Makes sense. So much of the work around CERN already happens independent of whether the collider is running or not, so skipping a rough season seems like the sensible thing to do (even from a purely inward facing cost/benefit standpoint).
It's a shame that the timing just had to coincide with the start of LHC Run 3, though. They only managed to generate around 5-6 months of data after 3 years of upgrades. I imagine that should still be enough to keep the scientists busy this Winter, though.
From what I recall the last time I was there is that they tune it down quite a bit in winter anyway because of electricity that is needed else where in France.
Also from my understanding most of the electricity that is generated for CERN is by nuclear power plants and since so many of those are currently under maintenance they may need the power they do have to supply export agreements etc.
EDF was a net electricity exporter, until 2022, but this year France is already importing quite a lot of electricity currently, due to most nuclear reactors being still in maintenance. They are supposed to be restarted before winter but I would not bet on it
Amazing the UK exporting energy to France when it is in the state it is.
Similarly; during the potato famine Britain exported much of Irelands food crops.
Now, the UK is doing this to it's own population, much of it's Oil and Gas from the North see is being exported.
Ordinary people are getting hit with what will be some of the biggest prices rises in Europe, but the people who have been in charge for 12 years don't care.
The new prime minister says she will fix this, but she was a minister for 8 years in this government, and her solution is to keep all the energy company profits, and give people a stopgap that will be added onto their bills for the next 10 years.
Right now, the UK is exporting energy to France because we are receiving Liquified Natural Gas at our Gas terminals and have nowhere to store it and can't send it over pipelines to Europe fast enough, so our only option is to burn it for electricity and sell that.
Once other EU LNG terminals come online, and as the UK needs more energy itself over winter, it stop exporting. Hopefully some more UK gas storage will come on line in the next few weeks as well, but probably not enough to make a significant difference to this winter's outlook: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-31/centrica-...
Usually that is due to existing contract agreements and futures. Which was agreed on by all parties involved.
In the Netherlands we're also getting questions about why we're exporting so much gas we need ourselves. Well that's why. We've already sold it, it just hasn't been delivered yet.
With the new energy profits levy introduced in July, the headline tax rate for oil & gas profits is now 65%, which is some way off letting the energy companies keep their profits.
What the UK is doing is letting its energy companies make bank while prices are high, and taking a (temporarily enhanced) cut of that to fund a cost of living subsidy for consumers.
Example, report in the papers 2 days ago local restaurant struggling to justify staying open as their energy bill (gas+electric) went up 7x (£60k last year, predicted £420k this year).
So, that 65% tax on profits really isn't doing much, it's passed on to customers. Tax rises only make sense here with capped prices.
What I would like to know is how that handles amortization? Especially for renewables where the capex is huge and the opex small. Is that a before or after amortization number?
The prices quoted are absolutely crippling, though. I wonder if people would actually prefer a 1970s style rolling blackouts to having two thirds of small businesses go bankrupt.
Where are EDF's (Electricite de France) profits for their UK generating units accounted for? Not a rhetorical question, I genuinely have no idea and I know it's quite easy to shift profits across borders.
As far as connected electricity grids go, you import from those memebers that have a surplus and export when you have one. The country of origin has nothing to do with any of it.
This is what you get when you rely on fossil fuels as an energy source in 2022. The truth is, the geographical distribution of where the fossil fuels have been discovered is completely non-uniform. Such non-uniform distribution leads to conflict among humans, over and over again.
Renewables and Nuclear make up about 50% of the total. It may very well grow, but there will be a time lag because French institutions are not known for their expedience.
It would be great if the UK would do this, but our new prime minister used to work for Shell, later on she was responsible for the UK shutting down it's gas storage facility in the north sea.
So; while we do nothing to reduce energy usage (including turning lamps off), UK energy companies are making some of the biggest profits ever.
Our government has come up with a solution though - they'll cap consumer energy prices at the current below-market rate and subsidise businesses, and pay for the cost of doing it by running up a debt repaid over the next decade or two. Basically, we can continue using energy as before and will pay for it later - yay!
The unfortunate thing is that it was basically politically untenable for them not to do this. In the run up to the announcement (basically a u-turn) there was a steady drumbeat of news headlines and articles telling us that they were driving everyone into poverty by not capping energy rates, that it was destroying businesses and no-one could afford it, that the rest of Europe was doing this and only our incompetent leaders were failing to do so because they wanted us to freeze, and so on.
The prices are just forcing some companies out of business not to reduce their energy usage. While some may invest in reducing their energy usage the reality is, many small businesses literally won't be able to afford to reduce their energy bill as the changes will require an up front investment. Larger companies most likely will just pass the cost on to consumers and keep on going.
The average home owner probably won't be able to afford a changing their fridge, their washing machine, their tv, etc. It'll be a case of turn off the heating during winter.
Europe is under an absurd, unprecedented energy crunch at the moment:
The worst problem is that the French nuclear reactors have massive issues - over half their capacity is currently offline because of massive defects or barely producing due to a lack of cooling water [1]. That same drought also impacted Swiss nuclear plants [2] and Italian hydro power [3].
On top of that, the German gas peaker plants that used to be relatively cheap are now, thanks to the Russian invasion, extremely expensive - but since the French don't have an alternative, they pay absurd amounts of essentially government-funded money [4] on the spot markets, enough to make even the expensive gas peakers worth it, which in turn drives up the price for anyone else on the shared European electricity grid.
And to make the situation even worse than it already is, this is not just a spot market crisis. There is no indication at all that the situation in France will clear up any time soon - to the contrary, it will get exponentially worse in winter, as the majority of France uses electric heating - and the drought induced hydro crunch will need many months of constant rainfall to refill all the natural reservoirs before the plants can act at capacity again. This makes long-term electricity futures absurdly expensive as well, and the price hike of these futures hasn't even begun to reach electricity consumers yet.
> because of massive defects or barely producing due to a lack of cooling water
This is false, and not the reason for the (currently) low load factor of nuclear.
Most reactors are off for maintenance, like they are each year in autumn, in order to be ready for the peak demand that winter is. This year might be slightly worse, but it's not unusual at all.
There is also no lack of cooling water. There is only a law that was set many years ago that can be changed without any impact on the safety of the reactors, and this law is limiting only for a few reactors a few days each year. Very anecdotal.
Frying few fish (proof?) whose population can be replenished easily and are anyway artificially managed by humans for decades already vs disaster to whole countries during winter?
Ask anybody affected, they wont care less for those fish. Its the least horrible choice out of horrible choices.
Also not sure what you mean by frying, rivers get super cold during winter, increasing temperature a bit wont kill anything if I apply common logic.
> Also not sure what you mean by frying, rivers get super cold during winter, increasing temperature a bit wont kill anything if I apply common logic.
Freshwater fish and other aquatic beings are extremely sensitive to water temperature and other conditions. Just look at the Oder disaster - it was caused by pollution that, in combination with low water levels and warm water, led to an exponential bloom of toxic algae [1].
Your linked article does not mention temperature once, except for that something similar could occur in a "hot, dry summer". The article seems to state fairly clearly that they need to do more research to determine what happened.
>linked to industrial pollution is the most likely culprit
>more research would be needed to determine the conditions that led to the algae's appearance.
Also, parent comments are talking about rivers in winter. A small increase in temperature, starting from winter temperatures would result in water that is still much cooler than summer temperatures, which fish seem to live just fine with.
Did you ever do any gardening or heard about any kind of development cycles? It's not because something is ok with some temperature in summer that the same temperature in winter is ok for the same being.
Good thing they aren't warming up winter rivers to summer temperatures or causing some sort of strange deathly winter algae blooms, like the parent I replied to was talking about.
Do you realize your argument is exactly the good old "who cares about 2 degree global warming? i'm happy i like summer" Go read up some ecosystem science will you?
"Frying few fish" "replenished easily" "artificially managed" "rivers get super cold during winter" "wont kill anything if I apply common logic" all of this is nonsense.
That's all true, but there is a little bit of hope:
One major cause for the current extreme gas prices is the fact that many EU countries are filling up their gas buffers now for the winter. So on top of the gas scarcity, there is also extreme demand at the moment.
Some countries have reported that they are (almost) done. This will decrease demand and prices will go down. At least until the winter begins ..
The current gas prices haven't even reflected yet that the Russians have shut down North Stream 1 for good.
Anyone still thinking that this will ever reverse until the country is called Eastern Ukraine instead of Russia is in for a very rude awakening. There will be no more gas from Russia and the import capacity for other sources is already booked out.
To make it worse: when the winter is over, the crunch to refill the storage will begin again, and this time with no Russian capacity at all and to make it worse likely without (or with significantly reduced output from) the Dutch gas field in Groningen [1].
It will reverse as soon as the EU removes the sanctions and opens Nord Stream 2. Right now, the sanctions are pushing up prices, making the Russian government fabulously wealthy. Price caps are even going to make things worse. Ethics don't trump economics 101 nor do they keep grandma from freezing to death, unfortunately.
I think conflict escalation is more likely than Europe conceding to get the fossil gas taps turned back on. The world can’t be held hostage by a madman forever.
Unfortunately, with most of Italian politicians being in the pockets of Putin and massive protests expected across Western Europe, it is very well possible that the sanctions get lifted.
We have experience in delivering ourselves as hostages to Putin in exchange for cheap gas - the events following the 2014 invasion of the Krim should be more than enough proof of just how many spineless and corrupt "leaders" Europe has. I have no doubt that there are enough who will cave to the pressure of the streets should the situation escalate.
There are mechanisms to prevent that on a large (EU) scale, and US probably will use them if needed. Threats or sweet deals to politicians will keep them in line.
Governments seem to be responding to this. This week, Russia is saying it will block all sales to any nation implementing the G7 proposed price cap on Russian gas. (Russia is free to not sell anything if they don't want to, of course).
However, thanks to this invasion, Russia now only has a few years remaining of such significant gas exports left, no matter what: the more time passes the more substitutes for Russian gas are installed, because it is unacceptable to NATO and EU nations for Russia to have the capacity to threaten them with reduced fuel supply.
There's also the question of what fraction of Russian export capacity to Europe would vanish in the hypothetical where the pipelines going though Ukrainian territory were destroyed for whatever reason (I can think of at least three scenarios leading to that).
> There's also the question of what fraction of Russian export capacity to Europe would vanish in the hypothetical where the pipelines going though Ukrainian territory were destroyed for whatever reason (I can think of at least three scenarios leading to that).
Jamal is 33 billion m³ a year [1] and Soyuz 26 billion m³ [2], while each of the North Stream pipelines has 55 billion m³ capacity [3] - meaning that even in the case that both Jamal and Soyuz are irreparably destroyed for whatever reason, North Stream has more than enough capacity to take over. And that was the entire point why Ukraine, Austria and Poland were so opposed to the buildout of North Stream - had both been opened, Russia would have been able to completely cut out all the transit countries, leaving them completely at the mercy of Russia and Germany's notoriously Russia-amorous politicians.
For (effectively) state-owned companies, politics trumps economics 101. Removing sanctions will cause a marginal drop in natural gas price for a few weeks, but no more.
At this point, the European natural gas market is sufficiently skewed by state involvement that "economics 101" is marginally more useful than astrology. Geopolitics 101 is what you should turn to for answers.
Why would we open up NS2 if NS1 isn't even being used due to Russian decisions? What would added capacity do when they're not even using the existing links?
Putin can at any time decide to open North Stream 1 or the existing pipelines (Jamal or Transgas-Soyuz or Transgas-Drushba). It's understandable that Putin doesn't want to pay for the Soyuz and Drushba routes as he'd have to pay transit fees to Ukraine, but there is no excuse for not using Poland-Belarus bound Jamal even if North Stream 1 actually had technical defects. He is using gas as a weapon and extortion lever against Europe, there is no other way to describe it.
The call to open North Stream 2 is nothing more than Kremlin propaganda, and the only ones calling for it here in Germany are more-or-less plain Kremlin fifth column agents.
Besides: opening NS2 would be a symbolic caving before Putin - a signal that even invading a country for annexation gains, a no-no ever since WW2, is not too much of a crime for Europe to look away.
What do you want to do? the errors were made in the past. The only way forward is to normalise the relationship instead of further escalating this very dangerous situation.
> The only way forward is to normalise the relationship
Yes, by removing Russia from Ukraine. No one thought of "normalising" relations with Nazi Germany's Hitler as my ancestors marched through Europe either.
What should we do? Send everything we reasonably can to Ukraine so that they can drive out Russia. And then send some more that they can get rid of Putin once and for all.
> No one thought of "normalising" relations with Nazi Germany's Hitler as my ancestors marched through Europe either.
Yes they did - France and Britain attempted to appease Hitler for 5 years.
Of course the lesson to learn from that is exactly that appeasement doesn't work. Letting Hitler get away with annexing Czechoslovakia only emboldened him to go further.
Eventually enough has to be enough. I'd rather deal with the pain now than wait until Russia turns its attention to our own borders after it's finished with Ukraine.
Spot on. We've seen this before with Hitler, and we are smarter now.
It's true the situation is different - Putin has nukes - but we have nukes as well, and there are ways to be tough without escalating to using them. This means we do not have to fold just because Hitler has nukes now. We should be as tough as needed to stop the expansion.
if a peace deal is as easy as some suggest like the one that was prevented by Boris Johnson(guarantee that Ukraine will never be part of NATO etc.) then I do not understand why you would like to escalate the situation even further.
One has also to acknowledge that the economic sanctions and the military support for Ukraine are also very hostile moves.
This is so naïve. What makes you think that the Russians will keep North Stream 2 open, given the fact that they are closing North Stream 1 for the EU now?
If they will keep it open at all, it will be only after some heavy concessions on the EU side.
They did quite clearly mention requiring heavy concessions on the EU side as the very first bit of their comment (which I don't agree with). Everything they wrote was centred around if "the EU removes the sanctions".
Even if it was, CERN aren't going to suck up power and thus raise prices while there's still going to be a supply crunch elsewhere. A huge amount of gas usage for direct heating needs to be displaced with electric in the near term, so it's a good look for CERN to do their part and a good use of government money to not compete with the citizenry.
> French nuclear reactors [...] offline because of massive defects
There's no "massive defects" involved, it's a combination of 1. regular refueling maintenance which happens every summer; 2. some maintenance being delayed due to COVID-19 that was finally able to be scheduled this year; 3. a minor corrosion issue [1] being found with the welds in one of the newer plants, leading the power plant operator to stop all similar plants for safety reasons to be manually inspected.
> barely producing due to a lack of cooling water
There's plenty of cooling water, it's just warmer than usual upstream of some of the plants, and the plants have rules about not rejecting water above a certain temperature to the river in order to protect wildlife. These rules can be waived and in fact have been waived several times this summer and previous summers to continue producing at higher load -- it sucks for the fishes that get +1°C, but we're basically making a choice between warming up the rivers or warming up the planet with more CO2 emissions. This is indeed the same situation as in Beznau (CH, the article you linked), but absolutely not comparable to the problems with hydro in Italy that are actually due to lack of water. You can't waive a lack of water.
> no indication at all that the situation in France will clear up any time soon
(1) and (2) are absolutely going to clear up by winter. https://nuclear-monitor.fr/ shows the planned maintenance end dates. Just by the end of the month EDF is planning to have 11-12GW back online [2] (though their maintenance end dates tend to slip up by a few days in general). That leaves the 12 reactors (out of 56) impacted by (3). I suspect that if it actually comes to blackouts, (3) might also clear out, if we decide that the minor safety risk of the welding issues is less bad than the people actually dying due to lack of power. Unfortunately anything involving nuclear safety makes people freak out and require 100% reliability, even when it's absolutely irrational to do so and causes more human deaths.
> 3. a minor corrosion issue [1] being found with the welds in one of the newer plants, leading the power plant operator to stop all similar plants for safety reasons to be manually inspected.
Minor? Your link is outdated. EDF was forced to prolong the shutdowns recently [1].
> (1) and (2) are absolutely going to clear up by winter.
It will, but the drought is likely to reappear next summer, which is why not just the spot electricity market is bananas but also the futures market. Additionally, there is the very real potential of further issues cropping up - the French plants are almost all extremely old [2]
> Unfortunately anything involving nuclear safety makes people freak out and require 100% reliability, even when it's absolutely irrational to do so and causes more human deaths.
Well, the problem with nuclear is that even a tiny fuck up has the potential to irradiate a large region for decades. We still can't eat game or shrooms in Bavaria without checking them for radiation levels, and that over 35 years after Chernobyl.
> Minor? Your link is outdated. EDF was forced to prolong the shutdowns recently [1].
Your link doesn't say anything about the severity of the issue, just the number of reactors it impacts (12, which is the same number I indicated).
> It will, but the drought is likely to reappear next summer
Sure, by then the welding issues are hopefully finally addressed (the plan is to have the maintenance done by January, but I strongly suspect this will slip by a few months) and then it's only the regular refueling which has been happening in summer for almost 50 years.
> which is why not just the spot electricity market is bananas but also the futures market
Well, no, that's due to a lack of electricity production capacity. Issues with the french nuclear fleet are part of that problem, but they're not all of that problem.
> even a tiny fuck up has the potential to irradiate a large region for decades
Absolutely not. Tiny fuckups happen all the time and have no consequence. Major fuckups happen once in a while and also have no consequence (TMI, for example). Huge fuckups have happened twice in the past 40 years, and only once with major irradiation consequences (Fukushima Daiichi has roughly no exclusion zone left at this point 11 years after the accident, the last town has been reopened earlier this year). The nuclear industry has learned from all these fuckups, from the tiniest ones to the catastrophic ones, and something like the issue at Chornobyl just cannot happen in France.
OP is rabid anti-nuclear person with an axe to grind. It gets boring after a while, especially with rabid anti-nuclear people being partially responsible for the current crisis. If it wasn't for them, Europe would be much less dependent on Russia.
HN tends to be fairly pro-nuclear, which is not surprising given that the majority of its users are in the US which doesn't have a lot of the problems Europe has with nuclear - they have more than enough space to build nuclear plants safely away from population centers, earthquake-prone areas or flood-prone coasts or to store the waste.
It seems like the situation has resolved itself, at least the posting is not grey anymore.
I think that being pro-nuclear actually can make sense until there is enough renewable capacity installed. Its IMHO better than firing coal and generating more CO2. Also we already have nuclear waste, so we are already in a unfavorable situation and producing some more is probably the better tradeoff than ruining our climate. In my opinion, the safety of these power plants is, however, the biggest pain point that is not solved and will likely never be.
We still should work towards renewables so nuclear power can become a thing of the past.
That can be done with diesel locomotives [1], but with nuclear carriers? Not sure. For one, only the French and the US have nuclear carriers, with the British additionally running a nuclear submarine fleet.
Besides, even the largest US carriers of the Nimitz class barely reaches 200 MW of power (and the majority of it goes directly to the propellers via steam turbines, not via intermediate electrical systems). Your typical actual power plant however goes into the ~1000 MW/1GW and above region.
Yep, nothing besides doing its job supporting the organisation preventing a European war escalation as well ad providing intel to Ukraine.
Send an email to Macron though, I'm sure he'd like to hear about HN experts who want to use an air-carrier that develops less than 10% of the least powerful land based nuclear plant to power the grid...
Similar things were thought of before for Northern Ireland in the 70s but not implemented because it was impractical in that case. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/4132635.stm
Wouldnt rule it out entirely especially as a political gesture of doing everything possible when unrest threatens, but not as a very meaningful intervention.
Understandably, since they're for a boat and the whole point is to move the boat, that's not actually electricity. They mostly make steam, which is used to turn propellers, which are used to move the boat.
They do make some electricity, well, by domestic standards it's a lot of electricity, but in terms of a country's need for electricity it's a drop in the bucket. The Ford is probably capable of making 125MW of electricity (details are classified) and is the only carrier of its type in service for a year or two yet. Older US carriers have smaller, less capable reactors and are less equipped to generate electricity from the steam.
Admittedly you decide when you get 125MW from your aircraft carrier, whereas the wind blows when it likes - and the carrier is portable, sort of, but that's just not very much juice and it's the only one of its kind in the world.
What does Bitcoin energy consumption have to do with CERN?
Don't forget most mining is done in China, not Europe. And your first link mainly tries to show that Bitcoin consumption isn't a lot compared to other uses. So I don't really see the point.
They have been kicked out of China. Most went to the US, some went to other places in central Asia (e.g. Kazakhstan) but they largely left for the US. And some later left central Asia after causing various local blackouts and contributing nothing to their host country other than small bribes and sucking up energy subsidies.
You gotta admire the Chinese bureaucracy for not using kid's gloves when dealing with a problem. In the U.S. you would have miners suing the government, or the government suing the miners, the legality of crypto mining would make its way through the court system and eventually reach the Supreme Court. Then you would have governors possibly standing up to the federal government to retain their miners. In China, the government can decide overnight to kick crypto miners to the curb. No lawsuits, no court cases, no grand speeches, just an enforcement action without possibility of recourse.
China isn't alone in banning it, and the US COULD ban it as well (similar to how gold was banned in the past).
They not only choose not to, but it is rapidly becoming "financialized" - Trading on the CME, and the major players on wall street looking to get into the game and collect their "rent".
i think you forgot to add "communist" in your response.
Normally people like to write "authoritarian communist government" to make it sound really bad.
So like the people of China want crypto banned, and the government does it and this is BAD.
whereas the rest of the world adds fuel to this ponzi scheme and this is good?
Tell us, when the US outlawed ownership of gold under executive order 6102 was this "authoritarian" because it is unclear that the people voted on it or asked for it?
You're mocking him, but he was accurate - it is authoritative government, even more so than in the West.
I'd say expropriation of gold was authoritarian, i.e. undemocratic, because it was done by president, not Congress. US, with its strong president, is not a perfect democracy, powerful groups/president can do things that demos does not want.
That's not claiming it was a bad decision or policy. There were probably good reasons for that step, and it may have helped the country.
>You gotta admire the Chinese bureaucracy for not using kid's gloves when dealing with a problem
Do you feel the same way when the "problem" is "people who want a say in government" or "student activists" or "Uyghurs" and "dealing" with it involves genocide? It's true that authoritarian countries can act decisively on real problems sometimes, when their own private politics align. But they far more regularly act "decisively" to make things worse, to crush freedoms, to cover up their own corruption, etc. It's not particularly admirable that once in a while they have good issues too.
>they far more regularly act "decisively" to make things worse, to crush freedoms, to cover up their own corruption, etc.
That's why Democracy is the worst form of government excluding the alternatives. But it would be nice to have a democratic government that is also capable of acting decisively. I don't have any ideas how you'd do that, but it doesn't seem wrong to express the desire.
This would be possible only when all in the parliament would agree and want the same policy and same law as soon as possible. This is indeed rare, even in dire circumstances like hospitals full of sick people and more coming, or energy crisis in Europe.
Democracy being swift like autocracy is basically impossible. Any pretense of democratic government action needs the discussion to happen, which takes lots of time, and this makes the action not swift.
Instead, the way western governments seem to approach these crises is that lawful process is violated by the government more or less, tough dubious measures are introduced more or less in the interest of the country, then some people protest, maybe lawsuits get filed, then justice system gets bogged down for years, and in some cases we get rulings that government broke the law. This usually changes nothing.
>In China, the government can decide overnight to kick crypto miners to the curb. No lawsuits, no court cases, no grand speeches, just an enforcement action without possibility of recourse.
You admire how dictatorship ignores any law when its convenient for them. You realize this goes hand in hand with overall situation in China re uighurs concentration camps, useless lockdowns killing people in situation where rest of the world goes meh, supporting russia despite sanctions and so on and on.
No, I dont admire them. That government has earned 0 respect, despite some hard numbers they can achieve (or not, who knows)
They can, and they have. China has been building ghost cities for years to prop up their own capital figures, all those apartments would be on the books for prices no Chinese could afford, and stayed empty for years.
It seems to have worked out for them and eventually the cities became inhabited. But it was a huge gamble and here in the west we would call it a scam.
Of course one thing you can't fake is international currency when trading with other countries. But this is one thing China has more than enough of because we all pay them to make our goods.
> What does Bitcoin energy consumption have to do with CERN?
Priorities. Bitcoin (as other POW based cryptocurrencies) waste a huge load of energy, with a single Bitcoin transaction that cost over US$100 of energy (old estimation when energy costs were a lot lower) and mining farms sprouting everywhere hosting thousands of nodes of which each one draws 2000-5000 Watts, just like one or two heaters, but kept on 24/7 with their fans pumping heat into the atmosphere.
My point is that before looking at CERN, maybe, just maybe, they should look at other places where energy is wasted by turning it directly into money (and heat), also without creating businesses and jobs.
I don't think that's very doable though. Bitcoin ASICs only stay relevant for a short time, when they're surpassed by more efficient models, and no longer economically viable. I doubt the owners of these are willing to turn them off and let their investment expire without using them. Also, the increasing cost of electricity dramatically reduces that write-off period.
Besides that, CERN is mostly publicly funded and one huge consumer so the government has lots of control over them which they don't have over miners, which are also more fragmented between many different operators. And the research CERN do is not time critical.
So I still think it makes sense. CERN is one thing they can actually do without too much trouble and has a relatively large effect.
Please don't post offtopic flamewar comments (including war flamewar comments) to HN, even if you feel strongly and your feelings are justified. It's not what this site is for, and can only destroy what it is for.
I just came back to this being quite a bit more controversial than I intended. I wrote it frustrated by the story and the commenters here who were ignoring the elephant in the room. Please detach it from the story, if it is possible, or otherwise make it so it doesn't cause further harm. Whatever you feel is appropriate.
In my defense, though, while I can see it being inflammatory it is definitely not offtopic. This is directly why CERN is being idled, and the article states it plainly:
"Europe's energy picture remains clouded by the war in Ukraine. Moscow's invasion of its neighbour have triggered sweeping sanctions from the West, led to a cut in energy supplies from Russia and stoked inflation.
On September 2, Russia indefinitely suspended natural gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, tightening the squeeze on Europe’s energy supplies. The ongoing economic battle between Moscow and Brussels has raised the prospects of recession and energy rationing in some of the continent’s wealthiest countries."
I agree with this wholeheartedly, but I also think some of the burden should be placed on Europe’s leaders for not preparing more thoroughly for this scenario.
Trade is a great tool to mitigate and avoid conflicts like these, but the power balance was shifted too far into Russia’s favour here.
Energy policy should have included means of establishing sovereignty over energy sources. Shutting down nuclear reactors was probably not the best move. Russian gas was cheaper, until it wasn’t. In hindsight, keeping domestic sources available would have been wise.
Other policies to establish Russian economic dependence upon the West would have helped too. That said, only so much you can do with an autocrat.
If you think about it, Europe sends its produce and Russia sends its energy and everyone lives happily together. That interdependence in EU is what keeps peace in Europe, it's very unfortunate that it didn't work with Russia.
The whole ordeal is ridiculous if you are not a dictator with fantasies about greatness.
I'm inclined to think that EU and USA's mistake was to turn blind eye to failing democracies because when a country is not a democracy its leader can do all kind of crazy stuff fuelled with nationalism or another ideology instead of trying to stay in power by providing prosperity. Maybe there must be a rule about offloading dependence when a country turns into less and less democratic nation with leaders who stay in power through means you don't have control in.
Surely sanctions bite and thats why Russia plays the energy card but it definitely would have bitten more or even deter the conflict if Putin was in power through proper governance.
>If you think about it, Europe sends its produce and Russia sends its energy and everyone lives happily together
That energy was for Europe for more important than these produce for Russia. Our leaders are to blame for going on with this imbalance of leverage for so long and not taking measures or backups despite the US warning us on several occasions that Europe is vulnerable to Russian exploitation due to this imbalance. Unfortunately for us, out leaders are Muppets asleep at the wheel.
That's only because Russia is not a proper democracy. Europe is poor on energy, leaders couldn't have chosen to export energy to Russia and buy their produce because the reality doesn't allow that. Instead, they did the next best thing and invest in energy efficiency. EU is quite efficient on energy use, making dependence on Russia lower than what it could have been.
Many times the climate change is half of the story, the other half is that EU couldn't be lavish on energy use even if it wanted.
>That's only because Russia is not a proper democracy.
You're saying it as if that came as a complete surprise to the EU leaders and EU population, that Putin's Russia was not a "real" democracy. When the US and the Eastern Europe was warning for decades that Russia cannot be trusted. Yet Germany turned a blind eye.
> You're saying it as if that came as a complete surprise to the EU leaders and EU population, that Putin's Russia was not a "real" democracy. When the US and the Eastern Europe was warning for decades that Russia cannot be trusted. Yet Germany turned a blind eye.
No I don't say that at all, read my comment again. I clearly say that they made a mistake with that.
> Our leaders are to blame for going on with this imbalance of leverage for so long and not taking measures or backups despite the US warning us
Power of european leaders comes from european citizens, not from US (at least on paper).
Blame the european citizens, that they wanted to have good relations with Russia... no this does not work either.
Many people did not believe Putin would invade, or did not want to preempt him.
Now that we have the proof of treachery, working with/appeasing Russia became dangerous and only now we have a incontrovertible reason to disconnect from it. But before the invasion, it was not so clear that being on good terms with Russia was bad.
No, but Germany started a shutdown of nuclear power plants and the laying of the Nordstream gas pipeline as recently as 2011.
I appreciate that major infrastructure projects take a long time to build - but a gas-heavy Russia-dependent energy mix was the deliberate choice very recently.
The problem is gas is cheaper and more reliable than any alternative. It could have gone with Nuclear, but then it would have priced itself out of 101 industries decades ago. You can't blame them for taking cheap Russian gas to keep jobs and prosperity for a few decades...
That's fine, but be careful where you turn that gaze. One reason Europe is so reliant on russian gas is because the US refused export licenses for a long time. Why? Because the US would rather have jobs in manufacturing than extraction. So US leaders are as much to blame for this as European ones.
Another reason is instability in the Middle East and Iranian sanctions. Both also US choices that have shored up dependence on russian gas.
Right now, the quickest way to more gas would be a rapid deal with Iran that cuts right through US sanctions...
I’m glad to see a shift in sentiments from Germany about nuclear power [0]. There have been warnings about energy dependence on Russia for years [1], maybe not long enough to spin up more nuclear plants but certainly enough time to make good progress on them.
It’s not the president putin. It’s corrupt Germans who took russian money and build insane dependency on cheap russian gas. Now the card house is falling apart and the general population must pay the price. My gas bill increased by ~2,8x. On the other hand russians have nothing left to blackmail Europe.
> On the other hand russians have nothing left to blackmail Europe.
that's a very naive way of looking at economic interdependence, even more naive than the view of politicians half a year ago that led Europe to the current energy crisis. How about european aerospace industry's need for titanium and aluminium? [1] There are several important resource markets where Russia has a significant share of the supply pie [2]. Metals and fertilizers to name a few. Politicians know that but are acting as if they don't, and the public has better start asking them for more than just knee-jerk reactions with economic sanctions that mostly hurt key european industries and numerous households that depend on these industries.
All wars are terrible. This one hurts a little more because it's closer to home (to many HN users). But it's no worse than any other wars that are fought daily across the globe.
Fuck wars and the old *** in government offices that declare them.
No, this one hurts more because it's so completely unnecessary.
Wars are more often fought because people have differences that are actually legitimate, meaning reasonable people can at least see the point of view of each side.
Obviously all war is terrible, but at least usually you can see a reason for the war.
This one though? There was absolutely no reason for it.
NATO was not actually expanding. Russia has no chance of occupying Ukraine and keeping it. What are Russia's goals? No one can even say, not even Russia.
What wars in the past, say, 200 years were fought because "people [had] differences that [were] actually legitimate" and not the basic imperialism and/or ethno-nationalism that has driven Russia's aggression against Ukraine?
Ukraine got under control of a West-oriented government and many Ukrainians supported that. Military and economic ties grew. This telegraphed that Ukraine was on the path to be lost from the Russian sphere of influence (satellite states). Also it was an uncomfortable/dangerous for the Putin regime because it signaled to Belorussians and Russians that a different, west-oriented government system is possible.
Putin's popularity was falling before the war; nothing quite like war and war propaganda to neutralize discontent of powerful groups in Russia with the government; also works on the gullible part of population.
Lots of gas deposits and other natural resources in eastern Ukraine.
Belief in a quick "fait-accompli" win, resulting in expansion of Russian-controlled territory and gains in domestic popularity. Increase of power on the geopolitical scene, more power in relation to Europe.
Biden looked like a weak president who would not do much.
West did almost nothing in reaction to annexation of Crimea.
West did not want concede anything big to Putin during the talks. Probably rightly so.
This one though? There was absolutely no reason for it.
Of course there was, Ukraine becoming a NATO member. Just read Putin's address [1] after the invasion started, it is spelled out in no uncertain terms. You may disagree whether this warrants are war but this does not change the fact that there is a reason and Russia consistently said so for decades.
I think this framing is a little strange. Ukraine was not joining NATO, and if it had been that seems quite reasonable to expect given that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014
As I said in another comment, the Bucharest summit 2008 started paving the way towards a NATO membership. Until 2014 under Yanukovych Ukraine itself suspended its membership ambitions, in 2014 it continued seeking membership. The Russian response followed and prevented a membership due to Ukraine being in an active conflict and this bought Russian time to either find a diplomatic solution or prepare the invasion.
That is a good point, I never thought deeply about that. As far as I know, Ukraine NATO relationships still progressed even after 2014. So even though an actual membership was not possible for essentially technical reasons, the intention was still there and progress was arguably made. So maybe the situation was not judged as satisfactory, no official membership but a defacto membership in the making. Other contributing reasons like resources including water for Crimea.
I agree that Ukraine wanted to join NATO, but that isn't the same thing as that aim being likely to be realised. Putin's calculus is his own to know and I don't think his claims about why he does things can be taken at face value
> what would the alternative reasons be and why would he not want to spell them out?
He has spelled it out before--he believes that Ukrainians are really Russians, and therefore Ukraine should not exist as a separate country because why divide a nation in two.
I had this discussion a few days ago and I read the entire essay Putin wrote - if this is the best evidence for the reuniting a nation explanation, then I am not convinced at all. Compared to decades of opposition against NATO expansion this is laughable evidence. Go, read it [1] if you have not.
Let's take that at face value "Ukraine becoming a NATO member". How does a war stop them from becoming a NATO member? Russia can not occupy Ukraine - they don't have the manpower for that.
What's the end game? What's the goals of the war? How does an invasion, that has to end at some point, stop Ukraine from joining NATO?
Even if Ukraine looses, Russia has no ability to force them to do anything. Russia wins - and then what?
Easiest way, you make them sign an agreement during peace negotiations. Maybe even just demonstrating that you are serious and what the consequences are might act as a deterant for at least some time. Install a pro Russian government.
You are right, nothing will guarantee that they never become a NATO member, but for some time is a plausible goal. Even just being in an active conflict prevents a NATO membership unless the rules are changed which is what Crimea and eastern Ukraine achieved since 2014.
Russia has a 500 year long uninterrupted track record of invading and occupying its neighbors. Now, you might say that this is an unfair comparison because hundreds of years ago everyone was doing that, and okay, yes! But the last time Russia bit off a piece of one of its neighbors was 2014! Russia acts like a 19th century imperialist in the year 2022! The last time Russia occupied a foreign territory and deported its inhabitants to Siberia was this year! And they’ve done it every place they’ve occupied in the 21st century! I mean, it’s actually incredible.
Saying that this particular instance of territorial expansion has a self-defense motivation is, I think, implausible given the history.
It's a bit more complicated than that because Ukraine looked into joining NATO in the early 00s, reversed course and was (at least officially) neutral until 2014 when Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas. December 2014 they restarted plans to join NATO.
Realistically, Ukraine was left with the choice of slowly losing territory to Russia, or joining NATO.
The events in and around 2014 are really important. Did Ukraine revive its NATO membership ambitions because of Russian actions or did Russia act in response to new NATO membership ambitions?
When I first researched this after the invasion started, I arrived at Russia reacting but I am open to being proven wrong.
> (and Swedish/Finnish membership is virtually assured).
I believe Swedish/Finnish membership has been officially accepted by NATO. All that remains is collecting the official ratifications from the rest of NATO. (Currently, 8 of the 30 member states have yet to ratify it.)
See my other comments addressing your point. And I of course agree, to some extent this backfired. But I am not sure that Russia would not still consider this a win overall. Not all neighbors are equal if you take things like geography into account, so I would not rule out the possibility that Sweden and Finnland were factored in.
I agree that Ukraine was not going to join NATO in March 2022 ; however, it can completely be assumed that the window of "attacking Ukraine before it joins NATO" was only going to narrow.
And, given the importance of Russian oil and gas in the post-covid recovery period, the predictable reduction in nuclear capacity in France and Germany, the plausible lack of support from EU population and German industry for a cold winter, Putin's aging, etc... It might just be that the timing felt "as good as it will ever be".
Also, being on the "initiative" side gives your more positive outcomes. Best case was a flash invasion of Kiyv with public support. Next best case, a flash invasion without public support. That didn't pan out, but their next option is not terrible : grab as much territory as possible in Spring and Summer, then... Wait it out. General Winter will give Russia a pretty nice seat at the négociation table when EU citizens finally bail out.
Now, it's possible that we europeans stand the cold (or maybe, FSM willing, that winter is _not_ cold), that US weapons work, and that Putin contends with "I keep Crimea and some water, you join NATO, Dombass stays neutral." Sadly, that looks like the "best" plausible outcome to me - but who knows...
I still think Putin getting bumped off is a plausible outcome - either by his own FSB, elements of the Russian military, angry oil oligarchs or Ukrainian partisans with or without the help of the CIA and friends.
Whether that will count as a good outcome really depends on what follows: chaos and civil war could be terrible; a short caretaker government followed by the election of Alexei Navalny might be the best possible result.
Putin is certainly far from the ideal leader but it is probably safe to say things could also be much worse. Leadership change in a country like Russia with so many nukes is always a bit frightening. You do not even have to look at Russia, just look at the end of Trump's presidency. I think the only thing that is certain is that interesting times are ahead.
I personally think NATO has some blame to take. Ukraine begged to join NATO for years. NATO said no and played a slow game. All NATO had to do was say yes. Russia would have never invaded a NATO country. But they did invade a country to make sure they didn't join NATO.
Not just that, but a week long NATO air + cruise missile campaign would stop this war completely, the Ukranians would just walk to their borders picking up the bodies. But NATO would rather send weapons and watch.
I also tend to put some blame on NATO, but I think they should not have offered a membership or only one with additional rules like in the case of Norway. The prospect of Ukraine joining NATO is what forced Russia to act to possibly prevent a NATO membership, as you said this would have become a lot more impossible to do once Ukraine had joined NATO.
If you consider Ukraine becoming a NATO member a threat to Russian security that has to be prevented at all costs, then you are forced to act if your opposition is ignored. Besides this there are essentially only two options - Ukraine does not become a NATO member or you convince Russia that a Ukrainian NATO membership is not a threat to its security.
EDIT: As a thought experiment entertain the idea of a partnership between Mexico and China where in exchange for economic support China gets a few military bases in northern Mexico, just a few thousand soldiers and tanks and maybe an airfield here or there. Take into account the recent US reaction in response to a partnership between the Solomon Islands and China [1].
This explanation doesn't make much sense. If Ukraine maybe joining NATO in an unspecified future is such a big threat to Russia, then surely Finland joining it right now is an even bigger threat. Not to mention that Poland and the Baltic states already are NATO members.
Russia's security is guaranteed by nukes. Security definitely wasn't the reason why Russia has invaded Ukraine.
If security is guaranteed by nukes, why does the US threaten the Salomon Island? Placing missile defense systems close to the launch sites gives you the possibility to intercept them early in the boost phase when they are still slow. Having assets close to enemy borders in general gives you shorter reaction times. This is about tipping the scale somewhat in your favor, not ensuring your victory.
I am not qualified to judge the situation with Finnland, but not all neighbors are necessarily equal. Things like geography, for example, might play a role and Finnland in, Ukraine out might be more desirable than Ukraine in, Finnland out.
Russia is busy with Ukraine so can't deal with Finland however they have been talking tough and posturing.
NATO members are NATO members, attacking them after they've joined NATO an orginisation basically created to fight Russia would mean you go to war with all NATO members.
Russia's preference methodogly of defence is creating distance. With Ukraine, NATO would have been extremely close to Moscow. Finland is further away but they're still not happy about it.
NATO expanding into that region was well known to be something that would threaten Russia, since it was founded to fight Russia, to the point Joe Biden said decades ago[1], that Russia expanding into that region would cause conflicts.
For me, what allowed this to happen is that NATO were slow walking Ukraine. This created the uneasy possibility that they could join but never really giving the signal that they can join. They asked for a Membership Action Plan in 2020. In 2022 they still weren't given one and got invaded because of NATO. It takes two to tango as they say and those two are Russia and NATO and the Ukrianan people are the ones who suffer the most.
It was the Bucharest summit 2008 that started paving the way for Ukraine and Georgia to become NATO members. Georgia was immediately attacked, Ukraine under Yanukovych suspended its membership ambitions itself until 2014. When they resumed their membership ambitions, Crimea and the east Ukraine where the response of Russia and this prevented a NATO membership because you can not be in an active conflict as far as I know. This then gave Russia time to prepare the invasion in order to try to prevent a NATO membership forcefully.
I think you have the ordering of 2014 backwards. It wasn't until December that Ukraine resumed their plans for joining NATO and was arguably a response to Russian activity in Donbas and Crimea.
This is indeed crucial and when I first researched this after the invasion started, I arrived at Russia reacting. I can however no longer tell how I arrived at this conclusion. If I find some time, I will look into this again, as it is pretty important for my understanding and explanation of the conflict. Ad hoc I am not sure if this would completely break my point of view.
Let me know if you find something definitive. Figuring out this timeline shouldn't be as hard as it has been for me when you mentioned something contrary to my recollection...
You are of course correct that Ukraine officially gave up the non-alignment in late December 2014. What I have to check is whether in late 2013 or early 2014 there were any indications that Ukraine might reverse course.
Sure but I do not think that I would have seen Maidan in general as something that warranted more or less immediate action from Russia. Either I really got this wrong or I must have come across something more relevant.
I think it is fair to assume that in general the USA prefers Ukraine in NATO over a neutral Ukraine and that over one oriented towards Russia. In NATO there are at least some countries that preferred Ukraine remaining neutral. Even if everyone always says that it is a sovereign decision that does not preclude them from at least having preferences. But there is at least some evidence for outside influence to push Ukraine into a certain direction which goes beyond just having a preference.
I did a bit of reading yesterday but I have not yet found anything I consider strong enough to support my Russia reacted point of view. At least at this specific point in time, in general I still have no reason to doubt that a NATO membership was the desired outcome. So currently I really tend towards I got this wrong and I am mostly held back only because I looked into all this in quite some detail after the invasion started and that seems like a mistake I should not have made.
The post you responded to omits a few important segments that are crucial for understaning actions and reactions. Let's start with:
- 1990 - 2000: whether Ukraine had a sovereign right to join military blocs in the first place and how Zelensky's rhetoric on the matter contributed to Moscow's decision making. My past comments regarding the issue: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32299159
- ~8 years of what could be best characterised as a civil war between two sides of the same country backed by two different world powers. A period of forming of Azov Battalion out of nationalistic elements of the divided society (long twitter thread): https://twitter.com/camaradabruno/status/1499781846682505220
- Early 2022: “Do you realize that if Ukraine joins NATO and decides to take Crimea back through military means, the European countries will automatically get drawn into a military conflict with Russia?” Putin said. “Of course, NATO’s united potential and that of Russia are incomparable.”: https://thebulletin.org/2022/02/putin-says-ukraine-membershi...
IMO, everything post 2014 is of little importance.
By that point, Ukraine no longer trusted that Russia would respect its sovereignty and Russia no longer trusted that U Ukraine would remain neutral with NATO.
I don't have one in particular in mind. I have in mind a whole pattern, going back at least as far as the invasion of Georgia in (IIRC) 2008. That said - in actions, not just words - that Russia feels free to invade neighbors if it doesn't like their policies.
Then came Russia's statements at the time of the color revolution. (No, I don't recall specific statements - that was eight or nine years ago.)
Then came the invasion of the "little green men". Russia said it was an internal thing, that Russia was not involved. Ukraine knows better.
Was that not enough for Ukraine, as early as 2013, to be looking for alliances to help their defense?
But for every move they made, Russia felt threatened by NATO. And so Russia responded by threatening Ukraine even more (mostly verbally, until 2022). But the bigger the threats that Russia uttered, the more Ukraine sought to strengthen ties to the west. This was now a positive feedback loop. It doesn't matter if one side was "right", it doesn't matter who made the first move, Russia's reactions were driving Ukraine more firmly into the camp of the west.
Since the invasion, Russia's comments have been jaw-dropping. "Ukraine has no independent existence." They threatened Finland for joining NATO. (Why do they think Finland might see the need to join NATO, after decades of non-alignment?) They threatened Poland for being a transit point for weapons flowing into Ukraine. They talked about re-creating the USSR or the Russian Empire or some big thing from the past that had a bigger land footprint. They talked about already being at war with NATO. Do they think that people don't listen to this? That they don't react? That the reaction is going to be to bow down to Russia's diktat? People (not just Ukraine) are scrambling, either toward Russia or away. Belarus is scrambling toward (Russia having kept Lukashenka in power might have something to do with that). Uzbekistan and maybe Kazakhstan are moving toward Russia. Everyone else is scrambling away, trying to find allies big enough to deter Russia from attacking them.
(Now, in fairness, since the invasion Russia has been running wartime propaganda, so of course their rhetoric has hardened. That doesn't convince their neighbors that Russia wants to live with them in peace, though.)
So, yeah. It's not just one threat. It's the whole pattern of Russia's words and actions over the last decade or two.
The invasion of Georgia followed the Bucharest summit 2008 so in my opinion this can be understood as a reaction against Georgia seeking NATO membership. Ukraine decided not to persue a NATO membership until 2014. From my initial research on the topic I arrived at Russia reacting in 2014 as Ukraine started to reverse course but other commenters have pointed out that I got the order of events wrong. They are certainly right with the official reversal with regard to seeking NATO membership which happened only in late December but I have to look into this again as I do not remember why I arrived at Russia reacting.
But I do not want to get stuck in the details of the actual events now because as you point out there is a more fundamental issue independent of the actual events. And I almost completely agree with the way you describe it as an unstable situation with positive feedback. Not sure if you wanted to say that this feedback loop formed in 2014, but if, then I would disagree. This cycle existed essentially since the end of the Soviet Union - Ukraine moves towards NATO, threats or actions in opposition, more incentive to seek NATO membership. Rinse and repeat. The specific events of course change but it is always the same cycle.
It doesn't matter if one side was "right", it doesn't matter who made the first move, Russia's reactions were driving Ukraine more firmly into the camp of the west.
With the first part I agree, but the second one is onesided. This is only one of the links in the cycle but in the same way any move towards NATO forces Russia to up their threats or even take action. And in that link it is not only the actions of Ukraine that matter but also outside actions. For example the USA wanting to support specific political groups in Ukraine in 2014 is also something that fuels the cycle as it may also move Ukraine closer to a NATO membership.
Ignoring everything after the war started because we are talking about how it started, it seems to me that everything you mentioned is related to the NATO issue, isn't it? I did some reading on the history of Ukraine Russia relations and I would say all things considered they got along pretty okay besides the NATO membership issue. Crimea is probably the biggest friction point but even there the longterm leases look like an acceptable compromise.
And let me return once more to the cycle which should have been broken long ago and must be broken at some point to achieve stability. Where can it be broken? Convince Russia that NATO in Ukraine is not a threat. Not going to happen any time soon just as a Chinese presence in Mexico would not be acceptable to the USA. A long time ago directly after the end of the Cold War this might have been possible with Russia itself becoming a NATO member. And obviously Ukraine remaining neutral or at most having only a special membership in NATO like Norway with no foreign assets on its territory.
Both have only become harder with the war and beyond that you either need radical changes like disappearing countries or become really creative. I think someone actually pointed some non-obviouse direction out to me but unfortunately I do not remember.
> Ignoring everything after the war started because we are talking about how it started, it seems to me that everything you mentioned is related to the NATO issue, isn't it?
No, I don't think so. Russia intervened in Belarus to keep Lukashenka (sp) in power, against the will of the people. I don't think the people were asking for Belarus to join NATO, though. So I think that Russia has more "red lines" than NATO. A color revolution and/or a real democracy anywhere in the former USSR is a red line, at least while Putin is in power. (Because Putin very deeply fears a color revolution in Russia.)
And I think that's the deeper point. These aren't Russia's red lines; they're Putin's. And Putin may develop other things that become "red lines", because the bottom line is "anything that Putin feels threatened by". That's not a reasonable expectation to place on other nations. Ukraine and Belarus are not Putin's playthings, nor his colonies. "Don't do anything Putin doesn't like" is not something that independent nations have to play along with.
Why should Russia have prevented a sovereign nation from doing anything? Is Ukraine not a sovereign nation? Should the US prevent Mexico from joining into a membership scheme with other nations?
Look at the US reaction towards the Solomon Islands [1] earlier this year. And we are not talking about memberships in random international organizations, we are talking about placing military assets close to rival borders. Do you think the USA would tolerate Chinese bases, tanks and airplanes in northern Mexico? What happened when Cuba asked for Soviet ICBMs as deterent against the USA trying to overthrow their government?
Sovereignty does not mean you can do whatever you want. Why do the USA and Israel try to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, are they not a sovereign state? Why invade Afghanistan, is hosting terrorists not something sovereign state can do if they want? You can of course maintain that sovereignty grants you the right to do whatever you want inside your territory, but then you also have to admit that not only the evil Russians are violating rights left and right.
Russia, as a state, has legitimate concerns around the expansion of NATO. There are thousands of alternate universes where these concerns could have been addressed peacefully. Russia is a great state with a lot of history and heritage and its position in the global pecking order should be solidified.
However, NATO expansion does not give Russia a right to attack a sovereign country and attack civilian population centers with no regard to human life. Russia has been an aggressor in this. No matter where our political sympathies lie, we have to call a spade a spade. Russia started this war.
Russia's war against Ukraine buries its reputation deep, deep into the ground. Putin completely destroys whatever reputation as a "great state" Russia may have had.
NATO doesn’t expand on its own. Sovereign nations seek to join for their own reasons. As a sovereign nation, Ukraine had the ability to seek membership.
Ukraine didn't have the ability to join NATO, it's outlined in its founding documents (Constitution, and the Declaration on the State Sovereignty) that derive from declarations signed between USSR and Ukrainian SSR in 1990 ((Chapter IX. EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL SECURITY): "The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention to become a permanently neutral state in the future, which does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three non-nuclear principles: not to accept, not to produce, and not to acquire nuclear weapons." [1]
I think it's more about Ukraine having enough resources of gas and oil to replace russia for eu and oh surprise Russia now has control over exact those zones full of resources (south and east).
Nato is not a concern(Finland proves this) because, check, Russia has enough nukes to kill all living beings on earth and still not use all of them
It's a shame that the timing just had to coincide with the start of LHC Run 3, though. They only managed to generate around 5-6 months of data after 3 years of upgrades. I imagine that should still be enough to keep the scientists busy this Winter, though.