6 ms·

Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “The Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal

coldnose 7y ago
> “The Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal Oh, I assumed that it'd be safe after a couple decades...
- scrungus 7y ago
  its actually emmiting radio active waves
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Maybe a after a couple thousand decades :-)
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    Yea, the title doesn't reflect the scale of the consequences.
CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
(2013) Since this article was published, the “New Safe Confinement” has been completed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confineme...
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Yes and the foot is still just as lethal inside it and will be for quite some time, your point is? Great estimation here for how long and how much- https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hp7l5/what_is_the_expected_life_timeline_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hp7l5/what_is_... “The elephants will probably go away long before the radiation all goes away.”
  - CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
    >Yes and the foot is still just as lethal inside it and will be for quite some time, your point is? Ummmmmmm, I’m confused now. I noted the (2013) as there is a convention to append the year to the title for older articles. And reading the article, it talked about the New Safe Confinement as still being under construction, so I linked to the Wikipedia article showing that it had been completed.
    - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
      Ah I see, my apologies.
  - inflatableDodo 7y ago
    Now this is a wild guess on my part, not being a nuclear engineer and all, but I reckon that the foot is probably not just as lethal now it is inside this 'New Safe Confinement' thingy, unless they have gone and named it really, really badly.
    - stephen_g 7y ago
      The elephant's foot is quite deep under the reactor in a lower level of the complex. So I don't think it specifically is any more or less safe since you have to go to a lot of effort to get near enough for it to hurt you. The New Safe Confinement has a different purpose - to stop radioactive dust and debris from the reactor itself (a bit higher up) from spreading into the nearby area and being spread by the wind in case the hastily constructed original containment structure collapses (they are going to remove that old structure now the NSC is finished so that doesn't happen, I believe).
      - mirimir 7y ago
        TFA does note: > Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. I had never heard that it was "still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant". Given that it's only 10% as radioactive as it was initially, that seems unlikely.
- Nicksil 7y ago
  Non-mobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement
- chrischen 7y ago
  > The man in this photo, Artur Korneyev, has likely visited this area more than anyone else, and in doing so has been exposed to more radiation than almost anyone in history. How has he managed to survive?
  - n1000 7y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233706
- iLemming 7y ago
  There's Nova documentary on Netflix about construction of NSC. Quite some amazing engineering.
  - NullPrefix 7y ago
    Is there a name?
    - surge 7y ago
      Megatomb I believe
shmerl 7y ago
It's featured in somewhat distorted shape in "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl" in one of the underground tunnels. https://i.imgur.com/TVvbcan.jpg https://i.imgur.com/TVvbcan.jpg
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Looks like that's just a generic solidified corium flow. Elephant's Foot just happens to be a famous solidified corium flow.
  - knolan 7y ago
    I’m pretty sure the game has a version of the actual Elephant’s Foot, but this doesn’t look like it. At the end of the first game you go down into the remains of the Power Station to make a wish like the room in Tarkovsky's Movie. I’ll have a look for some gameplay videos.
  - zaarn 7y ago
    How many corium flows are there that there can be a generic one? Or a famous one?
userbinator 7y ago
Someone who took a photo of it, up close, was surprisingly still alive in 2014, according to this article: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-ch...
mycall 7y ago
> The Elephant’s Foot will be there for centuries Does that mean it won't bleed into water supply before then?
- LeoPanthera 7y ago
  The "foot" is composed of (now) solid material, and sitting on a concrete pad onto which the reactor building was constructed. Around the building is the "New Safe Confinement" structure. So no, it will not bleed out.
  - Hamuko 7y ago
    Does the New Safe Confinement also extend into the ground?
    - gargravarr 7y ago
      It doesn't, but after the disaster, the basement areas were eventually filled with a lot more concrete. It's not just the very thick concrete pad between it and the groundwater, and it no longer generates enough heat to threaten to melt through.
- duxup 7y ago
  Fukushima might provide some insight as to how likely it is a reactor would experience a "China Syndrome" where a meltdown occurs and forms a mass that is hot enough to break through the containment systems in place through to groundwater and etc. Fukushima was not a modern reactor with fewer safeties than most modern systems and even there with an uncontrolled meltdown the "China Syndrome" did not occur. The fuel fused to the sand at the bottom and stopped. I'm not an industry professional but I suspect Fukushima may indicate that the likelihood of a "China Syndrome" type event is less likely than was previously thought.
cgijoe 7y ago
The title of this post needs a "(2013)" tag added. This is an older article, and is out of date.
ated19 7y ago
That would be true if exactly one isotope decade into a stable isotope. With more complex decay chains etc that does not always apply. https://sushkom.com https://sushkom.com
cm2187 7y ago
I am surprised I can’t find more recent photos, I would have assumed robots would be regularly sent over the years to monitor it.
- egorfine 7y ago
  Nope. 1. the room with the elephant foot is hardly accessible now; 2. nothing interesting happens with it, no need to monitor
UglycupRawky 7y ago
If you can, find the documentary BBC Horizon, Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus. I first saw this in the 90s as a kid and I was blown away. Absolutely crazy situation at the time. Hats off to the Liquidators and the scientists who tried to mitigate this mess. Many died and have been forgotten since.
HocusLocus 7y ago
It's only lethal if you attempt coitus or ingestion.
- HocusLocus 7y ago
  Before the dreaded HN grey curtain of we-dont-like-you descends on my post... while most of the article is well written, two helpings of TRIPE in this article jumped out at me. I'd expect better from a writer for Scientific American. The first,"the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink." This is ludicrous! The thing is only slightly temperature-hot. Was the writer reacting to that famous jiggly time lapse photo with the waving flashlight... that just HAPPENS to trigger everyone's molten China Syndrome fantasy? More about the photo, and apologies to anyone (like the article's silly author) who thought the photographer had died a horrible death whispering the word, "Rosebud". https://www.quora.com/Is-the-elephants-foot-still-hot https://www.quora.com/Is-the-elephants-foot-still-hot The other piece of TRIPE is a dangerous general malaise of willful containment ignorance. Storing nuclear waste was never considered the best idea, not even in Fermi's day. It is the competent science writer's job to communicate that wringing our poor hands in despair and waiting oodle-thousands of years is not the only option. It is safely contained within our own time frame, and IF we should desire to grind it up and render it with technology we NOW POSSESS with actual means just beyond the corner (bombarding it with fast neutrons, reaping heat energy in the process)to result in a short decay product that is a few hundred years from walk-away safe. Now we cannot financially afford to do that on this day or the next, but that is no cause for a SCIENCE article to fail to remind us that its current dangerous state is from a lack of follow-through and not of possibility. It's not enough to just present the truth about radiation and nuclear energy any more. Too much noise. We must push back at the ignorance and hysteria, make sure the young do not grow up steeped in superstition.

> “The Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal Oh, I assumed that it'd be safe after a couple decades...

scrungus 7y ago
its actually emmiting radio active waves
Ididntdothis 7y ago
Maybe a after a couple thousand decades :-)
- de_watcher 7y ago
  Yea, the title doesn't reflect the scale of the consequences.

(2013) Since this article was published, the “New Safe Confinement” has been completed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confineme...

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Yes and the foot is still just as lethal inside it and will be for quite some time, your point is? Great estimation here for how long and how much- https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hp7l5/what_is_the_expected_life_timeline_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8hp7l5/what_is_... “The elephants will probably go away long before the radiation all goes away.”
- CaliforniaKarl 7y ago
  >Yes and the foot is still just as lethal inside it and will be for quite some time, your point is? Ummmmmmm, I’m confused now. I noted the (2013) as there is a convention to append the year to the title for older articles. And reading the article, it talked about the New Safe Confinement as still being under construction, so I linked to the Wikipedia article showing that it had been completed.
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    Ah I see, my apologies.
- inflatableDodo 7y ago
  Now this is a wild guess on my part, not being a nuclear engineer and all, but I reckon that the foot is probably not just as lethal now it is inside this 'New Safe Confinement' thingy, unless they have gone and named it really, really badly.
  - stephen_g 7y ago
    The elephant's foot is quite deep under the reactor in a lower level of the complex. So I don't think it specifically is any more or less safe since you have to go to a lot of effort to get near enough for it to hurt you. The New Safe Confinement has a different purpose - to stop radioactive dust and debris from the reactor itself (a bit higher up) from spreading into the nearby area and being spread by the wind in case the hastily constructed original containment structure collapses (they are going to remove that old structure now the NSC is finished so that doesn't happen, I believe).
    - mirimir 7y ago
      TFA does note: > Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink. I had never heard that it was "still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant". Given that it's only 10% as radioactive as it was initially, that seems unlikely.
Nicksil 7y ago
Non-mobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_New_Safe_Confinement
chrischen 7y ago
> The man in this photo, Artur Korneyev, has likely visited this area more than anyone else, and in doing so has been exposed to more radiation than almost anyone in history. How has he managed to survive?
- n1000 7y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19233706
iLemming 7y ago
There's Nova documentary on Netflix about construction of NSC. Quite some amazing engineering.
- NullPrefix 7y ago
  Is there a name?
  - surge 7y ago
    Megatomb I believe

shmerl 7y ago

It's featured in somewhat distorted shape in "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl" in one of the underground tunnels. https://i.imgur.com/TVvbcan.jpg https://i.imgur.com/TVvbcan.jpg

Hamuko 7y ago
Looks like that's just a generic solidified corium flow. Elephant's Foot just happens to be a famous solidified corium flow.
- knolan 7y ago
  I’m pretty sure the game has a version of the actual Elephant’s Foot, but this doesn’t look like it. At the end of the first game you go down into the remains of the Power Station to make a wish like the room in Tarkovsky's Movie. I’ll have a look for some gameplay videos.
- zaarn 7y ago
  How many corium flows are there that there can be a generic one? Or a famous one?

userbinator 7y ago

Someone who took a photo of it, up close, was surprisingly still alive in 2014, according to this article: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-ch...

mycall 7y ago

> The Elephant’s Foot will be there for centuries Does that mean it won't bleed into water supply before then?

LeoPanthera 7y ago
The "foot" is composed of (now) solid material, and sitting on a concrete pad onto which the reactor building was constructed. Around the building is the "New Safe Confinement" structure. So no, it will not bleed out.
- Hamuko 7y ago
  Does the New Safe Confinement also extend into the ground?
  - gargravarr 7y ago
    It doesn't, but after the disaster, the basement areas were eventually filled with a lot more concrete. It's not just the very thick concrete pad between it and the groundwater, and it no longer generates enough heat to threaten to melt through.
duxup 7y ago
Fukushima might provide some insight as to how likely it is a reactor would experience a "China Syndrome" where a meltdown occurs and forms a mass that is hot enough to break through the containment systems in place through to groundwater and etc. Fukushima was not a modern reactor with fewer safeties than most modern systems and even there with an uncontrolled meltdown the "China Syndrome" did not occur. The fuel fused to the sand at the bottom and stopped. I'm not an industry professional but I suspect Fukushima may indicate that the likelihood of a "China Syndrome" type event is less likely than was previously thought.

cgijoe 7y ago

The title of this post needs a "(2013)" tag added. This is an older article, and is out of date.

ated19 7y ago

That would be true if exactly one isotope decade into a stable isotope. With more complex decay chains etc that does not always apply. https://sushkom.com https://sushkom.com

cm2187 7y ago

I am surprised I can’t find more recent photos, I would have assumed robots would be regularly sent over the years to monitor it.

egorfine 7y ago
Nope. 1. the room with the elephant foot is hardly accessible now; 2. nothing interesting happens with it, no need to monitor

UglycupRawky 7y ago

If you can, find the documentary BBC Horizon, Inside Chernobyl's Sarcophagus. I first saw this in the 90s as a kid and I was blown away. Absolutely crazy situation at the time. Hats off to the Liquidators and the scientists who tried to mitigate this mess. Many died and have been forgotten since.

HocusLocus 7y ago

It's only lethal if you attempt coitus or ingestion.

HocusLocus 7y ago
Before the dreaded HN grey curtain of we-dont-like-you descends on my post... while most of the article is well written, two helpings of TRIPE in this article jumped out at me. I'd expect better from a writer for Scientific American. The first,"the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink." This is ludicrous! The thing is only slightly temperature-hot. Was the writer reacting to that famous jiggly time lapse photo with the waving flashlight... that just HAPPENS to trigger everyone's molten China Syndrome fantasy? More about the photo, and apologies to anyone (like the article's silly author) who thought the photographer had died a horrible death whispering the word, "Rosebud". https://www.quora.com/Is-the-elephants-foot-still-hot https://www.quora.com/Is-the-elephants-foot-still-hot The other piece of TRIPE is a dangerous general malaise of willful containment ignorance. Storing nuclear waste was never considered the best idea, not even in Fermi's day. It is the competent science writer's job to communicate that wringing our poor hands in despair and waiting oodle-thousands of years is not the only option. It is safely contained within our own time frame, and IF we should desire to grind it up and render it with technology we NOW POSSESS with actual means just beyond the corner (bombarding it with fast neutrons, reaping heat energy in the process)to result in a short decay product that is a few hundred years from walk-away safe. Now we cannot financially afford to do that on this day or the next, but that is no cause for a SCIENCE article to fail to remind us that its current dangerous state is from a lack of follow-through and not of possibility. It's not enough to just present the truth about radiation and nuclear energy any more. Too much noise. We must push back at the ignorance and hysteria, make sure the young do not grow up steeped in superstition.