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> A dirty bomb would render areas uninhabitable - or at least dangerous - for decades after a war is over. Russia has literal nuclear weapons that are made spe

> A dirty bomb would render areas uninhabitable - or at least dangerous - for decades after a war is over. Russia has literal nuclear weapons that are made specifically for that purpose. They've threatened to use them. Why would they bomb a nuclear power plant to get an uncontrollable release instead of simply dropping a nuclear bomb if they want a nuclear war? Because obviously, that will happen if they're blowing up nuclear power plants.

yellow_lead 4y ago
Because the political fallout is lower. Reportedly, the US has already outlined the consequences of Russia using nuclear weapons. I haven't heard of anything similar for damage to a nuclear power plant.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Because dropping a nuclear bomb is a clear and attributable act that comes with clear consequences. An "accident" at a nuclear energy facility can be very easily made to look like it was the work of your enemy, or the work of third parties, or ... who knows? The ambiguity and confusion works in your favour and you can lie at will. This is a state that most likely just blew up its own undersea natural gas pipelines to send a message and make it clear that it is capable and willing to perform such actions when cornered. Now, I don't think irradiating Ukrainian territory makes a whole lot of sense, tactically. But I fear what this regime can and will do in desperation.
- rendall 4y ago
  > But I fear what this regime can and will do in desperation. Why are you afraid what they will do in desperation? First, their desperation is self-imposed. There is no outside force that warrants their desperation. Russian desperation is Russia's alone to deal with. They behave like the mad dog in the room to get what they want. Their apparent desperation is a tactic to frighten the easily frightened. More importantly, are you in Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland or rural northern Norway? Because the people who live in these areas will suffer in a nuclear war, but they fear nuclear war far less than a Russian victory. They support Ukraine despite Russian threats. Ask yourself why that is. Unrelated, nuclear power is the Earth's best chance to avert climate change from carbon emissions, war notwithstanding. Modern reactor design will ameliorate even missile attacks.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    To be clear my fear of what this regime can/will do does mean I feel we should submit to them. That is, I'm not giving the Elon Musk argument that "nuclear war is possible therefore give Putin what he wants."
    - rendall 4y ago
      That was so diplomatically reckless of Musk. I went from general admiration for the guy to deep unease at his lack of maturity.
  - thunky 4y ago
    > they fear nuclear war far less than a Russian victory. They support Ukraine despite Russian threats. Ask yourself why that is Ignoring the obviously devastation to Ukraine, isn't there a scenario where Russia winning is the safest outcome for Europe and the rest of the world? Especially now that they've been worn down so much by the conflict.
    - rendall 4y ago
      > isn't there a scenario where Russia winning No. Hell no. Russia is run by a mafia. The safest for the world is Russia to lose decisively and then to remain a pariah until they demilitarize and denuclearize. They will take a victory, or even an armistice, as an opportunity to retool and try again.
      - thunky 4y ago
        It's just not clear to me what a losing Russia looks like. Or what Russia, Ukraine, and Europe look like after the smoke clears. From my perspective (in the US), it seems to me that our government has an interest in extending the conflict. We're providing just enough weapons and support to help Ukraine not lose, but not enough support to end this already. Maybe this is so Russia doesn't decisively win or lose, and their military and standing pays a large price. However, I can't help but to worry that we're ultimately making the end state worse for Ukraine and possibly Europe if nukes come into play.
- luckylion 4y ago
  You can also just lie about nukes, it's just that nobody cares for lies in either case. Russia could drop a nuke and say "it was totally a Swiss plane", but that doesn't matter to anyone, and the same would be true for them attacking nuclear power plants. They shot down MH17 and only the hardcore believers are pretending to believe them, and those folks would say it wasn't them if Putin personally pushed the button while on live TV and narrating what he's doing the whole time. The difference is that we don't care enough about MH17 to go to war over it. Put Nancy Pelosi on that plane, and see what happens and how far they'd come with "it totally wasn't us, I swear on Stalin's grave".
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    I wish I could agree with you that "only the hardcare believers are pretending to believe them" on the MH17 front. I have had mostly non-political non-Russophile family members regurgitate disinfo/conspiracy points on that topic. My point being that Russian disinformation campaigns generally work. They never paid the consequences for that action. Or for polonium poisonings on foreign territory etc. They're targeting civilians in the war and still there's a significant % of people in the west openly supporting them. And in large part this same phenomenon seems like it would happen if they were to blow the dam on the Dnieper, or, as discussed here, perform terrorist actions involving a nuclear power plant. It's much much harder to do the same with an actual nuclear weapon attack. That would bring immediate NATO involvement of some form. The broader point isn't about nuclear power per se but about the wisdom of building any infrastructure that has clear long term safety and vulnerability issues. The problem with most forms of nuclear power generation is that they require many lifetimes worth of maintenance and continuous high quality engineering and monitoring. I simply am too pessimistic about human beings to feel this is wise.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      I believe by and large they don't pay the price because nobody really cares. The British certainly don't like it, but it'd be a very different story if the Russian agents were murdering Royals or British politicians. If they're "only" murdering exiled Russians, it's more like the Turkish intelligence services murdering Kurdish activists in France: not amused, but definitely not something to go to war over. You're right, there are lots of people who "believe" them, but I think that's a somewhat different story. There's a group of people we've left behind in the West that will believe whatever you tell them, as long as it vaguely resonates with their world view. They dislike their country's government because of their personal situation, so if you start your tale by "your government is lying to you", you have their attention. I don't know how to win them back, but I don't think they actually 'believe' it, it's more of a tribal thing, and they've switched tribes because they didn't feel like they were treated as part of their original tribe (which I can understand to some degree). It's important to say though: these people 'believe' those tales precisely because they're powerless; what they believe or don't believe does not matter. It's not like the Russian military would blow up a nuclear power plant to irradiate the area and have radioactive clouds drift westwards and we'd hold a plebiscite on how to respond (thank god!).
fleischhauf 4y ago
just make it look like an accident and you are not responsible for starting a nuclear war. counting the number of people accidentally falling out of windows these days certain organizations seem to have more of them..

yellow_lead 4y ago

Because the political fallout is lower. Reportedly, the US has already outlined the consequences of Russia using nuclear weapons. I haven't heard of anything similar for damage to a nuclear power plant.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Because dropping a nuclear bomb is a clear and attributable act that comes with clear consequences. An "accident" at a nuclear energy facility can be very easily made to look like it was the work of your enemy, or the work of third parties, or ... who knows? The ambiguity and confusion works in your favour and you can lie at will. This is a state that most likely just blew up its own undersea natural gas pipelines to send a message and make it clear that it is capable and willing to perform such actions when cornered. Now, I don't think irradiating Ukrainian territory makes a whole lot of sense, tactically. But I fear what this regime can and will do in desperation.

rendall 4y ago
> But I fear what this regime can and will do in desperation. Why are you afraid what they will do in desperation? First, their desperation is self-imposed. There is no outside force that warrants their desperation. Russian desperation is Russia's alone to deal with. They behave like the mad dog in the room to get what they want. Their apparent desperation is a tactic to frighten the easily frightened. More importantly, are you in Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland or rural northern Norway? Because the people who live in these areas will suffer in a nuclear war, but they fear nuclear war far less than a Russian victory. They support Ukraine despite Russian threats. Ask yourself why that is. Unrelated, nuclear power is the Earth's best chance to avert climate change from carbon emissions, war notwithstanding. Modern reactor design will ameliorate even missile attacks.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  To be clear my fear of what this regime can/will do does mean I feel we should submit to them. That is, I'm not giving the Elon Musk argument that "nuclear war is possible therefore give Putin what he wants."
  - rendall 4y ago
    That was so diplomatically reckless of Musk. I went from general admiration for the guy to deep unease at his lack of maturity.
- thunky 4y ago
  > they fear nuclear war far less than a Russian victory. They support Ukraine despite Russian threats. Ask yourself why that is Ignoring the obviously devastation to Ukraine, isn't there a scenario where Russia winning is the safest outcome for Europe and the rest of the world? Especially now that they've been worn down so much by the conflict.
  - rendall 4y ago
    > isn't there a scenario where Russia winning No. Hell no. Russia is run by a mafia. The safest for the world is Russia to lose decisively and then to remain a pariah until they demilitarize and denuclearize. They will take a victory, or even an armistice, as an opportunity to retool and try again.
    - thunky 4y ago
      It's just not clear to me what a losing Russia looks like. Or what Russia, Ukraine, and Europe look like after the smoke clears. From my perspective (in the US), it seems to me that our government has an interest in extending the conflict. We're providing just enough weapons and support to help Ukraine not lose, but not enough support to end this already. Maybe this is so Russia doesn't decisively win or lose, and their military and standing pays a large price. However, I can't help but to worry that we're ultimately making the end state worse for Ukraine and possibly Europe if nukes come into play.
luckylion 4y ago
You can also just lie about nukes, it's just that nobody cares for lies in either case. Russia could drop a nuke and say "it was totally a Swiss plane", but that doesn't matter to anyone, and the same would be true for them attacking nuclear power plants. They shot down MH17 and only the hardcore believers are pretending to believe them, and those folks would say it wasn't them if Putin personally pushed the button while on live TV and narrating what he's doing the whole time. The difference is that we don't care enough about MH17 to go to war over it. Put Nancy Pelosi on that plane, and see what happens and how far they'd come with "it totally wasn't us, I swear on Stalin's grave".
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  I wish I could agree with you that "only the hardcare believers are pretending to believe them" on the MH17 front. I have had mostly non-political non-Russophile family members regurgitate disinfo/conspiracy points on that topic. My point being that Russian disinformation campaigns generally work. They never paid the consequences for that action. Or for polonium poisonings on foreign territory etc. They're targeting civilians in the war and still there's a significant % of people in the west openly supporting them. And in large part this same phenomenon seems like it would happen if they were to blow the dam on the Dnieper, or, as discussed here, perform terrorist actions involving a nuclear power plant. It's much much harder to do the same with an actual nuclear weapon attack. That would bring immediate NATO involvement of some form. The broader point isn't about nuclear power per se but about the wisdom of building any infrastructure that has clear long term safety and vulnerability issues. The problem with most forms of nuclear power generation is that they require many lifetimes worth of maintenance and continuous high quality engineering and monitoring. I simply am too pessimistic about human beings to feel this is wise.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    I believe by and large they don't pay the price because nobody really cares. The British certainly don't like it, but it'd be a very different story if the Russian agents were murdering Royals or British politicians. If they're "only" murdering exiled Russians, it's more like the Turkish intelligence services murdering Kurdish activists in France: not amused, but definitely not something to go to war over. You're right, there are lots of people who "believe" them, but I think that's a somewhat different story. There's a group of people we've left behind in the West that will believe whatever you tell them, as long as it vaguely resonates with their world view. They dislike their country's government because of their personal situation, so if you start your tale by "your government is lying to you", you have their attention. I don't know how to win them back, but I don't think they actually 'believe' it, it's more of a tribal thing, and they've switched tribes because they didn't feel like they were treated as part of their original tribe (which I can understand to some degree). It's important to say though: these people 'believe' those tales precisely because they're powerless; what they believe or don't believe does not matter. It's not like the Russian military would blow up a nuclear power plant to irradiate the area and have radioactive clouds drift westwards and we'd hold a plebiscite on how to respond (thank god!).

fleischhauf 4y ago

just make it look like an accident and you are not responsible for starting a nuclear war. counting the number of people accidentally falling out of windows these days certain organizations seem to have more of them..