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

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

nautil.us

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 126 posts

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

#61

Post by brazzy »

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…

Yes, you are misunderstanding. There is no more chain reaction; the "close proximity" is irrelevant. The heat is generated by the unstable isotopes decaying. And there is nothing in the universe which can stop them from doing that.

It's a misunderstanding I had as well before I read detailed discussions of the Fukushima incident: stopping the chain reaction does not make a nuclear reactor "safe". It just prevents new highly radioactive material from being generated. But the material you already have is still generating massive amounts of radiation and heat, and if you're not able to dissipate that heat (which you want to do without also dissipating any of the material!) then the heat will build up, cause it to melt, and that will usually restart the chain reaction!

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

#62

Post by brazzy »

NamTaf wrote: post #30
mrschwabe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Only 217 Mt of tests has been from fission bombs; fusion bombs contain a much smaller amount of radioactive material relative to their yield.

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

#63

Post by dasil003 »

andyjdavis wrote: post #59
guard-of-terra wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Eurasia is like that with several hundred million people living in regions with harsh winters. Where would you re-settle four hundred million people? Would they want to be unwelcome guests anywhere else? As a species we lack fur, so we are really vulnerable to cold.

>Where would you re-settle four hundred million people? No one is talking about resettling anyone. My question was just about why people individually choose to remain in places that feature temperatures well outside of the range compatible with our species. Others have covered it pretty well. Some combination of habituation, laziness and disliking hot summers basically.

The cockroaches tend to be smaller.

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

#64

Post by plikan13 »

icelancer wrote: post #31
mrschwabe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no expert, but I suspect there's a big difference between the planet's naturally occurring radiation and the high volume of unstable particles spewing out from the Fukishima meltdown everyday.

Yeah. The planet's naturally occurring radiation is a hell of a lot stronger and more dangerous.

What people never seem to understand is that the proximity of the source matters.

Compare a tiny amount of radiation coming from a long distance (say the core of the earth) and a tiny amount of radiation coming from speck of decaying radioactive material released by Fukushima that is floating around in the air of your office room. You measure the radiation in the room and sure enough the radiation is very weak. You conclude "See? Fukushima is no worse than natural radiation". Now what happens if you're so unfortunate to inhale that speck of material and it settles in your lungs? Then the picture changes completely because some cells of your lungs will now be very close to the source of radiation and these cells -- and always the same cells -- will be subjected to a long period of intense radiation.

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

#66

Post by guard-of-terra »

andyjdavis wrote: post #59
guard-of-terra wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Eurasia is like that with several hundred million people living in regions with harsh winters. Where would you re-settle four hundred million people? Would they want to be unwelcome guests anywhere else? As a species we lack fur, so we are really vulnerable to cold.

>Where would you re-settle four hundred million people? No one is talking about resettling anyone. My question was just about why people individually choose to remain in places that feature temperatures well outside of the range compatible with our species. Others have covered it pretty well. Some combination of habituation, laziness and disliking hot summers basically.

An individual might move but that doesn't affect the topic we're talking about.

Also, moving is not easy: you have to learn new languages, acquire skills you did not have use for previously, and get a work permit.

(And for the hilarious part, we often see people from warm countries moving to more temperate ones because those are economically and politically better off)

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

#67

Post by arielby »

justatdotin wrote: post #28
ori_b wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 waste…

Arsenic & Mercury are elements, which also can't be neutralised by the right chemical reactions.

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

#68

Post by acqq »

Related video, also workers at Chernobyl, but another piece of the reactor: the roof.

https://youtu.be/FfDa8tR25dk

"Military people call such places "FRONTLINE", liquidators who worked at the Chornobyl nuclear station called it "ROOF COATING". It was the most contaminated, and therefore the most dangerous, place in the zone. The remains of the roof coating of the 4th reactor. The operation on decontaminating the roof lasted more than five months. We will tell about only two days."

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

#69

Post by Thimothy »

andyjdavis wrote: post #59
guard-of-terra wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of Eurasia is like that with several hundred million people living in regions with harsh winters. Where would you re-settle four hundred million people? Would they want to be unwelcome guests anywhere else? As a species we lack fur, so we are really vulnerable to cold.

>Where would you re-settle four hundred million people? No one is talking about resettling anyone. My question was just about why people individually choose to remain in places that feature temperatures well outside of the range compatible with our species. Others have covered it pretty well. Some combination of habituation, laziness and disliking hot summers basically.

People have been living in those cold climates long, LONG, before modern heating systems. More than "laziness and disliking hot summers" I would say that humans will settle wherever are resources that can support them, period.

An example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_people

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

#70

Post by InclinedPlane »

illumen wrote: post #57
cjslep wrote: post #4

I think this article is very well-written overall. However, there are still a point that could use clarification. > During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency shutdown. It did not work. Calling the incident a routine test greatly mischaracterizes what they were doing. This wasn't some sort of daily safety checkli…

They were doing things in their routine. Thus it's routine. You're misrepresenting things.

You could not be more wrong. The circumstances leading to the Chernobyl accident were exceptional and unusual by any measure.
Post reply on HN