Maintenance had been postponed during the corona crisis. What had not been foreseen was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the associated general energy crisis in Europe.

> What had not been foreseen was the Russian invasion of Ukraine

The Russian reaction to the eastward expansion of NATO right up to Russia's borders has been foreseen and warned about since the 90s, including by top level US officials such as George Kennan and William Burns and by informed & insightful commentators such as John Mearsheimer. [1,2]

The Russian government made very clear protests in December of 2021 (the last in a long line of such protests) that they felt existentially threatened and would have to act.

> and the associated general energy crisis in Europe

Many people also warned about how stupid the sanctions that Europe imposed on Russia were, with the very high risk that they would harm European states (and their peoples) much more than Russia itself. One person I remember making such warnings in advance or concurrently was Philip Pilkington in UnHerd. [3,4,5]

[1] https://www.cato.org/commentary/many-predicted-nato-expansio...

[2] https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-follows-decades-of-w...

[3] https://unherd.com/thepost/sanctions-wont-hurt-russia/

[4] https://unherd.com/thepost/oil-and-gas-sanctions-hurt-the-we...

[5] https://unherd.com/thepost/gas-embargoes-will-hurt-europe-mu...

Yes, clearly, NATO expansion means Russia must invade... a non NATO member? Meanwhile the actual border state of Finland joins and... not a peep? Depleting vast amounts of key personnel and equipment all along the very line you claim was the source of danger?

No, Russian propaganda will variably claim NATO, Nazis and Jews are responsible, depending on what bigger fool they are trying to address. Well, one bit!

I know there is a seemingly endless stream of people who are going to make 'Russian propaganda' allegations under any substantive comment that goes against the dominant Western media narrative, with facile and shallow rebuttals of points made. But this is a very serious topic and every serious person should stop and think before they engage in such behaviour. The Russian propaganda charge here is especially stupid when I only referenced the views of US Americans and Britons, including :

1. George Kennan - "best known as an advocate of a policy of containment of Soviet expansion during the Cold War" [1]

2. William Burns - United States deputy secretary of state (2011-2014), Director of the Central Intelligence Agency since 2021 [2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_F._Kennan

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Burns

Can serious person use Occam's razor? The explanation for war in Ukraine is that Putin wants to stay in power, plain and simple.

Occam's Razor tells us that the Russians acted to 1) stop the constant bombing and cultural suppression of the Russian speaking people in the east and south of Ukraine that had been ongoing since the US backed coup in 2014 and 2) to finally move against the build up of forces and weapons that the US had been pouring into Ukraine since the coup to trigger a war on Russia's border that they hoped would lead to the destruction and dismemberment of the Russian state itself (the openly stated goals of the US).

(In parenthesis, I will also note the very silly but oft-repeated mistake of conflating Putin with Russia in the comment above. Russia does not act on the whims or personal ambitions of Putin; indeed, Putin stays in power largely by responding to the needs and desires of the Russian people, and the pressure inside Russia for him to act against the existential threat building on the Russian/Ukrainian border has been very strong and he has faced criticism for not acting earlier.)

Occam's razor is the idea that, in trying to understand something, getting unnecessary information out of the way is the fastest way to the truth or to the best explanation (c) wiki

The explanation about dictator's desire for power(now also life) is more simple than geopolitics and cultural suppression.

And about the needs of the Russian people: I don't remember Russians having a debate about starting a full scale war. Maybe Putin thinks its what they need but if there was a real debate we can safely assume people would prioritize having in-house toilets and a million other things that are suddenly became not so important.

You are 'applying Occam's razor' to a fiction, not reality. Anyone can dream up a fiction (or take one supplied to them) and then draw a simplistic conclusion from it.

I'm applying explanation to a fact. "Fiction" is not the right property to categorize explanations, the right one would be "probability". So yes, anyone can dream up an explanation and then judge if one is more probable than the other.

Can't forsee covid though, nor the war in Ukraine

Without these two things we most likely wouldn't have blackouts

  >What had not been foreseen was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the associated general energy crisis in Europe... 

  >Can't forsee covid though, nor the war in Ukraine...

Yes. Who could possibly have foreseen that announcing you're stopping imports of gas from Europe's biggest supplier, in the run up to winter, might lead to... er... a shortage of gas supplies.

No-one in the corridors of power in the EU or UK, apparently.

If you plan for these events you'll quickly stop all imports and exports because you'd have to be self sufficient 24/7

> No-one in the corridors of power in the EU or UK, apparently.

The whole conflict is just the other party calling bluff. But both the West and Russia have invested so much neither is going to settle. So they up the stakes and get dragged downwards. The only thing left is to complain that “it’s unfair the the US is profiting”.

And those pesky Norwegians.

As a European, it's not our problem. Ukraine isn't an EU member.

But we need electricity and industry.

You might be right, but that’s not where the EU is at right now. You can’t see people protest in the EU capitals, can you? At least not the extent where the governments have to cut the aid.

If anything can be learnt here it is

A.) that many things cannot be easily foreseen which includes record draughts and the Ukraine conflict.

B.) It makes sense to have a diversified energy mix where no single source is used predominantly.

> A.) that many things cannot be easily foreseen which includes record draughts and the Ukraine conflict.

I don't know. These record draughts are directly tied to climate change and I have known since the 90's that the Pentagon and the UN knew climate change would bring wars, population displacement et resources problems. I think that's where we are.

Droughts (lack of rain) in case others don't understand the typo.

You think that the war in Ukraine was caused by climate change? Can you expand on that?

Yes and no. The 10 years maintenance was foreseeable, but during that they discovered a stress corrosion issue, initially on the (somewhat beleaguered) N4 plants but which turned out to be a lot more widespread than that.

It’s also chicken-decisions coming home to roost: maintenance delays due to covid, poor maintenance conditions leading to strikes, and training of new maintenance staff had apparently been slashed because an expected shift to renewables means you apparently don’t need to train staff to maintain 50+ nuclear plants expected to run for decades more.

> maintenance delays due to covid

Due to the response to Covid, not due to Covid itself.