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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)

#91

Post by kabdib »

mohawk wrote: post #78
beloch wrote: post #73

While the article does contain some interesting details, I fundamentally disapprove of it's anti-nuclear moralizing. It's the constant trickle of articles like this that maintain public paranoia about nuclear power. This matters, because nuclear power allows us to meet today's power demands with today's technology without releasing CO2 into the environment. Alternative power sources are still some ways from meeting h…

I don't like fear-mongering either. But nuclear only looks cheap because a lot of costs are externalised. Prudent calculation of costs of insurance against accidents and waste storage for centuries make it unprofitable. Improvements in reactor safety often leads to humans behaving more carelessly. It is a penny-wise, pound-foolish technology, especially in densely populated areas.

Many of the existing reactors were designed in the 50s and 60s, and are overly complex; they grew out of designs that were used for production of nuclear material for weapons, and safety features were bolted onto the side (this was an era when seatbelts weren't required on automobiles!). More recent designs are significantly and inherently safer and simply can't get into the same kind of trouble that the older designs can.

Yet we treat all reactors the same. Nuclear = bad for some reason.

I'd much rather be getting rid of coal plants (which are far worse for us than nuclear plants in terms of carbon emissions, pollution and actual emitted radiation) and have a national resolve to build safer, modern nuclear plants. But the fear-mongering and bad politics make this impossible.

Alternate sources of energy can be worse. For instance, when you look at the total cost of solar cells (lots of end-to-end industrial infrastructure involving toxic chemicals and energy-hungry manufacturing) and deaths from installers falling roofs, nuclear starts to look a lot better, even with plants we have today.

But anti-nuke makes headlines, and gets people fired up, and is better for the oil and coal industries.

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

#92

Post by demallien »

pluma wrote: post #87
demallien wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, for anyone living in an actual city, bikes and cars are generally roughly equivalent in terms of trip time. For example, I have an 8km commute on the outskirts of Paris - it takes about 45mins, regardless of whether I run, ride a bike, take public transport, or drive a car. (Ok, to be more precise, in includi the time to change into sports gear for the bike / running. Without this the bike takes about 30min…

I think the biggest difference in mindsets between the US and Europe (other than the isolationism/socialism divide and religion) arises from their different scales. Europe is far more densely populated. The cities are generally much closer to each other. There often isn't the equivalent of American "suburbs", instead there are more (and smaller) cities. Most people living in cities get around by walking or use the pu…

Well, for what it's worth, I'm actually Australian, and our cities are very similar to those in the US. What I said holds as much for Perth or Sydney as it does for Paris and London. The key is that traffic congestion reduces average car speed to something roughly equivalent to what you do on a bike, ie 15-20km/hr...

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

#93

Post by camperman »

dirtyaura wrote: post #47
erglkjahlkh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the experiment's requirement lead into the operators disabling almost every single safety mechanism. The automated systems disallowed the actions they were trying to do, so they disconnected most important security measures. Operating like that you can make even hydroelectric power station extremely deadly, and kill a lot of people.

Is there are a good article or book describing this, i.e. that they disabled safety mechanisms. I'd like to read more about it.

This is an excellent piece that goes into some detail:

https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl

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

#94

Post by tptacek »

mohawk wrote: post #78
beloch wrote: post #73

While the article does contain some interesting details, I fundamentally disapprove of it's anti-nuclear moralizing. It's the constant trickle of articles like this that maintain public paranoia about nuclear power. This matters, because nuclear power allows us to meet today's power demands with today's technology without releasing CO2 into the environment. Alternative power sources are still some ways from meeting h…

I don't like fear-mongering either. But nuclear only looks cheap because a lot of costs are externalised. Prudent calculation of costs of insurance against accidents and waste storage for centuries make it unprofitable. Improvements in reactor safety often leads to humans behaving more carelessly. It is a penny-wise, pound-foolish technology, especially in densely populated areas.

The costs of coal are externalized, and, historically, higher than nuclear --- not in the abstract, but in deaths per year. But practically nobody is afraid of coal.

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

#95

Post by marcosdumay »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #45
vidarh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what magically safe alternative? (no, you don't avoid all deaths with hydro, wind or solar either; in fact hydro has historically been one of the deadliest power sources thanks to the Banqiao accident where a dam failure killed 171,000 - even excluding that, though, hydro is far from free of deaths) EDIT: Since I was being a bit snarky: The point is last I heard the number of deaths from installation of rooftop s…

Fusion. Every ten years, plasma physics say that we would have fusion on the next ten years. :D

Well, once we have fusion we'll certainly discover taht it isn't completely safe.

That's because nothing on the scale we need is safe.

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

#96

Post by illumen »

EliRivers wrote: post #80
illumen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I could write "Conduct improv brain surgery on the guy sitting next to me" in my daily planner and it doesn't make it routine. Calling a knife a fork doesn't make it so, and calling something routine that isn't likewise doesn't make it so.

If you conducted brain surgery on the guy next to you routinely then it makes it routine. Even if it's a really silly thing to do.

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

#97

Post by delackner »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #33

I guess it is how you look at it. Much of this article has issues but one of the most glaring is this one: "Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink." One of the things this…

That all sounds very nice, but the Fukushima reactor material is still above ground and totally at risk of explosion and entry into the atmosphere if it is not continually water cooled. The cooling water has contaminated the entire nearby water system and the ocean.

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

#98

Post by mpyne »

acqq wrote: post #72
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…

It wasn't actually any science experiment, merely an engineering step to improve the emergency process, and not even performed for the first time: https://www.oecd-nea.org/rp/chernobyl/c01.html "The Unit 4 reactor was to be shutdown for routine maintenance on 25 April 1986. It was decided to take advantage of this shutdown to determine whether, in the event of a loss of station power, the slowing turbine could provid…

I'd take issue with the idea that there was no/minimal coordination with the reactor operators.

In fact, the issue that made the turbine spindown test such a disaster for Chernobyl was the extended amount of time and number of power excursions that that reactor (not non-nuclear) operators had spent trying to setup for the initial conditions of the turbine test.

The test had been intended for the afternoon shift, and required reactor power and steam output to be set within a prescribed band before the test. The operators duly setup these initial conditions, but then the regional electrical control center unexpectedly asked Chernobyl-4 to remain online (instead of shutting down as planned) to service electrical demands.

The reactor operators then resumed power operations and tried to re-establish test conditions at the end of their shift when they received permission to shutdown. But this shift from power operations to low power back to power operations and back again to low power induced xenon transients, and an extremely unusual and dangerous control rod configuration, all in an effort to establish the nuclear parameters to run the non-nuclear test.

And then they turned over to the evening shift as if they were handing over a set of car keys for a company sedan, an evening shift that had not been expecting the test (though by this point the conditions were such that either shift would have caused the reactor accident IMHO, assuming no one made the brave call to abort the test completely).

I'm willing to grant that professional nuclear testing groups were not actually involved in the design and implementation of the test, but it's simply not true that this was the result of a bunch of steam plant engineers running a test that was felt to be non-nuclear in nature. The nuclear reactor operators were deeply involved in setup and spent almost the entirety of a shift setting up for this test, and had plenty of opportunity throughout to evaluate the possible reactor plant response to their actions.

In fact had the test simply been to take a reactor operating at power and to spontaneously trip the steam supply valve to the turbines the accident would never have happened, even without coordinating with the reactor operators first. In the actual event the closure of the steam valve was simply the non-nuclear nudge that finally tipped off a disaster laboriously arranged during a full shift by nuclear reactor operators, operators who should have known better just from first nuclear principles.

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

#100

Post by mpyne »

spatten wrote: post #37
spatten wrote: post #25

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…

I did a bit more reading, and found this crazy and scary graph. It's under "Uranium-232 Series Activity" near the bottom of this paper[1]. It shows that gamma ray output from U-238 increases > 5x a year after U-238 is first refined, and stays higher than originally was for >100 years. It's due to the decay products of U-238 (and their decay products) all producing radiation that adds up to more than the original's. I…

In fact the base nuclear fuels are almost extraordinarily safer than the products of their use, speaking from a nuclear perspective alone. Nuclear fuel that is stable enough to be useful as a reactor fuel has such a long half-life (usually on the order of billions of years) that it's only very weakly radioactive. But the fission products formed from the fission of the fuel are much much more radioactive.
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