Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Part 5

The inspection crew finally made it:

14:01
The inspectors have arrived

So, even with all the massive hurdles in their way, the IAEA inspection team actually managed to pull through and reach the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. According to the BBC, the plant is currently under Russian occupation, so the IAEA mission had to be escorted there by Russian forces.

The folks over at Energoatom confirmed the news about them arriving.

Gregory Ramos3 said:The inspection crew finally made it:

14:01
The inspectors have arrived

So, even with all the massive hurdles in their way, the IAEA inspection team actually managed to pull through and reach the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. According to the BBC, the plant is currently under Russian occupation, so the IAEA mission had to be escorted there by Russian forces.

The folks over at Energoatom confirmed the news about them arriving.

Really hoping they can get this sorted out soon.

Word on the street is the Americans wouldn't budge on stepping up the game:

The New Counteroffensive Strategy: The Ukrainians were actually all set to go, but then the US pulled the plug—telling them "stop."
The Ukrainian military was originally looking at launching a much larger counterstrike, but in the end—following advice from Washington—they shifted their entire focus strictly to the southern region near Kherson.

Benjamin Taylor6 said:Word on the street is the Americans wouldn't budge on stepping up the game:

The New Counteroffensive Strategy: The Ukrainians were actually all set to go, but then the US pulled the plug—telling them "stop."
The Ukrainian military was originally looking at launching a much larger counterstrike, but in the end—following advice from Washington—they shifted their entire focus strictly to the southern region near Kherson.

God, what an utterly brainless article.

The Ukrainians have already run through countless simulations alongside both Americans *and* the British, and once those were done, the current offensive was clearly identified as the most logical path forward.

To suggest the Americans are calling the shots here is just plain absurd.

View on twitter

Thomas C. Theiner
@noclador
Btw, you can be sure that Ukraine war-gamed its upcoming offensives against at least two NATO Corps commands (US GB); and afterwards Ukraine fine-tuned its plans and NATO adjusted its materiel support to Ukraine.
9:48 PM · Aug 14, 2022

analogbear5 said:Is there anything worth noting on the NATO servers?

Good 🤣

analogbear5 said:Anything new popping up on the NATO servers?

So, we’ve got this retired general of ours claiming that the best move for the Ukrainians would be to just sign a peace treaty right now—even if it means giving up territory.

...parts of the country? Honestly, I'm starting to worry they might be left with nothing at all. It looks like they may eventually have to swallow the bitter pill of lost land and just settle for an armistice. Look, we all want to see Ukraine come out on top—believe me, I do—but expecting a total victory at this stage just isn't grounded in reality anymore. And you really have to take everything you hear with a grain of salt; between the actual fighting on the ground and the massive media propaganda war going on, nobody knows what's truly happening. Both sides are busy spinning their wins to look massive and downplaying their losses to keep morale up.

Benjamin Taylor6 said:So, we’ve got this retired general of ours claiming that the best move for the Ukrainians would be to just sign a peace treaty right now—even if it means giving up territory.

...parts of the country? Honestly, I'm starting to worry they might be left with nothing at all. It looks like they may eventually have to swallow the bitter pill of lost land and just settle for an armistice. Look, we all want to see Ukraine come out on top—believe me, I do—but expecting a total victory at this stage just isn't grounded in reality anymore. And you really have to take everything you hear with a grain of salt; between the actual fighting on the ground and the massive media propaganda war going on, nobody knows what's truly happening. Both sides are busy spinning their wins to look massive and downplaying their losses to keep morale up.

Man, he’s been singing that same tune since day one—that the UA should just surrender and sign whatever Russia wants. Nothing new there, just the usual stuff from Kotromanovic.

Noah Sanchez2 said:It isn't quite that simple. If you kill the excitation, sure, the generators spin freely like you said, but you lose the load. For instance, if you have a 500MW generator, it needs a turbine capable of maybe 550MW (accounting for losses, these are just rough numbers), and that turbine needs steam at specific pressures and temperatures—say, delivering about 600MW of energy from the reactor to the turbine. Here's the catch: if you cut the excitation and the generator starts spinning idle, you still have 600MW of energy sitting in that superheated steam. That massive amount of energy has to go somewhere; it doesn't just vanish. You can't shut down a nuclear plant (or a coal or gas plant) just by flipping an "electrical" switch. You shut them down from the source where the energy is actually produced—by reducing the fuel consumption in a boiler or, in a nuclear plant, by inserting control rods made of boron steel to soak up free electrons and stop the fission process. Once thermal production drops, the steam pressure and temperature drop, the turbine slows down, the generator slows down, and eventually, the whole system settles enough to safely cut the excitation.

In the event of a major system failure, the generator does get disconnected immediately (excitation is cut and it's isolated from the grid), but at that exact same moment, all that superheated steam has to be vented into the atmosphere. It’s a deafening, violent event—something I've witnessed firsthand several times. Simultaneously, you have to cut the fuel to the boiler or, in a nuclear scenario, rapidly drop those control rods to halt fission while cooling systems kick in to bring the reactor temperature down over several days.

So, shutting down a standard fossil fuel plant is a complex operation, and with nuclear, the process is even more dangerous and significantly more complicated.

Yes, that's essentially how it works; in any case, a sudden shutdown carries a heavy risk of catastrophe.

There’s just no way Ukrainians can sign any peace deal while the Russians are stuck on this idea that they need to conquer the entire country—whether that happens tomorrow or two years down the line.

Anthony Hill5 said:Once again, those relentless critics of Vladimir Putin and the war are being tossed out of hospital windows. I suppose this marks the 1,001st time we've witnessed such a convenient disappearance, wouldn't you agree?

https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-l...#liveblog-body

The Sultan sends along the Katul-ferman and a silk tie...

Jessica Peterson2 said:Putin's media outlets are constantly churning out these ecstatic little prophecies claiming Europeans are going to be shivering in frozen apartments next winter because they've lost access to Russian gas. It’s quite a spectacle, really. Yet, curiously enough, they don't seem to give a single damn about the fact that 40% of rural households and 30% of urban homes across the entirety of Russia have absolutely no access to gas pipelines —if they ever did at all. 🤷

Back in early 2000, I was visiting Moscow and spent some time over on Broadway, checking out the high-rises and the working-class neighborhoods. It turns out those apartments don't have any gas connections whatsoever. Not for cooking, not for heating. Everything was done with electric stoves and space heaters.

Why bother selling cheap at home and wasting money building up domestic infrastructure when you could just export everything at a premium—plus slap an export tax on top?

Jack Smith12 said:Back in early 2000, I was visiting Moscow and spent some time over on Broadway, checking out the high-rises and the working-class neighborhoods. It turns out those apartments don't have any gas connections whatsoever. Not for cooking, not for heating. Everything was done with electric stoves and space heaters.

Relying on electricity for cooking works perfectly fine for the Capital and other major metropolitan areas that possess their own power plants and a robust, well-developed grid infrastructure.
I don't have gas in my apartment either.
As for heating, nobody actually tries to heat an entire apartment solely with electricity, unless we're talking about supplementary radiators or small convector heaters. In Moscow, centralized district heating is everywhere, powered by plants that run on gas.
But just imagine some tiny village out in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from any major power station or a reliable high-voltage transmission line.
The same logic applies to a small town where the local plant was built back during the era of Lenin’s electrification efforts and now only manages to generate power for maybe two or three hours a day.
It is precisely in those kinds of remote villages and struggling towns that roughly 40 or 30% of households reside.☕

brightheron64 said:The Sultan sends along the Katul-ferman and a silk tie...

A window latch...

Jessica Peterson2 said:Relying on electricity for cooking works perfectly fine for the Capital and other major metropolitan areas that possess their own power plants and a robust, well-developed grid infrastructure.
I don't have gas in my apartment either.
As for heating, nobody actually tries to heat an entire apartment solely with electricity, unless we're talking about supplementary radiators or small convector heaters. In Moscow, centralized district heating is everywhere, powered by plants that run on gas.
But just imagine some tiny village out in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from any major power station or a reliable high-voltage transmission line.
The same logic applies to a small town where the local plant was built back during the era of Lenin’s electrification efforts and now only manages to generate power for maybe two or three hours a day.
It is precisely in those kinds of remote villages and struggling towns that roughly 40 or 30% of households reside.☕

And how much are you paying for gas heating? I bet it'll be dirt cheap.

analogbear5 said:Anything popping up on the NATO servers?

Nothing. These kinds of links—where you just end up with some peacekeeper graphic—keep redirecting whenever you type the domain into a URL under NATO control:
https://psb4ukr.natocdn.net/logos/links/psbnews.svg
Basically, NATO is still resolving addresses for those problematic materials.

Jessica Peterson2 said:Relying on electricity for cooking works perfectly fine for the Capital and other major metropolitan areas that possess their own power plants and a robust, well-developed grid infrastructure.
I don't have gas in my apartment either.
As for heating, nobody actually tries to heat an entire apartment solely with electricity, unless we're talking about supplementary radiators or small convector heaters. In Moscow, centralized district heating is everywhere, powered by plants that run on gas.
But just imagine some tiny village out in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from any major power station or a reliable high-voltage transmission line.
The same logic applies to a small town where the local plant was built back during the era of Lenin’s electrification efforts and now only manages to generate power for maybe two or three hours a day.
It is precisely in those kinds of remote villages and struggling towns that roughly 40 or 30% of households reside.☕

In one apartment I visited recently, there wasn't even a visible heating system—not a single radiator in sight. The owners confirmed they rely exclusively on electric space heaters. It honestly caught me off guard. The place was quite modern, too; for instance, they were using an induction cooktop.

casualcrane20 said:Look, IF—and that's a big "if"—it turns out Europe buckles under energy shortages from the East before sanctions actually break Russia, then our local politicians are going to be holding the bag.

So, what's the move?

Thomas Nelson25 said:So, what's the move?

There are three possible scenarios—though calling them "solutions" is a stretch since the outcomes are anyone's guess:

- Continuing this grind until someone finally snaps,
- Getting NATO involved,
- A peace conference.

Then again, there's always that one wildcard: someone actually removes Putin and his inner circle. Or perhaps they'll come up with something else entirely.

Jessica Peterson2 said:In Moscow, they have this super specific way they handle heating bills: we basically pay an average amount based on what we used last year for twelve months straight, and then right at the start of the next year, we get hit with a final bill that’s either a little extra or a little back in our pockets depending on the math.

Honestly, I don't think it's quite as unique as you're making it out to be.

Back home in the States, whether it's your electricity or your gas, you usually just get these bills every few months based on what the utility company thinks you're gonna use, and then at the end of the cycle, they send over a reconciliation to settle the difference between what you actually used versus what you paid—we just call it the "adjustment"—and then the whole thing starts all over again.

Since I really can't be bothered to mess around with that, and I definitely don't want to get blindsided by a massive bill because their estimates were totally unrealistic, I just take it upon myself to read my own meter, calculate exactly what I actually consumed, and just pay for what I used instead of blindly following whatever number they slapped on the bill.🙂