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Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

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Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#21

Post by mrschwabe »

NamTaf wrote: post #16
mrschwabe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like comparing a lit-match to a gas pipeline fire. Detonations dissipate quickly - the meltdowns are a constant flood of radioactive particles into our atmosphere. Only the fire doesn't end - because we don't have the technology to stop it, and perhaps will not ever. So no, I don't agree - likely the number is much less than 507 and uncomfortably close to the number of plants already in disaster-mode.

Hang on, do you think the fissible material from a bomb just vanishes? It is just hurled across a bigger area due to the fact that a bomb explodes. Exactly what level of physics education do you have?

I have no physics education, I'm using common sense. They don't design bombs like they do core reactors. Bombs are intended to explode immediately, reactors are intended to help produce power for a very long time.

But hey, I'm listening - show me a chart that compares the total amount of ionizing radiation released into the atmosphere by bombs dropped on Nagasaki & Hiroshima versus the amount produced already by the Fukishima site.

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#22

Post by shmigheghi »

Seems silly to me to just leave it sitting there for decades if its internal heat is being generated by how the isotopes are in close proximity to each other. Or I might be misunderstanding why it's generating its own heat.

Could they contain and cool down the waste by slicing off chunks of the mass and containing each chunk in lead-lined boxes? Essentially re-processing the lump into crude 'control rod' sized chunks and storing them in little lead boxes to contain the radiation being thrown off.

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#23

Post by muuh-gnu »

mrschwabe wrote: post #2

A disturbing thought is that Fukishima is an even more dire situation. The Pacific ocean will never be the same. Which of the 507 other plants will be the next go into meltdown? I wonder how many of these disasters the planet can handle before it becomes inhabitable to all life.

Please spread your religious propaganda elsewhere.

HN is a place to discuss, not to proselytize. Thanks.

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#24

Post by Igglyboo »

shmigheghi wrote: post #22

Seems silly to me to just leave it sitting there for decades if its internal heat is being generated by how the isotopes are in close proximity to each other. Or I might be misunderstanding why it's generating its own heat. Could they contain and cool down the waste by slicing off chunks of the mass and containing each chunk in lead-lined boxes? Essentially re-processing the lump into crude 'control rod' sized chunks…

I think the main issue is that no one wants to get anywhere remotely near it.

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#25

Post by spatten »

So it's now almost 30 years after Chernobyl, so if I read this naively:

> When this photo was taken, 10 years after the disaster, the Elephant’s Foot was only emitting one-tenth of the radiation it once had.

the Elephant's foot will currently have 1/1000th of the original radioactivity it had right after the disaster, and 10 years from now it will be down to 1/10,000th. At that rate it would be indistinguishable from background radiation within a century or so (just guesstimating here, but that's a lot of powers of 10 -- I'm probably being pessimistic).

I'm guessing that this is wrong, though, and that the radioactivity from longer half-life radionuclides will eventually start to dominate and the "effective half-life" will be much longer.

Does anyone have any idea how long it will be until Chernobyl blends into the background radiation?

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#27

Post by mrschwabe »

pdkl95 wrote: post #18
mrschwabe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like comparing a lit-match to a gas pipeline fire. Detonations dissipate quickly - the meltdowns are a constant flood of radioactive particles into our atmosphere. Only the fire doesn't end - because we don't have the technology to stop it, and perhaps will not ever. So no, I don't agree - likely the number is much less than 507 and uncomfortably close to the number of plants already in disaster-mode.

A meltdown doesn't necessarily put any radioative particles into the air. If it did, that would be a very unusual event (such as Chernobyl). On the other hand, a bomb has a tendency to put an ultra-fine dust of uranium, various transuranics, and quite a few fission products into the atmosphere. I suspect that you may be confusing a radioactive isotope (such as U235) with the particles associated with nuclear radiatio…

Sure, thank-you for clarifying. And I agree, it certainly is easy to mix-up the types of radiation.

But yes, I do consider particles like Iodine-129 and Cesium-137 "contamination".

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#28

Post by justatdotin »

ori_b wrote: post #15
sebastianavina wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they say the same about almost any waste... but at the end the oceans are clogged with waste.

The Fukushima accident was a rare event, dumped a small amount of waste compared to ongoing industrial operations, and the most worrying part of the waste that it dumped decays on the timescale of decades, and not millenia. I don't have stats about what gets directly into the oceans, but when we mine gold, copper, and other ores, we create entire ponds called "tailings ponds" full of arsenic, cyanide, mercury, and al…

like gold and copper, nuclear fuel is also mined. the nuclear industry produces large volumes of finely pulverised long lived low-level radioactive wastes in the form of uranium tailings. Unlike arsenic and cynaide, the hazard posed by uranium is not onyl checmical, but also radioactive. Whereas these chemical pollutants can be neutralised by the right chemical reaction, the radioactive hazard of uranium mining wastes cannot be neutralised, only contained.

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#29

Post by mrschwabe »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #23
mrschwabe wrote: post #2

A disturbing thought is that Fukishima is an even more dire situation. The Pacific ocean will never be the same. Which of the 507 other plants will be the next go into meltdown? I wonder how many of these disasters the planet can handle before it becomes inhabitable to all life.

Please spread your religious propaganda elsewhere. HN is a place to discuss, not to proselytize. Thanks.

How fitting that the lone voice of dissent in this thread would eventually be charged with spreading religious propaganda. Guess we should have saw that one coming!

Re: Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013)

#30

Post by NamTaf »

mrschwabe wrote: post #21
NamTaf wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hang on, do you think the fissible material from a bomb just vanishes? It is just hurled across a bigger area due to the fact that a bomb explodes. Exactly what level of physics education do you have?

I have no physics education, I'm using common sense. They don't design bombs like they do core reactors. Bombs are intended to explode immediately, reactors are intended to help produce power for a very long time. But hey, I'm listening - show me a chart that compares the total amount of ionizing radiation released into the atmosphere by bombs dropped on Nagasaki & Hiroshima versus the amount produced already by the…

Please don't use 'common sense' and talk about how they design bombs and core reactors when you have no physics education. But hey, I'll humour you with as crude comparison as I can string together in a few minutes.

This link [1] roughly compares Chernobyl to a Fat Man equivalent, which had a 21kT yield, or 0.021 MT. That's 0.003% of the total yield of all the atomic tests mankind has conducted (545MT total [2]).

So by a first cut of the numbers, we've set of 26,000 Fat Man equivalents. Even considering that Caesium ratio of 890:1 between Chernobyl to Fat Man, that's over 29 Chernobyls worth of the stuff flung out. Pick any of the other ratios and it looks worse for your argument.

Oh, and on the note of you freaking out about the amount of radiation that Fukishima is dumping into the Pacific and how it's screwing up all the ocean life, remember that about 10% of all of those explosions were detonated into the ocean half-way between the US and Japan.

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

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons_tests#...

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