12 ms·

Kyshtym Disaster

60 points by ZeljkoS 5y ago

cmckn 5y ago
The cavalier dumping of waste into lakes and rivers is wild to think about. I was recently reading about various mid-century plans to dam or widen the Bering strait in order to intentionally melt the Arctic. It’s astonishing how humanity viewed and treated our ecosystem so recently in our history.
- ttyprintk 5y ago
  Some Russian statesmen propose that Russia stands to gain from global warming. The radiation from the most polluted lake in the world dried up and blew away. I wager that happens again.
  - simonh 5y ago
    Where did it blow away to? What you're describing sounds to me like a plume of radioactive dust drifting across and mostly settling on a huge area down wind of the lake. Who lives there, or eats agricultural produce from there?
    - ttyprintk 5y ago
      According to Wikipedia, half a million people irradiated from caesium and strontium isotopes in 1968. Sounds like it happened just as you describe. The headwaters of the Kama, Tobol and Ural rivers run through this part of Russia. We know that caesium from Fukushima was detectable in Canada. That was a #7, this was a #6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
- forgotmyoldname 5y ago
  What's truly wild to think about is how eagerly and relatively easily humans completely shaped nature to our desires until recently, and now an uncomfortably large number of people today think any obvious harm being done to the planet is completely natural and humans are too small and insignificant to be a factor. We went from being a few steps away from actively melting the Arctic, to people saying humans couldn't possibly melt ice.
  - dkarl 5y ago
    And they segue straight from "humans couldn't possibly influence climate" to "and if there's a problem we can fix it with technology" with a straight face.
- code_duck 5y ago
  I lived near Los Alamos, NM which was the site of the Manhattan Project. I was looking to rent a building for an art studio and one of the places I looked at was across the street from a large empty lot with a chain link fence, wrapped in green canvas. I looked into this and it had been a primary dump for nuclear weapons development in the 40s - barrels in unlined trenches, buried about 20-40 feet deep. They recently cleaned it up at the cost of a couple billion, if I recall. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21%20Fact%20Sheet_February%202019_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21... Then I looked into what was on the end of that road - a radioactive metal milling facility which discharged waste water containing various toxic radioactive metals directly off a cliff into the desert (it's also a very beautiful area). They recently cleaned that up and the metal plume went down over 500 feet. In fact, all wastewater from the labs went to a central area in town (now an ecological park) and was simply dumped into the stream. The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Then, I realized I was living 3/4 of a mile from the large material disposal area which is currently the lab's main waste dump - TA 54 I believe? https://n3b-la.com/mda/ https://n3b-la.com/mda/ Reading about all the areas there and what is public about what they've stored was somewhat disturbing. Most of it was stored with very little documentation. But, the scientists and employees don't have any problem with living in town. From what I gather they stopped dumping waste carelessly in the 60s. I think they have it under control at this point, but there continues to be debate about long-term storage.
  - yodelshady 5y ago
    > The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Radioactivity is, funnily, one of the easier human health hazards to manage for precisely this reason - by definition, it's (generally) detectable. Not as easily as, say, a bear, but easier than a virion or most regular chemical contaminants. Plus, radionuclides don't actively evolve.
    - 5y ago
stevespang 5y ago
I have Ukrainian relatives who survived Chernobyl. They are physics professors, who to this day - - are very nervous of anything emitting radioactivity. They even refused to view a small alpha particle device I bought from United nuclear that had only a tiny piece of uranium ore from Canada inside it (virtually all alpha particles emitted)
throwawaylinux 5y ago
Second worst nuclear incident by radioactivity released -- 66 diagnosed cases of chronic radiation syndrome, estimated 200 additional cases of cancer. Amazing when you compare with just coal mining deaths and premature death estimate from coal fired electricity generation over the years. It boggles the mind how the fossil fuel / environmentalist lobby anti-nuclear fear propaganda ever took hold in total absence of fact, but I have to hand it to them.
- dylan604 5y ago
  > fear propaganda ever took hold in total absence of fact, i mean, isn't that like exactly how it is always done?
- AutumnCurtain 5y ago
  The key is to create your toxic plume slowly over decades instead of in a big showy bang
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2017/11/03/470349.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2017/11/... That single coal power station explosion I found on the first page of search killed more people than the Chernobyl explosion. You joke, but the real key is to buy governments, advertising, and "activists".
    - jhgb 5y ago
      How did you conclude that it killed more people than the Chernobyl explosion?
      - throwawaylinux 5y ago
        Because it apparently killed between 32 and 43 depending what you read. 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl. Long term radiation from Chernobyl may kill anywhere from 100 to thousands of premature deaths, but I also don't count the continual nuclear and chemical disaster that is a normally operating coal power plant or its contribution to premature deaths, let alone its contribution to climate change. Only the deaths as a direct result of the explosion, just to go a little easier on coal.
axiosgunnar 5y ago
Still better than coal and our only hope for a carbon-neutral future
- cee_el123 5y ago
  atleast until we create an artificial star on earth ( i.e. viable fusion reactor )
  - andbberger 5y ago
    no no no no no! no! we have the spicy rocks now! there is literally nothing wrong with fission. we can't stand here dying while we wait for non-existent technology to save us we needed more spicy rock reactors like, 50 years ago.
    - cee_el123 5y ago
      even if we agree that safety is guaranteed.. there is the fact that it would take a lot of dirty energy to build all the reactors and to source the uranium.. that is.. potential payoff has a upper bound unlike in fusion
  - PhantomGremlin 5y ago
    We have viable fusion, today: Renewables are fusion at a distance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580174 As a high school senior, I went to visit a college back in 1973. I visited a lab where they were playing around with approaches to fusion reactors, a Tokamak IIRC. Today, 48 years later, we're not really any closer than we were in 1973. But today we do have both wind energy and PV energy. Commercially viable fusion. We should embrace it.
    - cee_el123 5y ago
      IMO the energy needed to manufacture, install and operate all the wind turbines and PV panels would approx cancel out the benefits of renewables ( do we even have that quantity of raw materials readily available ? or would it take an asteroid or two ? )
HenryKissinger 5y ago
I'm a little angry at the lack of coverage of Eastern European history in most US schools. I never learned of this, and I consider myself relatively well informed on nuclear issues. Looks like I need to reassess that.
number6 5y ago
Are reactors, that are not meant to produce nuclear weapons, safer or is it just coincidence?

60 points by ZeljkoS 5y ago

The cavalier dumping of waste into lakes and rivers is wild to think about. I was recently reading about various mid-century plans to dam or widen the Bering strait in order to intentionally melt the Arctic. It’s astonishing how humanity viewed and treated our ecosystem so recently in our history.

ttyprintk 5y ago
Some Russian statesmen propose that Russia stands to gain from global warming. The radiation from the most polluted lake in the world dried up and blew away. I wager that happens again.
- simonh 5y ago
  Where did it blow away to? What you're describing sounds to me like a plume of radioactive dust drifting across and mostly settling on a huge area down wind of the lake. Who lives there, or eats agricultural produce from there?
  - ttyprintk 5y ago
    According to Wikipedia, half a million people irradiated from caesium and strontium isotopes in 1968. Sounds like it happened just as you describe. The headwaters of the Kama, Tobol and Ural rivers run through this part of Russia. We know that caesium from Fukushima was detectable in Canada. That was a #7, this was a #6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
What's truly wild to think about is how eagerly and relatively easily humans completely shaped nature to our desires until recently, and now an uncomfortably large number of people today think any obvious harm being done to the planet is completely natural and humans are too small and insignificant to be a factor. We went from being a few steps away from actively melting the Arctic, to people saying humans couldn't possibly melt ice.
- dkarl 5y ago
  And they segue straight from "humans couldn't possibly influence climate" to "and if there's a problem we can fix it with technology" with a straight face.
code_duck 5y ago
I lived near Los Alamos, NM which was the site of the Manhattan Project. I was looking to rent a building for an art studio and one of the places I looked at was across the street from a large empty lot with a chain link fence, wrapped in green canvas. I looked into this and it had been a primary dump for nuclear weapons development in the 40s - barrels in unlined trenches, buried about 20-40 feet deep. They recently cleaned it up at the cost of a couple billion, if I recall. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21%20Fact%20Sheet_February%202019_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21... Then I looked into what was on the end of that road - a radioactive metal milling facility which discharged waste water containing various toxic radioactive metals directly off a cliff into the desert (it's also a very beautiful area). They recently cleaned that up and the metal plume went down over 500 feet. In fact, all wastewater from the labs went to a central area in town (now an ecological park) and was simply dumped into the stream. The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Then, I realized I was living 3/4 of a mile from the large material disposal area which is currently the lab's main waste dump - TA 54 I believe? https://n3b-la.com/mda/ https://n3b-la.com/mda/ Reading about all the areas there and what is public about what they've stored was somewhat disturbing. Most of it was stored with very little documentation. But, the scientists and employees don't have any problem with living in town. From what I gather they stopped dumping waste carelessly in the 60s. I think they have it under control at this point, but there continues to be debate about long-term storage.
- yodelshady 5y ago
  > The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Radioactivity is, funnily, one of the easier human health hazards to manage for precisely this reason - by definition, it's (generally) detectable. Not as easily as, say, a bear, but easier than a virion or most regular chemical contaminants. Plus, radionuclides don't actively evolve.
  - 5y ago

stevespang 5y ago

I have Ukrainian relatives who survived Chernobyl. They are physics professors, who to this day - - are very nervous of anything emitting radioactivity. They even refused to view a small alpha particle device I bought from United nuclear that had only a tiny piece of uranium ore from Canada inside it (virtually all alpha particles emitted)

throwawaylinux 5y ago

Second worst nuclear incident by radioactivity released -- 66 diagnosed cases of chronic radiation syndrome, estimated 200 additional cases of cancer. Amazing when you compare with just coal mining deaths and premature death estimate from coal fired electricity generation over the years. It boggles the mind how the fossil fuel / environmentalist lobby anti-nuclear fear propaganda ever took hold in total absence of fact, but I have to hand it to them.

dylan604 5y ago
> fear propaganda ever took hold in total absence of fact, i mean, isn't that like exactly how it is always done?
AutumnCurtain 5y ago
The key is to create your toxic plume slowly over decades instead of in a big showy bang
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2017/11/03/470349.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/international/2017/11/... That single coal power station explosion I found on the first page of search killed more people than the Chernobyl explosion. You joke, but the real key is to buy governments, advertising, and "activists".
  - jhgb 5y ago
    How did you conclude that it killed more people than the Chernobyl explosion?
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      Because it apparently killed between 32 and 43 depending what you read. 31 people died as an immediate result of Chernobyl. Long term radiation from Chernobyl may kill anywhere from 100 to thousands of premature deaths, but I also don't count the continual nuclear and chemical disaster that is a normally operating coal power plant or its contribution to premature deaths, let alone its contribution to climate change. Only the deaths as a direct result of the explosion, just to go a little easier on coal.

axiosgunnar 5y ago

Still better than coal and our only hope for a carbon-neutral future

cee_el123 5y ago
atleast until we create an artificial star on earth ( i.e. viable fusion reactor )
- andbberger 5y ago
  no no no no no! no! we have the spicy rocks now! there is literally nothing wrong with fission. we can't stand here dying while we wait for non-existent technology to save us we needed more spicy rock reactors like, 50 years ago.
  - cee_el123 5y ago
    even if we agree that safety is guaranteed.. there is the fact that it would take a lot of dirty energy to build all the reactors and to source the uranium.. that is.. potential payoff has a upper bound unlike in fusion
- PhantomGremlin 5y ago
  We have viable fusion, today: Renewables are fusion at a distance. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23580174 As a high school senior, I went to visit a college back in 1973. I visited a lab where they were playing around with approaches to fusion reactors, a Tokamak IIRC. Today, 48 years later, we're not really any closer than we were in 1973. But today we do have both wind energy and PV energy. Commercially viable fusion. We should embrace it.
  - cee_el123 5y ago
    IMO the energy needed to manufacture, install and operate all the wind turbines and PV panels would approx cancel out the benefits of renewables ( do we even have that quantity of raw materials readily available ? or would it take an asteroid or two ? )

HenryKissinger 5y ago

I'm a little angry at the lack of coverage of Eastern European history in most US schools. I never learned of this, and I consider myself relatively well informed on nuclear issues. Looks like I need to reassess that.

number6 5y ago

Are reactors, that are not meant to produce nuclear weapons, safer or is it just coincidence?