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

• 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.
        • stephen_g 7y ago
          This article (from 2016, three years later than TFA) says it’s estimated to be ‘slightly higher than the ambient temperature’ - 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... While it reaching groundwater was definitely a concern in the 80’s, I don’t think it’s actually moved significantly or is expected to in the future.
          • mirimir 7y ago
            Thanks. That's more or less what I expected. "China Syndrome" was an influential film. But until Fukushima, I don't believe that we saw melted core "lava" reach groundwater.
      • 7y ago
• 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