Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

moxie.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 264 posts

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#191

Post by TeMPOraL »

pvaldes wrote: post #132
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate that people still point to Chernobyl as why we should never go back to nuclear power ever again.

Taking in mind that the human population living in the area has sinked, and that Prypiat has been a ghost town eating money for 33 years, I can understand the general lack of enthusiasm for repeating the Chernobyl experience at home.

Given the extent of tourism into the exclusion zone (myself visiting Prypiat in 2017), I wouldn't be surprised if the town itself actually made money and if (excluding opportunity cost and the costs of Sarcophagus) the whole Zone was net-profitable now.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#192

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

kzrdude wrote: post #173
ekianjo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And you know what, the Japanese government deserved it. They started the war, killed millions of people in the process (including many millions of civilians in Asia), and then had the gall to try to bargain for decent surrender terms after all that horror they caused? Nope. Sometimes harsh punishment is necessary. The government yes. The people did not elect them. They had no choice in the matter, and were also tra…

A different perspective, not trying to justify killing civilians. No matter which way a leader comes to power, the population pays the taxes and the ultimate tolls. This means that when we are on the inside, in the country, we can't be more or less complacent with a bad dictator than a bad elected leader, we always pay the price for what they do. It's always our problem.

Back-channel peace negotiations had been taking place for quite a while before the war ended. There was a large faction in the Japanese leadership that wanted to end the war, because it was widely understood to be unwinnable.

The offer was a negotiated surrender that would end hostilities with some face-saving concessions - specifically for the Emperor.

There isn't a perfect historic record of the negotiations, but it's clear the Allies pushed hard for unconditional surrender.

If the argument is about minimising the loss of lives, the war could have been ended much earlier.

If the argument is about the post-war relationship between the allies/survivors, and which actors the bombs were supposed to send a message to, the situation is much more complex.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#193

Post by speaker1 »

guscost wrote: post #146
arcticbull wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even still the remaining 3 reactors at the Chernobyl plant continued to operate safely, the last one closing in the year 2000. There’s a number of RBMK reactors in use today; they learned from the accident and patched up the issues. Not to say the new western reactors aren’t better, the very much are.

Even the older western reactors were much better. Look up “positive void coefficient” and “passive nuclear safety”.

Sure, but Fukusima incident speaks itself for their safety.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#194

Post by speaker1 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #149
moxie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even if a thousands died from Chernobyl, it reflects the danger of the Soviet system, not of nuclear energy. Just take the thing we learned in this week's episode: The design flaw on the RBMK reactors that caused the explosion had been observed before, but the report was classified to not put the glorious Soviet nuclear technology in a bad light !!! In any remotely sane system, security risks are published and compen…

I kinda miss your point. What then does the Fukushima incident reflect? Danger of Japanese system, lol? Or as the US contractors built it, the US system? As according analysis [1] the Fukushima station design itself did not consider the natural features of place. Chernobyl incident happened due to human error, according to same source.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Ch...

edit: formatting

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#195

Post by mikekchar »

dalore wrote: post #60
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #55

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.

If you are ever in Japan, IMHO, it is really interesting to go both to the Hiroshima peace memorial museum and the Yasukuni shrine war museum in Tokyo. The contrast is really interesting, especially wrt the interpretation of the end of WWII in Japan. I think it's fair to say that whoever you talk to there is a fair amount of propaganda pushing one, mostly political, view over another.

What I can say with some certainty is that after the war more than 1 million people in Japan died of starvation due to the combined effects of the US blockade during the war and the poor food distribution system in Japan at the time. In fact, Japan's protectionist agricultural system of today is based on measures put in place by the occupational government, designed to ensure that such a famine could not occur again.

Japan was already beaten by the time the atomic bombs were dropped. Firebombing would have been completely unnecessary. The US just needed to wait. The main issue, of course, was whether or not there would have been a conditional surrender or an unconditional surrender. Similarly talks of land invasions and militia trying to defend the main islands is also interesting, but actually pretty unrealistic. If you can find it, I recommend reading "Barefoot Gen" which is a manga about the time period written by someone who survived it. It is available in English.

As someone who now makes Japan his home (and hopefully eventually obtain citizenship), I am of mixed feelings about the end of the war. It worked out the way it worked out and I think people would be hard pressed to say that the outcome was ultimately bad for Japan. I suspect that Japan was even dramatically better off for having lost the war. Hindsight is 20:20, of course. However, I think the rationalisation of the use of atomic weapons is pretty darn thin. The argument that it saved lives is incredibly speculative and really not based in any realistic evaluation of the situation at the time. Even today there is a lot of propaganda flying around. I try not to second guess that decision. Whatever reasons there were, it happened the way it did. However, I don't think we need to perpetuate the image of America doing no wrong. We don't have to rationalise the decision. It was what it was.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#196

Post by jabl »

dplavery92 wrote: post #174
baybal2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, 5 megaton tnt is like ~25 exajoules. Thermal energy of 100 tons of 2000C uranium is like 0.25 terajoules... Somebody missed at least 5 zeroes And it was later found that only few percents of the fuel melted, so very likely 7 zeroes... And given that it is not possible for anywhere close to 10% of thermal energy of such huge, solid body to go into steam flash, add 2 more zeros.

While 5 megatons definitely does seem like an overestimation, I think the fear was that it was a much larger mass of molten corium, including not just the fuel itself, but also molten silicon and lead, from the material dumped on the exposed reactor to quench the fires and prevent fallout. There was an estimated 5000 tons of this suppressant material, although I don't know how much could have reasonably been expected…

The largest ever fission explosion was, IIRC, something like a few hundred kT. It's just physically impossible to have a bigger yield from fission alone, as the bomb assembly blows apart before it has time to fission. And this was from a carefully designed weapon, not a reactor fueled with LEU melting. So yes, 5 MT is pure fantasy with absolutely no connection to reality.

As for prompt criticality, in a weapon the neutron multiplication time is around a million times faster than in a prompt criticality transient in a thermal neutron reactor. That's what allows a weapon to have any significant yield before it disintegrates.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#197

Post by paganel »

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…

> 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.

I'd add the Romanian authorities to that list (I'm from Romania). Looking at the areas contaminated with Cesium-137 [1] one can see that Bulgaria is reasonably high in that list while Romania is no-where to be found, even though my country physically stands between Bulgaria and Chernobyl. The reason for that is that Ceausescu's regime was either too incompetent or too ideologically corrupt to correctly measure the Chernobyl disaster's effects on the country's population and ecosystem.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Environment...

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#198

Post by paganel »

arcticbull wrote: post #48
moxie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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…

Are you telling me that this chart [1] is pure correlation with no causation whatsoever? Do you live in the area affected by the Chernobyl disaster? (I do). Or do you live half a world away with no direct health-related stake in this? Even so, why are you content with hiding under the rug these "statistical anomalies"?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#/media/File...

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#199

Post by jabl »

keldaris wrote: post #90
dralley wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That possibility was briefly considered and quickly dismissed as improbable in the extreme, which it was. A nuclear explosion would require Uranium enriched to at least 85%, whereas the fuel in RBMK reactors was only enriched to 2%. It's not just unlikely it's actually impossible.

That's not entirely correct. There is no specific level to which uranium (or any other fissile material) must be enriched before supercriticality may occur, the level of enrichment simply determines the critical mass required. For instance, the critical mass for pure U-235 is around 50kg, while for 20% enriched U-235 you'd need about half a ton or so. [1] In the case of Chernobyl, the concern was that upon contact wi…

Prompt critical is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for a nuclear weapon to go boom. In a weapon the neutron multiplication time is a million times faster than in a prompt criticality transient in a thermal reactor. Otherwise it would disintegrate before it could develop any significant yield.

But yes, certainly the melted fuel becoming critical and/or causing more steam explosions could have made the Chernobyl accident worse than it already was.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#200

Post by EmpirePhoenix »

Double_a_92 wrote: post #180
dmode wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> drilled into American minds This was also taught to me in Europe.

I had some suprisingly varied versions of this in school (also europe)

a) to save lives b) the bombs were actually planned for use against berlin, but the nazis already collapsed when they were ready c) because how else could you ever test these weapons in a realcase scenario d) to force a unconditional victory

The truth is probably as often a mixture of multiple interests at different levels with different motivations

Post reply on HN