11 ms·
Ukraine warns Chernobyl nuclear plant suffered power outage
- sofixa 5y agoJust watch Russia blame Ukrainian Nazis if something goes wrong here.
- rjzzleep 5y agoNot like I really want to engage in this, but what exactly would Russian gain from that? Their capitol is only 500 km from the Ukrainian border. I get that everyone thinks Putin is crazy and therefore everything every Russian does is suicidal, but come on, we ought be able to put our emotions aside and talk about this properly.
- kenmacd 5y agoThey didn't say they want something to go wrong, just that if it does Putin will blame someone else.
- scrollaway 5y agoI don't think GP is implying Russia has something to gain from it. But that won't prevent it from happening.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- risyachka 5y ago>> I get that everyone thinks Putin is crazy and therefore everything every Russian does is suicidal, but come on, we ought be able to put our emotions aside and talk about this properly. Thinking that putin is crazy is actually a result of talking about all this properly. Because no one in the world can find another explanation.
- mey 5y agoPutin has backed himself into a corner. The only way the Russian government seems to be willing to move forward is to control the narrative, and so far that has been spinning a false narrative about liberating Ukraine from Nazis. At this point the information curtain is dropping in full force inside the country with extreme laws being put in place punishing "lies" about the way with up to 15 years imprisonment plus cutting off external media and social media. Chernobyl has been in Russian control since the second or third day of the war. Strategically it is a pathway between Kyiv and Russia. I doubt Russia wants to destroy it, it'll do way more harm to Russia than anyone else, but this is a war and infrastructure is being destroyed.
- tiborsaas 5y agoIt's enough to have enough poorly educated people take over there and incompetence will do the rest. This is what caused the '86 meltdown in the first place.
- sofixa 5y agoRussia would gain more "validation" of their narrative, that Ukraine is a dangerous state run by Nazis and what not that needs to be "demilitarised" and "denazified". It's of course an outright bullshit narrative, but they keep inventing bullshit to prop it up.
- HarryHirsch 5y agoThe Nazis ran a scorched earch program when the end was visible (The Captain, anyone), so the Ukrainian Wehrwolf behind this is even a tenable hypothesis.
- micromacrofoot 5y agoRussia has already warned about Ukrainians building a dirty bomb, so you're probably not far off. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence-says-ukraine-making-nuclear-dirty-bomb-2022-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...
- sofixa 5y agoFunnily they did it days after Ukrainian officials and an alleged FSB whistleblower warned they'll do so.
- Kelteseth 5y agoI actually got an ad(!) on YouTube about this yesterday. I was only able to record the last minute of it with my smartphone (crappy I know, but I watched in on my android tv), so I do not remember the full version. The ad was about that we do not know what will happen in Chernobyl, and it could be dangerous to the eu depending on the direction of the wind. It actually used footage from the show Chernobyl, but I highly doubt it was licensed. It ended with "STOP WAR IN UKRAINE". This was by far the strangest ad I ever watched on YouTube.
- kache_ 5y agostop watching youtube if you're getting ads
- imglorp 5y agoUblock Origin, obviously not on Chrome, blocks YT ads nicely.
- ry4nolson 5y agoUblock Origin still works fine on chrome and indeed blocks youtube ads.
- ben-schaaf 5y agoNot on Android, no extensions there. Works great with Firefox though.
- zamadatix 5y ago$143.88/year does it for 5 family members on all devices as well.
- fuckcensorship 5y agoI can’t tell if you’re trying to make a joke, but that’s an outrageous expense for something that can be easily gotten for free.
- jl6 5y agoThe article says the spent fuel assemblies need active cooling otherwise the water will evaporate. Really?! Even though it’s years since the reactors shut down?
- wongarsu 5y agoThe fuel assemblies are radioactive, thus heat the water. Heated water evaporates. That's all the article claims, and it's obviously true. In fact, liquid water at any temperature evaporates. What the article doesn't mention is the timescale. Is the water heated to a significant degree? Does it evaporate notably faster than any other pool exposed to the atmosphere? The answer seems to be: not really enough to worry about.
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoThe shutdown procedure for a nuclear reactor can take decades.
- doikor 5y agoFor the spent nuclear fuel this isn't really a problem as this is over 20 year old spent fuel. Yes over weeks or months the water might evaporate but spent fuel that old is stored outside with letting it cool passively to the air all over the world (usually after around 5 years or so) Here is a post about this by IEAA from March 3rd. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-8-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-8-iaea-... "Due to time elapsed since the 1986 Chornobyl accident, the heat load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water contained in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal without the need for electrical supply."
- baremetal 5y agozirconium clad rods exposed to air generate hydrogen gas. not a good thing.
- ben_w 5y agoZirconium can split hydrogen from H2O, but only if exposed to H2O while between about 1000 and 1500 C. You can tell by looking if the rods are this hot, because they will be emitting orange light: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000%20Celsius%20black%20body http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000%20Celsius%20black%... If the fuel rods are stored indoors, that building will already be on fire before the rods get that hot. If the rods aren’t in an enclosed volume, any hydrogen would rapidly diffuse. Eventually it would either oxidise (too spread out for “burn” to feel like the right word) or escape into space. If they’re in a building which is on fire and while it’s on fire someone sprays water on them, then they’ll produce hydrogen. IDK if that hydrogen would burn away fast enough to not be an explosion hazard or build up enough that it is, but it shouldn’t come up anyway because any firefighters on site ought to know not to use water in that situation.
- korantu 5y agoOnly if heated above 1000C, and if there is enough steam. 20 y.o. spent fuel will not heat this much
- 5y ago
- sschueller 5y agoParaphrasing an expert in the field (https://twitter.com/energybants https://twitter.com/energybants): "The spent fuel rods are over 20 years old and have very little heat to dissipate. In most plants, spent fuel that is more than 5 years old sits in dry storage cooled easily by air. Also RBMK (Chernobyl reactor type) has lower burnup than other reactor types, thus lower decay heat." "There are indeed 20k old fuel rods in a pool. Their heat is low enough that experts I've talked to expect weeks or even months to heat the water enough to dry out the pool. Even then, natural air circulation should be sufficient."
- baremetal 5y agoair circulation around zirconium clad fuel rods is not a good thing. auto ignition becomes a high probability issue with the generation of hydrogen gas.
- sassy_quat 5y agoIf only if this is reddit and I could call upon the remindme bot to see if you'll eventually be right. For now I wonder when this will happen.
- jeofken 5y agoMake a calendar entry with a link to the comment you want to remember
- rectang 5y ago
- beloch 5y agoPredicting Putin is difficult at best. However, Chernobyl may have been captured simply because it's on one of the shortest paths to Kyiv. It may also be that the exclusion zone is a bit safer for troops to travel through than the surrounding areas. Residual radiation is nowhere nearly as deadly as a pissed off Ukrainian with an RPG. Also, Russians camped out in the exclusion zone probably don't have to worry about artillery or drone strikes. Ukrainian forces know better. If you're worried about nuclear catastrophe, the taking of the Zaporizhzhia power plant is far more concerning. Russians hit one of the buildings with rocket fire. It turned out to be a training building and not one of the reactors. We have to ask if that was deliberate or if everyone (the Russians included) just got lucky. Taking this power plant gave Russian forces control over a quarter of Ukraine's power generation, which has obvious strategic value. Ukrainian forces are also unlikely to counter-attack directly, for obvious reasons, so it should be easy for the Russians to hold. Finally, taking this plant hostage dealt a huge psychological blow to a country that remembers the Chernobyl incident.
- Archelaos 5y agoThis shows what a terrible technology nuclear power is in terms of security. Everything from fuel to waste is a potential target in times of war or terrorist attacks. So even opponents without nuclear weapons of their own can turn a conflict into a nuclear one.
- dimitrios1 5y agoSo what is the argument here? We shouldn't have nice things that could greatly benefit society because terrorists or war-mongering dictators might come after them? What if a warring nation destroyed a hydroelectric dam and it flooded an entire town? Does this mean we should give up on hydro power? What would happen if a terrorist gained access to your city's water treatment facility and contaminated it with a bioweapon resistant to chlorine? Does this mean we shouldn't have water delivery for our cities? What would happen if a terrorist or warring nation gained access to your country's institute of virology where you are performing gain-of-function research, and they unleash a superbug you didn't intend into the population? Should we not perform medical science then? What would happen if you built a really tall building and a terrorist decided to fly an airplane into it? Should we not build tall buildings anymore?
- ahelwer 5y agoNone of your analogies are applicable. Nuclear power stations require extraordinary stability in a world that cannot provide it. Earthquakes, tsunamis, war, or another failure mode nobody’s even thought of yet can lead to entire states becoming uninhabitable. We should desire that the consequences of failure draw from the domain of the normal distribution. Nuclear power draws its failure consequences from the exponential distribution. And failures will always happen eventually.
- dimitrios1 5y agoNuclear power stations on 1970s or older technology* The newer technologies, with the much smaller reactor cores can greatly limit the destructive capabilities even to the point where a meltdown caused by some unforseen event will be entirely containable.
- EB-Barrington 5y agoOver the last week, workers have been tortured at this plant by the Russian occupiers. Vehicles are coming in and out of the exclusion zone, tracking radioactive materials all over Ukraine. The spent fuel is not be an issue (yet), as long as Russians hold their fire. This is all getting extremely serious - and I hope the world can one day say "we did everything we could to help Ukraine", because at the moment they certainly can't. Source: me (and others of course) (I'm sure deep in my comment history here there will be something about me formerly running tours at Chernobyl, I have a lot of contacts, I have met in person with two Chernobyl workers here in Kyiv just today - and I only post information I know to be 100% accurate) Hello from Kyiv.
- 4ggr0 5y ago> Over the last week, workers have been tortured at this plant by the Russian occupiers I would really like to see proof for that. Not necessarily because I don't believe it, but because anecdotes backed by facts or sources are way more powerful than a random comment on HN.
- tablespoon 5y ago>> Over the last week, workers have been tortured at this plant by the Russian occupiers > I would really like to see proof for that. Not necessarily because I don't believe it, but because anecdotes backed by facts or sources are way more powerful than a random comment on HN. If there's proof, you probably won't see it for months or years, at least. It's not like the Russians are going to let BBC reporters embed with their interrogation units.
- 4ggr0 5y agoWell maybe someone recorded it. Is there not at least a single other person talking about this?
- justin66 5y agoThe kind of military units that hold people prisoner and compel their labor are notorious for letting international reporters in to observe conditions. I'm sure you'll get your news report shortly!
- ThalesX 5y ago> UN nuclear watchdog says Chernobyl power cut has no critical impact on safety The loss of power at the Chernobyl plant does not have any critical impact on safety at the site, the UN’s nuclear watchdog says. > The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tweeted that the “heat load of spent fuel storage pool and volume of cooling water at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant [are] sufficient for effective heat removal without [the] need for electrical supply”.
- gunfighthacksaw 5y agoI always thought S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was just a gripping shooter with survival horror and open world elements. Now it looks like it was a prophecy. I wonder if the Strelok is alive today?
- WilTimSon 5y agoDoesn't look much like a prophecy considering all the analysis by experts. Unless something more drastic happens, the plant will be fine. (The obvious caveat here is that even experts can be wrong but let's hope they're not.)
- foxfluff 5y agoI recall there being lots of "experts" around during the Fukushima disaster, explaining that there's nothing to worry about (because insert explanation of safety mechanisms in a modern reactor that either weren't there at all or were not working). I hope the experts this time around actually know what they're talking about. It's hard to tell armchair experts and real experts apart.
- VeninVidiaVicii 5y agoWhat is the end goal here? I hadn’t heard much about anything nuclear in years, and suddenly three nuclear threats or events in the past two weeks.
- kobalsky 5y agomedia amplifying every piece of fear inducing crap spewed by both sides of the conflict. scared people watch the news more often.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoYou're not providing a counter-argument, you're just calling people idiots. That's not an argument.
- kobalsky 5y agoAre you are arriving at the conclusion that I'm calling people idiots because I say that scared people watch the news more often? People get scared because no one can be informed 100% of time about 100% of the topics. When I say that scared people watch the news more often I count myself included, since this damn invasion happened I have some news channel 100% of the time because I want to know what hell is going to happen, if I have to stock up or if I need to build a damn nuclear shelter. I do think that a big chunk of the news media is composed of a band of ruthless, unethical pieces of garbage.
- VeninVidiaVicii 5y agoTo be fair the tone seemed terser in your first statement and I thought you were angry. Now, rereading it, I can see what you meant.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- lumost 5y agoRussia has a military doctrine of "Escalate to De-escalate" that they adopted in the year 2000 to deal with superior forces of NATO. Basically the idea is that by escalating violence, threats, and otherwise increasing "risk" for the other side they can force a negotiated settlement that would be superior to what their actual bargaining position is. At the extreme, this is why Russian military doctrine allows the use of tactical nuclear weapons as they provide a last stop for negotiation before runaway Mutually Assured Destruction scenarios. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon#Risk_of_escalating_a_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon#Risk_o... > According to several reports, including by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as a result of the effectiveness and acceptability of USAF use of precision munitions with little collateral damage in the Kosovo conflict in what amounted to strategic destruction once only possible with nuclear weapons or massive bombing, Vladimir Putin, then-secretary of Security Council of Russia, formulated a concept ("escalate to de-escalate") of using both tactical and strategic nuclear threats and strikes to de-escalate or cause an enemy to disengage from a conventional conflict threatening what Russia considers a strategic interest.[21][22][23] The lowered threshold for use of nuclear weapons by Russia is disputed by other experts.[24][25]
- jonasenordin 5y agoIf Chernobyl is in Russian hands, how do the Ukrainians know it's lost power?
- belter 5y agoThe Ukrainian technicians are managing the plant under the guns of Russian soldiers.
- jonasenordin 5y agoThanks. This article seems to bear this out: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60638949 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60638949
- rags2riches 5y agoPresumably the invaders did not bring their own crew for the plant along. The crew is still there and have communicated about the lost power.
- dspillett 5y agoIf it is not generating its own power for remaining operations (cooling etc.) then they could tell by reading a drop in drawn power from whatever the usual external source is?
- api 5y agoOne of the things I learned here is that Chernobyl still requires active cooling to some extent. The failure modes of nuclear fission power are just insane. Yes I think it's true that coal has killed far more people, but the economic cost of just one fission plant failure is so high that one serious incident destroys the economics of the entire program. It also tends to make fission power privately uninsurable since once incident would bankrupt the insurance company within weeks. How much renewable energy and storage could you buy for the containment and cleanup cost associated with Fukushima?
- jaywalk 5y agoChernobyl does not require active cooling today. It will be fine without power.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoOther comments imply that the nuclear rods have been inactive for 20 years, and that passive - or even air - cooling will be fine. There won't be any runaway reactions or additional meltdowns, if that's correct.
- didip 5y agoIf the Russian government want to stoke fear about Nuclear power plant to keep the EU addicted to their oil and gas, this is a smart play.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoIf ineffective, because the IAEA and co have already indicated the risk of incidents is low. Same with the other nuclear power plant being captured; at this point I'd say the danger of Russia launching nukes is a tad bit higher than a nuclear power plant. Besides, don't nuclear power plants have safeties built in these days in case of power loss or a lack of attendants? I've pulled up the article about control rods, if I'm reading it correctly, if inserted fully they should stop the reaction. I presume nuclear reactors have failsafes so that the control rods are inserted fully in case of incident.
- ngcc_hk 5y agoThe details not sure but you know they use graphite in those days that get into big trouble. Just melt down is problem. But explosion then spread out. Not sure these cool down of rods of 21 years have year. Hope not.
- RNAlfons 5y agoPlease explain how Germany should heat most of their households with nuclear power? This nuclear Astro-Turf is really jumping the shark these days...
- gizmo686 5y agoWhat do you need an explanation about? Electrical heating is a solved problem at this point.
- RNAlfons 5y agoSo what do you propose? To roll out electrical heating for 75% [1] of the German population? You think this is in any realistic way affordable or even doable in a significant time? Seriously? [1]https://de.statista.com/infografik/11385/art-der-heizung-und-zum-heizen-genutzte-energietraeger/ https://de.statista.com/infografik/11385/art-der-heizung-und...
- grujicd 5y agoI had no idea that Chernobyl nuclear plant was still operational after the accident, with 3 remaining reactors. The last one was shut down in 2000. Operators were comming there every day for work, nuts! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Decommissioning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
- tailspin2019 5y agoThis is news to me too. I’m amazed. From your link: > After the explosion at reactor No. 4, the remaining three reactors at the power plant continued to operate, as the Soviet Union could not afford to shut the plant down. > …. In October 1991, reactor No. 2 caught fire, and was subsequently shut down. I always assumed it was totally abandoned after the accident, barring the cleanup work.
- danielktdoranie 5y agoThat's interesting. I thought all of Chernobyl's remaining reactors were shutdown in 2000... why does it matter if it has power or not?
- CodeGlitch 5y agoPower is needed to pump water to cool the reactors. Without power = meltdown.
- pdonis 5y agoNot for reactors that have been shut down for more than 20 years. Decay heat removal from a shut down reactor is an issue for days or perhaps weeks after shutdown, not years.
- jdrc 5y agoRussians are probably using the nuclear scare for terror purposes, knowing that it makes big headlines in europe & US.
- chillage 5y agoThis is coming from the Ukraine government so.. Seems more likely the scare is coming from Ukraine to stoke international outrage at Russia?
- omnicognate 5y agohttps://nitter.net/iaeaorg/status/1501545852715905029 https://nitter.net/iaeaorg/status/1501545852715905029 > IAEA sees no critical impact on safety.