How did divers manage to blow up the Nord Stream pipeline? | Hacker News Reader

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

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71 pointscolinprince85 comments

Yet this could be precisely why the saboteurs used [Andromeda]. To stay undetected and unaccountable — which they managed to do until the charges were made public this week.

It's well worth reading the Spiegel piece from a year ago, which is far more in-depth and goes over a lot more of the evidence and plausibility of the scenario. It's odd to me ARD would put out this highly similar but 90% slimmed down and far less convincing article and not even mention the earlier and more authoritative Spiegel report.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/investigating-th...

I guess the ARD take is intentionally more on the side of infotainment. There's also this WSJ article from a few days ago which purports to know some very specific facts and even to have quotes from participants of the operation: https://archive.ph/Ka8HB

It also of course claims

> In the wake of the attack, which took out three of the four conduits forming the pipelines, energy prices surged.

which is trivially disprovable, not least because the pipelines were not transporting any gas and hadn't for a while. They are too busy writing fiction they don't bother to verify even the most basic things.

> which is trivially disprovable, not least because the pipelines were not transporting any gas and hadn't for a while.

This doesn't disprove anything. Energy prices could still have surged for multiple reasons, e.g. because countries might have worried about similar attacks on other, active pipelines and might have become more eager to boost their reserves. We'd have to look at some actual stats, but even then it might be hard to tell apart any effects from the utter market chaos at the time.

I don't understand; I looked at the actual stats. It's clear you didn't. There was no surge.

Can you publish the "stats" here?

Marked for your convenience:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVCwMmbXsAAaaZM?format=jpg&name=...

Look, blowing up Nord Stream made natural gas cheaper!

This seems to show an (ongoing) increase of some energy prices in Germany after Sep 22:

https://media.aroundhome.de/image/upload/f_auto/q_auto/w_800...

I mean, the sentence in the article is very vague. "Energy prices surged". Which energy? How soon? For how long? Where? For which buyers (private or public)? It could mean a lot of things, so I'll grant this one line of journalism isn't great. Journalism isn't easy, though. I have no opinion on the WSJ in particular as I don't really know it, but if you dismiss everything that has a few sloppy lines in it, you might not necessarily end up with the best sum of information.

This is a few pixels on a consumer price index. Which energy - do you want to make a guess? What is a surge to you?

You can be right about the stats but still wrong with your reasoning. Markets are often impacted by all kinds of events.

> not transporting any gas and hadn't for a while

yeah, "a while" = 1 month. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/31/business/nord-stream-1-eu... "the most basic" aka cnn

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

It's not traders who speculate with the prices (which could also be), it's the countries who where buying enough supply for months. Yeah sure, it could trigger a surge in supply in order prevent a shortage.

While technically possible, carrying a 500 kg payload at depths beyond 50 meters is extremely challenging and would typically involve commercial diving teams, saturation diving techniques, or the use of ROVs.

Handling a 500 kg payload is more feasible at shallower depths due to lower pressure and shorter decompression requirements.

At 30-50m depths, the challenges increase, and more sophisticated equipment (e.g., lift bags with remote controls) is likely required.

Typically, multiple large lift bags are used to make the payload neutrally buoyant or slightly negatively buoyant. The operation of these bags requires at least two divers, but ideally, a team of 3-4 divers should manage the lift bags to control the ascent and descent accurately. The payload needs to be guided and stabilized during the descent to prevent it from spinning, tilting, or drifting. This typically requires 2-3 divers focusing solely on keeping the payload steady.

At such depths, safety divers are essential. They provide assistance in case of emergencies, such as a diver getting entangled with the payload or a lift bag malfunctioning. At least 2-3 safety divers would be advisable. A dive supervisor or lead diver should be responsible for overseeing the operation, managing communications, and coordinating the divers' actions.

Minimum Team Size: Lift Bag Management: 3-4 divers. Payload Control: 2-3 divers. Safety and Supervision: 2-3 divers (including a dive supervisor). This brings the total minimum team size to around 7-10 divers.

In addition to the divers in the water, a surface support team, including a dive supervisor, tender, and possibly a medic, is essential. If available, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) can assist with the operation, potentially reducing the number of divers needed for direct handling.

It is bizzare that one arrest warrant was issued when many people were involved.

> While technically possible, carrying a 500 kg payload at depths beyond 50 meters is extremely challenging and would typically involve commercial diving teams, saturation diving techniques, or the use of ROVs.

Those conditions would be challenging during the day, but what about at night? That seems downright impossible without a huge professional operation, not some poor maintained pleasure boat.

The closest equivalent I can think of is cave diving but those tend to have guidelines placed by expert teams and those often take many expeditions over several years to fully place.

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

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

Where does the 500kg figure come from? I don’t see it in the article.

I’m also surprised about the 220lb figure mentioned in the article. Assuming a steel twinset, and 4 extra cylinders, we barely get to 60-70kg. Where do the remaining 30-40kg come from?

It was an estimation made up early in the coverage by experts when they didn't even know what kind of explosives were used (it's Octogen).

If its HMX (Octogen) then two kilograms is a bit more than sufficient to get the job done. Even 1.2kg is likely sufficient.

Is that 500kg mass or negative buoyancy? Because 500kg of octogen (density of 1.91g/cm³) which thus would take up 261800cm³. An item of that volume and mass would only be 230kg negatively buoyant in sea water.

Still very heavy, but basically neutral with 2 large lift bags (you can easily find 150kg pyramid lift bags for about 1-200€ each).

It sounds like many of these requirements are for safety and reliability.

I can imagine that participants in a war would be much more risk-tolerant than a typical team of professionals would be. Maybe they're okay with a high-ish chance of failure, injury, or death, and so they resource the mission within the limits of what they have, or what they believe will pass unnoticed?

The Germans believe that there were several people. Not 10, but several. The constraint was that they had to be able to pose as vacationers.

Skepticism is warranted for sure, but we shouldn't underestimate what highly motivated and courageous people can do.

Losing a 500 kilogram bundle of explosives in the Baltic Sea is also not an acceptable mistake.

Worth the risk. That's like a single bomb.

I still don't understand why Denmark and Sweden said they believed that “several hundred kilograms” of explosives were used. It's bizzare.

What makes you think that’s bizarre? Presumably one could calculate this from seismic data of the blast, after accounting for the fact that there was still gas in the pipeline despite it not being in use.

How about we go in two trips? Your max divers are cut to 5. Two trips is not operationally impossible, and perhaps the diver swim distance allowed the asset that held the first payload was able to be close enough to make the full payload delivery in two trips. Perhaps we cut down the payload into thirds - 3.3 divers per trip, assume we can round up due to military divers being trained in mission specific tasks and physically conditioned to preform these duties above average diver capability, that could put us even lower.

Do you really think that a team blowing up a pipeline as part of an on ongoing war is necessarily going to follow all best practices and safety recommendations?

I think your comment is bizarre. Did you use an LLM to write it? I don't think many humans would write Lift Bag Management with L, B, M in upper case like that.

Why would you need 500kg of explosives? That's massively overkill.

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

Do the pipelines want to explode? How high is the pressure? There’s no oxygen there so the gas itself won’t explode.

The pipeline must be fairly heavy duty to handle pressure and rough conditions on the seabed. And punching a small whole is probably not enough as it could potentially be fixed?

> How high is the pressure?

It's probably similar to a normal gas tank, as the gas is liquefied inside it.

If it "wants" to explode or not will depend on how it's built. But the one sure thing is that the explosive is on the wrong side of it (outside), so all the important forces are on shear and other secondary effects.

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

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

A 85-95% methane, ethane, propane, and butane environment like that which was found in Nord Stream 2 is not flammable because there is no oxidizer present (typically oxygen) under water. Carbon dioxide and Nitrogen are non-combustible and made up the remainder of the gases in the pipeline.

"Handling a 500 kg payload"

1kg would be enough to breach a pipe. A single determined diver, not necessarily following OSHA rules could do it.

The question I have is, what side is Germany on? They're cutting or suspending military aid, they are indicting Ukrainians, they are blowing up their own energy production making them more dependent on Russian natural gas. WTH?

https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-halt-new-ukraine-mil...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germany-halve-military-...

In a letter to the U.N. Security Council from Sept. 29, three days after the incidents, Denmark and Sweden said they believed that “several hundred kilograms” of explosives had been used to damage the pipes, each of which measures more than three-and-a-half feet in diameter and is made from steel encased in weighted concrete.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/world/europe/nord-stream-...

https://archive.is/00tvb

The German security, media, and political establishment has been completely infiltrated by Russia over the past 30 years. So many of Germany's bad decisions over the past few decades can be explained by this.

Germany taking in millions Syrians is often viewed by critics through the lens of "(naive) empathy". But they were just helping Russia get rid of anti-Assad Syrians.

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

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

The article, funnily enough, made a better argument in pointing that Andromeda sailing boat might not have been involved - but rather some other vessel. The whole article felt like reading a 'proof by contradiction in prose' - from the shabby state of diving enclosure, to the extreme technicalities in executing the sabotage, and lastly even mentioning naval presence in the area.

As a person not following the details of Nordstrom case, this article didn't tell me anything new except how a skeleton crew on a shabbily maintained skiff could/couldn't blow up a pipeline (better technical discussion offered by user:greenavocado in other thread). Are there other state actors involved? Maybe. Is it being used as a distraction for some cover-up? Possibly. Who knows

And the icing: the person charged criminally is 'one Mr. Volodymir Z, who denies being involved' :)

Often reporters can’t get a story past editors or into the headline but they manage to slip things into the body of the article if you read between the lines.

It was enlightening to read/watch the realtime assessments of the sabotage from US leadership. The original storyline from American leadership was that Russia did it. That this story got any legs was an insult to the intelligence of any thinking person. The pipeline was a major revenue source for Russia, and probably a major reason why Germany was slow to back Ukraine.

Eventually leadership realized that this was a terrible angle, and now the story is that they have no idea who did it.

My take is that it was either Ukraine or the U.S. And even if it was Ukraine, it was done with the U.S. president's approval and tactical support.

We were consuming different media at the time. I do not recall anyone serious making definitive statements about the perpetrators. Too many groups had the motive and opportunity to execute the plan. Given the small crew size required, it would not have even required national backing to execute. A professional diving crew would possess all the required equipment without additional funding.

I do not recall anyone serious making definitive statements about the perpetrators.

This might be narrowly literally true, but - especially in the context that apparently the CIA was aware of the Ukrainian plot to carry out the attack before it occurred - former CIA director Clapper saying "Russia is certainly the most likely suspect" or Biden's statement “Let me say this, it was a deliberate act of sabotage and now the Russians are pumping out disinformation and lies”

And the anonymous "officials familiar with the latest intelligence" informed CNN [If Russia did deliberately cause the explosions] that Moscow would likely view such a step as worth the price if it helped raise the costs of supporting Ukraine for Europe. US and western intelligence officials believe Putin is gambling that as electricity costs rise and winter approaches, European publics could turn against the Western strategy of isolating Russia economically. Sabotaging the pipelines could “show what Russia is capable of,” one US official previously told CNN.

And national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Friday that the US does not believe any NATO ally is behind the leaks.

etc ... I think it's fair to say this at least vaguely pointed finger at Russia communicated to the public an impression which US leadership knew to be false.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/28/politics/nord-stream-pipe...

Nobody from the "American leadership" said Russia did it.

They pushed back against disinformation spread by Russian propagandists like Seymour Hersh who were baselessly blaming the US and Norway without providing any credible proof.

Seymour Hersh were later exposed to be a unknowing useful tool for Russian handlers because his "US security source" was using Russian idioms that no Westerner would use.

Google "poor waif in his underwear".

What about this approach? Put the payload on an inflatable lifeboat. Anchor the boat, and try to get the anchor to land directly on top of the pipeline. Keep trying until sonar confirms succes. Thread the rope through a loop on the lifeboat. Partially deflate the lifeboat so that it slowly descends. The rope serves as a guide. Use sonar to check whether the charge is acceptably close to the pipeline. Cut the rope and leave.

If it was close enough, activate the charge remotely. Otherwise, just leave it there without activating it.

Only shows how little trust could be put on fixed infrastructure these days. From now on it has to be built in ways much more resistant to sabotage or attacks. In some ways this is already done: for example, renewable energy facilities are too spread out to be vulnerable, it takes too many and too powerful munitions to wreck a solar or wind power plant vs coal-fired one of comparable output. But gas pipelines are an entirely different thing.

> Only shows how little trust could be put on fixed infrastructure these days

You either introduce redundancy to get rid of single points of failure, or you invest in more reliable means to fulfill given requirements, and keep former main "pipe" as backup.

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

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

That's true. We should depend less on things that are so vulnerable. LNG is partially a solution though - a liquefaction or regasification terminal is easier to protect, and defence of shipping at sea is a well-debugged thing since WWI.

> defence of shipping at sea is a well-debugged thing since WWI.

When (presumably) the Royal Navy was in charge of it. Since WW2 it's been the US one that's handled it, but... Some pundits *cough*PeterZeihan*cough* have been saying for a while now that America is withdrawing from the role of World Police.

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

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

The substations and power lines are pretty vulnerable.

Electricity infrastructure like substations and power lines already have a proven method of redundancy by building more of it than needed. Also Russia's attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure shows that substations and power lines can be rapidly rebuilt.

A gunman killed power for tens of thousands by shooting electrical infrastructure. A coordinated attack at a lynchpin could do much worse.

  A gunfire attack on two electrical substations in rural North Carolina has left tens of thousands of people without power, schools closed, a curfew imposed, and authorities investigating what they say was an intentional, criminal attack.
  As the outages continued into Monday, questions persisted about who carried out the attack and what could have been their motive in knocking out power to Moore County and its 100,000 residents.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/05/1140775417/north-carolina-sub...

I’m enthusiastic about the wind plants were building off the East Coast, but I also worry that they have single points of failure where the power cables come in from the ocean. These could even be severed accidentally. I hope they’ve considered adding some redundancy to these links. There’s even a plan to build offshore power distribution networks up and down the whole East Coast which would potentially help (or hurt.)

Throughput of those cables isn't so huge. It takes an attack of enormous scale which will be impossible to hide or misattribute to cause significant power shortage over a wide area this way.

Well, these wind projects can be close to 1GW and they come onshore at one place. So that seems like it could be very disruptive. What am I missing?

Skip to "Group chartered sailing yacht" or even "Trained divers required" to avoid what reads as ML-generated SEO spam.

Related recent coverage about the failed arrest of one of the main suspects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41244947

> Yet this could be precisely why the saboteurs used [Andromeda].

Or it could be precisely why that boat was not used for anything of the sort.

This kind of argumentation reminds me of, "only a guilty man would protest that much against the charge laid against him".

The best scenario would have been for the pipeline to have never existed. This is the second best.

Yeah, if anything this shows up how hard and non-trivial it is. And they even suggest "they got the inadequate boat on purpose", oh really?

I think anyone with a mission hard enough wouldn't make it harder on themselves on such a triviality. Special missions will nerf themselves for a variety of reasons but here it's not coming out across as a particular good reason

Given the recent reporting of a real collision of a ship with an undersea pipeline from Finland to Estonia...this seems not likely....

What is missing....there was several entities tracking one distinct Russian ship big enough to cause such damage before and after the even occurred...then several years later...nothing about that specific ship....

> Given the recent reporting of a real collision of a ship with an undersea pipeline from Finland to Estonia...

Your use of the word "collision" makes it sound so... Accidental.

That was, IIRC, a Chinese ship, which:

1) Dragged its anchor[1] along the bottom of the sea for God knows how many miles, out in the middle of the Gulf of Finland, before they "just happened" to snag it on that telecommunications cable (IIRC; not a pipeline).

2) Then legged it across the Baltic and out through Öresund without responding to attempts at communication, and then home to China where authorities are denying Western investigators any access to the ship's crew.

Doesn't feel very accidental at all to me.

Buut... I don't see how it supports the hypothesis that it was the Russians who blew up NordStream 2. What's the logical connection?

___

[1]: Or some specialised implement designed to do the maximal amount of damage, but make it look like it was by an anchor?

Joe Biden said if Russia invaded Ukraine there will no longer be a Nord stream 2. "We will bring an end to it."

Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWUuhNd37WI&t=11

USA likely blew it up.

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