Russian gas flows to Europe
berthub.eu
berthub.eu
[1] https://entsog.eu/ [2] https://agsi.gie.eu/#/historical/eu
at which point... the EU economy shuts down?
Be careful, this realtime graph is not always correct (especially the last hour)!
The worst part is, this delusion of believing in Western omnipotence continues fuelling bad decisions today. I was in Kharkiv, Ukraine when the war hit -- there were two major delusions prevalent in the weeks and months leading up to the war. 1. People believed the war could not happen because we believed our American superpower ally would somehow magically prevent the war or stop it quickly, or 2. we believed our leaders would have the sense to settle with Russia instead of destroying our country. 4 months later after losing 20% of our territory, both fantasies evaporated quickly, but I'm astounded at how many people continue to live in the 3rd fantasy of believing Ukraine could somehow "defeat" Russia while still avoiding WW3. Do people understand what a defeat of Russia would look like? Are you trying to bring a global thermonuclear war apocalypse? What is your endgame here?
Read more newspapers. You can choose: https://www.google.com/search?q=civilians%20dead%20in%20afgh...
https://reliefweb.int/report/afghanistan/civilian-casualties...
"Civilian casualties of explosive violence mount as Taliban capture Kabul"
Somehow wikipedia is only the second link, mentioning the actual numbers of civilians.... but again... when was the last time news like this made headlines? When was the last time anyone imposed sanctions against countries killing civilians there?
Also, considering we're still there (eg. syria), we're still the occupying force there, why is there not daily reporting of what we did there and how bad it was? Why are there not international efforts to pull our soldiers out of there?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/10/16/pentagon-pay...
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/11/world/middleeast/11casual...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/16/magazine/unco...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/18/us/airstrikes...
Although I agree there was no real punishment, after all the US isn't going to charge their own soldiers unless they can find hard evidence it was done on purpose because it would disincentivise them from doing their work, at best they could hope for some payment from the US, that did happen on the odd occasion, no where nearly as much I doubt as they would have received if they killed someone domestically like that though.
> because it would disincentivise them from doing their work
You mean "making mistakes" and killing civilians? Why can't EU impose sanctions on US? Like kick them out of the EU teritory as a start?
USA even bombed a couple of weddings in pakistan... and they aren't even at war with pakistan.
And let's not forget what happens when US kills a reuters journalist... they go after the whistleblower of course, and the website operator that published the video.
Look, we all know russians are bad, but for many more countries america is the "number one risk and enemy", and even at this moment, many more countries are occupied by US army than by the russians. If we (the europeans) don't mind americans destroying countries all around the world, even bombing some in europe (yugoslavia 1999, similar reasons to what putin is doing now), why are we destroying our own economies now, when the russians are doing it?
The only ones having any benefit out of this current crisis are the american politicians... EU economy is fucked, russian economy is fucked, and Biden is taking the taxpayers money, giving it to Zelensky, so zelensky can buy weapons from bidens buddies, who (probably) give a percentage back to biden (or whoever his handler is). Oh, and also china for getting cheap oil an gas from russia.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/coalition...
I must question how hard you are looking because none of these links have shown paywalls to me, and even if they did you could use reader view (depends on browser) or various archive services to see what was written. If you want articles from specific date periods you can use Google search date parameters.
> You mean "making mistakes" and killing civilians?
No, from doing any sort of military activity. If you wanted to 100% verify there is no potential civilian nearby any military activity would immediately grind to a halt. You'll find for similar reasons why few Nazi German soldiers were ever punished for killing civilians, because even the Allies understood is it something almost impossible to accuse your enemy of without it also applying to your own soldiers, thus most trials focused on purposeful targeting of civilians, which is something different.
> Why can't EU impose sanctions on US?
EU has put sanctions on the US for various things over the years.
> Like kick them out of the EU teritory as a start?
Because it would mean they actually have to pay for their own defense which none of them are particularly keen on doing.
> US kills a reuters journalist...
If you watch the actual video it's pretty clear the men the journalists are with are carrying weapons, if I remember correctly an RPG. Militarily speaking they were entirely a legitimate target and I personally never understood the controversy about it, perhaps because they worked for a western news organization it became famous. If you wanted to pick an example of them killing civilians who weren't hanging around with militants there are many better ones.
> similar reasons to what putin is doing now
There was no genocide of Russian speakers in Ukraine so that's nonsense.
> The only ones having any benefit out of this current crisis are the american politicians.
This is also obvious nonsense. How are high gas prices and high inflation rates beneficial to American politicians? The Russian economy is doing (for now at least) far better than the American or EU ones.
If you look at what was actually given, half of it is given under lend-lease, which as the name suggests, is a lease, they're not actually buying anything that they have to pay back. The US is buying them from whatever companies and then lending them out to Ukraine. If you read the law passed for it, the US expects no compensation for any loss of military equipment given to Ukraine, only that whatever is left is returned when the war finished. Instead of spouting conspiracy nonsense you should actually go and learn up on what you criticize because it's very common that people talk all this stuff about things they don't understand at all. I do agree though that China and India are big beneficiaries from this being able to buy things from Russia at big discounts though.
It's all very hard to be consistent about. For one thing, one can't fanatically support any "side" since there are bad deeds being done in many corners of the world.
What settlement could Ukraine have with Russia that wouldn't be the end of Ukraine? Russia is demanding that Ukraine allow part of its territory to secede and form "independent" nations, as well as have Ukraine avoid bolstering its ability to protect itself from its neighbours. Do you think those countries won't try to take more territory from Ukraine, with Russian backing? Do you think Russia will really stop invading Ukraine, after having already done it twice?
Any settlement would've been better than this. Every major city destroyed, 15% of the population emigrated.
Because the only one on the table simply has Ukraine remove its ability to defend itself, and create a Russian client state that Russia will continue to use to wage proxy war on Ukraine until they're entirely within Russia's control.
Appeasing the bully or tyrant leads only to more of the same. From the tyrant's perspective, what they did worked (gial achieved) and the opponents indicated that they are OK with it. Thus, they should try the next step they want.
The reason this invasion happened was because there was no real push-back to the Crimea invasion.
When would you propose that we start fighting back instrad of allowing Russia ti annex ever more - when Lithuania and Poland are being bombed? Berlin & Frankfurt? Paris? London? DC?
The US was looking to buy petroleum from Venezuela. The same Venezuela they were vehemently criticizing and putting economic sanctions because of the ongoing dictatorship over there.
This war is more complex than we think. The world is already in a second cold war and now we have to blocks: the West (US and the EU) vs The East (China and Russia).
We are at "...hard times make strong men..." Cycle now.
Thanks for the high compliment, but although I stand with the Ukrainians, I do not have that heritage. I also do not appreciate your insult to Ukranians as if it would be their take, and their desire for freedom from Russian tyranny is somehow senseless.
>>Do you really think Russia can afford going to war with literally half of the planet? In merely the past few weeks, Russian officials have specifically threatened Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and other areas, literally saying that these are 'historical Russian territories' and should be under Russia's control - the exact same justification for their current 24-Feb-2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Russia was not stopped after Chechnya, Georgia, Syria, Crimea, and other territories. Russia therefore assumes that since these advances were not strongly opposed, that more will be accepted. Since we are now opposing, if we do so successfully (push RUS out of every square inch of UKR territory), it will stop. If we yield, which is what Russia is counting upon, they will go further, at a time of their choosing. Not instantly, but they will not stop. This is being demonstrated at this moment.
>>If that's the case, NATO might as well send preemptive strikes (nukes, etc..) to avoid that scenario or probably Russia could foresee that and strike first since they are currently at war. This is not true and is an unnecessary and counterproductive escalation. Russia has already made lots of nuclear sabre-rattling about various topics such as Finland and Sweden joining NATO, yet been shown to be absolutely toothless. Russia does not want nukewar any more than we do, but they do want us to cower under that threat. The choice is simple, either back down and accept tyranny under their threats, or stand up and face the threat.
Again, Russia will not undertake these ongoing wars instantly but will do so at a time of their choosing. The message we want to send is not that we will wipe you out now, but that your future attempts will result not in the successes you have enjoyed, but only more costly failures.
>>This war is more complex than we think. The world is already in a second cold war ...
Of course this is more complex. IMO, we are already in WWIII and have been since at least 2014.
>>We are at "...hard times make strong men..." Cycle now.
Fully agree. Now is the time to stand up to authoritarianism, or democracy will be lost globally for at least generations, if not centuries or permanently.
'I'm astounded at how many people continue to live in the 3rd fantasy of believing Ukraine could somehow "defeat" Russia while still avoiding WW3'
2. The US lost in Vietnam without using nukes. Even more relevant, the USSR lost in Afghanistan without using them! I believe Pakistan has lost 3 straight wars to its arch-enemy, with no nuclear weapons being used.
If we follow your logic to its conclusion, Russia can annex Poland, Lithuania, Germany, France, and so on, and at every step of the way we'd say 'well we can't defeat Russia or else they'll use nukes'. They'd be able to conquer.... everything this way. This seems bad? Would you like to live in this world?
Yeah and buy American liquefied gas instead. Thanks but no thanks.
America lost to Taliban
USSR lost to Afghanistan
All of these were insurgencies. Why can’t Russia lose to an insurgent Ukrainian population?
Is Russia willing to fight for 10 years?
Did you believed that Russia was going to get Ukrainian territory easily, Putin thought that also.
> What is your end game?
Too avoid repeating the same mistake that with Hitler. Give Putin more territory and he will need hungry for even more. This may end the war now instead of encouraging further fights.
Why? These kind of cold-war era proxy wars happened throughout history. One big power makes a move directly or indirectly, while the other side will be supported indirectly by other powers. It becomes a pure resource war, and no party has a reason to escalate it beyond the conflict zone. Russia has no reason to open new fronts even if NATO props the war zone, or covertly supports sabotage attacks within Russia's border - the same way the US or China fights proxy wars, based on success, they take it or leave it (for the time). Ukraine is a long term strategic investment for Russia, not a life and death struggle.
If we use the Afghanistan analogy, Ukraine is on the border of NATO too. Interestingly, then NATO would be the overextended multinational entity trying to expand even further in this scenario. If we expect an "Afghanistan" scenario to repeat itself, then logically one would expect NATO to collapse.
In earlier comment you said: "Vietnam and Afghanistan .... Those were pure proxy wars. This is not a proxy war, it is a direct hot war." And here you wrote: "This is not a proxy war. Russia is involved directly on its border. A proxy war is in a far off land." And I was saying that Afghanistan was not a far off land, it was on the border, so your two usages of "proxy war" weren't consistent.
Sorry, I don't understand your second paragraph, I was not trying to draw an analogy with USSR and Afghanistan.
As I understand, your argument is instead that: "Afghanistan was not important to USSR, so USSR did not consider using nuclear weapons then", while "Ukraine is a core interest of Russia, so it will rather start a nuclear war (and risk destruction of the world) rather than back down and return to the positions before Feb 24th." I don't know if this statement is as obviously correct as it may seem to you. Certainly many believe that Russia is not willing to self-destruct to stand the ground here.
This isn't just Ukraine v Russia, hence the proxy war label is correct.
I definitely agree about American hubris though, they had the opportunity in the 1940s to use nuclear weapons against the Soviets to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons but the risk avoiders and pacifists won out, those who thought America would win without war because they were under God or because their system was better or something of those ideals. I guess that ultimately was true and it did potentially save lots of lives but culturally & militarily speaking I don't see modern Russia being much different from the USSR.
Whether you consider that Ukraine can 'win' the war depends on your definition of 'win'. They could certainly stop them from taking any more than what they currently have, perhaps even take back significant parts of Ukraine, but it would require much more military support than is currently given. The US seems content on draining Russia without really having them lose much of the territory they have gained.
I am not quite sure why people think you could just 'settle' with Russia. Settling would only happen when Putin wants it to happen, and from his own speeches and writings it is clear he wants to restore Russia to how the USSR was geopolitically. I remember even 5 years ago some Russian military guys I knew who would joke about one day being able to have a second try of mass raping German and Polish women (WW2 being the first) so in my view I doubt settling would do much except delay further ambition of Putin.
I very much doubt that Putin would be willing to go to WW3 over Ukraine though no matter how many military defeats he had in Ukraine, he isn't stupid and Ukraine isn't worth that much.
Im affraid the person you directed this question to (putler) doesnt read HN.
Russian win in Ukraine means more attacks in the future.
First, the Americans warned everybody that Russia would attack on Feb 16 and they were widely mocked for it... for a week.
Second, there is no "settling". Ukraine could either be a puppet state with all its leaders, laws and policies decided and picked by Moscow, or it can be a normal country. This was never about Russia getting the Donbas and Crimea and you could not have assuaged Putin by giving him this. Sadly this will take a while, but Russia will lose this war the way they lost Afghanistan, Poland, Japan and countless other wars.
This war will continue unless the Ukrainian govt decides to sue for peace and enter negotiations with Russia. This war is really about Russia telling the US and NATO to go F themselves. Putin is done with those "b**ches."
The purpose of prolonging this war through military support is to draw Ukraine into the remit of the West as they will be indebted in one way or another to the West if they "win" this war. That part is already done. The question is whether a defeat of Russia will allow that to be realized.
Ukraine's best bet now is to get rid of the Zelensky regime and replace it with one ready to enter into negotiations. If the West will not enter the war directly then the war is lost as far is Ukraine is concerned.
If Ukraine starves Russia of ammo they win the war and HIMARS looks like it is doing exactly that.
Additionally every week that goes by is a week that Ukraine gets new weapons in the past couple weeks it was HIMARS in coming weeks it’ll be M270s and Gepards, and in the coming month/s it’ll be NASAMS.
It's not black and white anymore. I'm just a bystander but instead of looking for alternatives to deascalate, people here want Ukraine to "win" the war by any means necessary while they are probably comfortable and well fed at home.
I was wrong about the war, but I think my understanding of the situation has improved. My mistake was naivety. The naivety is gone now, and I think there is real chance of this war going global if the West keeps fuelling the conflict.
Later maybe we'll get a more moderate government in Russia and they'll give up the neo fascist dictatorship thing?
If Europe loses gas supplies tomorrow, they would:
* Build coal gasification plants (they're fairly simple things, and don't require much special equipment - there are lots that already exist unused and are over 100 years old). Switch about a quarter of towns to 'town gas' rather than natural gas.
* cut down heating to only about half of buildings - 'stay with a friend' will be policy for the winter months.
* Switch off street lighting and other big non-critical electricity users.
* Shut down energy heavy industries - much of this has already happened because energy prices mean it isn't economical to make glass, pottery, aluminium, steel, etc.
* Don't interfere much with market prices - allow them to go sky high. But give each premises an energy credit approximately enough to heat and light one room for free - after that you pay sky high prices.
Using that strategy, current reserves would last 1 year at least.
There is no IF, NS1 is being turned off tomorrow. https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/80867/
"Nord Stream AG to shut down both strings of Nord Stream gas pipeline on July 11-21 for scheduled repairs"
Most likely scenario at this point is "prolonged servicing" and no gas flow after 21.
Gas is traded internally all round europe, so 'cutting off' one country doesn't have much impact because they just buy from another.
It's the continent-wide energy shortfall that will be the issue, but as OP points out, there are plenty of ways to steeply cut energy use while keeping some semblance of regular life.
There are also lots of shuttered coal mines all round europe, many of which could be reopened if necessary, and coal to gas is an option - not done since the 1980's since it cost more, but it might well be back on the cards.
With all due respect, I think other people have a different definition of "disaster" if this suggestion
> cut down heating to only about half of buildings - 'stay with a friend' will be policy for the winter months.
isn't a disaster in one of the richest countries in the world.
and might keep it offline until Germany bends the knee.
OPEC cartel will eventually collapse and it will be buyers market. Regulation can make it sooner.
> Russian gas flows to Europe, sourced from ENTSO-G, gas storage levels from GIE.
Also (I still don't understand HN's hype for nuclear), let's not forget how often and much the nuclear plants have to stand still because of xyz (e.g. too little cooling water, which was the case in France in the last months).
> Indeed, far from being an indictment of Stasi infiltration of the Greens, Gieseke and Bahr's study is a portrait of a largely failed attempt by the Communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) to co-opt the nascent left-wing party on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
How did a few Stasi cooperators the 1980s Green Party translate into experts recommending Germany's nuclear power plants be shut down in the late 2010s?
https://legacy-assets.eenews.net/open_files/assets/2017/07/0...
https://www.foxnews.com/world/russia-funding-environmental-g...
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-funding-green-groups-discredi...
https://www.transparency.org/en/press/germany-state-governme...
https://www.eenews.net/articles/devin-nunes-claims-russia-is...
in comparison how Russia deals with this internally https://www.nirs.org/russia-cracks-down-on-anti-nuclear-move...
"Seemingly" doesn't really do it for me, especially not when there is a concerted, well financed effort to pull the wool over your eyes.
So sure, in a year or two we can get these reactors back online. In 10 or 15 years we can even get new ones. But these time scales don't help in the next winter and on those time scales we can come up with solutions that are even better and not at risk at making eating shrooms you find in the forest killing you..
Recently a former conservative minister got an award for fighting against wind power which is named after a former key figure of the early green movement in Germany, wo later dropped out to figth against wind turbines.
Bavaria is holding back the construction of a crucial north-south connection for electricity, which would bring the power from the wind-rich north to them. But they don't want the power lines messing up their landscape.
Everyone wants electricity, nobody wants to see the infrastructure that makes it.
People are meshugge.
If they would be easy to run longer, I would be all for it. But big money is better spent into reducing the gas dependency overall.
The decision to keep these 3 plants running or not is not about the waste, but about the fact that they were planned to shut down for years now, and there is some real hurdles to reversing that now. The impact of keeping them on is also rather small. The effort and money is more effectively spent elsewhere.
The decision to shut them down happened long ago. They voted against a proposal from the opposition to revert that. The plants were planned to shut down since a long time, there is a lot of unsolved issues around keeping them running, like fuel and personnel. The plants also would impact gas usage only by 1% and electricity isn't a great replacement short term for all the gas used.
In hindsight I think the decision to get out of nuclear was wrong, especially before getting out of coal. But keeping the last 3 running for some more months isn't really a solution for anything.
It's irrational that Germany is shutting down secure and climate friendly power plants while Europe is in the midst of an energy crises and a war.
The reason for the irrationality is that Germans (I'm one) do not want to admit that they've been wrong about nuclear energy for decades.
In retrospect it would be better if Germany did not decide to shutdown the nuclear, but presently this is a rational decision.
Yes they were, France uses around 40% electrical heating[1], Germany around 5%. Norway is almost entirely electrically heated.
1. From some quick online searching.
But look at France's portion of nuclear at the start of the 70s, then the 90s. There's no reason except political will that Germany couldn't do the same.
If you look at any longer term projections on the German or EU energy mix in the next 10-30 years, natural gas will still be critical to the energy mix in 2050 if current plans continue. E.g. [1] shows a nice summary of that.
Thus arguments like "efficient building codes" are a red herring. You'll still need to heat your efficiently insulated buildings.
The current plans for doing that are fundamentally still those spearheaded by Germany and others before 2014. If the EU has a serious commitment to longer term sanctions on Russia those plans need to change.
I don't think they will. I think we'll still be buying Russian gas then, and that Germany et al will find some way to sell out Ukraine in the next couple of years. But one can always hope for better.
1. https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-futur...
> natural gas will still be critical to the energy mix in 2050 if current plans continue. E.g. [1] shows a nice summary of that.
Being critical and being a large component are two different things -- and it's not that difficult to source smaller amounts of natural gas than what Germany uses today. As far as predictions for distant future are concerned...well, we know how e.g. IEA was able to botch those. So I really wouldn't take any predictions about 2050 for granted.
> Thus arguments like "efficient building codes" are a red herring. You'll still need to heat your efficiently insulated buildings.
Decreasing the energy required by a factor of five or so is not "a red herring". That's a massive change. Likewise, there's apparently a chance that by 2030, this will have been amended to require zero-energy buildings in the future.
If by "mitigate" you mean "make less painful", then indeed it is enough, as it's a step in the right direction.
A German produces almost twice as much CO2 as a Frenchmen. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
No, nobody will admit to that or change their minds, the end of nuclear in Germany will be celebrated as a success for the environment.
No, changing the opinion now would not matter. Germany killed its nuclear industry decades ago. Being right about this would have mattered in the 80s and 90s. You don't get the CO2 or methane that has been emitted back into the ground or the people that died out of the ground by being right in 2022.
That is under dispute. Its the entire reason they are shut down in the first place.
A lot of Germans believe (rightly or wrongly) that Japanese are as quality-conscious and dependable as they themselves. Corollary: if the Japanese can fuck up in the ways that led to Fukushima, then the German operators can fuck up in similar ways.
Now, these people may be wrong. But they made the decision. Until Fukushima, there was a net pro-nuclear vote, after, against, because these people switched.
If you want to argue about safety, I think you might do well do focus on the safety issue that made the significant voter segment change their opinion.
No, they're not. The shutdown decision was made (and put into binding law!) almost ten years before Fukushima.
Mine is that the decision to stop was taken by a government with a parliamentary majority in general, but narrow popular backing in this specific case. So the law at risk of revision if the right/wrong parties won an election. Some politicians thought revising it might be a good campaign issue.
The reacter lifetimes were extended after such an election, and I think it was a first step. If that had gone well, one of the parties in the coalition would've proposed revising the law before the next election. But it did not go well: "Fukushima ändert alles", said Merkel, and I think she was right. From that point on, the law aligned well with a broad majority of voters. Noone proposed a revision as a campaign issue after that point.
Those power plants can't be run next winter.
Contracts have been terminated, replacement parts with long lead times haven't been ordered, maintenance windows have been shifted in anticipation of the shutdown. It's possible to write new contracts and order new parts, so they could be back in operation, maybe sometime late in 2023.
But that would still leave them them down precisely in the period that matters most: Next winter.
Sounds like a long list of lame excuses.
The the usual politicians' way of speaking. If there was the political will of having the nuclear power plants works, they would go and find the spare parts in a second. There's no political will (thank you Greens!) so they make up excuses.
Globally a lot of harvests are falling through because of floods and heat waves. Combined with the inflation that's just starting to take off... Paying for life's necessities will be challenging for a lot of employed workers
Because of the cultural stigma associated with radiations (which itself comes from the very real fear of a world-ending nuclear war during the early cold war) most smokers would refused to live around a nuclear accident site, even though it's quickly (after the most radioactive elements, namely iodine, has decayed away) much less dangerous than the cigarette they knowingly smoke all day.
Fun fact: did you know that in Germany alone the area of what has been destroyed by coal mining is comparable in size to the exclusion zone of Fukushima. This is when things go alright with coal: https://nitter.42l.fr/autommen/status/1538496930262704128#m
viewed from space: https://nitter.42l.fr/KetanJ0/status/1383023566766096386#m
A long sustained risk is called "life".
That is way, way longer than we have anything like civilization!
A video I watched recently explaining a lot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k
Yet that is half the reason for the drama. The other half being Fukushima and Chernobyl.
Humans are not rational beings, hence we need to look at where their fear comes from, to find appropriate solutions.
2. As a consequence, the plants are in no shape to be run much longer without major refurbishment, rehinring and training personal. Also, the fuel rods are basically spent, new ones would have to be ordered and manufactured which takes quite some time. Want to guess where most fuel rods came from? (spoiler: Russia)
3. Yes, running them longer would have saved burning some coal which would be good for the climate.
4. They wouldn't have saved much, if any, gas burning. Gas power plants are "fast" plants, vs. nuclear plants, which are the slowest to change power output. Nuclear power plants consequently cannot replace gas power plants. On top of that, there are a lot of combined electricity/heating gas plants. They cannot be replaced by nuclear power either.
5. Electricity production is just a small fraction of gas usage, the biggest part goes to private home heating and of course, industrial usage.
So, yes, bad timing. Woulnd't have been a problem but for Putin attacking and utterly destroying parts of the Ukraine. But as things are, the best way to deal with is, to press forward with renewables instead of sinking more money into nuclear. (By the way, the real crisis is that only 50% of France nuclear powerplants are operating. Between heat and repairs, French power supply is under much greater pressure, actually often enough supported by Germany)
Can you back that up? To me it looks like only 5% of uranium is in Russia (https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/uranium-p...)
> They wouldn't have saved much, if any, gas burning
Compare to coal (that seems to be the tradeoff in Germany) nuclear energy kills 820x more people per produced energy unit. 820x the number of human lives lost.
C02 emissions are about 250x higher https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy#:~:text=....
And yes, the nuclear power plants produce less CO2 than coal. No doubt about that. But that is the consequence of a decision over 10 years ago. Unfortunately, the same government who decided that, didn't built up renewables at the required speed, actually slowed down the buildup of renewables.
This is going to change now rapidly.
It's not about mining. You need to enrich uranium first, and a massive portion of world's industrial capacity for that is in Russia: https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/commentary/re... - "Russia had around a 46 percent share of global enrichment capacity in 2018".
France is still paying MWh at far higher price than Germany now (see https://www.eex.com/en/market-data/power/futures#%7B%22snipp...). This may change with Russia closing the Nord Stream 1 but you can't say nuclear energy is the solution.
Also, since the origin of the electricity doesn't matter in this case, to say that you'd need to not shut down those nuclear plants is clearly wrong since you could just use the currently underutilized coal plants to get exactly the same effect -- except the lack of electricity is clearly not a problem.
Yes, long term we can talk about many alternatives, but it's july... august, september, and it's already cold, space heaters cost ~10eur (2kW) and are still available (atleast more available than the alternatives).
Also, pete is incredibly dirty in terms of air quality.
Same will be for anyone who is doing business with Putin's fascists today.
The US is a democratic country so far, Russia is not.
It’s incredibly childish, stupid and dangerous to pretend that these countries are all equally evil.
And while none of those countries may be involved in a military conflict right now, they've been in the past. Recently.
So given there is no good country selling gas right now, I prefer to get the cheapest one. Thanks.
It’s important to understand that Russia is a much bigger threat to European safety than the Saudis.
When it comes to defending central european borders, your whataboutism isn’t helpful.
You may call this cynical. But I think that this whataboutism that leads to inaction is the most cynical of all.
Must be fun looking in at all this from the sidelines.
We sent our soldiers to every shithole america decided to "bring democracy to", but now, ukraine has become so important, that we are willing to destroy our own economy and "passively fight" until the "last dead ukranian", to achieve what exactly?
it is often forgotten that this is exactly what the US did for the first 2-3 years of the war. Germany swallowed up the wealth of Europe. Britain had already swallowed up the wealth of a quarter of the world. the US swallowed up both of their wealth and ended the war with 2/3 of the world's gold
this is a simplification, but it's also huge overarching story of WW2 that is often missed. people know the US and Russia became the world's two superpowers, but there's very little attention paid as to how the US came to be one of them
Some ideas to evaluate, in no particular order. Some are (close to mainstream), others elephant's shit:
- accelerated LNG terminal buildouts (butchering Nordstream 2 and making it a terminal at the coast, ...)
- EU level natural gas purchasing
- carrots for lowering per capita energy consumption: insulation, contests, subsidies, ...
- temporary ban on use of cars with >= 3l engines
- 100 km/h EU wide maximum speed limit
- no private jet traffic except for medical emergencies
- temporarily extend/unmothball coal and nuclear electricity plants - temporary regulatory relaxation on wood harvesting for heating purposes
- 24/7 production at any and every solar panel, wind turbine, insulation and heat pump manufacturer - faster rollout of planned (hvdc) interconnects - EU wide helicopter money for paying energy bills or lowering them: per capita, differentiated by climate zone
- (possibly) concentrate large solar and green hydrogen projects in southern EU (higher immediate returns)
- intensive direct wage support for employees in temporarily loss-leading energy intensive sectors
- ..._
Also, your question is far more complex and not comparable to the russo-ukraine war.
For one, the geo-political situation prior to WW2 and especially compared to today might aswell be from a completely different planet. Prior to world war 2, a intranational political union like the EU did not exist, not to mention most countries in europe weren't democracies at the time.
Here anti-Russian notion was written in genes in cruel ways for generations
There're plenty of polls about views on Russian-Ukraine war. And views are pretty one sided.
Another division is people who were moved here by soviet government. It's not uncommon that the old generation, born outside of Lithuania, lives in Russian media, sometimes not even speaking Lithuanian after decades of living here. Yet their (grand)children are well integrated into Lithuanian society, including anti-Russian notion.
.... and then we have our own bunch of Russofiles for various reasons. Including among youth, and even what you'd call liberal youth. Some famous people now do incredible stunts to cover pre-Russian-invasion actions. While others stick to their guns.
I have a declared fascist father in law, and he sided with Putin from the very start (his opinions are generally an unimaginative mirror of what he reads in the major Italian newspaper he reads)
[0] "Energy content of gas storage sites in the EU". At the time of posting, it is mostly smooth but has a very steep drop at the end. from about 77 to 58 GW*year.
> Be careful, this realtime graph is not always correct (especially the last hour)!