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Radiation spikes in Chernobyl
- BlinkenBlinken 5y ago
- sschueller 5y agoWhat strategic purpose would taking Chernobyl have other than maybe securing the site and preventing someone from blowing a hole in the sarcophagus?
- tokamak 5y agoBuilding fear in the West.
- adventured 5y agoThat removes fear in the West in the context of battles raging around it. Russia has enormous nuclear capabilities, they don't need Chernobyl for anything other than to secure it from being used against them in some manner (whether stunt propaganda, or some kind of radiation threat). Chernobyl being secured by Russia relieves that risk for the West.
- newsclues 5y agoYou hold a position to launch attacks from that are hard to counter attack. Setup your artillery there and they can’t just shell the area back out of fear of causing a nuclear disaster. IMO, the UN should have stepped in and taken control of the nuclear zone. There is a global risk here.
- yaris 5y agoFrom some russian sources I’ve read that Chernobyl has been taken by Belarus soldiers, not russians. Because Belarus guys are sensitive to anything going on around Chernobyl and want to secure the site.
- jwandborg 5y agoIsn't Belarus a dictatorship? If so, that's such a nice thing for a dictator to do.
- 8note 5y agoSelf interest. Belarus is one of the places that will feel the worst effects if anything happens at chernobyl
- newsclues 5y agoThe Russias attack Kiev came from Belarus. If Belarusian soldiers are involved that is a greater escalation that simply allowing Russia to invade another nation through their territory. Belarus being a Russian pawn at the moment anything is possible I guess
- dillondoyle 5y agoI've read both reports that Belarusian military is in Ukraine, and also not. I can't find a legitimate top AP or similar report. The not sources seem to be repeating video put out from Russia so I wouldn't buy any side right now. Either way Belarus are defacto participants having done military drills, allowing tanks to move through their checkpoints into Russia. Regardless of whether they are or are not shooting right now, Belarus is 100% a pawn of Russia. That is the model Putin is trying to create in Ukraine.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoThey are working as puppets for the Russians so they're essentially Russian invaders for the 90% estimation.
- etiam 5y agoWell put. Also, take the following with more than a grain of salt as I'm in no way really knowledgeable about such systems, but I would imagine both the area itself and temporarily disturbing it could be valuable as cover for nuclear weapons. One valuable tool for keeping track of them involves detecting and analyzing escaped isotope traces, and that's going to be harder to pick out and make sense of against that noisy background. As I understand it, nuclear weaponry still features prominently in Russia's military doctrine and it's worth noting that not only the military but Russia's whole citizenry have been trained and prepared for nuclear fallout, to a much greater extent than most nations seem to prioritize today. In addition to artillery I imagine for instance certain kinds of anti-air systems might be attractive to put on a site like that. Any further suggestions? They could have taken weeks to bring equipment in during the "military exercise" with Lukashenko's troops, so I guess few things are truly off the table.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago"could be valuable as cover for nuclear weapons" You can't hide a nuclear blast, we have satellites in orbit that detect the flash. Chech the vela incident - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_incident "Russia's whole citizenry have been trained and prepared for nuclear fallout, to a much greater extent than most nations seem to prioritize today." That's not been the case for like 40 years
- seizethegdgap 5y agoI believe etiam means a higher level of background radiation means it's easier to move nuclear weapons, not use them.
- ClumsyPilot 5y agoThey are not detectable anyway - if you put a nuclear warhead in a truck, there is no way to detect it from a plane or a satellite, In fact you probably could put a nuclear bomb inside a lead-lined shipping container and send it from China to US, across all US railways, and back across the world on another ship, and probably no-one would ever know. Also why would Russia move nukes by land through chernobil, when they have bombers and complete control of the airspace?
- UnlockedSecrets 5y agoChernobyl has a nice road that happens to be the shortest road between Kyiv the Ukraine capital and Russia. It also still has several active reactors only 1 of them melted down so that gives some strategic merit byt the road is 99% of it.
- jaywalk 5y agoAll reactors at Chernobyl have been shutdown since 2000. I have been amazed lately at how many people are unaware of this and think Chernobyl is still an operating nuclear power plant.
- netsharc 5y agoA few weeks ago there's a cartoon where a guy sits in front a computer, and a speech bubble above him says "After 2 years of being an epidemiological expert, I am now a geo-political expert."...
- vlovich123 5y agoI had the opposite perception and thought no reactors were active since the explosion.
- brimble 5y agoIt was long one of those "surprising fact" sorts of things.
- blablabla123 5y agoIt's quite crazy though that they left it running for 14 years after making the area around it inhabitable and causing fallout over whole Europe
- jaywalk 5y agoIt is pretty crazy. I would assume that they really needed the energy it was producing, although I admit that I don't have much further knowledge on the topic.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- altgoogler 5y agoTake a look at the map. Chernobyl sits right on the border of Belarus, 130km to Kyiv on the western side of Dnieper river. They didn't take Chernobyl to take the reactor, they took it because it is extremely strategic if the goal is to assault Kyiv.
- seanw444 5y agoThis is most certainly the correct answer. It's the shortest shortcut to the enemy's capital, despite being an exclusion zone.
- Symmetry 5y agoAlso, it's a pretty unpopulated region and for that reason easier to move large forces through without trouble. And as a minor consideration, "We captured Chernobyl, protecting you good Russians from Ukranian nuclear threats" can be used as propaganda.
- keewee7 5y agoThe posh ruling elite in Moscow and StP want to deceive the West into thinking Russia is a mad dog that is too dangerous to bother. They want to scare the West from imposing total economic sanctions. They want to scare the West from supplying the Ukrainian resistance. Always remember Russia is a rational actor no matter how much Putin and Lavrov are fear mongering about sanctions leading to a nuclear WW3. The French foreign minister was the first to call out their bluff yesterday. I hope more Western leaders will follow.
- Jeff_Brown 5y agoI wish I knew how to tell. In game theory there are games that the crazy person wins. "Chicken" is the most famous. If both players are crazy, both lose. Unfortunately the discipline offers no way of diagnosing insanity. Committing to what looks like a crazy plan can be rational. Putin's speech on Monday certainly seemed unhinged, but he might be a good actor.
- AnotherGoodName 5y agoI'd point out that being irrational in order to scare the west into thinking you're irrational is still an example of being irrational. We can only call their bluff so many times before they feel the need to demonstrate that they are indeed willing to be crazy. Which they've done here with this whole Ukraine situation.
- clord 5y agoIt is “high ground” in the sense that it can not be safely assailed.
- teeray 5y agoIt still has functioning reactors, so I’d imagine it’s the same as the time-old military strategy: secure the supply lines. In modern times, electricity is vital to an enemy’s defensive capabilities, so depriving them of it forces them to use generators with exhaustible fuel supplies.
- yabones 5y agoThe last reactor to shutdown was Unit 3 in December 2000. The whole facility has been undergoing cleanup and decommissioning since. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
- throwawayboise 5y agoDrifting slightly off topic but it always seemed amazing to me that they kept the other reactors running even in the immediate aftermath of the Unit 4 explosion. Literally just down the hall, units 1, 2, and 3 ran for years afterwards. These were all manually controlled reactors that needed humans in the control room. No "working from home "on these.
- yabones 5y agoI think the main reason they did that, was there was simply not money in Ukraine to build replacement power plants during the 90s after the USSR collapsed. They had no other option than to keep the plant running, or risk their entire grid collapsing. Very scary to think about having to make that decision.
- ols 5y agoUnit 3 was just behind a wall, but 1 and 2 were quite far away (300-500m). They all had multiple serious incidents before and after the Chernobyl Disaster (1982 - partial core meltdown at #1, 1984 - incidents at #3 and #4, 1991 - fire at the turbine hall of #2). This was the most unsafe nuclear power plant in the whole USSR and the operators were in grave danger all the time.
- eouw0o83hf 5y agoThe Chernobyl complex still houses a key power distribution center for the Ukrainian power grid, so it does hold strategic/logistical importance.
- ornornor 5y agoIsn’t it still generating electricity (with the reactors that didn’t melt down) for the region despite everything? I guess as an invader, you’d want to control the power plant.
- bluGill 5y agoThat was shutdown a few years ago. Though I suspect that there is other infrastructure still in/through the area.
- adrianmonk 5y agoWikipedia says all the other reactors were used for some time after the accident, some for quite some time, but now all reactors at the site have been shut down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Reactor_fleet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
- stjohnswarts 5y agoPrimarily roads and solid surfaces through the area allows Russians an easier way to invade in order to murder innocent Ukrainians.
- anshumankmr 5y agoThere's a followup tweet with a possible explanation: https://twitter.com/WillyWaugh/status/1497157722663391233 https://twitter.com/WillyWaugh/status/1497157722663391233 Though I am not 100% sure of this since the USSR had removed the topsoil back then but I suppose more of it could have spewed back in to the soil over time.
- ugjka 5y agoI don't think they removed the top soil for the whole exclusion zone, that'd be an insane feat
- sp332 5y agoFrom 1986: https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/02/Workers-have-removed-all-the-topsoil-from-Pripyat-an/2145533883600/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/12/02/Workers-have-removed... They removed the topsoil from Pripyat. It wasn't perfect, but they pushed it into 800 trenches. https://xcdsystem.com/wmsym/archives//2013/papers/13526.pdf https://xcdsystem.com/wmsym/archives//2013/papers/13526.pdf
- hadlock 5y agoJapan is about halfway through this process in the Fukashima area
- dtx1 5y agoI was in chernobyl, you could pick up reactor core debris everywhere there by just looking for it with a dosimeter for a few minutes.
- anshumankmr 5y agoEven now?
- dtx1 5y agoI was there 2019, I assume not much has changed since then
- nuccy 5y agoRussians came from Belarus and with their tanks disrupt the radioactive soil and create dust [1]. The internal systems and the reactors themselves are in nominal state without changes. 1. https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-says-chernobyl-radiation-levels-increasing-after-russia-invasion-2022-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-says-chernobyl-radia...
- awb 5y agoWhat are the environmental / health risks of this radioactive dust getting kicked up?
- nuccy 5y agoUnless there is a strong wind it likely will settle back, especially since it is a thick forest around the station.
- ornornor 5y agoI don’t know about where you live but here in Europe there have been storms warnings with pretty strong winds in the last week. Not a meteorologist and I have no idea how that would impact radioactive dust spread.
- awb 5y agoAre the prevailing winds are typically West to East?
- ornornor 5y agoAccording to https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/historyclimate/weatherarchive https://www.meteoblue.com/en/weather/historyclimate/weathera... they're blowing from the West to the East so it's blowing from Europe towards Pripyat, so at least there is that.
- deutschewelle 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- perihelions 5y ago- "Data from the automated radiation monitoring system of the exclusion zone, which is available online," Where is this official source?
- elil17 5y agoNot the source shown, but the Ukrainian Parliament has tweeted a similar radiation map: https://twitter.com/ua_parliament/status/1497108007863435279 https://twitter.com/ua_parliament/status/1497108007863435279
- perihelions 5y agoYes, that's the tweet I quoted and am asking about. (It's the tweet that's double-RT'd by the tweet that's the HN submission).
- elil17 5y agoOops, my bad. But I would think that most people would consider the Parliament of Ukraine an official source - surely they have direct access to radiation data?
- perihelions 5y agoThat doesn't terminate my curiosity.
- mtmail 5y agoOne of the screenshots is https://www.saveecobot.com/en/radiation-maps#11/51.3463/30.1513/gamma/comp+cams+fire https://www.saveecobot.com/en/radiation-maps#11/51.3463/30.1... (related discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30461521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30461521)
- tastroder 5y agoThe other side is from www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua (currently down)
- overflyer 5y ago
- pvaldes 5y agoSo we will have another massive die-off of endangered saiga antelopes this spring.
- hereforphone 5y agoBe careful out there S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- contingencies 5y agoHehe. I had a laugh. For those who miss the reference, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) + https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
- perihelions 5y agoTangentially, if you appreciate being able to read raw, unfiltered OSINT like OP (@OAlexanderDK) dug up, you'd be interested to know Twitter mistakenly suspended his account twice in the past three days [0] -- one among a large number of legitimate OSINT people covering Ukraine. The existence of this kind of HN thread is fragile. You can also read Twitter Site Integrity's apology and response [1], or independent reporting about this [2]. [0] https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1496513006657839108 https://twitter.com/OAlexanderDK/status/1496513006657839108 [1] https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1496544199478583297 https://twitter.com/yoyoel/status/1496544199478583297 [2] https://www.ft.com/content/5b23938b-49b8-426f-97af-640ba40c9922 https://www.ft.com/content/5b23938b-49b8-426f-97af-640ba40c9... ("Twitter admits it mistakenly removed Ukraine open-source intelligence accounts")
- capableweb 5y agoTo add to the list of unfiltered OSINT straight from Ukraine/Russia, Telegram channels/groups are invaluable (but treat everything as unconfirmed rumors until confirmed elsewhere): - https://t.me/uniannet https://t.me/uniannet - https://t.me/ukrpravda_news https://t.me/ukrpravda_news - https://t.me/istorijaoruzija https://t.me/istorijaoruzija - https://t.me/dumskaya_net https://t.me/dumskaya_net - https://t.me/idelator https://t.me/idelator Beware, some of these are literally Russian propaganda, so again, don't take anything being said/shared as truth until verified elsewhere. In case you need a translation service for the channels, I wrote a Telegram bot that translates anything you send to it/forward to it to English (via DeepL, so higher quality translations than Google Translate), accessible here: - https://t.me/transtel_bot https://t.me/transtel_bot - Source: https://codeberg.org/CapableWeb/transtel https://codeberg.org/CapableWeb/transtel
- reitanqild 5y ago
- isoprophlex 5y agoWhat the actual flying fuck happened there, that's intensely horrible. War is hell.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- borgchick 5y agoSo are soldiers from both sides, either on foot or in vehicles in full radiation suits??? If not, aren't they at severe risk of radiation poisoning (in addition to rapid on set lead poisoning)? Not to mention if they continue past chernobyl into other regions, aren't they just gonna carry all that radiation with them?
- Accujack 5y ago>aren't they at severe risk of radiation poisoning No. Radiation effects are based on time and exposure level, and even with dust kicked up they're not likely to spend enough time there that it makes them sick at all. Breathing in radioactive material from the dust is a bit more of a problem, but I'd expect they're wearing at least basic masks outdoors. No radiation suits, though. They'll carry some dust with them wherever they go, but like dust from anywhere else, it will slowly be dispersed on roads and in rain gutters. It's not "instant death dust" so while it will increase background radiation somewhat where it lands, unless someone eats or breathes a lot of it, they won't be affected. So, still not a good thing, but not something that's a huge problem compared to flying bullets. Now, if they punch a hole in the new safe confinement and a lot of water gets in, that will be much more of a problem.
- justinpombrio 5y ago> If not, aren't they at severe risk of radiation poisoning? The Chernobyl exclusion zone extends miles outside the reactor, and gets tourists. I think the danger level is more like "don't live here or you'll get cancer" than "don't walk here or you'll die". And don't pick up sketchy looking things because they might give you cancer. Inside/near the sarcophagus is a different story (that I don't know, but assume is much worse). For example, the local wildlife is apparently doing better now than it was before the meltdown, because of lack of human activity. Not counting right next to the reactor where things died. Hopefully the Russian troops don't interfere with ongoing cleanup efforts... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#Radioactive_contamination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone#Radio...
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoThis is ridiculous panic. They haven't cracked open the NSC or anything like that. It's just dust. Long lived radionuclides kicked into the air that emit alpha and beta radiation - practically harmless unless you're playing around in it like a sandpit. Please don't let your attention be diverted from the matter at hand.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y agoYeah, most people don't have a proper mental model of radiation - it tends to be discussed either as a virus, or as a poison. It's neither - it doesn't multiply, it is not transmissible, dilution works perfectly well; and as a bonus - it gets less dangerous on its own with time
- skywal_l 5y agoCould they be deploying nukes? Chernobyl would be the perfect cover.
- stjohnswarts 5y agolol Russia doesn't need to "deploy" nukes. They can hit any spot on the planet in a matter of minutes without moving anything at all.
- pleb_nz 5y agoImagine this for a movie plot Russia stages the invasion as a cover to recover something from deep under Chernobyl What do you think that thing might be....
- ge96 5y agoThey bored straight into hell (an actual recent movie that came out The Superdeep) edit: that's not a spoiler btw, the plot is pretty neat
- jl6 5y agoChernobyl was a geo-nuclear power plant sited on top of a natural column of subcritical fissile material that extended down deep into the Earth’s crust. The plan was to seed the column with just enough nuclear fuel to bring the upper part to critical mass, and thence draw material upwards into the reaction zone, thus creating a virtually unlimited supply of fuel and energy. Unfortunately, the accident caused a meltdown which is still going, three decades later. When it hits the mantle, its energy output will begin to grow exponentially as it consumes the greater concentrations of nucleotides at that depth. Eventually, it will explode, triggering global supervolcanism, which will destroy most of human civilization, and potentially drop ash on Putin’s car. He’s only just had it washed, so he sends in the troops to retrieve the melting core, and save the world.
- elihu 5y agoHonestly the elephant's foot is the closest real-life thing I can think of to the Ark of the Covenant from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's just that everyone already knows that it has no practical applications and they don't want it.
- ineedasername 5y agoDoes someone have any insight on why Russia would expend resources taking this site? AFAIK it doesn't have anything useful or produce any power, except maybe the possibility that mishandling it could invoke the terror of regional disaster. (Unless that's the point?)
- simplyaccont 5y ago- shortest path to Kyiv from Belarus - you can't really bomb them now at this location in order to push back
- jltsiren 5y agoOthers have already mentioned the location between Kyiv and the Belarusian border. Another reason could be that there are huge wetlands on the Ukraine–Belarus border, with only a few major roads across. If Russia wants to move troops and supplies in that general region, they have to pass by Chernobyl.
- thow-58d4e8b 5y agoIt's on the way to Kiev, the exclusion zone means there are no large urban settlements to fight over, and it's also using the West's weaknesses against itself - reality: topsoil has somewhat elevated levels of radiation compared to normal background radiation. The sarcophagus around the molten core is basically indestructible. public perception: radioactive cloud will make all Europe uninhabitable
- aluminum96 5y agoI really thought that Russia would avoid the exclusion zone. It was just so obvious that everyone benefits from keeping fighting out of that area.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoIt has two advantages for the Russians: 1. It's one of the most direct paths from the Russian border to Kyiv. 2. It's not likely to get bombed by anybody.
- zrail 5y agoVery likely a dumb question, but would the Russians be carrying depleted uranium ammunition? Could that be what's causing the detectors to see spikes?
- picture 5y agoDepleted uranium generally are used by 30 mm autocannon rounds carried by CAS planes or helicopters, though depleted uranium APFSDS tank shells do exist. Detectors are most definitely not detecting depleted uranium ammunition due to how radiation intensity falls off swiftly with distance, and the low radioactivity of DU itself
- eigelc 5y agoI find this radiation spike very suspicious. What is the mechanism? Did they open the sarcophag, did they stop taking care of spent fuel from other reactors? What happened? I don’t buy the story that they raised radiation simply by disturbing dust with their vehicles. There have been 39 years since the nuclear accident and I assume enough winds and rain and snow to raise all the dust that could have been raised.