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Comment Re:Nuclear Facility in WA (Score 1) 32

Proven for a whole 40 years on the site of nuclear power plants. Not really an impressive record compared to what we're talking about here. Basically you're talking about plans to manage things for hundreds of years or more that pretty much require ephemeral entities like corporations to continuously exist to take care of them. This is the same bad plan that has been used for all kinds of non-nuclear toxic waste forever. How many times have we heard stories about holding ponds for mining companies and other industrial interests that were supposed to be kept isolated from the water table and streams and rivers for centuries being completely ignored the second that the corporations that created them stopped being profitable and evaporated, leaving behind absolutely nothing to face any sort of liability ending up polluting people's drinking water and wildlife? Or, for that matter, just bursting a dam and flooding tens of thousands of acres with toxic heavy metals and the like?

Once again, the nuclear waste problem is such a drop in the bucket compared to other forms of pollution that it's barely worth discussing. The nuclear waste problem is not really a big deal compared to the other issues with nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, I'm still not going to ignore handwaving excuses for the kind of brain-dead waste management plans that just hand-wave away the problem of perpetual care. Like we're seeing in Ukraine right now, nuclear power plants are basically reliant on active care to not automatically become disaster areas. That is not exactly a ringing endorsment for nuclear power.

Comment Re:Are the problems of mankind man-made? (Score -1, Troll) 131

Wow, Ukraine had a "tiny force"? It was the second-largest military in Europe (and much of the Russian military was stationed in the East building infrastructure). Their military was part of the reason it was the poorest country in Europe (they were also the most corrupt nation in Europe, which is the rest of the reason). Russia never had more than 150,000 soldiers in the Donbass for the first full year of the conflict, and much of the time it was around 120,000. Now it's around 170,000 according to both the Ukrainian and Russian MODs, while Ukraine claims 900,000 in uniform (most of them rear echelon of course). The Ukrainian number is debatable though because of "force inflation" where corrupt commanders pocket the salaries of soldiers who have died or deserted, but they still greatly outnumber the Russian troops at the front. The reason why Russia has a much larger number of people under arms is because they rotate them out every few weeks, while the Ukrainian troops are left at the front for months at a time.

Only because Ukraine wiped out all of Russia's tanks right off the bat, shot down a large percentage...

The reality distortion field is strong in this one . . .

Here's Azov's commander explaining why Western observers are not allowed in front line command posts, in the very last video on this page (I refuse to post links to XTwitter).
https://simplicius76.substack....

Comment Re:Nuclear Facility in WA (Score 1) 32

It's only reasonable for you to add a disclaimer to your post that what you are saying only applies outside of the body. Plenty of that stuff is very nasty due to radiation if it ends up in the human body. Especially the more bio-available stuff. Then there's also the fact that, even if it were not radioactive, plenty of it is chemically toxic, even without the radioactivity. That's not to say that there's massive amounts of it compared to other toxic stuff that can end up in the environment. However, we do tend to require that any industry that produces polluting, toxic byproducts to have a viable plan to deal with them. Of course, as we can see with many industry, there are very often failures to meet those requirements. Still, there's no special reason to give the nuclear industry a magical pass on those requirements.

Comment Re:sure thing uberbah, everyone believes you. (Score 1) 131

The fact is that responsible officials made verbal assurances that the NATO would not expand into former Soviet States. And Russian officials relied on those assurances.

What a load. That is simply not how diplomacy or government really work and you know it. Non-binding schmoozing by diplomats is just that and nothing more. You're basically calling the Russians either liars or morons or both.

I don't see how anyone can argue it wasn't with NATO supplied missiles raining down on Russia.

Then you're a liar or a moron as well.

Comment Re:Are the problems of mankind man-made? (Score -1, Troll) 131

No, Ukraine invaded the independent states of Donetsk and Luhansk, which after eight years of fighting and over 14,000 dead civilians requested assistance from Moscow. If Kosovo can declare its independence and request aid from another country than so can Donetsk and Luhansk.

Comment Re:Are the problems of mankind man-made? (Score -1, Troll) 131

Ukraine has done nothing BUT threaten its neighbors as long as it has existed, that was the point of the 2014 coup and the prospective membership in NATO, for it to be a launching ground into the heart of Russia. The Donbass had declared its independence and had resisted invasion from Ukraine for eight years before they finally requested assistance from Moscow, the far right militias which were leading the invasion openly declared that their aims were to "cleanse" the territory of ethnic Russians (the majority in the region) and replace them with "pure" Ukrainians (just read some of their literature).

If "Putin's aim is genocide" then he's the most incompetent barbarian ever, between the two combatants the death toll among civilians after three years of war is still lower than the death toll of civilians in Gaza in the first month. If the US were actually interested in stopping a country from attacking its neighbors, firing weapons into innocent third countries, using WMD against civilians, and committing genocide then we'd be invading Israel today rather than shipping them all the weapons we can produce.

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