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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."
I know quite a few in the Cherynobe area who survived just fine. I even have some messed up film, somewhere :)
Still sounds scary though.
How did they treat you? It was a very intensive and demanding treatment and you had to be very strong to withstand it. I had continuous blood and plasma transfusions. For a few months I lived on other people's blood. Then the ulcers from the radiation burns started to appear. I had a lot of burns. Only after a couple of months did it become clear that there was a chance I might live. 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.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Anyone up for recording this and making it available?
Back in 1990 I caught a photo exhibit by Igor Kostin in Baltimore, MD. He was the first photographer in the area after the accident and toured it afterwords, taking many pictures which are still very disturbing to remember.
It's remarkable how optimistic he is on nuclear power, even with his concerns of safety above finanancial or even political concerns.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I don't dispute the heroic efforts by everyone who put their lives on the line, but the tragic fact is that the chernobyl reactor fire could have been avoided if there had been more attention paid to safer reactor design and materials.
Although the fire itself was caused by human error, the RBMK style reactors are much worse than the machines run by the US or western Europe and the powers that came up with that style of reactor are at least partly to blame for that tragedy.
The end isn't in sight yet, the "coffin" that is encasing the bad reactor is cracking, it may collapse causing another giant radioactive cloud of dust to blow all over the Ukraine, Russia, and Europe.
I had no idea that someone who was involved in Chernobyl would feel the need to hide the very fact that he was there.
What if this man was your neighbor and Chernobyl was your hometown? Would you harbor a grudge against him because he worked there?
After all, just because someone was there doesn't mean they were responsible for the accident. Like he said, "there was nothing we could do."
Sleep is futile.
Quote: What do you think about nuclear power?
I'm fine about it, as long as safety is put head and shoulders above any other concern, financial or whatever. If you keep safety as your number one priority at all stages of planning and running a plant, it should be OK.
Nuclear power will never work in the US for that very reason. Power is a private enterprise. Don't ask me why that is just the way this country thinks. Private industry will never put safty as number one priority. It's number one priority is profit. Companies will skimp on safety to maximize profit. Yes I know that we do have nuclear reactors in this country now. They are extremly regulated. They are being deregulated every day. When they are de-regulated enough for the companies, a disaster will soon follow. (5-10 years)
Unfortunately more stations means more opportunity for smaller incidents... Tut mir leid.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
I still remember the brownish color and ugly taste of Lugol's solution (hope I didn't mess up the name) the nice ladies at kindergarten gave us. Of course, it was a matter of a few years until I understood the reason this "medicine-that-doesn't-taste-good-but-you-must-dri nk-it" was given to us. Weird feelings when playing Fallout ever since ;)
most people i know think of nuclear power plants as giant atomic bombs that can go off any second. no use to explain things like "critical mass" or how efficient nuclear power is compared to coal/oil. "nuclear? no way, thats too dangerous."
but no need to worry anymore. now were dismantling all our high-standard plants here, so the big companies can sell us the power generated by nice russian RBMK reactors.
ah heck. i dont need no power plants. my power comes right out of this little outlet in my wall.
Because I'm someone who supports nuclear fission as a means of generating power (at this point in time, anyway)...
... redundant safety precaution after redundant safety precaution. Three Mile Island proved that those precautions work, even after a series of mistakes.
What do you think about nuclear power?
I'm fine about it, as long as safety is put head and shoulders above any other concern, financial or whatever. If you keep safety as your number one priority at all stages of planning and running a plant, it should be OK.
This is why this is not going to happen in the U.S.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Yucca mountain is perfectly safe, but it's kind of stupid. We have the technology to reprocess most of the stuff into more fuel for reactors. Other stuff is useful in medicine and micro power sources. The remainder can be made safe via a process known as "Photoremediation".
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. *sigh* Things are pretty bad when our own government doesn't understand.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
We aren't living in the 50s anymore. Nuclear development hasn't shown the results it promised and we today we know about more options.
What options do we have today that we didn't have in the 1950's? How many of those are capable of outright replacing the Coal/Oil/Nuclear infrastructure?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Yeah, my interpretation was that his shame was more the result of the fact that Chernobyl was a disgrace for the Soviet Union, and he does not want to identify himself as someone who people could blame (his being blameness in fact has nothing to do with it).
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
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?
And even when it's done well (most U.S. plants appear to be safely constructed and maintained), how can we guanantee it's safety through administrations or government overthrows? How many people were needlessly affected (in Russia and elsewhere) because of Soviet political bullshit?
Chernobyl is fucking TERRIFYING. There's a reason why that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game is based on that location.
I say, nuclear power becomes a more viable option when you can tell me what to do with the waste it generates. And the answer has to be better than 'bury it'.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Actually, if you read a UN report on the matter, its scientists concluded that the lingering radiation from Chernobyl is equal to about 40% of the dose from all nuclear tests put together. Check the table at the bottom. I recall reading that the particular isotopes released by the explosion were worse than those from nuclear tests for some reason, but I haven't been able to locate the source of that information.
Make cheese not war 8:)
- Actual miners deaths - over 100,000 miners deaths world wide since the 19th century.
- 116 *children* die in slag heap tragedy (here - my father lost his two brothers in this accident)
This is not even mentioning the fact that coal smoke is incredibly toxic and even radioactive.I was born in Kiev.. something like 250 - 300km from Chernobyl. Most of us were lucky cause the wind took frist radiation wave to another side... otherwise you could see Kiev dead (actual capital of Ukraine). I've seen lots of children in special hospitals tolly mutated.. not a good thing to see.. i imagined myself @ their's place. Nuclear power is a great this once it is controlled proprelly. Now Ukrainian government is asking for $ each year for creating new shields for old reactors... bastards!
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
I had a class with a russian girl last year. Not russian actually, but a former satelite state whose name escapes me. Anyway, because she was born within a certain distance from Chernobyl(she was 17, or so as of this past year) the Red Cross will never except her blood for donation for her entire life.
I thought that was fairly interesting, that they have a lifelong ban on all people's blood that lived/were born within a certain perimeter of the accident.
I can't wait for that reflected moderated reactor to come online up in Alaska. Toshiba's 4S system, consists of a prefabricated core, sealed at the factory, then delivered to the site and installed into prefabricated concrete casings, then plumbed and wired. The 4S system does not use the traditional rod and core design. It design is based on a reflector that moves up and down the face of the uranium core, reflecting neutrons back into the core, causing the fission rate in increase, creating power. If more power is needed, the refector moves faster, but it also shortens the core's life, which is 6 years on the nominal decay rate.
The upshot to this design is that if something breaks, the reflector simply stops, and the core cools down back to it's normal static decay rate. For instance, you have a power surge that causes a turbine trip, which in turn causes a surge in high pressure steam feed. The operator or automation would take note of it, tripping emergency venting on the secondary coolant loop, finally ordering the reactor to SCRAM. The refector stops moving and things cool down and the community relies on the auxillary generator until a technician can come out to check things out before resetting the system back to normal power generation.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
what should have been done. There are many excellent description of what caused the event, and what was done wrong to produce the event, but I still haven't found any explanation of what the response should have been to stop the accident. Can anyone comment, or have a link. And I am talking about fixing the problem once all of those safeties were removed. Was this a recoverable condition that they hadn't trained for, or was the outcome unavoidable....
Who is the master of foxhounds, and who says the hunt has begun? -Pink Floyd
or was the outcome unavoidable....
sorry no links - but briefly from what I read in russian press -the outcome after the things they did was unavoidable. But then ALL similar reactors were equipped with new features which will make the similar situations avoidable. So now if the things at any power plant will go the same way - then there will not be tragedy.I was just a young lad at the time of the explosion and living in Switzerland, but I still remember it as the summer without lettuce. I guess the radiation was being absorbed in the leafy green above ground plants, and hence you couldn't eat it.
It's weird, I don't remember the drastic explosion, the incredible loss of life, the aftermath, except the fact that I couldn't eat lettuce that summer.
Odd the things you remember.