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Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

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Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#111

Post by 7952 »

mseebach wrote: post #104
7952 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree. A lot of countries have been open to new nuclear developments. In the UK for example there is a supportive government, and schemes are even quite popular locally due to jobs. Yet the commercial and political risk is still huge. Despite the legacy of nuclear schemes it is still difficult to get schemes of the ground. And those kind of issues are in a large part due to the unqiue challenges that nuclear…

Despite those unique challenges, the French built 56 reactors in the 70s and 80s. GDP had quadrupled since then, while those unique challenges haven't gotten bigger -- but they have been amended with 40 years of rabid FUD. That is the challenge, and as long as politicians are repeating the FUD, it's not going to get easier.

So massive overuns in time and money are due to FUD? Does the explain design flaws? Politicians are used to taking flack for infrastructure projects, that is hardly unique to nuclear. But funding the next generation of reactor is hugely expensive and risky regardless of public perceptions.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#112

Post by mseebach »

x0x0 wrote: post #107
mseebach wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a chicken-and-egg situation here -- people are never going to get comfortable with nuclear while politicians are leading the FUD-charge.

Yet we keep being told, "Oh no, it's safe this time. Really." and then Fukushima happens. Not to mention cleanup costs that started at $50B are now estimated to surpass $0.2T. I would be surprised if they don't double a couple more times before all is said and done, and that's fractions of a trillion dollars.

Because compared to the cost of climate change, really is was safe this time, even after Fukushima. And a substantial fraction of the cost is due to extreme, very likely unwarranted caution, motivated by an unreasonable level of, exactly, fear.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/13/is-it-sa...

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#114

Post by mseebach »

7952 wrote: post #111
mseebach wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite those unique challenges, the French built 56 reactors in the 70s and 80s. GDP had quadrupled since then, while those unique challenges haven't gotten bigger -- but they have been amended with 40 years of rabid FUD. That is the challenge, and as long as politicians are repeating the FUD, it's not going to get easier.

So massive overuns in time and money are due to FUD? Does the explain design flaws? Politicians are used to taking flack for infrastructure projects, that is hardly unique to nuclear. But funding the next generation of reactor is hugely expensive and risky regardless of public perceptions.

Partially, yes. The reactors currently under construction are third generation, as opposed to tested, proved and wildly successful second generation plants (plus tweaks and updates). There are of course many good (and even more really bad) reasons to prefer a new and unproven design over a slightly older proven one, and few of them unique to nuclear projects -- but massive unwarranted fear (including conflation with nuclear weapons) has been the defining narrative of nuclear between 30-40 years ago when we were perfectly capable of building nuclear projects and today.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#115

Post by Balgair »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38
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…

> Then there was a call to go help clean up. They promised money, even better apartments for volunteers (housing was government provided). Some went and they came back to a new apartment but they didn't enjoy it for too long. Others told stories of people burned so badly by the radiation their skin and meat was falling off their bones. Just as a complementary data point, there were people who turned out OK. My friend…

Ummm, that's ~2 lbs per day. Was he running a marathon each day without eating, for 3 weeks straight? That alone should have shut down his heart. Your friend's father is much stronger than an ox, as I am sure most farm animals could not have survived that either.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#116

Post by 7952 »

mseebach wrote: post #114
7952 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So massive overuns in time and money are due to FUD? Does the explain design flaws? Politicians are used to taking flack for infrastructure projects, that is hardly unique to nuclear. But funding the next generation of reactor is hugely expensive and risky regardless of public perceptions.

Partially, yes. The reactors currently under construction are third generation, as opposed to tested, proved and wildly successful second generation plants (plus tweaks and updates). There are of course many good (and even more really bad) reasons to prefer a new and unproven design over a slightly older proven one, and few of them unique to nuclear projects -- but massive unwarranted fear (including conflation with…

So why did they choose to not use proven designs? Honestly I don't have a problem using riskier designs if it could reduce costs. And increased complexity is a risk in itself.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#117

Post by fusiongyro »

x0x0 wrote: post #107
mseebach wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a chicken-and-egg situation here -- people are never going to get comfortable with nuclear while politicians are leading the FUD-charge.

Yet we keep being told, "Oh no, it's safe this time. Really." and then Fukushima happens. Not to mention cleanup costs that started at $50B are now estimated to surpass $0.2T. I would be surprised if they don't double a couple more times before all is said and done, and that's fractions of a trillion dollars.

The point I'm trying to make is that every system has risks and externalities, but for some reason they only get added up when we're talking about nuclear.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#118

Post by cr0sh »

choult wrote: post #49

I visited Chernobyl and Pripyat about four years ago; it was a rather sobering experience. If anyone is interested, my unedited photos can be found here: https://plus.google.com/photos/115800995007308025308/album/5... https://plus.google.com/photos/115800995007308025308/album/5...

I find these pictures fascinating!

Would you be willing to share the albums as zip files or such for downloading? Strangely, google photo albums don't seem to have a method to download the complete album for public albums (there is supposed to be a way to do it for your own albums, though - but that doesn't apply here - though if you were willing to create a download file of the albums, you could download them that way to your google drive, then share the drive files publicly).

Regardless - thank you for sharing these!

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#119

Post by fulafel »

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…

Your #1 is wrong in at least 3 ways. (Seawater, Thorium, breeders).

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#120

Post by mseebach »

7952 wrote: post #116
mseebach wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Partially, yes. The reactors currently under construction are third generation, as opposed to tested, proved and wildly successful second generation plants (plus tweaks and updates). There are of course many good (and even more really bad) reasons to prefer a new and unproven design over a slightly older proven one, and few of them unique to nuclear projects -- but massive unwarranted fear (including conflation with…

So why did they choose to not use proven designs? Honestly I don't have a problem using riskier designs if it could reduce costs. And increased complexity is a risk in itself.

It's difficult to say, but it's likely to be a factor that an official expressing a risk tolerance >0.00 would have a very short and unglamorous career ahead of him in the hostile climate surrounding anything nuclear, despite us casually accepting much, much higher risks in all sorts of areas.
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