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Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

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Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#181

Post by goto11 »

sifRAWR wrote: post #161
mrpopo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

People "demonizing" nuclear typically do it because of the potential devastating consequences of an accident, and the uncertainty of storing waste for thousands of years. Not because they think nuclear have a high death toll in everyday use.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#182

Post by dplavery92 »

Phlarp wrote: post #14
randylahey wrote: post #4

I found it very distracting that none of the ostensibly Russian or Ukrainian characters have an even remotely slavic accent.

So Soviet characters that speak English with a slavic accent would be less distracting? Surely if you are bothered by this they should be speaking Russian with English subtitles.

I think we have seen this sort of approach succeed in a major US TV production in Netflix's Narcos. There are English-speaking characters, yes, but most of the drama happens entirely in Spanish.

I think this series would also have been better fully in Russian with English subtitles.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#183

Post by stevenjohns »

goto11 wrote: post #181
sifRAWR wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People "demonizing" nuclear typically do it because of the potential devastating consequences of an accident, and the uncertainty of storing waste for thousands of years. Not because they think nuclear have a high death toll in everyday use.

But the potential devastation isn’t rooted in reality - anyone can assume the worst could happen, and when it did happen in Chernobyl the numbers haven’t been very high.

The alternatives, even the green ones like hydroelectric, have dwarfed nuclear-related deaths hundreds, if not thousands, of times over with single catastrophes[0].

Arguments against the storage of nuclear fuel usually don’t understand how little waste there is and, even still, burying a problem for 200 years while we figure out how to deal with it is an infinite number of times better than dealing with the fallout of global warming by not shifting to nuclear energy.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#184

Post by perfunctory »

When discussing the safety of nuclear power most comments seem to focus on the number of deaths. While death count is tragic in itself, it doesn't capture the full extent of human drama.

Consider this

Fukushima

"the nuclear accident was responsible for 154,000 being evacuated"

"In December 2016 the government estimated decontamination, compensation, decommissioning, and radioactive waste storage costs at 21.5 trillion yen ($187 billion), nearly double the 2013 estimate."

Chernobyl

"In 2005, the total cost over 30 years for Belarus alone was estimated at US$235 billion; about $301 billion in today's dollars given inflation rates."

"between 5% and 7% of government spending in Ukraine is still related to Chernobyl"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_nuclear_disa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#185

Post by onetimemanytime »

moxie wrote: post #19
dweekly wrote: 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…

I think there's a lot of uncertainty in talking about Chernobyl, since most of the information published by the Soviet authorities was intentionally incorrect or misleading, designed to downplay the significance of the accident. One thing I've found interesting in talking about Chernobyl is that advocates of nuclear power are often willing to accept the Soviet numbers as fact, since they confirm the idea that nuclear…

>>One thing I've found interesting in talking about Chernobyl is that advocates of nuclear power are often willing to accept the Soviet numbers as fact, since they confirm the idea that nuclear power is still relatively "safe" even in case of disaster.

The other posters mentioned the trade-off, or people die in plane crashes but many more would have died had they taken the car. Power needs to be generated one way or another...

Also, can we agree that the Chernobyl plant's design and management might have been lacking? New models are much safer.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#186

Post by godelski »

nostromo wrote: post #89
arcticbull wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing I've found interesting in talking about Chernobyl is that advocates of nuclear power are often willing to accept the Soviet numbers as fact, since they confirm the idea that nuclear power is still relatively "safe" even in case of disaster. I believe the IAEA report (which you can read yourself) put together by the United Nations and relevant affected governments in the mid-2000s. It shows that over the e…

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).

Well let me give you another number then. 1 million deaths, annually, are linked to coal ash.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#187

Post by godelski »

sifRAWR wrote: post #161
mrpopo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Interestingly enough Wiki notes a EU study[0][1] that shows that nuclear and wind are some of the cheapest energy sources when you price in environmental effects and health costs.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_the_co...

[1] http://www.externe.info/externe_2006/exterpols.html

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#188

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

stevenjohns wrote: post #183
goto11 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People "demonizing" nuclear typically do it because of the potential devastating consequences of an accident, and the uncertainty of storing waste for thousands of years. Not because they think nuclear have a high death toll in everyday use.

But the potential devastation isn’t rooted in reality - anyone can assume the worst could happen, and when it did happen in Chernobyl the numbers haven’t been very high. The alternatives, even the green ones like hydroelectric, have dwarfed nuclear-related deaths hundreds, if not thousands, of times over with single catastrophes[0]. Arguments against the storage of nuclear fuel usually don’t understand how little was…

> anyone can assume the worst could happen, and when it did happen in Chernobyl

The miniseries makes it clear that the absolute worst outcomes at Chernobyl were prevented through huge effort: water was drained from the tanks under the meltdown, so there was no steam explosion that would have smashed the other reactor cores as well. The meltdown then did not burn through the concrete and into the groundwater table.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#189

Post by KptMarchewa »

Fins wrote: post #154
ekianjo wrote: post #113

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 no either Japanese Navy nor Japanese Air Force at this point, so quality of Soviet Navy does not matter. All they would need to do is to transport enough bodies to the islands.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#190

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

sifRAWR wrote: post #161
mrpopo wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The absolute worst case scenario for Chernobyl would have happened if the corium had melted through to the water table and caused a huge steam explosion. This was narrowly avoided. It's hard to estimate the impact but at the very least a much larger area would have been heavily irradiated.

Deaths/TrKWhr isn't a useful measure, because nuclear has a binary risk profile. When it goes badly wrong it does a lot of lasting economic damage, in ways that other energy sources don't.

There's also no way to compare "TCO" like for like because coal etc are nasty immediate pollutants, while nuclear waste remains a problem for a very long time.

The real problem with nuclear isn't the technology, it's the trustworthiness of the management culture around it. If the industry was a byword for truth, honesty, and straight dealing it would be perceived in a much less negative way.

That doesn't seem to be how the industry operates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_whistleblowers

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