201–210 of 264 posts
Its amusing that the EU had to invest billions into the project. Hell even the US put in money and expertise despite being an ocean away. Where was Russia? It was their powerplant that blew up!
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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…
But they did say that, and they said that after the war too.
Dresden fire bombing was justified partly with that kind of thinking.
The US's use of "Shock and Awe" had the same aims.
> Using as an example a theoretical invasion of Iraq 20 years after Operation Desert Storm, the authors claimed, "Shutting the country down would entail both the physical destruction of appropriate infrastructure and the shutdown and control of the flow of all vital information and associated commerce so rapidly as to achieve a level of national shock akin to the effect that dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had on the Japanese."[10]
> Reiterating the example in an interview with CBS News several months before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Ullman stated, "You're sitting in Baghdad and all of a sudden you're the general and 30 of your division headquarters have been wiped out. You also take the city down. By that I mean you get rid of their power, water. In 2, 3, 4, 5 days they are physically, emotionally and psychologically exhausted."[11]
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anyway, it's much lower than death caused by burning coal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
We shouldn't contrast fossil to nuclear energy but both to renewables. In other words, stop burning things to get energy, for fossil energy because of the carbon dioxide and for nuclear energy because long-term storage of wastes is an unsolved problem. I am surprised again and again that people propose nuclear energy as a solution to climate change. Don't they know we will come out of the frying pan into the fire wit…
We shouldn't contrast fossil to nuclear energy but both to renewables. We really should go out of both coal and nuclear.
In other words, stop burning non-renewable things to get energy, for fossil energy because of the carbon dioxide and for nuclear energy because of the long-term storage of waste.
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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…
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.
After WW2 it was more convenient for everyone to say that Hiroshima was what ended the war. The picture of a bunch of crazy generals in a bunker planning Japanese resistance until literally the last man woman and child is not very flattering.
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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.
The economic damage caused by Chernobyl in 30 years is estimated in 235 Billion of dollars.
Source Belarus Foreign Ministry: http://chernobyl.undp.org/russian/docs/belarus_23_anniversar...
This includes destroying trust in Ukrainian agriculture for 30 years and removing also a good chunk of lands suitable for agriculture in a country previously called "The Breadbasket of Europe (and soviet countries)".
I would expect also huge maintenance bills for a long time. The cost of the new sarcophagous and auxiliary buildings is estimated in 2.3 Billion dollars extra.
Plus increase of health services and cancer surveillance checks in nations affected by the disaster (like Ukranie, Belarus or Russia, but also Polland or Germany). Belarus registered a x40 increase in children's thyroid cancers since the accident.
Ukraine and Belarus still need to spend more than 5% of its annual budget in benefit payments to compensate 7 million people for the accident. In whole, Belarus pays around $1 million at day for Chernobyl
Plus the cost of vigillance of the restricted area to avoid garbage collectors (if not, mafias could load trucks with free metal scraps and sell it in Moscow, Berlin or Paris for example), or keeping unauthorized adventurers from doing stupid things.
Plus the cost of the damaged nuclear central itself that lose a quarter of its planned energy production for 15 years and is not producing any energy since the year 2000; only debts.
Taking all of this in mind, As thematic park and bussiness, Chernobyl is a ruinous one. Is a nice continental nature park, the first in the world, but apart of that is a ruinous adventure.
Highly recommend the HBO's new miniseries Chernobyl. One episode left. It's already at the top of IMDB TV show rankings. [1] https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/
Can anyone explain why the Pripyat hospital in the first episode was so dirty and old? It had only been running for about 15 years at the time of the disaster.
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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…
Even then, nobody even knows or agrees how many victims Chernobyl have claimed or will still claim.
Comparing nuclear-related deaths to the Chinese dam disaster is a bit disingenuous also. China did not have nuclear power in the same time period, so of course no nuclear-related deaths happened. But if China had had enough nuclear plants to replace dams and they had the same amount of construction errors, removal of safety features, bad management and a "once in 2000 years" unforeseen natural disaster - are you sure no nuclear accidents would have happened?
If you just compare absolute numbers, you will see walking is more dangerous than skydiving.
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> at least not on the terms that we were demanding (and got) Terms that were un-necessary. Japan still has an emperor no? Could have ended the war much earlier if they wanted to.
It's hard to say with certainty. It's not like we can re-run history and try it again. Japan certainly turned out well with what did happen; it's not clear that a better outcome would have resulted from a less total surrender on their part. There's a lot of value in helping to move forward when you admit that you were completely beaten, not just mostly beaten; the latter leaves the door open for a repeat. And another…
Applying that standard, there would not be a single American left alive for the constant war they wage since the end of WW2.
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I hate it when movies try to portray foreign language speakers as speaking accented English. That’s not how any of this works! If they want to go for accuracy, the actors should speak the actual language. Provide subtitles for outside audiences. Otherwise, just have the actors speak normally. It’s no less authentic than speaking with an accent, and the actors can focus on acting. Another prominent Soviet example of d…
I’ve heard some audiences (probably Americans) don’t like subtitles. So it’s a matter of money in some ways.
> would have ignited a second reaction that would have been the equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion. It would have leveled Kiev and Minsk, and would have ejected the nuclear material from the other 3 Chernobyl reactors with a force that would have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of years
(I can imagine it is exaggerated, but I am not an expert so can't tell the magnitude. I meant 5 megatons is not that much, the tested "Tsar Bomba" was estimated at 50+ megatons. And even will tones of material spread around, most of it would have settled on the ground on a smallish area, right?)