9 ms·

Chernobyl’s Blown Up Reactor 4 Just Woke Up

44 points by illuminated 5y ago

stmfreak 5y ago
Nuclear energy is fantastic and environmentally friendly for the first 50 years. It’s the next 9,950 years that no one has been able to complete successfully.
pkpioneer 5y ago
nice
bayesian_horse 5y ago
What happened at Chernobyl is the kind of thing that theoretically can't possibly happen at hundreds of other nuclear reactors around the world. Which is kind of frightening.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
arnon 5y ago
This article is very poorly written unfortunately. It goes into multiple "we don't know, but here's an option" paragraphs which give no useful information.
pvaldes 5y ago
Last week: This antinuclear idiots are dumb, nuclear is totally safe, we have planned any possible scenario, all the smart people love it... Today: cric, cric, cric... Always the same history. Sigh.
- Klasiaster 5y ago
  The submission got flagged as well :shurg:
agent327 5y ago
> Underneath reactor 4 there is still nuclear fuel that is active and which will take around 20,000 years for it to deplete. The uranium is too radioactive for anyone to live in the city Bullshit. The uranium is contained and not a threat to anyone. Even in the same building (reactor 3) it's quite safe. What makes the city dangerous to live in is the cloud of particles that spread over the wide environment immediately after the accident, something that wouldn't have happened if only the Soviets had added a containment vessel.
ggm 5y ago
Wonderfully scary. Scientists have two theories: water is getting in, causing startup. And, water isn't getting in, preventing dampening down. Ie, they have no idea. Both A and not-A are being hypothesised. The meetings must be quite confrontational. If only we had two Chernobyl to run A/B testing on.
- wcoenen 5y ago
  I don't think there's much controversy about keeping water out. The main scenario to avoid is a bunch of water flashing into steam (when the nuclear reactions suddenly ramp up, for whatever reason) and blowing everything wide open again.
- markb139 5y ago
  Maybe water is getting in and out at differing rates
- Y_Y 5y ago
  You have to hypothesise both A and not-A. If you can rule out A then you know not-A is true. (Or you reject the Law of the Excluded Middle, but that's not cool.)
  - mjfl 5y ago
    Well really the hypotheses are "A causes B" and "not A causes B" which does actually leave a third case "A and B are independent".
    - mhio 5y ago
      Which leaves a rather large set of N causes B's
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  It could be something else [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_the_Unknown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_the_Unknown
ideamotor 5y ago
Hm I have been binge-watching a certain sci-fi show that’s on Netflix recently …
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Klasiaster 5y ago
Nuclear power is far too risky and even if all goes well, the waste problem is mostly unsolved (some solutions exists but who knows how many years they are stable), and the sourcing of uranium is a environmental and health problem, too (cf. the situation in Niger). Anyway, I don't know why I even write on HN about this topic since most of the crowd is pro-nuclear anyway and will either ignore this article or play it down and praise the technology…
- jaggirs 5y ago
  Nuclear is one of the least deadly energy sources (taking all deaths, including by nuclear disaster, into account). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM
  - e0a74c 5y ago
    Does that take into account the millions of people who'll suffer from birth defects, low fertility, physical deformities and cancers for millennia to come?
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      From the nuclear and chemical pollution from burning coal and other fossil fuels? Probably not. Nor the impacts of climate change for millennia to come.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    It is also not a widely used energy source. Nor is direct fatality, especially just looking into the past, the only issue. Proponents of nuclear power often don't want you to think about what happens when nuclear power has to be doubled, quadrupled, and so on. Nor are the risks really computable at all, with really small chances of extremely bad things happening. And the potential for bad actors at any time.
    - Tade0 5y ago
MrWiffles 5y ago
What’s the worst possible scenario with this situation? Could the reactor explode like a nuclear weapon or something? Or is it just going to escalate into more and more radioactive output? And if the latter, how far away from the site might the effects be seen?
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Nuclear weapon, no. Nuclear fuel starting a fire and/or a chemical explosions, yes. A file/explosion could damage the containment structures and release radiation. But in no circumstances would we have an A-bomb style event.
  - squiggleblaz 5y ago
    Is a worst case scenario on a scale of a reproduction of the initial event, or (very much) worse, or not really that bad?
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  I'm no expert, but at a guess I'd worry about radioactive material getting out of the containment and being blown to where it shouldn't. Which is really the problem most of the time, rather than something blowing up or irradiating something directly.
jinseokim 5y ago
No Loginwall frontend: https://scribe.rip/chernobyls-blown-up-reactor-4-just-woke-up-74bedd5fc92d https://scribe.rip/chernobyls-blown-up-reactor-4-just-woke-u...
- thriftwy 5y ago
  The article seems to be jumping to conclusions without explaining how does "waking up" look like.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thriftwy 5y ago
Can't read the OP (HNed), but the title sounds like the intricate promotion campaign for the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- dandanua 5y ago
  It's more like anti-promotion for this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830708
pvaldes 5y ago
And the "scientists are confused ha ha" signature of a lazy writer.
reincarnate0x14 5y ago
This is nonsense fear mongering. It didn't "just wake up" in any sense, the reactivity has been monitored for years and did rise slightly after 2017-2019 as the New Safe Confinement reduced the amount of rain getting into the structure. Here's a Reuters link of the same damn thing from six months ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/chernobyl-staff-record-rise-nuclear-activity-within-safe-limits-2021-05-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chernobyl-staff-record-rise-nu... The journal article they refer to was from work done in 2020. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ta/d0ta09131f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ta/d0ta0... Work done to better understand the decay process going on in the post-meltdown structure is interesting, but none of it notes any real risk of significant criticality in the remnants of the core.
- nindalf 5y ago
  I figured it would be fear lingering when the link was from a site I’d never heard of. If some imminent disaster was on the cards id expect to hear about it from Reuters or AP.
- tasubotadas 5y ago
  >Scientists don’t understand why… They know exactly why - in the Reuters article they say it's because of the lost moisture from the rain (there is now shelter above the reactor) and that it was expected :D What a piece of journalistic crap...
Louis2 5y ago
Amazing Content on this website.I Like it.Thanks for sharing. https://www.greatpeople-me.bid/ https://www.greatpeople-me.bid/
nkssy 5y ago
Ok, I know nothing about nuke power. That said, I have a few questions: Nuclear power is just about making steam isn’t it? Its ultimately about using heat to boil water, isn’t it? Why can't they continue making steam from this reactor? Its not exactly cooling down, is it?
- rocqua 5y ago
  You could, but its not producing that much heat. Moreover, a normal reactor has two loops. The first is an internal loop that moves heat from the core to a heat exchanger. The second is an external loop that takes heat from the heat exchanger and turns it into steam that goes to a turbine. This is done because the internal loop gets rather contaminated with radioactive materials. Turning that contaminated water to steam and venting it to the outside world is... bad.
- s21n 5y ago
  Yes, it's cooling down, very quickly. There is no reactor anymore, it's just melted fuel that flowed into rooms under the reactor vessel but it cooled quickly and now it's just a warm rock. Nuclear reactor is constructed in a way that the neutrons from fission are reflected back to the fuel to cause more reactions so the reaction rate is kept stable at a very high level. When the reactor was blown out by steam it lost most of it's power in seconds because the structures that kept the chain reaction running not existed anymore. The conditions at the spot where the fuel is deposited may change due to environmental factors, for example when rainwater sinks into the fuel or it evaporates or runs off (water is a neutron moderator). That may cause temporary surge in fission reactions but it's still nowhere close to an operational reactor.

44 points by illuminated 5y ago

Nuclear energy is fantastic and environmentally friendly for the first 50 years. It’s the next 9,950 years that no one has been able to complete successfully.

pkpioneer 5y ago

nice

bayesian_horse 5y ago

What happened at Chernobyl is the kind of thing that theoretically can't possibly happen at hundreds of other nuclear reactors around the world. Which is kind of frightening.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

arnon 5y ago

This article is very poorly written unfortunately. It goes into multiple "we don't know, but here's an option" paragraphs which give no useful information.

pvaldes 5y ago

Last week: This antinuclear idiots are dumb, nuclear is totally safe, we have planned any possible scenario, all the smart people love it... Today: cric, cric, cric... Always the same history. Sigh.

Klasiaster 5y ago
The submission got flagged as well :shurg:

agent327 5y ago

> Underneath reactor 4 there is still nuclear fuel that is active and which will take around 20,000 years for it to deplete. The uranium is too radioactive for anyone to live in the city Bullshit. The uranium is contained and not a threat to anyone. Even in the same building (reactor 3) it's quite safe. What makes the city dangerous to live in is the cloud of particles that spread over the wide environment immediately after the accident, something that wouldn't have happened if only the Soviets had added a containment vessel.

ggm 5y ago

Wonderfully scary. Scientists have two theories: water is getting in, causing startup. And, water isn't getting in, preventing dampening down. Ie, they have no idea. Both A and not-A are being hypothesised. The meetings must be quite confrontational. If only we had two Chernobyl to run A/B testing on.

wcoenen 5y ago
I don't think there's much controversy about keeping water out. The main scenario to avoid is a bunch of water flashing into steam (when the nuclear reactions suddenly ramp up, for whatever reason) and blowing everything wide open again.
markb139 5y ago
Maybe water is getting in and out at differing rates
Y_Y 5y ago
You have to hypothesise both A and not-A. If you can rule out A then you know not-A is true. (Or you reject the Law of the Excluded Middle, but that's not cool.)
- mjfl 5y ago
  Well really the hypotheses are "A causes B" and "not A causes B" which does actually leave a third case "A and B are independent".
  - mhio 5y ago
    Which leaves a rather large set of N causes B's
mytailorisrich 5y ago
It could be something else [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_the_Unknown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_the_Unknown

ideamotor 5y ago

Hm I have been binge-watching a certain sci-fi show that’s on Netflix recently …

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Klasiaster 5y ago

Nuclear power is far too risky and even if all goes well, the waste problem is mostly unsolved (some solutions exists but who knows how many years they are stable), and the sourcing of uranium is a environmental and health problem, too (cf. the situation in Niger). Anyway, I don't know why I even write on HN about this topic since most of the crowd is pro-nuclear anyway and will either ignore this article or play it down and praise the technology…

jaggirs 5y ago
Nuclear is one of the least deadly energy sources (taking all deaths, including by nuclear disaster, into account). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jzfpyo-q-RM
- e0a74c 5y ago
  Does that take into account the millions of people who'll suffer from birth defects, low fertility, physical deformities and cancers for millennia to come?
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    From the nuclear and chemical pollution from burning coal and other fossil fuels? Probably not. Nor the impacts of climate change for millennia to come.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  It is also not a widely used energy source. Nor is direct fatality, especially just looking into the past, the only issue. Proponents of nuclear power often don't want you to think about what happens when nuclear power has to be doubled, quadrupled, and so on. Nor are the risks really computable at all, with really small chances of extremely bad things happening. And the potential for bad actors at any time.
  - Tade0 5y ago

MrWiffles 5y ago

What’s the worst possible scenario with this situation? Could the reactor explode like a nuclear weapon or something? Or is it just going to escalate into more and more radioactive output? And if the latter, how far away from the site might the effects be seen?

sandworm101 5y ago
Nuclear weapon, no. Nuclear fuel starting a fire and/or a chemical explosions, yes. A file/explosion could damage the containment structures and release radiation. But in no circumstances would we have an A-bomb style event.
- squiggleblaz 5y ago
  Is a worst case scenario on a scale of a reproduction of the initial event, or (very much) worse, or not really that bad?
bayesian_horse 5y ago
I'm no expert, but at a guess I'd worry about radioactive material getting out of the containment and being blown to where it shouldn't. Which is really the problem most of the time, rather than something blowing up or irradiating something directly.

jinseokim 5y ago

No Loginwall frontend: https://scribe.rip/chernobyls-blown-up-reactor-4-just-woke-up-74bedd5fc92d https://scribe.rip/chernobyls-blown-up-reactor-4-just-woke-u...

thriftwy 5y ago
The article seems to be jumping to conclusions without explaining how does "waking up" look like.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

thriftwy 5y ago

Can't read the OP (HNed), but the title sounds like the intricate promotion campaign for the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

dandanua 5y ago
It's more like anti-promotion for this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28830708

pvaldes 5y ago

And the "scientists are confused ha ha" signature of a lazy writer.

reincarnate0x14 5y ago

This is nonsense fear mongering. It didn't "just wake up" in any sense, the reactivity has been monitored for years and did rise slightly after 2017-2019 as the New Safe Confinement reduced the amount of rain getting into the structure. Here's a Reuters link of the same damn thing from six months ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/chernobyl-staff-record-rise-nuclear-activity-within-safe-limits-2021-05-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/chernobyl-staff-record-rise-nu... The journal article they refer to was from work done in 2020. https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ta/d0ta09131f https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ta/d0ta0... Work done to better understand the decay process going on in the post-meltdown structure is interesting, but none of it notes any real risk of significant criticality in the remnants of the core.

nindalf 5y ago
I figured it would be fear lingering when the link was from a site I’d never heard of. If some imminent disaster was on the cards id expect to hear about it from Reuters or AP.
tasubotadas 5y ago
>Scientists don’t understand why… They know exactly why - in the Reuters article they say it's because of the lost moisture from the rain (there is now shelter above the reactor) and that it was expected :D What a piece of journalistic crap...

Louis2 5y ago

Amazing Content on this website.I Like it.Thanks for sharing. https://www.greatpeople-me.bid/ https://www.greatpeople-me.bid/

nkssy 5y ago

Ok, I know nothing about nuke power. That said, I have a few questions: Nuclear power is just about making steam isn’t it? Its ultimately about using heat to boil water, isn’t it? Why can't they continue making steam from this reactor? Its not exactly cooling down, is it?

rocqua 5y ago
You could, but its not producing that much heat. Moreover, a normal reactor has two loops. The first is an internal loop that moves heat from the core to a heat exchanger. The second is an external loop that takes heat from the heat exchanger and turns it into steam that goes to a turbine. This is done because the internal loop gets rather contaminated with radioactive materials. Turning that contaminated water to steam and venting it to the outside world is... bad.
s21n 5y ago
Yes, it's cooling down, very quickly. There is no reactor anymore, it's just melted fuel that flowed into rooms under the reactor vessel but it cooled quickly and now it's just a warm rock. Nuclear reactor is constructed in a way that the neutrons from fission are reflected back to the fuel to cause more reactions so the reaction rate is kept stable at a very high level. When the reactor was blown out by steam it lost most of it's power in seconds because the structures that kept the chain reaction running not existed anymore. The conditions at the spot where the fuel is deposited may change due to environmental factors, for example when rainwater sinks into the fuel or it evaporates or runs off (water is a neutron moderator). That may cause temporary surge in fission reactions but it's still nowhere close to an operational reactor.