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It killed 4000 people because they basically shut down cities and villages to allow it to do so. If they hadn’t obliterated those places the death toll would b

It killed 4000 people because they basically shut down cities and villages to allow it to do so. If they hadn’t obliterated those places the death toll would be a lot higher. I haven’t heard of entire cities being shutdown due to solar accidents despite the far greater prevalence of solar farms than nuclear facilities in existence. Edit: Also, heroic efforts by ordinary Russians, who almost certainly compromised their own lives so that people much further away wouldn’t be affected.

vermilingua 7y ago
Yes, because even despite the mismanagement of the disaster, the timescales involved allowed them to implement the protections needed. You’re arguing for the GP.
- notahacker 7y ago
  Personally I think may require evacuation of entire cities for decades to mitigate casualties is a risk factor worth taking into account, except perhaps when building nuclear reactors in deserted areas. Similarly, the fact that we've largely contained it by shutting entire countries down is not an argument for COVID-19 actually being one of the least harmful pathogens humanity has encountered.
  - DagAgren 7y ago
    Definitely worth taking into account! But when you do, it's still a lot less damaging overall than things like coal.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tsukikage 7y ago
    So, what I'm hearing in this thread is that we should evacuate entire areas around coal burning power plants for decades, but we choose not to.
    - notahacker 7y ago
      I'd probably shut them down altogether where possible. But disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that the radiation exposure from living in Pripyat is comparable to that of living somewhere near coal plants.
      - arcticbull 7y ago
        > But disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that the radiation exposure from living in Pripyat is comparable to that of living somewhere near coal plants. Yes and no, in a way it's worse because Pripyat was evacuated, so people were moved to low radiation areas. Coal plants, people don't realize just how much radiation is generated by them. Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste. [1] "Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas." Honestly it sounds much risker to live anywhere near a coal plant than anywhere near a nuclear plant (which for the record have had 30 years of safety upgrades since Chernobyl). Not to mention, the last RBMK reactor at the Chernobyl power plant was left operating until the year 2000. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...
brutt 7y ago
You mean, ordinary Ukrainians, 260 thousands of them.
na85 7y ago
I don't think anyone claims that nuclear is safer than solar, but of course solar can't really power everything because half the time it's dark. Also you'd need a solar farm about the size of Spain just to satisfy demand, to say nothing of transmission losses getting energy to high latitudes or mountainous/cloudy regions where the sun doesn't shine all day long. Imagine trying to power Seattle or Vancouver with solar. It might work until 3 or 4 pm in the summer, but at all other times you'd need to bring power across the Rockies, taking massive transmission losses all the way due to resistivity of wire, and then of course when it's the rainy season in the Pacific North West, it's snowing in the Prairies so now you need to have a means of scraping snow and ice from your Spain-sized solar farm. Then scale that difficulty up by an order of magnitude, adding in the cost of maintaining multi-terawatt transoceanic power cables to import energy from another continent if you want to run your electrical applicances after the sun goes down. It's just not feasible.
- pvaldes 7y ago
  > of course solar can't really power everything because half the time it's dark And this new thing called internet could never work because half the time people is sleeping so trying to access a webpage in Australia would work only 12 hours a da... oh, wait... We have batteries. > you'd need a solar farm about the size of Spain https://mapfight.appspot.com/sahara-vs-es/sahara-desert-spain-size-comparison https://mapfight.appspot.com/sahara-vs-es/sahara-desert-spai...
  - na85 7y ago
    Your snarky analogy doesn't really make sense because the power infrastructure in Australia runs all night long with no need for batteries. Or did you think that Australia's coal and NG plants shut down in the evening? But sure, you could put that Spain-sized solar farm in the Sahara. Then it's just a simple matter of pacifying the Islamic militants and whoever else while building a global-scale power distribution network, and convincing opposing powers such as NATO, Russia, and China, to give up their domestic power infrastructure and put national security at risk by relying on one giant point of failure all while coordinating construction projects (with their increased electrical demands) on a global scale. I won't even get into the size of the battery farm required to store a continent's energy needs. The United States used 1.068E20 joules of electricity in 2018: Divide by the number of seconds in a year and there's your wattage, I'll leave it to you to figure out the rest. edit: and we're still ignoring transmission losses at transcontinental scale

vermilingua 7y ago

Yes, because even despite the mismanagement of the disaster, the timescales involved allowed them to implement the protections needed. You’re arguing for the GP.

notahacker 7y ago
Personally I think may require evacuation of entire cities for decades to mitigate casualties is a risk factor worth taking into account, except perhaps when building nuclear reactors in deserted areas. Similarly, the fact that we've largely contained it by shutting entire countries down is not an argument for COVID-19 actually being one of the least harmful pathogens humanity has encountered.
- DagAgren 7y ago
  Definitely worth taking into account! But when you do, it's still a lot less damaging overall than things like coal.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tsukikage 7y ago
  So, what I'm hearing in this thread is that we should evacuate entire areas around coal burning power plants for decades, but we choose not to.
  - notahacker 7y ago
    I'd probably shut them down altogether where possible. But disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that the radiation exposure from living in Pripyat is comparable to that of living somewhere near coal plants.
    - arcticbull 7y ago
      > But disingenuous in the extreme to pretend that the radiation exposure from living in Pripyat is comparable to that of living somewhere near coal plants. Yes and no, in a way it's worse because Pripyat was evacuated, so people were moved to low radiation areas. Coal plants, people don't realize just how much radiation is generated by them. Coal ash is more radioactive than nuclear waste. [1] "Fly ash uranium sometimes leaches into the soil and water surrounding a coal plant, affecting cropland and, in turn, food. People living within a "stack shadow"—the area within a half- to one-mile (0.8- to 1.6-kilometer) radius of a coal plant's smokestacks—might then ingest small amounts of radiation. Fly ash is also disposed of in landfills and abandoned mines and quarries, posing a potential risk to people living around those areas." Honestly it sounds much risker to live anywhere near a coal plant than anywhere near a nuclear plant (which for the record have had 30 years of safety upgrades since Chernobyl). Not to mention, the last RBMK reactor at the Chernobyl power plant was left operating until the year 2000. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

brutt 7y ago

You mean, ordinary Ukrainians, 260 thousands of them.

na85 7y ago

I don't think anyone claims that nuclear is safer than solar, but of course solar can't really power everything because half the time it's dark. Also you'd need a solar farm about the size of Spain just to satisfy demand, to say nothing of transmission losses getting energy to high latitudes or mountainous/cloudy regions where the sun doesn't shine all day long. Imagine trying to power Seattle or Vancouver with solar. It might work until 3 or 4 pm in the summer, but at all other times you'd need to bring power across the Rockies, taking massive transmission losses all the way due to resistivity of wire, and then of course when it's the rainy season in the Pacific North West, it's snowing in the Prairies so now you need to have a means of scraping snow and ice from your Spain-sized solar farm. Then scale that difficulty up by an order of magnitude, adding in the cost of maintaining multi-terawatt transoceanic power cables to import energy from another continent if you want to run your electrical applicances after the sun goes down. It's just not feasible.

pvaldes 7y ago
> of course solar can't really power everything because half the time it's dark And this new thing called internet could never work because half the time people is sleeping so trying to access a webpage in Australia would work only 12 hours a da... oh, wait... We have batteries. > you'd need a solar farm about the size of Spain https://mapfight.appspot.com/sahara-vs-es/sahara-desert-spain-size-comparison https://mapfight.appspot.com/sahara-vs-es/sahara-desert-spai...
- na85 7y ago
  Your snarky analogy doesn't really make sense because the power infrastructure in Australia runs all night long with no need for batteries. Or did you think that Australia's coal and NG plants shut down in the evening? But sure, you could put that Spain-sized solar farm in the Sahara. Then it's just a simple matter of pacifying the Islamic militants and whoever else while building a global-scale power distribution network, and convincing opposing powers such as NATO, Russia, and China, to give up their domestic power infrastructure and put national security at risk by relying on one giant point of failure all while coordinating construction projects (with their increased electrical demands) on a global scale. I won't even get into the size of the battery farm required to store a continent's energy needs. The United States used 1.068E20 joules of electricity in 2018: Divide by the number of seconds in a year and there's your wattage, I'll leave it to you to figure out the rest. edit: and we're still ignoring transmission losses at transcontinental scale