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Chernobyl’s new sarcophagus

251 points by Sami_Lehtinen 10y ago

saurabhjha 10y ago
I remember watching a 90 minute documentary on Chernobyl on television around 2010. It was mentioned that the construction of sarcophagus was 10 year behind schedule. Glad to see the work done though the world paid a huge, huge price for it.
rl3 10y ago
The official time-lapse video of this, without all the ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH1bv9fAxiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH1bv9fAxiY
- hometownglory 10y ago
  Some people are wearing hazmat suits, some others not. How come?
  - falcolas 10y ago
    From what little I know, the people in hazmat suits are those who are in an area where they could pick up radioactive particles on their clothing; the suits can be shucked as part of an exit process to keep all of the radioactive particles confined. The hazmat suits do little to protect against the actual radiation, most of that is mitigated by limiting the time you can spend in the area. There have been a few "dirty jobs" type shows which have shown this process in action: when replacing a turbine on a nuclear generator, there was a literal line in the floor everyone watched - materials and people could only move in one direction with respect to that line without a lengthy cleaning and inspection. There's also a few Veritasium YouTube videos about a visit to Chernobyl which goes into detail about the exposure limits.
    - robertely 10y ago
      I'm fairly sure the show you are talking about is "World's Toughest Fixes" specifically the episode "Nuclear Turbine". It is available paid on Youtube/Amazon
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    I would speculate that either the folks in hazmat suits had to traverse more contaminated areas to get where they are standing, or the activity will potentially dislodge radioactive material into the air around them, or there are unmarked hot spots where radiation levels are higher.
lisper 10y ago
More info and pix on the original sarcophagus: http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/sarcophagus/ http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/sarcophagus/
BozeWolf 10y ago
More info about the arch. I recommend watching the movie. http://www.mammoet.com/en/cases/Arch-over-Chernobyl/ http://www.mammoet.com/en/cases/Arch-over-Chernobyl/ I studied mechanical engineering... and was mostly interested in off shore (heavy) tech. this is kind of comparable. My background makes me more then interested in these kind of things. The size of this mobile structure is just impressive.
bigbugbag 10y ago
Vinci and Bouygues, two french companies in the construction business with a long history of corruption all over the world including Russia (qatar, turkmenistan, french pentagon, cambodia airports, notre dames des landes, ... just to cite a few of the most recent). Both have ties with previous France president and have pointed for shady practices from illegal construction to use of migrant as slaves and forced labour. The attribution of the sarcophagus contract to those two was suspicious at the times. It's not unheard of in Vinci and Bouygues cases that whistleblowers and witness tend to die or be sued into oblivion using SLAPPs. AFAIK no one came forward to speak and the deal went on. Seems to be a nice engineering work though, sadly it funnels money to rich family with poor ethics and practices.
- bengalister 10y ago
  "Notre Dame des landes" there are no proofs at all, only suspicions coming from environmental extremists whom often lie to achieve their goal, not really trustworthy people. I am not saying that the 2 companies are clean, but let's face it the construction business is corrupted or using un-ethical practices (like agreement on price between competitors) almost all over the world. For instance, you would expect the construction business to be clean in a country like Canada which is often praised for being a non-corrupted country but at least in Québec it is owned by mobster overpricing every project.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- gpvos 10y ago
  The pyramids were also built with slave labour. Sad that we haven't progressed very far since then though.
  - FoeNyx 10y ago
    > The pyramids were also built with slave labour. Last time I read about this subject, historians and egyptologists were still having some disputes about this.
mp3geek 10y ago
Do they have plans to fix whats below? "Elephants foot".
- tehabe 10y ago
  I think I heard that the long term plan is to remove all material from the reactor. But I don't when and most importantly, I don't think anyone has a clue on how to remove the material from the reactor.
  - mkj 10y ago
    I guess it's probably "wait for more advanced robots to be developed"
    - tehabe 10y ago
      I think the Japanese are working on those because they need them for cleaning up Fukushima.
- ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  I know the new sarcophagus has robotic cranes so they can begin to dismantle the old sarcophagus, at least, and presumably, then presumably start to dismantle the rest of the facility. The elephant's foot presents an intriguing problem not only because of how deep it is in the facility, but that it's essentially a super-dense, super-concentrated glob of radioactive junk that is essentially fused to the structure of the reactor. And of course, kills anyone who gets close to it. One article I read, of course, suggested that when it comes to cleaning up radioactive waste, the longer you wait, the easier it is. Which is true, what was done recently would've been drastically more dangerous a couple decades ago. It gets safer to work in the area the longer you wait. So as long as we can be relatively confident it will hold containment in the facility, it may be best left alone.
- moritzsimon 10y ago
  I remember reading in some forums a while ago that the timeframe is somewhat in the range of 50-100y for recovering most of the waste. Probably they need another sarcophag inbetween ...
matthewmacleod 10y ago
It's not a bad article, but I do take exception to: On 26 April 1986, the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded during a routine stress test. … which is emphatically not what happened!
- 2sk21 10y ago
  Indeed, many safeguards were deliberately disabled during this "test".
  - pja 10y ago
    Well, it was a test & it was deliberate. But definitely not routine. I imagine the author is trying to convey that it was a pre-planned action, not a response to some kind of emergency. It was still a terrible, terrible idea of course.
- my123 10y ago
  It was designed to be done at the day shift, but they needed additionnal power at that time... (so it ended being done by people without training)
  - qaq 10y ago
    Conducting the test using a power station near a very big city was retarded idea in the first place as pretty much most things in USSR.
    - qaq 10y ago
      Right conducting test with nuclear power plants near big cities is a great idea :).
doomlaser 10y ago
If you haven't seen it, this is a great photo essay that goes through the history of the Chernobyl accident and aftermath: http://imgur.com/a/TwY6q http://imgur.com/a/TwY6q It's pretty enthralling
- aw3c2 10y ago
  WARNING: Human gore and mutated animal photos are part of this. A lot of fascinating images I have never seen before, thanks!
  - blakeyrat 10y ago
    Take the mutated animal photos with a huge gigantic grain of salt. The "citation needed" alarm rang out loud when I looked at those.
  - savoytruffle 10y ago
    Another interesting biological result at Chernobyl is not mutation, but simply natural selection: Radiotrophic Fungus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus Fungus that is essentially using "photosynthesis" of gamma radiation from the melted core instead of sunlight to grow.
- stymaar 10y ago
  The author did a fantastic job ! Thank you for posting it here.
- lisivka 10y ago
  S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 3D shooter trilogy maps are based on real plans of Chornobyl and Prypiat. See photos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPf8YlzUPw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPf8YlzUPw4 . S.T.A.L.K.E.R. itself is unusual game.
  - ionised 10y ago
    It's fantastic. Easily my favourite game (series) of all time. The sense of desolation, claustrophobia, isolation and hopelessness in the world the developers created is something that still stands unmatched for me.
faragon 10y ago
I still remember watching the Chernobyl accident report in TV with my family when I was a boy. We started crying spontaneously when it was explained that many volunteers knew they were working knowing they would not survive (when the situation was still out of control). It was terrible.
- hirsin 10y ago
  From my reading, the volunteers were not actually informed of the true danger they faced. In multiple instances either no warning was given or the truth hidden, saying that the background levels were harmless when in fact they simply had no equipment that could measure high enough. In addition, I'm skeptical that the biorobots and liquidators were true volunteers. If the Soviet government comes to your house and hands you three sets of clothing saying "we need volunteers", you didn't really have a choice.
  - IvarTheHomeless 10y ago
    I have watched a lot of footage and read many accounts of Liquidators who thought they really were fulfilling their duty to the Motherland. I suppose it could all be a Soviet psyop, but to me it's convincing.
myth_drannon 10y ago
A mandatory read about how people's lives were affected by the accident - "Chernobyl Prayer" - Svetlana Alexievich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich) She won the Nobel prize for her writing. The accident happened in Ukraine but a fact that is not usually written is that Belarus had a QUARTER of it's land mass polluted (and Belarus is a large country).Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
- jedmeyers 10y ago
  I've also read that Belarus still spends around 20% of their budget on Chernobyl disaster related activities and payouts.
- IvarTheHomeless 10y ago
  I showed a Ukrainian a photo of Steven Seagal holding gift melons from the president of Belarus, her response was "Only old people who don't care about radiation buy produce from Belarus" http://time.com/4468168/steven-seagal-carrot-watermelon-minsk-belarus-president/ http://time.com/4468168/steven-seagal-carrot-watermelon-mins...
biktor_gj 10y ago
There's something that always wonders me abouth these kind of disasters. You have people saying "we shouldn't be making more nuclear plants, they're all too dangerous and can explode!" And then you have others who say something in the lines of "But they get the cleanest energy" or "you can't depend on solar energy for everything" I think the question almost nobody is asking is what will happen to this if it goes unmantained and workers leave the plant unattended, for example, a disease striking the region, economic collapse or a civil war. What containment do any goverment have for that kind of situation, it's not like you can put someone in there and push some random buttons or something to keep the entire thing from melting...
- jayjay71 10y ago
  The DARPA Robotics Challenge was actually inspired by the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, because it was unsafe for any humans to go there and people were surprised that no robots were capable of going themselves. Of course, we still have a long way to go before robots are going to deliver on that front. I don't know enough about nuclear reactors to know what the safeguards are in the scenarios you describe, but I do think it's smart to ask about the worst-case scenario.
- jdiez17 10y ago
  We already have inherently safe nuclear reactors[1] that automatically power down if the core gets too hot due to the physical properties of the fuel, without the need for an electronic control system. However, incidents such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima have already tarnished nuclear in the public view, making it politically unfeasible to spend money on new reactors. This is a good summary of the situation: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
  - 7952 10y ago
    Have any full scale molten salt reactors actually been built?
artursapek 10y ago
> Invited guests enjoy a virtual reality experience in the hospitality tent at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (Credit: Anton Skyba) I never considered VR as a way to explore things that would kill you in reality. That's awesome. I want to go poke the elephant's foot.
- eswat 10y ago
  Seems like a natural progression given video games. When I saw that photo I immediately thought about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series. That gave a lot of gamers an idea of what walking around in the exclusion zone was like, albeit a very fantastical version of it.
throw2016 10y ago
I think the massive costs of a mistake rule nuclear power our. There is no rational calculation to be made. We risk decimating the entire environment around the plant for hundreds of years with consequences that will stay with us hundreds of years. No price can be put on that kind of damage and we have zero right to ruin the earth in this way. We need to find safer technology. God knows what the final consequences of Fukushima will be. I think nuclear power proponents have no case. I am not russian and have nothing to do with Russia but as a fellow human being those images of ordinary russians trying to deal with the crisis bring me to tears and I don't want any human being to be in that position or suffer in this grotesque way because of someone's overconfidence or mistake.
- collyw 10y ago
  Yet we seem happy pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere which will likely cause far greater damage.
- cknight 10y ago
  When working as intended, nuclear is low on emissions and the main concern is the requirement for waste disposal. The waste can be deposited far from human habitation or particularly sensitive ecological areas. Big problems that kill or injure people are rare, but catastrophic. Its main competitor, coal, is estimated to cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every year when working exactly as intended, and is the single biggest culprit with regards to human induced climate change, the results of which may be catastrophic. I wouldn't say I am exactly pro-nuclear but it makes no sense to me to target nuclear when we have this fossilized wooden elephant in the room.
  - beders 10y ago
    "deposited far from human habitation" Which is not really a solution. Solar is at $.029/wH now. Stop the nuclear power non-sense. Stop the coal power non-sense. All of this is obsolete technology now. Both have disastrous and costly consequences.
    - 10y ago
udp 10y ago
I only recently found out that Chernobyl was still a functioning power plant until 2000: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1071344.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1071344.stm
- kurthr 10y ago
  Yep, imagine if Fukashima (which leaked radiation slowly into the ground water an ocean rather than burning the pile) were treated like Chernobyl. Amazing how I read articles about how the area is such a great nature preserve now, when it was so much (5-10x) larger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Ch... In comparison the Tohoku Tsunami caused 25k casualties, which (outside of Japan) seem have been largely ignored over by the coverage of the radiation leaks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
  - glasz 10y ago
    i love how wikipedia portraits it like an event with no aftermath. fukushima is still leaking. 400 tons of radioactive water. this will probably go on forever. the meltdown may have reached ground water. nobody knows because tepco and japans enlighted gov won't tell. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/whats-really-going-on-at-fukushima/ http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/whats-really-going-on...
deleted 10y ago
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gravypod 10y ago
Earlier when I read this thread someone mentioned they were disassembling the plant. Where are they putting it and why are they moving it? Is it not better to keep it contained or are there some sanitization proceedures that can be used to better contain the radioative particles?
- tempestn 10y ago
  It didn't say explicitly, but my guess is that they want to disassemble the first sarcophagus and the original plant in an orderly manner before they eventually just collapse. Even the new sarcophagus won't last forever, so there also needs to be a plan to eventually deal with the most radioactive material as is done with other highly radioactive waste. (It's entirely likely I expect that the less radioactive stuff will be left on-site, just not as part of crumbling buildings that could eventually collapse, blowing out radioactive dust.)
stplsd 10y ago
There is a great documentary from BBC Horizon series made in 1991 called "Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus", it won a Emmy. It shows scientists working inside chernobyl's sarcophagus, in 1996 BBC did a follow-up, and almost all scientists form original program were already dead, mostly from heart attacks. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-inside-chernobyl-s-sarcophagus_shortfilms http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-in...
IvarTheHomeless 10y ago
This eccentric Ukrainian thinks the Soviets blew up Chernobyl intentionally to cover up the true purpose of the nearby radar array Duga-3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1poYZCO7qk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1poYZCO7qk
caub 10y ago
radiation is not enough for them, they even smoke
cladari 10y ago
If they had built a containment building and a shield building into the design instead of after they melted it down Chernobyl would be a footnote and a lessons learned training tool instead of a disaster area. I was in the nuclear industry in Operations from '74 to '00 and simply could not believe what they did and how unprepared they were.
glasz 10y ago
so sad most of you don't understand german. i could show you one years-old (2002) documentary featuring dr. pflugbeil who went into reactor 4 and to the infamous elephant's foot. while birds and rainwater went in and out of the defective roof he concluded that that more than 90% of the radioactive material exploded into the atmosphere and unless you're living in chernobyl, there's no danger for the rest of the world anymore. in fact, ppl are living in the zone... the elephant's foot is no radioactive material. it is just molten material from the building. if it is that dangerous, why is there no military protecting it from terrorists? meanwhile, money is to be made from the spectacle that is the fud being spread about chernobyl. https://youtu.be/DM6uDZsyX1E https://youtu.be/DM6uDZsyX1E in another film, ranga yogeshwar demonstrated how european companies sold and built decommission facilities on-site, multimillion euro projects, and handed them over w/o instructions. it is left up to the ukrain to use the tools but they don't know how. scroll to timestamp 35:00 https://youtu.be/eFt1SezekaE https://youtu.be/eFt1SezekaE the new sarcophagus is a testament to the political corruption and bankruptcy of the eu. nothing more.

251 points by Sami_Lehtinen 10y ago

I remember watching a 90 minute documentary on Chernobyl on television around 2010. It was mentioned that the construction of sarcophagus was 10 year behind schedule. Glad to see the work done though the world paid a huge, huge price for it.

rl3 10y ago

The official time-lapse video of this, without all the ads: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH1bv9fAxiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH1bv9fAxiY

hometownglory 10y ago
Some people are wearing hazmat suits, some others not. How come?
- falcolas 10y ago
  From what little I know, the people in hazmat suits are those who are in an area where they could pick up radioactive particles on their clothing; the suits can be shucked as part of an exit process to keep all of the radioactive particles confined. The hazmat suits do little to protect against the actual radiation, most of that is mitigated by limiting the time you can spend in the area. There have been a few "dirty jobs" type shows which have shown this process in action: when replacing a turbine on a nuclear generator, there was a literal line in the floor everyone watched - materials and people could only move in one direction with respect to that line without a lengthy cleaning and inspection. There's also a few Veritasium YouTube videos about a visit to Chernobyl which goes into detail about the exposure limits.
  - robertely 10y ago
    I'm fairly sure the show you are talking about is "World's Toughest Fixes" specifically the episode "Nuclear Turbine". It is available paid on Youtube/Amazon
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  I would speculate that either the folks in hazmat suits had to traverse more contaminated areas to get where they are standing, or the activity will potentially dislodge radioactive material into the air around them, or there are unmarked hot spots where radiation levels are higher.

lisper 10y ago

More info and pix on the original sarcophagus: http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/sarcophagus/ http://chernobylgallery.com/chernobyl-disaster/sarcophagus/

BozeWolf 10y ago

More info about the arch. I recommend watching the movie. http://www.mammoet.com/en/cases/Arch-over-Chernobyl/ http://www.mammoet.com/en/cases/Arch-over-Chernobyl/ I studied mechanical engineering... and was mostly interested in off shore (heavy) tech. this is kind of comparable. My background makes me more then interested in these kind of things. The size of this mobile structure is just impressive.

bigbugbag 10y ago

Vinci and Bouygues, two french companies in the construction business with a long history of corruption all over the world including Russia (qatar, turkmenistan, french pentagon, cambodia airports, notre dames des landes, ... just to cite a few of the most recent). Both have ties with previous France president and have pointed for shady practices from illegal construction to use of migrant as slaves and forced labour. The attribution of the sarcophagus contract to those two was suspicious at the times. It's not unheard of in Vinci and Bouygues cases that whistleblowers and witness tend to die or be sued into oblivion using SLAPPs. AFAIK no one came forward to speak and the deal went on. Seems to be a nice engineering work though, sadly it funnels money to rich family with poor ethics and practices.

bengalister 10y ago
"Notre Dame des landes" there are no proofs at all, only suspicions coming from environmental extremists whom often lie to achieve their goal, not really trustworthy people. I am not saying that the 2 companies are clean, but let's face it the construction business is corrupted or using un-ethical practices (like agreement on price between competitors) almost all over the world. For instance, you would expect the construction business to be clean in a country like Canada which is often praised for being a non-corrupted country but at least in Québec it is owned by mobster overpricing every project.
- deleted 10y ago
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gpvos 10y ago
The pyramids were also built with slave labour. Sad that we haven't progressed very far since then though.
- FoeNyx 10y ago
  > The pyramids were also built with slave labour. Last time I read about this subject, historians and egyptologists were still having some disputes about this.

mp3geek 10y ago

Do they have plans to fix whats below? "Elephants foot".

tehabe 10y ago
I think I heard that the long term plan is to remove all material from the reactor. But I don't when and most importantly, I don't think anyone has a clue on how to remove the material from the reactor.
- mkj 10y ago
  I guess it's probably "wait for more advanced robots to be developed"
  - tehabe 10y ago
    I think the Japanese are working on those because they need them for cleaning up Fukushima.
ocdtrekkie 10y ago
I know the new sarcophagus has robotic cranes so they can begin to dismantle the old sarcophagus, at least, and presumably, then presumably start to dismantle the rest of the facility. The elephant's foot presents an intriguing problem not only because of how deep it is in the facility, but that it's essentially a super-dense, super-concentrated glob of radioactive junk that is essentially fused to the structure of the reactor. And of course, kills anyone who gets close to it. One article I read, of course, suggested that when it comes to cleaning up radioactive waste, the longer you wait, the easier it is. Which is true, what was done recently would've been drastically more dangerous a couple decades ago. It gets safer to work in the area the longer you wait. So as long as we can be relatively confident it will hold containment in the facility, it may be best left alone.
moritzsimon 10y ago
I remember reading in some forums a while ago that the timeframe is somewhat in the range of 50-100y for recovering most of the waste. Probably they need another sarcophag inbetween ...

matthewmacleod 10y ago

It's not a bad article, but I do take exception to: On 26 April 1986, the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded during a routine stress test. … which is emphatically not what happened!

2sk21 10y ago
Indeed, many safeguards were deliberately disabled during this "test".
- pja 10y ago
  Well, it was a test & it was deliberate. But definitely not routine. I imagine the author is trying to convey that it was a pre-planned action, not a response to some kind of emergency. It was still a terrible, terrible idea of course.
my123 10y ago
It was designed to be done at the day shift, but they needed additionnal power at that time... (so it ended being done by people without training)
- qaq 10y ago
  Conducting the test using a power station near a very big city was retarded idea in the first place as pretty much most things in USSR.
  - qaq 10y ago
    Right conducting test with nuclear power plants near big cities is a great idea :).

doomlaser 10y ago

If you haven't seen it, this is a great photo essay that goes through the history of the Chernobyl accident and aftermath: http://imgur.com/a/TwY6q http://imgur.com/a/TwY6q It's pretty enthralling

aw3c2 10y ago
WARNING: Human gore and mutated animal photos are part of this. A lot of fascinating images I have never seen before, thanks!
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  Take the mutated animal photos with a huge gigantic grain of salt. The "citation needed" alarm rang out loud when I looked at those.
- savoytruffle 10y ago
  Another interesting biological result at Chernobyl is not mutation, but simply natural selection: Radiotrophic Fungus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus Fungus that is essentially using "photosynthesis" of gamma radiation from the melted core instead of sunlight to grow.
stymaar 10y ago
The author did a fantastic job ! Thank you for posting it here.
lisivka 10y ago
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 3D shooter trilogy maps are based on real plans of Chornobyl and Prypiat. See photos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPf8YlzUPw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPf8YlzUPw4 . S.T.A.L.K.E.R. itself is unusual game.
- ionised 10y ago
  It's fantastic. Easily my favourite game (series) of all time. The sense of desolation, claustrophobia, isolation and hopelessness in the world the developers created is something that still stands unmatched for me.

faragon 10y ago

I still remember watching the Chernobyl accident report in TV with my family when I was a boy. We started crying spontaneously when it was explained that many volunteers knew they were working knowing they would not survive (when the situation was still out of control). It was terrible.

hirsin 10y ago
From my reading, the volunteers were not actually informed of the true danger they faced. In multiple instances either no warning was given or the truth hidden, saying that the background levels were harmless when in fact they simply had no equipment that could measure high enough. In addition, I'm skeptical that the biorobots and liquidators were true volunteers. If the Soviet government comes to your house and hands you three sets of clothing saying "we need volunteers", you didn't really have a choice.
- IvarTheHomeless 10y ago
  I have watched a lot of footage and read many accounts of Liquidators who thought they really were fulfilling their duty to the Motherland. I suppose it could all be a Soviet psyop, but to me it's convincing.

myth_drannon 10y ago

A mandatory read about how people's lives were affected by the accident - "Chernobyl Prayer" - Svetlana Alexievich (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svetlana_Alexievich) She won the Nobel prize for her writing. The accident happened in Ukraine but a fact that is not usually written is that Belarus had a QUARTER of it's land mass polluted (and Belarus is a large country).Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

jedmeyers 10y ago
I've also read that Belarus still spends around 20% of their budget on Chernobyl disaster related activities and payouts.
IvarTheHomeless 10y ago
I showed a Ukrainian a photo of Steven Seagal holding gift melons from the president of Belarus, her response was "Only old people who don't care about radiation buy produce from Belarus" http://time.com/4468168/steven-seagal-carrot-watermelon-minsk-belarus-president/ http://time.com/4468168/steven-seagal-carrot-watermelon-mins...

biktor_gj 10y ago

There's something that always wonders me abouth these kind of disasters. You have people saying "we shouldn't be making more nuclear plants, they're all too dangerous and can explode!" And then you have others who say something in the lines of "But they get the cleanest energy" or "you can't depend on solar energy for everything" I think the question almost nobody is asking is what will happen to this if it goes unmantained and workers leave the plant unattended, for example, a disease striking the region, economic collapse or a civil war. What containment do any goverment have for that kind of situation, it's not like you can put someone in there and push some random buttons or something to keep the entire thing from melting...

jayjay71 10y ago
The DARPA Robotics Challenge was actually inspired by the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, because it was unsafe for any humans to go there and people were surprised that no robots were capable of going themselves. Of course, we still have a long way to go before robots are going to deliver on that front. I don't know enough about nuclear reactors to know what the safeguards are in the scenarios you describe, but I do think it's smart to ask about the worst-case scenario.
jdiez17 10y ago
We already have inherently safe nuclear reactors[1] that automatically power down if the core gets too hot due to the physical properties of the fuel, without the need for an electronic control system. However, incidents such as Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and Fukushima have already tarnished nuclear in the public view, making it politically unfeasible to spend money on new reactors. This is a good summary of the situation: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-power/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602051/fail-safe-nuclear-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
- 7952 10y ago
  Have any full scale molten salt reactors actually been built?

artursapek 10y ago

> Invited guests enjoy a virtual reality experience in the hospitality tent at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (Credit: Anton Skyba) I never considered VR as a way to explore things that would kill you in reality. That's awesome. I want to go poke the elephant's foot.

eswat 10y ago
Seems like a natural progression given video games. When I saw that photo I immediately thought about the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. video game series. That gave a lot of gamers an idea of what walking around in the exclusion zone was like, albeit a very fantastical version of it.

throw2016 10y ago

I think the massive costs of a mistake rule nuclear power our. There is no rational calculation to be made. We risk decimating the entire environment around the plant for hundreds of years with consequences that will stay with us hundreds of years. No price can be put on that kind of damage and we have zero right to ruin the earth in this way. We need to find safer technology. God knows what the final consequences of Fukushima will be. I think nuclear power proponents have no case. I am not russian and have nothing to do with Russia but as a fellow human being those images of ordinary russians trying to deal with the crisis bring me to tears and I don't want any human being to be in that position or suffer in this grotesque way because of someone's overconfidence or mistake.

collyw 10y ago
Yet we seem happy pumping tons of CO2 into the atmosphere which will likely cause far greater damage.
cknight 10y ago
When working as intended, nuclear is low on emissions and the main concern is the requirement for waste disposal. The waste can be deposited far from human habitation or particularly sensitive ecological areas. Big problems that kill or injure people are rare, but catastrophic. Its main competitor, coal, is estimated to cause hundreds of thousands of premature deaths every year when working exactly as intended, and is the single biggest culprit with regards to human induced climate change, the results of which may be catastrophic. I wouldn't say I am exactly pro-nuclear but it makes no sense to me to target nuclear when we have this fossilized wooden elephant in the room.
- beders 10y ago
  "deposited far from human habitation" Which is not really a solution. Solar is at $.029/wH now. Stop the nuclear power non-sense. Stop the coal power non-sense. All of this is obsolete technology now. Both have disastrous and costly consequences.
  - 10y ago

udp 10y ago

I only recently found out that Chernobyl was still a functioning power plant until 2000: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1071344.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1071344.stm

kurthr 10y ago
Yep, imagine if Fukashima (which leaked radiation slowly into the ground water an ocean rather than burning the pile) were treated like Chernobyl. Amazing how I read articles about how the area is such a great nature preserve now, when it was so much (5-10x) larger. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Chernobyl_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Ch... In comparison the Tohoku Tsunami caused 25k casualties, which (outside of Japan) seem have been largely ignored over by the coverage of the radiation leaks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_an...
- glasz 10y ago
  i love how wikipedia portraits it like an event with no aftermath. fukushima is still leaking. 400 tons of radioactive water. this will probably go on forever. the meltdown may have reached ground water. nobody knows because tepco and japans enlighted gov won't tell. http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/whats-really-going-on-at-fukushima/ http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/15/whats-really-going-on...

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gravypod 10y ago

Earlier when I read this thread someone mentioned they were disassembling the plant. Where are they putting it and why are they moving it? Is it not better to keep it contained or are there some sanitization proceedures that can be used to better contain the radioative particles?

tempestn 10y ago
It didn't say explicitly, but my guess is that they want to disassemble the first sarcophagus and the original plant in an orderly manner before they eventually just collapse. Even the new sarcophagus won't last forever, so there also needs to be a plan to eventually deal with the most radioactive material as is done with other highly radioactive waste. (It's entirely likely I expect that the less radioactive stuff will be left on-site, just not as part of crumbling buildings that could eventually collapse, blowing out radioactive dust.)

stplsd 10y ago

There is a great documentary from BBC Horizon series made in 1991 called "Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus", it won a Emmy. It shows scientists working inside chernobyl's sarcophagus, in 1996 BBC did a follow-up, and almost all scientists form original program were already dead, mostly from heart attacks. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-inside-chernobyl-s-sarcophagus_shortfilms http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-horizon-1996-in...

IvarTheHomeless 10y ago

This eccentric Ukrainian thinks the Soviets blew up Chernobyl intentionally to cover up the true purpose of the nearby radar array Duga-3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1poYZCO7qk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1poYZCO7qk

caub 10y ago

radiation is not enough for them, they even smoke

cladari 10y ago

If they had built a containment building and a shield building into the design instead of after they melted it down Chernobyl would be a footnote and a lessons learned training tool instead of a disaster area. I was in the nuclear industry in Operations from '74 to '00 and simply could not believe what they did and how unprepared they were.

glasz 10y ago

so sad most of you don't understand german. i could show you one years-old (2002) documentary featuring dr. pflugbeil who went into reactor 4 and to the infamous elephant's foot. while birds and rainwater went in and out of the defective roof he concluded that that more than 90% of the radioactive material exploded into the atmosphere and unless you're living in chernobyl, there's no danger for the rest of the world anymore. in fact, ppl are living in the zone... the elephant's foot is no radioactive material. it is just molten material from the building. if it is that dangerous, why is there no military protecting it from terrorists? meanwhile, money is to be made from the spectacle that is the fud being spread about chernobyl. https://youtu.be/DM6uDZsyX1E https://youtu.be/DM6uDZsyX1E in another film, ranga yogeshwar demonstrated how european companies sold and built decommission facilities on-site, multimillion euro projects, and handed them over w/o instructions. it is left up to the ukrain to use the tools but they don't know how. scroll to timestamp 35:00 https://youtu.be/eFt1SezekaE https://youtu.be/eFt1SezekaE the new sarcophagus is a testament to the political corruption and bankruptcy of the eu. nothing more.