Putin's Russian expanding to be the old USSR

louis · 2022-03-29 06:15:17

kbd512 wrote:

Louis,
NATO kept poking Russia, from Putin's perspective, until he threw a massive temper tantrum that resulted in mass murder of people who would otherwise have had more in common with Russia than the rest of Europe. In reality, NATO was never going to attack Russia and they were never going to admit Ukraine to NATO, but after a month of watching the Ukrainians lay waste to the Russian military with comparative pea shooters, now the entire world knows that Russia's military has a glass jaw when it comes to a real slugfest, and their leadership is so paranoid about being attacked, because that's what they want to do and are actually doing to their neighbors, that they can think rationally (from anyone else's perspective). Putin's merely another third-world tin pot dictator, no different from Castro or any of the other little phony street toughs who think they know something about fighting until they mess with someone who actually knows how to fight.

It's true that NATO could be said to have poked Putin. But history is complex. To begin with, as the Berlin Wall fell, the pro-globalist West thought it was a slam-dunk and they could change Russia, make it an ally of the EU, perhaps even bring it into the EU and NATO over time. The arrival of Putin on the scene gradually changed everything, but he was clever and moved slowly, exploiting Western differences. The rush to expand NATO was as much a product of fear in recently "liberated" Eastern Europe as any drive to expand from NATO. However I would agree NATO acted hubristically in trying to expand its role.

Regarding GDP, in a sense you're right if we're talking about services, and if you read what she wrote instead of simply calling her names, then you'd see she stated that sometimes new services are not very energy-intensive while being very valuable, boosting GDP out of proportion to the energy invested into the economic activity. We see how services like Uber use owner-operator ride-sharing with cellular technologies to reduce the number of cars required. Seemingly unimportant little innovations like that can have profound impacts without going gonzo on energy consumption. We had taxi cabs since we had cars, but Uber figured out how to use mobile devices to more efficiently utilize the fleet of vehicles while not paying the owner-operator for maintenance, likely another unsustainable scheme in the long-term, but it works until those owner-operators can't pay their bills. However, you still subscribe to the "metaphysical woo woo" nonsense that these "economists who never left the classroom" do. There is no human activity that doesn't use energy. If you're alive, you're using energy. Period.

Wasn't me who denied energy usage for all activity but I think we agree there are ways that low energy use can improve GDP output. The classic one was probably in 18th century England when "husbandry" knowledge about all aspects of agriculture e.g. crop rotation spread among farmers so that agricultural output increased hugely, allowing expansion of population, urbanisation and industrialisation. Knowledge is the classic low energy user!

I'm also counting on recycling improving because otherwise this "electronic-everything" futurism, however cool-looking, is pure fantasy. In the same way that it took about 90 years for Lead-acid battery recycling to reach 95%, it's probable that recycling any other type of battery will take at least that long to become at least that pervasive, and then the energy cost will still exceed that of sourcing virgin materials. The government could incentivize programs for recycling, but they believe the same thing you do- that resources are infinite. If we're talking about the entire solar system, then compared to Earth the resources are infinite, but someone has to have "been there, done that" first, and thus far there are no takers despite the fact that they could be wealthy beyond anyone's dreams. The sea bed mining looks interesting and I read about that, too, but again, let's see how closely reality matches up with "the dream".

Recycling is one of those areas where government intervention can make a huge difference. If it becomes a legal requirement, the sector will put in the investment to make it happen. Obviously you can't do it overnight but once the legal requirement is there and everyone knows the rules of the game, the recycling capacity expands.

I've already stated what the present issue with photovoltaics, wind turbines, and batteries is. The sunk cost over time is exponentially more than competing solutions. It starts out that way and gets worse over time. When fossil fuels were more plentiful, it didn't matter much, but they can't keep the lights on in China where they make all these things. That's why the marginal monetary cost of making the next copy of these whiz-bang gadgets, which reflects embodied energy costs, has to approach something trivial for it to be viable. We've almost figured out how to do that with microchips, but the energy cost is still staggering. How do you achieve continual growth when energy costs keep going up as the scarcity of the inputs continues to get worse? Beats me, but if you figure that out please let the manufacturers know so we can make this beautiful dream a reality.

In looking at this issue, firstly ignore historic costs as a guide to future costs except to the rate at which costs have fallen. The potential for cost reductions in photovoltaics particularly but also in battery storage, green hydrogen production and wind energy are huge. Secondly, let price be your guide.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/leve … -hydrogen/

Only fully depreciated Gas CC facilities can beat the lowest price points for solar and wind. Of course we have yet to see entries for fully depreciated wind and solar facilities (they too will be extremely cheap). I accept this chart doesn't mean green energy viewed as a total system (generation, distribution and storage) can yet match the price of the cheapest non-green sources but they are getting very close now and the outlook is good. The price of large nuclear power facilities is never going to go down substantially unless perhaps you can safely get AI robots to manage the facilities. Automated small nuclear power facilities might be a lot cheaper but we don't have any in operation in the real market place yet, so we will have to see. I am sceptical about them because of the terrorist threat and public opposition to having them sited on people's doorstep and the lack of any real info on operational costs.

Calliban · 2022-03-29 06:53:03

louis wrote:

Wasn't me who denied energy usage for all activity but I think we agree there are ways that low energy use can improve GDP output. The classic one was probably in 18th century England when "husbandry" knowledge about all aspects of agriculture e.g. crop rotation spread among farmers so that agricultural output increased hugely, allowing expansion of population, urbanisation and industrialisation. Knowledge is the classic low energy user!
e of the cheapest non-green sources but they are getting very close now and the outlook is good. The price of large nuclear power facilities is never going to go down substantially unless perhaps you can safely get AI robots to manage the facilities. Automated small nuclear power facilities might be a lot cheaper but we don't have any in operation in the real market place yet, so we will have to see. I am sceptical about them because of the terrorist threat and public opposition to having them sited on people's doorstep and the lack of any real info on operational costs.

Energy, labour, capital and technology. Crop rotation was a good example of improving technology, which can also be described as complexity. Technological development is not resource free. There must obviously be sufficient surplus wealth to support it. And it cannot go on forever, it reaches limited returns. In times where resources are tightening, research budgets are going to tighten as well. Technology cannot change the nature of resources. They remain what they are. Technology is really about finding more innovative ways of using them. And it's effects are often overestimated. It will not be possible for technology to allow growing production of real goods whilst energy supply is shrinking. Technological innovation is likely to decline in an age of resource poverty. The technological innovation of the 17th century took place in a period of slowly rising surplus energy and growing affluent classes. It allowed an unprecedented number of people to give their lives over to science. In the decades ahead, we will be facing the opposite situation.

Capital is investment in productive machinery at current technology sets. Capital without energy is a statue. Labour without energy is a corpse.

Your comments about green energy sources and cost decline of nuclear power, make me wonder how much you really know about these things and how they actually work. More later.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-29 06:55:59)

Calliban · 2022-03-29 10:01:04

Worth reading, though horrifying.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022 … ime-again/

Western sanctions against the Russian central bank are the final straw that will break the dollar as the world's reserve currency. The implications for the US and allied Western countries are not good.

SpaceNut · 2022-03-29 17:36:06

Money is still traded like metals and precious stones as the universal cash exchange when trading all currency's as its a gamble for pump and dump..

Russia’s Su-57 Fighter Bomber Is Supposed to Rival the F-22... So Where Is It?

I think this is true about many other military items in use as well...

kbd512 · 2022-03-30 00:50:28

Louis,

The price of solar panels can never fall below whatever it takes to make them. To wit, we're still using silicon wafers and thin film plastics as substrates. No significant advances in making the substrates have been realized. The coatings are different, but the real energy cost is tied to the base material, packaging, and power conversion equipment. A power transformer is a power transformer. A silicon wafer is a silicon wafer.

At GWe scales, no wild advances have been made in power conversion and distribution. All practical power conversion systems for industrialized countries operate at that scale, not smaller.

Price points have no context when you're not comparing apples-to-apples.

US Yearly Per-Capita Energy Consumption:
839.5 gal oil 34,083.7kWh @ 40.6kWh/gallon
2,879.85 lbs coal 2879.85kWh @ 1kWh/pound (depends on the type of coal used, obviously)
91,980 scf natural gas 26,959.338kWh @0.2931kWh/scf
4,416.5kWh electricity per year
So... 68,339.388kWh / 68,339,388Wh per person per year (that's... a lot)

A 290W solar panel with 5 hours of full sun can produce around 500kWh per panel per year- overall world average vs the Sahara or Middle East or similar ideal case scenarios since nobody in Germany has figured out that Germany is not the Sahara.

That works out to 137 panels per person for equivalent energy production. Assume any efficiency gains are immediately gobbled up by the quantity of new electronics required plus electrical resistance losses and new production associated with the power transmission and distribution infrastructure that must be built, because it inevitably will be built if everything is electric or electronic. All the stuff we use today still has to be powered tomorrow, and that means a lot of things like appliances or electric vehicles needs to be manufactured. The world does not stop for anyone's futurism fantasies. People still need food, potable water, hot water for cooking and cleaning, transportation, medical care, clothing, fancier electronic gadgets that prevent them from learning how to count, etc.

2.95t of CO2 per solar panel, cradle-to-grave, according to a UK site advocating for switching over to PV.
That's about 1,219kg of coal- a bit less than the 1,306.65kg that the average American uses per year.
137 PV panels per person * 320M people * 2.95t of CO2 per panel = 129,328,000,000t of CO2
129,328,000,000t of CO2 / 25 year expected panel life = 5,173,120,000t of CO2 per year
4,460,000,000t of CO2 for the entire US in 2021, according to US EIA.
4,460,000,000t is less than 5,173,120,000t by a significant bit.

China consumes about 2X as much energy as the US and makes 90% to 95% of the world's solar panels, mostly using coal and natural gas.
Tesla's GigaFactory in California gets its energy from coal as well, which is unsurprising. Elon Musk is pretty smart and a better salesman than most.

So... After we emit the equivalent of about 29 years of CO2 emissions at the 2021 rate, I presume that magic happens and we cease to generate CO2 emissions for electricity and transportation. We stop using all existing power plants, planes, trains, trucks, and ships, unless they're solar powered. How we actually do that is a great question. I don't see it. Trains are feasible even if it's not practical under all operating scenarios. Trucks and ship can't be solar powered in any practical manner. Aircraft are absurdly impractical and will remain so. Passenger cars made from advanced composites with small batteries and less crash protection are doable.

Somehow we keep doing that into perpetuity without the dirt cheap fossil fuels that permitted practical PV to begin with, or we keep covering the ground with more and more solar panels until we run out of space or raw materials. Recycling takes even more energy than mining virgin materials according to all of the major PV manufacturers, so we need more and more panels to keep providing the same input energy that makes our global economy possible to begin with.

If more magic happened and we could make 50% efficient vs 25% efficient PV panels, then we could have a marked reduction in both CO2 emissions and panel production (both good things for sustainability), but then our panels cost 2X as much as the existing panels, because you can't replace existing paid-for manufacturing equipment and well-established methods using brand spanking new whatever, and one half the total production quantity, and expect to obtain a cost reduction. People who passed Economics 101 know that that's not how basic economics works, even if everyone else isn't intelligent enough to accept that that's how it works.

I guess we're producing panels like they're going out of style at that point, so maybe we still get some kind of cost reduction benefit and hopefully a CO2 reduction since we should be able to power the PV panel factory at some point. Why are we not doing that already? All those PV panels coming out the end of the factory, yet nobody thought putting some on the factory's roof might be a good idea?

I have solar PV on my roof, and lots of it relative to most home installs. The power inverters for 16 of my 76 panels have failed in less than a year's time and have to be replaced with new units from the factory. The 76 panels and 2 Tesla PowerWalls that I have are insufficient to run any of the AC units at any time, but over the course of a year they reduce our electricity cost to just the bill for the panels ($367/month, for 25 years) by feeding power into the grid. Relative to what we were paying, which was provided by PV farms and wind turbines, they're a bargain. Relative to what we paid when we used coal and then natural gas, they're absurdly expensive.

I keep waiting for the day that any aspect of this becomes cheaper and more efficient than what it purports to replace, but thus far it requires PV farms, rooftop PV, wind turbine farms, non-existent affordable battery energy storage, and gas turbines to replace what was working about as well as it could. Up to this point, the joke's on me. All this talk about "avoided emissions" or "emissions reduction" looks suspiciously like blindly operating on blatant falsehoods. If we keep building more and more of this stuff but our CO2 emissions keep increasing every single year, then from my perspective it's not working as advertised. Maybe we differ on that point. We're doing something, but I don't think it's what we said we were doing.

If I produce 1 ton of Silicon, then it doesn't take 10 times less energy to produce 10 tons of Silicon. The Silicon might be cheaper per ton due to economy of scale, but unless the input energy goes to less than 1/10th of what it took to produce 1 ton, then I can never use less energy. At some point, the input energy becomes the cost driver, even if everything else has already been paid for. Can you point out some smelting process where it took less than 1/10th of the input energy to produce 10 times more metal? If you can't, then do you understand why I consider this a fool's errand, even if you disagree with that assessment?

The price of all this stuff keeps going up, not down, because it's becoming more rather than less expensive. All that talk about "getting more for your money" doesn't mean squat unless your salary goes up. Yeah, more power is more better, but only when you can afford it. I think we're really trying to crush poor people more than we already have, while calling it something else.

Terraformer · 2022-03-30 02:27:24

Trucks and ship can't be solar powered in any practical manner.

Ships, however, *can* be nuclear powered A few countries have enough experience operating nuclear powered vessels that they could nuclearise their merchant navy. Probably couldn't hire cheap Filipino's to work on them though, and the ships couldn't use the canals... but when you're not as worried about fuel costs, going round the Capes might not be as big a deal (and certain routes, like the Pacific and Atlantic, don't require transiting canals anyway). If the British government was serious (they are not), they'd announce a plan to develop such a fleet, providing an abundance of skilled jobs (especially in places like Barrow) and decarbonising shipping.

Calliban · 2022-03-30 05:50:55

The world is slowly waking up to the reality that the economy is an energy driven process, rather than being a financial system. Money is the language of the economy, energy is its substance.
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpres … onal-pull/

Calliban · 2022-03-30 05:58:13

Terraformer wrote:

Trucks and ship can't be solar powered in any practical manner.
Ships, however, *can* be nuclear powered A few countries have enough experience operating nuclear powered vessels that they could nuclearise their merchant navy. Probably couldn't hire cheap Filipino's to work on them though, and the ships couldn't use the canals... but when you're not as worried about fuel costs, going round the Capes might not be as big a deal (and certain routes, like the Pacific and Atlantic, don't require transiting canals anyway). If the British government was serious (they are not), they'd announce a plan to develop such a fleet, providing an abundance of skilled jobs (especially in places like Barrow) and decarbonising shipping.

Possible in principle. But the use of nuclear power adds a huge amount of cost to a ship because of the amount of analysis and safety management that goes into demonstrating tolerable safety. One way around this would be to develop a standard modular nuclear power system and have essentially the same safety case and safety management arrangements for all vessels employing the unit. A large container ship needs about 40MW of shaft power. A tug, about 10MW. A standard 20MWe nuclear battery, could serve a number of functions.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-30 05:59:24)

Quaoar · 2022-03-30 06:34:57

Calliban wrote:

Terraformer wrote:
Trucks and ship can't be solar powered in any practical manner.
Ships, however, *can* be nuclear powered A few countries have enough experience operating nuclear powered vessels that they could nuclearise their merchant navy. Probably couldn't hire cheap Filipino's to work on them though, and the ships couldn't use the canals... but when you're not as worried about fuel costs, going round the Capes might not be as big a deal (and certain routes, like the Pacific and Atlantic, don't require transiting canals anyway). If the British government was serious (they are not), they'd announce a plan to develop such a fleet, providing an abundance of skilled jobs (especially in places like Barrow) and decarbonising shipping.
Possible in principle. But the use of nuclear power adds a huge amount of cost to a ship because of the amount of analysis and safety management that goes into demonstrating tolerable safety. One way around this would be to develop a standard modular nuclear power system and have essentially the same safety case and safety management arrangements for all vessels employing the unit. A large container ship needs about 40MW of shaft power. A tug, about 10MW. A standard 20MWe nuclear battery, could serve a number of functions.

What if such a nuclear merchant ship go on fire while moored in the New York Harbor?

Last edited by Quaoar (2022-03-30 06:36:05)

Terraformer · 2022-03-30 07:35:51

How do they handle fires on existing nuclear ships? And if they didn't, would the result be any worse than it would be on a fully fuelled cargo ship (I am assuming the reactor has some kind of means of safely shutting down -- there's plenty of seawater for cooling at least)?

Calliban · 2022-03-30 08:09:16

Quaoar wrote:

What if such a nuclear merchant ship go on fire while moored in the New York Harbor?

Probably not very much. The reactor would trip, either manually or in response to external temperature sensors. Fission would halt, but the core would continue to generate decay heat. This would be removed using decay heat removal systems. For a reactor this small, DHR would probably be via natural circulation and then conduction of heat through the hull or a sea water heat exchanger.

There is always a small probability of radiation release if DHR systems are damaged. If this were to occur, the core would overheat and fission products, principally iodine and caesium, could be blown across New York City. Anyone in the plume would take a dose and a few may die from cancer as a result. One has to balance the slight possibility of this happening against the certainty of a diesel powered ship contributing to New York Air pollution and causing cancers and heart attacks. Life is always about achieving the balance of risk. Safety is always relative.

kbd512 · 2022-03-30 08:27:09

Terraformer,

Fires are handled on nuclear powered ships the same way fires are handled on fossil fuel powered ships, becasue the materials that will be on fire are the same. For any mainspace fire, you use AFFF mixed into sea water or plain sea water, because that's what you have a functionally infinite supply to work with. So long as you have pumping power provided by backup diesel generators, you can keep pumping out the foam.

All mainspaces are also equipped with Halon. If the Halon does the trick, then you don't use sea water. Since the doors are always dogged, it generally works, but everyone in the space will be dead if they don't evacuate first. I also seem to recall seeing small O2 bottles like the ones the free divers used attached to the belts of our engineers. I think they're good for 5 minutes or so.

All ships, no matter what they're powered with, have backup diesel generators, period. The backup diesel generators aboard an aircraft carrier are roughly the size of a 4-bedroom house and distributed between different parts of the ship with their own locally-stored fuel supply. Ditto for all the fossil fuel powered ships I served aboard. I've never seen a ship, civilian or military, without backup diesel generators.

The reactor is always cooled with sea water, and there has to be a certain number of feet of water beneath the keel to avoid ingestion of too much silt / sediment from the sea bed. That problem could feasibly be resolved on cargo ships by putting alternate intakes on the side of the ship so much less water is required under the keel. Unlike Star Trek, if all pumping power to cool the reactor was lost then you would eject the crew rather than the reactor core. Since that has never happened aboard a US Navy ship after more than half a century of operating hundreds of reactors, I presume it's an impractical failure mode so long as the crew takes care of the reactor.

When it comes time to refuel or repair or retire the reactor, the entire reactor core is cut out of the ship, fuel removed or replaced, and then transported to a burial site at end-of-life.

Reactor core disposal trench for all of the pre-Los Angeles class nuclear powered attack submarine reactors:

Naval_Reactor_Compartment_Packages_in_Trench_94_at_Hanford%2C_WA.png

Most of what you're looking at there is a lot of empty space.

The alternative is hundreds of millions of cubic meters of fossil fuels, going no faster than 6 to 12 knots or so if the ship is entirely wind powered, or not having so many cargo ships because we stop shipping massive quantities of materials and finished goods between continents where we already have those materials (and this is the only real and practical solution to the energy consumption problem).

Calliban · 2022-03-30 10:10:03

Kbd512, many thanks for an excellent explanation.

Those cylinders in the trench are actually entire submarine reactor compartments. Each one is roughly 30' in diameter and about 40' long. It looks as if the disposal option was to cut the entire RC out of the submarine, ship it by road or rail and bury it whole. Presumably, the reactors were defuelled before doing this. The only radioactive materials remaining are the steel reactor pressure vessels, which are dustbin sized units and primary circuit pipework, which probably contains some crud. If we wanted, we could cut this material out of the RC and reduce volume by another 90%. But I guess they figure that a 30' wide cylinder is already a very compact volume for a large ship propulsion system that lasts 30 years. Many of the components of a PWR are still completely workable after a standard 30 year hull life. We could in principle transplant the PWR into a new ship. But logistically, it is easier just to build a new one.

It is an open question whether a commercial nuclear propulsion system would resemble a submarine PWR or whether we would use something else. A Lead cooled fast spectrum reactor would be marginally more compact. But the operational chemistry of a PWR is so well established that it doesn't really make sense trying to develop an entirely new fuel cycle from scratch. One sticking point for a commercial ship would be the fuel. Refuelling a submarine is seriously expensive and takes anywhere up to 2 years. This cost, both in money and operational downtime, has favoured the development of whole life nuclear cores, sufficient for a 30-year Hull life. But this raises two problems in a commercial ship. Firstly, to contain 30-years of fuel in a compact core tends to push the need for highly enriched fuel. This is a proliferation concern outside of military hands. Secondly, long-lived nuclear cores contain a lot of radioactive fission products as the ship reaches end of life.

These sorts of problems lead me to wonder if a molten salt reactor or aqueous homogenous reactor would be a more appropriate choice for a commercial ship. These do not require HEU as fuel and can refuel continuously, without an extended shutdown period for refuelling. Unfortunately, this would mean starting from scratch when designing a commercial ship propulsion system, as the military technology is not suitable. But AHR is such a simple technology with a long history in isotope production. It would be easy to design and build.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-30 10:29:26)

Calliban · 2022-03-31 02:26:39

Interesting article from Pepe Escobar. It hints at some of the real motivations behind Russia's annexation of Donbass.
https://thecradle.co/Article/columns/8480

This is one of Europe's key Iron and steel producing regions. It therefore plays an important role in Chinese belt and road ambitions, which require development of trans-Eurasian rail links. Essentially, if a major power wants to move serious quantities of raw materials or goods over land, it needs railways. Mariupol is well situated to be the manufacturing centre for this infrastructure. Once complete, these trans-Eurasian railways will fully connect the Eurasian continent, bypassing American controlled sea lanes.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-31 02:32:12)

Terraformer · 2022-03-31 03:00:52

They have the plan of turning the Sea of Azov into a Russian lake? Of course, even then Turkey will control the Bosphorus, which they'd need to get things out into the Med...

With Turkey being in NATO, who knows what could happen? They aren't supposed to close it for shipping, but then, seizing foreign currency reserves wasn't *supposed* to happen either.

Quaoar · 2022-03-31 05:19:49

Calliban wrote:

These sorts of problems lead me to wonder if a molten salt reactor or aqueous homogenous reactor would be a more appropriate choice for a commercial ship. These do not require HEU as fuel and can refuel continuously, without an extended shutdown period for refuelling. Unfortunately, this would mean starting from scratch when designing a commercial ship propulsion system, as the military technology is not suitable. But AHR is such a simple technology with a long history in isotope production. It would be easy to design and build.

Civilians will never be allowed to manage HEU. So the only possibility is a new generation reactor with LEU (as a side note even new NTR projects use LEU for the same reason and I would like to open a topic as soon as possible about a new LEU version of the old Timberwind), but a nuclear cargo ship, beyond a very high initial investment, requires a nuclear engineer, a very highly-educated crew and probably even a commando of armed contractors to non be captured by pirates. It may result too much expensive even in a future where oil price is very high.

Last edited by Quaoar (2022-03-31 05:21:20)

Calliban · 2022-03-31 17:10:30

Quaoar wrote:

Civilians will never be allowed to manage HEU. So the only possibility is a new generation reactor with LEU (as a side note even new NTR projects use LEU for the same reason and I would like to open a topic as soon as possible about a new LEU version of the old Timberwind), but a nuclear cargo ship, beyond a very high initial investment, requires a nuclear engineer, a very highly-educated crew and probably even a commando of armed contractors to non be captured by pirates. It may result too much expensive even in a future where oil price is very high.

It would require a trained nuclear operator. I think transport ships should be armed anyway, or else assembled into convoys with destroyers escorting them. The systems should be designed for passive safety even in the absence of an operator. I think the AHR has particular strengths in this regard as they have strong negative void temperature coefficients. Decay heat removal can also be via entirely passive means. If heavy water is available as a moderator, then AHRs could use natural Uranium as fuel. Without internal structure these units are the most neutron efficient of all nuclear reactors.

If all does go wrong and some kind of leak does occur, I would point out that a nuclear accident is not the end of the world. It makes a mess and is a pollution hazard. But a diesel engine is a pollution hazard every second of every day. What we are concerned with is total risk.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-03-31 17:15:59)

louis · 2022-03-31 18:16:12

If the war seriously depletes agricultural production in the region we need to look at technological alternatives that could rapidly increase agricultural production in arid areas of the world like Australia, parts of India, Namibia, SW USA and Mexico, Sahara, and Chile.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti … ep-closer/

Use of polytunnels with water recycling must also be something that needs to be explored.

RobertDyck · 2022-03-31 18:24:10

Canada has attempted to develop a new nuclear reactor to replace the aging NRU reactor. Maple reactors would be two identical reactors so if one is down for maintenance the other would still work. These reactors were used to produce medical isotopes. I mention them because they were intended to use HEU. This was a government facility but non-military. The project was cancelled in 2008 due to design problems. It was to use very small reactor cores which produced temperature control problems.

louis · 2022-03-31 18:35:45

Would they have a role to play in taking agricultural production north in Canada? Another few degrees north in heated polytunnels could be v significant given the size of the country.

RobertDyck wrote:

Canada has attempted to develop a new nuclear reactor to replace the aging NRU reactor. Maple reactors would be two identical reactors so if one is down for maintenance the other would still work. These reactors were used to produce medical isotopes. I mention them because they were intended to use HEU. This was a government facility but non-military. The project was cancelled in 2008 due to design problems. It was to use very small reactor cores which produced temperature control problems.

RobertDyck · 2022-03-31 19:46:30

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) would not. But several people have raised the idea. Northern communies that don't have an all-weather road, food is expensive. Greenhouse production could help food security as well as cost.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-01 17:39:13

Speaking of reactors the Russians are heading home due to radiation poisoning from chenobyl and on another front Russia is claiming that oil tanks behind the front line inside Russia was hit by 2 helicopters.
Seems that they are upset that this was done....seems quite reasonable in the throws of war started by the other.

SpaceNut · 2022-04-03 20:09:51

Night ambushes carried out by a team of Ukrainian special forces and drone operators on quad bikes have helped turn the tide of the Russian invasion

Aerorozvidka is a specialist air-reconnaissance unit within the Ukrainian army, which has claimed to have destroyed dozens of Russian "priority targets," including tanks and command trucks.
The unit's commander, Lt Col Yaroslav Honchar, told The Guardian about an ambush near the Ukrainian town of Ivankiv, which helped stop a 40-mile mechanized Russian column heading to attack the capital Kyiv.
Equipped with night-vision goggles, sniper rifles, and remotely detonated mines and drones, the team of about 30 Ukrainian soldiers approached Russian forces by riding on quad bikes through forests under cover of night.
Some of the drones used by the unit were equipped with thermal imaging cameras, and others were capable of dropping small 1.5kg bombs.
"This one little unit in the night destroyed two or three vehicles at the head of this convoy

Bikes so silent that they can sneak up on the enemy

seems another oil refinery in Russian territory has been hit, Odessa rocked by explosions as Russia claims strikes on oil refinery, fuel depots

Void · 2022-04-05 19:39:37

Well, I will first say that I am not happy about what is happening. It seems quite a waste. But I am also not interested in putting on a cheer leader outfit and chanting "Hurray for our side". But I do, in general prefer our side.

I often do not like the slant at http://www.asiatimes.com, as it is often too generous to ant-American sentiments, too pro-China, in my opinion. But I like to have windows on views from other cultures/areas of the planet.

This article by "Spengler" may seem rather confusing to some/many of you.

But it is not so much a political slant as a ruthless overview.
The author seems to summon a very cold-blooded entity from the past, who apparently was indeed ruthless.

Here it is: https://asiatimes.com/2022/04/cardinal- … mir-putin/
Quote:

Cardinal Richelieu explains Vladimir Putin

For me to speak more on this at this time would be for me to put words in Spenglers mouth. So, I won't.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2022-04-05 19:44:12)

Calliban · 2022-04-06 08:54:31

Interesting article by Tom Luongo.
https://tomluongo.me/2022/04/05/bucha-b … criminals/

Could it really be, that the Bucha massacre was staged by the Ukrainians as a false flag operation to intensify international pressure on Russia? I think it is tempting to see method in madness. It is more tempting to assume some grand conspiracy and political game at work, than it is to accept the reality that the massacres were carried out by poorly supervised, adolescent Russian soldiers. One hand really does not know what the other is doing in the Russian armed forces. Their lack of competence, abysmal logistical support, obsolete equipment and weak command structure, shocked me far more than the allegations of atrocities against civilians. I agree with Luongo, that the Russians could have taken Kiev had they not been mindful of civilian casualties. What I think Luongo misses is how loosely controlled many Russian soldiers really are, fighting in different parts of the country, with poor lines of communication. A gang of poorly supervised youths armed with guns, will do terrible things out of spite and arrogance, precisely because they lack the introspection, moral conscience and worldview that only adult experience can bring.

Luongo also assumes the presence of coordinated masterplans carried out by Western elites. I think there probably are underlying themes and long term goals that these people work to. But the sanctions against Russia are anything but crafty. Withdrawing the SWIFT payment system from Russia stands to do irreparable damage to the US Dollar as world reserve currency. The past 14 years of monetary supply inflation and record low interest rates point to intellectual elites that do not understand the energy basis of the economy or the importance of dominating hifg tech manufacturing as a way of maintaining a positive trade balance. These people are anything but geniuses. The sanctions against Russian oligarchs, few of whom have anything to do with the invasion, seriously undermines the UKs position of money laundering capital of the world. After the neoliberal vandals had sabotaged the countries manufacturing economy, financial services were just about the only thing the UK had to offer the world. Nothing about the sanctions on Russia point to the actions of a mastermind. Western elites are behaving like teenagers in an argument, simply hurling anything they think will cut their opponent, absent of any strategy or thoughts for the longer term. Rather like throwing any mud you can and hoping some will stick.

Last edited by Calliban (2022-04-06 09:02:09)

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