Interview With Chernobyl Engineer 584
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has posted an interview with a former Chernobyl engineer, Alexander Yuvchenko, who was not only there the night of the explosion, but is still alive today to tell about it. A fascinating recollection of some pretty heroic acts."
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:5, Informative)
Ironic medals (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I just can't get over it... (Score:2, Informative)
"Torch" is a common term folks in the rest of the world use for what we North Americaners call a flash light.
Ain't you ever watched Dr. Who??
Re:Unpatriotic (Score:2, Informative)
not unpatriotic, it's factual.
Re:Unpatriotic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ironic medals (Score:1, Informative)
I believe that's correct. The greater mass of Alpha particles causes them to be more easily deflected than beta particles. Gamma radiation has a near-zero mass, so it can penetrate most forms of matter. (Penetration being the act of "missing" most of the matter.)
I think you may be getting confused by Neutron radiation, which is the most massive type of radiative particle. Neutrons do a LOT of damage due to their mass, but they don't actually have a lot of penetrating power.
Re:Chernobyl...18 Years Later (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photobl
Google is your friend.
Re:Safety of Nuclear Power (Score:5, Informative)
Coal is one of the most impure of fuels. Its impurities range from trace quantities of many metals, including uranium and thorium, to much larger quantities of aluminum and iron to still larger quantities of impurities such as sulfur. Products of coal combustion include the oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; carcinogenic and mutagenic substances; and recoverable minerals of commercial value, including nuclear fuels naturally occurring in coal.
MORE NUCLEAR MATERIALS ARE RELEASED BY COAL BURNING THAN ANY NUCLEAR PLANT HAS EVER RELEASED. That's a VERY important thing to know, because COAL KILLS PEOPLE.
Russian R.B.M.K reactors were badly designed ... (Score:5, Informative)
The following is the Paper [world-nuclear.org] everyone will link to. And the following provides some nice diagrams to look at [nucleartourist.com]
And just for kicks: Some really freaky pictures [a-newsreport.com]. (The second one really gets to people, he is working IN the bloody thing!!)
Sunny Dubey
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Chernobly today (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dropping the control rods. (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, IIRC the reason the thing blew is that the power levels were decreased to too low a level to sustain stable reaction.
I'm not a nuclear physicist, but I believe in that style of reactor, the presence of the particular water they were using decreased the reaction speed, instead of increasing it as it is done in modern, western reactors. So they had the control rods pulled all the way out, and the water flow super low.
Then the water started to boil a little, and that boiling caused bubbles in the moderating water, which allowed the reaction speed to launch into some nasty exponential power spike that could not have been prevented in the time it took to see the spike.
I'm pretty sure what I just wrote was mostly right. I'm just too lazy to find links. But I am sure that the power level was super super low, and the control rods were pulled all the way out. Bad idea.
Muerte
Re:Ironic medals (Score:5, Informative)
I believe that's correct. The greater mass of Alpha particles causes them to be more easily deflected than beta particles. Gamma radiation has a near-zero mass, so it can penetrate most forms of matter. (Penetration being the act of "missing" most of the matter.)
No, the greater mass of alpha particles (2 protons and 2 neutrons, basically a Helium nucleus) makes them more difficult to deflect, not less. However, other factors have an impact on the scattering cross section, including particle charge and energy.
Gamma particles have a zero rest mass, since they are simply energetic photons.
I think you may be getting confused by Neutron radiation, which is the most massive type of radiative particle. Neutrons do a LOT of damage due to their mass, but they don't actually have a lot of penetrating power.
No, Neutrons are less massive than alpha particles.
Good Chernobyl Reference (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ironic medals (Score:1, Informative)
Gamma radiation has NO mass. It is a high energy photon. Photons have momentum but no rest mass.
I think you may be getting confused by Neutron radiation, which is the most massive type of radiative particle. Neutrons do a LOT of damage due to their mass, but they don't actually have a lot of penetrating power.
Neutrons are not the most massive form of particle radiation. Alpha radiation is essentialy the nucleus of a Helium atom. Check the periodic table and you'll see there are two neutrons and two protons in an alpha particle. Also, Neutrons don't cause the most damage. Gamma are the highest energy of the group.
More detailed article also published... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:heroism in the face of bad design and decisions (Score:5, Informative)
Most likly a myth. Every airplane with retactable gear I know of have what they call squat switches that prevent the gear from retracting when the plane is on the ground. Also the way the gear on the F16 retracts I doubt that it could retract with the plane sitting on it.
Re:Safety of Nuclear Power (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. There's an exception in copyright laws for referencing.
Re:Kidd of Speed - Ghost Town (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Chernobyl...18 Years Later (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that she drove through on a motorcycle at high speed is the hoax.
It was a guided tour, she took a helmet and took pictures of it. (Never see the bike in actual situ.)
Re:More detailed article also published... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Kidd of Speed - Ghost Town (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, it seems to be the case [museumofhoaxes.com].
But, the images are still pretty incredible.
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:5, Informative)
Life expectancy in the US (m/f) (yr 2000): 74.1/79.4
Combined total healthcare costs per capita, Britain (yr 1998): 4,178$
Combined total healthcare costs per capita, USA (yr 1998): 1,461$
I'll take the British system, thanks (and several dozen others) over the US system. If I have to fork over some extra to take care of my teeth, it's no big deal
Re:Ironic medals (Score:5, Informative)
No, beta particles are deflected more in a magnetic field than alpha particles are, all things being equal.
Alpha particles are essentially helium nuclei, they have a charge of +1 and a mass of 4. Beta particles are electrons, they have a charge of -1 and a negligible mass when compared to an alpha particle (each proton is about the mass of 1800 electrons). Gamma particles are high-energy photons with no charge and essentially no mass at all.
When they are ejected in the same direction with the same velocity through a uniform magnetic field it is the beta particle which will be deflected more. This is due to the fact that both particles will have the same force acting upon them, but they have a different mass. Since the alpha particle has much more mass it will be deflected a lot less by the force and so it will curve less than the beta particle. The gamma radiation will not curve at all because photons have no charge and will hardly be affected by a magnetic field.
As for deflection, the alpha particles take up a lot of room. When they encounter other material they are much more likely to have a collision than beta particles which have a very small volume. This means that the alpha particles usually only travel a small distance through a material before slowing down enough to be stopped. Beta particles get slowed down less because they tend to be able to slip right past the atoms (actually past the nuclei) in the material. Gamma particles penetrate the furthest because they really are only captured occasionally by atoms and quite a large percentage will manage to get through even a couple of feet of low-density material.
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:5, Informative)
Eight months ago, I pulled my adopted son out of a Russian hospital in Novosibirsk against the will of the doctor. He had severe asthma and bronchitis which he had contracted while there for minor outpatient surgery. He hadn't been bathed or had his clothes changed in weeks. He was lying in a wet cloth diaper. His crib was made from knit kite string. This is the same hospital where I saw, with my own eyes, supplies being delivered by horse-drawn cart. He is covered in scars. He had more scars at 1 year old than I had at 33. One of them is a scar on his scrotum where they split it front to back for exploratory surgery. In the US, they would have ordered a cat scan. This was last winter. Would you say things have improved since soviet times?
Re:heroism in the face of bad design and decisions (Score:2, Informative)
Basic definitions:
Subcritical reactor - fission reaction rate is declining over time
Critical reactor - fission reaction rate is constant over time, self-sustaining chain reaction has been achieved
Supercritical reactor - fission reaction rate is increasing over time
There's nothing mystical about these terms. Every power reactor in existence goes supercritical during startup, for instance -- it's the only way you can raise power. When full power is reached, then you sit at a critical state for as long as you can. When you need to shutdown, you go subcritical. That's all there is to it.
The only way I know of to have a subcritical assembly raise power, or maintain a constant high power, is to have some external source of neutrons to drive the pile. Accelerator driven systems would have the advantage of always being subcritical, all you'd have to do to shutdown is shut off the accelerator. The problem right now is the high amount of power needed to run the accelerator constantly. Right now, and for the near future, critical reactors are going to be much more efficient.
So really, what are you talking about? Nobody is going to build a subcritical accelerator driven system in the near future. Pebble beds, at least in the form of the PBMR, are critical reactors. Where are you getting your information?
Re:Ironic medals (Score:1, Informative)
Wrong.
Alpha particles have a +2 charge.
Re:heroism in the face of bad design and decisions (Score:2, Informative)
It was a cool summer last year in Japan(well, cool by Japanese standards, it would still be roasting by US standards, I don't know how those people stand that weather) so there weren't any forced blackouts, but there are problems associated with strict obedience....
Re:heroism in the face of bad design and decisions (Score:4, Informative)
More than anything, the Chernobyl disaster reminds me of a Windows user who disables the firewall and antivirus just to install that nifty Explorer toolbar. The difference being that an average Windows user doesn't kill thousands of people through his stupidity...
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:3, Informative)
In the US, if you want healthcare, you fucking work for it. This provides a great incentive to people in our country. As for your claim that increasingly few jobs come with healthcare coverage, do you even know what you're talking about? Granted, Wal-Mart sucks ass. However, even my friend who works part-time at starbucks has basic healthcare coverage after only a few months. Apart from anecdotal evidence, the number of US citizens currently without healthcare is roughly 15%. That stat is roughly the same from the eighties, but it's way, way better than estimates of the sixties (though exact census data apparently does not exist). More people than ever before in history have healthcare, and they have to work and contribute to society in order to get it.
Is it optimal? No! Not until we hit ST:TNG-levels will it be optimal. But it's better than ever and likely to improve as the cost of healthcare drops (it has risen for the past eight years due to increased acceptance of cosmetic and semi-necessary treatments, but that will taper off over time).
Re:Why Nuclear will never work.. (Score:3, Informative)
All elected officials (and bureaucrats) need to live in the immediate vicinity of a power plant. Nuclear, coal, wind, hydro, solar, etc. They need to live with (and provide budget for) the plants that supply them with power, and they need to live in the immediate vicinity of the risk too! Chalk it up to their elected (or appointed) "duty."
On the flip side, you've got celebrities and politicians voting down clean power:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20030811_1031.htm
If everyone used their arguments, we'd never put any power plants anywhere.
Re:Safety of Nuclear Power (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why Nuclear will never work.. (Score:4, Informative)
Er...no.
Here's a British one [wikipedia.org], Here's a list of them [wikipedia.org], and oh here's a nice big page [greenpeace.org] on a really fucking scary one that released more radiation than Chernobyl. Scared? You should be.
Despite this, I'm still a supporter of nuclear power, mind.
Radon mainly (Score:5, Informative)
Some links:
http://www.stormingmedia.us/76/7636/A7636
http://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-el
Especially http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-
Re:Safety of Nuclear Power (Score:3, Informative)
To be fair it wasn't banned because the US government was concerned about reprocessed fuel being stollen and used for weapons.
The reason is because we wanted to sign treaties that prohibited creation of weapons grade nuclear materials. While reprocessed fuel itself is not very usefull for creating bombs, the processes and equipment that are used to reprocess the spent fuel is simular enough to those used to process it into weapons grade material, that it would be quite easy to pass off a weapons producing plant for a reprocessing plant to inspectors. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter was one of those presidents that believed that treaties should be a fair deal, so if we wanted other countries to refrain from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, then the US should agree to do the same.
Now you can certainly argue that these treaties were not effective, or are no longer relevent. I just wanted to make sure other people fully understood the original reasoning behind them.
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:2, Informative)
Which is why they sent their high-ranking people to the west for advanced surgeries
any examples , please.
Contrarily to what you say - as living in ussr I could say - almost no high ranking people were getting treatment in the west. Though being old people ( and most of the high ranking people in 70 80 s were old) they had a great number of different deceases). For them there was a special department if I remember correctly the 5 th department of the Ministry of health. And , boy, the quality of this treatment called among people 'kremlevka hospital' was extremely high.
Though I could think on a special cases when it was known that somewhere in the world there were NEW methods to cure difficult deceases. But visiting west for treatments were absolutely not a natural way. Seems you somehow confused North Korea or some other contry with USSR.
also. Regarding teeth. The treatment of teeth was not advanced still was very good and in most cases based on western ( imported) equipment I might say that in my high school I was checked each 6 months for teeth and when there were problems they were immediately fixed, in some social groups though it was very prestigious ( fetish) to have golden teeth - that is why you probably could notice them.
overall I could say thouth there were problems in health care - those who wanted to be cured would always get nessesary and hight quality treatment ( of cause those abused alcohol would not have will to induce a health system to provide good medicaltreatment for them..) but my personal experience - I got quite good treatment when I become hardly ill, though it took time to get to good clinic and yes - it affected on how long I was getting rid of my decease. But eventually I was healed and the soviet system provided best western and local equipment and best doctors for that. And hey - I was absolutely average guy.
Amen! (Score:3, Informative)
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President." - Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
Re:Ironic medals (Score:1, Informative)
The difficulty with discussing things like this is that ideas (such as volume) are mostly innapplicable when discussing elementary particles, especially when discussing scattering. However, the facts are as follows:
Alpha radiation consists of helium nuclei consisting of two protons and two neutrons. They have a charge of +2 fundamental charge units, or about 3.204e-19 coulombs. They have a mass of 4 nuclear mass units, or about 1.67e-27 kg.
Beta radiation just consists of electrons. They have a charge of 1.602e-19 coulombs and a mass of 9.1e-31 kg.
Gamma radiation is high-energy photons. Photons have no charge and no mass, and always travels at the speed of light, and interact neglibly with each other.
All of these particles obey the laws of quantum mechanics, which means that things like size and position are more than a little indeterminant. This is not the place for a full-fledged explanation of wave mechanics, but the following statements are true:
1. The ability of a particle to travel through material depends both on its wavelength, which is determined by both its mass and its velocity, and the nature of the material it is traveling through. For instance, low-energy electrons have a long wave-length compared to low-energy alpha particles, which are much more massive and thus much more "normal." Thus in some crystals, electrons are scattered into an interference pattern determined by the speed of the electrons and the grid spacings. There is no simple reason why the interactions happen the way they do, and it would be well-advised to not try to give any. If any are found, they are probably based on conservation of energy and momentum, which are just as true quantum-mechanically as classically.
2. However, the discussion of trajectories in magnetic fields above is mostly correct. The waves follow the classical trajectories in these simple cases. It is a straight-forward derivation to discover that if a charge particle is released in a magnetic field, it will travel in a circle with a radius of curvature r=m*v/q/B, where B is the magnetic field strength, m is the mass, q is the charge, and v is the particle velocity. Thus because the alpha particle and electron masses are so different, the radius of curvature for the alpha particle will be much larger than for the electron, and it will tend to curve less in a field. The gamma rays will travel in a completely straight line.
Grigori Medvedev (Score:4, Informative)
I got my copy several years ago when I was researching the politics of obedience and whether engineer subordinates should be responsible to authority or the laws of physics for a course in Ethics.
The book, "The Truth about Chernobyl", by Grigori Medvedev (ISBN 0-465-08775-2) ( English translation - by the way very well done ) Copyright 1991 by Basic Books, Inc.
( Incidentally, from my research in Ethics, I just about got the feeling that if you were gonna toe the line on Ethics, you had better work for yourself.).
Re:Unpatriotic (Score:5, Informative)
Coal as a nuclear fuel... wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Fissioning U-235 releases about 200 MeV/fission, or about (2e8 eV/fission)(1.6e-19 J/eV)(6.02e23 fissions/235 g)(0.075 g) = 6e9 Joules per tonne of the more enriched coal. That's about 1.6 megawatt-hours of heat, that can be derived from fissioning the U-235 in a tonne of coal.
Bituminous coal has an energy density of combustion of about 25e9 Joules per tonne, or about 7 megawatt-hours of heat from burning a tonne of coal.
At first glance, the combustion seems to win, especially when you consider that you can only get about 10% of the energy out of the uranium without reprocessing. But if you use the U-238 too (to make plutonium, which will then also fission in a conventional reactor), you get about 100x as much energy as from fissioning just the U-235. Of course, that takes reprocessing the fuel at least once, which is energy intensive, and there will of course be losses in the system. So maybe you only win by 30x. The fission should yield about 50 megawatt-hours of heat in a proper breeder-reactor setup. That's more than ten times the heat of combustion. Even "crappy" coal with only 1.5ppm of uranium in it could match the energy of combustion.
Wow.
Re:Yeah? Clean it up! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:5, Informative)
The British system was the cheap one. That's what I get for not previewing....
Stability and Xenon (Score:5, Informative)
Xe-135 is destroyed when it absorbs a neutron. So in an operating reactor is it "burned" rapidly as it is produced. But when you shut off the reaction, Xe-135 levels rise over the next eight hours to a peak level and then decay. This makes it very difficult to start a power reactor eight hours after you shut it down: the Xe-135 acts like an additional control rod, damping the reaction. You find that you have to pull the control rods much farther out to get the reaction started.
There's a problem with that: as soon as you get the reaction going in the core, the Xe-135 will rapidly "burn" off, restoring the usual control laws. That is dynamically unstable, as more neutrons -> less Xe-135 -> more reactive core -> even more neutrons!
The operators should have known what was happening when the found they had to pull the rods much farther than expected in order to bring the reactor stable "zero"-power operation ("zero-power" operation means that a chain reaction is being sustained but is not producing a significant amount of power. It is an important first step in operating the reactor: you start the reaction going, demonstrate positive control, calibrate your control settings, and then proceed to the power level you want. In the reactor where I worked, 5 watts of power, out of a rated maximum of 250 kilowatts, was considered "zero power".).
That unstable positive coefficient (as the Xe-135 burned off) made the reactor spike rapidly in power to a high thermal level -- where the reactor's positive void coefficient [what the Muerte23 described in the parent article] took over. That is a poor element of reactor design -- the Chernobyl reactors were "over-moderated". Fission neutrons come out fast, but uranium absorbs neutrons best when they're moving slowly. So you put the reactive material in a medium (water or graphite or Zirconium hydride or whatever) that will absorb energy from the neutrons without absorbing the neutrons themselves -- they bounce around, losing energy, until they can be absorbed by the core. Too little moderation, and the core won't start up. Too much moderation, and the neutrons will get absorbed and the core won't start up. The Chernobyl reactors were over-moderated, so that small voids in the graphite/water matrix in the core would increase the reactivity of the core. That's just stupid -- properly designed reactors are under-moderated, so that if the water boils the reaction tends to shut itself down.
Anyhow, all that would be moot except that the operators had disabled the main reactor shutdown mechanisms -- they couldn't SCRAM (or rapidly re-insert the rods into the core), but were forced to rely on the much slower drive mechanisms -- which couldn't contain the reaction. A rapid-drop SCRAM system existed (and would have saved the facility) but had been disabled for testing.
The problem (as I see it) with nuclear power is that people are such fuckin' idiots. Reactors are completely safe around people with what is called "common sense" but unfortunately, common sense isn't. Eventually, pointy haired bosses and Joe Sixpack rule the day.
(BTW, I hold a no-longer-current nuclear reactor operator's license).
Re:Quite a few (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Treatment was prompt (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. The MiG15 you describe below was superior to US fighters at the time of it's creation.
Their jet fighters were incapable of some maneuvers that the World War II P-51 could perform easily.
The Space Shuttle can't roll like a P-51 either; doesn't mean it "sucks".
The MiG-15's main opponent was the US F-86, and given equally skilled pilots, the MiG would NEVER lose. It had superior mobility, so the choice of whether to disengage or continue fighting was up to him. Fortunately for the USA, most Korean MiG pilots were dangerously untrained. (That's Chuck Yeager's opinion I'm repeating)
Later MiGs were in several ways superior to USA equivalents too. The US fighters usually had an advantage in radars, missiles, or avionics; but that's not really the plane's fault, is it?
Re:Safety of Nuclear Power (Score:1, Informative)
There are also uranium-thorium breeders that convert plentiful thorium into uranium. If the thorium and uranium are chemically combined when the fuel is made, the newly-produced uranium just enrichs the fuel slightly.
Re:Yeah? Clean it up! (Score:4, Informative)
Not quite correct, I work in a nuclear plant. If you take the volume of your high-end single family home, 2 stories + basement, you have a volume about equal to the fuel used by a single reactor in it's lifetime.
That being said, to generate the same amount of electricity, you need to burn 4-5 times that volume in coal per day, and several times the weight.
A nuclear fission event releases 2 million times the energy of any chemical reaction (i.e. burning). The amount of waste fuel a nuke plant generates is incredibly small by any reasonable standard.
Of course, we also generate lots of low level radioactive waste (contaminated tools, clothing, instruments, neutron sources, etc) but much of this stuff really isn't harmful, it's just that since we know it's more radioactive on it's way out of the plant than on the way in, we have to exercise ridiculous controls.
Re:Safety of Nuclear Power (Score:1, Informative)
Untruthful (Score:3, Informative)
BTW, if you're going to talk baseless crap, you're probably better off complaining about "socialist" universal healthcare than weapons and terrorism. Most people won't believe you, especially if you don't even toss in the "communism is dead" canard.
Re:Unpatriotic (Score:4, Informative)
God damn revisionist warmongers...
The reason given prior to the invasion was that, according to Bush & Co., Saddam Hussein had in his possession an arsenal of weapons of mass destructions with missiles to launch them beyond the range allowed by the U.N., and deployable within 45 minutes.
Bush said that he would deliver the proof after his "hundreds of thousand" of "weapons inspectors" (troops) had been there for 2 weeks.
Its been what, a year and a half? Bush lied, the U.N., France, Germany and Russia were right, the weapons inspector were right, they did their job, there were no weapons of mass destruction.
But now you'll hang on to any justification once that the actual motivation has been debunked. So this week, apparently, its Russia's word that Saddam was planning something, somewhere, against the U.S. Really?
Questioning your government to the point of them becoming ineffective because the media "told you so" isn't patriotic, it's being led like a sheep to your own slaughter.
Who was led to the slaughter [cnn.com] like sheep under false pretenses again?
And the death toll is what, 5 to 1 Iraqis killed compared to U.S. troops? Bah...they don't count, their lives have no value, they weren't born in the U.S., who cares if they live or die...
Will Bush be afraid to use force the next time America is threatened?
Dammit, if you support the damn war, at least have the guts to support the real motivations for it. Not the pretend reason of the week.
P.S. Wanna use the "Saddam did bad things in the 80's while we were supporting him and financing him so we can invade his country all we want now that he isn't obbeying us anymore" excuse? How about some follow through [wikipedia.org] on that idea?
Re:Unpatriotic (Score:5, Informative)