Tsar do whatever he wants as he appears strong and manufactures the fear through the lies
4) Russians are stupid and not capable of creating anything, only destruction. They stole anything technologically worthwhile.
5) Russia is a terrible autocratic imperialist country that is completely geopolitically irrational.
Any person taking this video at face value should conclude that Russia should be suppressed and destroyed, that would be a great service to the human kind. Yes, everything makes sense now.
If you want an actual explanation for the extension of NATO into the former communist countries, look no further. East Europeans have a collective memory about how the Russian military operates.
Though I think we're seeing the Ukrainians are fierce when cornered, so probably isn't the morale breaker they think it is.
This whole situation reminds me of the Mosul dam in Iraq, which was controlled by ISIS for awhile. The dam is kept stable by continuous grouting operations, which I believe were on hold for awhile.
I'm guessing the Ukrainian troops fell back to the nuclear power plant hoping they wouldn't get attacked there.
Is targeting electricity production a de-facto attack on EU infrastructure?
Would taking out Ukraine's electricity generation increase its dependence on Russia (who could sell it), and significantly increase the EU's dependence on Russian gas?
Physical connections to the EU have been constructed, but they are not in sync so the actual connection has not been made yet.
Because the effects of a nuclear meltdown are closer to that of a chemical attack and far away from that of a thermonuclear detonation. Blurry red lines cease to be lines.
No. Because, again, if you detonated a thermonuclear weapon above that same space, the difference would be night and day.
Whereas a nuclear explosion is a self-sustaining nuclear reaction, which produces a fireball that can engulf an entire city.
Given the option, I'd far rather stand a mile downwind of an exploding reactor[1], than a mile from ground zero of any modern nuclear weapon[2]. The solution to the first problem is walking away, and trying not to breathe too much of the crap in. There is no solution to the second problem, because you, and everything in miles around you would be instantly incinerated.
[1] https://youtu.be/xulAgMNK5Jk?t=193
[2] https://youtu.be/r3l0G3XOUv4 - the fireball is a mile across. Anyone for miles outside the fireball zone will be turned into charcoal. Each modern ICBM carries 6-12 of these. That is what nuclear war will look like. Both sides in a nuclear conflict will fire hundreds of them, against opposing cities.
Swapping many ICBMs is a lot more deadly than letting one NPP go critical.
Just nitpicking, but AFAIK nuclear power plants already "go critical" whenever they're operating (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_(status) "Criticality is the normal operating condition of a nuclear reactor, in which nuclear fuel sustains a fission chain reaction.")
I'm not sure why the parent post was downvoted. It was on-topic and taught me something relevant.
That is a very high threshold.
No doubt there are people working on black flag political assassination attempts, but really the only other options are convincing non NATO members to intervene or launching bombers towards Moscow and making an ultimatum that won’t be perceived as a bluff.
Ultimately though i think Ukraine has to mostly handle this on its own and if it doesn’t win the only thing to be done is let it happen and completely isolate Russia from the global economy until they are broken. It is not a pretty picture when your only options are backing a nuclear power into a corner.
Their simple map (https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Simple.aspx) shows the last update as being 03/03/22 22:00 UTC, but selecting a station doesn't give any current or historic readings.
The advanced map (https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx) doesn't display any data for me.
[0] https://www.greenpeace.org/static/planet4-international-stat...
1: https://facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=358548829609705&id...
And Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/@47.5124275,34.5850663,1549m/dat...
So yes, those in charge of the plant surrendered it to the attackers.
I don't understand the statement. Either it is completely oblivious to daily reality, or it is hinging on some pedantic / language dependent semantic detail that should really be explicitly addressed.
> Reuters could not immediately verify the information, including the potential seriousness of any fire.
TL;DR it would take a concerted effort to build such a bomb without killing yourself only to build a worse bomb that would draw in NATO.
Chernobyl was a graphite pile reactor with no containment building, and none of those exist anymore fortunately.
I should aadd that VVER's like the reactor in question have missile shields for precisely this reason, and a bunch of other passive features. It shouldn't explode.
2nd Edit: what I’m concerned about is artillery hitting spent fuel containment. I don’t know if they used hardened casks, or if they’re using pools that might be in a less hardened building. Whoever is shelling this thing is insane, or very stupid.
Edit: More footage [2]
[1]: https://imgur.com/a/W9WbI4m [2]: https://twitter.com/aletweetsnews/status/1499547760986509315
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/03/nuclear-powe...
It's quite naive I know but if you make the consequences very clear and extremely bad for the troops, it might really deter them.
Or Russia is implementing a something similar to a scorch= the-earth policy.
The money went the other way - "guarantee" of sovereignty plus financial compensation, in exchange for the nuclear weapons.
Or just submit some token soldiers and have them claim to have defied orders and acted on their own, not hard for an autocrat.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-ukrai...
#Ukraine regulator tells IAEA there has been no change reported in #radiation levels at the #Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant site.
anyways, the news cycle nowadays and the misinformation is insane
CNN literally reporting "Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is on fire, according to the mayor of a nearby town."
Which again, sensationalist title the plant itself is not on fire. CNN and FoxNews literally saying it's another Cherynobyl - "Fears of disaster greater than Chernobyl as Putin's forces attack largest atomic plant in Europe"
Idk man, I get it's a war and shit is serious, but the information overload of propaganda from all sides is insane and is really fucking with people's anxiety and mental state.
Frankly, I am not sure why Ukraine/West feel the need to broadcast propaganda - its not even necessary.
Ghost of Kyiv ..
https://web.archive.org/web/20110705230730/http://news.cnet....
It makes no sense for Russia to start shooting at a useless office building. If they wanted, they’d drop a few bombs on the critical infrastructure and that’s it.
Maybe the rumors Ukrainian forces evolved them into an attack and planted the fire has some substance? This news is the perfect headline to further lure in the west to help, without any actually critical damage to your own land.
A nuclear incident is pretty much their only (unlikely) hope to get some kind of foreign or NATO involvement.
He attacks a nuclear plant and creates the risk of a meltdown. The result will be to remind the EU about how scary nuclear power is and ensures public opinion stays firmly against the one power source that can wean them off Russian oil.
Also, it has strategic value as limiting power to the rest of Ukraine makes it harder to wage war. No power, less internet and communication, slowing the stream of awful (for Putin) pictures and videos of his brutal war.
And capturing it would be a propaganda coup at home. Putin stopped the evil Ukrainians from blowing up a massive dirty bomb.
Pure evil genius.
I would be happier if they blew up Chernobyl again as at least there is no more pressure cooker that can blow this shit high into the sky a seconds time.
[1] https://gdb.rferl.org/94D46F09-409D-415F-B87D-836E88607ECF_w...
The USSR survived Chernobyl. It’s a very risky move, but not necessarily a stupid one.
How very Reuters of them. I should have expected nothing less.
It's indisputably a war of baseless aggression. Giving their narrative of it being a special operation to de-nazify is no different than giving nazis equal opportunity to explain their position on the Holocaust: an operation of de-bolshevization (which is what they actually said at the time).
Maybe projecting nihilism is a strategy of its own. If I act as if there is nothing I care about except my goal you will never convince me to give up. So you have to give up to spare casualties.
If Russia really did go to war over securing some natural resources and a geopolitical strategic location, over a false pretense of something like liberation, it would sound so much like...well, us.
So let us take a quick moment of pause and realize that this demon lives well within our own borders, too.
Hoping and praying for peace.
It's not that this is good or acceptable, but if you're just now getting mad, or just now seeing humans for what they're truly like, then perhaps this is a good lesson and an important milestone in the maturation process. Human nature has not changed so much over the last 80 years. It's good to be reminded of that, though the reminders are difficult.
People in countries around Syria talked about war in Syria a lot. And in that conflict, America seems to be blamed for both intervening and not intervening enough. It is guilty of Russia bombing cities and Assad actions ... and also for helping rebels in actual fight. Because, in relation with Ukraine war, it is important to make America guilty of literally every bad thing everyone does in every conflict.
I have, however, heard the opposite argument: nuclear power plants are now extremely safe because of safety regulations, so we should build more of them.
> Should any discussion of nuclear power go on for long enough, it becomes inevitable that someone will rant that the only reason it has become unaffordable is a proliferation of safety regulations.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/11/why-are-nuclear-plan...
what are you doing again?
what did you do?
I donated money to the Ukrainian army.
----
Like I said, a special kind of stupid. Keep driving that SUV in your fight against Russian oil.
In times of war, the first casualty is the truth.
P.S. According to Reuters/MSNBC/US Official - There is no evidence Russia attacked nuclear reactors in Ukraine.
https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-usa-nuclear-e...
“#Ukraine energy officials telling the media and U.S. officials that elevated radiation levels are being detected at #Zaporizhzhia”
- Marco Rubio, Senate Select Intel Committee
Put on your glasses boys
Is this an act of desperation, ignorance or spite?
Initiation of an actual radioactive disaster near your own border on purpose…
They pulled the same shit in 1956 when they got captured by the Hungarians and in 1968 when they invaded Czechoslovakia: 'We were told it was a training mission'. This is straight-up a survival tactic for the prisoners. They're playing dumb and acting innocent. It's impossible not to know by now where, what and why you are doing in a foreign country, in a fucking military convoy.
So we’re back to the question: how can they be so stupid to attack the facility itself?
I don't think there's any evidence that they're acting irrationally, from within their context. Making the land uninhabitable would be irrational, for everything we know of their context.
As Ukranians continue to fight back and the West plays economic games instead of taking decisive military action, the escalation will continue until, by the end, everyone will agree that we should have just risked the initial nuclear threats of Russia rather than having Putin start launching nuclear weapons after having also leveled most of Ukraine and done whatever other increments of catastrophic forms of abuse come to his team's minds unyil then.
Alternatively, Putin wins before he feels backed that far into a corner, or maybe he's deposed before we reach nuclear weapons. But I really can't picture him backing down from confrontation, given that he was of a mindset to invade Ukraine.
As with COVID, we seem to always do too little too late.
You summed it up perfectly. If we had listened to these idiots in the 60s none of us would be here.
and it wouldn't be first time in this invasion for Ukrainians to destroy something and claim Russians did it
also we are here in HN where people discuss in civil manner, if you can't do it you should seek different venue
With more breakthroughs in nuclear fusion energy and policies [1], the gradual adoption of nuclear (as well as EV tech) will soon mark the end of old world. The implication of this is beyond anything anyone can conceive as we do not truly know what becoming a Tier 1 civilisation means. This could also mean new military tech that would render all existing fossil-fuel-based weapon systems inefficent things of the past. In this new world social mobility would mean different things too (as energy gets cheaper (which is the cost of pretty much every basic thing a modern industrial society depends on), things get more decentralized), old status quos will crumble as the cost-to-transform skyrockets.
Systems that come with top-down execution structure always optimize for cost-to-execute and not cost-to-transform [2]. This would give you advantages eg in a Nash equilibrium, etc, but it also means losing touch with the every-changing reality that is the world now.
[1]: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
It seems like the current renewable trend will phase out most fossil fuels BEFORE the most optimistic timeline for Fusion energy being a viable alternative.
And he doesn't have to "win" via occupation, all he has to do is destroy the place setting it back decades.
If any country undoes all the sanctions and seized property while he's still alive, he's "won".
He doesn't care about the lives on either side and there will never be justice for that even if he ends up hung by his own people (impossible fantasy outcome).
Imagine how even more destructive he'd be if he had unlimited "free" power via fusion, I am really certain fusion will initially cause more war than stop them because the money saved will go into military spending and once you have that buildup, someone always wants to put it to use.
> Ukrainian nuclear plant, Europe's largest, ablaze after Russian attack - minister
Submitted title was "Europe's largest nuclear power plant on fire".
You know Russia would ultimately take the blame.
EDIT: according to child comments, a meltdown is unlikely/impossible, but spread of radioactive particles due to a direct strike is possible.
Neither are good, but they wouldn't be nearly as bad as Chernobyl or a nuclear weapon strike.
a) "the way Chernobyl did" is technically correct (the VVER reactor that Zaporizhzhia is uses a difference containment strategy), but a distinction without meaning - a meltdown is a meltdown.
b) "anymore" - Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was built between 1980 and 1996.
It's true that it is a safer design than Chernobyl, but yes it absolutely can still meltdown.
> The most significant risk is a breach of the reactor chamber fragmenting the fuel rods and spreading radioactive particles around
Note that this "spreading radioactive particles around" is probably more dangerous to health than a meltdown.
Put in different terms: We're basically talking about the equivalent of a dirty bomb.
I'd say that how much radioactive waste gets expelled or leaked and how much energy goes into it makes all the difference in the world and each meltdown is probably unique.
This is, so far as I know, the first time anyone has carried out a military attack on an operating nuclear plant. Nobody knows yet how that really plays out. But it looks like we all get to find out.
On the other hand, I don't know whether the VVER design contemplates shelling, either.
The Israelis bombed an Iraqi plant in the 80s I think.
Both the Iranians and the Israelis actually bombed the site one different operations in different years. Thereafter Saddam is now known to have said.
"Once Iraq walks out victorious [over Iran], there will not be any Israel"
It was both justified and didn't represent the risk that attacking this reactor represents.
Not saying that the attack is thus acceptable, just saying that it will take a concerted effort to breach the containment.
For what it's worth, the russian convoy is firing on the administrative building, not the power units themselves, but I don't know specifically what is in said admin bldg or what the ramifications for operation/shutdown of the power units/cooling systems works if the admin building burns down and/or gets shot up.
it's not a rational risk assessment.
making nuclear energy economically unfeasible by mandating that things be drastically overbuilt has doomed us all to climate catastrophe
If you want to represent nuclear, do it honestly; there are a million reasons why it's a good thing, a weak strawman doesn't help your case.
if we designed airliners with a safety factor in line with people's fear of flying and not the actual risk of failure, they would never be able to get off the ground.
yet we require that nuclear power plants tolerate any conceivable failure mode, no matter how unlikely, or dangerous.
that's not rational.
And that's before equivalent spending on research, plus tax breaks and subsidies.
100 might sound like hyperbole, but if, somehow, nuclear was guilt-free power, we'd be using at least twice as much power as we currently do. Eventually that much waste heat becomes its own problem (requiring more cooling to 'deal with')
I was more talking about the distance between plants as a function of the odds of encountering the Precautionary Principle with regards to radiation events, but heat pollution is something that I've already seen happen in a town near where I grew up, where an artificial lake intended as a cooling pond ended up being unfit for recreation due to encephalitis-inducing microbes that enjoyed the heat of the cooling system.
Heat pollution at the plant can be problematic depending on where the plant is and what cooling system you use. On the consumption end it exponentially contributes to the heat island effect. Not a huge exponent, but an exponent nonetheless. Doubling power consumption more than doubles heat pump power budgets, and pushes nearby systems that previously relied on passive cooling into requiring active cooling, which pushes more systems into active cooling, on and on.
I think the only time I ever really disagreed with George Carlin was his bit about how arrogant humans are to think that we can possibly ever do enough to alter the climate. Turns out we can. There are just so many of us doing our own little game of externalities. I wonder if he were alive today what he'd have to say about it.
This is from last week and discusses the practical impacts of war around the plant being a major issue even if the plant isn't involved:
https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/02/24/most-immediate-nucl...
That article briefly mentions this page, where the CEO of Ukraine's nuclear operator states that they are protected:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/A-guide-Nuclear-...
"In addition, Ukrainian power units are ready even for an aircraft crash, because the containment and the reactor vessel designed to withstand corresponding risks."
Russia doesn't need to control the immediate areas around nuclear plants in the initial phases of their invasion, it's lunacy that they aren't carefully avoiding them.
We are over a week in, I think this is beyond the initial invasion timeframe. Russia has faced fierce resistance so I can understand a desire to weaken that defense.
It’s a lot harder to stage a defense when you have no electricity. Strategically it makes a lot of sense for Russia to overtake or shut down the power grid. If they do that with physical damage then there’s no need to control the immediate vicinity.
Chernobyl caused between ~100 and ~16,000 deaths, depending sensitively on how one models the effects of small (sub-natural-background) radiation increases over a large population.
One could argue, at most, that this would be equivalent to a radiological weapon ("dirty bomb"). But even then it wouldn't be correct because of the important difference between purposeful radiological dispersal and radiological dispersal as a side-effect of a legitimate military action.
These insane people I think need to watch the Tsar bomba go off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwlNPhn64TA
We aren't talking about fatman and little boy. Talking about thousands of H bombs and literally the apocalypse for the human race.
In a war situation, shutting off highways and disabling power plants or oil refineries are all strategic targets that affect both the military and civilians. But shutting down a refinery is different than dumping all of the chemical tanks into the water supply, setting oil fields on fire, or making the nuclear plant blow up.
The chief issue is that, unlike something like cultural artifacts, power plants have significant strategic military importance. Perhaps a rule that (a) fighting be confined outside a certain perimeter and (b) plant workers have special protected status like medics, and are required to obey shutdown orders if the invading military takes control of the perimeter (so that the invaders don't have incentive to physically destroy the plant).
If radiation escapes it would be a "dirty bomb" equivalent event, it will speed up sanctions and nations will urge Russia to allow experts to inspect the damage.
A meltdown/explosion is possible if they damage safety systems/shielding. Still won't be seen serious as a "nuke detonation" event, but countries that receive fallout will be pissed off.
If Russia continues causing more nuclear pollution that affects it neighbors, yes, it could mean war scalation.
But based on what happened in Fukushima, critical electrical/cooling systems and backups would have to be damaged in order to pose catastrophic risk.
While this is unlikely I'll probably lose some hours of sleep on this.
I very much doubt the Russians would do this on purpose (fallout would risk the whole operation and possibly Russian territory too) although the fighting around there is incredibly stupid.
Not exactly a brilliant strategy - unless you're deranged and really don't care about your people.
Aside from the obvious "knocking the power plant out to cripple the city" argument there are probably better ways to do this than blowing it up. For example, controlling the area and literally turning it off. It seems wild, even by Russian doctrine, to do such a thing.
On the other hand, the Ukranian military has every reason to "salt the earth" with a potentially critical reactor in order to do as much damage to a Russian occupation as possible. Are the Ukranians this crazy? Well, to do this they wouldn't have to be much more crazy than Russians shelling it.
Something doesn't smell right here. In the article there is this quote:
> In an emotional speech in the middle of the night, Zelenskyy said he feared an explosion that would be “the end for everyone. The end for Europe. The evacuation of Europe.” “Only urgent action by Europe can stop the Russian troops,” he said. “Do not allow the death of Europe from a catastrophe at a nuclear power station.”
The undertone of this seems more threatening than fearful. Especially given Zelensky's overall response to NATOs lack of response. Additionally, Zelensky isn't much less corrupt than putin (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-i...).
I do not intend to sound like a Russian apologist here but rather be the devil's advocate. This doesn't make sense inside either country's war doctrine. It seems more like it's being used as propaganda by one side or the other. Very suspicious indeed. I don't think Russian conscripts are stupid enough to blow a reactor to turn it off. I also don't think Ukraine is stupid enough to use this to salt the earth. Yet, I find the official story fairly hard to believe.