Chernobyl...18 Years Later 971
abysmilliard writes "A young Ukrainian woman has posted a photo journal of her motorcycle rides through Chernobyl and the area surrounding it. Included are pictures of the now-emptied city, maps of current radiation levels, and a discussion of how the area has changed. While the english is quite broken, it's often rather surreal, as well, with quotes like, 'I don't know how sound the silence to those tourists that they can not stand it, but to me after hitting a red line on my bike tacho it sound like all those ghosts cursing 1100cc kawasaki engin.'"
Gamma World (Score:5, Insightful)
one phrase... (Score:5, Insightful)
Weird -- and intriguing (Score:1, Insightful)
First of all, this should very much be an example of the terrors, not of nuclear power per se, but of nuclear war.
With a war-happy president, this is all the more scary.
On the other hand, wouldn't it be terrible and exciting at the same time to ride through these places?
If I make enough money when I grow up (being barely of voting age) I might do that one day. Affermation of my anti-war beliefs, strange sci-fi fanboy fantasy, who knows...
Amazing.
Re:Listed as science (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:one phrase... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a lesson (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to meantion that the system had little to no foresight that humans would be using it. When it started overheating the alarms went off full steam and the workers got scared and threw all of the rods into the core. (The rods are supposed to slow down the reaction.) Well, since the core was so hot, the rods started reacting inside of the reactor and _increased_ the temperature.
The moral of this story is that there is no moral. All great system failures or any other "big" event never is caused by the apparent singular event right before the shit hit the fan.
I've been to Ukraine... (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been to Ukraine 3 times in the past 2 years: my gf is of Ukrainian extraction. Chernobyl is a name to conjure demons with there. Even more so than in the West. What's even scarier is that the Ukrainian government's denial over the state that it is in. They still are running at least a couple of the reactors and they are not being terribly maintained. The Russians came out stating that the buildings that the reactors are in are about to collapse...yet the Ukrainian government is unwilling to shut the place down.
Expect a sequel there, folks, and it's gonna be just as ugly if not worse. To make matters even more horrifying, based on the behavior of the Ukrainian government, the people are going to be informed through western sources long before, but far too late even so, that anything wrong is happening there when it does.
Note I say when, not if. I really mean it too.
Re:It's a lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, a quick google search reveals that others [aracnet.com] have relayed the same experience.
Before anyone starts trolling... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Chernobyl was based on very old technology. Nuclear power is much safer today.
2) France gets >80% of its power from nuclear sources. Nuclear power is one of the cleanest sources of energy in the world. (I have nothing against fossil fuels, either--at the moment NOTHING has proven as economical. But I do think ultimately, we will have to find alternatives, and nuclear power is certainly a viable option.)
3) It is my opinion that the worst part of Chernobyl was the way the communist regime tried to keep it a secret, until they found out that it was just so big they simply couldn't keep it a secret anymore. Sure, many other governments in the world (and I am NOT naming any ones in particular) have also been forced to fess up to things later, but that is NOT an excuse. The Russian government was truly evil, and I will not retract that statement, as long as I live.
Re:one phrase... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nuclear technology has always been a nightmare (Score:4, Insightful)
Nuclear power is dirty, but... unless we use and research it NOW, it'll always stay dirty. Coal plants, while still emitting pollution, are MUCH more efficient and much LESS polluting than they were 50 years ago.
Re:MOD DOWN - INCOMPLETE - ORIG PAGE STILL WORKS (Score:1, Insightful)
If it's not down now, it will be soon.
Should he go save the pics after the site is dead?
I Have to say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:angelfire? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Radiation exposure in Kiev (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll say a prayer for your wife tonight.
Peace,
wbs.
Re:Nuclear technology has always been a nightmare (Score:3, Insightful)
Block off a few square miles and store it. That's all it takes. The amount of nuclear waste generated is miniscule compared to the amount of other types of waste that we don't think about twice. The whole "what do we do with nuclear waste" thing is way overblown.
Re:Before anyone starts trolling... (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming the plant is well run, never attacked by terrorists, and the nuclear waste it generates never leaks into the environment. And if any of those things DO happen... well, 48,000 years is a rather long time to wait before you can move back home...
Re:Reporting (almost) at the time (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you have any evidence? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, welcome to the 1940's. Where have you been in this last half century? I'd say the furious over-regulation by governments world-wide is unbelievable. For instance, I now have to recycle the few micro-grams of mercury contained in fluorescent lamps and batteries. Do you know what's the biggest cause of cancer in humans due to chemicals? Salt. Sodium chloride, that is. Do you know what's the biggest cause of cancer due to radiation? Sunshine. Do you know what's the second biggest cause of cancer after tobacco? Obesity. Don't believe my words, ask any oncologist. No, the biggest environmental threat to humans isn't either radiation or chemicals, it's ignorance, stupidity, and paranoia.
Re:It's a lesson (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot Effect? No... (Score:5, Insightful)
Naaa, this is Slashdot. The story has nothing to do with games, SCO, the latest video card benchmark, or esoteric science. Therefor, it should last fairly well.
Mirror (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, that's the most powerful thing I've seen on the internet in a long time.
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Radiation exposure in Kiev (Score:2, Insightful)
The waste is ALWAYS a byproduct of nuclear fission plants, the meltdown at Chernobyl is a damaging event, but it's also very rare.
We need to get fusion technology perfected, then we have no nuclear waste, and no chance of meltdown, just maybe a containment field collapsing and a ball of plasma burning for a few minutes. So let's make it cold fusion, then we're totally covered, since we'd rather harness the same power the sun uses, instead of harnessing all the power the sun radiates.
Re:Do you have any evidence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Mayak - another nightmare that lives on... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's not overblown at all. I can deal with a lot of things but this is one that I don't want in MY backyard!
It doesn't take much of this radioactive shit to cause a serious disaster. I agree with using something like Yuca Mt. to store it all in but even this has problems.
1) Transportation. Getting it there will be more than half the fun. What if there's an accident on the way in? Which town along the way will become the next Chernobyl?
2) Possible environmental consequences. Things like water table contamination are a real concern.
3) Natural disasters. A sudden earthquake or volcanic activity could certainly ruin your day.
Can you predict the future for 10,000+ years? That's how long a site would need to remain stable.
Of course, where it's all stored now is a bigger nightmare because it can hardly be protected - particularly from terrorists. Then there's the waste of the plants themselves. I haven't heard any real info on what to do with a decomissioned plant yet other than just 'leave it lay'. Not good at all.
I'm not nuke-phobic, but I am realistic about man - an imperfect being handling something that you simply CANNOT make a mistake about.
The sad thing is, this is hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened. I don't usually support Greenpeace, but check this info out about the city of Mayak since a nuclear disaster. These people still LIVE THERE! Some of the pictures in their image gallery are quite disturbing:
http://archive.greenpeace.org/mayak/index.html
if i were to guess... (Score:3, Insightful)
A couple of months ago a magnesium recycling plant in ohio (i think) burned up. A town webcam was pointed in its direction, and despite being miles away, the sky looked as bright as day from the white light reflecting off the bottom of the clouds at 2 am. You could definiately say it was glowing.
or, it could actually have been the radiation ionizing the air (is this possible, nuclear physicists?). I seem to remember some descriptions of nuclear blasts causing purple glows in the air from radiation ionizing it.
Re:What's even more scary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ditto. There are a number of great books describing exactly what happened. (It's amazing how much info never made the mainstream press even in the years following, even here in the West)
IMHO, they should be required reading in any engineering classes ( or, perhaps, in any and all high school classes) but the latter is not likely to happen..
SB
There is something sad and beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
It is eerie that a beautiful young woman would be our guide. Eerie that she would chronicle this deadened scene for us to view while enjoying the freedom it gives her, well aware of the danger and of those who died and still suffer the effects of the worst nuclear disaster the world has ever known.
As I slouch back in my chair, well aware of the life around me in this chilly San Francisco evening, it becomes clear that sometimes the internet offers us too much.
Safe passage Lena.
Nostalgic (Score:2, Insightful)
It reminds us that we will be consumed by our own creation, entropic in nature.
And also disturbing.
Most moving thing I have ever seen! (Score:3, Insightful)
She is, I am very certain, very fast moving on that ZX-11.
More so moving, I have perhaps never been so humbled as a human being as viewing her site. It should be praised. Insight into one of human kind's saddest tragedies that I rarely think one person has, and she can convey it to others so completely.
Thanks. I learned a lot more from her site than I expected to by following that link.
Re:Weird -- and intriguing (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're interested in that sort of thing, you shouldn't be looking at Chernobyl as an example, you should be fact-finding Nagasaki and Hiroshima. _Those_ are examples of nuclear devastation during wartime; Chernobyl was the result of an nuclear accident involving a power plant reactor meltdown. Quite a different situation.
Re:the playground is scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Shit... I watched that film in science at school... everyone spent the week beforehand getting all excited, because another class had seen it, and told us about how crazy it was.
For the second half, we had no teacher, because she'd gone to do anything but watch it... I don't think anybody ate that lunch time.
It's some scary, scary shit, but if you can handle that, well worth watching.
There was also one recently by the BBC about smallpox, which was disturbing, but not in quite such an extreme way.
Re:Quiet Town? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:3, Insightful)
Firstly, the citizens viewing the catastrophe from the roof apparently noted that "it was shining of radiation". I wish I could talk to a few of them to determine exactly what they meant by this but I would tend to think they wouldn't have made that bizzare characterization of what they saw if it was merely burning graphite on the ground.
Cherenkov radiation is not observed in air (you need particles with mass traveling with speed higher than the speed of light in given medium , and the optical density of air is low (close to vacuum), the particles would have to travel at speeds near to c - which are difficult to obtain because of relativistic effects. (You can get that from accelerators, but not from fission)
The beta particles coming from the aerosolized radioactive isotopes should be at least Mev scale which I would think is enough....no? Also the reactor was an RBMK design which when it exploded should have released a huge amount of steam (small water droplets) likely intensifying any cerenkov effect...
There is similar-looking bluish shine/flash around extremely strong sources, like criticality accident with Pu, U, or in nuclear explosion (the mushroom has bluish envelope). This shine is caused by intense ionisation of air molecules by radiation, mostly X-ray.
In the accounts I've read of the observed "purple glow" from a nuclear blast, it is usually attributed to the mushroom cloud, which after a couple of seconds must not emit much at all in the way of x-rays(I think x-rays are only emitted when the initial fission/explosion plasma is still extremely hot[blackbody radiation]). So if the blue glow is there during the mushroom cloud it is either Cerenkov or ionization by particle radiation coming from fast (intense) decaying isotopes in the air.
In the '40's there was a scientist at LosAlamos, Louis Slotin, who was doing a very foolish experiment to measure the criticality of a sphere of plutonium called "tickling the dragons tale" where beryllium hemispheres are slowly closed around a small core of Plutonium. Slotin slipped and the assembly went immediately critical releasing a large flux of beta particles. Slotin died [vt.edu], but not before noting a "blue flash" at the moment of criticality which may have been either Cerenkov radiation in the air or.. more likely in the jelly inside his eye which would have made it look like it was filling the room. So I still think the Cerenkov explanation is possible.....
Re:the playground is scary (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't remind me.
At around the same time one of the U.S. networks had a similar made-for-T.V. movie that was supposedly very controversial: "The Day After [imdb.com]". However, it came off like an Irwin Allen disaster flick compared to Threads.
Re:Before anyone starts trolling... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Before anyone starts trolling... (Score:2, Insightful)
It is also a good reason why there have been NO more reactors. Most were built by lowest bidder that didnt actually have to use the things. It was a CONTROL room that had serious flaws built into just the controls. Not to mention the basics of the the reactors themselves.
Also Chernobyl is a good example of why NO one wants one in their backyard. One good screwup and your life starts over if your lucky enough to keep your life. The pictures speak volumes. THOUSANDS of people had to up and leave. They could take nothing with them because it was radioactive. They had to leave their whole life behind. Sure its that
Also no one has come up with a good way to get rid of the waste other then let it decay. The decay rate is on the order of thousands of years not a few years. What happens when you run out of places to hide the stuff thats to hot to handle anymore? You can not pile it up too close to each other or you will create a bomb. You can not keep spreading it out as you make a bigger mess.
Also think about this there are WAY more serious issues in the power system currently. Its working at max capacity for the wires. You may remember a little blackout last year. It was caused by goofie procedures a bit of bad code and a bit of bad luck all imploding on itself. With that accedent a few hundred died(?). But with a good radioactive incident the effects are lasting for hundreds of years. Not to mention it would probably cause another huge cascade like we saw last year.
OH yes lets launch it into space. Well let me put it to you that MANY launch vehicles blow up. A few thousand gallons of liquid oxygen is HIGHLY combustable (its why they use it). Even the Apollo program of which you speak so highly had some VERY spectacular falures ON the launch pad no less! A few dozen people lost there lives to that. It still is more of an art than a science. Now lets say 99.9% of the time it works. Ok now its that 0.01% time it didnt work. You do realize that when the shuttle broke up a few years ago it scattered debris over an area of 1/3rd the united states. And they had about a hundred safe launches with that shuttle alone. Its that one time that you do not want... Do you want a chunk of radioactive metal raining down in your neighborhood? Even lets just say 1 piece. Sure that 1 piece isnt that bad. But what if it is a 2 pound piece? Sure there are a lot of what ifs here. But the whole system you built up has a lot of em too.
The REAL reason you will never see anymore reactors is because people are scared. Thats it. They see these acidents and go 'damned if I want that NEAR ME or my kids'.
I also put it to you that the basic idea of a reactor is quite crude. Put this metal near this and it gets very hot (heat wise). Boil some water turn a turbine and make electricity. There are MANY ways to boil water.
The only 2 things in this country capable of building a reactor is the goverment or a coporation. Neither of which has shown the wherewithal to do it correctly. That is also why NO one wants it around. Who do you trust to build the thing right?
You seem to be under the impression that nuke power will solve a bunch of problems. Well it could. But guess what, it creates a WHOLE new set that are just as nasty if not more so. But until you can solve those problems you come off as a loony waving a gun around no less!
I too would like to see more aplication of nuke power. However I have been less than impressed with the current instalations, and the people that built them, and the people that own them. And like dilbert said 'nucular power can be used for good or evil and you dont want to get any on you'.
Re:Before anyone starts trolling... (Score:3, Insightful)
When fossil fuels are used, where do they go? In the air. In the water. In the ground. No "ifs" about it. They DO get into our environment. With nuclear power, we can keep a tight lid on where the fuel goes and prevent it from getting out. And if we didn't have so many people who wrongfully hate nuclear power, the United States could reprocess fuel so there would be less waste. But, unfortunately, we Americans are collectively assholes about it.
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, these are great pictures. Most people have forgotten about Tchernobyl now -- I bet practically everyone thinks that life is just going on there normally by now. The pictures show us the dangers of working with nuclear energy -- one small mistake, and the whole region is doomed for a long time, far beyond the lifetime of a single human. If this doesn't teach us a lesson about safety and security, I don't know what will.
There Will Come Soft Rains (Score:5, Insightful)
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone."
--Sara Teasdale
Re:There is something sad and beautiful (Score:5, Insightful)
Disasters can happen on purpose, too.
Re:Do you have any evidence? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mayak - another nightmare that lives on... (Score:1, Insightful)
1) Transportation. Getting it there will be more than half the fun. What if there's an accident on the way in? Which town along the way will become the next Chernobyl?
This is actually one of the safest procedures involved with disposal. The containers housing the waste (often rags, junk, or even water!) are IMMENSELY durable. These things have been dropped from 10,000 feet, impaled on massive "ground-spikes", and smashed by diesel-electric locomotives at high speed without cracking or leaking a bit.
Modern containment is extremely advanced. Movements are planned and proposed months ahead of time. Even if one were to just plain fall off the truck (most of the time they are on rail cars), you would need a nuclear weapon to penetrate it.
In other words, you're more likely to die in an accident gawking at the spectacle on nearby train tracks when some idiot slams into your rear end.
2) Possible environmental consequences. Things like water table contamination are a real concern.
Not anymore. In fact, go check out the DoE's site. They have this immense study on geo stratum structures and building an "monolith" type warning system that could even ward off natives 10,000 years in the future. I'm not sure about the psychology of that, but at least your kids wouldn't venture near in their life time.
3) Natural disasters. A sudden earthquake or volcanic activity could certainly ruin your day.
Can you predict the future for 10,000+ years? That's how long a site would need to remain stable.
See above, and yep that's exactly what's being predicted! Yikes eh?
Of course, where it's all stored now is a bigger nightmare because it can hardly be protected - particularly from terrorists.
Just an opinion, but the only one with access to the waste site after bring sealed is ol' Barney who forgot the whole "tag in tag out" procedure and got left at C-Level when the cap was being installed...
Pattern here (Score:3, Insightful)
Houston, we have a pattern.
Re:Sad graffiti... (Score:3, Insightful)
A friend of mine once did some work in an anechoic chamber (no echoes, soundproofed from outside noise). His boss told him that people can start hallucinating from the sensory deprivation, and that he'd be back about every 20 minutes to check on him. Every 20 minutes, the guy actually did show up, he took it that seriously.
I personally haven't ever experienced silence like that. But sometimes in town here on winter nights, when the trees are bare and there's no traffic, it gets really quiet. Creepily quiet, because when you go outside you normally think of it as being a noisy place. Chernobyl is probably something like that, except *all the time*.
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, me too. Stupid piss-taking jokes about an event that goes beyond the realm of experience of any one of the lives of a small group of people currently sitting on their ass in a comfy place, reading a website called
Prosperity does not give one the right to degrade another persons experience
And before anyone pulls out the ol' "get over it, its only a joke" excuse, let me just say that jokes have their time and place.
The Chernobyl incident was a completely different time, in a completely different place. If this site was hosted in Russia, and the jokes were about American disasters, how many of you would consider them to be flame-bait, or make a noise about how 'inappropriate' it is?
Ridicule aint no compliment, and it aint no reflection.
That said, I hope that the generations yet to come understand that the generation currently alive are sorry for what they did to the future, with Chernobyl.
Re:Gamma World (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, but nature doesn't get all sentimental or up-in-arms if critters are born with birth defects or die early from cancer. As long as the critters live long enough to reproduce at a growing rate, then that's all that's needed.
Humans are a bit pickier about that pesky "quality of life" issue.
Re:Do you have any evidence? (Score:2, Insightful)
> world-wide is unbelievable. For instance, I now
> have to recycle the few micro-grams of mercury
> contained in fluorescent lamps and batteries.
I see you have adopted the popular motto of: "Think locally. Act like nobody else exists."
When you throw trash out, where it goes is a bit more complicated than "away". Because 6 billion other people are out there doing the same.
Much-hyped? I don't think so (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it so? Tell me than, why my friends, relatives, friends of relatives, and relatives of friends have died or are dying because of cancer?
Re:Gamma World (Score:4, Insightful)
So tiresome... (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the SAME thing couldn't happen. But other things could/will/do. Anyone who is an engineer knows that, as there simply are no perfect fail-safe systems.
Here in germany people were also priding themselves about their fail-safe reactors, especiually compared to Chernobyl. But then along came 9/11, and they wondered what would happen if a Jumbo Jet would crash on the nuclear power plant. No, the shielding wouldn't hold - the best idea they come up with now is to use fog bombs to make the plant invisible. Like that's going to make a difference with GPRS available.
You know, the nature of such catstrophies is that they come in a way nobody has thought of before. Of course Chernobyl has been analyzed over and over, and people won't make the SAME mistakes. But you bet they'll make OTHER mistakes. To deny that is just being in denial.
Re:Who modded this insightful? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think what matters most is that more people died from it in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Even if the radioactivity was 200x less, it still was much more than enough to wipe out entire cities.
Touching (Score:3, Insightful)
I found it strange that the tourists who went to the ghost town were disappointed that it was so quiet! I would have thought that was the point.
Great stuff! To be commended.
She did admit that radio-activity on the roads she travelled is still many times normal background. I hope her dad knows his safe doses well...
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Which is why our next reactors will have only infallible humans operating them.
Oh, wait.... our next reactors will have only infallible computers operating them.
Dang! Wait... our next computers will have only infallible humans programming them.
Wait...
Re:Quiet Town? (Score:4, Insightful)
The moderators modding this up as funny are probably the same modding me down when I wonder why there are 1000+ people being kept without a trial in Cuba.
Re:angelfire? (Score:2, Insightful)
A sparse but informative site.
Re:Mayak - another nightmare that lives on... (Score:2, Insightful)
The way the contaners are desined the risk of contmination after an accident is very, very low. The way the contaners are desined and how the radioactive waste is stored, make leakage of radiation a near zero posablity.
"Possible environmental consequences. Things like water table contamination are a real concern."
Remotely posable, however the water table is constintly contminated by natural radioactive elemintes and little if any harm comes from it.
"Can you predict the future for 10,000+ years? That's how long a site would need to remain stable."
Anti-nuke activest love to use this argument. Theres one proablem with it, after 500 years the waste matteral is substataly less radioactive the the uranium it came from! Granted that's a long time but no where near as long as 10,000 wich is the decay rate untill it reaches backround radiation levels. A site like yuka Mt. even in sevral worst case senairos will last 780 years. more then enough time to decay to naturaly safe levels of radiation.
And on a side note we wouldn't have any where near as much waste if enviormental actives would alow for the reopening of reprocesing plants. If we actual had an operation reprossing plant we would not only generat a fraction of the waste we do now, but also we would have a ton more full for our reactors, AND the radioactive waste would end up degading at a much faster rate. It would only take about 6500 years to reach backround levels, and about 325 years to end up becomeing less radioactive then uranium!
"http://archive.greenpeace.org/mayak/index.html
Pesonaly I would take every thing I read from them with a gran of salt...
Pardon my sp errors...
Ozymandias (Score:2, Insightful)
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Re:So tiresome... (Score:4, Insightful)
After 9/11 there were concerns about all kinds of things. There were concerns about arab-looking people having graduation parties on their lawns. Post-9/11 concerns have remarkably little to do with the real world.
But maybe they only thought of smaller aircrafts. Steel-inforced concrete maybe sounds good from the point of view of human being, consisting largely out of soft material like water. Jumbo Jets might be less impressed.
This isn't theoretical, it's been tested. Not with a jumbo jet, but with a rocket-propelled F-4 Phantom. It's smaller than a large airliner, but it has larger engines, and it's the engines that have real penetrating power. Don't make the mistake of comparing with the WTC; those buildings were mostly open space and were not designed to take any kind of impact.
And what about those new rockets the US developed to penetrate bunkers 12m below rock?
What about them? There's no way a terrorist would get ahold of one of those. I'm not saying there's no way to breach a reactor's containment. However, with most methods of doing so, whatever breaches the containment is likely to be as dangerous to the surrounding countryside as the containment breach itself.
interesting point, although surely a power plant contains more energy than a PC, so it seems less obvious to me why the explosion couldn't be big enough to blow up my house. So how is it supposed to work? Is there some kind of feedback loop to decrease the activity the hotter it gets (or whatever, I am no nuclear scientist)? Does that loop work without extra controlers, which might have been destroyed in the case of an accident?
Yes, it's possible to make a reactor which reacts less as it gets warmer, without any systems at all. Building a reactor isn't a matter of just piling enriched uranium together until you have enough of it in one place. (You can, but it's really inefficient and nobody actually does.) Instead, you have a very complex system involving enriched uranium, moderators, neutron reflectors, etc. which all have to be in exactly the right position for anything to happen. When stuff heats up, it expands, and it's possible to make it so that this expansion makes the reactor less reactive. Even ignoring that, once the reactor heats up to a certain point, things will start to bend and break, which will knock everything completely out of position and the reaction will stop right away. The China Syndrome (a core melting and sinking to the center of the earth because it keeps itself out) is basically impossible.
Chernobyl was also like this, in fact it's hard to make a reactor that isn't. The giant mistakes in Chernobyl was that it didn't have a containment structure, and it used graphite as the moderator. Graphite is carbon, and carbon burns really nicely. What happened was that the reactor core heated up extremely and set the graphite on fire. That fire threw large pieces of the core into the atmosphere. The way to keep similar accidents from happening is simple: don't put highly-flammable substances in your reactor core! With a sane reactor design, you could even breach the containment dome and nothing really terrible would happen because all of the nasty substances will still stay in one place, absent a large quantity of explosives or flammable substances.
So, you think it's a laughing matter, do you? (Score:3, Insightful)
I gather from your Web site [shambala.net] that you are from the U.S.
Do you think that the September 11 attacks are a joking matter? Those attacks killed thousands; the effects of Chernobyl may have killed 300,000 if one accepts an estimate from a U.K. charity [chernobyl.org.uk]. The radiation of Chernobyl spread across multiple countries. -- I remember news reports reporting radiation tracked all the way to northern Finland [time.com]; radiation was tracked to Central Europe and the Mediterranean [time.com].
I entered college 90 minutes' drive east of Three Mile Island in the Fall of 1979. The campus was still on edge because of the accident and uncertainty about its long-term effects -- because weather can go from west to east there....
Links that may be useful rather than callously "funny:"Zeal.com search on Chernobyl [zeal.com]
www.chernobyl.info English-language pages [chernobyl.info]
Chernobyl Charities U.K. page on book Voices from Chernobyl [chernobyl.org.uk]
Re:So tiresome... (Score:2, Insightful)
I was only mentioning that as an example that unforessen things can happen, not because 9/11 made me particulary worried.
whatever breaches the containment is likely to be as dangerous to the surrounding countryside as the containment breach itself.
I don't think so, surely spreading radioactive waste is more perilious than just creating a big hole in the floor.
With a sane reactor design, you could even breach the containment dome and nothing really terrible would happen because all of the nasty substances will still stay in one place, absent a large quantity of explosives or flammable substances.
Unless a jumbo jet crashes into it... Thanks for your infos, but I am not fully convinced yet. It seems to me you are mostly making the old point, that an accident like Chernobyl couldn't happen in modern plants. My point was that other things can happen, that we didn't take into consideration yet. Your point with the PC that can't explode was a good one, however, you kind of refuted your own argument by admitting that the Chernobyl reactor was following similiar principles as other reactors. So apparently even with such a technology, the stuff in the core is still dangerous. It doesn't always take explosions, for example - maybe some evapourated polluted water would do the trick just as nicely? (but again, this is just an example trying to make a theoretical point - don't bother replying by explaining why water can't evaporate etc., we could go on like that forever).
Re:So tiresome... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fair enough. But I would like to point out that doubting the safety of nuclear power in general because of a single accident, while simultaneously not understanding how nuclear power works from an engineering and physics standpoint, is foolish. Nitrate-based explosives have killed more people than nuclear power and nuclear weapons ever have, but I don't see people subsequently doubting the safety of their nitrate-based fertilizers. What I see is, people are frightened of nuclear power because they don't understand it and they can only imagine the bad, and I don't feel this is justified. Please don't take this as a personal insult, I mean this as something I see in people in general.
Re:So tiresome... (Score:2, Insightful)
There simply is a big difference: coal power plant blows up (if it can), maybe a city is polluted for a few months or years. Nuclear power plant blows up, whole continent might be polluted (or whatever), perhaps for hundreds or thousands of years. I believe you that as long as nothing bad happens, nuclear power is better for the environment. But I don't believe that taking into consideration the risk*damage equation, nuclear power is still so good. I think most people in favour of nuclear power just forget to multiply by 'damage' in the above equation. The odds of winning in the lottery are also neglectible, but people are becoming millionaires because of the lottery every week.
I don't think it's just that people don't understand it enough. Would you go out and fertilize your vegetables with Plutonium? Why not? I think there goes your strange nitrate-analogy (which to me seems completely unrelated - as long as we don't blow up the whole planet, you can find an infinite list of things that have killed more people than nuclear weapons).
The bottom line is: nuclear power is NOT a harmless thing, and the only mistake is not that people don't know it's harmless. You have to admit that you have to handle it in the right way. Think about coal - people have been storing coal in their cellars for ages, carrying it to the ovens by hand. Would you recommend the same with nuclear power? I think that shows that there is a fundamental difference that people are aware of. Sure, maybe burning those fossile fuels in the long run also kills, but that's yet another issue (I don't want to recommend fossile fuels, either).
My Uncle Was In Chernobyl And He Survived It (Score:5, Insightful)
My uncle was a member of one of the first rescue teams that were sent to Chernobyl after the disaster. This might be slightly off topic, but if you think that the pictures of the empty city are disturbing, take a look at people who were there after the tragic event.
I hate a lot of things about my former country, the Soviet Union, and its leaders. One of the things that I hated the most was the fact that people were never told the truth. In May of 1986 my uncle was told that he had to go to Chernobyl to help patch things up. Since he was a memeber of an elite task team that was a part of chemical forces, a special unit within the Soviet Army, he had no other options. He went there in May and he spent some quality time there. His major task was to drive tons of cement to a helicopter that would drop it off on the damaged reactor.
The not-so-funny thing was that nobody who was in my uncle's shoes knew what was going on there. The superior officers, had to tweak radiation meters down so nobody could find out the real level of radiation. People did not have proper protection, tools to work with; moreover, the Soviet leaders did try to play things down a notch. Afterall, how could a superpower have a major disaster?
Out of all of my uncle's rescue team, only a dozen or so people are alive now. All of them are disabled. My uncle has problems with his eyes and due to this fact he had to quit his job: he was a professional photographer. The Ukranian government pays him a small pension, not enough to buy food for a week. His immune system got reduced down to 60% of what he used to have. Still, he's better than his son. My cousin's system is 40% of the normal level. I remember reading a newspaper about a woman who had to buy a bottle of vodka every day. She did it because her husband could not surive through pain without it. Just as my uncle, he was in Chernobyl trying to fix the Soviet problem without exposing it to the rest of the world. That guy was lucky. His kids had been born before he went to Chernobyl. You won't believe how many stories I've heard when people just wanted to die without pain and suffering.
Finally, here is a surprise for you. Chernobyl is not the only empty city. In fact, if you want to see more of them, you should travel to southern Belarus. See, due to the winds and the rain that happened right after the disaster, most of the radiation that escaped in Chernobyl ended up miles away in the neighboring state. In fact, Belarus recieved more damage than the Ukraine due to the wind pattern for that day. Most of the winds blew from the Ukraine straight into my motherland and the damage was done. I was lucky. Although I was in the rain that day, most of the radiation passed around my town. However, many towns received a solid amount of radiated water but the government did not do anything until it was late. As I said above, the government did everything it could to cover up the problem.
We were told to burn our clothing and take a shower. That is it. That was the f*cking Soviet solution to the problem. Months later dozens of small towns were evacuated. People left leaving everything behind in hopes that they would return. Return my ass. The only people who returned were either looters or bums who scored nice houses where they could live. Years later, after the Soviet regime had collapsed, some reporters were providing us with information places that were emptied out. Most of these places are still there. They are a real time machine. If you go there, you'll see pretty much everything as it was in late 80's. Pictures of those places are distrubing, but not as bad as pictures of kids with cancer or disabilities due to the Chernobyl disaster. As for me, I am afraid of having a child myself. Who knows what got inside of me during that f*cking rain... All I know is that some of my friends started to develop problems already.
Have a nice day.
Re:Gamma World (Score:2, Insightful)
Chilling... (Score:3, Insightful)
My hat is off to her and others that document this as a monument to those who lost their lives, their loved ones, and their homes. These people died needlessly at the hands of those that considered human life to be secondary to political goals.
In a time where we all worry about the possibility of a rogue nation, or a terrorist triggering a nuclear or "dirty" bomb, we need to look at this and be aware of the outcome.
May this tragedy never be repeated.
-dh
Made me want to cry... (Score:1, Insightful)
I guess I must be a big pussy, but when I read that, it made me want to cry.
Also the part about the head doctor from the oncology hospital. He knew better than most any other people just what the fatal dose of radiation he had received was going to do to him, yet he must have kept working the best he could anyway until he himself died of cancer a mere 40 days later. Whew!
Re:Abandoned places (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Gamma World (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how long she stayes in the city.
Time exposed could be less then your would be on your bycycle.
Re:Gamma World (Score:3, Insightful)
Another short story on a similar theme is "Flying Dutchman" about a post holocaust world where nothing is left but robot systems still bombing each other
Re:My Uncle Was In Chernobyl And He Survived It (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the "REAL" death toll and the real story (Score:3, Insightful)
When I read the reports I looked for hard medical data on physical imparments. Other than the thyroid cancers, this seems to be not addressed. One might erronously conclude there really were only 40 or so people who died and that no one suffers from radation effects other than this small group.
I think it is really good to get the information out in the open. To me the UN report looks credible. But the personal accounts also look really credible and there seems to be a disconnect between them. It would be good to get more information.
As for the flora and fauna. Yes - the horses look quite happy actually. Is there evidence of mutation in the wild animals and plants in the area? How about physical effects? Still births? Premature death?
I'm sure the scientific community is doing research... hopefully they will publish it on slashdot or that someone from here will find it.
Re:Um that was scary... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear reactor containment domes, on the other hand, are designed to actually shield from an airplane impact. They don't just absorb it and survive, the airplane will not penetrate. This is a totally different degree of survivability. Not to mention that this has actually been tested, and the dome is barely even scratched. A bunker buster could crack it. A nuke going off right next to it could, but a nuke a little distance away probably wouldn't do much. These things are seriously strong.
About your completely nutty tin-foil hat theory about the causes of WTC, get real. People have been flying airplanes into things to destroy them since the 40s. An Algerian terrorist group tried to fly an airplane into the Eiffel Tower in 1994, and was only unsuccessful because French security forces learned of their plans beforehand and decided to raid the airplane during negotiations on the runway. An operation involving 20 people on four different flights timed to go off within minutes of each other requires years of planning to pull off. There's no way your show could have been the inspiration for the attack.
Offtopic reply - maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
No matter how long you live after that, or where you move, the images and memories will haunt you. And the older you get, the more you learn about how stupid and egotistic the political decisions can be. And the governments excuse themselves with "we didn't know..." and you feel how lucky you are to be alive today.
Live and tell the story. I think this is our purpose, the next-generation survivors. And if you truly do so, you'll see how people just don't want to hear, don't care, and excuse themselves with having more important things to do...
I truly hope you have a healthy child one day.