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Interview With Chernobyl Engineer
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist has posted an interview with a former Chernobyl engineer, Alexander Yuvchenko, who was not only there the night of the explosion, but is still alive today to tell about it. A fascinating recollection of some pretty heroic acts."
but is still alive today to tell about it.
... and considers no longer requiring a lamp to read by at night a bonus.
The little guy just ain't getting it, is he?
Where is the "Chernobyl Disaster Veterans for Truth" post? :-D
Stood there and watched the blue ionized air as it poured out of the reactor?
"Is small fire comrade, under control now."
(Hey at least it's not an "In Soviet Russia..." joke)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
I doubt he did that but if you read /. for a while you'll realise certain Americans have some weird idea that the quality of healthcare in countries is determined soley by dentistry and that everyone in all other countries has bad teeth and hygiene when compared to Americans.
There may be an element of truth in this since Americans need good teeth to consume the amount of food they do but I haven't actually studied this correlation.
I think this is some kind of reaction to the fact they have to pay directly for their Health Service.
The nimrods running the plant deliberately disabled critical safety systems to conduct a test of another safety system. There's a key issue here, if you need to ask the question then you should not put it to the test without considering the very severe consequences and erroded safety margin left should the answer to the question be other than you expect.
It reminds me of a story of the F-16 pilot sitting on the ground who thought the aircraft would stop him raising the gear when on the ground. So he tried it and discovered that yes he could indeed raise the gear contrary to his expectation, now I ask you why would to do something so dumb?
I also ask, why would the plant engineers at Chernobyl disable safety systems to *test* another *backup* safety system? Utterly moronic, and there's not a lot a plant designer can do to avoid that kind of rank stupidity. A good old fashoned Soviet show trial followed by swift execution of the plant managers is the appropriate remedy.
Indeed. I take great comfort that the Bush administration compares favorably to the Soviet dictatorship.
I'd bet he'd win a head-to-head with Mussoulini too!
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"Stood there and watched the blue ionized air as it poured out of the reactor?"
You mean they got for free that "clean, healthy air" those Sharper Image hacks are trying to sell on TV for $400 each?