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Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

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Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#31

Post by boomboomsubban »

mkesper wrote: post #22
jjoonathan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.…

You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer. “I know three women my age (between 30–40) who have experienced thyroid cancer. When one of them was surprised to get the diagnosis, her doctor told her they see women our age from the Soviet Union very frequently with the same. Not a coincidence.” — Z. K.

>You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer.

Neither are you, you're speculating that they must exist in high numbers. That quote doesn't show anything, that could be a coincidence and frequently is a vague term for a very busy individual.

There has been a noticeable increase in thyroid cancer incidents in the area, but treated thyroid cancer is the second least fatal cancer. About 93% of people are alive thirty years later.

The highest peer reviewed studies estimate 27,000 deaths, still far below the Banqiao dam failure.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#32

Post by ckastner »

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…

> 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.

Note that according to one recent study, reservoirs also contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Previous HN discussion [1].

It's just one study and its quantified result should probably be debated, but it's general argument that reservoirs contribute to greenhouse gas emissions sounds well-reasoned to me.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12884030

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#33

Post by ckastner »

boomboomsubban wrote: post #31
mkesper wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer. “I know three women my age (between 30–40) who have experienced thyroid cancer. When one of them was surprised to get the diagnosis, her doctor told her they see women our age from the Soviet Union very frequently with the same. Not a coincidence.” — Z. K.

>You're not taking into account all the people who didn't die immediately but long before their time because of cancer. Neither are you, you're speculating that they must exist in high numbers. That quote doesn't show anything, that could be a coincidence and frequently is a vague term for a very busy individual. There has been a noticeable increase in thyroid cancer incidents in the area, but treated thyroid cancer…

The apparently most extensive study lead by the WHO even puts this at around 4.000 deaths [1].

[1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#34

Post by drvd »

jjoonathan wrote: post #18
cletus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

If a dam burst it kill a lot of people in short time. And 36 hours later rebuilding the infrastructure and towns begins.

If a reactor bursts it might not kill lots of people but it will devastate a large area for a very long time. We still do not know internal details about the Fukushima reactors because not even robots can go there.

A dam burst is a nightmare but it is a nightmare which is easy to clean up afterwards. A reactor catastrophe is a nightmare nobody knows how to clean up at all.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#35

Post by reitzensteinm »

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…

How can you list scarcity of uranium as an issue for nuclear, then advocate for hydro without mentioning the same?

There are only so many suitable locations for hydro, and the further down the list we go the worse the incremental environmental impact.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#36

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#37

Post by TeMPOraL »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #14
tbrownaw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The tricky thing is separating those people from their support groups long enough for the reasoning to stick. Otherwise, all the effort only gets wasted on trying to overcome people's need of belonging to a group.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

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's father was on his honeymoon in the area and when the call for volunteers came, he signed up. From looking at the family album, my friend tells me he lost something like 20kg in 3 weeks, but otherwise, it turned out well - he's alive and healthy today, and so is my friend.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#39

Post by TeMPOraL »

bitL wrote: post #28

This really strikes chord with how Fukushima was treated - nothing to be concerned about, citizen, move along and enjoy swimming on a Fukushima beach a year later... One would think this would happen only in communist societies but seeing it happening in Japan and everybody being fine with that was shocking. And then there were people pointing out xkcd and bananas, downplaying the effects and conflating radiation dus…

Well, now that the dust settled, it turned out they were perfectly right, and pretty much all the damage to lives and the region was caused by panic and evacuation.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#40

Post by ralfd »

jjoonathan wrote: post #18
cletus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

A hundredseventythousand?! :-o I have never heard of that dam accident.
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