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

Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

711–720 of 894 posts

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#711

Post by arc-in-space »

yabones wrote: post #314

This has been a real reckoning for me, as somebody who has historically been very pro-nuclear. Quite simply, humanity is too good at screwing things up to harness such a fundamentally powerful and dangerous source of power. It requires a commitment to long lasting peace and stability that we're just not capable of.

I have already been very pro-nuclear and this does not change my views. Without nuclear, Russia would have had even more power. And it could have been weaker if we had built more of it. The dangers and costs are systematically overstated.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#712

Post by suyjuris »

ornornor wrote: post #652
ciphol wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chernobyl killed about 10k people. A single dam collapse killed 170k people a few decades ago.

Chernobyl killed millions of people over time. Tons of thyroid cancers that would have never existed if Chernobyl didn’t explode.

Do you have any kind of source for this? As far as I am aware, estimates for deaths based on thyroid cancers are ~160 [1]. Not 'thousand, just 160 – you claim is off by five orders of magnitude. Estimates for the total death toll are up to 60000 if you assume the linear no-threshold model [2], so might be much lower in reality.

[1] See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di....

[2] The model assumes that any amount of radiation is harmful and estimates the harm of low doses as a corresponding fraction of the harm of large doses. Empirical evidence is unclear, at best, but it functions as worst-case estimate.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#713

Post by fami-com »

Amezarak wrote: post #701
dzhiurgis wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq was a terrorist state full of abuses Russia is a terrorist state full of abuses invading a peaceful democratic country. This is incomparable.

"Democratic" is used as a thought-terminating cliche. Just a few years ago Ukraine had an insurrection because of their election results and overturned the election to install a new leader. It's a corrupt kleptocratic state very similar to Russia, it's just more of the money comes from American interests than in Russia, and that upsets the Russian kleptocrats who don't want American influence in Ukraine. Similarly, a…

That's objectively and demonstrably false. The revolution (not an insurrection) didn't happen because of election results (the election was in 2010, the revolution started at the end of 2013 and continued into 2014). It started because the president decided to halt the integration of Ukraine with the EU and was peaceful until the government had decided to escalate.

And if you're talking about the Orange Revolution from 2004, that was peaceful all the way through, and lead to a second round of the election, not installing a new leader.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#714

Post by amcoastal »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #692
amcoastal wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

You ever wonder about people who fall for baseless conspiracy theories about stolen elections? How could they possibly fall for these politicians and other assorted nutjobs telling them the election was stolen, without ever providing the evidence? Dumb uneducateds! They're nothing like us enlightened intellectuals.

Your red herring arguments and whataboutism is noted. Stretching arguments about obvious ties to russia to being "election = stolen", while ignoring the actual 40℅ of the country who still believes trumps bullshit. I will also note that there were dozens of confirmed contacts between trump and Russia and you see the bromance still playing out to this day.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#715

Post by dewey »

eru wrote: post #445
yabones wrote: post #314

This has been a real reckoning for me, as somebody who has historically been very pro-nuclear. Quite simply, humanity is too good at screwing things up to harness such a fundamentally powerful and dangerous source of power. It requires a commitment to long lasting peace and stability that we're just not capable of.

This is bad, but nuclear isn't uniquely dangerous here: just imagine the same kind of shelling around a large dam.

I hope you realize how bad of a comparison that is. If a dam would break and flood some area it would kill people but after a year the chaos will be cleaned up and things will be back to normal.

If the same thing happens to a nuclear power plant the area can't be lived in for millions of years.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#716

Post by dewey »

akvadrako wrote: post #574
watwut wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A single dam break did not killed and hurt magnitudes more people then singly Chernobyl.

> In 1975 the failure of the Banqiao Reservoir Dam and other dams in Henan Province, China caused more casualties than any other dam failure in history. The disaster killed an estimated 171,000 people and 11 million people lost their homes.

Were they able to rebuild their homes in the years past that in the same spot? Yes.

Are people able to move back into the Chernobyl fallout zone in the next few thousand years? No.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#717

Post by thedougd »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #709
HPsquared wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shutting down is a much safer condition than operating. The decay heat decreases massively over time (huge difference between minutes / hours / days /weeks) and gets safer the longer it has been off. Also if it's online, the electricity needs to go somewhere: any disruption to the electrical grid and it'd have to go off - probably at a bad time. Better to go through the shutdown in a planned manner while the outside…

What would happen if the grid connection was severed by bombing? Is there no emergency shutdown mechanism where the output is just dumped into some artificial load? Then again, a 5700MW resistor might require a bit of cooling.

Stoo the turbines and dump the st team/heat into the lake instead?

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#718

Post by dewey »

isomel wrote: post #537
MandieD wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is part of why a lot of Germans have always been uneasy with nuclear power.

The German are uneasy because of irrational fear and exaggerated risks. Even if the worst happen at that nuclear power plant, it will still be a small disaster compared to all the causalities that already have happened in Ukraine the last few weeks (you know: the war)

> "it will still be a small disaster compared to all the causalities that already"

Maybe I'm missing something regarding this specific reactor but how is a war that will eventually (hopefully) be over worse than a nuclear fallout that would make large areas unlivable for thousands of years and affect multiple countries and also killing a lot of people.

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#719

Post by usrusr »

Muromec wrote: post #603
HWR_14 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Internet speculation is that the power plant will be shut down once taken over. Which at least minimizes the ongoing risk of human error. Heck, shutting down is probably a far simpler process than continuing to run - nuclear power plants are designed to be shut down if necessary.

Well, shutting down nuclear reactor is not a simple process — it has to be actively cooled for weeks after being disconnected, which requires power, which you don’t have because you shut it down. So there should be either on-site generators (burning fuel) or external power . That’s why power stations usually have multiple reactors which are serviced on schedule, so it always has some generation happening. None of it…

Given the quality of Russian supply planning and execution it seems as if the biggest danger could be emergency generator fuel supplies getting forcefully repurposed. Good luck doing a safe shutdown...

Re: Fire extinguished at Ukraine nuclear power plant, Europe's largest

#720

Post by 5560675260 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #617
dsabanin wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of Ukraine and Russia, now we all know which country is more likely to use a dirty bomb.

I'm not sure I understand you. Of those two Ukraine is surely more likely to use a dirty bomb; purely because they don't have access to a traditional nuclear arsenal. If Russia wants to use Nuclear weapons then they only need to enter the codes. That would probably be the final straw for western powers putting boots on the ground though.

Now Russia has control of the power plant and actual means to do it, if they decide that they want to depopulate that region a bit. Launching nukes might trigger a retaliatory strike, so I don't think that it was ever on the table.
Post reply on HN