I just had a horrible realisation as to why russian forces are occupying the Chernobyl area.
Using a nuclear device on Ukraine is hopefully out of the question even for Putin. But what about a conventional explosive blasting away the protective materials around the reactors (or the sludge that's left rather) and sending that cloud of radi…
I just had a horrible realisation as to why russian forces are occupying the Chernobyl area.
Using a nuclear device on Ukraine is hopefully out of the question even for Putin. But what about a conventional explosive blasting away the protective materials around the reactors (or the sludge that's left rather) and sending that cloud of radioavtive particles sweeping in over Ukraine?
Or just blasting the sarcophagi open and collect the material to dump it in water reservoirs, especially those for agriculture?
I wonder where there is a line that would cause Germany and the rest of the EU to go: "Enough! It's time for Operation: Barbarossa II, and this time we won't stop until we hit the Pacific Ocean".
That would lead to the destruction of Europe. Americans aren't particularly interested in dying for Europe: they're still traumatized by the 50K or so American deaths in Vietnam, and as far as wars go, 50K is a trifle. A war with Russia would entail millions of American deaths. (Millions of Russian deaths, too, but the Russians would be defending their own country.) Europe has no military capability to defeat Russia on Russia's own soil, and even if it did (it doesn't) it certainly doesn't have the willingness to make the gargantuan sacrifices that it would have to make to have any chance of doing so. The whole idea is a non-starter.
US not required for that. The militaries of the EU nations are greater than Russia's by far, excluding nukes. In fact, the militaries of the Scandinavian nations, the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania are on par with Russia's.
Russia uses a lot of tricks to get its numbers up, such as counting the home guard as actual line troops. It's old hat and doesn't fool anyone but it does make good copy for the press and for politicians getting off on playing up the military strength of their or another country.
It's like China's aircraft carriers. When is an old soviet hull permanently undergoing reparis and renovations, and the other is used for propaganda. Againast an opponent such as Taiwan it's plenty enough, but against any nation with actual modern capabilities such as Japan it's sunk.
Yes, yes, yes. Dream on. Western countries might be able to defeat Russia in some proxy war somewhere. On Russia's own soil? Puh-leez. And the "excluding nuclear weapons" is a particularly nice touch. If you attack Russia (or any other nuclear power, really, even a much smaller one), trust me, nuclear weapons will not be excluded.
And while we're at it, let me ask you this: would you personally be willing to go fight and die somewhere in Siberia? Let your sons and brothers (if you have either) do that? Let your parents freeze to death as Russia turns off gas? Don't tell me about liquid gas from the States: if you want to fight a war of annihilation, you're going to need all the energy you can possibly get (liquid, coal, wind, anything really) for the war effort. Old people not freezing to death is not a priority.
They couldn't possibly send radioactive materials only over Ukraine. Those particles would go into Russia and Belarus, too. If anything, I think Russia has an interest in double-securing that reactor, and making sure it's well protected against any missiles from whatever side. I don't know to what extent this is technically possible, though.
Speaking of which: yeah, so much for "clean nuclear energy." As soon as you have a war, a nuclear reactor becomes a huge liability. It doesn't even have to be hit by a missile. All that needs to happen is for maintenance to be interrupted, and you've got an enormous mess on your hands. All those geniuses trying to persuade us how safe and clean nuclear is are implicitly counting on thousands of years of uninterrupted peace.
I just had a horrible realisation as to why russian forces are occupying the Chernobyl area.
Using a nuclear device on Ukraine is hopefully out of the question even for Putin. But what about a conventional explosive blasting away the protective materials around the reactors (or the sludge that's left rather) and sending that cloud of radioavtive particles sweeping in over Ukraine?
Or just blasting the sarcophagi open and collect the material to dump it in water reservoirs, especially those for agriculture?
I wonder where there is a line that would cause Germany and the rest of the EU to go: "Enough! It's time for Operation: Barbarossa II, and this time we won't stop until we hit the Pacific Ocean".
Re: Barbarossa II
That would lead to the destruction of Europe. Americans aren't particularly interested in dying for Europe: they're still traumatized by the 50K or so American deaths in Vietnam, and as far as wars go, 50K is a trifle. A war with Russia would entail millions of American deaths. (Millions of Russian deaths, too, but the Russians would be defending their own country.) Europe has no military capability to defeat Russia on Russia's own soil, and even if it did (it doesn't) it certainly doesn't have the willingness to make the gargantuan sacrifices that it would have to make to have any chance of doing so. The whole idea is a non-starter.
US not required for that. The militaries of the EU nations are greater than Russia's by far, excluding nukes. In fact, the militaries of the Scandinavian nations, the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania are on par with Russia's.
Russia uses a lot of tricks to get its numbers up, such as counting the home guard as actual line troops. It's old hat and doesn't fool anyone but it does make good copy for the press and for politicians getting off on playing up the military strength of their or another country.
It's like China's aircraft carriers. When is an old soviet hull permanently undergoing reparis and renovations, and the other is used for propaganda. Againast an opponent such as Taiwan it's plenty enough, but against any nation with actual modern capabilities such as Japan it's sunk.
Yes, yes, yes. Dream on. Western countries might be able to defeat Russia in some proxy war somewhere. On Russia's own soil? Puh-leez. And the "excluding nuclear weapons" is a particularly nice touch. If you attack Russia (or any other nuclear power, really, even a much smaller one), trust me, nuclear weapons will not be excluded.
And while we're at it, let me ask you this: would you personally be willing to go fight and die somewhere in Siberia? Let your sons and brothers (if you have either) do that? Let your parents freeze to death as Russia turns off gas? Don't tell me about liquid gas from the States: if you want to fight a war of annihilation, you're going to need all the energy you can possibly get (liquid, coal, wind, anything really) for the war effort. Old people not freezing to death is not a priority.
They couldn't possibly send radioactive materials only over Ukraine. Those particles would go into Russia and Belarus, too. If anything, I think Russia has an interest in double-securing that reactor, and making sure it's well protected against any missiles from whatever side. I don't know to what extent this is technically possible, though.
Speaking of which: yeah, so much for "clean nuclear energy." As soon as you have a war, a nuclear reactor becomes a huge liability. It doesn't even have to be hit by a missile. All that needs to happen is for maintenance to be interrupted, and you've got an enormous mess on your hands. All those geniuses trying to persuade us how safe and clean nuclear is are implicitly counting on thousands of years of uninterrupted peace.
Unless of course you design your reactors to be walk-away safe. The technology to do that has existed since the 1960s.
https://www.ornl.gov/molten-salt-reactor/history