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Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

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251–260 of 264 posts

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#251
post #74

I'm confused, did they legally entered the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone? I was told that biking into the Chernobyl Zone, e.g., is forbidden due to the risk of contamination when you exit. Edit: Indeed it was not. From Instagram, “we spent the night tiptoeing around razor wire fences, coasting through sleeping security checkpoints, and riding frantically away from some surprisingly alert and vigilant guard dogs.” This val…

Price of a day trip is much less if you're local. Higher prices are for tourists, but they include smaller groups and more comfortable buses.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#252

On that score- the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did less overall damage than the Allied's firebombings in other cities- and, IIRC, there were less casualties in the nuked cities as well- the damage was just different.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20033412 and marked it off-topic.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#253
post #95
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a pretty detailed report on health care in Belarus from 2013: http://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/232835/H... Of note: * Rates of smoking in Belarus are also high. * The indirect impact of Chernobyl includes a lack of health care facilities in the (rural) regions most impacted. If the stat you're working from was breast cancer mortality, I'd push back harder, but I don't think that's what you'r…

> * Rates of smoking in Belarus are also high. Russia and Poland have higher rates of smoking. Anyway, it would be mostly about lung cancer which isn't the main component here. > * The indirect impact of Chernobyl includes a lack of health care facilities in the (rural) regions most impacted. Lack of healthcare facilities doesn't really impact cancer incidence rate. >If the stat you're working from was breast cancer…

Indeed. Also, stands to reason that breast cancer incidence rate is less correlated with standard of living or availability of healthcare than mortality rate. (Unless the society is so primitive that cancer mortalities don't get counted)

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. You better pray that the US keeps being able to keep war away from their soil, because what comes around goes around. Especially when people like you gleefully claim that civilians "had it coming".

The thousands of nuclear weapons we have make this an academic question. Everyone knows that we would use them if facing an invasion of our homeland, so there never will be a foreign invasion on our soil. I know we've done some shitty things to a variety of different countries over the years, but those acts are never going to be reciprocated in kind because they're the kinds of acts that only the powerful can do to t…

Spoken like a true Roman, ca. 409 AC

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#255
post #19
post #5

The pictures are lovely and the reflections profound. But much of the cited data here appears wrong. For instance, the article states (italicized): "six hundred helicopter pilots were killed" and yet it was only 600 helicopter pilots who _flew_ liquidator missions[1], two of which were killed in an piloting accident and none were registered killed from immediate radiation exposure[2], though at least one eventually d…

I think there's a lot of uncertainty in talking about Chernobyl, since most of the information published by the Soviet authorities was intentionally incorrect or misleading, designed to downplay the significance of the accident. One thing I've found interesting in talking about Chernobyl is that advocates of nuclear power are often willing to accept the Soviet numbers as fact, since they confirm the idea that nuclear…

It's safe even if you take the worst case estimates. There's no need to accept the Soviet numbers to justify nuclear power.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#256
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People "demonizing" nuclear typically do it because of the potential devastating consequences of an accident, and the uncertainty of storing waste for thousands of years. Not because they think nuclear have a high death toll in everyday use.

But the potential devastation isn’t rooted in reality - anyone can assume the worst could happen, and when it did happen in Chernobyl the numbers haven’t been very high. The alternatives, even the green ones like hydroelectric, have dwarfed nuclear-related deaths hundreds, if not thousands, of times over with single catastrophes[0]. Arguments against the storage of nuclear fuel usually don’t understand how little was…

Hydroelectric is not "green". It has devastating ecologic impact. It is better than some alternatives, but it also tends to destroy whole ecosystems.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kinda miss your point. What then does the Fukushima incident reflect? Danger of Japanese system, lol? Or as the US contractors built it, the US system? As according analysis [1] the Fukushima station design itself did not consider the natural features of place. Chernobyl incident happened due to human error, according to same source. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Fukushima_and_Ch... edit: formatti…

Fukushima was a very extreme natural disaster striking at a precise location to expose that the Fukushima reactors were not fully ready for a theoretically possible but never in 1000+ years of Japanese history observed earthquake. 15,897 people died in Japan that day, in buildings, roads, and vehicles. None from the nuclear incident. Yet no one talks about how the building, road, and vehicle security failed and wants…

We could have a Fukushima and a Chernobyl a year and it would still be a net improvement.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#258
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fukushima was a very extreme natural disaster striking at a precise location to expose that the Fukushima reactors were not fully ready for a theoretically possible but never in 1000+ years of Japanese history observed earthquake. 15,897 people died in Japan that day, in buildings, roads, and vehicles. None from the nuclear incident. Yet no one talks about how the building, road, and vehicle security failed and wants…

We could have a Fukushima and a Chernobyl a year and it would still be a net improvement.

In numbers of dead, you're right. In left behind "exclusion zones", it would become untenable.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#259
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could have a Fukushima and a Chernobyl a year and it would still be a net improvement.

In numbers of dead, you're right. In left behind "exclusion zones", it would become untenable.

If the exclusion zones were made as excessive as Chernobyl, sure, but most of the Chernobyl exclusion zone is safe today, and most of the rest could be made safe with relatively little additional effort. With even a somewhat more reasonable exclusion zone, if that was the trade-off and we could save those who die from fossil fuel plants today, it'd be an easy choice for my part.

Of course it's not a realistic trade-off - it's "easy" to make plants vastly safer than either.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#260
post #3

Highly recommend the HBO's new miniseries Chernobyl. One episode left. It's already at the top of IMDB TV show rankings. [1] https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/

I find this one more... down to Earth(?) and despite being more of a love story, it touches almost every subject there is to touch.

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt2934916/ https://youtu.be/Xe8ptlQ1_FQ

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