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One question for nuclear advocates, as I know it's full on-trend at the moment: What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using their nucealer fac

by LightG 4y ago

One question for nuclear advocates, as I know it's full on-trend at the moment: What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using their nucealer facilities? Just like Russia is playing "games" around the Ukranian nuclear plant? What's to stop that being used as the new threat? We won't turn your gas off, we'll threaten your nuclear plants? Genuine question.

orthecreedence 4y ago
> What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using their nucealer facilities? Nothing, unless you yourself have leverage. Every resource or dependency is a potential weakness. The idea is to be able to say "ok, if you bomb our fission plant, we'll shut off your fresh water supply." It's all a huge game of chess.
- LightG 4y ago
  But doesn't chess rely on two half-decent actors sitting down across a table from each other? Clearly some actors are willing to throw the board across the room In which case, why are 'we' considering creating that weakness? I understand there is a strong wave behind nuclear right now, but it does feel like we're just creating the instruments of another, different, mess.
  - orthecreedence 4y ago
    > But doesn't chess rely on two half-decent actors sitting down across a table from each other? No? People play "chess" all the time without sitting down at a board. You're twisting the metaphor. > Clearly some actors are willing to throw the board across the room And like I said, there would be consequences for that. > In which case, why are 'we' considering creating that weakness? Having a large body of fresh water is a weakness. Maybe we should send it all away to another country...? > I understand there is a strong wave behind nuclear right now, but it does feel like we're just creating the instruments of another, different, mess. The mess has already been created. It's called an enormous population of 8 billion people. How do you produce all the things they need without destroying the planet? There are more existential issues at hand than "well, nuclear is a perfect energy source, but people who don't like us might hurt our energy production so we should just do ..." Do what instead? Any power source can be attacked. I don't even get your position here. The only way to mitigate attack is complete distribution. Solar is great for that, but unfortunately unbelievably underpowered to drive the entire productive system. If you want a happy medium, then smaller, modular nuclear reactors would be the way to go.
weberer 4y ago
I'd imagine it would receive the same response as if Russia launched a nuclear missile directly. In other words, WWIII.
BurningFrog 4y ago
Your question seems to boil down to "what's to stop a foreign power to invade and defeat us in war?". For most of Europe, the main answer is membership in NATO.

by LightG 4y ago

orthecreedence 4y ago

> What's to stop adversaries holding countries to ransom using their nucealer facilities? Nothing, unless you yourself have leverage. Every resource or dependency is a potential weakness. The idea is to be able to say "ok, if you bomb our fission plant, we'll shut off your fresh water supply." It's all a huge game of chess.

LightG 4y ago
But doesn't chess rely on two half-decent actors sitting down across a table from each other? Clearly some actors are willing to throw the board across the room In which case, why are 'we' considering creating that weakness? I understand there is a strong wave behind nuclear right now, but it does feel like we're just creating the instruments of another, different, mess.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  > But doesn't chess rely on two half-decent actors sitting down across a table from each other? No? People play "chess" all the time without sitting down at a board. You're twisting the metaphor. > Clearly some actors are willing to throw the board across the room And like I said, there would be consequences for that. > In which case, why are 'we' considering creating that weakness? Having a large body of fresh water is a weakness. Maybe we should send it all away to another country...? > I understand there is a strong wave behind nuclear right now, but it does feel like we're just creating the instruments of another, different, mess. The mess has already been created. It's called an enormous population of 8 billion people. How do you produce all the things they need without destroying the planet? There are more existential issues at hand than "well, nuclear is a perfect energy source, but people who don't like us might hurt our energy production so we should just do ..." Do what instead? Any power source can be attacked. I don't even get your position here. The only way to mitigate attack is complete distribution. Solar is great for that, but unfortunately unbelievably underpowered to drive the entire productive system. If you want a happy medium, then smaller, modular nuclear reactors would be the way to go.

weberer 4y ago

I'd imagine it would receive the same response as if Russia launched a nuclear missile directly. In other words, WWIII.

BurningFrog 4y ago

Your question seems to boil down to "what's to stop a foreign power to invade and defeat us in war?". For most of Europe, the main answer is membership in NATO.