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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

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Mr. Sandman said:
I mean, hard commiting to nuclear will power our industries, its just that it would be cheaper to do petrochems. And there are reasons in universe for us to do this, mostly regarding issues in bulk coal transportation among other things. Besides, if Climate Quest comes, it will be incredibly satisfying to say "we have done our part" condescendingly in climate meetings, and will make the transition to renewables much smoother, not to mention all the health effects. Also, I want my Atompunk USSR and by Marx we shall have it!
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It would be cheaper implies that taking a hard nuclear option will essentially deprive us of resources to do other things and fix other problems. And we already have CCGT which are a good option for reducing both CO2 and PM emissions. Even if we never build nuclear plants, we can already be very smug about emissions. I don't think using very finite now-resources to solve a then-problem that we're in many ways already mitigating is a good choice. Better to invest now and then use the more developed resources in the future to head it off. I know delaying Climate issues feels bad to us, but for the USSR it is 1962 and the climate becoming an issue is legitimately a long, long way away in a way it is not for us in 2023.
Hianny said:
We want an armsrace with the US becuase we don't have to pay for it the people paying for it are the suckers in the army. An armsrace will only strengthen the MNKH and cripple the army as more and more of their budget and personal are going to be dedicated to a nuclear force that is never going to be used. The army has already gathered enough nuclear weapons to end the world 3 times anything more they build is just fucking themselves over.
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I could see a more aggressive foreign policy leading to some Linebacker-esque use of the strategic bomber force, or use of the tactical missile force in a similar way.
 
DeltaV11.2 said:
It would be cheaper implies that taking a hard nuclear option will essentially deprive us of resources to do other things and fix other problems. And we already have CCGT which are a good option for reducing both CO2 and PM emissions. Even if we never build nuclear plants, we can already be very smug about emissions. I don't think using very finite now-resources to solve a then-problem that we're in many ways already mitigating is a good choice. Better to invest now and then use the more developed resources in the future to head it off. I know delaying Climate issues feels bad to us, but for the USSR it is 1962 and the climate becoming an issue is legitimately a long, long way away in a way it is not for us in 2023
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Never said otherwise, but again, I want my Atompunk USSR. We know we can do mass nuclear, and this is a quest, as such the most "optimal" way is not necessarily the most desirable.
 
Well, I want mass nukes so that we finally go for nuclear thermal tugs and claiming Mars for USSR as is proper.

And get to do massed space before the "Towards the Future" quest.

Blackstar said:
Far far more in terms of nuclear buildup. The army can see the massive US bomber arsenal and wants a bigger domestic one. The US has a similar reaction to your missile and air defense network. Both sides are basically mass producing plutonium at rates far higher then the OTL cold war, because neither wants to have less bombs.
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That implies more and better plutonium-producing reactors as well as more nuclear engineers (and nuclear-rated technicians) in the MIC.
Combined with our early and decently big investment, it impels me to ask two questions:
1) Just how far ahead are we relative to OTL in everything nuclear? Neck and neck, half a year ahead, five years ahead?
Five years behind?
2) Can we loot the military again work with generals to set up a robust pipeline of military nuclear engineers and technicians for our civilian nuclear program?
 
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DeltaV11.2 said:
It would be cheaper implies that taking a hard nuclear option will essentially deprive us of resources to do other things and fix other problems. And we already have CCGT which are a good option for reducing both CO2 and PM emissions. Even if we never build nuclear plants, we can already be very smug about emissions. I don't think using very finite now-resources to solve a then-problem that we're in many ways already mitigating is a good choice. Better to invest now and then use the more developed resources in the future to head it off. I know delaying Climate issues feels bad to us, but for the USSR it is 1962 and the climate becoming an issue is legitimately a long, long way away in a way it is not for us in 2023.
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to be fair there's other advantages, even if they're probably not enough to make full nuclear worth it.

1)more diversification of our energy sources
2)possible easier removal of coal plants in the following plan by having a surplus from nuclear, which also means less pollution AND less rail stress to move all that coal and likely less need to import or produce as much coal
3)faster development of nuclear technology in general.
 
Mr. Sandman said:
Never said otherwise, but again, I want my Atompunk USSR. We know we can do mass nuclear, and this is a quest, as such the most "optimal" way is not necessarily the most desirable.
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Yeah, its like we do atompunk and rockets well enough and we should be able to do the thing where you take asteroids out of space and crash the global steel economy again, atleast i kinda remember Blackstar saying that at somepoint in the past.

And isnt crashing the markets the most communist thing to do? Isnt this what Marx would have wanted?
 
DeltaV11.2 said:
It would be cheaper implies that taking a hard nuclear option will essentially deprive us of resources to do other things and fix other problems. And we already have CCGT which are a good option for reducing both CO2 and PM emissions. Even if we never build nuclear plants, we can already be very smug about emissions. I don't think using very finite now-resources to solve a then-problem that we're in many ways already mitigating is a good choice. Better to invest now and then use the more developed resources in the future to head it off. I know delaying Climate issues feels bad to us, but for the USSR it is 1962 and the climate becoming an issue is legitimately a long, long way away in a way it is not for us in 2023.
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Beyond this, there is one more thing to keep in mind, which is that early nuclear power plants were quite a bit less good safety wise. Now of course the design chosen for the first civilian test plant was to try and avoid that issue already, so it is perhaps some what mitigated already. But an argument could be made I guess that one would want to improve the tech a bit more yet before really mass rolling it out.

No idea if that is a very realistic argument, but else one could ponder a second series of test reactors. Each one focusing on different improvements to the current design. Like improving efficiency, reducing cost to make via for instance simplifications, improvements to safety, import whatever nuclear know how from abroad possible. And then one could try to use those to create a next generation reactor instead. This should allow for a pretty good gain in R&D as well, if not better then just building many reactors of the same type, but admittedly wouldn't be cheap either, if cheaper then mass deployment. But it might allow one to start mass deployment with a substantially better first reactor series then.
 
The golden age to spam nuclear reactors is let's say maybe... the 1980-1984 FYP, which is about the earliest that I expect Atomash to be built and spun up for full operation. We might have built, like, the bare minimum Atomash by 1975 and have it do LRIP and scaling up to full size for 1975-1980, but I don't think we'll be ready for max effort. And Atomash by 1970 is probably too much to ask for.

Next FYP (1965-1969) we really probably shouldn't even do 2 dice, much less 3, the technology is currently highly artisan and experimental. I'd be fine with 1 die to keep technical pressure up so we continue to develop expertise, but civilian nukes need at least another decade to cook before we can actually fund them heavily and not look like an idiot who wasted money for less power when gas is right there and dirt cheap.
 
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a couple notes from the Discord.

not exact quotes, but these are two points Blackstar has made repeatedly.

1) Go too hard on nuclear and you risk making it completely unpopular and burning out on it. As in, 3 dice is so expensive that it might be a political own-goal

2)Once we finish this rail (or even earlier), we should REALLY work on our roads. Because they're shitty. And no more of that "but suburbs and cars bad!" fear mongering! A good road network is important, there's things roads can do that rails can't, and marginal returns on rails are not that good after this round of electrification is done, while our roads are so lacking that we can get a LOT of value for each project there.

thank you and have a nice evening :V
 
To remind everyone about how underdeveloped our road network is our major cities, including Moscow, had main thoroughfares made of dirt in the 50s until Mal finally did the project. The road projects are a low having fruit and we should consider consistent invest in them.
 
Not doing roads screws the rural farmers. Frankly, they need all the help they can get after the CPSU fucked them over and over for the last 40 years.
 
as a matter of fact, value return is roads>canals>more rail at this point. We have REALLY good rail, but we have bad "everything else" in terms of vehicle infrastructure.

Keep in mind the example of China. Their railway network nowadays is truly impressive. It's also incredibly wasteful, underused, and it's losing money like you wouldn't believe.

Then again, to China a big part of its value is not really in economic returns, but also in helping fostering a national identity by reducing the "distance" between different parts of the country too. But from an economic point of view the Chinese Railways system is a huge waste.
 
There's also some synergy to doing the Moscow High-Capacity Road Ring while we're also doing the urban renovation of Moscow, so that specifically is something we want to get to work on.
 
Honestly, this is Moscow we are talking about, overboard now is probably not enough in 10 years considering the growth it is experiencing right now.
 
Re: Roads, I suspect the Trans-Siberian one is high priority, as a first step to bettering the road network in places other than West Russia.... We're not getting out of the Infra focus even with the dice looted from the military are we?

Mr. Sandman said:
We are at 25+15, so effectively 40% of GNP. I really doubt it will go that low thankfully. And stuff like inflation is much less of a problem than in the start of the plan afaik, so things might have changed.
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I was only counting our direct budget, since the enterprises sure as heck aren't funding any power generators for us. That said unless it was mentioned in-text somewhere I'd rather keep the assumption that the Government is still cutting spending next plan. My guess is we'd go to 15+10 or 20+10.
Pittauro said:
mh... we could fund similar dams in CMEA countries, and work on interconnecting the electrical grids.
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Do our European putters have much un-utilized hydro potential? It's pretty flat. I would like to interconnect the grids, but The Voz probably is not big on that given we haven't had a power grid project available in a while.

Pittauro said:
1) Go too hard on nuclear and you risk making it completely unpopular and burning out on it. As in, 3 dice is so expensive that it might be a political own-goal
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OK, thank you for that warning. No more than two autonuke dice, at least until we build Atomash, sounds like a safe bet.
 
Chimeraguard said:
There's also some synergy to doing the Moscow High-Capacity Road Ring while we're also doing the urban renovation of Moscow, so that specifically is something we want to get to work on.
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I'd be worried about the planners for the two projects butting heads and tripping over each other. Given the signs of corruption/scope creep on the Ring Road (very high scope for a single city, vaguely proposing "a number" of rings on a project that should be better defined) I'm inclined to finish the renovation first, so the Ring Road guys have to really think about what if anything they tear down for their circles.
 
General_Urist said:
I'd be worried about the planners for the two projects butting heads and tripping over each other. Given the signs of corruption/scope creep on the Ring Road (very high scope for a single city, vaguely proposing "a number" of rings on a project that should be better defined) I'm inclined to finish the renovation first, so the Ring Road guys have to really think about what if anything they tear down for their circles.
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Tbf, its literally the largest city and metropolitan area in Europe by a good bit. Moscow sprawls wide, and really, the best time to do something like this is when we are demolishing huge swathes of the city anyway.
 
There might be more nukes about the otl but the USA and USR are much more open with each other and don't really want to try more than proxy wars that develop to having their troops on the ground in them right if my memory is correct?
 
As I understand it, part of the reason why there is a large nuclear arsenal is because both sides don't have good intelligence on how much their opposite had. The Open Skies treaty should mitigate that and hopefully end with fewer or just marignally more nukes compared to OTL.

And yeah, the warm relations between the two makes it that they will only do proxy-war stuff.
 
Speaking of treaties, any hope for a TTL salt treaty that lets us mutually agree to only build the minimal amount of nukes needed for MAD and not have a money-draining arms race?

Pittauro said:
Keep in mind the example of China. Their railway network nowadays is truly impressive. It's also incredibly wasteful, underused, and it's losing money like you wouldn't believe.

Then again, to China a big part of its value is not really in economic returns, but also in helping fostering a national identity by reducing the "distance" between different parts of the country too. But from an economic point of view the Chinese Railways system is a huge waste.
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Wow such capitalist thought. But no really having profitability as the benchmark for success of a passenger transport network is going at it wrong. You build trains not because they pay themselves off, but because of the QoL and other intangible benefits that come from easy rapid travel across the country (and also environmental vs cars or flying, but it's too early for that TTL). Sure there are diminishing returns and you shouldn't build railroads to buttfuck nowhere as some memes tell you but just because a train route cost more to run than it makes does not mean it's a drain on the nation.

And if you wanna talk income vs expenses, how much dough would those asphalt roads make us eh?
 
General_Urist said:
Speaking of treaties, any hope for a TTL salt treaty that lets us mutually agree to only build the minimal amount of nukes needed for MAD and not have a money-draining arms race?


Wow such capitalist thought. But no really having profitability as the benchmark for success of a passenger transport network is going at it wrong. You build trains not because they pay themselves off, but because of the QoL and other intangible benefits that come from easy rapid travel across the country (and also environmental vs cars or flying, but it's too early for that TTL). Sure there are diminishing returns and you shouldn't build railroads to buttfuck nowhere as some memes tell you but just because a train route cost more to run than it makes does not mean it's a drain on the nation.

And if you wanna talk income vs expenses, how much dough would those asphalt roads make us eh?
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You may be right about that, but Blackstar has mentioned in discord that at our current state of things, from an economic perspective in the ease of return and the economic stimulus they provide by way of transportation, the order goes from roads>canals> rail electrification.

She has also mentioned that not doing roads is worsening our urban and rural economy because we are making things difficult for our enterprises that do not have dedicated rail links, which is almost all of them. Like, she has mentioned these roads are going to be used mainly by trucks, because people can just take the train.
She has even said that if we wanted to be economically optimal, we should, after finishing the Western HSR, not build more rail and spent 2k on building roads.

These roads are not only used by cars, but they are also heavily used by trucks, and those trucks can improve the transportation of the economy, providing it a stimulus.
 
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