5 ms·
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 th
by 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 agoOne could be charitable and allow the use of the word hemorrhage as a metaphor for iron-catalyzed lysomal rupture.
- tomswartz07 10y agoTo 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 agoQuestion answered successfully, I suppose.
- pdkl95 10y agoFar 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")
- mikeash 10y agoThanks for posting that link. I was familiar with the general outlines of the test and how it went wrong, but I had no idea it was a standard test that had been falsely signed off during the initial commissioning. Just makes it even crazier.
- digi_owl 10y agoIt is sad how the loss of face and position was used as a cudgel to push ahead against protocol and notions of safety in what was supposed to be a workers republic. Makes one wonder if the systems where more alike than different...