Ukraine Invasion - Please do not post videos showing attacks/similar

[The Running Man]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1505890321879683084

Thats why they canaries from above because the armour is so thin its virtually non existent on the top down as that is where it is flattest.

Tanks should only ever wander into urbanised areas woth screening troops in front who locate the targets.

But ultimately with drone, nlaw, javelin and artillery bombardments a slow moving or static tank column is fodder.

 

[StriderX]

25% only. Are we even trying?

Well we'd not want to become dependent on Uranium ore, so a diverse energy mix is all we can really do until fusion starts offering a solid alternative.

 

[D.P.]

Well we'd not want to become dependent on Uranium ore, so a diverse energy mix is all we can really do until fusion starts offering a solid alternative.

Indeed most uranium comes from Kazakhstan, which is very chummy with Putin, and nearly had it own cival war recently.


The other factors is that even if you magicked the money and a suitable location put of thin sir this instant, ignored all required analyses, impact reports, environmental studies and generally msde all the red raoe disappear, a ndw nuclear power station would take 5 years to build.

Alternatively we can install a large amount of solar, wind and battery storage by this summer time.

 

[dowie]

some good news re: the railways in Belarus:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1505972610177421316

https://twitter.com/x/status/1505973168938307584

Came in here to post that, crazy they're admitting to that (obvs deleted soon after). The leak they had cited even more, add in some POWs to those death + wounded numbers and that's not a good picture (no doubt Ukraine side suffering too), this really doesn't seem to be sustainable, at least not at this intensity... gotta be a ceasefire/pause soon or they'll dig in and it could be like a bigger version of what we've seen with Donbas + added risk of insurgency.

 

[Grim5]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1505946616842313735

what kind of missile can take out an entire shopping mall in 1 hit?

Where is the footage that shows Ukraine storing bombs in the theatre housing 2000 women and children

 

[Allnamestaken]

Who the hell cares where Ukraine is storing anything. They are being invaded by a power who doesn’t care where or who they are shooting.

They can store bombs in a school for all I care, they are defending their sovereign territory from an aggressor that wishes to take it.

it would have made little difference if there was ammo or civilians in that mall.
It’s clear they are murdering civilians.

 

[IGBT]

I just wonder how will Kiev survive if the huskys start to bomber it? They don’t have any way to defend themselves from incoming missiles?

 

[StriderX]

I just wonder how will Kiev survive if the huskys start to bomber it? They don’t have any way to defend themselves from incoming missiles?

The city itself was designed to repel an invasion, but Ukraine has had weeks to fortify it and strategize how best to use it's features.

 

[Angilion]

25% only. Are we even trying?

That might be the right amount. No existing means of generating electricity is perfect. With present technology the best bet is a mix. I would have though the right amount of fission would be somewhat more than 25%, but maybe the UK could install a truly massive overcapacity in wind and solar if we blanket the place. Or maybe we could remain dependent on France to prop us up.

The issue with renewables is, obviously, that they're wildly variable and completely uncontrollable. It's impossible to run a modern civilisation on that basis. In theory it could be offset by having a massive excess of nameplate generating capacity (because renewables never generate their alleged output, rarely get anywhere near it and often generate little or nothing at all) and massive electricity storage. Which could work if electricity storage exists on the required scale. But it doesn't. May as well decide to power the country using dilithium crystals and a warp drive.

So we need enough controllable generation and right now that's fossil fuels or nuclear fission. But only enough. Those methods have problems of their own.

My gripe is with the 2050 target. It could be done faster. It should be done faster. At that rate they'll probably be up and running about when the first fusion power stations are being built. If that is the case, we'd be shutting down the fission power stations not long after we powered them up.

Well we'd not want to become dependent on Uranium ore, so a diverse energy mix is all we can really do until fusion starts offering a solid alternative.

Yes, that. Also, radioactive waste is a problem. Nowhere near as much of a problem as it's often made out to be, but the less of it the better. Using a thorium cycle fission reactor would work around the issue of sourcing uranium, but that's not a well tested technology.

 

[Zeeflyboy]

Well we'd not want to become dependent on Uranium ore, so a diverse energy mix is all we can really do until fusion starts offering a solid alternative.

Ideally we’d finally get around to taking a serious look at MSR/LFTR… seems most analysis in the past on use of thorium has centred on the use of solid fuel rather than liquid which overlooks many of the advantages. When you consider that only 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium is the fissile U-235 isotope Thorium is about 400 times more abundant and readily available as a by product of other mining operations.

The Chinese seem to be stealing a march on the west with their investment into molten salt reactors and thorium research… would be nice to see it get some more attention/investment in the west. Lots of western companies have popped up in the last few years to develop it after Kirk Sorensen has spent the last decade bringing them back into the public consciousness, but definitely an area more money could go into. Hard to disrupt the status quo though ultimately.

Given it’s already been demonstrated at oak ridge back in the 60’s it’s probably a much nearer term bet than fusion and would act nicely as a bridge that addresses quite a few of the current nuclear power issues while we await the holy grail.

 

[HungryHippos]

The issue with renewables is, obviously, that they're wildly variable and completely uncontrollable. It's impossible to run a modern civilisation on that basis. In theory it could be offset by having a massive excess of nameplate generating capacity (because renewables never generate their alleged output, rarely get anywhere near it and often generate little or nothing at all) and massive electricity storage.

Central storage is always going to be key, there are some really interesting methods they can use to store it that don't require huge batteries as well. For example you can fill a reservoir using excess electric when renewables are generating a lot, and you can empty it when you need extra generation, so it acts like a big battery of sorts.

 

[chaparral]

some good news re: the railways in Belarus:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1505972610177421316

Be real shame if one night a group of people set fire to all them Russian army vehicles on that train.

 

[IGBT]

The city itself was designed to repel an invasion, but Ukraine has had weeks to fortify it and strategize how best to use it's features.

But the thing how much that matters if you will have probably a shower of missiles coming over you?

 

[ubersonic]

If i google how many tanks russian has it come back with anywhere from 2,400 to 22,000

This was discussed extensively back before the invasion kicked off but in short, before the invasion Russia had just under 3000 tanks in active service (in use with it's armed forces) plus 11,000 in storage (sitting in warehouses or fields having not moved or had any maintenance done in 20-30 years).

The estimates as to how much of their operational % the invasion forces have lost are just ballpark numbers based on the facts that are/were known. Basically we know for a fact they had less than 3000 tanks to send to Ukraine and they weren't going to send every single tank in Russia to invade Ukraine. This means we know they have sent between 1000-2000 tanks to take part in the invasion (probably somewhere in the middle), which means we know they have now lost between 25-50% of the tanks they could have made available (again probably somewhere in the middle).

 

[Chuk_Chuk]

That might be the right amount. No existing means of generating electricity is perfect. With present technology the best bet is a mix. I would have though the right amount of fission would be somewhat more than 25%, but maybe the UK could install a truly massive overcapacity in wind and solar if we blanket the place. Or maybe we could remain dependent on France to prop us up.

The issue with renewables is, obviously, that they're wildly variable and completely uncontrollable. It's impossible to run a modern civilisation on that basis. In theory it could be offset by having a massive excess of nameplate generating capacity (because renewables never generate their alleged output, rarely get anywhere near it and often generate little or nothing at all) and massive electricity storage. Which could work if electricity storage exists on the required scale. But it doesn't. May as well decide to power the country using dilithium crystals and a warp drive.

So we need enough controllable generation and right now that's fossil fuels or nuclear fission. But only enough. Those methods have problems of their own.

My gripe is with the 2050 target. It could be done faster. It should be done faster. At that rate they'll probably be up and running about when the first fusion power stations are being built. If that is the case, we'd be shutting down the fission power stations not long after we powered them up.



Yes, that. Also, radioactive waste is a problem. Nowhere near as much of a problem as it's often made out to be, but the less of it the better. Using a thorium cycle fission reactor would work around the issue of sourcing uranium, but that's not a well tested technology.

We already produce about 17% of our energy with nuclear. Though that is going to reduce, as half our currently operating nuclear power plants are set for decommision within the next 5 years.
Also if we want to start heating our homes and water with electricity we will need an abundance of electricity.

 

[ubersonic]

25% only. Are we even trying?

One of the cost issues with nuclear power stations/reactors has always been having to stop/reduce output overnight. I.E I'm not sure it's still true but when I was younger the UKs nuclear plants alone produced well over 100% of the energy the country required at night, this is why electricity providers offered tariffs that were cheaper off-peak in order to entice people to run appliances/storage heaters then.

25% may not seem that much but the ideal situation we would want to be in would be where nuclear can power the grid by itself at night with maybe a little backup form wind, then during the day nuclear/wind/solar/hydro can all power the grid and meet demand, and if there is ever a shortfall at day/night due maybe to low wind or early sunsets disabling solar before peak usage is up then reserve power sources can be brought online to provide a temporary boost (like gas/oil/biomass/coal).

 

[Angilion]

Central storage is always going to be key, there are some really interesting methods they can use to store it that don't require huge batteries as well. For example you can fill a reservoir using excess electric when renewables are generating a lot, and you can empty it when you need extra generation, so it acts like a big battery of sorts.

And it's nowhere near enough and it's fantastically expensive and it's lossy and it's dangerous to store tens of millions of tonnes of water on top of a hill held back by a dam (almost all of the worst power station disasters have been hydroelectric, along with many other disastrous dam failures) and it destroys the environment over a large area and there aren't enough suitable places to put it. It's in use. It's not even vaguely suitable for this task. It's for covering an unexpected brief shortfall because a power station has tripped out. Dinorwig is sometimes being used for load balancing nowadays but that's only because the UK grid has been pushed to the constant brink of collapse by over-use of wind and we have to try anything and everything to reduce how much we have to rely on France to prop it up.

It's true that we can't use batteries to store enough electricity, but I didn't restrict my comment to batteries. We don't have any way of storing enough electricity, no matter how it's stored. There are many things being tried (e.g. flow batteries, solid masses and mavity (much safer than using water), compressed air, hydrogen, etc), but none of them are even plausible in the foreseeable future let alone working now. Matter-antimatter annihilation as a power source is also really interesting, as is using a black hole as a power station. But we need something that works now, not something that might maybe possibly work at some point in the future.

 

[dowie]

But the thing how much that matters if you will have probably a shower of missiles coming over you?

It's got nothing to do with the missiles, it's about trying to keep out the Russian soldiers attempting to get inside, they matter rather more than the missiles.

 

[ubersonic]

Western powers lied to Russia too, they promised in 1991 that Nato wouldnt expand eastwards.

There are three major issues with this.

(1) - There's no evidence it ever happened.
(2) - Soviets/Russian politicians/negotiators weren't/aren't mentally inept, if it was ever requested/offered then there would be documentation of it.
(3) - Issue #1 and issue #2 combined prove it's actually a Russian lie.

It's also funny they always refer to NATO enlargement as "expansion" like it's some beastly empire coming to get them. NATO is literally an alliance of countries that banded together to form a mutual combined defence against Soviet expansion. The reason so much of eastern Europe has joined NATO since 1991 isn't because NATO asked them to it's because they asked to join NATO because having spent the majority of the 20th century owned/ruled/occupied by Russia they wanted to ensure Russia doesn't invade them again.

It's got nothing to do with the missiles, it's about trying to keep out the Russian soldiers attempting to get inside, they matter rather more than the missiles.

There is a certain comedy to the fact that Russia is having so much trouble getting into Kiev is because they're attacking the side Stalin had fortified to withstand a NATO assault/siege xD

 

[IGBT]

It's got nothing to do with the missiles, it's about trying to keep out the Russian soldiers attempting to get inside, they matter rather more than the missiles.

Even if it happens to what happened to Mariupol? 90% of buildings destroyed? That was my point. After having 90% of buildings destroyed what will stop the soldiers coming in?