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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)

#111

Post by glomph »

kabdib wrote: post #91
mohawk wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 design…

The person you are replying to didn't say anything about Nuclear being bad. They made a point only about cost.

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

#112

Post by mtviewdave »

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…

>Please don't use 'common sense' and talk about how they design bombs and core reactors when you have no physics education.

If I can step back from mrschwabe's immediate questions, I'd like to point out how problematic your attitude is, NamTaf.

Nuclear power generation in the West is a political question. Which means its future is going to be decided by the average voter. The average voter is not going to have a "physics education". Maybe they took high-school physics[1], and maybe that class touched on radiation and nuclear power generation. But odds are, even in that case, the average voter doesn't really remember it.

I just checked my alma mater's undergraduate physics course catalog, and nuclear physics is an upper-division topic. It is unacceptable, in a democratic society, to suggest that voters have the right to an opinion on a topic of importance to society only if they've taken upper-division university classes on the topic in question.

The real failure isn't that mrschwabe doesn't have a physics education. The failure is that, 66 years after nuclear criticality was first used to power a light bulb, the physics/nuclear power advocate community hasn't figured out how to incorporate the basics of nuclear power generation into the average person's "common sense".

[1]Obligatory disclaimer about this being a U.S.-centric post. I'll let others comment on the quality of secondary-level physics instruction in other countries.

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

#113

Post by hobbes78 »

brc wrote: post #60
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…

I saw a documentary that showed squatter-types already were living in the surrounding area - whatever the exclusion zone area was. They interviewed them, but they were 'meh' about the risk. They had the place to themselves and were pretty happy.

I envy the ignorant people, for they are happy...

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

#114

Post by afterburner »

vidarh wrote: post #42
afterburner wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditch both.

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…

Are you including the effective body count due to increased greenhouse gas emissions (for coal) and cancer incidence/habitat destruction (nuclear)? Not to mention the economic damage of the incredibly expensive reactors (nuclear) and pollution (coal), which can probably be abstracted into a body count as well due to poorer health and living conditions from pollution/wasted societal resources.

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

#115

Post by vidarh »

glomph wrote: post #111
kabdib wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 design…

The person you are replying to didn't say anything about Nuclear being bad. They made a point only about cost.

Consider that the cost of coal, solar, wind, hydro is under-estimated because we don't take into account the externalized environmental issues and excess deaths.

If we're going to try to account for externalized costs for nuclear, we need to do it for all the others too, and the results would not be pretty.

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

#116

Post by vidarh »

afterburner wrote: post #114
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…

Are you including the effective body count due to increased greenhouse gas emissions (for coal) and cancer incidence/habitat destruction (nuclear)? Not to mention the economic damage of the incredibly expensive reactors (nuclear) and pollution (coal), which can probably be abstracted into a body count as well due to poorer health and living conditions from pollution/wasted societal resources.

> cancer incidence/habitat destruction

The are both far worse for coal than for nuclear.

But no matter what you include for nuclear, you won't get the numbers very high.

> Not to mention the economic damage of the incredibly expensive reactors (nuclear)

It's not at all clear that nuclear is any more expensive than the alternatives if you accounts for the externalized costs of e.g. the huge bodycount from the alternatives.

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

#117

Post by vidarh »

iSnow wrote: post #74
icelancer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yeah and a hell of a lot better shielded. Come on, no need to pull the discussion to a moron's level.

I suggest you get a geiger counter and walk around with it for a while.

Not nearly all of the naturally occurring radiation is occuring in some well shielded location deep underground.

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

#118

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

How bizarre that you think hot summers are fine but cold winters are ill-suited to humans.

If we only lived in locations that are a good temperature year-round we would barely live anywhere.

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

#119

Post by andyjdavis »

Xylakant wrote: post #84
andyjdavis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and freeze to death in winter? This is off topic but I always find statements like the above rather bizarre. Why must humans insist on living in places where the environment is hostile to human life? I guess its because I grew up in a place where heating is very rarely necessary, without cooling of any kind and have spent most of the last three years traveling around countries where you could theoretically walk arou…

> This is off topic but I always find statements like the above rather bizarre. Why must humans insist on living in places where the environment is hostile to human life? Because by an unlucky twist of nature (physics and chemistry combined) the richest soils are found in temperate regions, so the lands that historically were capable of sustaining a high population density are in the colder regions, the ones where yo…

That is really interesting :)

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

#120

Post by nitrogen »

plikan13 wrote: post #64
icelancer wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Some of the potassium in your cells is radioactive and decaying right now at a rate of 4900 decays per second[0]. That's about as close as you can get to the source, and it's not a big deal.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium-40#Contribution_to_n...

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