For all the criticism modern governments get (often rightly) it’s incredible how fast Germany built these new terminals.
And it does show we have just as much productive capacity in western societies today as we did 100 years ago. What’s missing is consensus that problems should actually be solved, not used to enrich yet another rentier class.
I hope Germany learns from this and keeps away some of the barriers to growth they regulated into existence.
I am 100% in favor of any technology that allows us to stop emitting CO2 in a short time-frame, including nuclear. My reservation about the pro-nuclear (online) argument is that it always seems to be framed more as an excuse to "punch some hippies" than as a serious effort to calculate the cost of deploying nuclear at scale, let alone an effort to marshal political opinion to a state that would allow for any of it to happen.
I've resigned myself to hoping France makes new investments so we can just buy it from them on the market. Nuclear isn't happening in Germany. Barely anyone in the anti-nuclear movement is willing to have a discussion beyond "Chernobyl was bad, THTR was a huge failure and waste disposal is a problem I will accept nothing but a perfect solution on".
> What are current feasible, sustainable solutions to long-term nuclear waste storage? Any pointers?
Bury it in geologically stable areas.
At some point: it will cool down on its own, or technology will be developed to re-use it in an economically-amiable fashion and we can bring it back up. We know how to re-process it [1] but no body really wants to pay for that.
As it stands: before we start worrying about what happens to nuclear "waste" 500+ years in the future, we have to get through the next 100 years and all the issues that climate change is causing right now.
All I know is that I'm more comfortable burying some extra waste next to the stuff we already have to bury somewhere (like Onkalo) than burn more fossil fuels. Trading long term for short term isn't the best, but I don't really see anything else getting us off a track to further global ecological devastation you couldn't cause with nuclear waste even if you were trying.
Yeah I've never heard of it, either. I haven't even really seen hippies in the opposition. They're just normal people who, as soon as they hear the word "nuclear", panic really hard and refuse to receive any new information that would actually address their concerns.
Try it. Say my concern is that the relevant nuclear operators are organisationally similar to TEPCO. Give me some new information that either explains how they are different, or explains that an organisation like TEPCO is well suited to run a nuclear reactor safely.
You're kind of proving my point here. Your concern is that an operator can be unsafe, which is valid and will always be true. So no, I won't argue against your contrived framing.
The only true fix would be a reactor and fuel design that can't melt down. A walk-away safe design that, even if you intentionally induced the worst disaster, still wouldn't pose a real threat to the public. Then it wouldn't matter if the operator was a cartoon villain determined to destroy the city.
This is the part that people still don't want to hear. They can't accept that their pet concern can be eliminated by approaching the problem differently and breaking their assumptions. They look for new concerns, but educating them doesn't help because when they run out of unaddressed concerns, they just circle back to old concerns that were already addressed. Their concern was never more than an excuse. They just want the answer to fit their preconceived notions.
For nuclear to be accepted, it needs better public messaging, because ultimately people are reacting emotionally rather than thinking critically.
You're not giving new information about my concern, you're trying to stay on another topic. You're answering the question you think I should have instead of the one I have.
Some of the relevant German organisations discarded dangerous waste at a construction site and then shredded the paperwork. That happened due to organisational traits, nothing to do with nuclear physics, but if my concern is that organisations with those organisational traits shouldn't be doing things with potential catastrophic effects, then you can't just answer with physics. Shredding paperwork is real, and my concern about is a concern to answer, not to ignore. If you ignore it, blame yourself for ignorance, not me for refusing to listen to "new information that addresses my concern".
This is similar to the Challenger space shuttle. NASA had organisational traits that led to powerpoint slides with seven different font sizes, and "the shuttle might burn" was in the smallest font size. The shuttle eventually did, and partly because organisation's culture was one to suppress risks using the smallest of seven font sizes. TEPCO did similar things at Fukushima — there was more emphasis on how to document that all requirements had been fulfilled than on maintenance. Sometimes that led to low costs and discrepancy between documentation and reality.
Risk has two components: severity and likelihood. Typically on a scale of 1-5 each.
Fukushima has severity 5 risks, and some people are willing to accept them as long as they think the likelihood is 1. But not you, and that's fine. Me neither, btw.
This is the problem that new technology is trying to address. Eliminate the severity 5 risks.
But a lot of people are resistant to taking stock of what's been eliminated so far and what hasn't. That's the problem with the public discourse. That's the new information that people reject. They only think along the likelihood axis and can't recognize when the severity has been reduced.
Going back to your concern. TEPCO is an operator. They can only affect the likelihood, not the severity. That's why I don't want to debate you about them. I don't want to convince you to accept a severity 5. I want to ask you where you think we are in eliminating the severity 5s.
> For nuclear to be accepted, it needs better public messaging, because ultimately people are reacting emotionally rather than thinking critically.
A great start would be not consistently lying about everything until the lies are indisputably proven and then pretending it never happened every single time about everything for over 70 years.
Demonstrate a walkaway safe pebble bed reactor or similar that doesn't break down constantly or start leaking unsustainable levels of Kr-85. Remediate the hundreds of contaminated mines, spills and processing sites that the buck is being passed on. Stop demanding unlimited indemnity from any accident exceeding a pittance. Actually tell the truth about contamination events and levels entailed in standard practise ahead of time. Allow actually independent third parties rather than industry bodies to confirm claims on site, and estimate costs that are somewhere in the ballpark of reality with no backroom 'service' contracts. Stop pretending you've 'solved' waste by gathering a quarter of the money required and saying "we'll probably bury the SNF somewhere", don't worry about all the low level and intermediate waste. Demonstrate the existence of a viable fuel source or breeding program that isn't walking a tight rope on the edge of prompt criticality. Demonstrate a reprocessing process that doesn't push an entire continent's coastlines to 5% of safe limits whilst producing barely enough fuel to run about 2GW of reactors.
Then it's worth considering as something that isn't just another scam.
Until that point the oligopily of the nuclear industry should be rightly treated as a bunch of craven ghouls who are having a tantrum because they were held to account and didn't get to hoard billions whilst killing millions of people like the coal barons did.
I'm not a marketing person. I have no idea how they'll address past bad behavior, dispel common myths, or educate about fundamentally new technologies that eliminate old problems. I'm just saying they'll eventually have to do it.
The alternative is we ignore the entire cesspit and acknowledge that accepting 2-5% of energy being provided by fossil fuels in a small minority of countries until storage matures is better than putting everything on hold and hoping that gifting a few trillion dollars to people who have done nothing but scam will work better.
You're pretending the option is fossil fuels or nuclear like every other concern troll. Never has been because nuclear is incapable of solving the problem.
You're illustrating the problem I described originally. When it's time to discus nuclear, people like you can't do it. You deflected by changing the subject to comparing different energy sources.
Refusing to acknowledge your attempt to force the conversation into a very narrow framing where the true source of risk and harm is ignored isn't deflecting. And your last point is incredibly disingenuous. Having a nuclear reactor isn't an end, having energy is. Refusing to acknowledge the existence of alternatives and that they beat your proposal on its supposed merits is the inabity to have a discussion.
This is an incredibly transparent attempt to frame a conversation in such a way that the only possible avenue of discussion is how long we have to sit on our thumbs and wait for a gen IV nuclear reactor to materialise whilst ignoring the absolute failure of any previous designs to deliver on their promise of cheap, clean, abundant, or safe power.
Your gaslighting is not as subtle as you think it is. Refusing to believe nuclear advocates isn't 'panic' or irrational when the lies have been so consistent for wellover three generations that assuming the opposite of what you say is a much better strategy for coming to correct conclusions than believing you.
In your mind, I'm trying to convince you to accept a risk that's unacceptable to you. But I'm not. I don't want to change your risk-tolerance.
It's very laborious explaining that to vehemently anti-nuclear people. Please read my other comment in this thread, because I'm not going to repeat myself.
No. You're trying to shift the focus away from reality and on to an imaginary world where an industry that has consistently lied and done the worst thing they can get away with will do the right thing if we stop holding them to account. And where the very real externalities at mines and fabrication plants and enrichment plants and reprocessing plants that have been accumulating since the 50s are not allowed to be spoken about. And where there will never be an actually bad accident in spite of the yearly near misses and frequent events that 'can never happen'. And where the promises of reactors that exist on paper will come true despite that being the opposite of what happened every single other time.
And you're positioning dealing with this as necessary due to an imagined need that can't be better solved with alternatives.
And instead of acknowledging the industry's unbroken history of gaslighting and lies you are positioning anything other than credulous paying of the scammers to continue doing nothing other than grift as an unfounded panic.
Either you haven't read the comment like I asked, or you're wilfully ignoring me. Again, I don't want to change your risk-tolerance. Do you understand what that means?
I understand perfectly what it means. You're continuing to try to paint any objection as an unfounded fear of an extremely rare event given the assumption that there is no mismanagement or corruption or lying, and to paint any scepticism about non-existent gen IV reactors as unfounded fear of them failing in the exact same ways.
Without specifying which non-existent design you are vaguely gesturing at, the objection cannot be made more concrete. One concern will be 'addressed' with a half lie about one technology, which then isn't allowed to come up when talking about a completely different technology where the half lie doesn't apply.
Gen III+ reactors have many many failure modes that 'can't happen' but require assumptiona and defense in depth princies that are regularly violated. MOX is a complete lie, especially with regard to Pu240 and Pu241 or meaningfully solving fuel shortages. There is nowhere near enough fuel for large scale expansion of them.
Molten salt reactors skate on the edge of prompt criticality and there's no process for cleaning the salt. They also leak constantly.
Sodium cooled Uranium breeders operate on the certainty of emitting more fission products into the ocean (or the Techa river) than fukushima did during reprocessing. Primary coolant leaks are also on fire in addition to being radioactive. They also catch fire constantly and skate on the edge of prompt criticality if used in breeding mode.
Neither has a strategy for dealing with the primary coolant after a plant is done or shuts early other than making the public pay to look after it for 50 years then putting it in a hole. Neither actually helps reduce Pu240 or Pu241 meaningfully. Neither can breed enough fuel to maintin a significant fleet of burner reactors.
HTGRs have yet to manifest and either no-one outside of the boys club will be allowed to make fuel for them or they will produce an order of magnitude more waste. The claims about having '3x' the fuel efficiency are based on 6x as much U235, so they actually run out of fuel twice as fast.
The lies about the rest of the fuel cycle are too numerous to summarize.
- we don’t have the mineral supplies for other non-fossil options
- nuclear has a better safety record, all in
- nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers
- nuclear can supply the base load
- nuclear produces rare elements that help with advanced medicine
But you can’t reason people out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, and many people were raised in a green-washed death cult. Like most religious people, they uncritically repeat that faith and become angered if you point out the inconsistencies.
My home country Sweden has plenty of Uranium but it is forbidden to extract it.
And this is the problem for the nuclear industry - due to political road blocks, everything is unnecessarily expensive and difficult.
Uranium mining has adverse side effects to the local environment. Few want an uranium mine in their area.
You could also say: uranium mining is incredibly expensive, and we're not willing to pay the cost, so we import it from countries where the cost is paid by someone else.
Would it really be so bad for Europe to depend on Australia and Canada for fuel? In theory, a single cargo ship delivery could power the entire continent for a year.
Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are hardly beacons of liberty, and might be susceptible to Russian pressure (though they may be more independent than I give them credit for), Namibia and Niger might not have mining standards superior to current Cobalt producers and China is China.
The best defense nigerian uranium mining has against slavery allegations is Uranium ore's abysmal energy density.
It would take an artisinal miner years or decades to gather a kg of uranium. They'd produce more electricity on a bicycle generator.
Which is not to say that they're paid well or given PPE or that radon levels are monitored, or that the tailings dams are kept to any sort of safety standards.
When you get things like "Activists have protested the arrival of [tanker LNG] acquired through fracking", during an energy crisis, it seems fair to point out that some people are just unreasonable.
Environmentalism's greatest enemy has been environmentalists.
Teddy Roosevelt et al. were able to get more done because they played realpolitik, and realized that getting 50% of what you want, even if you have to hold your nose at some compromises, is better than getting 100% of what you oppose.
If anti-nuclear protesters were serious about ranking their worries, they'd be supporting the IAEA trying to cordon off the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station from the war ASAP.
So every nuclear capable nation on Earth is ruled by this fear cabal? What else can this powerful cabal do, end world hunger or colonize the moon?
If nuclear was everything it proponents claimed it to be, there would be at least one country on Earth going all in on them. Nuclear is useful in the power mix but it's value is way overstated. It is not an economical choice, if it was no amount of lobbying would stop them from being built. Coal usage did not decrease due to intense environment lobbying, but only when cheaper alternatives were available.
>What else can this powerful cabal do, end world hunger or colonize the moon
The combined money lobbying power of energy companies could almost certainly end world hunger. Probably not colonize the moon but certainly establish a permanent base.
The safety profile of hydro and nukes are dominated by large rare events, which makes prediction tricky. Hydro is much less safe historically because of a single event: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Banqiao_Dam_failure
Wind and solar don't have catastrophic failures, but people installing and repairing them do sometimes fall. Residential rooftop solar is especially bad here, since the deaths are divided over a relatively small amount of generation capacity. Still, overall wind and solar are safer than nukes, and data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats.
> data sources saying otherwise generally are using pre-Fukushima stats.
I thought only one person died as a direct result of the Fukushima meltdown? And the other deaths attributed to it were due to poor handling of the people who evacuated; basically frail people dying in temporary shelters, unrelated to the nuclear aspect.
I had thought that counting evacuation deaths was correct, since I'd thought the evacuation was to reduce the risk if far more radiation was released. But reading up on it now, it seems like the evacuation was after the risk of that was over, and was in response to the current levels of radiation? In which case it looks like a large overreaction.
Old stats is the answer, but not because of Nuclear.
The wind and solar industries are ramping exponentially, and the death rates are usually done per TWh generated. The solar deaths are heavily weighted towards the start (mining, installation) while the energy produced lags and accumulates over decades.
The stats used to show that rooftop solar was slightly more dangerous that nuclear per TWh, but the number is dropping faster for solar so it's not been true for years.
The slighlty more important point is how far ahead nuclear solar and wind are, compared with fossil fuels. It's a stark difference.
The nuclear stat is missing all the deaths of miners and people living near mines and old tailings dumps.
Similarly solar is missing all the silver (and past Cd/Te/In/etc miners) miners and people dealing with pollution and wind is missing knock on effects from rare earths and PFCs (nuclear may also be, but we don't get any public info on the LCA of UF6 production or what modern centrifuges are made of).
The first is ongoing however, and the second is decreasing exponentially.
People forget that the "evacuation" happened after (and because of) a tsunami/earthquake that killed 20000 people. That was the real root cause of all the deaths.
The immediate cause of most off the "evacuation" deaths, was that a large number of very old people were exposed to moderate amounts of stress due to being relocated which caused them to die slighly before what they might otherwise have. (Kind of like when we count terminal cancer patients as dying "from Covid" if they had covid when dying).
For these people, there was no medical reason to relocate them in the large majority of cases. If you're 80+, a few MSv of exposure has no effect on you life expectancy, since you will die from other sources long before any cancer can develop.
In other words, very few years of expected life were lost, and those that WERE lost, was almost entirly due to a huge overraction to whatever increase in radiation there may have been. Which, I would argue, should primarily be blamed on anti-nuclear fear-mongering propaganda.
Imagine a racist couple living in a suburb when a Mexican family moves in to the next-door house, stressing them out. If the racist husband dies from a stress related illness after that, I would argue it was his racism that killed him, not the Mexican family.
Spreading excessive (as in actual misinformation) anti-nuclear propaganda is like spreading such racism or similar forms of prejudice or bigotry. It doesn't matter if it's Greenpeace or Tucker that spreads the propaganda.
The fact is that the Fukushima plants were built at a time when the only alternative was coal. Had they never been built, Japan would have built coal plants with the same capacity at the same time.
Given the amount of toxic polution caused by old coal plants over such a time span, I'm sure Nuclear Power in Japan has saved 10s if not 100s of thousands of lives to date, even before counting any damage from global warming.
And Japan is STILL building new coal plants, partly because of the anti-nuclear propaganda, which will continue to cause harm long into the future.
If anything, the vast majority of deaths that will happen as a consequence of the Fukushima incident, will be due to several countries shutting down (or failing to build) nuclear plants while still relying on large amounts of dirty fossil fuels, in many cases still including coal/lignite.
I'm not sure it's tenable to just evacuate young people from a radiation zone. There still needs to be people to service the old people's needs.
I do take your point, I interpreted the parent to mean that the reason for the evacuation was radiation. In that case I'd still maintain that the deaths should be attributable to the nuclear incident.
Agreed man years lost may be a better measure. I'm not sure what the morality is Vis a vis valuing a young person's life more that an old person, as a society though, we seem to have come the conclusion that an old person's life is more valuable than it should rationally be.
I don't think it's reasonable to resort to whataboutism. Yes nuclear energy has probably saved lives overall, but it still costs lives. If a plane crashed should we accept the people died due to the plane crash or should we discuss how it's much safer than driving?
I suppose half the problem is that humans are bad at evaluating risks. So I'm not averse to contextualising the risk, but the contextualising cart shouldn't be put before the actual quantified risk horse.
The "one" figure ignores deaths caused by evacuation SNAFUs. But if some event causes an evacuation and the evacuation has a normal number of mishaps, then that event causes those mishaps. Evacuations are rare and happen under unusual circumstances, they will suffer from SNAFUs.
You can't cause an evacuation, expect that it'll go perfectly and deny any responsibility when it doesn't.
Construction deaths are added to wind and solar, but people don't add mining and construction deaths to nuclear (that said, they don't add it for hydro either).
If you use the pretty tortured metric "human lives lost per KWh energy produced" then yes (as of now). You know what would have an even better safety record according to that metric? Chucking the earth into the sun.
> nuclear doesn’t require we do business with cobalt slavers
Looking over the border to France, can it? The forecasted load factor for French nuclear power generation this year is 51.5% and the energy there is probably the most expensive in whole of Europe.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
Nuclear is an ideal base load provider because nuclear plants really like to run 100% of the time, only shutting down for refueling or maintenance. Which is exactly what you want to meet a demand that exists 100% of the time.
If you have enough generation, nuclear is an ideal base load provider.
That's exactly the counterpoint I'm trying to make: a lot of French reactors were and are down "for maintenance", making it very much not the ideal base, or any, load provider.
That's something we never hear from nuclear power proponents, why?
Many french power plants use nearby rivers as a source of coolant. A big issue last summer was that rivers carried not enough water to reliably provide cooling.
Thanks to climate change, this situation will likely become more common in the future.
France's electrical grid has a vastly lower climate footprint than, for instance, Germany's, due to the nuclear plants. If it turns out that water supply remains and issue in future years (and was not just a fluke), I expect they will find ways around that (either by allowing sligtly warmer spill water or by using hydro dams to store more energy for the summer.
Anyway, Germany and France are essentially the same grid, so differences in consumer prices tend to be determined largly by transport costs and the costs of neighboring countries.
German power gets cheap when they can import from Scandinavia, Poland and Central Europe, and expensive when they have to export to those. French power is similarly affected by imports/exports to Spain, Italy and the UK.
If you want to compare nuclear costs to other sources, you have to look at production costs for PLANNABLE energy for a conglomerate of sources, adjusted for risks and externalities (dry spells, reliance on dictatorships or other unstable or adverserial countries, market prices for commodities, pollution and climate change, etc).
If you adjust for all externalities, especially polution and climate change, I'm convinced French electrical production is far, far cheaper per stable GW of output than Germany's.
That does not change the fact that nuclear plants are currently failing at providing sufficient baseload capacity in the one EU country that has the most of them.
Yes, that's true. You're misinterpreting that fact. That's the problem. France wants to extend the lifetime of fully depreciated reactors, and hasn't provisioned enough capacity to do all the maintenance required. That could happen with any generation method.
Yet it has happened with this generation method.
In fact the problem has more causes: France has stopped investing in new nuclear plants, in part because they felt safe the old plants will continue to work as usual which they won't as we see, but also because their new EPR design is a complete failure. The Flamanville EPR plant was scheduled to go productive in 2012. It's 2023 and it still isn't. Olkiluoto, another EPR in Finland went briefly productive in 2022 but soon new faults were discovered. And don't even look at the cost overruns for these plants.
So the current situation is EDF will be nationalized to avoid going bankrupt, and who knows when and if the stress corrosion issue with older reactors will be resolved. Let's just hope there will be enough water in the rivers and reservoirs for them to use, because the droughts are worsening. Meanwhile the EPR reactors are still not working and their construction company Areva was taken over by EDF to avoid going bankrupt.
But I do not live in France, I live in Slovakia and we have another nuclear plant under construction, Mochovce 3. Mochovce 3 construction was restarted in 2008, to be finished in 2014. It's 2023 and any time now it should be finally going productive, after a 15 year construction and about 300% cost overruns. And the energy company may have to be saved by the state as a result.
And these are not exceptions, it's the same for Hinkley Point C in the UK and probably other new plants at least in Europe as well.
So it's very strange when someone writes about stable and cheap nuclear energy production and somehow never mentions current huge issues with it.
And the point is wrong if you have to wait 15 years and go bankrupt for excellent baseload (and whether the whole baseload thing makes sense at all is also a very good question) that may or may not work depending on water availability.
Especially if you have alternatives, and it looks like we could build a lot of renewables and storage combined with say green hydrogen or ammonia. With lower risk and gradually. And not spend the next 100 years and countless billions decommisioning them.
But then it looks like it is the best base load tech, until someone actually tries to build it. Then it becomes a huge commitment and a burden for >100 years (20y planning, permissions, building + 60y lifetime + ???y decommissioning and waste management).
What if storage (or hydrogen/ammonia storage and peakers) is already good enough, but we are not building it because we are blinded by the empty promises of nuclear utopia? I guess we will see in a few years as the first efforts of this type go online.
I can't understand the mindset that says nuclear has been some sort of overwhelming force in power generation. It's been the most tentatively adopted generation tech in history; we've ignored the guaranteed radiation of coal mining while we've had endless worry about nuclear power.
We've pumped a huge amount of money and time into talking about and researching and building renewables, with a much smaller promise of return. Which is fine, but it seems very surprising to speculate that popular nuclear has overshadowed poor unpopular renewables.
> it seems very surprising to speculate that popular nuclear has overshadowed poor unpopular renewables.
Depends on your social circles or information sources I guess. What I get from mine (including HN) is that nuclear power is the correct technocratic solution to the world's problems. It has no downsides. Meanwhile renewables are ugly and not worth the investment. And I am only exaggerating a little.
> We've pumped a huge amount of money and time into talking about and researching and building renewables, with a much smaller promise of return.
I don't understand this, and also don't agree with it. The yearly new photovoltaic installed capacity is reaching hundreds of GWp. Even with a load factor of 15% it's adding much more capacity than we ever could with current nuclear technologies. And also much cheaper. The typically conservative IEA predicts new 600 GWp/year in 2030, but already in 2022 the world has added 268 GWp (according to BNEF) and will hit over 300 this year. Yes, the storage and smarter grids need attention. But overall renewables are absolutely worth the money and time they get.
Those are household prices, pretty much irrelevant in this case as they are decided by national regulators and often subsidised. Have a look at wholesale prices. Those were around 1000e/MWh between August and November:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Emericdevigan/status/160997302993...
Renewable generation in Germany has quadrupled in the last decade (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Germany). You're framing it differently, but your argument is mostly just about "nuclear" and will devolve into the same tired arguments. So I'll give my standard statement, I guess:
Nuclear is failing not because of resistance from hippies or whatever. It's failing because it's far, far, far too expensive, by more than an order of magnitude vs. other renewable choices. There's zero value in spending Euros on a reactor when we could build a bazillion wind turbines and hydro pumps and battery farms for that cash. Nuclear might have a home at the very end of the process when we're trying to wind down the last of the gas peaker plants. But no, nuclear will never represent a significant fraction of renewable power generation. Never. No one wants to write that check.
We're already in serious trouble due to climate change, and our future looks increasingly bleak due to it becoming worse.
It's a big enough issue that the whole world should really be at war with burning fossil fuels right now, our best minds should be focused on solving this issue, yesterday.
What this article proves proves is that we're capable of solving really hard problems in very short amounts of time, "if the inventive is there". Clearly it was, I can't help but feel it has a little bit to do with profits and political motivations, which is why moving to renewables is happening (because it makes economic sense), but is the political drive and will to do more there? I don't think so.
it's too expensive because of resistance from hippies who constantly interfere with more regulations and changing regulations and requirements. They can be built safely and cheaply and mined with local swedish uranium if not for all of the ever shifting regulations from the political resistance tactics.
If that were true then there would be a reactor somewhere in the world beating wind power on cost, and there isn't. Even Chinese reactors, constructed under a regime that criminalizes hippies and regulates only for the benefit of the party leaders, are reliably late and over budget. Ex: Fangchenggang-3 is a new unit of an existing design on an already-operating site. It began construction 8 years ago, was supposed to be operational two years ago, and hasn't reached criticality yet.
It just doesn't work. You can blame your political enemies if you want, but that's not going to make a reactor appear.
It is the same spirit of pocketing profits and deferring problems to later generations that is behind nuclear power as it is behind fossil fuels. Both are evil. By acknowledging this, Germany is ethically ahead of most other societies on this planet.
Considering the nuclear power shutdowns, it's not so clear that any acknowledgement was made. To me, it seems to confirm business as usual, especially the continued expansion of lignite mines.
yes! wind, solar and decentralized buffer storage can make us independent from both mined fuels, uranium and fossils, real fast once there is a political willpower to do so.
Merkel as a quantum physicist, a PhD at that, knew how to read statistics and forecasts. her exit from nuclear was an incredibly wise and far sighted political measure. I hope we'll be wise enough to stick with it.
had to lol at praising Merkel. Well what _actually_ happened was that due to nuclear lobbying her cabinet decided in 2010 to stall the already decided exit by the former government under chancellor schröder (in 2004 ircc). Then 9 months later Fukushima happened and due to german angst in public polls she announced 3 days afterwards to make the nuclear exit even shorter than in the beginning which happened to be end of 2022. This all led to hefty fines (ircc couple billions) paid by tax payers.
Well I think she deserves praise for her actions around the refugee crisis around 2015 which took some guts on her side.
But along with her erratic nuclear policies she left highly crusted public authorities, a failed energiewende towards renewables, a strategic disaster in terms of russian gas and a dysfunctional army among many other things.
She always presented opportunism as a legit style of doing politics ("Politik der kleinen Schritte") oftentimes leading to absurd compromises and systematic short-sightedness.
Her conservative party started copying US Republican tactics which harms the German system even more because it is much relying on compromises between political camps.
For me the only remarkable attribute about her is her willingness to do anything to stay in power. I'd bet she didn't even know what for.
They didn't exactly build a terminal, they upgraded an existing jetty to allow a floating terminal to dock and connect to the gas network on the main land. Engineering-wise it was a fairly straightforward job.
LNG is not a gas, it is a cryogenic liquid. Cryogenic liquids are not easy, but are anyway not "under extremely high pressure", nor is LNG especially explosive: there is rarely enough oxygen immediately at hand for a good explosion, as opposed to a big fire. (Rockets would have a big tank of LOX right there.)
A big fire can be bad, but is nothing like a detonation.
If you zoom out far enough, nothing is straightforward. I bet most people on this site would consider building a small-scale CRUD app straightforward, but if you ask them to start from pure silicon and a bit of metal nobody could pull it off.
Germany already operates about 40,000 km of natural gas pipeline. This was a 26km extension in a flat and rural/industrial area. There was no engineering challenge here that they hadn't already pulled off hundreds of times before.
Floating terminals can be relocated anywhere in the world on short notice. It’s an LNG processor with a ship built around it. They’re also cheap, typically ~$50M-$100M/year to lease.
Of course, but nevertheless it was fast. It should be noted, however, that what has been built so far is only a precursor to a "real" terminal that has yet to be built. And that environmental concerns have not been adequately considered due to the hasty implementation. The special circumstances caused by the failures of previous governments have also prompted the Green Party, under whose ministerial initiative the construction took place, to prioritise speed over thoroughness. However, due to these special circumstances and the previous negligence, this case is not suitable as a general recommendation for the future.
The government introduced a 'red tape cutting law' to speed up the process (also, it's remarkable because it's the first 'high profile project' in Germany I can remember that was finished in time).
Not sure if it qualifies as "high profile", but the Emscher renaturization project (5 billion euro budget from 1992 to now), which included digging a 51 km underground canal was on-time and on-budget as far as I can tell.
Well, the 'red tape' exists so that the public also has a say in the planning process of infrastructure projects (it is their money after all that pays for those projects, but also often unfortunately results in pointless NIMBY-ism of small interest groups).
So cutting the red tape actually means taking away freedom from the people, which is a serious matter and shouldn't be taken lightly (I agree though that the two sides of the problem need to be better balanced in Germany - in the end the main problem (usually) isn't the government, but a public opinion that's somewhere between indifferent to openly hostile towards change / progress).
Red tape provides space for graft, which wants projects never completed. Grafty projects are finally completed when it looks like the money would dry up regardless.
Nukes are among the graftiest projects (alongside urban tunnels, some places). NB, even without the graft and even discounting public subsidy, they would be among the most expensive power sources, so there is never a good reason to build one.
In unrelated news, "As investigators piece together clues, Russia has quietly taken steps to begin expensive repairs on the giant gas pipeline, complicating theories about who was behind September’s sabotage." [1]
As a European I'm glad the CIA/Poland/aliens blew up the pipelines that were funding the Russian invasion.
Even the environmental effect was minor; the methane emission from the leaks had 1/5th of the GHG effect of my small country's, Denmark, annual GHG emission.
Europe continues to send more money than ever to Russia [1], whether by proxy or not. Industrial terrorism against Germany, by US/UK/etc., does not change that.
What is does do is reinforce the European dependency on Washington, as evidenced by this post.
No question the European dependency on Washington is currently reinforced.
However, it just occured to me that LNG terminals have one big advantage over a Russia-Europe pipeline: There is exactly one country that can send gas through a pipline that starts in Russia.
There are many countries that can send ships to our LNG terminals.
If, how, and when we make use of that flexibility is another question completely, of course.
This was true because of the all time high natural gas prices (€350/MWh) and high oil prices, both of which have now dropped to pre-war levels (~€70/MWh).
"Pre-war levels" is a disingenuous sleight-of-hand. Gas was at €15-20 in winter 20-21 before Zelensky declared his intent to assault Sevestapol, after which the price gradually quadrupled. All before Russia invaded.
It's really not if we're talking about the sum of payments to Russia from EU for oil/gas. Before the 24th, the share of Russian gas was hovering above 50% of total EU imports and when the price skyrocketed, the dollar value of imports did as well. Your link cuts off at Q2 2022, which is when the price was at it's highest. Since then, Russian gas imports have dropped off a cliff as well as the price. As of Dec 2022, EU imported only about 1/5 of the amount of gas from Russia that they did Dec 2021. Given the new (and planned) LNG capabilities, that percentage will only keep dropping.
So yes, EU did pay the most money they've ever paid for gas to Russia, but that was a one-off situation, which is not going to repeat. Russia overplayed it's hand.
Adding another nail to the coffin claiming Russia blew up their own pipeline.
At some point we have to face reality that it was the west and most likely the UK and US in a joint operation as the no one else has such capabilities.
Once we accept that we need to ask ourselves (as Europeans) who is really on our side and who has OUR best interests in mind.
I don't blame the US for taking advantage of a crisis but we need to stop being so gulable to believe they won't as they have time and time again.
> Adding another nail to the coffin claiming Russia blew up their own pipeline.
Or not. Blowing up NS1 to pressure Germany to allow NS2 to open wouldn't be inconceivable, while also pushing up the price of gas through other pipelines. It's risky and stupid, but that also describes most of what Russia's been doing the last 9 months.
Implicit in the threat of “do what we say, or we turn the gas off” is “and we’ll let you keep the gas if you do”. Russia’s threats become completely empty and meaningless if the blackmailees know that the blackmailer can’t turn the gas back on.
The game theory becomes totally boring when both outcomes are “Europe doesn’t have gas”. The obvious strategy becomes “just support Ukraine because there is no penalty for doing so”. Which is the opposite of what Russia wants.
It also forces Europe to find other gas sources… after which, any future attempt to use gas for blackmail is less effective. Again, opposite of Russia’s interests.
> Russia’s threats become completely empty and meaningless if the blackmailees know that the blackmailer can’t turn the gas back on.
Empty threats are Russia's MO and have been for literal decades now. They've threatened Europe with nukes so many times that it doesn't even make the news anymore when it happens. Also, NS1 was not the only operational pipeline and it would have been a massive win for Russia if Germany had flipped their decision on NS2 to ensure their own gas supply. And clearly if they're working on NS1 now, it wasn't damaged beyond repair.
> Putin may be stupid, but he’s not that stupid.
I don't know, it sure looks like it. Most of his recent actions seem to be best explained as short-term fixes to a massive strategic blunder. It's only human to try to read into things and assume there must be some greater plan to his moves.
> Empty threats are Russia's MO and have been for literal decades now. They've threatened Europe with nukes so many times that it doesn't even make the news anymore when it happens.
And would those threats be more or less credible if Russia unilaterally destroyed all their own nukes (and proved that they had done so)?
> Most of his recent actions seem to be best explained as short-term fixes to a massive strategic blunder.
Uh huh. And how does this help him, exactly? Putin must be the dumbest person to ever play eleventy-seven degree chess with such skill.
It's been reported that the pipeline is encased in concrette which had to be removed before placing the explosives. Additionally several ships with proper diving gear and crew had to go there and stay undetected.
That is not true. Seismic monitoring show that the explosions were equivalent to several hundred kilograms of explosives. With that much explosives there was no need to remove the concrete. The "concrete removing CIA robots" narrative is only pushed by Russian propaganda accounts.
We are talking about nation states, it's a silly question. Neither Russia, USA or any other state has a problem "buying" the explosives. They don't shop in the fertilizer section at your local hardware store.
Truth, that is what I meant. The Baltic Sea is generally not that deep was the point. It does not require advanced marine navigation or diving equipment to reach the pipeline
> The best undersea surveillance in the area, security experts say, is by Russian sonar sensors along the pipeline. Western investigators have no access to that data.
If Russia had any evidence they could contort or doctor to implicate the US they’d do it yesterday. If they had evidence that suggested it without having to contort it, they’d be shouting it from the rooftops.
Great, now free the Leopards, Abrams and IFVs/APCs. This ain't gonna end unless Ukraine gets more armor to (re)form battalions.
I really don't get the whole "don't anger Putin" vibe, during the Vietnam War the USSR would send pretty much anything they could against the American forces. Even aircraft together with crews, as aircraft weapon systems really really require trained personnel. And no WW3 happened.
Western gear like that is very different in terms of maintenance to the Soviet era gear Ukraine has been making use of.
Even if there wasn't some theoretical advantage to prolonging Russia's engagement to bleed them, or the risk of current tech falling into enemy hands, there just isn't the infrastructure in place to keep Abrams etc in the fight. Hell the fuel and ammo difference alone would be a logistical nightmare.
Bridges in Ukraine are not rated for the load Leopards present. They would need to be transported by rail, spaced out between empty cars.
Probably those Leopards Ukraine gets will need to be stationed opposite the Belarussian border and near Kiev, and could not much alter the course of the war unless another invasion were attempted there.
It was Pumas, IFVs not tanks. The newest of the new, just a slightly failed rollout, they're already fixed. It's not uncommon at all for new weapon systems.
We're talking oldest Leopards and Marders here.
Also, it's not just about the vehicles in the Bundeswehr. It's about rallying the Rheinmetall clients to create a pool that can be donated from various European countries, for example adding the excuse to upgrade the european fleet to the latest Leopard standard. It has to start with political decisions, though. The Bundeswehr is fully behind this proposal (it was purposefully leaked to the press early on in the war).
Ukraine is already running a whole zoo of Western and Soviet artillery, MLRS, IFVs, APCs, trucks, anti-air, UAVs, air-to-ground, heavy and light infantry arms, and more. I'm sure it's less than ideal logistically, but it's being done and I don't see that managing a bunch of Leopards is impossible when they're already feeding a bunch of CAESARs and M113s and whatnot.
The Abrams runs on "any" fuel but uses significantly more of that fuel to do anything.
This works fine for America because we invest heavily into logistics in the military, but other countries probably won't be helped by having to double up their supply to most tank operations.
Fuel really isn't a problem there any more, and neither is logistics broadly speaking. They received hundreds of thousands of tons of military support. Supply up to the Ukrainian border of specific weapon systems is, specifically slow political decisions. It seems there is no consensus that Ukraine should decisively win.
And even if they get an Abrams that has half the range they'd take it at this point.
In fact it is all us military that use diesel fuel. Note that jet fuel is high grade diesel fuel and jet-a is the specific formulation that the us military runs on.
They go out of their way to make everything diesel. two notable examples: there is a motorcycle reconisence squad and the us army had custom Kawasaki klr made with diesel engines for them. the lycoming company had a great deal of trouble making a small diesel engine for a little army drone.
Whenever you hear Germans tell you something isn't possible wrt Ukraine, just wait a month or two for America to end up doing it anyway.
Happened with Western heavy equipment when the HIMARS and M777s were sent, happened with air defense with the Patriots, and I'm sure Bradleys will be sent next.
Not really the case with air defense, where Germany was first in sending modern anti-air facilities (Iris-T SLM directly from the manufacturer.. not even Germany themselves were using it yet).
Dont forget about the Gepard flak tanks either.
And for the offensive weaponry there is significant coordination among the Western parterns with many supplying equivalent weaponry at the same time (Germany supplied MARS II, which shoots the same rockets as HIMARS; as well as several PzH2000).
Add on the the time needed for actually training the people..
I heard for weeks from German apologists about how the Polish suggestion to send the Patriots Germany offered to Ukraine instead was just a publicity stunt because such an action would require US approval which would never happen. Then America pledged to send them outright to Ukraine. Whoops!
That we cannot know. But what we do know is that Germany pledged delivery of the Iris-T anti-air system (which btw is among the newest systems on the market) back in May and it being delivered in October of last year.
But given that and that Poland initially agreed to the delivery and only afterwards started changing their tune, I don't think the PR angle is that far-fetched?
The Patriots are seriously needed, that's a fact, because next to no one can supply ammunition for the Ukrainian S-300. Debating the Polish motivation is a waste of time IMHO.
One thing I'd add is that Patriot != Patriot, this is a common name for essentially completely different weapon systems (air defense systems, but from different eras). Same as the S-300. So it could be that US is supplying some really old Patriots that would still work fine for taking down Kh-55 and Kalibr missiles. I don't think we know what exact Patriot battery configuration Ukraine will receive.
The point of not giving enough weapons to Ukraine to settle this quickly is much more nuanced than just "don't anger Putin":
- After previous proxy wars that saw a country flooded with western weapons it was not unheard of for a new regime to turn around and sooner or later use all the weapons they got against western forces in turn (see Afghanistan for the most famous example). Governments do slowly learn the lessons of the past and are hesitant to give out too many weapons.
- Mobilization in Russia has seen hundreds of thousands flee the country and tens of thousands of young men have been killed or wounded. Even after the war ends and sanctions are eventually lifted, the demographic imbalances that Russia will face in the coming future will keep crippling its economy and army for decades. NATO doesn't care all that much about who rules the Donbas, but they do care about reducing the threat of Russia to its member states. Prolonging the war for another few years will see tens of thousands more mobilized Russians being fed into the meat grinder, making the future demographic problems that much worse.
- The Russian state falling apart and former provinces selling their nukes to the highest bidder would be a Bad Thing (tm), so we want to supply the Ukrainians with enough weapons so that they don't lose (and maybe win back the conquered territories) but not with enough weapons that they could conceivably make a big enough counter attack into Russia that it would fracture.
> The Russian state falling apart and former provinces selling their nukes to the highest bidder would be a Bad Thing (tm), so we want to supply the Ukrainians with enough weapons so that they don't lose (and maybe win back the conquered territories) but not with enough weapons that they could conceivably make a big enough counter attack into Russia that it would fracture.
Yeah, because a federal state headquartered in Moscow would never fracture from the cost of a long slow war, only a quick clear defeat. (Please, please don't look at the last time a federal state headquartered in Moscow fractured and the war that set the stage for it.)
So NATO is deliberately prolonging the war at the expense of Ukraine to fulfil some masterplan involving a time-delayed demographic-based attack on Russia to weaken it? Nah, I don't buy it.
Assuming it was possible through increased arms sales/lend-leases/donations to tip the balance (it's not) - wouldn't a quick, comprehensive defeat followed by the accession of Ukraine to NATO and the EU be more of a destabilising black-eye for Russia than a slow-burn demographic time-bomb? Given that they've now seen first-hand the difference between being a NATO member and not, why would Ukraine then go on to burn the possibility of joining by then countering with an invasion of Russia?
If it was possible to end this quickly in Ukraine's favour without starting WW3 then NATO countries would have done so. At the very least so the the EU could go back to buying gas and oil from Russia.
It's more of an attack of opportunity rather than a preconceived masterplan I think. In chess terms: the Russians blundered and NATO is taking advantage of it.
A similar thing happened with the Sweden and Finland situation: NATO would prefer them to be a part of the alliance but had acquiesced to them remaining neutral. However when the war started and they decided they would actually prefer to join NATO now, the current members (except Turkiye, but even they didn't oppose it on military grounds) were more than happy to fast-track their joining procedures. Never waste a good crisis, as the saying goes.
I do think NATO could have done more if they really wanted to end the war quicker. As the original comment mentioned, the western countries have pretty large stockpiles of armored vehicles that could be sent over. There are also plenty of systems like ATACMS and cluster munitions that the USA has but has decided not to supply to Ukraine. The fact that NATO has so far declined to supply these weapons even though they could indeed be used to end the conflict sooner indicates to me that they are not interested in ending the conflict as soon as possible.
Well NATO members like Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic have been supplying armoured vehicles, and importantly they’ve been of the similar type that the Ukrainian army already trained to use and maintain. It’s been stated elsewhere in this thread that you can’t just do s/T72/M1 Abrams/ on an army.
I agree that we can do more, but I don’t think we can do enough to turn the tides overnight without trucking in brigades of NATO forces and starting WW3.
> be more of a destabilising black-eye for Russia than a slow-burn demographic time-bomb?
In this situation you can't get rid of all the stale weapons, can't have a hundreds of new weapon contracts and can't have a perfect opportunity to sell LNG.
> At the very least so the the EU could go back to buying gas and oil from Russia.
This is not in the interests of one NATO country.
That wasn't a masterplan, but it's a result of decades of meddling in the politics of all states on Russian border. Yep, there was a disastrous blunder which allowed to the current situation to develop, but always remember what Soviets were 10 feet tall.
So I know it doesn't apply everywhere but I'm going to raise Occam's razor here, because either:
1. the war is being deliberately prolonged by US or NATO, despite the economic and political issues it causes domestically in many NATO countries, with the purpose of offloading some military equipment, selling a bit of LNG for a while and triggering a demographic problem some point in the future (one that didn't topple the USSR when it last occurred after WW2)
2. winning a war is hard and there's only so much hardware a country can use, and it's not clear at what point helping one country causes their opponent to turn to nuclear weapons
The first possibility involves nations acting against their own self-interests in service of a combination of small-fry trade and some nefarious bond villain style plan. The second involves some simple and observable facts.
> but it's a result of decades of meddling in the politics of all states on Russian border
I presume you are referring to Russia’s meddling in those states?
> This is not in the interests of one NATO country.
The entire EU would have been delighted if they were able to keep buying Russian gas at the price they did. They’ve just about managed to cobble together supplies to make it through the winter, and have bodged this floating LNG terminal quickly signalling what the future of EU gas imports probably look like. But make no mistake if they had a way to keep buying cheap Russian gas without throwing Ukraine under the bus they would absolutely have taken it. That ship has since sailed.
> I presume you are referring to Russia’s meddling in those states?
I presume you are completely oblivious on what US did in Ukraine in the last 30 years? Or it's a totally different thing, because evil Russkies and democratic Americans?
> But make no mistake if they had a way to keep buying cheap Russian gas without throwing Ukraine under the bus they would absolutely have taken it.
You are stating the reason here yet you are totally ignore it yourself. There is one country what doesn't depend on Russian gas and to which prolonging the crisis only provides benefits without downsides?
> raise Occam's razor
You need to compare comparable things. One thing is a Bond-like master plan. Other one is 'oh things hard' ignoring what this thing were baked for decades.
RE1) Abrams and Leopards would become inoperable within a year or two without spares, much faster if you actually use them in combat (did you know the Abrams runs on a jet engine?)
RE2) fair point, immoral but realpolitik, can't disagree
RE3) I'm talking about something in the order of what Zaluzhnyi recently asked in The Economist, a few battalions. This is definitely not enough to "conquer Russia", even a small part of it. The nazis used something in the order of a thousand battalions and still failed. Not to mention that I really don't see any political will in Ukraine to do that. Plus defensive nukes, Russian nukes are very very serious.
I suspect the point is to let Putin drain his resources into Ukraine. If he's draining it there he's not messing with precious 1st world real estate.
Russia will end up weaker and Ukraine will end up a bombed out shell of a country with rusting hulks from every other 1st world country scattering the countryside.
>I suspect the point is to let Putin drain his resources into Ukraine.
Ukraine isn't a black hole. Russia draining resources in Ukriane comes at the cost of Ukraine's own resources, in money and human lives, both economical, civilian and military.
The longer the war goes on, the more lives Ukraine loses, the more refugees (usually young skilled people) leave the country and the less chance they will return later to rebuild the country.
If Ukraine somehow takes any Russian territory (defined as post 2014)… it is almost guaranteed nuclear weapons would be used to stop the Ukrainian advance
> If Ukraine somehow takes any Russian territory (defined as post 2014)… it is almost guaranteed nuclear weapons would be used to stop the Ukrainian advance
Nuclear weapons haven't even been used when Ukraine has hit Russias actual territory (in Russia) so why would they use nuclear weapons against Ukraine retaking its own territory?.
Russia has “annexed” additional territory post-2014, some of which was subsequently taken by Ukraine (and some of which was already controlled by Ukraine when it was “annexed”.)
I'm not so sure. The whole point of an exercise like this is to demonstrate power, or to acquire resources. Neither tactical nor strategic nuclear weapons would help with those objectives. Ukraine's army isn't isolated to a single spot — tactical nukes wouldn't even be as effective as WW2-era area bombing, and a whole lot more expensive. Strategic weapons would deny resource acquisition to RU. The use of nuclear weapons (of either kind) against civilian centers would be problematic, I think? The US "got away" with its use of nuclear weapons (first use; the US was the only major player left; etc.)
I don't think Putin would attempt to use nuclear weapons to preserve Russian control over the Donbass. Crimea is less clear (after all, Sevastopol is the main Russian Black Sea naval base), but his sham annexation of the four oblasts makes it less likely in my eyes.
It's hard to see a case where the use of nuclear weapons would improve Russia's situation, especially where Ukraine is seeking to recover territory almost everyone other than Russia agrees is rightfully Ukrainian. The story changes a little more if Ukraine were striking at the heart of Russia, but that is not a realistic option.
Vietnam doesn’t border Russia/USSR, and Vietnam isn’t a former Russian territory with millions of native Russian speakers.
Western countries need to ask themselves: is funding a major proxy war against the second most powerful military in the world in our long term strategic interest?
> Western countries need to ask themselves: is funding a major proxy war against the second most powerful military in the world in our long term strategic interest?
I mean, why wouldn't it be? It's directly degrading an adversary and competing power. It's a lot faster than indirect means and it's a lot cheaper than going into combat ourselves. Sure, you could spin that as "imperialist Americans using poor Slavs as proxies" but really the "proxies" want the same outcome as America. Why shouldn't people with aligned interests work together?
> Western countries need to ask themselves: is funding a major proxy war against the second most powerful military in the world in our long term strategic interest?
Russia is a gas station that happens to have nuclear weapons, not the 2nd most powerful army in the world.
"Russia is a gas station" - have no idea about it now but in the time past they've managed very decent space exploration, science, education and some other things.
That was aeons ago, in a different country, in a different world. And apart from that, anyone outside the Soviet Union could only see what their propaganda wanted them to see.
It was the Soviet Union, not Russia. They really are different things, for example the Space Programme was mostly the development of the R-7 rocket, which was designed by a Ukrainian (Sergei Korolev).
You probably heard about the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. The Moskva was made in Soviet Ukraine, in Mykolaiv. Not in Russia. Shame they mismanaged it so much since then that just a few guided cruise missiles did the job.
The military budget of Russia is a far cry of the military budget of the Soviet Union. The scale is not even comparable, arguably the per-soldier performance went down as well.
"Second most powerful military in the world"? What world is that? Russia isn't even the second most powerful military in Europe or in Asia. At this point, Russia is on the verge of being the second most powerful ex-Soviet state.
Russia has the most nuclear weapons of any country, the largest airborne assault force in the world, the best missile defense system in the world, the second most nuclear submarines (and second best), the third most fighter aircraft, the most tanks.
Russia has a great domestic arms industry/natural resources and can resupply itself in isolation.
People need to realize that Russia's defense is primarily setup to defend its borders.
Any country other than the US would not fare well in a nuclear war with Russia, including China.
China hasn't been at war since the 70s. No one knows how well they would do in a conflict.
You simply cannot ignore nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a great equalizer, that is why North Korea cannot be invaded from South Korea, despite South Korea having a much better "conventional" military.
> Great, now free the Leopards, Abrams and IFVs/APCs. This ain't gonna end unless Ukraine gets more armor to (re)form battalions.
IIRC, since the war started, Ukraine has more than doubled its number of operational tanks, some from Soviet-era tanks from NATO member inventories, but mostly with captured Russian ones.
> I really don't get the whole "don't anger Putin" vibe, during the Vietnam War the USSR would send pretty much anything they could against the American forces. Even aircraft together with crews, as aircraft weapon systems really really require trained personnel. And no WW3 happened.
It came pretty close (also in Korea), but you’ll note that those were quite far from the US itself, and innthe Vietnam War the US still did escalate against neighboring countries, which is also something the US wishes to avoid Russia doing.
Now look at a map and compare the distance to the former territory of the Soviet Union and associates, and compare that with the distance of Cuba to the CONUS.
OK, but he won't have it. Time to get real. I'm not boasting, the war over the political control of all of Ukraine, or even the eastern half of it is lost. It didn't have to be lost, but it was lost in March of 2022. What remains is some "territorial details".
(also, I think you should have written "Vietnam is far away from Washington", it was the USSR in the position of today's NATO and America in the position of Russia in my analogy; and fair enough it is).
OK, the Vietnam war was before my time, I'm vague on even some of the important stuff. On the other hand, US and USSR nuclear policies are not the same (the nuclear option is the main fear causing restraint towards Russia at the moment).
As for Ukraine, they will still have a hard time reconquering the area currently under Russian control. Resources on the Ukrainian and Western side are also limited.
This is a risky bet. If Putin just wants some more land, then you can probably throw more weapons at the conflict and he will eventually realize that it is not worth the trouble and give up. If the opposing view is correct, if this is not about some additional land but about keeping NATO out of Ukraine, then throwing more weapons at the conflict, cornering Putin, is probably the fastest path towards total destruction of Ukraine, including the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons.
Russia is throwing everything already, we've even seen T-55 taken out of what could be called museums. You should see some pictures from the front, it is Verdun all over again. This is a total war that has to conclude.
I have admittedly not followed the developments in the last weeks and months in too much detail, but I would still say this is for the most part a war between two armies. But Russia could turn against the country, target every power and water plant, hospital, fuel storage, industrial plant, dam, port, ... They could go non-conventional, they could go nuclear.
And how should it conclude? Who should give up what?
They already do all those things except nukes. I cannot emphasise this enough, they already do everything that they can.
Conclusion is return to at least Feb2022 borders, preferably 1991 borders. We have the international law for a reason, everyone agreed to this law (including the USSR) after WW2.
>We have the international law for a reason, everyone agreed to this law (including the USSR) after WW2.
You can start with 'totally not a blockade':
> By using the term "quarantine", rather than "blockade" (an act of war by legal definition), the United States was able to avoid the implications of a state of war.
A blockade is the use of force to prevent other nations from trading with somebody. It has never been an act of war to stop your own citizens from trading with somebody.
Okay, let's not argue about the extend of the war, I am still not convinced that it could not get a lot worse, but if it already is as bad as it can get, that would - in a certain way - be a good thing as it can not get any worse, at least besides lasting longer.
This leaves the question, is your proposed end acceptable for Putin? In essence your are saying, if I do not misunderstand you, undo the last year, at the very least. What makes you believe that Putin would judge the situation differently this time, i.e. that this situation does not warrant the invasion of Ukraine?
The reality of the situation is that Russia does not have the military capability to achieve its political aims. This has been clear to every observer since about March. Yet Russia has not attempted to moderate its political aims to reflect its actual military capabilities, and I think it is unwise for Ukraine or anybody else to humor Russia by considering these unrealistic aims as a viable starting position for negotiations.
Sadly, given the delusions of Putin, this means having to prolong the war in Ukraine. Delivering yet more decisive defeats of the Russian military is likely to be the only thing that can shock him into realizing that what he wants is unachievable and he has to adjust his aims to reality.
In Ukraine it was specifically a change to the political regime, which didn't work.
Don't know what the current aim is, could be simply a suppression of Ukraine through continuous damage so that it slowly becomes another Syria over the next decade.
There's also damaging "the evil West" in whatever way is possible, mostly by subverting the democratic processes. They did help with a few political movements (help, not necessarily start), we have evidence for that on both sides of the Atlantic. This goal probably didn't change.
> Don't know what the current aim is, could be simply a suppression of Ukraine through continuous damage so that it slowly becomes another Syria over the next decade.
The current aim may be to continie the war so as to defer the costs of failure. While the war continuing doesn’t guarantee that (see, fall of the Russian Empire), the return and demobilization of troops after a failed war isn’t without risks from those who opposed the war and those who supported it and are angry about the retreat and those who, whatever they thought about the war, are dissatisfied with the post-war conditions, which the war continuing can often defer.
In Ukraine it was specifically a change to the political regime, which didn't work.
You’re so anxious to proclaim this over, when the main course hasn’t even begun.
And, having read the Zalushny interview, you should know full well that what they need amounts to yet another army, their third in this conflict pretty much. And there’s no indication that they will get it.
This seems a reasonable explanation to me, the troop size used is much more compatible with going after the government than wanting to conquer the entire country.
Russia believed that it could achieve a lightning-fast invasion of Kyiv that would enable them to install whichever puppets they wanted, and appear to have put more effort into planning their new puppet government than the actual military invasion.
They still do not have the necessary military force to conquer Kyiv, which is a necessary precondition for achieving regime change. However, even a conquest of Kyiv isn't necessarily sufficient to effect regime change; you'd need to demonstrate control of sufficient parts of the country to make a rump government or government-in-exile infeasible. That's likely to require controlling more or less everything east of the Dniper, Kyiv, and Odesa. Or basically everything outside of Western Ukraine around Lviv.
In short, Russia did not have anywhere near the military force needed to achieve even their most limited war aims if Ukraine were able to put together any kind of defensive force (which they did).
That all seems totally reasonable to me, much more reasonable than Putin just wants more land and after Ukraine he would move further west. I especially agree, even if you manage to overthrow the government, it will be a long uphill battle to achieve anything remotely resembling stability.
This leads to the next question, why does Putin want a regime change, after all regime change is not an end goal? What other avenues are there towards the underlying goals, i.e. how could he change strategy or where could be ground for a diplomatic resolution?
It's nonsensical to talk about a "diplomatic resolution" with a counterparty focused on unilateral taking. You offer 10, they demand 20. You offer 15, they demand 30. The only winning move is to offer nothing, because it's not a good faith negotiation. The end scenarios you're looking for are Russia voluntarily retreats out of Ukraine, Putin gone (dead or at the Hague), or Russia isolated as the next North Korea.
The alternative is the breakdown of the system of international borders and end of US hegemony. And nobody is in the western world should be taking these for granted in favor of a different empire, despite their well-trodden flaws.
So you suggest to keep hitting Russia as hard as possible? You know what the Russian policy for nuclear weapons usage says?
The Russian Federation retains the right to use nuclear weapons [...] when the very existence of the state is put under threat.
I would think twice if hitting Russia as hard as possible - whether militarily or economically - is really in the best interest of everyone. It is certainly in the best interest of the USA, the weaker Russia becomes, the better, more energy to spend on China, but I am very unsure that hitting Russia as hard as possible is in the best interest of Ukraine.
I guess we can all agree that in an ideal world no country should attack any other country, no matter whether they have conventional weapons or nuclear weapons or no military at all.
Back in the real world you have to make a tough decision - your ideals versus your wellbeing. You can keep pushing Russia, maybe it will eventually cave in, fine. But what if not? What if Russia eventually tells you in no uncertain terms, one more weapons shipment and we will go nuclear? Do you call and find out whether they bluff or nuke Ukraine? What if they actually do it? Are you willing to escalate from a proxy war with Russia to a war with Russia? Are you willing to make it a nuclear war?
You're brushed aside the game-theoretic truth in favor of continuing to push this self-defeating what-if worry narrative. Taken to the absurd, your "tough decision" would allow a single madman to ransom the entire world.
In the "real world", Ukraine seems quite willing to face the possibility of being nuked - if they were not, they would have already surrendered to the bully with the nukes. And it's the Ukrainians ultimately making the decision to keep defending themselves or not, regardless of this specious reference to "proxy war".
Furthermore, offensive nuclear use by Russia would most likely invite an overwhelming conventional retaliation by US and NATO forces, with the goal of preempting Russia from ever doing such a thing again. The alternative would be to just sit back and watch Russia conquer ever-more westward, while suffering the same ongoing "what if" worry.
I believe the current answer is yes. Certainly the Ukrainians are on board with this plan.
The current damage and loss of life and health in Ukraine is already larger than a megaton bomb placed over a large-ish city.
Also, the US & NATO voiced publicly their planned response to the usage of a much smaller (kiloton range) nuclear device, namely the complete destruction of the Black Sea Fleet. They did so in the usual way of making former generals speak to the media.
It is also important to notice that it's not US/NATO/whoever's decision. The Ukrainians will fight with whatever they have available, a short talk with anyone in the country makes this crystal clear.
Either Putin is a reasonable man who can be negotiated with, or a man who is willing to use nuclear weapons to stave off a loss in a war on foreign soil he started.
It could also be neither of these, but it cannot be both.
What about the Iraq war? A Power Point with made up stuff is seemingly enough reason for a nuclear super power to invade a non-nuclear state and kill its head of state without due process. Where were the sanctions against the USA? Where were the weapons shipments in support of Iraq? Where were the worries about nuclear proliferation to be protected from that kind of shit?
And yes, I said what about, so let me be clear before you write anything about Whataboutism. I can accept a world with shitty rules where accumulating enough weapons grants you an unlimited stack of get-out-of-jail-free cards, but much worse than shitty rules are different rules for different players, that is truly unfair. Let's just tell Putin that he did a bad thing and then move on as if nothing happened. Or would it not be better if we opposed the USA - and any other country doing stupid shit - as vigorously as we oppose Putin?
I think that Iraq second time was an atrocity too. You can debate the scale but not the basic fact. The first time was certainly acceptable though, even necessary.
I am not in a position to help the Iraqis today but I am in a position to help the Ukrainians, by advocating for their victory and by direct help out of my own pocket. In general those things should be considered separately, there is no simple connection between them. But yes America got away way too easily.
About nukes - the attacking coalition has simply never threatened the usage of nukes. You can also note that during the Vietnam war there was an American general that wanted to fix their military failure with nukes, and he was immediately dismissed from his job.
Fundamentally, Putin wants to Make Russia Great Again--essentially, to reestablish Russia as a regional hegemon. He particularly seems incensed that even Russophile Ukrainians would rather be aligned to the West than to Russia were they forced to choose.
The countries Russia seeks to assert hegemony over don't particularly want to be a part of that hegemony (even in Belarus!), and Russia doesn't have much in the way of carrots to offer those countries. Offering a diplomatic status that even freezes the status quo as de facto recognition only serves to legitimize Russia's use of invasion to get what it wants--note that this is the third war this century where Russia is invading another country to do this (the prior two being the Russia-Georgia war in 2008, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014).
[...] to reestablish Russia as a regional hegemon [...]
Without any implications whether I agree or not and ignoring the means used in case this is what Russia wants and does, purely looking at the supposed goal - is this a bad goal?
Their regional hegemony has only every been possible with the use of force. Eventually Russians will have to come to terms with why none of their European neighbours like them.
I said ignoring the means used, is the goal in itself a good one or a bad one? Correct me if I am wrong, but I understood you as saying that Russia wanting to become a reginal hegemon is bad, and I want to understand if this is bad because of the goal or because of the means.
Russia could only become a 'regional hegemon' via two routes:
1. By convincing its neighbours to allow it to be so
2. By forcing its neighbours to accept it as such
Russia's neighbours were not going to allow the former to happen for good reason, and Russia found its possible hegemony swallowed up as its former colonies joined the EU. Ukraine is just another one of these.
Carrot didn't work, so the stick became the only possibility for achieving the same goal. But the carrot never would have worked anyway. Ukrainians toppled Yanukovich precisely because Putin had him withdraw from the EU accession process. The EU has been the only path to prosperity for young people in Eastern Europe; with Russia lied only poverty.
So Russia not only didn't have anything to offer the countries it wished to become a hegemon of, it was also despised by the same countries because they had precisely lived under Russian hegemony within living memory.
The goal was bad because the means they are using were the only possible means. Once Ukraine joined the EU, it would have been lost to Russian hegemony forever.
> So in short, Russia becoming a local hegemon is fine in principle
As an outside observer, perhaps, but I suspect for those in Eastern Europe who lived under Russian hegemony in living memory, even this would be undesirable.
> But now I don't actually know why I went down this thread, I don't think Putin believes he should and can become a local hegemon.
It is a matter of speculation whether Putin actually believes in expanding Russia and its sphere of influence, or merely acts so, but it hardly matters if that's the way he's acting.
As an outside observer, perhaps, but I suspect for those in Eastern Europe who lived under Russian hegemony in living memory, even this would be undesirable.
Cuba probably does not feel any better about the US hegemony, they are getting punished for no good reasons since 60 years.
It is a matter of speculation whether Putin actually believes in expanding Russia and its sphere of influence, or merely acts so, but it hardly matters if that's the way he's acting.
I think this makes a big difference because the possible solutions for this conflict will be very different.
> Cuba probably does not feel any better about the US hegemony, they are getting punished for no good reasons since 60 years.
Perhaps, and I wouldn't blame them either if they didn't want to be under US hegemony either.
> I think this makes a big difference because the possible solutions for this conflict will be very different.
Ukrainians will not accept not joining the EU; migrants will risk life and limb to board rickety deathtraps of boats to enter the EU.
Putin knows this, of course, and whether or not he believed in stopping Ukraine from joining the EU or only acted so no longer matters because this war aim is no longer achievable.
So he has settled at the moment for the consolation prize of the annexation of the four oblasts of southeastern Ukraine. Again, whether he believes in a Novorossiyan project or only acts as if so in order to come across as having at least gained something, anything from this war, hardly matters. The Ukrainians have little reason to stop their offensive at the moment. They likely believe (and I do, too) that they will be able to retake all of the land that the Russians captured last year, that they will be able to drive Russia back to at least the pre-February 2022 borders. If they are correct, there is no reason to settle for anything less than a return to those pre-war borders.
Either way, this is incompatible with both Putin genuinely wishing to annex these territories and Putin acting so but in reality just trying to scrape out a win.
If Putin is driven out of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, if the land bridge to Crimea is broken, if Ukraine can still join the EU, then he will have wasted untold resources and lives for nothing. No amount of spin can blind even ordinary Russians from realising that at that point, and whether Putin believes in this project or not, he has already inexorably tied his political fate and legacy to the outcome of this war.
And if Russia is pushed back to the pre-February borders and has nothing more to offer in negotiations, Ukraine may decide to push into Donetsk, Luhansk, and/or Crimea - and at that point, it becomes worse than just a waste, but a genuine loss.
They did annex much of Ukraine, although have not been able to hold on to the annexed regions. Notably, they lost Kherson in November.
However, this was probably a consolation prize after their decapitation strike failed, and may not have been their original plan. Russian ultra-nationalists do play up a notion of 'Novorossiya' which would include everything from Odessa to Kharkiv, however; this by now is utterly unrealistic, but Russia attempted to take both Odessa and Kharkiv early in the war. With the former, they were stopped at Mykolaiv, and with the latter they stopped short of managing to take the city itself.
They also lost the parts of Kharkiv oblast (which they did not annex) they had occupied around September or so. This opens them up to counteroffensives in Luhansk oblast (which they annexed), specifically around Kreminna (where there is ongoing fighting and a reported Russian withdrawal) and Svatove.
I can see that you're paying attention to what they "annexed" but nobody except maybe the defunct Syrian government and some other puppets care about what Russia "annexed" and what not. The Czech Republic has recently "annexed" Kaliningrad.
Well, it's certainly more embarrassing for them to lose land they've annexed rather than land they're just occupying without having annexed it. Certainly puts a whole damper on the question of what would make Crimea a red line, if/when it comes to that, although I suspect Russia will try to settle for status quo ante bellum by the time that becomes a real question.
So it's weird, you've tangled a bunch of stuff together by simplifying it as "Russia" wanting to do something, it's not that simple.
From what I can see it's driven from what Putin wants, which is clearly not to "protect" anyone from anything but rather to conquer and control Ukraine. I'm sure he'd be willing to sacrifice many lives to achieve this though.
As for the people, well the spike in young Russian men escaping the country to avoid being mobilised suggests that the people aren't particularly keen for any fight, brutal or otherwise. I've seen a few interviews with people on the street in Russia where some have expressed support for the war and for mobilisation generally, but that's usually from people who wouldn't be mobilised (older people or women). Those who would be eligible for being mobilised appear to be relatively evenly split between
1. "I don't think about politics" (weirdly common, suspect it's a euphemism for "I don't want to be critical of Putin on camera")
2. "I'm for the war. What, me getting mobilised? It won't happen"
3. "I'm against this, it's stupid, I'll leave if I'm mobilised".
There's the odd True Believer, but I suspect they'd change their tune after a few weeks camping outside Bakhmut. So to return to what you said:
> If Russia genuinely views this as a war to protect Russians from ethnic cleansing, they’ll fight brutally as long as they can.
Well, the person in control doesn't see it that way and the people he'd send in to fight don't seem too enthusiastic to jump into such a brutal fight. It remains to be seen what this implies, however.
He is lunatic and lots of other words because he and his cronies actively destroying 2 countries one of which is their own.
He is also pathetic as all that huge income from oil, gas, grains, metals etc. got basically stolen. His precious army appears to be a "shining" example of his policies.
[...] what Putin wants, [...] is [...] to conquer and control Ukraine.
What evidence do we have for that? Because that is really important, if you get the goals wrong, you risk making very bad decisions about your response.
Ok so let's put it as "conquer and/or control". But really, how else should we interpret one country launching a full-scale invasion of a neighbour while declaring that it doesn't have a historical reason to exist and belongs to them? I just don't know how else we're supposed to interpret this.
This seems implausible to me. There was never a chance to conquer and control a country the size and population of Ukraine with 200,000 soldiers. When Germany invaded Poland, a country half the size of Ukraine and roughly comparable population, they brought 1.6 million soldiers and two weeks later the Soviet Union attacked from the other side with an additional 0.6+ million soldiers. I can not imagine that Putin would think 200,000 soldiers would be enough, he does not seem to be that kind of idiot.
[...] while declaring that it doesn't have a historical reason to exist and belongs to them?
This seems to be based on Putins essay »On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians«, right? The following is also from that essay.
Things change: countries and communities are no exception. Of course, some part of a people in the process of its development, influenced by a number of reasons and historical circumstances, can become aware of itself as a separate nation at a certain moment. How should we treat that? There is only one answer: with respect! You want to establish a state of your own: you are welcome!
[...]
The Russian Federation recognized the new geopolitical realities: and not only recognized, but, indeed, did a lot for Ukraine to establish itself as an independent country.
And yes, it also talks about historic ties and disputed land and all that stuff, but you can not take this essay and draw the conclusion that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine unless you cherry-pick parts of it.
I just don't know how else we're supposed to interpret this.
Just as Putin said in his public address after the invasion started, he considers NATO expansion a threat to Russia and Russia will do whatever is necessary to make this not happen.
> I can not imagine that Putin would think 200,000 soldiers would be enough, he does not seem to be that kind of idiot
It very nearly was though? Were it not for some hilariously self-inflicted logistical blunders during the early blitz we could've seen Russian tanks rolling through Kyiv and either a peace treaty signed on some very Russian-friendly terms or a rout of a not yet fully prepared or mobilised Ukrainian army in and around the capital and the north. We know now that it didn't transpire, but let's not pretend we didn't all fear the worst when we read the news and saw those maps of Ukraine showing red tendrils of Russian control reaching towards Kyiv. Throw in the suspicion that the Ukrainian army would've been less willing to fight, the surprisingly poor condition of the Russian military, the belief that there would be pockets of pro-Russian sentiment - it's not unreasonable at all to suggest that this was all planned to annex or at least subdue the country.
> Just as Putin said in his public address after the invasion started, he considers NATO expansion a threat to Russia and Russia will do whatever is necessary to make this not happen.
He also stated that his aim was to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine - isn't that asserting control over the country? To be honest, he's said a lot of things about his "special military operation" - it is impossible not to "cherry-pick".
> he considers NATO expansion a threat to Russia
I know this is probably not your intent, but this is the exact line all the pro-Russia propaganda guys use - Putin is an uwu smol bean who just feels very threatend and scared. It's applied with mental gymnastics to suggest that this is an inevitable result of NATO's reckless military conquest of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechia, Slovakia etc (who they suggest joined NATO at gunpoint, rather than because they had been miltarily threatened by Russia or the USSR in the last century). It's a weird one not least because invading Ukraine inevitably led to Finland and Sweden quickly allying with and applying to join NATO. Which was fairly idiotic and brings me back to your original point - I think it comes down to whether what kind of idiot you think Putin is:
1. an idiot with imperial ambitions who did not comprehend how rotten, corrupt and unprepared his military is
2. an idiot who didn't think invading Ukraine cause a Western neighbour they share a ~1300km border with and who they have invaded in the past to join NATO
Because he's traded the impossibility of Ukraine joining NATO (so long he ensured Luhansk and Donetsk remained "independent" and Crimea annexed) for an enormous new NATO border. I guess we’ll see - if he’s truly concerned about NATO on his borders he’ll surely be invading Finland right? They’re not yet a member…
I guess we were using the word conquer differently and your usage is probably the more accurate one. Is was thinking of occupying the country and controlling it with force as opposed to marching to Kyiv and overthrowing the government. So I meant that occupying Ukraine with 200,000 soldiers was unrealistic and nothing that I think Putin would attempt. For overthrowing the government on the other hand this seems not to unreasonable and, as you point out, this might actually have been a close call.
He also stated that his aim was to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine - isn't that asserting control over the country?
My interpretation is that demilitarization means going against increasingly stronger ties to NATO including weapon sales and denazification means going against increasing anti-Russian sentiments. No judgment about the validity of those points implied, I just think it is much more useful to find a interpretation that makes sense in the greater context than ignoring it as incoherent rumbling and making fun of it because Selenskyj is a jew.
And I would agree, it is a form of control. I think he really wants Ukraine not in NATO, which is a kind of control, and because he could not get this any other way, he eventually tried to get there by trying to overthrow the government with force. But I am a bit wary of using very general terms like control, every international agreement is a form of control, albeit one where the involved parties agree.
So we were probably again using the word control somewhat differently, you more like some control, I more like full control. And, as I said, I think he wants some control but not full control, he wants Ukraine outside of NATO but I don't think he wants Ukraine a part of Russia.
I know this is probably not your intent, but this is the exact line all the pro-Russia propaganda guys use - Putin is an uwu smol bean who just feels very threatend and scared.
I mean I am certainly not a pro-Russia propaganda guy, but I still think that this explanation is the most likely one. I don't know what exactly the pro-Russia propaganda guy version looks like and I would certainly not agree with all of it, for example, as you mentioned, nobody forced the eastern NATO members into NATO, but I consider the general idea of Russia being afraid of NATO expansion and this eventually leading to the war as the most likely explanation. Not at last because there is no credible alternative explanation with reasonable evidence for it.
Ah I'm sorry man, it really was honestly not my intent to cast you as some Putin shill but I guess it is bound to appear that way regardless of whether I included the disclaimer :) But I didn't include it flippantly, there was a reason behind why I raised this, I just didn't articulate it very well.
The reason I mentioned it is that I've seen this line so many times in the context of these pro-Putin/Z guys and the stuff they copy-paste every time that it nearly lost all meaning to me - it's just line noise that is the same as all the other Putin propaganda. The only way it could be elevated beyond that is if it was validated by Russia also invading Finland (which they definitely won't ... I hope). Because that right there is very real NATO expansion on Russia's doorstep, a massive new NATO border and two very militarily-capable nations joining, in Putin's eyes, an organization hellbent on your destruction.
Remember that Ukraine's accession was certainly not guaranteed prior to 2014, was definitely not going to happen while Luhansk, Donetsk and Crimea were occupied (since that would mean NATO was suddenly and willingly at war with Russia) and is now a near-certainty if Ukraine succeed in driving Russia out.
So it just seems so self-defeating - if the intent is to reduce conflict with NATO and discourage any countries from joining then why do something that demonstrates the value of being a NATO member in a country that was not in the position to become a NATO member? I cannot stress enough how much of a profoundly bone-headed own goal it is, if that was the intent.
Sorry I'm maybe just repeating myself at this point. But it just seems more insane a reason to me than a quick patriotic land-grab or some "regime change" does, regardless of what we anyone in the Kremlin says.
Yes, all their brother Russians, that suspiciously turned out to be mostly real Russians in costume! And wouldn't you know it, they went to the military depots of their brother Russians and out came... post-USSR Russian military gear!
So you saying that for example Donbass is populated mostly by Russian citizens rather than Ukrainians? I find that hard to believe. I am sure some "real Russians" were sent in and mess with the situation but do you think that if the main population of Donbass was really against it they would not have resisted the way the rest of Ukraine does now?
Personally, I'd be surprised if the Donbass wasn't populated mostly by Russian citizens after 8 years of armed conflict instigated by an invader intending to push out anyone who isn't a Russian citizen
How did it get populated "mostly by Russians"? Are you saying that in 2014 all Ukrainians started to move out and let Russians step in and take over? This is very hard to believe.
Yes, I am in fact saying that, in the Donbass, Ukranian citizens began to move out of the territory invaded by an adversary whose ultimate goal was to incorporate it into their territory.
So few Russians invaded a region and the population had decided to move out? No fight? Are those the same Ukrainians who are now kicking the shit out of Russian army? What you are saying does not make any sense. Again hard to believe.
Finland and Estonia weren't planning for a new terminal but in February of course realized they needed one. The countries are connected by a new gas pipeline so share a common interest. They started a race to construct the ground facilities and acquire a floating terminal ship. Finland was farther along in the construction and it was decided to place the terminal there. It started supplying gas to the grid in in December. It's not famous German red tape so I guess doesn't make the news.
https://lngprime.com/europe/finlands-first-fsru-begins-suppl...
Nowadays almost the whole of Europe is connected by international gas pipelines. Of course there are flow constraints, but it's hard to completely cut off any place. In theory one could send gas from Norway south through UK, Holland, Germany and Poland and then back up north through Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia all the way to Finland.
Add the terminals dotting the map and it's a pretty resilient system. This is a nice resource. https://www.gie.eu/publications/maps/gie-lng-map/
LNG will be a welcome capability for a country weaning itself from a violent authoritarian.
This will not slow the green energy transition because hydrocarbons are still required for almost every technology in existence (including the ability to build PV panels).
The transition would be faster if we suddenly didn't have any more gas, but it would also be very chaotic. This looks like a decent middle ground with the gas being more expensive, increasing the incentive to stop using it while still being available to the people/business who haven't been able to do so yet.
Using a euphemism like "chaotic" for an event that would kill hundreds of millions (if it happens globally) and lead to a complete collapse of most social and economic structures is not exactly good form.
I wonder how much production during that time would move to places like China where the energy comes from coal to a much larger degree which is so much worse.
>Activists have protested the arrival of gas acquired through fracking.
In Appalachia we can set our tap water on fire because activists protest so hard against one last generation of nuclear plants that could have bridged the gap until solar energy became cheap enough to be ubiquitous.
These small but vocal groups were often funded by an odd mixture of dark money coming from former KGB operatives and fixers from the GOP who’d selectively boost useful policies to accomplish goals at odds with a happy, healthy populace.
In the end, importing LNG for Germany is essentially crypto currency free market decentralization principles applied to geo politics.
Clearly, and this has become obvious on the global stage, if you have two equally sovereign powers making a deal and having aligned incentives (e.g. to build physical gas pipelines that cost a lot of money and can be blown up), then the more resilient approach that features decentralized and permissionless market access is that of LNG.
It's because LNG tankers are interoperable and they can technically come any moment from any new country. There's no direct platform-dependence on Russia for Germany anymore and with an extension of LNG ingestion capabilities, more diversity of supply will mean that gas now can't be leveraged as a power brokerage tool by a single country anymore.
If the alternative to fracking is less energy consumption, then of course fracking is bad. But in the short run that means lowering the standard of living and politically that is a non-starter.
If the alternative to fracking is wind+solar+nuclear, then yes fracking is probably worse. But it will take years, if not decades, to build up the green power generation capacity to replace fossil fuels. We're on our way and we should be doing more of this, but we're not there yet.
In the current environment, Germany is reverting much of its energy generation from gas back to brown coal. This has far worse emissions than gas. As far as fracking goes, I'll happily accept a few earthquakes in the Dakotas over the ecological disaster that is coal.
All of the choices here are bad. We still need to pick the least bad one.
> In the current environment, Germany is reverting much of its energy generation from gas back to brown coal. This has far worse emissions than gas. As far as fracking goes, I'll happily accept a few earthquakes in the Dakotas over the ecological disaster that is coal.
If you include fugitive methane from fracking it's almost a wash. It really is that awful,
Got any evidence for this? Because it sounds like a mad conspiracy theory.
I've been to small events in my local area where fracking has been damages water catchment areas. A professor from a nearby university came to give a talk on the damage it's going, why and how on earth would he be sponsored by Russians?
He showed us evidence, photo, statistical evidence which we could verify ourselves just by going for a short hike on the damage it was doing.
The US in this case, but the Russian (French-built) LNG exports have also greatly increased (for now), to the point that they are now larger than by pipeline (which has fallen dramatically) !
(Though still several times less than imports from US.)
Someone could easily make the point that the Ukraine war was an opportunity for Biden to deliver on his promise to the US oil industry to make Europe buy US excess shale gas which was 3x more expensive than Russian gas.
Around a year ago, I was convinced Putin wouldn't invade Ukraine because the West would find new energy sources, starving Russia of key income, and Sweden and Finland would join NATO. Not only that, Russia is now confirmed to be the the junior partner in its relationship with China.
In hindsight, I do buy into the argument that NATO grew too much to the east, and there would have been wisdom in creating an "DMZ" between NATO and Russia. The growth of NATO left Putin feeling trapped. It would have been better to slowly move Western resource sources to better sources and friendlier countries.
I would argue that the Russian invasion proved the new NATO members right. At the end of the day Russia reserved itself the right to use brute force when it sees it's own interest threatened. For a lot of countries the only chance to defend themselves if attacked by Russia was and is to join NATO.
For all the criticism modern governments get (often rightly) it’s incredible how fast Germany built these new terminals.
And it does show we have just as much productive capacity in western societies today as we did 100 years ago. What’s missing is consensus that problems should actually be solved, not used to enrich yet another rentier class.
I hope Germany learns from this and keeps away some of the barriers to growth they regulated into existence.