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mod edit: Find the old Cold War / Airpower thread herequote:Edit 01/17/23: on posting video   Welcome to the new Cold War thread! This is a chill thread where we discuss the Cold War, Air Power, Procurement and its Malcontents, some current events, weapons of mass destruction, post awesome photos of aircraft, and talk about how seeing Threads when we were eight kinda hosed us up. If you want to discuss any of those things, or learn about the worst things people can make, or try to parse why so many deranged things happened between 1945 and 1992, this thread is for you. On current events: we like to nerd out and keep it chill around here, so some current events are discouraged but not forbidden, mainly because if you want to talk about X, it usually has a dedicated thread on SA somewhere. A message from our benevolent overseer on this: Cyrano4747 posted:I've said it before in this thread, but we're just in a strange spot where the actual subject material does intersect with politics and real life poo poo. The recent Iran crap is a good example of that. There were some great conversations about airpower related poo poo, and foreign policy and politics begins to get involved at the edges.  The Cold War: CZECH OPTION So when World War 2 ended, Europe was a ruin, as was South East Asia. China got back to its latest civil war. Many nations such as India were still emerging after being a colony. So the two big winners of World War 2, the United States and the Soviet Union, towered above the other nations. America's GDP was half of the Earth's, and its navy and air force was second to none. The Soviet Union had the largest Army, so large it was reckoned by the Americans that had the USSR felt like it, Soviet Forces could have conquered the rest of continental Europe in 30 days. Already physically the world's largest nation, the USSR was imposing communism on every nation it occupied, creating an empire that Genghis Khan could only dream about. So two such nations likely would have been rivals regardless. But thanks to the ideological differences between them, the Cold War was inevitable. Not so much that there were differences; it was the defining of both sides in dipole absolutist terms that would fuel the conflict when realpolitik wasn't enough. Both sides saw the other as dedicated to their destruction for ideological reasons. Both sides saw the other as fanatical and duplicitous. Both sides saw the other as engaged in an arms race that was extraordinarily dangerous. While both sides didn't always think the same, they often did, and this obsessive mirror competition is one of the Cold War's strongest characteristics. In an irony, when this mirroring did not hold was sometimes the most dangerous. In an early 1980s peak of hostility, what western leaders saw as a renewal in determination to prevail over the Soviet Union, the USSR interpreted the newly aggressive stance a prelude to a sneak attack. This perception made the bellicose west actions (who saw relations with the Soviet bloc as more or less stable and business as usual) nearly trigger World War Three, simply because they didn’t understand how their actions were perceived by the Soviet Union at the time. Other fun characteristics include:  Paranoia. The paranoia both felt about the other had a thousand fathers, some of them entirely justified. The USSR had seen the most productive and fertile part of their nation destroyed in a savagery that's difficult to comprehend, even today. The USA saw the force of communist ideology linking with the USSR as a terrifying and effective force at flipping the allegiance of nations in the late 1940s. Stalin being Stalin certainly got paranoia off to a running start (I mean you can find quotes from noted pacifist Bertrand Russell about how a hard line was necessary against ol' Joe) but it was all pervading, and lingers with us today----  Proxy wars. Open conflict between the superpowers promised a war so cataclysmic, calling such a war Armageddon seemed to be underselling it. So, hostility was sublimated into covert operations and proxy wars. While obviously preferable to mutually assured destruction, the people and nations involved in these proxy wars might have a hard time believing that, as internal struggles became much more destructive when superpowers began supplying arms to both sides. America adopted an anti-democratic approach, not caring who they backed as long as the communists were wiped out, a policy that would extract its own costs, much in the same way as Germany paid heavy costs for shipping Vladimir Lenin to Imperialist Russia. The Soviets, for their part, could justify almost any action as supporting communism, even if in practice outside observers would describe it as straightforward imperialism. The distinction between ideology and obedience to the USSR functionally vanished - though I suppose the same could also be said of the USA. Alliances. Both sides built alliance networks to protect themselves. In the USA, these were NATO, NORAD, and the 'five eyes' intel sharing treaty between the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In the USSR, it was the Warsaw Pact. While the Warsaw Pact dissolved at the end of the Cold War, the three American treaty organizations are the cornerstones of the defenses of both the United States and the other nations involved - which is something of a mixed blessing for all concerned.  Anti-Ballistic Missile structure under construction.  XB-70 at takeoff. Military Industrial complexes. Both sides built up giant industries centered around defense, and the continued existence of such industries would drive both an arms race and needless expenditure. While most people are familiar with the American Military Industrial complex, the Soviet Union had it arguably worse, with the wealth of nations being invested in weapons that unless Armageddon came calling were massively expensive holes in the ground. This also was wrapped up with---  Nuclear Weapons. The world was quick to put together that once the peanut butter of nuclear weapons was combined with the jam of inter-continental ballistic missiles, the world was toast. Nuclear weapons by themselves promised physical destruction on a level inconceivable at the start of World War 2, and were rapidly developed by both superpowers into a staggering array of canned sunshine choices, from the 0.02 kT Davy Crockett field munition to the 100 megaton (100,000 kT) Tsar Bomb, both tested within 15 years of the ~ 15 kT bomb used at Hiroshima. Once ballistic missiles demanded smaller warheads post 1960, weapon shifted from making bigger bombs to fitting more on to ballistic missiles and their Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) warheads. Missile and warhead numbers soon multiplied to the point that civil defense against nuclear attack was abandoned as largely pointless. Nuclear weapons also gave birth to a whole series of new ideas, like megadeath as a unit of measurement, debates about countervalue vs. counterforce targeting, and how much warning there would be if an attack happened. [Thanks to distance, the USA/Soviet Union would have a luxuriant half hour to wait for missile strikes; the USSR striking Europe produced warning times that amounted to “don’t bother warning anyone.”]  One bit of wisdom from the old thread I'll remember: "there's a big difference in destructive capability between 50-500 warheads, but no difference at all once you push past 5000." Deterrence. When dealing with the twisted logic of the cold war, the only way to safely defend oneself was to promise destruction to any nation that attacked with nuclear weapons. The only way to ensure such a capability was the hedging of bets and the deployment of a wide variety of weapon systems in great numbers. The acme of these was the new capital ship class of ballistic missile submarines. The deadliest warships ever built, a single submarine has enough firepower to destroy nations, hidden beneath the waves. The largest of these, the famous (and famously expensive) Typhoon class SSBNs was built as deterrence just in case the USSR's enemies managed to take out their land-based ballistic missiles and its armada of strategic bombers in a sneak attack. The fleet once completed was to have all by themselves the ability to destroy any conceivable attacker. Upon a signal, Typhoons would surface, erupting through the Arctic sea ice, then launching its payload of 20 bespoke SS-N-20 missiles, each carrying up to ten nuclear warheads of 100-200 kT each. At peak service, six Typhoons carried 120 ballistic missiles (or if you prefer, 1200 warheads), all by themselves capable of destroying NATO. Oh, and while making this new OP, I came across this fact. Reloads for ballistic missile submarines in the west typically was provisioned for at a 1.5 to 1 ratio, IE 1.5 missiles in storage for every one missile deployed on a sub. The USSR in contrast built 7-8 reloads for each deployed missile. So, not only did the Soviets develop a new missile just for the Typhoon class, they had planned to build ~ 840 reloads, once again, larger than every other nation on earth's nuclear deterrent (once again putting aside the Cold War USA.)  Books, thread approved: CHAD ALERT Nonfiction Command and Control by Eric Schlosser. On American command and control of nuclear weapons, you’ll run out of profanity at some points. Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John D. Clark. An astonishingly readable book on the development of the stuff that makes rockets go. Formerly out of print, recently given a new issue. The Dead Hand by David E. Hoffman. Pulitzer prize winning journalism about...lots of things, including the USSR’s deadman switch for its atomic arsenal, and Russia’s continued to this day biowarfare program. The source of this priceless story: Nebakenezzer posted:The Aral Smallpox incident Midnight At Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. An essentially arbitrary book choice [there are many excellent ones] on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. A story from it: quote:The engineers then began to lay siege to the reactor, advancing on it slowly from behind a series of “pioneer walls” to shield building workers from the invisible fusillade of gamma rays streaming from within the ruins. At a safe distance, the engineers welded hollow steel forms, 2.3 meters square and almost 7 meters long, which they stacked like huge bricks on flatbed railcars. They pushed these into position around the reactor using armored combat engineering vehicles, and concreted them in place—railcars and all—using pumps stationed at least 300 meters away. More than 6 meters high and 7 meters thick, the resulting walls threw a “gamma shadow” in which workers could remain safely for up to five minutes at a time. Ecocide in the USSR: Health And Nature Under Siege by Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly Jr. Written just after the end of the Cold War, it documents a major factor in the collapse of the USSR: health and environmental neglect on a staggering scale. Required reading for anybody who thinks about modern China frequently. Fiction On the Beach by Neville Shute. The World blew itself up, and Southern Australia has a season or two before the radioactive cloud enveloping the world reaches them What it lacks in occasional technical details it makes up for with despair. Also a good old movie and a bad recent one. Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Like On the Beach, it was the nuclear apocalypse as imagined around 1960. In Alas, Babylon's case, the narrative is centered around a small town in Florida dealing with the (metaphorical) fallout of now being an island in a sea of radioactive rubble. Downright optimistic compared to most other fiction if you need something like that. Fire Lance by David Mace. What looks like a 70s technothriller is in fact the logic of the Cold War with no arms control. A twofer from author Charles Stross: the Novella “A Colder War” and a short story, “digital walrus”  Movies, thread approved: ARABIAN CLANDESTINE Dr. Strangelove (1964.) It’s really funny, but then you learn a lot of the jokes are concise Cold War policy summaries. Fail-Safe (1964). Produced around the same time as Strangelove, it’s the same basic plot (accidental nuclear exchange) except played straight. Once you see it you’ll understand why 1960s audiences preferred the comedy. Many fine actors in this ensemble piece, including Walter Matthau playing a pre-Henry Kissinger. The Day After (1983). A miniseries but whatev, sometimes credited with getting Reagan to understand Nuclear War is awful. Appears to have genuinely caused a shift in US policy, so good job Steve Gutenberg! Threads (1984). Also a miniseries, whatev, the British take on The Day After is so relentlessly (and realistically!) grim you can only cackle nihilistically when you read the directors first instinct was to use the contemporary cast of Coronation Street to film it. Avoid the Kardashian remake, but watch the poo poo out of this half-hour documentary the BBC prepared as a supplement. Sombody put together a good fictional youtube of the nuclear apoclypse through the lens of the BBC. Made in 2019. Miracle Mile (1988). Somewhat obscure today, it mixes a romantic comedy with the start of a nuclear war, the ending is legendary. It was denied the fame it deserved because movie producers throughout the 1980s wanted to change that ending because they felt it too dark, and it was only released at the Cold War’s end. War Games (1983). An unusually intelligent movie all around about a NORAD defense computer and a computer hacker, it’s one of the very few movies with a *realistic* take on computer hackers. Also humanity may die, TBD. The Pentagon Wars (1998). A comedy about military procurement, just don’t confuse it with something factual. Strategic Air Command (1955). If the Strategic Air Command (SAC) of the USAF had a public relations problem by the mid 1960s, ten years earlier they reached a peak with this Jimmy Stewart movie. Produced with full cooperation with SAC, it features amazing real-life footage of the B-36 ‘Peacemaker’ intercontinental bomber. When the Wind Blows (1986). [Hat tip: SlowBloke] A British hand-drawn animated film based on a graphic novel, pensioners face nuclear annihilation. It is depressing.  Good Resources: ATLANTIC HEAVY Covert Shores Blog. If it is undersea and secret, hsutton has drawn a picture of it. Excellent resource for understanding submarines, narco 'subs', UAVs. Restricted Data - Nuclear Secrecy blog. Written by a science historian, this blog is all about atoms exploding. Especially rich about early American atomic bomb history. Also the guy who made NUKEMAP. armscontrolwonk is a blog and podcast done by experts in WMDs and their proliferation. When something involving these pops up in the news, these people always have intelligent comments. Defense Watch blog. The essential blog for all things Canadian Military related. Shut up, there were like 5 of us Canadians in the last thread. For the last decade the previous thread was running, Canada was trying to replace its fighter aircraft and failing. bestfighter4canada is a blog following this bleak house style procurement saga Atomic-annhilation.com. Great site for cold war images.  Missilethreat.org. A site dedicated to demystifying missiles, missile defense, and missile threats.[hat tip: ThisIsJohnWayne] Cold War Related Miscellaneous Links: GREENLAND DOMESTIC One of the old thread's favorite documents: 1970s ICBM basing options from the RAND corporation. CNN's official video to play in case "the world ends" The Nuclear Security Administration Lost a Film Titled 'Skull Melting Demonstration' Project Iceworm: the Rebel base on Hoth but real and 1950s. Sprint point defense ABM. A US anti-ballistic missile that launched itself via explosive and needed incredibly powerful radio to cut through the cone of plasma its flight generated. Moar Sprint video Meet the stars of the Strategic Defense Iniative, AKA Star Wars! If you've never heard of Able Archer '83, the history guy made a good video. [Hat tip: aphid_licker] Underwater ejection: risks and alarming, alarming RL demonstrations Cyrano4747 posted:Now, on a note that is far more pleasant, everyone in this thread click on this video. It's an oldie but a goodie and if you haven't seen 70s AAA being tested to a soundtrack normally associated with John Holmes laying pipe, well, you need to do that.  Effortposts (previous iteration): S.AFRICAN SUBVERSION Effortpost on the Convair B-36 Peacemaker. Three posts I did for the last thread on Russia's Kirov class battlecruisers: Kirov! 1: Origin of Soviet Nuclear Battlecruisers Kirov! 2: More Options than a Mercedes S-class Kirov! part 3: Kirovs in Soviet/Russian service Xerxes17 in the mil history thread did some excellent effort posts on Soviet tank development. While the products were sometimes revolutionary (T-64) or quite useful (T-72) the story does talk about a poo poo-ton of needless competition, political shenanigans, and a process that has the Soviet Union fielding three MBTs with nothing common between them. The T-64 Object 172 Aka, T-72 “Straight outta Nihzny Tagil Ft. Leonid Kartsev” The T-80: Explosion at the Soviet Haywire Factory hobbesmaster has a comprehensive US government report on EM effects of nuclear weapons On Why Zombies are Dumb: a Microbiological Perspective The New Yorker does a deep dive into a formerly obscure intellectual that forms the core of Vladimir Putin's political views. TL;DR: quote:I don't have a bead on who Putin is aside from an increasingly sloppy megalomaniac, so seeing him recycle an Orthodox Russian philosopher that was super into Hegel, taught by the originater of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, became ideological buds with friggin' Lenin after the revolution, endorsed a form of Christianity that said "truth is a lie, and God is a feeble fuckup" then went fascist, (first Italian, later Nazi) and then had the good sense to move to Switzerland before the war started, and who throughout WW2 was cheering on the Germans as they attacked the USSR, and if anything became even more extreme after world war two is, ah, interesting. Nebakenezzer posted:A few years ago now Mr. Chips in the AI thread posted a neat but sadly incomplete history of VSTOL:  Effortposts (current iteration): NICARAGUAN PREEMPTIVE Cyrano on US Navy ship names. There's no USS Richard Nixon supercarrier  I mean think about it there is zero chance that thing wouldn't be nicknamed "the big dick"piL defends the LCS. So, have you ever wondered what serious radar wave trauma would look like? A Soviet paper on some dudes who were doing maintenance on a extremely powerful Soviet Missile defense radar when it powered up. [Thanks shame on an IGA] Noosphere with some Swiss cold war stuff: how Switzerland was going to defend itself, on their cool Mirage 3 recon aircraft, use of pigeons in World War 3. Notgothic explains how a US army who's top men at the time were all airborne alums attempted to reform the army to fight atomic war. Pentomic Divisions: War by Way of Gallagher JcDent posted:I made this thing for Russia reasons Phanatic educates on nuclear bomb design basics and their 'safety' [IE resistance to exploding when you'd really they'd rather not.] Cyrano4747 posted:This poo poo is evergreen Nebakenezzer posted:Guys: I have a commercial you all need to see Nebakenezzer fucked around with this message at 19:54 on Mar 30, 2024 |
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Jan 12, 2020 23:20
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > The Firing Range > Cold War Thread 2: Electric Canberra Boogaloo
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Jan 12, 2020 23:25
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i like big bombs and i cannot lie
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Jan 12, 2020 23:33
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Thank you for the OP and also goddamn that style of art is so iconic. Not just for war stuff, but old space logos, car ads, or even just “we are farming over here” posters.
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Jan 12, 2020 23:38
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If you have any additions or suggestions, please let me know. Also sorry for using myself a lot, most of the material I got by browsing my own posting history in the previous thread. I'm hoping re effortposts the cold war krew will fill it out a bit. 
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Jan 12, 2020 23:48
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Awesome OP. Thanks for taking the time to get that done. And getting it done on time for a 1991 end to the last thread. New thread under budget and on time. Cold War thread procurement success story. It's OK, we'll subcontract the next one out to Irving and Bombardier
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Jan 13, 2020 00:45
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We should make an AIRPOWER/90s thread, where we can talk about stuff like: How awesome the A-12 Avenger 2 will be. The V-22 and Comanche will get fielded any day now! and man, did you notice how charismatic that new president of Serbia is?
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Jan 13, 2020 00:50
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MRC48B posted:We should make an AIRPOWER/90s thread, where we can talk about stuff like: Boy oh boy I can't *wait* for the AST-21 Tomcat! 
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Jan 13, 2020 00:55
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Awesome OP. Prose, content and artwork are fire.
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Jan 13, 2020 00:55
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MRC48B posted:We should make an AIRPOWER/90s thread, where we can talk about stuff like: Thank goodness we've got the B-1B online now, those B-52's were getting pretty antiquated and well overdue for replacement.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:02
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Jumping back to this for a moment because I did a small shitload of reading on the topic over the summer.Nebakenezzer posted:Midnight At Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. An essentially arbitrary book choice [there are many excellent ones] on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Midnight in Chernobyl is a better account of the disaster than many, especially HBO's, but it's not without its own errors. A particularly obvious example: quote:Upstairs at mark + 12.5, in the cavernous three-story pump room alongside the reactor vault, Senior Coolant Pump Operator Valery Khodemchuk stood at his post, engulfed in the thunderous roar of all eight main circulation pumps working at once. If you look at a floor plan of CNPP's fourth block, you'll see there are two pump rooms with four pumps each, one on either side of the reactor hall. The north side room was exposed to open air when the outer walls collapsed and the pumps can be seen in pre-sarcophagus photographs taken from outside the reactor building. For all its flaws, HBO's version recreated this detail vividly. Also, make sure to read the end notes and citations and take any statement that cites Grigori Medvedev with a large grain of sand and boron, especially if it's a dramatic scene. Medvedev invented a bunch of bullshit to sex up his own account of Chernobyl, published relatively soon after the event, and subsequent authors have been largely content to repeat his lies even when they're flatly contradicted by the testimony of pretty much everyone who was actually there and lived to tell about it. Nobody had heated arguments in the control room. Nobody went into the reactor hall and saw channel caps bouncing up and down. Nobody, so far as has been credibly determined, got close enough to actually see the destroyed reactor and report back. What is the cost of lies? Thirty years of tainted scholarship.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:03
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Great OP! The previous thread was one of my favorites on the forums, and I'm looking forward to plenty of future stories of Cold War horrors and nuclear near-disasters in this one.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:03
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Wingnut Ninja posted:Thank goodness we've got the B-1B online now, those B-52's were getting pretty antiquated and well overdue for replacement. Shhhh! Dale Brown will hear you! 
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Jan 13, 2020 01:05
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 I can't think of a better post to make to start a new Cold War/Airpower thread, than one with a B-52 in it. So here you go.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:12
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Jan 13, 2020 01:13
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BRB buying a panel van to have that airbrushed on
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Jan 13, 2020 01:15
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Some sort of weird hovercraft system for launching aircraft off a damaged runway?
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Jan 13, 2020 01:15
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everything about this, just 
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Jan 13, 2020 01:19
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Its so goddamn amazingly cold war jesus
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Jan 13, 2020 01:19
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Jan 13, 2020 01:27
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Airplanes are rad     
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Jan 13, 2020 01:29
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A little bit of cold war history I hiked out to a few years ago.  https://imgur.com/a/PMvcRE6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgoyne%27s_Cove "Wikipedia" posted:On 18 March 1953, Brigadier General Richard E. Ellsworth was co-piloting a Convair RB-36H Peacemaker bomber on a 25-hour journey as part of a simulated combat mission flying from Lajes, Azores back to the Rapid City Air Force Base.[1] As part of their exercise, the bomber's crew was observing radio silence and had switched off their radar guidance, flying via celestial navigation. They had planned to fly low over the ocean, steadily increasing to higher altitudes before reaching the mountainous countryside of Newfoundland.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:30
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Airpowers.      
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Jan 13, 2020 01:35
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Is there any good reason for countries like Germany abandoning nuclear power? Oh is it just people overreacting? I thought cleanly done nuclear power was better for the environment than many things. But I know dick all about any of this stuff. It sure seems like once that genie is out of the bottle, it’s not going back in. I also will never forget taking trains through Scotland and seeing the big nuclear smokestack looking things.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:41
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Captain Log posted:Is there any good reason for countries like Germany abandoning nuclear power? Oh is it just people overreacting? I thought cleanly done nuclear power was better for the environment than many things. But I know dick all about any of this stuff. Well for one you aren’t going to get notifications from coal plants like the one that happened by accident in Ontario yesterday causing mass pants making GBS threads https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/we-need-answers-mass-alert-about-pickering-nuclear-generating-station-sent-in-error-1.4763685 quote:The Ontario government admitted to erroneously sending out a mass alert telling of an “incident” at Pickering Nuclear Generating Station on Sunday, sending people across the region into a panic as they sent a retraction notice approximately 106 minutes later. Logically yes, nuclear is a potentially cleaner and even safer option than GHG causing options but people by and large in large groups are neither logical or rational. I think the reason it is successful in France especially in the west is due to the French weird blasé attitude to basically everything. priznat fucked around with this message at 01:47 on Jan 13, 2020 |
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Jan 13, 2020 01:45
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First time poster in this thread. So what was the dumbest aircraft of the cold war?
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Jan 13, 2020 01:48
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just here to not discuss the avro arrow
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Jan 13, 2020 01:49
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Lawman 0 posted:First time poster in this thread. For prototypes, I'd have to say the tail sitters. For stuff that made production, maybe the Vought F7U Cutlass.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:51
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Lawman 0 posted:First time poster in this thread. There are a lot of good contenders here. Among ones that actually entered service I submit the F7U Cutlass and the Sea Vixen.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:52
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Captain Log posted:Is there any good reason for countries like Germany abandoning nuclear power? Oh is it just people overreacting? I thought cleanly done nuclear power was better for the environment than many things. But I know dick all about any of this stuff. It's because the anti-nuclear power movement here in Northwestern Europe really grew out of the nuclear disarmament movement. If you want to have discussion on nuclear energy and its roll in reducing climate change, the German just won't have it -- because that's never what it was to begin with. Germany has all sorts of ideological baggage from 1968, which is stacked on top of denazification, which is all coated with batter and bread crumbs and fried in Reunification. Add to that, since they have an endless supply of coal, they can afford to turn it all off, because ideology is only going to last until the first rolling blackouts. And all the environmentally ambivalent know that in the back of their head.
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Jan 13, 2020 01:53
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Lawman 0 posted:First time poster in this thread. Like in concept or in actual use?
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Jan 13, 2020 01:53
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Lawman 0 posted:First time poster in this thread. I feel like the idiots that have advocated for building the Arrow today as a part of the ongoing Canadian fighter procurement disaster deserve special mention. Fearless fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Jan 13, 2020 |
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Jan 13, 2020 01:56
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   Project Ithacus rocked. Dante80 fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jan 13, 2020 |
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Jan 13, 2020 01:57
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https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonnyc/status/1216426088278188034?s=21
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Jan 13, 2020 01:59
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Lawman 0 posted:First time poster in this thread. The Thunderscreech
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Jan 13, 2020 02:01
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priznat posted:Well for one you aren’t going to get notifications from coal plants like the one that happened by accident in Ontario yesterday causing mass pants making GBS threads Yeah a coal plant releases uranium into the atmosphere when everything is working normally. The coal burned for power in the US in 2017 itself contained enough uranium to fuel fifty 1000MW reactors for a year.
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Jan 13, 2020 02:03
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Auto 5 for Cat poo poo One 
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Jan 13, 2020 02:06
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Mortabis posted:There are a lot of good contenders here. Among ones that actually entered service I submit the F7U Cutlass and the Sea Vixen. Was it the Cutlass that has such awful engines that one returning to base with an engine failure was once told to wait because there were two other jets, also with engine failure, in the pattern in front of him? I remember it was one of those early 50's jets like the Cutlass or the Demon.
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Jan 13, 2020 02:07
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Captain Log posted:Is there any good reason for countries like Germany abandoning nuclear power? Oh is it just people overreacting? I thought cleanly done nuclear power was better for the environment than many things. But I know dick all about any of this stuff. Anti-nuclear sentiment is very strong and deeply ingrained in Germany, especially former W. Germany. To give you an example, my father went from protesting Germany-based nuclear weapons to serving out his conscription in the Bundeswehr within a month, nbd. It was a large part of early life for a certain generation of Germans. Ever wonder why German guns don't come from the (German) factory with tritium sights? The gas is illegal in Germany, as it's a component needed to make bombs. They are very specific about poo poo like that. Germany now is perfectly happy to shut down the nuke plants aaaaaand let the French NPP's right over the border provide clean, cheapish energy. It wins over most voters, from the CSD to the Greens, no one will attach their name to nuke power in-country.
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Jan 13, 2020 02:07
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One thing with nuclear power is that if you are an environmentalist who believes in decarbonising as much as possible by 2025-2030 nuclear power plants just take so long to build they don't really help, so you would be better off with renewables and reducing demand (or so the argument goes). Note this mostly applies to countries like the UK and Germany which don't really have a native nuclear industry, and so need outside help to build plants which also means you don't get economy of scale, unlike in the US or France for example.
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Jan 13, 2020 02:07
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