Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl • Hacker News Board

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#11

Post by desdiv » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 4:27 AM UTC

AnonNo15 wrote: post #10

rdtsc wrote: post #9

Remember watching the evening news with my dad when they finally announced it publicly. They completely downplayed it. In came in as "Oh by the way, an accident at ChAES happened, next up - sports...". Here I found the 20 seconds blurb: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ouJjaV_NbY (sorry in Russian, obviously). My dad, a mechanical engineer, also specializing in workplace safety was really concerned and told me. "This…

To be fair, the lady from TV announcement said that one of the reactors is damaged, which is a really bad thing for nuclear power plant.

I think OP's point was that a 20 second blurb, no matter how truthful or accurate, is downplaying the situation.

If an analogous event happened in the US, all entertainment programming would be suspended and there would be continuous news coverage on all the major channels for several days, just like after 9/11.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#12

Post by kodfodrasz » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 4:35 AM UTC

The interviews are interesting.

I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while.

----

What troubles me is the contant flow on anti-nuclear-power propaganda to HN. If we accept the fact of global warming, and humanity as its cause, then the fearmongering about nuclear power should stop, as it is a necessary component in reducing CO2 emissions while not giving up too much from our lifestyle. With the lessons learned from the nuclear accidents we have every measure to avoid them in the future, until the fusion technology is ready, and to have reliable, zero-emission power in our energy mix.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#13

Post by tbrownaw » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 4:59 AM UTC

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy and other environmentalist causes.

The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#14

Post by sillysaurus3 » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 5:06 AM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #13

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy and other environmentalist causes. The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.

A movement is composed of people, and those people can be reasoned with individually. If we reason with enough of them, the narrative changes.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#15

Post by justicezyx » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 5:18 AM UTC

tbrownaw wrote: post #13

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

Problem is, that wouldn't satisfy the "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills" narrative that underlays much of the activism around climate policy and other environmentalist causes. The solution always has to be fewer humans and less human activity, with the possible exception of temporary "sorry, we were never here" cleanup efforts.

China did managed population growth, guess what happened, no one is happy. I doubt human can overcome their own nature to step ahead and regulate population effectively.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#16

Post by cletus » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 5:40 AM UTC

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

There are a number of problems with nuclear power.

1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1].

2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active).

3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reasons.

4. We'd create a whole bunch of radioactive slag that we honestly have no good way of dealing with.

So far it seems the best power source we have is hydroelectric. Of course it's only possible in some places. This can devastate certain species (eg salmon) but in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option.

Solar has been on a stellar (pardon the pun) rise for some years simply because the cost of cells has decreased by way more than I ever would've predicted.

Widespread electric vehicles are still hindered by the relative expense and scalability issue of batteries, notably how much lithium we have available as well as the environmental impact of mining the necessary materials. It does seem like we're one big battery breakthrough away from completely changing this landscape however.

Wind has a place but I think will remain a niche energy source.

I increasingly have the view the the economic production of electricity from nuclear fusion is a pipe dream. The temperatures are too high, magnetic containment seems too problematic and, worse, the neutron emissions are a big problem (yes, yes, I know about He3).

This does seem like it's a problem we're going to have to solve this century.

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

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#17

Post by acidburnNSA » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 5:50 AM UTC

I got a similar set of stories from a friend who's parents were nearby. She translated them here: https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl/memories.html

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#18

Post by jjoonathan » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 6:00 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #16

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

There are a number of problems with nuclear power. 1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1]. 2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active). 3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reaso…

> in terms of cost, risks, environmental impact and power output, hydro is hard to beat if it's an option.

The death tolls tell a different story.

You aren't alone in this belief, but I've never really understood it. Banqiao dam bursts and kills 170,000 people: hydro is fine, we should do more. Chernobyl melts down and kills 30: nuclear power is inherently unsafe!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dam_failure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accident...

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#19

Post by acidburnNSA » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 6:01 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #16

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

There are a number of problems with nuclear power. 1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1]. 2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active). 3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reaso…

Thanks for posting. I'm in the nuclear industry and would like to try to address some of these issues if you don't mind.

1. Uranium in seawater is replenished by erosion through streams at a rate faster than we could ever burn it. It is effectively totally sustainable and even renewable on a 4+ billion year time frame, even without breeder reactors. But really, breeder reactors will become a thing when uranium gets expensive enough to warrant them. The reactors that were attempted so far just weren't needed because it turned out we had way more uranium that we originally thought.

2. With passive cooling systems, even seismically active regions can be powered by nuclear. Also, there are exciting possibilities for offshore nuclear, floating 10km out to sea where tsunami wavelengths are huge. Cooling is guaranteed and huge shipyards can do the construction. I agree that it's clear from Fukushima that designs requiring active cooling are no good in such places.

3. There are teams of nuclear engineers and other reactor designers in San Francisco right now at the American Nuclear Society meeting whose goal is to reduce the price of nuclear so that corporations can make a profit from them without compromising safety. I believe it can be done.

4. The Finns are about done with their deep geologic repository [1] and it's looking great. We definitely know how to dispose of nuclear waste. It's just a matter of political will and outreach. The tradeoff you have to keep in mind is that you can get all your primary energy for literally your entire life while personally producing 2 soda cans of nuclear waste. Compare that to fossil fuel (2 million times more waste) or to the vast energy harvesting resources for wind and solar (concrete bases, fiberglass, steel, silicon, glass, semiconductor processing, etc.) and you see that nuclear is extremely low footprint and that's its magic.

I sympathize with your concerns and am working to mitigate them. Biggest hurdle in my mind is standardizing designs. I dream of coordinating an open source reactor design effort some day.

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

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#20

Post by wbl » Tue, Jun 13, 2017, 6:01 AM UTC

cletus wrote: post #16

kodfodrasz wrote: post #12

The interviews are interesting. I was a kid those days, and my mother keeps telling me that diary products were suddenly put on a sale (before the news release). I live in Eastern-Europe, in the former Warsaw Pact bloc. My father worked in a research institute, so managed to get a hold of the information before the official announcements. He told her not to buy any diary or vegetable for a while. ---- What troubles m…

There are a number of problems with nuclear power. 1. The world's uranium supply won't actually go that far [1]. 2. A lot of places aren't suitable for nuclear reactors (eg they're seismically active). 3. We have to trust either corporations or governments to run such plants. Corporations will tend to maximize short term profits at the cost of long term safety. Governments will tend to do the same for budgetary reaso…

Notice how reprocessing or fast breeders solve problems 1 and 4. As for 3 the US has never had an release of radioactivity to the environment from a nuclear reactor aboard a ship or submarine in several thousand years of operation time.