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

nautil.us

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

#51

Post by arethuza »

dirtyaura wrote: post #47
erglkjahlkh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the experiment's requirement lead into the operators disabling almost every single safety mechanism. The automated systems disallowed the actions they were trying to do, so they disconnected most important security measures. Operating like that you can make even hydroelectric power station extremely deadly, and kill a lot of people.

Is there are a good article or book describing this, i.e. that they disabled safety mechanisms. I'd like to read more about it.

I can recommend Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima by James Mahaffey - it has a chapter on Chernobyl and goes into a fair amount of details:

http://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Accidents-Meltdowns-Disasters-M...

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

#52

Post by vidarh »

ori_b wrote: post #38
justatdotin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

like gold and copper, nuclear fuel is also mined. the nuclear industry produces large volumes of finely pulverised long lived low-level radioactive wastes in the form of uranium tailings. Unlike arsenic and cynaide, the hazard posed by uranium is not onyl checmical, but also radioactive. Whereas these chemical pollutants can be neutralised by the right chemical reaction, the radioactive hazard of uranium mining waste…

Yes, thanks for pointing that out. Uranium tailings are one of the biggest environmental issues with nuclear power, and one of the ones I never hear anyone mention. The radioactive waste produced by the plants is more of a political issue than a technical one, as is the switch to far safer, more maintainable, non-proliferating reactor designs.

Because even if it's one of the biggest issues with nuclear power, it's still a trivial one compared to more active waste, or coal.

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

#53

Post by guard-of-terra »

andyjdavis wrote: post #50
chii wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and freeze to death in winter? not cook your food and eat it raw? walk/cycle for 3 hours to commute to work?

>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…

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.

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

#54

Post by vidarh »

andyjdavis wrote: post #50
chii wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and freeze to death in winter? not cook your food and eat it raw? walk/cycle for 3 hours to commute to work?

>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…

Because we can. Because we grew up there and it's familiar. Because many of us prefers cold winters to summers we find too hot.

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

#55

Post by HCIdivision17 »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #45
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…

Fusion. Every ten years, plasma physics say that we would have fusion on the next ten years. :D

I had always heard it as thirty years. The ten year estimate seems to be a newer development! (My guess is that fusion is becoming less theoretical and shifting into an engineering problem; still hard, but a bit more deterministic.)

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

#56

Post by yason »

cnvogel wrote: post #40
ori_b wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pacific ocean isn't really noticing any effects. Water is great at stopping radiation. In fact, open pool reactors like this one ( http://www.ansto.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/45495/OPAL_... ) are serviced by scuba divers. The increase in radiation in the pacific is lost in the noise when compared to naturally occurring background radiation. There are some areas directly around Fukushima where that is not the…

Whiel I agree with your statements, it should be noted that sometimes scuba-diving in nuclear reactor's pools isn't as safe and fun as originally intended. http://www.isoe-network.net/index.php/component/docman/doc_d... [A diver not briefed on avoiding unknown objects picked up a highly activated bolt laying on the pool floor and received a substantial amount of radioactive dose.]

This just verifies that water is a good shield against radiation. The slides explained that any proximity to, not to mention physical contact, with the object would be highly dangerous but having a mere 1.4 meters of water in between the human and the object the dosage would be negligible.

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

#57

Post by illumen »

cjslep wrote: post #4

I think this article is very well-written overall. However, there are still a point that could use clarification. > During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency shutdown. It did not work. Calling the incident a routine test greatly mischaracterizes what they were doing. This wasn't some sort of daily safety checkli…

They were doing things in their routine. Thus it's routine.

You're misrepresenting things.

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

#58

Post by pfortuny »

andyjdavis wrote: post #50
chii wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and freeze to death in winter? not cook your food and eat it raw? walk/cycle for 3 hours to commute to work?

>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…

Well, first of all just "moving" is a hassle. Then people, for whatever reason, tend to be attached to what they call "home." And third, probably, because we like it.

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

#59

Post by andyjdavis »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #53
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…

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.

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

#60

Post by brc »

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.
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