18 ms·

Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot”, Is Still Lethal (2013)

66 points by bryanwbh 10y ago

dmfdmf 10y ago
<During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency shutdown.> Not routine. Operators disabled numerous safety features to perform a turbine spin-down test before shutting down the reactor for scheduled maintenance. The power surge was due to putting the reactor in an unstable state before shutdown. The safety features they bypassed were designed to keep the reactor out of the unstable operating region.
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  Nuclear power is very safe if run by sensible humans without external pressure. I just don't trust humans to accomplish this for the next thousand years without fail. Even less if a nuclear power plant is run for profit. Even less if storage of nuclear waste does not give off any profit and safe storage needs to be ensured for thousands of years.
  - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
    This is also a largely solved problem in the form of self contained plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_autonomous_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_... Basically, the idea is that you remove the human factor where possible (and modern robotics/drone technology can handle where humans ARE needed... to a degree) and build it with the focus on protecting that valuable waste from bad folk. There are definitely some concerns still, but this combined with much safer reactor technology gets rid of a lot of the concerns. One of the big problems is that even a lot of existing tech is still very old because people are terrified of nuclear energy and don't want to build new stuff. Which leads to making do with old stuff and finding ways to retrofit. Which is basically NASA's problem just with fear instead of apathy leading to crap budgets.
  - PolLambert 10y ago
    New nuclear power plants are designed to be safe even when run by unsensible humans (up to 72h) Any nuclear storage has to designed to be safe and secure from the second you close it up, irrespective of what humans will be doing the next thousands of years. (except of course, deliberately opening said storage)
    - std_throwaway 10y ago
      I'm not aware that we have such storage and I'm very sure that we have not tested such storage for long-term stability.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        I question the generally-accepted necessity of such storage. Yes, nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years. But chemical waste such as arsenic and mercury remain dangerous forever, but we don't take anything like those precautions when disposing of those.
    - edblarney 10y ago
      CANDU reactors in Canada, I think are designed to be run by nobody at all. They require heavy water to keep the reaction going. No heavy water, it just cools down. If anything 'breaks' - no heavy water, no chain reaction. I'm grossly oversimplifying, but you get the idea. I suggest that if we actually put our minds to it, we could develop a kind of 'dumb reactor' that didn't require any kind of intervention at all, other than maintenance.
      - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
        Already done and has been for a while. Here is a quick wiki article on the subject/an example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_autonomous_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_... Plenty more can be found if you have access to read actual articles and not just wikipedia
  - kalleboo 10y ago
    I also don't trust humans to handle nuclear power safely. But the types of grids and storage systems needed for renewables are not quite on the horizon, and right now the alternative is fossil fuels which have a far worse track record than nuclear. Nuclear worst case is a localized area is poisoned for generations. Fossil fuels best case is the whole planet becomes a struggle for human life. Can't we hedge our bets?
    - ageofwant 10y ago
      The area directly surrounding Chernobyl is a lush green wildlife haven. Its paradise compared to say, Sydney CBD.
      - pvaldes 10y ago
        New York was a green forest and a nice river before people came and will return to this original state if people leaves for any reason.
      - kalleboo 10y ago
        Obviously the planet would be better off if humankind was wiped out. I'm not convinced that should be our goal though.
  - wojt_eu 10y ago
    In the mean time coal power plants kill more people than Chernobyl disaster every year. "A United Nations study estimates the final total of premature deaths associated with the disaster will be around 4000, mostly from an estimated 3% increase in cancers which are already common causes of death in the region." - http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/) "Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300 premature deaths a year" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european... [Edit] I just took top results from Google, without much research. My point is that even though I fear nuclear disasters too, we should try and compare numbers and trade-offs.
    - perlpimp 10y ago
      coal soot is also radioactive. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
    - walkingolof 10y ago
      Nuclear disasters are more permanent and thus a bigger risk, I live in a place where it rained on that day in -86, we still have not gone back to normal, fishing, hunting etc
      - mikeash 10y ago
        How long will it take for the mercury emitted by coal plants to leave the ecosystem?
        tobltobs 10y ago
        One of the standard arguments of nuclear power supporter is that radioactive materials exist naturally in soil and rock, therefore the additional radiation caused by by nuclear waste is neglect able. Is there any reason why nuclear power supporters do not apply the same logic to other energy sources?
  - hueving 10y ago
    Classic irrational fear. Even with the old reactors included, how many deaths has nuclear caused compares to coal/natural gas? I would rather have us running on 100 fukushima era plants than the stupidity of continually burning dinosaurs until we ruin the environment.
    - rimantas 10y ago
      You can include hydro too. Banqiao Dam. Or Sayano–Shushenskaya power station accident in 2009 if you want more recent one.
      - ceejayoz 10y ago
        Banqiao Dam killed one hundred seventy one THOUSAND people, for anyone who's skimming past. If a nuclear plant killed that many it'd be the end of nuclear power.
        JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        But nuclear power can kill slowly over decades. Can we come up with the true number of deaths (or shortened lives) from radiation? Its hard to compare.
        ceejayoz 10y ago
        > Can we come up with the true number of deaths (or shortened lives) from radiation? Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... Estimates will range a bit, but we can say with complete confidence that all nuclear accidents thus far haven't come anywhere near that one dam failure.
        JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        Reading that page, I see estimates from 1/10 to 10X the dam failure. I can't see how it could be said "haven't come anywhere near"
janzer 10y ago
(2013)
- userbinator 10y ago
  3 years later, it is still lethal.
pasta 10y ago
Related: some days ago Mammoet placed a big tent over Chernobil: http://www.mammoet.com/en/news/mammoet-completes-installation-of-new-safe-confinement-in-chernobyl/ http://www.mammoet.com/en/news/mammoet-completes-installatio...
- ifdefdebug 10y ago
  Wikipedia: "The total cost of the Shelter Implementation Plan, of which the New Safe Confinement is the most prominent element, is estimated to be around €2.15 billion (US$2.3 billion). The New Safe Confinement alone accounts for €1.5 billion." Tell me again nuclear power is cheap.
  - krige 10y ago
    Well soviet nuclear power obviously isn't, which is about the only expensive thing they ever did.
    - paganel 10y ago
      I'd say their space program wasn't cheap, either. Their ICBM program was also up there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_%28missile%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_%28missile%29).
  - jychang 10y ago
    Two can play this game! "Hurricane Katrina caused $81 billion in property damages, but it is estimated that the total economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion" Tell me again dirty power is cheap.
    - ifdefdebug 10y ago
      I am not sure what's your point, but Hurricane Katrina was not a human-made catastrophe.
      - 10y ago
iSnow 10y ago
>Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant I don't think that's true. The corium had cooled down when they discovered the elephant's foot. It's still extremely radioactive, but not melting hot.
darawk 10y ago
> The first explosion from the steam inside the reactor was enough to send the 4-million-pound lid of the reactor assembly through the roof of the building. 4 million pounds? Is that right? Just for comparison, the maximum takeoff weight of a 747 is 735,000 pounds. Less than a quarter of the weight of this lid?
- zdkl 10y ago
  One's supposed to fly, and the other... Well the opposite I guess?
- netrus 10y ago
  While I do not know if that number is correct, a Boing if engineered to be as light as possible, while the lid should be as heavy as possible. The density of a plane is way lower than that of water, as Tom Hanks recently proved ;)
- avian 10y ago
  Let's see. 4 million pounds is around 1800 metric tons. Density of concrete is around 2 tons/m³, so 1800 tons is the mass of about 900 m³ of concrete. This is a volume of a disc about 1 m thick and 35 m in diameter. Seems plausible. Also, from Wikipedia: Explosive steam pressure [...] destroyed the reactor casing, tearing off and blasting the 2000-ton upper plate, to which the entire reactor assembly is fastened, through the roof of the reactor building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_and_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_...
  - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
    Similarly, one is about flying in a controlled manner that is comfortable for passengers. The other was basically a giant pipe bomb.
jlebrech 10y ago
Chernobyl is prime example health and safety gone wrong, the accident happened because they were doing safety tests on backup generators. this is the kind of scenario where the ticking off boxes mentality should not be welcome. things should have been done the long way, i.e giving people a blackout while they were doing those tests. they also gave the testing duties to the night shift because they ran out of time. prime example not to test things in production, but also not test things for testing's sake (especially in production)
- digi_owl 10y ago
  My impression was that management rammed the test through because they wanted to be seen as effective, even as the on-site engineers warned about the risks.
  - jlebrech 10y ago
    security is where the feds should have been involved, the kremlin didn't know for quite a long time. and had they done the safety procedure it might not have happened.
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  Just… what? Do you have some kind of baffling misunderstanding of what was going on here? It's perfectly possible to build systems such that they can be tested 'in production'. Indeed, in many cases I'd argue it's far more useful to informing the result of tests. I completely reject the notion that 'health and safety' and 'box ticking' is responsible for the disaster at Chernobyl, when it's quite clearly the opposite: a lack of rigorous safety procedures, and those procedures which do existing not being followed.
jlebrech 10y ago
how about creating electricity from Chernobyl's background radiation? https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-online-proceedings-library-archive/article/direct-energy-conversion-from-gamma-ray-to-electricity-using-silicon-semiconductor-cells/AD86142E057DC2D41E77AD7E28DD10A7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-online-proceedin...
- comboy 10y ago
  They are talking about 1% efficiency while there is well tested solution of RTGs[1] that have 3-7% efficiency. Or maybe I'm missing something. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
  - jlebrech 10y ago
    but at 1% efficiency how much background radiation does it absorb?
tonyplee 10y ago
Any similar studies/pictures for Fukushima's 4 nuclear cores? I assume they also melt down completely, true?
- augustl 10y ago
  I wonder why there aren't more pictures and videos of Fukushima. For Chernobyl, we even have youtubers now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU
- maxerickson 10y ago
  They aren't sure yet, there is solid information that 1 melted down completely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#Core_meltdowns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... It seems the fuel is still contained though.
quirkot 10y ago
> If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is ~1,000mi^2 ... this is 80% the size of the state of Rhode Island. "Nearby" residends? Whole article is just kinda sloppy
ucaetano 10y ago
From the article: "Two minutes of exposure and your cells will soon begin to hemorrhage;" It is sad to see this level of sensationalism in first 3 lines of the article. Not only cells CAN'T hemorrhage by definition (hemorrhage is blood escaping from the circulatory system, cells don't have blood inside them), but that claim is completely made up, not present in the NRC article linked. Any decent level of fact-checking would have caught that. Making up fake definitions for precise medical terms for the sake of impact is really bad journalism. And then it's followed by: "During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency shutdown." "If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink." Which is contradicted by the article itself: "Oozing through pipes and eating through concrete, the radioactive lava flow from reactor Number 4 eventually cooled enough to solidfy[sic]."
- pohl 10y ago
  One could be charitable and allow the use of the word hemorrhage as a metaphor for iron-catalyzed lysomal rupture.
- tomswartz07 10y ago
  To further point out, the test that caused the incident was not a 'routine test'. They had purposely disabled a large number of safety catches in order to perform a risky and ill-advised test. The aim of this test was to determine whether cooling of the core could continue to be ensured in the event of a loss of power.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    Question answered successfully, I suppose.
  - pdkl95 10y ago
    Far too often I see the test described only superficially or with the misleading political euphemism of "routine test". As you mentioned, it was a test of of the cooling system in the even of a power loss, but even that description softens just how insane the test was. I recommend this[1] description of the events that lead to the test and what happened during the test itself. [1] https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl#photo-group-93861 https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl#photo-group-938... (if the #photo-group-93861 doesn't work, see the heading "The Accident To End All Accidents")
kbart 10y ago
There is an article about that famous photo of Elephant's Foot: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-che...
agentgt 10y ago
I read an interesting article a while back on making reactors safe using helium gas: https://www.cfact.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-safety-reactors-that-cant-meltdown/ https://www.cfact.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-safety-reactors-tha... Personally I'm not terribly worried about meltdowns but rather terrorist getting hold of the waste and making dirty bombs but even that seems fairly unlikely (that is the pros outweigh the cons given todays technology).
brokentone 10y ago
One of my favorite videos, BBC Horizon's 20 year old Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus. There are details of "the elephant's foot" at around 16m. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-inside-chernobyl-s-sarcophagus_shortfilms http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-in... Most interesting thing I learned is that the primary cause of death of the scientists who at that time were still researching the resulting decay, was from heart failure and strokes.

66 points by bryanwbh 10y ago

<During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency shutdown.> Not routine. Operators disabled numerous safety features to perform a turbine spin-down test before shutting down the reactor for scheduled maintenance. The power surge was due to putting the reactor in an unstable state before shutdown. The safety features they bypassed were designed to keep the reactor out of the unstable operating region.

std_throwaway 10y ago
Nuclear power is very safe if run by sensible humans without external pressure. I just don't trust humans to accomplish this for the next thousand years without fail. Even less if a nuclear power plant is run for profit. Even less if storage of nuclear waste does not give off any profit and safe storage needs to be ensured for thousands of years.
- CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
  This is also a largely solved problem in the form of self contained plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_autonomous_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_... Basically, the idea is that you remove the human factor where possible (and modern robotics/drone technology can handle where humans ARE needed... to a degree) and build it with the focus on protecting that valuable waste from bad folk. There are definitely some concerns still, but this combined with much safer reactor technology gets rid of a lot of the concerns. One of the big problems is that even a lot of existing tech is still very old because people are terrified of nuclear energy and don't want to build new stuff. Which leads to making do with old stuff and finding ways to retrofit. Which is basically NASA's problem just with fear instead of apathy leading to crap budgets.
- PolLambert 10y ago
  New nuclear power plants are designed to be safe even when run by unsensible humans (up to 72h) Any nuclear storage has to designed to be safe and secure from the second you close it up, irrespective of what humans will be doing the next thousands of years. (except of course, deliberately opening said storage)
  - std_throwaway 10y ago
    I'm not aware that we have such storage and I'm very sure that we have not tested such storage for long-term stability.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      I question the generally-accepted necessity of such storage. Yes, nuclear waste remains dangerous for thousands of years. But chemical waste such as arsenic and mercury remain dangerous forever, but we don't take anything like those precautions when disposing of those.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    CANDU reactors in Canada, I think are designed to be run by nobody at all. They require heavy water to keep the reaction going. No heavy water, it just cools down. If anything 'breaks' - no heavy water, no chain reaction. I'm grossly oversimplifying, but you get the idea. I suggest that if we actually put our minds to it, we could develop a kind of 'dumb reactor' that didn't require any kind of intervention at all, other than maintenance.
    - CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
      Already done and has been for a while. Here is a quick wiki article on the subject/an example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_autonomous_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small,_sealed,_transportable,_... Plenty more can be found if you have access to read actual articles and not just wikipedia
- kalleboo 10y ago
  I also don't trust humans to handle nuclear power safely. But the types of grids and storage systems needed for renewables are not quite on the horizon, and right now the alternative is fossil fuels which have a far worse track record than nuclear. Nuclear worst case is a localized area is poisoned for generations. Fossil fuels best case is the whole planet becomes a struggle for human life. Can't we hedge our bets?
  - ageofwant 10y ago
    The area directly surrounding Chernobyl is a lush green wildlife haven. Its paradise compared to say, Sydney CBD.
    - pvaldes 10y ago
      New York was a green forest and a nice river before people came and will return to this original state if people leaves for any reason.
    - kalleboo 10y ago
      Obviously the planet would be better off if humankind was wiped out. I'm not convinced that should be our goal though.
- wojt_eu 10y ago
  In the mean time coal power plants kill more people than Chernobyl disaster every year. "A United Nations study estimates the final total of premature deaths associated with the disaster will be around 4000, mostly from an estimated 3% increase in cancers which are already common causes of death in the region." - http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/) "Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300 premature deaths a year" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european-coal-pollution-premature-deaths https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european... [Edit] I just took top results from Google, without much research. My point is that even though I fear nuclear disasters too, we should try and compare numbers and trade-offs.
  - perlpimp 10y ago
    coal soot is also radioactive. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
  - walkingolof 10y ago
    Nuclear disasters are more permanent and thus a bigger risk, I live in a place where it rained on that day in -86, we still have not gone back to normal, fishing, hunting etc
    - mikeash 10y ago
      How long will it take for the mercury emitted by coal plants to leave the ecosystem?
      - tobltobs 10y ago
        One of the standard arguments of nuclear power supporter is that radioactive materials exist naturally in soil and rock, therefore the additional radiation caused by by nuclear waste is neglect able. Is there any reason why nuclear power supporters do not apply the same logic to other energy sources?
- hueving 10y ago
  Classic irrational fear. Even with the old reactors included, how many deaths has nuclear caused compares to coal/natural gas? I would rather have us running on 100 fukushima era plants than the stupidity of continually burning dinosaurs until we ruin the environment.
  - rimantas 10y ago
    You can include hydro too. Banqiao Dam. Or Sayano–Shushenskaya power station accident in 2009 if you want more recent one.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      Banqiao Dam killed one hundred seventy one THOUSAND people, for anyone who's skimming past. If a nuclear plant killed that many it'd be the end of nuclear power.
      - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        But nuclear power can kill slowly over decades. Can we come up with the true number of deaths (or shortened lives) from radiation? Its hard to compare.
        ceejayoz 10y ago
        > Can we come up with the true number of deaths (or shortened lives) from radiation? Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_... Estimates will range a bit, but we can say with complete confidence that all nuclear accidents thus far haven't come anywhere near that one dam failure.
        JoeAltmaier 10y ago
        Reading that page, I see estimates from 1/10 to 10X the dam failure. I can't see how it could be said "haven't come anywhere near"

janzer 10y ago

(2013)

userbinator 10y ago
3 years later, it is still lethal.

pasta 10y ago

Related: some days ago Mammoet placed a big tent over Chernobil: http://www.mammoet.com/en/news/mammoet-completes-installation-of-new-safe-confinement-in-chernobyl/ http://www.mammoet.com/en/news/mammoet-completes-installatio...

ifdefdebug 10y ago
Wikipedia: "The total cost of the Shelter Implementation Plan, of which the New Safe Confinement is the most prominent element, is estimated to be around €2.15 billion (US$2.3 billion). The New Safe Confinement alone accounts for €1.5 billion." Tell me again nuclear power is cheap.
- krige 10y ago
  Well soviet nuclear power obviously isn't, which is about the only expensive thing they ever did.
  - paganel 10y ago
    I'd say their space program wasn't cheap, either. Their ICBM program was also up there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_%28missile%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-36_%28missile%29).
- jychang 10y ago
  Two can play this game! "Hurricane Katrina caused $81 billion in property damages, but it is estimated that the total economic impact in Louisiana and Mississippi may exceed $150 billion" Tell me again dirty power is cheap.
  - ifdefdebug 10y ago
    I am not sure what's your point, but Hurricane Katrina was not a human-made catastrophe.
    - 10y ago

iSnow 10y ago

>Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant I don't think that's true. The corium had cooled down when they discovered the elephant's foot. It's still extremely radioactive, but not melting hot.

darawk 10y ago

> The first explosion from the steam inside the reactor was enough to send the 4-million-pound lid of the reactor assembly through the roof of the building. 4 million pounds? Is that right? Just for comparison, the maximum takeoff weight of a 747 is 735,000 pounds. Less than a quarter of the weight of this lid?

zdkl 10y ago
One's supposed to fly, and the other... Well the opposite I guess?
netrus 10y ago
While I do not know if that number is correct, a Boing if engineered to be as light as possible, while the lid should be as heavy as possible. The density of a plane is way lower than that of water, as Tom Hanks recently proved ;)
avian 10y ago
Let's see. 4 million pounds is around 1800 metric tons. Density of concrete is around 2 tons/m³, so 1800 tons is the mass of about 900 m³ of concrete. This is a volume of a disc about 1 m thick and 35 m in diameter. Seems plausible. Also, from Wikipedia: Explosive steam pressure [...] destroyed the reactor casing, tearing off and blasting the 2000-ton upper plate, to which the entire reactor assembly is fastened, through the roof of the reactor building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_and_explosion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_...
- CmdrSprinkles 10y ago
  Similarly, one is about flying in a controlled manner that is comfortable for passengers. The other was basically a giant pipe bomb.

jlebrech 10y ago

Chernobyl is prime example health and safety gone wrong, the accident happened because they were doing safety tests on backup generators. this is the kind of scenario where the ticking off boxes mentality should not be welcome. things should have been done the long way, i.e giving people a blackout while they were doing those tests. they also gave the testing duties to the night shift because they ran out of time. prime example not to test things in production, but also not test things for testing's sake (especially in production)

digi_owl 10y ago
My impression was that management rammed the test through because they wanted to be seen as effective, even as the on-site engineers warned about the risks.
- jlebrech 10y ago
  security is where the feds should have been involved, the kremlin didn't know for quite a long time. and had they done the safety procedure it might not have happened.
matthewmacleod 10y ago
Just… what? Do you have some kind of baffling misunderstanding of what was going on here? It's perfectly possible to build systems such that they can be tested 'in production'. Indeed, in many cases I'd argue it's far more useful to informing the result of tests. I completely reject the notion that 'health and safety' and 'box ticking' is responsible for the disaster at Chernobyl, when it's quite clearly the opposite: a lack of rigorous safety procedures, and those procedures which do existing not being followed.

jlebrech 10y ago

how about creating electricity from Chernobyl's background radiation? https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-online-proceedings-library-archive/article/direct-energy-conversion-from-gamma-ray-to-electricity-using-silicon-semiconductor-cells/AD86142E057DC2D41E77AD7E28DD10A7 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-online-proceedin...

comboy 10y ago
They are talking about 1% efficiency while there is well tested solution of RTGs[1] that have 3-7% efficiency. Or maybe I'm missing something. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
- jlebrech 10y ago
  but at 1% efficiency how much background radiation does it absorb?

tonyplee 10y ago

Any similar studies/pictures for Fukushima's 4 nuclear cores? I assume they also melt down completely, true?

augustl 10y ago
I wonder why there aren't more pictures and videos of Fukushima. For Chernobyl, we even have youtubers now! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU
maxerickson 10y ago
They aren't sure yet, there is solid information that 1 melted down completely: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disaster#Core_meltdowns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... It seems the fuel is still contained though.

quirkot 10y ago

> If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is ~1,000mi^2 ... this is 80% the size of the state of Rhode Island. "Nearby" residends? Whole article is just kinda sloppy

ucaetano 10y ago

From the article: "Two minutes of exposure and your cells will soon begin to hemorrhage;" It is sad to see this level of sensationalism in first 3 lines of the article. Not only cells CAN'T hemorrhage by definition (hemorrhage is blood escaping from the circulatory system, cells don't have blood inside them), but that claim is completely made up, not present in the NRC article linked. Any decent level of fact-checking would have caught that. Making up fake definitions for precise medical terms for the sake of impact is really bad journalism. And then it's followed by: "During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency shutdown." "If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink." Which is contradicted by the article itself: "Oozing through pipes and eating through concrete, the radioactive lava flow from reactor Number 4 eventually cooled enough to solidfy[sic]."

pohl 10y ago
One could be charitable and allow the use of the word hemorrhage as a metaphor for iron-catalyzed lysomal rupture.
tomswartz07 10y ago
To further point out, the test that caused the incident was not a 'routine test'. They had purposely disabled a large number of safety catches in order to perform a risky and ill-advised test. The aim of this test was to determine whether cooling of the core could continue to be ensured in the event of a loss of power.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Question answered successfully, I suppose.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  Far too often I see the test described only superficially or with the misleading political euphemism of "routine test". As you mentioned, it was a test of of the cooling system in the even of a power loss, but even that description softens just how insane the test was. I recommend this[1] description of the events that lead to the test and what happened during the test itself. [1] https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl#photo-group-93861 https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl#photo-group-938... (if the #photo-group-93861 doesn't work, see the heading "The Accident To End All Accidents")

kbart 10y ago

There is an article about that famous photo of Elephant's Foot: http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-che...

agentgt 10y ago

I read an interesting article a while back on making reactors safe using helium gas: https://www.cfact.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-safety-reactors-that-cant-meltdown/ https://www.cfact.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-safety-reactors-tha... Personally I'm not terribly worried about meltdowns but rather terrorist getting hold of the waste and making dirty bombs but even that seems fairly unlikely (that is the pros outweigh the cons given todays technology).

brokentone 10y ago

One of my favorite videos, BBC Horizon's 20 year old Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus. There are details of "the elephant's foot" at around 16m. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-inside-chernobyl-s-sarcophagus_shortfilms http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-in... Most interesting thing I learned is that the primary cause of death of the scientists who at that time were still researching the resulting decay, was from heart failure and strokes.