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Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

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Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#71

Post by eni »

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.…

May be because we are used to dangers of water, and floods for millions of years.

On the other hand, dangers of nuclear is a very recent thing. Common people's primary recollection point of nuclear is probably nuclear bomb.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#72

Post by oblio »

_urga wrote: post #42
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.

Would you prefer the "humans are basically good" narrative? Do you honestly find that to be a better explanation of human history the past few thousand years than "humans are evil, and the cause of all nature's ills"? Personally, I find the latter proves true to life. Better to accept it and deal with it, than to sweep it under the rug.

That's assuming that all the harm we do, we do it just to do harm. I think this assumption is false. Most of the harm we do is a side effect of things we're trying to achieve.

So, basically, we're just another (slightly smarter) animal.

It's not like, for example, invasive species introduced from another continent stopped for a second and thought: "hey! maybe we shouldn't breed too much and we shouldn't eat all the bees/birds/whatever!".

Life is like a gas, it expands to fill all the space given to it.

I don't think that's inherently bad. After all, life is the exception in the universe. And frankly, most of the universe is boring :)

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#73

Post by GhostVII »

ageofwant wrote: post #58

> The biggest man-made environmental disaster in written history. I stopped reading right there. Now I expected to reach exasperation somewhere in the article, but not at the second sentence. Chernobyl is a wildlife haven, it shelters a sea of fauna and flora that would otherwise have been the typical suburban death zone of humans, cat and dogs and nothing else. The biggest man made disaster has been committed and is…

Disasters usually refer to isolated, unexpected, incidents. Air pollution is not a disaster.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#74

Post by vkb »

doug1001 wrote: post #7

the OP is a sequence of brief (100 - 500 words) (skillfully edited & translated) vignettes from people who have first-hand memory of the events related to the Chernobyl disaster. i clicked and began reading the first one; two hours later and i just read the last one. The editor (who compiled, edited and translated these brief accounts) did a remarkable job, but stories themselves are extraordinary and compelling--man…

Editor here. Thank you for sharing your memories. And, for the note.

Some details about the origin: the vignettes were originally English-language comments in a private Facebook group.

It was a huge team effort to get them all collated, organized, and to check and re-check attribution and consent to share. We are so happy that we are able to share these collective memories and eyewitness testimonies, particularly outside of Facebook's walled garden.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#75

Post by kodfodrasz »

frik wrote: post #44
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…

You tell us some short emotional story. And then provide a second completely contrary paragraph comment how bad the propaganda is and how great nuclear is. You know what, your tactic is called Zersetzung, and what you are doing is not nice.

My story has nothing to do with the facts about nuclear power. The moral of the story is about socialist dictatorships, the lack of free speech and free flow of information.

The fact that you very subtilely called me a nazi (I had to google the word Zersetzung to recognize this) tells me something else: your ad-hominem attack is just annother example of the anti-nuclear propaganda I talked about. My opinion about nuclear power does not match yours, thus you call names on me, point finger at me, and even try to tell me what my idea should be after the experiences I have, or how should I present them. This is the very attitude which made the Eastern block be a bad, opressive place. This attempt to kill conversations about inconvenient/controversial topics, which starts to get the norm even in the western world is very troubling for me.

To conclude: what you are doing is just as much not nice as what you attributed to my story and opinion.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#76

Post by mseebach »

7952 wrote: post #66
mseebach wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France, a rich, functional, liberal, western democracy, is more or less uncontroversially nuclear powered to a very high degree. There are no more practical difficulties than any other large, important project. The only problem is politics.

That's like saying that building a road is no more difficult than launching a rocket into orbit. It turns out that nuclear physics is really quite hard. That is not a reason to not do something. But we shouldn't take these issues so lightly.

Of course it's hard. But it's not like we've never done it before and that operating nuclear power plants is this weird theoretical endeavour.

Or, put in another way: the hardness isn't why we're not doing it.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#77

Post by Glauc »

7952 wrote: post #66
mseebach wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France, a rich, functional, liberal, western democracy, is more or less uncontroversially nuclear powered to a very high degree. There are no more practical difficulties than any other large, important project. The only problem is politics.

That's like saying that building a road is no more difficult than launching a rocket into orbit. It turns out that nuclear physics is really quite hard. That is not a reason to not do something. But we shouldn't take these issues so lightly.

I think we have the nuclear physics part figured out. It is more of an engineering challenge.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#78

Post by Glauc »

mirimir wrote: post #2

In states near the Nevada test site, senior government officials evacuated before test series, with their families. And Kodak was notified in advance, so they could avoid using fallout-contaminated paper to interleave with their X-ray film.

While interesting, what does chernobyl have to do with nuclear weapons testing?

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#79

Post by rb1 »

kodfodrasz wrote: post #27
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it should be kept in mind that the design of Soviet reactors was incredibly unsafe compared to their western counterparts. Fukushima had four meltdowns with only a few casualties.

This is not true in this form. There were unsafe soviet designs, but also there were unsafe western designs. Soviet designs were not all categorically unsafe. The design used at Chernobyl was a problematic design, but still many layers of human error had to be involved to create the accident. Military reactor designs are generally less safe. Civilian designs were usually OK in the USSR.

It's not just the design(s), it is the implementation too.

At Chernobyl the powers at be (accountants?) got involved and decided to use flammable bitumen coverings on the roof of reactor 3, one would assume to save money. Unsurprisingly, the roof of reactor 3 caught fire.

Re: Eye-witness stories from Chernobyl

#80

Post by anon182429 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39
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.

Yes except for all the radioactive groundwater, total loss of fuel as it melted through the containment vessel into the ground as discovered by the robots they sent to investigate causing potentially unknown damage, and by the TEPCO's own admission, will take 40 years to clean up with technology that hasn't been invented yet. Besides that, everything is a-okay.
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