3 ms·

Thanks for this - something even more astounding is this document: http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/14/724/14724059.pdf http://ww

Thanks for this - something even more astounding is this document: http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/14/724/14724059.pdf http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Publ...

mikeash 9y ago
"About 100 kilometres from Sverdlovsk, a high-way sign warned drivers not to stop for the next 20 or 30 kilometres and to drive through at maximum speed." Fascinating and scary.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Seems like it wasn't great even before any accident. "Initially Mayak was dumping high-level radioactive waste into a nearby river, which flowed to the river Ob, flowing further down to the Arctic Ocean. All six reactors were on Lake Kyzyltash and used an open-cycle cooling system, discharging contaminated water directly back into the lake" Ouch.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    The whole thing is a great lesson in how “obvious” things we take for granted today, like using a sealed cooling system in nuclear reactors, or keeping waste in containers, were ideas that had to be developed through error-prone processes.
    - pvg 9y ago
      This wasn't done because the people who built these things didn't know what they were doing and what the consequences were.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        Not credible. The dangers of radiation exposure were fairly well understood. I think it's more like they were under extreme pressure from governent and military interests during the cold war to just "get it done" and safety was a secondary concern. Especially in the USSR where they were using prison labor for a lot of the nastier work.
        pvg 9y ago
        I think your misreading of what I'm saying is what's not particularly credible.
        mikeash 9y ago
        The dangers of acute exposure were well understood. The long term consequences much less so, as well as the many ways things could go wrong to cause exposure in the first place. That era is full of examples of terrible human damage done because people didn’t really get the consequences of pollution. These are mostly special just because the pollution was radioactive
        pvg 9y ago
        The consequences of long-term exposure were also known, perhaps not as well as now, but I think it's inaccurate to suggest this sort of thing was done out of ignorance, rather than expedience (and general disregard for human life). This isn't something like someone eventually noticing DDT was decimating bird populations or that lead from leaded gasoline was getting into everything.
  - blincoln 9y ago
    The same approach was originally used at Hanford in the US.[1] I've been on a couple of tours at Hanford, and the guides told us that the Soviet weapons programme was a carbon-copy of the one in the US - just scaled up, with many more plutonium-production reactors - so it's not surprising that they made the same mistake about the cooling. [1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger1/docs/LA9217MS.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger1/docs... - pages 9-10
    - mikeash 9y ago
      My favorite (for certain values of “favorite”) was the British Windscale reactor, which was air cooled and just vented out a big smoke stack. Predictably, it caught fire and turned into a major disaster. One guy’s insistence on installing filters in the chimney, over the objections of many others that it was pointless, prevented it from being a Chernobyl-scale event.
- mcguire 9y ago
  There are weirdly similar signs on smaller roads in southeastern New Mexico.

mikeash 9y ago

"About 100 kilometres from Sverdlovsk, a high-way sign warned drivers not to stop for the next 20 or 30 kilometres and to drive through at maximum speed." Fascinating and scary.

tyingq 9y ago
Seems like it wasn't great even before any accident. "Initially Mayak was dumping high-level radioactive waste into a nearby river, which flowed to the river Ob, flowing further down to the Arctic Ocean. All six reactors were on Lake Kyzyltash and used an open-cycle cooling system, discharging contaminated water directly back into the lake" Ouch.
- mikeash 9y ago
  The whole thing is a great lesson in how “obvious” things we take for granted today, like using a sealed cooling system in nuclear reactors, or keeping waste in containers, were ideas that had to be developed through error-prone processes.
  - pvg 9y ago
    This wasn't done because the people who built these things didn't know what they were doing and what the consequences were.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Not credible. The dangers of radiation exposure were fairly well understood. I think it's more like they were under extreme pressure from governent and military interests during the cold war to just "get it done" and safety was a secondary concern. Especially in the USSR where they were using prison labor for a lot of the nastier work.
      - pvg 9y ago
        I think your misreading of what I'm saying is what's not particularly credible.
      - mikeash 9y ago
        The dangers of acute exposure were well understood. The long term consequences much less so, as well as the many ways things could go wrong to cause exposure in the first place. That era is full of examples of terrible human damage done because people didn’t really get the consequences of pollution. These are mostly special just because the pollution was radioactive
        pvg 9y ago
        The consequences of long-term exposure were also known, perhaps not as well as now, but I think it's inaccurate to suggest this sort of thing was done out of ignorance, rather than expedience (and general disregard for human life). This isn't something like someone eventually noticing DDT was decimating bird populations or that lead from leaded gasoline was getting into everything.
- blincoln 9y ago
  The same approach was originally used at Hanford in the US.[1] I've been on a couple of tours at Hanford, and the guides told us that the Soviet weapons programme was a carbon-copy of the one in the US - just scaled up, with many more plutonium-production reactors - so it's not surprising that they made the same mistake about the cooling. [1] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger1/docs/LA9217MS.pdf http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/buttinger1/docs... - pages 9-10
  - mikeash 9y ago
    My favorite (for certain values of “favorite”) was the British Windscale reactor, which was air cooled and just vented out a big smoke stack. Predictably, it caught fire and turned into a major disaster. One guy’s insistence on installing filters in the chimney, over the objections of many others that it was pointless, prevented it from being a Chernobyl-scale event.
mcguire 9y ago
There are weirdly similar signs on smaller roads in southeastern New Mexico.