Russian Shelling Damaged a Nuclear Research Facility, Ukraine Says (vice.com) 49
A research center housing a nuclear neutron source facility held at the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology in eastern Ukraine was hit by Russian forces on Sunday, per a report from the state nuclear inspectorate. Motherboard reports: In a release published Sunday evening, the inspectorate called the blast "nuclear terrorism," spelling out a list of damages: a substation, which connects the plant to the electrical grid, on which the plant runs; cables within the facility's cooling system, which effectively prevent the plant from a meltdown; a heating line between structures in the facility; surface damages to the building that houses the structure; and windows across a number of buildings within the installation. "This list of damages is not complete so far. Currently, information on the consequences of the damages is being specified by the personnel," the report reads. An updated report following further inspection located no additional damage this morning.
The Security Service of Ukraine's Kharkiv branch said destruction of the facility could lead to "environmental disaster," the Kyiv Independent reported Sunday. Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported Sunday that the attacks were in fact brought on by Ukraine, a line that has since been debunked. The reactor, known as the NSA "Neutron Source" was built with support from the Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory in service of an agreement signed between the U.S. and Ukraine at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. The U.S. invested $73 million in the project, which promised that the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology would be "given the opportunity to build state-of-the-art technology in nuclear research that will contribute to "solving problems of nuclear power industry and extending technical lifetime of nuclear power plants,'" according to a report from the European Union Non-Proliferation Consortium.
The Security Service of Ukraine's Kharkiv branch said destruction of the facility could lead to "environmental disaster," the Kyiv Independent reported Sunday. Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported Sunday that the attacks were in fact brought on by Ukraine, a line that has since been debunked. The reactor, known as the NSA "Neutron Source" was built with support from the Illinois-based Argonne National Laboratory in service of an agreement signed between the U.S. and Ukraine at the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. The U.S. invested $73 million in the project, which promised that the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology would be "given the opportunity to build state-of-the-art technology in nuclear research that will contribute to "solving problems of nuclear power industry and extending technical lifetime of nuclear power plants,'" according to a report from the European Union Non-Proliferation Consortium.
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Subcritical neutron source != conventional reactor (Score:3)
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A novel way to pass the world's problems on to the next generation?
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all of Ukraine may become an chernobyl no go zone! (Score:2)
all of Ukraine may become an chernobyl no go zone!
Clickbait article (Score:2)
This is not nuclear terrorism, it's a simple casualty of war. No one believes Russia is targetting nuclear facilities on purpose, or is doing anything nuclear in the service of terror.
One item largely overlooked is the effect on agriculture. Ukraine is the "world's breadbasket", and the conflict likely to go on long enough to prevent farmers from planting crops in the spring.
Russia and Ukraine together account for about 25% of corn and wheat production worldwide. Assuming the conflict also affects Russian a
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For example, handing a toddler a normal glass to drink with runs a high risk of him spilling/breaking the glass.
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This post is essentially an apology to Russia.
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Oh I feel much better now.
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Re: Clickbait article (Score:2)
They don't want to destroy the power plant or electrical distribution... They want control so they can turn things back on quickly once they are in control.
They also didn't she'll the reactors or generator buildings - they shelled a training building... But we didn't find out about that till later, just the scaremongering nuclear disaster propaganda.
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This post is essentially an apology to Russia.
I wouldn't take it that way, war is complicated, and more so when you're in it. We're looking at it through a very small window. I can't fathom a good reason to fire artillery anywhere near a nuclear power plant, or any other critical infrastructure if they intend to hold the country. It seems like a completely boneheaded thing to do. We know Putin's reasons for invading Ukraine are total bullshit, but why anything else happens during the war is going to take a lot longer to sort out.
I'm willing to chal
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My gut tells me the attacks on power stations and research facilities is purely incompetence. If you want to knock out power in a way where you can bring it back online in a hurry once you have control of the region, you take out transmission lines that are relatively easy to repair after the fact. You don't shell anything related to generating power, nor the substations. This is just stupidity piled on stupidity and makes for great clickbait headlines and scaremongering. Nothing more.
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Here in media and officials are tracking this conflict pretty intensely, for reasons; we're now most likely on track to end our neutrality and join NATO together with Sweden (the application-process has not officially been started but after Niinistö recently met with Biden the consensus here both amont the public and political analysts is that it's unofficially underway and we'll
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maybe we could quit subsidizing it so heavily, that the only use we have to the excess of crop, is to literally burn it as fuel?
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No one believes Russia is targetting nuclear facilities on purpose
They damned-well better not be doing it unintentionally.
Some things are deserving of care. You don't lob bombs near a school or a hospital unless you don't care that children and medical professionals are going to get hurt. You don't play with matches at a gas station. You don't do combat near a nuclear facility. That Russia has done so three times in the last ten days isn't just some weird coincidence.
Also, I believe they are targeting nuclear facilities on purpose. Not intending to destroy them,
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You don't tug on superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off that old lone ranger
And you don't mess around with Vlad.
Re: Clickbait article (Score:2)
> No one believes Russia is targetting nuclear facilities on purpose, or is doing anything nuclear in the service of terror.
Dude, they surrounded the largest nuclear power station and lobbed shells at it from all sides all day long. You think this was an accident, the whole time they thought it was a grocery store that they were attacking?
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This is not nuclear terrorism, it's a simple casualty of war. No one believes Russia is targetting nuclear facilities on purpose, or is doing anything nuclear in the service of terror.
Correct, we just think -- or know rather -- that they're incompetent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
But actually this has been going on all throughout history.
https://www.britannica.com/eve... [britannica.com]
See? It's already very old news.
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No one believes Russia is targetting nuclear facilities on purpose, or is doing anything nuclear in the service of terror.
Uh...Russia is accusing Ukraine of trying to build a dirty bomb in Chernobyl. From world's experience this most likely means that *Russia* is trying to build a dirty bomb in Chernobyl.
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This is not nuclear terrorism, it's a simple casualty of war. No one believes Russia is targetting nuclear facilities on purpose, or is doing anything nuclear in the service of terror.
Yeah Putin's a nice guy. He'd never do anything like that.
Things keep getting worse and worse (Score:2)
I really don't understand why everyone is so afraid of acting (militarily) against Putin - it seems that not engaging in this war is just enabling Putin to keep terrorizing and killing and claiming more for Russia. Given the amount of destruction Russia (because of Putin) has dealt to Western Europe, I'm really surprised that drone-delivered airstrikes haven't commenced against Moscow and St Petersburg, or at least the electricity grid of Russia. Literally take away the power from Russia, and the irony is t
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Because he has nuclear missile-equipped submarines
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Excuse me, it's pronounced nuclear wessels [youtu.be].
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Re: Things keep getting worse and worse (Score:2)
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Wow, so that's not even close to correct.
Even the most aggressive projections put it at around 30-50M deaths if both the US and Russia use all of their nukes against the most populated targets.
Google it yourself, you will have dozens of studies to choose from, none of them will support what you said.
**note I am not saying 50M is acceptable, just that it isn't the end of life as we know it.
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Projections from folks who deep-dive study such things say that high-yield targets would be the first round. Most likely if Russia sends up the nukes, it'll start with somewhere like LA or New York to prove they mean business. And if we retaliate, it will likely either be a capital strike, or a large population center. It remains to be seen if there will be a second strike and retaliation. Most likely dependent on if our first strike takes out Putin himself.
We live in interesting times. That's the only thin
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Here's the first one that showed up for me:
https://www.icanw.org/new_stud... [icanw.org]
30ish million *in the first few hours*. But any major nuclear exchange, particularly if "both the US and Russia [manage to] use all of their nukes" would cause massive famines and breakdown of infrastructure that would kill many more than the actual bombs. "Billions" might be a bit high, but it's also not ludicrous.
Widespread nuclear war probably wouldn't cause human extinction (that's still debated though), but would absolutely be
New poll from Quinnipiac (Score:2)
As the world witnesses what is happening to Ukraine, Americans were asked what they would do if they were in the same position as Ukrainians are now: stay and fight or leave the country? A majority (55 percent) say they would stay and fight, while 38 percent say they would leave the country. Republicans say 68 – 25 percent and independents say 57 – 36 percent they would stay and fight, while Democrats say 52 – 40 percent they would leave the country.
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Interesting. Source:
https://news.yahoo.com/more-re... [yahoo.com]
That's not really a big shock though because we've already seen indications of this before. Democrats want to flee the country every time their guy doesn't win an election, so why wouldn't they flee if we were being attacked?
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New poll from Quinnipiac:
As the world witnesses what is happening to Ukraine, Americans were asked what they would do if they were in the same position as Ukrainians are now: stay and fight or leave the country? A majority (55 percent) say they would stay and fight, while 38 percent say they would leave the country. Republicans say 68 – 25 percent and independents say 57 – 36 percent they would stay and fight, while Democrats say 52 – 40 percent they would leave the country.
On the flip side, 44% of Republicans own a firearm versus 20% of Democrats. So proportionally, a lot more non-gun-owning Democrats would stay and fight than non-gun-owning Republicans. For it to be equal proportions, 88% of Republicans would have to say that they would stay and fight.
Of course, it's easy to say that until it actually happens. At that point, we would find out how much on both sides is true bravery and how much is chest puffing.
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Ukraine - The next gravel pit (Score:2)
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A democratic country (country being the key word here) had an internal vote to join NATO, just like any other democratic vote a country can decide on.
That vote had no bearing on NATO actually deciding the let them join (which was not going to happen).
So why are they fuckers? A free country voting on things internally, they can do whatever they want. They even get to vote in elections to chose their leaders, imagine that! Why does