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Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

moxie.org

161–170 of 264 posts

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#161
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those 7.3 million deaths are from people burning local fuels (wood, trash, dung, etc.) for heating and cooking. It's seems unfair to compare subsistence, low-tech energy (dung burning) to nuclear energy. It makes a lot more sense to compare high-tech nuclear energy with high-tech renewables (with storage).

> It makes a lot more sense to compare high-tech nuclear energy with high-tech renewables (with storage). If you really want to compare that, rooftop solar actually has a significant risk of worker death. I am willing to bet that, per TWh, there would be significantly more deaths with solar than nuclear.

Your hypothesis made sense to me, so I did a bit of research to try and back up the claim.

No idea about the biases or accuracy of the information supplied in these links, so take it with a grain of salt, but they seem to support the idea that Solar (installation) is indeed more dangerous than Nuclear per TWh.

Too many factors to call it more "dangerous", and also disingenuous because the absolute worst case scenario for solar power doesn't have the possibility of negatively impacting millions of peoples lives.

But hey, this is a bit of a fun fact that might stop people demonising nuclear energy so much.

Sources:

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/06/update-of-death-per-te... https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-d...

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#163
Visited Chernobyl 3 years ago, just before they cover it with Confinement.

https://imgur.com/gallery/uIOOz1p

Btw, you can easily visit it, because of lots of tours here, it cost about $100-$150 per day. I used this company https://www.chernobyl-tour.com/english/48-one-day-trip-to-th...

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#165
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, the soviet entry is clearly what led the leaders of Japan to surrender - the timeline also matches very closely. Not sure what we keep hearing the A-bomb propaganda such a long time after the facts.

That's something that Soviets very much want the world to believe, but they have never had shown how they could even possibly get their troops anywhere near Japanese mainland, what with Russian/Soviet/Russian navy historically being more dangerous to people who serve there than any enemy. And whatever happened in Manchuria or Korea didn't really concern Japan by that point anyway.

There were enough of Soviet troops to invade Japanese puppet Manchukuo, and they were planning on going to Hokkaido. [1]

Japan was plenty concerned, especially remembering the last time they met USSR military. [2]

In fact, memories of that smashing were arguably the reason Japan turned east to Pearl Harbour, rather than west to Soviet Union. [3]

[1] https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/red-army-i...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Khalkhin_Gol

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13102802-nomonhan-1939

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#166
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing against Moxie, but this stated fact is clearly nonsense. It certainly would have been terrible for a large volume of water to reach the burning core, but you're not going to get a 5MT blast from a reactor accident. It takes a LOT of things working perfectly to make a nuclear bomb explode correctly. Lots of bad things happen when reactors go critical, a nuclear blast is generally not one of them. It's the spre…

"Only 1400 kilograms of uranium and graphite mixture would have needed to hit the water to set off a new explosion. Our experts studied the possibility and concluded that the explosion would have had a force of 3 to 5 megatons. Minsk...would have been razed." - Vassili Nesterenko, director of the Institute of Nuclear Energy at the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. I am not a nuclear physicist, but at least som…

Link to original source please, in text, from a reputable source (copy of a report). An interview of a senile official as a part of a dubiuous documentary is not a solid source, sadly. Also, argument to authority does not make the claim valid

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#167
post #116
post #5

The pictures are lovely and the reflections profound. But much of the cited data here appears wrong. For instance, the article states (italicized): "six hundred helicopter pilots were killed" and yet it was only 600 helicopter pilots who _flew_ liquidator missions[1], two of which were killed in an piloting accident and none were registered killed from immediate radiation exposure[2], though at least one eventually d…

> It's just good when making specific claims for those claims to be substantiated. After watching the Chernobyl miniseries last week, I dug deep into Wikipedia articles related to the accident. One thing I found interesting was the following: to empty the bubbler pools, three men dived below to reactor to open valves: Alexei Ananenko, Valeri Bezpalov and Boris Baranov. In western media, it was reported that as soon a…

I think the more accurate way to describe it is "(Soviet) propaganda meets (Western media) sensationalism."

Not that we don't do propaganda, but I don't think it was government orchestrated and political in this case.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#168
post #60

On that score- the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did less overall damage than the Allied's firebombings in other cities- and, IIRC, there were less casualties in the nuked cities as well- the damage was just different.

Well yes, some consider that the atomic bombs saved lives by ending the war. If the bombs weren't dropped and the ware continued then those fire bombings would have killed even more.

I have heard this argument so many times, it almost seems like this has been drilled into American minds post fact to rationalize the only nuclear attack in human history. I can never take this argument seriously. There was no way there would have been more deaths unless the bombs were dropped. Imagine someone suggesting dropping a bomb in a dense city as an argument for “saving lives”. It seems absurd. Nobody knows how the exactly the war would have played out. So there was no guaranteed outcome. So, the bomb was dropped at best based on some probability.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#169
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, some consider that the atomic bombs saved lives by ending the war. If the bombs weren't dropped and the ware continued then those fire bombings would have killed even more.

Your comment is based on the myth that the atomic bombs ended the war. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hi... """ The atomic bombings, terrible and inhumane as they were, played little role in Japanese leaders' calculations to quickly surrender. After all, the U.S. had firebombed more than 100 Japanese cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two more cities destroyed; whether the attack requ…

Oliver Stone is a professional conspiracy theorist.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#170
post #140
post #79

> Standing in the bleachers, listening to the Pripyat municipal overture of resounding bird song, the only thing we could do was stare out at the trees and wonder "how long until New York looks like this?" I'm curious what the author meant by this. Does he mean how long would it take NYC to look like Chernobyl after a similar nuclear/natural accident happened? Or do they have a fatalistic outlook on the future due to…

> "Also the end of the story mentions there are no obvious monuments to the people who worked to help rescue people but there is one in the very city he was reporting from dedicated to the firefighters and others involved: https://oddviser.com/ukraine/chernobyl/memorial" I've seen it and really love it. The distinction is that it's inside the exclusion zone, a guerrilla art installation built by the liquidators thems…

Right, sounds like a fascinating place. Thanks for the article.

I'm interest to learn more about the security of the place (ie, how effective is it, the possible repercussions when caught, etc). Something I plan to read more into one day.

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