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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 once in your Slashdot browsing days, read the article! It's really interesting and worth your time.
Stood there and watched the blue ionized air as it poured out of the reactor?
but he didn't think it was the radiation
I submit that he was grasping for any alternative he could make himself believe that didn't involve him dying a horrible death.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Seriously - you went to the Soviet Union while it still existed and did a large, statistically significant sampling of people with respect to the appearance of their teeth? Enough to make generalizations about dental care for several hundred million people?
Wow. Good job.
He says in the interview that the control rods were dropped by his colleague, but from what I recall it was much, much too late. The core was so hot that the rods warped and jammed.
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.
Moreover manuals were outdated with areas simply crossed out. Human error at its worst.
Regardless of how you feel about nuclear power politically, the heroism demonstrated by the crew at Chernobyl was incredible-and deserves commendation.
If not for them, things could have gotten much worse. Many of these brave men knowingly gave their lives.
Sadly, a fake, I believe.
Thanks for pointing this out for us. A man on the brink of death, about to endure months of intensive treatment after one of the most horrific nuclear accidents in history, grasping for a reason to doubt the mortal danger he was in and the inevitable pain he would have to face. Hilarious.
I just read this and here is the paragraph for those interested :
"The accident released about as much radiation as one atmospheric nuclear test," Jackson notes. "Think of Chernobyl, which exuded hundreds of thousands of square meters of radioactive gas into the atmosphere. Think of all the hundreds of atmospheric tests, and think about the next breath you inhale. How many bits of Hiroshima, and Chernobyl, and Nagasaki you are inhaling each time you breathe in."
I think it speaks for itself...
P.S.: Is it ok to copy a paragraph from a copyrighted article if I reference it?
I'd rather be sailing...
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.
Quick question: how many people here would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for free health care? It's okay if you do, just be consistent about it. I suspect there aren't many who'd agree with this, though. Otherwise, you can't just point to Communist nations and say "well, if you ignore the mass murder and gulags, it really wasn't that bad. . . "
Being a 4th generation american let me step up for the rest of us and clue you in:
Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781
If a nation expects to be ignorant -- and free -- in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. --Edward Abbey (1927-1989)
Ever heard "Freedom isn't Free" The United States of America is better then every other nation so long as each and every citizen does their part to keep the government in check. If you don't believe me, read the constitution it shouldn't take very long for you to get the theme of the document. The duty of every citizen is to watch the government like a child trying to get away with something.
If you accept everything your government tells you as gospel, you become the trailer park woman on Jerry Springer who believes everything her derelict 13 year old drug addicted car thief son tells her. "And I did axe him, I taid Timmy, where'd you get dat Merchedes Benz? And he did tell me dat he had done founded it." Just like being a parent you need to be in your kid's (government's) face 24-7. It's your duty to, it's your job and responsability to cry foul. Living in the US you get all these great rights and responsabilities, but they aren't a gift. You have a job to do in exchange for them.
I'm reminded as well of Lewis Black's comentary where he adds "Ever here people say 'America is the GREATEST country in the world', but they've never been to another country? How do you know? How do you know for sure that there isn't something better out there? For all you know there are countries out there just giving stuff away for free, like HEALTHCARE!"
Yeah if you think the US has gone downhill, or if there's just one thing or two that another country does better, it isn't the US government that's been slackin' IT'S YOU!
That concludes how to be American 101.
I boycott signatures
Sigh. No wonder we can't agree on simple issues. You don't trust private industry. I don't trust government.
You should study the record on nuclear power in the USA. Zero people have been killed by private nuclear power, (except in non-nuclear related ordinary accidents like falling off a ladder at a nuke plant) but many have been killed and many endangered by government programs.
The number may be different today, but some years back they said that 98% of the high level nuclear waste in the USA is from weapons, not power plants. Yet nearly 100% of the national debate and are directed at the 2% civilian waste, because most facts about weapons waste are classified and because civilians are not asked to give their opinion about weapons programs.
Still because industry's #1 priority is profit, they are ineligible for trust in your eyes. Politicians, motivated solely by re-election are more credible to you.
In the USA and many other countries, nuclear power plants are owned and operated by non-profit government utilities. If those plants are demonstratively safer than profit-motivated plants, the evidence should be plain from the records. Can anyone cite such evidence?
As long as we need a majority to change anything, and as long as we can't find a majority to decide whom to trust, we're stuck with perpetual gridlock. The status quo, no matter how good or bad, reigns supreme.
I feel the same way. The description of the ionized air is extremely eerie, and I can't help but imagine the devastation, and horrible beauty of that scene. It gives me the creepy crawlies. Just something about a force so powerful that you can't actually feel until your body starts what amounts to dissolving.
-Jesse
Nothing says "unprofessional job" like wrinkles in your duct tape.
There is a primary difference between coal/oil and nuclear. Nuclear can't be cleaned up. It can be moved from one spot to another though. How about we put it in your backyard for starters?
Sure. A few hundred kilometres north of here is the Canadian Shield, which has been geologically stable for about 3 billion years. Vitrify the waste (turn it into glass with radioactives as dopants), put that in standard radioactive waste storage barrels (you know, the kind they test by dropping 30 feet onto spikes), and put those at the bottom of a mine shaft in non-porus shield rock. Plug the hole with clay, and it'll stay there until north america is subducted back into the mantle. The barrels decay after a few centuries, but they're mainly to prevent tampering and accidents in transit. Vitrified waste in non-porus bedrock in geologically stable areas goes nowhere.
The volume of waste to deal with is also far lower than, say, the volume of arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and other heavy metals that have comparably nasty effects that we have to dispose of on a yearly basis.
As for cleanup - most of the wastes are still heavy elements. They can be concentrated and removed from contaminated areas following a hypothetical nasty accident the same way other heavy metals are.
And the answer has to be better than 'bury it'.
What could possibly _be_ better? Any reprocessing scheme will give you more opportunity for contamination that sticking it in the shield for the rest of eternity. There really isn't much waste to _deal_ with - last I heard all of the high-level waste produced by the world's power reactors would fit in a couple of swimming pools if piled in one place.
If you really need fancy toys, look up the actinide-burning fast neutron reactor designs that others have proposed for destroying radioactive waste.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
-- Theodore Roosevelt
(any typos or misspellings are mine)
There is a primary difference between coal/oil and nuclear. Nuclear can't be cleaned up.
So how do we clean up the billions of metric tons of coal byproducts released into the atmosphere every year.
How about we put it in your backyard for starters?
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.
Tell me, what have you read of experimental nuclear reactors called PBMR's? Read this and pay close attention to the section labeled "Gas turbines heated by nuclear furnaces. When people mention nuclear energy, all they can think of is some 1950's, slow neutron reactors. Because of careless mistakes by humans, not their machines, all development of nuclear research has been severely limited. The much safer and, fool proof, technology of the PBMR's could have replaced most of the older reactors in this country if it weren't for panicky people who rely on sensational news outlets for their education. Who knows what we would be capable of now if development hadn't ground to a halt.
its simply not right to write off nuclear accidents as being miniscule compared to damage caused by fossil fuels.
I don't know anything about your statistics, but I will accept them for the purposes of this argument. Even if 30,000 died, that number is wholly insignificant in comparison the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels. Millions of cases of cancer the world over can be attributed in some way to the pollution caused by these power plants. The enivironmental damage is also very difficult to quantify, but there are many who believe global warming caused by fossil fuels reduces arable land, which results in more frequent famines.
No matter how you look at it, the immediate cessation of using fossil fuels and the largscale adoption of nuclear power is the simplest ethical choice one can make. Millions of lives will be saved, and we will take an important step in avoiding serious ecological damage in the future.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
- Quick question: how many people here would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for free health care?
Quick question: How many people here [in the U.S.] would honestly trade their political, civil, and economic freedom just for the illusion of safety? I think we already know the answer to this...