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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."
For Engineers the treatment was prompt, for the inhabbitants they pulled an "EPA in NYC after 9/11." They didn't evacuate the area, and assured people that all was well. After a week THEN they evacutaed everyone. I don't think the locals received the same top notch treatment.
I boycott signatures
He mentions a medal which everyone got 10 years after the event. Ironically, the design of the medal gets basic particle physics wrong - it shows alpha-particles being deflected more than beta-particles, although they have a greater mass. (If that link dies, just use the Google image search for Chernobyl medal).
Dude, you need to get outside more often.
"Torch" is a common term folks in the rest of the world use for what we North Americaners call a flash light.
Ain't you ever watched Dr. Who??
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/20 03/08/23/MN300070.DTL
not unpatriotic, it's factual.
What the hell is wrong with you? He's absolutely right; I was up by columbia (116th) then and a few days after, and even there you could smell the dust. When we visited near the site it was absolutely lung-clogging. I was incredibly thankful that I didn't have to live or work there.
Read jack phelps dot net
That's cuz it was later shown to all be a hoax.
o gs_cher.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photobl
Google is your friend.
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
No, that's not correct. For example, over 3,000 people died in one week in 1952. The problem is the makeup of most coal. From this link
Coal is one of the most impure of fuels. Its impurities range from trace quantities of many metals, including uranium and thorium, to much larger quantities of aluminum and iron to still larger quantities of impurities such as sulfur. Products of coal combustion include the oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; carcinogenic and mutagenic substances; and recoverable minerals of commercial value, including nuclear fuels naturally occurring in coal.
MORE NUCLEAR MATERIALS ARE RELEASED BY COAL BURNING THAN ANY NUCLEAR PLANT HAS EVER RELEASED. That's a VERY important thing to know, because COAL KILLS PEOPLE.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
the sad part is, some of them are still running ...
The following is the Paper everyone will link to. And the following provides some nice diagrams to look at
And just for kicks: Some really freaky pictures. (The second one really gets to people, he is working IN the bloody thing!!)
Sunny Dubey
As someone who has lived in Soviet Russia and who was in Kiev when the explosion occured (a city nearby) I can personally attest that the medical treatment in the Soviet Union was incomparably worse than anywhere else in the developed world.
>The disaster was caused partly by one engineer previously over-riding automatic safety protection in order to increase reactor power to levels needed to run a safety test.
Uh, IIRC the reason the thing blew is that the power levels were decreased to too low a level to sustain stable reaction.
I'm not a nuclear physicist, but I believe in that style of reactor, the presence of the particular water they were using decreased the reaction speed, instead of increasing it as it is done in modern, western reactors. So they had the control rods pulled all the way out, and the water flow super low.
Then the water started to boil a little, and that boiling caused bubbles in the moderating water, which allowed the reaction speed to launch into some nasty exponential power spike that could not have been prevented in the time it took to see the spike.
I'm pretty sure what I just wrote was mostly right. I'm just too lazy to find links. But I am sure that the power level was super super low, and the control rods were pulled all the way out. Bad idea.
Muerte
For those not versed in things nuclear (and why positive temperature coefficient of reactivity reactors are a BAD IDEA), a good background on the accident and nuclear power in general.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
...as those in the UK might realise, the newspaper The Guardian also published today a much longer and more detailed article with Sasha Yuvchenko, another engineer working at Chernobyl at the time who survived the disaster. He too comments on the excellent medical care he recieved. Read it here.
"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?"
Most likly a myth. Every airplane with retactable gear I know of have what they call squat switches that prevent the gear from retracting when the plane is on the ground. Also the way the gear on the F16 retracts I doubt that it could retract with the plane sitting on it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
P.S.: Is it ok to copy a paragraph from a copyrighted article if I reference it?
Yes. There's an exception in copyright laws for referencing.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
A very good read for sure, but last I heard, she admitted it was fake, more poetry than reality as she put it. Google for 'motorcycle fake chernobyl' and you can find some more info on it.
The photos are not a hoax.
The fact that she drove through on a motorcycle at high speed is the hoax.
It was a guided tour, she took a helmet and took pictures of it. (Never see the bike in actual situ.)
Yeah, it seems to be the case.
But, the images are still pretty incredible.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Life expectancy in Britain (m/f) (yr 2000): 75.7/80.4
;)
Life expectancy in the US (m/f) (yr 2000): 74.1/79.4
Combined total healthcare costs per capita, Britain (yr 1998): 4,178$
Combined total healthcare costs per capita, USA (yr 1998): 1,461$
I'll take the British system, thanks (and several dozen others) over the US system. If I have to fork over some extra to take care of my teeth, it's no big deal
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Actually this isn't true. My mom didn't have health insurance when she found out that she had a liver tumor. The state (California) paid for the surgery. Just because you don't have insurance and can't afford to pay doesn't mean they'll let you die. They aren't barbarians.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
For those of you who make fun of the Soviet system wen you probably wheren't even born then, this is a lesson: Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top.
Eight months ago, I pulled my adopted son out of a Russian hospital in Novosibirsk against the will of the doctor. He had severe asthma and bronchitis which he had contracted while there for minor outpatient surgery. He hadn't been bathed or had his clothes changed in weeks. He was lying in a wet cloth diaper. His crib was made from knit kite string. This is the same hospital where I saw, with my own eyes, supplies being delivered by horse-drawn cart. He is covered in scars. He had more scars at 1 year old than I had at 33. One of them is a scar on his scrotum where they split it front to back for exploratory surgery. In the US, they would have ordered a cat scan. This was last winter. Would you say things have improved since soviet times?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
How is pebble bed not a critical reactor? Unless they're planning some kind of subcritical, accelerator-driven system, I don't see how that would be possible. It would not be consistent with anything I know of the PBMR, for instance.
Basic definitions:
Subcritical reactor - fission reaction rate is declining over time
Critical reactor - fission reaction rate is constant over time, self-sustaining chain reaction has been achieved
Supercritical reactor - fission reaction rate is increasing over time
There's nothing mystical about these terms. Every power reactor in existence goes supercritical during startup, for instance -- it's the only way you can raise power. When full power is reached, then you sit at a critical state for as long as you can. When you need to shutdown, you go subcritical. That's all there is to it.
The only way I know of to have a subcritical assembly raise power, or maintain a constant high power, is to have some external source of neutrons to drive the pile. Accelerator driven systems would have the advantage of always being subcritical, all you'd have to do to shutdown is shut off the accelerator. The problem right now is the high amount of power needed to run the accelerator constantly. Right now, and for the near future, critical reactors are going to be much more efficient.
So really, what are you talking about? Nobody is going to build a subcritical accelerator driven system in the near future. Pebble beds, at least in the form of the PBMR, are critical reactors. Where are you getting your information?
Getting tired of Slashdot... moving to Usenet comp.misc for a while.
It's also an issue of people in certain societies where people are not willing to question their superiors. Last year, the government of Japan had to shut down 17 reactors due to safety concerns. People had known about these concerns for a long time, but their supervisors told them to ignore the problem, and most Japanese people are not nearly as willing to go above their supervisor's head(much like Soviet Russia) as they are in the West. Thankfully, someone finally came clean and informed the authorities who ordered the plants shut down for maintenance.
It was a cool summer last year in Japan(well, cool by Japanese standards, it would still be roasting by US standards, I don't know how those people stand that weather) so there weren't any forced blackouts, but there are problems associated with strict obedience....
Monstar L
More than anything, the Chernobyl disaster reminds me of a Windows user who disables the firewall and antivirus just to install that nifty Explorer toolbar. The difference being that an average Windows user doesn't kill thousands of people through his stupidity...
Throughout history, if you have not had private healthcare, you have had nothing. Only in the last few decades has anyone guaranteed healthcare, and almost all of the systems which have are very poor at it, producing a significant number of users who would rather have it privatized.
In the US, if you want healthcare, you fucking work for it. This provides a great incentive to people in our country. As for your claim that increasingly few jobs come with healthcare coverage, do you even know what you're talking about? Granted, Wal-Mart sucks ass. However, even my friend who works part-time at starbucks has basic healthcare coverage after only a few months. Apart from anecdotal evidence, the number of US citizens currently without healthcare is roughly 15%. That stat is roughly the same from the eighties, but it's way, way better than estimates of the sixties (though exact census data apparently does not exist). More people than ever before in history have healthcare, and they have to work and contribute to society in order to get it.
Is it optimal? No! Not until we hit ST:TNG-levels will it be optimal. But it's better than ever and likely to improve as the cost of healthcare drops (it has risen for the past eight years due to increased acceptance of cosmetic and semi-necessary treatments, but that will taper off over time).
Read jack phelps dot net
I wouldn't trust the government to run nuclear power. Scratch that... there is one way I'd trust the government to run nuclear power:
l /
All elected officials (and bureaucrats) need to live in the immediate vicinity of a power plant. Nuclear, coal, wind, hydro, solar, etc. They need to live with (and provide budget for) the plants that supply them with power, and they need to live in the immediate vicinity of the risk too! Chalk it up to their elected (or appointed) "duty."
On the flip side, you've got celebrities and politicians voting down clean power:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20030811_1031.htm
If everyone used their arguments, we'd never put any power plants anywhere.
-- No sig for you!
Reprocessing is also uneconomic. Uranium is cheap (mainly because of the global slowdown in reactor building). Reprocessing, on the other hand, is expensive. Until the price of uranium goes up, there will be little reprocessing.
after 50 years of operation of hundreds of Nuke power plants only 1 serious accident occurred
Er...no.
Here's a British one, Here's a list of them, and oh here's a nice big page on a really fucking scary one that released more radiation than Chernobyl. Scared? You should be.
Despite this, I'm still a supporter of nuclear power, mind.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
The main problem seems to be the Radon gas, which as radioactive gas can not be filtered out. Radiation levels near coal plants are higher than near atomic plants.
0 3.htmle ments/Rn -en.htm
9 7/FS-163-97.html looks good.
Some links:
http://www.stormingmedia.us/76/7636/A7636
http://www.lenntech.com/Periodic-chart-el
Especially http://greenwood.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-
Moritz
The reason why this isn't done (save for some allowance for the second case I listed), is that the government considers it a threat to national security. Their problem with these options is that evil terrorists may intercept nuclear materials shipments, then use them for evil deeds. So their solution is to pile it all in a big cave somewhere.
To be fair it wasn't banned because the US government was concerned about reprocessed fuel being stollen and used for weapons.
The reason is because we wanted to sign treaties that prohibited creation of weapons grade nuclear materials. While reprocessed fuel itself is not very usefull for creating bombs, the processes and equipment that are used to reprocess the spent fuel is simular enough to those used to process it into weapons grade material, that it would be quite easy to pass off a weapons producing plant for a reprocessing plant to inspectors. Furthermore, Jimmy Carter was one of those presidents that believed that treaties should be a fair deal, so if we wanted other countries to refrain from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, then the US should agree to do the same.
Now you can certainly argue that these treaties were not effective, or are no longer relevent. I just wanted to make sure other people fully understood the original reasoning behind them.
Which is why they sent their high-ranking people to the west for advanced surgeries
any examples , please.
Contrarily to what you say - as living in ussr I could say - almost no high ranking people were getting treatment in the west. Though being old people ( and most of the high ranking people in 70 80 s were old) they had a great number of different deceases). For them there was a special department if I remember correctly the 5 th department of the Ministry of health. And , boy, the quality of this treatment called among people 'kremlevka hospital' was extremely high.
Though I could think on a special cases when it was known that somewhere in the world there were NEW methods to cure difficult deceases. But visiting west for treatments were absolutely not a natural way. Seems you somehow confused North Korea or some other contry with USSR.
also. Regarding teeth. The treatment of teeth was not advanced still was very good and in most cases based on western ( imported) equipment I might say that in my high school I was checked each 6 months for teeth and when there were problems they were immediately fixed, in some social groups though it was very prestigious ( fetish) to have golden teeth - that is why you probably could notice them.
overall I could say thouth there were problems in health care - those who wanted to be cured would always get nessesary and hight quality treatment ( of cause those abused alcohol would not have will to induce a health system to provide good medicaltreatment for them..) but my personal experience - I got quite good treatment when I become hardly ill, though it took time to get to good clinic and yes - it affected on how long I was getting rid of my decease. But eventually I was healed and the soviet system provided best western and local equipment and best doctors for that. And hey - I was absolutely average guy.
It's nice to know I'm not the only one.
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President." - Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
I got my copy several years ago when I was researching the politics of obedience and whether engineer subordinates should be responsible to authority or the laws of physics for a course in Ethics.
The book, "The Truth about Chernobyl", by Grigori Medvedev (ISBN 0-465-08775-2) ( English translation - by the way very well done ) Copyright 1991 by Basic Books, Inc.
( Incidentally, from my research in Ethics, I just about got the feeling that if you were gonna toe the line on Ethics, you had better work for yourself.).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Fissioning U-235 releases about 200 MeV/fission, or about (2e8 eV/fission)(1.6e-19 J/eV)(6.02e23 fissions/235 g)(0.075 g) = 6e9 Joules per tonne of the more enriched coal. That's about 1.6 megawatt-hours of heat, that can be derived from fissioning the U-235 in a tonne of coal.
Bituminous coal has an energy density of combustion of about 25e9 Joules per tonne, or about 7 megawatt-hours of heat from burning a tonne of coal.
At first glance, the combustion seems to win, especially when you consider that you can only get about 10% of the energy out of the uranium without reprocessing. But if you use the U-238 too (to make plutonium, which will then also fission in a conventional reactor), you get about 100x as much energy as from fissioning just the U-235. Of course, that takes reprocessing the fuel at least once, which is energy intensive, and there will of course be losses in the system. So maybe you only win by 30x. The fission should yield about 50 megawatt-hours of heat in a proper breeder-reactor setup. That's more than ten times the heat of combustion. Even "crappy" coal with only 1.5ppm of uranium in it could match the energy of combustion.
Wow.
Whoops, I labelled those wrong.
The British system was the cheap one. That's what I get for not previewing....
No matter how kind you are, German children are kinder.
Xe-135 is destroyed when it absorbs a neutron. So in an operating reactor is it "burned" rapidly as it is produced. But when you shut off the reaction, Xe-135 levels rise over the next eight hours to a peak level and then decay. This makes it very difficult to start a power reactor eight hours after you shut it down: the Xe-135 acts like an additional control rod, damping the reaction. You find that you have to pull the control rods much farther out to get the reaction started.
There's a problem with that: as soon as you get the reaction going in the core, the Xe-135 will rapidly "burn" off, restoring the usual control laws. That is dynamically unstable, as more neutrons -> less Xe-135 -> more reactive core -> even more neutrons!
The operators should have known what was happening when the found they had to pull the rods much farther than expected in order to bring the reactor stable "zero"-power operation ("zero-power" operation means that a chain reaction is being sustained but is not producing a significant amount of power. It is an important first step in operating the reactor: you start the reaction going, demonstrate positive control, calibrate your control settings, and then proceed to the power level you want. In the reactor where I worked, 5 watts of power, out of a rated maximum of 250 kilowatts, was considered "zero power".).
That unstable positive coefficient (as the Xe-135 burned off) made the reactor spike rapidly in power to a high thermal level -- where the reactor's positive void coefficient [what the Muerte23 described in the parent article] took over. That is a poor element of reactor design -- the Chernobyl reactors were "over-moderated". Fission neutrons come out fast, but uranium absorbs neutrons best when they're moving slowly. So you put the reactive material in a medium (water or graphite or Zirconium hydride or whatever) that will absorb energy from the neutrons without absorbing the neutrons themselves -- they bounce around, losing energy, until they can be absorbed by the core. Too little moderation, and the core won't start up. Too much moderation, and the neutrons will get absorbed and the core won't start up. The Chernobyl reactors were over-moderated, so that small voids in the graphite/water matrix in the core would increase the reactivity of the core. That's just stupid -- properly designed reactors are under-moderated, so that if the water boils the reaction tends to shut itself down.
Anyhow, all that would be moot except that the operators had disabled the main reactor shutdown mechanisms -- they couldn't SCRAM (or rapidly re-insert the rods into the core), but were forced to rely on the much slower drive mechanisms -- which couldn't contain the reaction. A rapid-drop SCRAM system existed (and would have saved the facility) but had been disabled for testing.
The problem (as I see it) with nuclear power is that people are such fuckin' idiots. Reactors are completely safe around people with what is called "common sense" but unfortunately, common sense isn't. Eventually, pointy haired bosses and Joe Sixpack rule the day.
(BTW, I hold a no-longer-current nuclear reactor operator's license).
The blue glow was Cerenkov radiation, not ionized air. It's common in water, but to see it in air means that there must have been an incredibly intense source of beta radiation.
And the planes sucked.
Wrong. The MiG15 you describe below was superior to US fighters at the time of it's creation.
Their jet fighters were incapable of some maneuvers that the World War II P-51 could perform easily.
The Space Shuttle can't roll like a P-51 either; doesn't mean it "sucks".
The MiG-15's main opponent was the US F-86, and given equally skilled pilots, the MiG would NEVER lose. It had superior mobility, so the choice of whether to disengage or continue fighting was up to him. Fortunately for the USA, most Korean MiG pilots were dangerously untrained. (That's Chuck Yeager's opinion I'm repeating)
Later MiGs were in several ways superior to USA equivalents too. The US fighters usually had an advantage in radars, missiles, or avionics; but that's not really the plane's fault, is it?
There are also uranium-thorium breeders that convert plentiful thorium into uranium. If the thorium and uranium are chemically combined when the fuel is made, the newly-produced uranium just enrichs the fuel slightly.
Why do I always hear this back yard argument? If you took an average size suburban house and made it water tight, all of the nuclear waste made by all of mans reactors since the beginning of the nuclear age wouldn't even fill the basement.
Not quite correct, I work in a nuclear plant. If you take the volume of your high-end single family home, 2 stories + basement, you have a volume about equal to the fuel used by a single reactor in it's lifetime.
That being said, to generate the same amount of electricity, you need to burn 4-5 times that volume in coal per day, and several times the weight.
A nuclear fission event releases 2 million times the energy of any chemical reaction (i.e. burning). The amount of waste fuel a nuke plant generates is incredibly small by any reasonable standard.
Of course, we also generate lots of low level radioactive waste (contaminated tools, clothing, instruments, neutron sources, etc) but much of this stuff really isn't harmful, it's just that since we know it's more radioactive on it's way out of the plant than on the way in, we have to exercise ridiculous controls.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Yucca Mountain is composed of very dense volcanic rock. Think Granite with tiny crystals instead of large phenocrysts, etc. This structure handles heat very well. I'm not going to go into the specifics of rhyolitic rock's chemistry, but it is a very "hardy" rock that can withstand what nuclear waste can throw at it. The current tests being completed simulated the rock's ability to handle the level of heat. Another issue at hand, one that initially called concern to me was the potential for water. Upon visiting the site and reading several papers on the hydrology of the area I do not see any great chance of contamination. I do, with a skeptical mind see a slight chance of mineral salts attacking the containers integrity. This does not worry me, as the environment is dry. Its a desert for chrissake. As for the detractors of Yucca mountain, this is a highly political football that has been tossed around by our rep. Harry reid. He knows Yucca will be here to stay, and so do I. His political livelyhood depends on riling up the ignorant populace with the goddamned "not in my backyard" mentality. Yucca will bring jobs, money, industry, technology, and many other opportunities. I am interested to know where you you believe the nuclear repository should be put.
Tyler: You don't know where ive been, Lou. YOU DONT KNOW WHERE IVE BEEN!!
Your statement that Iraq was planning terrorist strikes against the US is linked to a statement by Russian President Vladimir Putin, ex-KGB head. That's never been corroborated. They rank down there with Bush's "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address claiming that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, *according to the British*. There was no uranium purchase, just forged documents from Italy, passed through Britain, to American intelligence and State Department analysts who dismissed it. There's even less evidence for Putin's statement than forged documents. And there's no WMD, not even according to Putin. You can be irrationally afraid of anything you like, if it helps you believe the lies pouring from Bush, then getting blamed on foreigners. Just stop spreading those lies and fears around.
BTW, if you're going to talk baseless crap, you're probably better off complaining about "socialist" universal healthcare than weapons and terrorism. Most people won't believe you, especially if you don't even toss in the "communism is dead" canard.
--
make install -not war
Now, with Iraq the American media spews shit about no WMD, even though Iraq was planning terrorist strikes against America and the people follow along once again, calling Bush a nazi even though like Clinton, he is trying to protect them against an unseen monster.
God damn revisionist warmongers...
The reason given prior to the invasion was that, according to Bush & Co., Saddam Hussein had in his possession an arsenal of weapons of mass destructions with missiles to launch them beyond the range allowed by the U.N., and deployable within 45 minutes.
Bush said that he would deliver the proof after his "hundreds of thousand" of "weapons inspectors" (troops) had been there for 2 weeks.
Its been what, a year and a half? Bush lied, the U.N., France, Germany and Russia were right, the weapons inspector were right, they did their job, there were no weapons of mass destruction.
But now you'll hang on to any justification once that the actual motivation has been debunked. So this week, apparently, its Russia's word that Saddam was planning something, somewhere, against the U.S. Really?
Questioning your government to the point of them becoming ineffective because the media "told you so" isn't patriotic, it's being led like a sheep to your own slaughter.
Who was led to the slaughter like sheep under false pretenses again?
And the death toll is what, 5 to 1 Iraqis killed compared to U.S. troops? Bah...they don't count, their lives have no value, they weren't born in the U.S., who cares if they live or die...
Will Bush be afraid to use force the next time America is threatened?
Dammit, if you support the damn war, at least have the guts to support the real motivations for it. Not the pretend reason of the week.
P.S. Wanna use the "Saddam did bad things in the 80's while we were supporting him and financing him so we can invade his country all we want now that he isn't obbeying us anymore" excuse? How about some follow through on that idea?
You can't take the sky from me...