The plant can process around 15 million tons of oil annually and produce approximately 5 million tons of gasoline, supplying fuel to the Moscow region.
If Russia is unable to rebuild refineries, keep aircraft flying (safely), etc. without all the supplies they used to import from other countries, it makes me wonder if their nuclear weapons are actually useable at this point. They have to be properly maintained, and the nuclear materials occasionally replenished. The longer sanctions are in place, and the more infrastructure Ukraine damages or outright destroys, the less nuclear capability Russia will have. Not a bad thing.
Right now it’s kinda a battle between Ukraine’s ability to produce long ranged drones vs Russia’s ability to repair their oil and gas infrastructure. Keeping in mind that only 10% of drones have been making it to their targets, though that may increase in time.
Throughout the war they’ve been able to repair their infrastructure surprisingly quickly, even increasing production over time. That’s until the last month or so, where they’ve seen a pretty drastic drop in production ability. Nobody knows how long that will actually last, but it seems they’ve been hit pretty hard considering I believe they’ve paused gasoline exports until the end of November.
As far as imports for important tech to keep vital equipment running, it doesn’t seem the attempts to block trade with Russia has been super effective. Throughout the war they’ve created a lot of different ways to evade import bans through the use of shell corporations in countries they still do trade with like China. I think yesterday I saw an article that all their drones still had important parts being manufactured in Japan. Corporations are more than willing to turn a blind eye so long as it is technically legal trade.
Unfortunately the war in Iran has been a huge windfall for Russia, their national wealth fund is basically the life blood of the Russian economy, and it keeps growing as long as crude oil is above 59 dollars a barrel. Though they are banning exports of gasoline, they are still exporting more crude oil than ever. The attacks have mainly affected their ability to refine crude into gasoline, and other more valuable byproducts. If Ukraine could hit their ability to transport crude, that would have a much higher impact. That however would be much harder to do considering a lot of it is produced off shore, and it may upset some of their military partners who are cautious about raising fuel cost domestically.
Forbidding direct imports always adds friction, costs, delay, middlemen, possibility of counterfeit parts, etc. Plus reducing volumen.
Do you have any info on them repairing things faster than expected? I thought Ukraine switched their refinery targeting precisely to avoid them repairing it too quickly. Did that work?
I understand what you mean, but they had like 10k nuclear bombs at some point. Even if a lot of them were poorly maintained they should still have a few hundred functional ones by sheer numbers alone.
Maintaining nuclear weapons is far from trivial. The Wikipedia page on stockpile stewardship goes into a bit of detail. But in a nutshell everything from the nuclear material to the electronics to the high explosives used to initiate the nuclear reaction degrade over time.
The US hasn’t manufactured new nuclear weapons since 1992, meaning they’re all at least 33 years old at this point. The US regularly checks & replaces all these components to keep them operational.
Russia is also believed to have stopped building new nuclear weapons since the breakup of the USSR in 1991, so their arsenal is at least as old as the US one. I’m not sure Russia would have been capable to maintain their stockpile the way the US has. Among other things:
Tritium, used as a booster, has a half life of 12 years, so needs to be replenished fairly regularly. It decays to Helium 3, which can hinder a fission reaction. So it’s critical it’s properly removed.
The batteries that power everything need regular replacing every few years.
The conventional high explosives used to initiate the chain reaction degrade over time, especially in high heat, and the close proximity to radiation from the nuclear core. These explosives are critical to triggering a nuclear reaction. They have to be very precisely shaped around the nuclear core, and the timing to detonate each piece of it is also critical. If they are even slightly degraded or the timing is off then you won’t get a nuclear chain reaction when the explosives detonate.
plutonium changes phases over time, so cores require occasional purification.
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s when we had treaties like START there were reports that US officials inspecting Soviet missile silos saw standing water in them. The implication was that the Soviets may not have taken maintenance as seriously as the US did.
But the bottom line is we truly have no idea. Organizations like the CIA and MI6 might have insight into all of this if they have assets (like Oleg Penkovsky was) who are able to provide them with verifiable data on the issue.
I know there are many reasons a poorly maintained nuclear weapon may not function as intended. And probably a lot of them are dysfunctional rn. But the idea that none of them work is wishful thinking…
Russia is still capable of producing the materials needed for a war that has been going on for 4 years now, or rather 12 if that’s how you want to count. They’re still using midrange ballistic missiles and probably still have ICBM capabilities.
Even if the bombs don’t work as intended, they could probably manufacture a dirty conventional bomb with great ease.
Not to mention Russia shutout international inspectors of its nuclear weapons in 2022, we have no counts or even status information about them since then.
And with all the corruption, I’m guessing the generals in charge of maintaining those nukes might have redirected some of those funds into their own accounts.
If Russia is unable to rebuild refineries, keep aircraft flying (safely), etc. without all the supplies they used to import from other countries, it makes me wonder if their nuclear weapons are actually useable at this point. They have to be properly maintained, and the nuclear materials occasionally replenished. The longer sanctions are in place, and the more infrastructure Ukraine damages or outright destroys, the less nuclear capability Russia will have. Not a bad thing.
Right now it’s kinda a battle between Ukraine’s ability to produce long ranged drones vs Russia’s ability to repair their oil and gas infrastructure. Keeping in mind that only 10% of drones have been making it to their targets, though that may increase in time.
Throughout the war they’ve been able to repair their infrastructure surprisingly quickly, even increasing production over time. That’s until the last month or so, where they’ve seen a pretty drastic drop in production ability. Nobody knows how long that will actually last, but it seems they’ve been hit pretty hard considering I believe they’ve paused gasoline exports until the end of November.
As far as imports for important tech to keep vital equipment running, it doesn’t seem the attempts to block trade with Russia has been super effective. Throughout the war they’ve created a lot of different ways to evade import bans through the use of shell corporations in countries they still do trade with like China. I think yesterday I saw an article that all their drones still had important parts being manufactured in Japan. Corporations are more than willing to turn a blind eye so long as it is technically legal trade.
Unfortunately the war in Iran has been a huge windfall for Russia, their national wealth fund is basically the life blood of the Russian economy, and it keeps growing as long as crude oil is above 59 dollars a barrel. Though they are banning exports of gasoline, they are still exporting more crude oil than ever. The attacks have mainly affected their ability to refine crude into gasoline, and other more valuable byproducts. If Ukraine could hit their ability to transport crude, that would have a much higher impact. That however would be much harder to do considering a lot of it is produced off shore, and it may upset some of their military partners who are cautious about raising fuel cost domestically.
Forbidding direct imports always adds friction, costs, delay, middlemen, possibility of counterfeit parts, etc. Plus reducing volumen.
Do you have any info on them repairing things faster than expected? I thought Ukraine switched their refinery targeting precisely to avoid them repairing it too quickly. Did that work?
I understand what you mean, but they had like 10k nuclear bombs at some point. Even if a lot of them were poorly maintained they should still have a few hundred functional ones by sheer numbers alone.
Maintaining nuclear weapons is far from trivial. The Wikipedia page on stockpile stewardship goes into a bit of detail. But in a nutshell everything from the nuclear material to the electronics to the high explosives used to initiate the nuclear reaction degrade over time.
The US hasn’t manufactured new nuclear weapons since 1992, meaning they’re all at least 33 years old at this point. The US regularly checks & replaces all these components to keep them operational.
Russia is also believed to have stopped building new nuclear weapons since the breakup of the USSR in 1991, so their arsenal is at least as old as the US one. I’m not sure Russia would have been capable to maintain their stockpile the way the US has. Among other things:
Back in the 90’s and early 2000’s when we had treaties like START there were reports that US officials inspecting Soviet missile silos saw standing water in them. The implication was that the Soviets may not have taken maintenance as seriously as the US did.
But the bottom line is we truly have no idea. Organizations like the CIA and MI6 might have insight into all of this if they have assets (like Oleg Penkovsky was) who are able to provide them with verifiable data on the issue.
I know there are many reasons a poorly maintained nuclear weapon may not function as intended. And probably a lot of them are dysfunctional rn. But the idea that none of them work is wishful thinking…
Russia is still capable of producing the materials needed for a war that has been going on for 4 years now, or rather 12 if that’s how you want to count. They’re still using midrange ballistic missiles and probably still have ICBM capabilities.
Even if the bombs don’t work as intended, they could probably manufacture a dirty conventional bomb with great ease.
Not to mention Russia shutout international inspectors of its nuclear weapons in 2022, we have no counts or even status information about them since then.
And with all the corruption, I’m guessing the generals in charge of maintaining those nukes might have redirected some of those funds into their own accounts.