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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.
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
Stood there and watched the blue ionized air as it poured out of the reactor?
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?
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
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?"
One of the most interesting bits of the interview is this:
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.
There you have it. From a man who nearly died and is still sick today from Nuclear power.
It's imperative for people to realize that Nuclear Power is not devil incarnate. By stopping Nuclear development, you are slowly killing yourselves with Coal and Oil plants. The number of people killed by nuclear power rate in the dozens (most at Chernobyl). The number of people killed by coal plants rate in the hundreds of thousands. Think about it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
"In 1986, the Russians were our enemies."
Who do you think "we" are, that we had the same enemies in 1986?
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).
thats the first word that came to my mind ;)
He may or may not in fact be a stalker, but surely he could help out making the game..
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.
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.
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)
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.
I may have a sense of humor and love the Simpsons, but this is not something to joke about.
When does the TV movie come out?
Where is the "Chernobyl Disaster Veterans for Truth" post? :-D
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.
Sadly, a fake, I believe.
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
Somehow I feel that this is a very important statement. I guess it is trying to tell me the next time I hear a loud thud, that it might not be my grandmother breaking a hip, but the war beginning.
I once lived opposite some warehouses converted into residental flats. Instead of internal staircaes, these buildings had metal staircases on the outside going all the way up to six floors. On one Saturday, repairs were being carried out by welders on the top floor. At this time, I had my computer on a desk in the corner of the room beside the window, and just about freaked out when I saw the reflection of an intense bright shimmering light being projected onto the wall opposite my window.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Ah ha found it... domain name was kidd with a double d
Kidd of Speed's photo journal of Chernobyl
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
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.....
I believe this site was shown to be a fake - she didn't go through there alone, but took a bunch of pictures from other sources and some of her own pictures during a standard tour. I can't find a source easily, though I'm sure someone else here can.
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 ;)
It seems to be a partial fake, anyway.5 /fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/0
it seems she did go there, but not the 'lone woman on a motorcycle' thing. She was evidently escorted around in an official car.
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
Hmm interesting.
o gs_cher.html
;)
Also, your link has a space in it, try again:
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photobl
Preview is your friend
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
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.
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.
...is one of my favorite chronicles of Chernobyl after the explosion. It's a little story (with pictures) about a woman that rode her motorcycle through Chernobyl and documented what she saw and how it made her feel. Very good read IMHO.
Here's the link (hopefully you people won't kill their server)
If I get a mirror put up, I'll post it.
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
Looking for this:
/. many moons ago, I was absolutely fascinated, and read the entire thing. Spooky.
http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm
When I found that site, whenever it was last posted on
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
I think the photos are true, it's just the circumstances under which they were taken which is bogus.
May as well put up a bit more :
o gs_cher.html
"I am sorry to report that much of Elena's story is not true. She did not travel around the zone by herself on a motorcycle. Motorcycles are banned in the zone, as is wandering around alone, without an escort from the zone administration. She made one trip there with her husband and a friend. They traveled in a Chornobyl car that picked them up in Kyiv.
She did, however, bring a motorcycle helmet. They organized their trip through a Kyiv travel agency and the administration of the Chornobyl zone (and not her father). They were given the same standard excursion that most Chernobyl tourists receive. When the Web site appeared, Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone. When it turned out that the motorcycle story was an invention, they were even less pleased about this fantasy Web site.
Because of those problems, Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading. "
from: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photobl
This is a stolen sig.
The original site was hosted on angelfire which is now down, but a mirror can be found here.
Unfortuantly as I posted a little earlier the story's a fake.
You're probably having a hard time finding it as it was shown to be a hoax. While some of the pictures were interesting, the story to go with it should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
That is just sad. RTFA. Are people just incapable of understanding heroism anymore?
...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.
Wasn't this shown to be a fraud? -F
"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."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
It's imperative for people to realize that Nuclear Power is not devil incarnate. By stopping Nuclear development, you are slowly killing yourselves with Coal and Oil plants. The number of people killed by nuclear power rate in the dozens (most at Chernobyl). The number of people killed by coal plants rate in the hundreds of thousands. Think about it.
I am not arguing the fact that most of our current energy production is not good for us. However, Andrew Gregorovich and a entire load of people would disagree with your assessment of what the costs of Chernobyl was.
From Gregorovich's article:
THE LIQUIDATORS are those people who were recruited or forced to assist in the cleanup or the "liquidation" of the consequences of the accident. As a totalitarian government the Soviet Union forced many young soldiers to assist in the cleanup of the Chornobyl accident, apparently without sufficient protective clothing and insufficient explanation of the danger involved. Over 650,000 liquidators helped in the cleanup of the Chornobyl disaster in the first year. Many of those who worked as LIQUIDATORS became ill and according to some estimates about 8,000 to 10,000 have died from the radioactive dose they received at the Chornobyl Power Plant. This group apparently includes those who built the containment building over the destroyed reactor No. 4 which is called the SARCOPHAGUS.
Don't worry. Sometime in the next ten thousand years Chernobyl will be safe to walk near. Then everything will be just back to normal.
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.)
We should be moving to technology like this in the near future. Get familiar with it, send links to your friends... Stop the established energy complex from supressing technologies like this.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I think he might be right since AFAIK, once you reach the violent vomiting stage, its too late, you're dead.
But he's clearly not dead.
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
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..."
One moronic bigoted stereotype deserves another eh?
From the article:
What happened?
The first thing I heard wasn't an explosion, it was a thud, a shaking. Then two or three seconds later came the explosion. The doors of my office were blown out. It was like when an old building is demolished, with clouds of dust, but combined with lots of steam. It was a very damp, dusty, powerful movement of air. There was a lot of shaking, a lot of things were falling. The lights went off. Our first thought was to find somewhere we could safely hide. We headed towards the transport corridor, where there was a small passage with a low ceiling. We were standing there and everything was falling around us.
Almost the same, but I was in the dorms, and my room mate had Taco Bell.
-ave
...or maybe not.
Imagine getting a job with "Engineer, Chernobyl" on your CV.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Are people just incapable of understanding heroism anymore?
I think one could probably draw a graph correlating the number of people who are incapable of understanding heroism with the number of people incapable of understanding a joke.
Where does the helium we put in baloons come from? Natural gas wells where it collects from decaying uranium and thorium. Those things are what keep the Earth's core hot. Vast quantities of these things are released every day by coal plants.
I'm not saying we can just replace coal power trivially, but we should be working towards that as a goal. I'm also not saying fission power is perfect either, but a well maintained nuclear plant causes less radioactivity in the environment than a coal plant of similar power output, and as the isotopes released have basically unlimited half-lives (4.5 b.y. for uranium and 14 b.y. for thorium, which are essentially forever to humans), the problem will last a lot longer.
Ultimately, neither is acceptable, and we should be doing our best to replace them both as soon as we can do it without bankrupting the world.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
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.
At least you could smell the dust and leave on your own before it did what... made you cough a bit?
Not quite the same thing as the government witholding information that your surroundings are being hammered with invisible radiation which people would soon start to die from. Hell, even the firefighters at Chernobyl weren't told that radiation was involved.
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:)
I wasn't talking about the soviet gov't at all. I was reflecting on his statement that criticizing the EPA for its idiocy after the attacks was somehow unpatriotic. I was merely pointing out that it was valid criticism, not that it was somehow comparable to chernobyl.
Read jack phelps dot net
carbon-12? Is carbon-12 radioactive? (I thought it was carbon-14...)
the real at&t mix
where the hell have you been?? War began 3 years ago!
Yes, you're right, Carbon-14 is the radioactive form of Carbon that is released when coal is burned.
Sorry about that,
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
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
I'm very disapointed to learn that her story was a hoax. I sure fell for that one- it was definately a moving story to read. I guess it is just hard to believe someone would make up something like that.
The point is, you have to draw a line somewhere :P. And you're never going to satify all the people. You just call it as seems appropriate to you.
Not to mention the bulkiness of coal means much more has to be mined and transported than uranium. Even at a low rate, mining and rail accidents add up.
...ver a year and a half more life on average! We both win!
Blar.
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)
It was worth reading. It made me sad and rethink about life. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The motorcycle trip was a fake. The trip through the area was real
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.
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
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
In Europe anyway they call them torches don't know about Russia. In Russia they call them in Russian:-). The word would be "fonarik", you insensitive clod!
Because the president said so:
(emphasis added)
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.
Yes, it is your duty to cry foul, if something foul is indeed being done. However crying foul to the point where the government is crippled from fulfilling it's main duties (national defense, and regulation of interstate commerce) for your own personal gain is NOT Patriotic.
A good example of this is the American media. They LOVE a good story they can attack a president on. When Bill Clinton tried to kill Osama Bin Laden the media screamed "Wag the dog, Wag the dog!" and the American people followed like sheep. 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.
So how many people have to die before people open up their eyes? Did Clinton step down his effort to catch Bin Laden because of the Media and "American Patriots" who were assuming the worst about him? Will Bush be afraid to use force the next time America is threatened?
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.
For all you know there are countries out there just giving stuff away for free, like HEALTHCARE!
That isn't such a good deal, people from other countries constantly come to the US for healthcare. Not to mention, many of the european countries are going to have to cut back on socialist programs like universal health care in 20-25 years because there will be way more people retired than working.
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!
You are right about this, go out and VOTE people. If you don't like the current political parties, find one that appeals to you or make your own and VOTE. While you may think that a third party vote is "throwing your vote away" a third party only needs about 5% to get federal campaign funds for the next election.
If you are going to liken the government to a child, who in their right mind gives a child more responsibility when it's clearly shown that it can't handle the chores that it has already been given? The Federal Govt does so many things poorly it's been lampooned about it for decades. But knowning that, you want it to start handling something like healthcare? The healtcare cost increases are due to the Fed Govt meddling with it since 1964. Having it get involved for everyone will only make it worse and cost more for everyone. It needs to get out of the business entirely. If you read the US Constitution, you will see that it's not their duty do any it anyway - all of these programs are bribes for votes.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
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]
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.
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.
After World War II, saying "we are better than any other nation" seems kinda scary to me.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
Wow! Reminds me our First Secretary's speeches... scary.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
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.
Russian Model: After Chernobyl, my penis is falling off.
Moe: And "penis" is Russian for?
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Offtopic, but I think the more important question for us now is how many people would trade their political, civil, and economic freedom for security? I guess we're going to find out...
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.
Erf! 30 years on the core, not 6!
My bad.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
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.
AC or not, it's a valid correction.
However crying foul to the point where the government is crippled from fulfilling it's main duties
Explain how this is possible. Are you implying that George Bush reacts so poorly to verbal criticism or adversity that he would be paralyzed and unable to perform his duties? (On the other hand, given his reaction when told of the unfolding 9-11 events, you MAY have a point there.)
That isn't such a good deal, people from other countries constantly come to the US for healthcare.
It's not a "good thing" for the class of Americans who can afford decent health care. You make a significant overgeneralization, however, when you say people from other countries...; in actuality it's RICH people from other countries who come here for treatment, in part because we have generally good health care available to those (like them) who can afford it, but more to the point, our American health care is less clogged-up (i.e. less waiting) for those who can afford it BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE WHO CANNOT AFFORD IT and thus do not "get in the way" of the more affluent, as happens in their home countries with health care rationed by need rather than by ability to pay.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
No, anything that quotes Edward Abbey is "How to be an Environmental Extremist Terrorist" 101.
John Kerry is a Joke!
Obviously, this doesn't help you for chronic/long term conditions before they become an emergency, but it is hardly the draconian state you claim.
Me? I'm for more governmental control and regulation of the medical industry (and just as, if not more importantly, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. Malpractice suits especially need limits.), but not abject European socialism. When industries get too big for individuals or states to handle, the federal government has an obligation to step in and keep them honest. What bothers me is that people are too apethetic to keep the Fed honest.
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
They won't accept blood given by homosexuals either. Because somehow, they feel that the people who fuck without taking simple precautions are the same peoplas as those who want to waste an hour to give blood. And you know, teh gheys habe teh AIDS OMG.
Hmmm... I thought the second "interview" was funnier than the first. But then again, I'm always accused of being one of those supposed commie-leftist-pinko types.
Un-news
Do you assert that "Soviets took care of their people well and their medicine was top" simply because of stories you read on the 'net, or do you have substantial evidence of this? Perhaps you are old enough to remember the tragedy at Chernobyl but have you ever even BEEN to Russia or any other former Soviet republics, or know people who have? Or perhaps do you live there now and your own personal circumstances have not been good since the fall of the USSR and you remember the good times?
From my perspective it looks like the Soviets were quite the opposite--they neither cared for citizens at large nor did they have an adequate public healthcare system. This fellow was highly educated and had skills and background considered important to the state. Furthermore, the more plant operators, technicians and engineers that survived, the more witnesses the state had to obtain information from in analysing the explosion. At least in the US there is SOME degree of protection and money can buy you good care--in the USSR you had to hope the Soviet government thought you were worth saving.
This isn't a case of a good system turning bad through stagnation and corruption either--the Soviet Union was rotten to the core right from the beginning in 1917. My grandmother's family was not really wealthy but did live alright on their own farm in Ukraine--until the revolution when their farm was seized and they were expelled from their property. My grandmother was a small child and the family faced great enough hardship that they fled to Canada to make a new life. A lot of attention is paid to the fact millions were killed in concentration camps during Hitler's reign of Germany, and rightly so. Unfortunately not so much attention is paid to the criminal acts of Stalin, who committed genocidal atrocities that probably even surpassed those of the monster Hitler.
Until communism fell we only had information that was either filtered by the Soviet state or came from informants or defectors, but our eyes were really opened with the breakup of the USSR. Although great effort was placed on central planning as a means to enforce equality, the reality was that there was no equality--central planners decided who was "more equal" than others. As a result, if you had connections in the politburo or were blessed with certain skills, intelligence or family ties you were taken care of.
If you were a farm worker, or coal miner or factory worker you were worthy of little more than enough sustinance to perform your duties--the system established just the kind of classes that the revolution was supposed to eliminate. So as engineers, doctors, politicians and such got top notch hospital treatment, schoolchildren in Kiev got untreated tumours and lesions, coal miners got emphesyma and citizens in general got to live in riteky state housing built with concrete largely reinforced with straw and refuse.
I suspect that you grew up believing in the communist ideal and never had to live in the reality of it, or you actually DID live in it and were fortunate enough to be part of the "more equal" strata of Soviet society--that is, you or your family were "white collar" partipants in the state machine. Admittedly, post-Soviet Russia hasn't been all that kind to that segment of society.
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).
Explain how this is possible. Are you implying that George Bush reacts so poorly to verbal criticism or adversity that he would be paralyzed and unable to perform his duties? (On the other hand, given his reaction when told of the unfolding 9-11 events, you MAY have a point there.)
*sigh* I notice you didn't touch the Clinton comment. What is wrong, do you think it only goes one way? Clinton read polls and cared more about how he looked "politically" than Bush does. I don't doubt that EITHER of them could be influenced and paralyzed by the media. I would bet that Clinton was during the Lewinsky scandal.
It's not a "good thing" for the class of Americans who can afford decent health care. You make a significant overgeneralization
No, you make a signifcant overgeneralization. You make it sound like poor people are dying on the street from lack of health care. The US has Universal health care. ANYONE can walk in to a hospital off the street and get heath care if anything serious is wrong with them and the hospital MUST take them and MUST give them the same treatment and it comes out of the American taxpayers wallet.
Everyone might not have universal health care, but where in the constitution does it say that? You have the right to life, liberty and to see the doctor if you have the flu?
And what happens to the health care system once the government takes over? In places like Canada it the average time it takes is 2 weeks to see a doctor. How motivated will the nurses and doctors be to take care of you? Ever been to motor vehicles in the US? That is what you can expect if the US government takes over health care. It's been proven time in and time out, taking away choice and handing an industry over to government never works as well as letting the free market decide things.
, however, when you say people from other countries...; in actuality it's RICH people from other countries who come here for treatment, in part because we have generally good health care available to those (like them) who can afford it, but more to the point, our American health care is less clogged-up (i.e. less waiting) for those who can afford it BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE WHO CANNOT AFFORD IT
No, they come here simply because it's the best health care. It's not about the "wait time"...If you are going to have a major operation would you wait an extra week for a good doctor or take any old shmuck who has the next opening?
People who have to pay for their health related services take up 50% less resources than people who are insured however there is little to no effect on their overall health (this is from a study done at Harvard. Look it up, it was done by Newhouse).
That's nothing new. U.S health care has always been centered around pharmaceutical profits. Pharmacies charge 4x the cost of Canada even though the drugs were build from the same manufacturers. Then U.S. health delegations say "Canada and oversea medicine is unsafe". That's complete bullshit.
By the end of the decade, U.S. health care will no longer be known to be top among the world. It'll go down as a service that is overpaid, too political and complicated. And Americans will be sitting on top of miracle treatments that no one can afford except the millionaires.
The conspiracy behind all this is the population control. You either send a bunch of people to war and keep a low headcount OR you provide unaffordable heathcare. Conspiracy 101.
I read the MIT report, the Xenon problem was an important issue and ment that it was very difficult to 'relight' the reactor. When the raction restarted, it was too quick.
Right ... Saying otherwise and coming up with the propaganda and the media to support the view that the president is always right comes dangerously close to Facism.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
You should always support and give thanks to those soldiers who are willing to risk their lives in your defense. In return you should be ready to hang from the trees anyone that would risk the lives of those soldiers needlessly.
It's really a simple promise. "I'll die for my nation and any member of it, just don't make me die for something less"
I boycott signatures
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
Unless you want to pay money, you are stuck reading negative gifs (sucks when you get to the photographs), but this is pretty good.
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.Sure, coal plants release a lot of carbon. Some of it's C-14 (as another poster already pointed out). But you know where that carbon-14 came from? It came from the atmosphere that the dinosaurs (or trees, or diatoms, or whatever) were breathing. In fact, since the coal has been underground for so long, where it's not exposed to the cosmic rays that create the C-14 in the upper atmosphere, it contains a far lower concentration of C-14 than the CO2 you're exhaling right now.
Bugrit! Millenium hand and shrimp!
That procedure might be suitable in a dire emergency, but if the medical system is so degraded that most heart surgeries are dire emergencies what does that say about the society's capabilities and priorities? It certainly does not fit with Soviet claims of being the Worker's Paradise and the pinnacle of civilization.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Nuclear reactors don't emit beta particles at a high enough energy to create Cerenkov radiation in air. On the other hand, Cerenkov radiation in molten glass (which is now solidifed and known as Chernobylite) coming up through the air and scattering off dust is quite plausible.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Er... he was joking. See, these days it seems that any sort of criticism of the government or public services, etc., gets slammed for being unpatriotic... especially if they are defense or terrorism related... so he wanted that post modded down for being critical of the EPA's actions after 9/11, which scratches a particularly raw nerve in the public psyche and... oh, just forget it...
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
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
Yes, and my understand is that the accident involved 1 of the four reactors-and wasn't quite the worse accident theoretically possible for that reactor. Personally, I think nuclear power isn't a very good idea--and building reactors without safeguards is even worse. Still, that doesn't detract from the heroism shown by the men that kept a bad situation from getting worse. You didn't loose your entire community in this disaster-some folks did.
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...
More likely, the air was being ionized by gammas.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
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.
What do you mean, "start handling healthcare"? The Federal government runs Medicare, the VA, the NIH, and various other healthcare operations. It has done so for decades,and is one of the few factors keeping healthcare affordable. If you want to complain about factors driving up the cost, let's talk about the artificially constrained supply of doctors, the dangerous workplaces and polluted environment increasing demand, and the billions of dollars spent marketing drugs.
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
The "common defence", and even "the blessings of Liberty", especially for posterity, require a healthy population.
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make install -not war
Er, "socialist/anarchist" evaluates to "1/0", which is an error. Do you balance your healthcare bills with that calculator?
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make install -not war
... apart from the waste issue. That's the thing, the main masty by-product of nuclear reaction is the waste, and what the heck do you do with it? If there was a way to safely recycle it into something safe, we would be high to not embrace nuclear power... but that's the thing, you can't. solar, water (waves, tides) and wind should be worked on. I think there is real potential there to free ourselves from sucking carbon from underground and blowing it into the air.
Indeed. This is how asbestos can cause cancer, just by being a mechanical irritant on the inside of the lungs. It's not chemically toxic or anything, like breathing cigarette smoke or something.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
As some posts below reveal, the accident resulted from a series of mistakes/stupid actions. If any of these mistakes had not occurred, the accident would not have happened. The removal of the safeties in itself did not cause the accident - it was the raising of control rods, removal of cooling water, etc. Then because of the positive void coefficient, lowering the control rods briefly increased the power of the reactor and caused the explosion. Once the explosion happened, it was all over -- putting out the fire quickly was pretty hopeless once the graphite had caught on fire.
i'm not familiar with the exact definitions, but there seems to be two kinds of nukes. those that heat the water directly and those that use a heat exchanger. neither is perfect, but the heat exchanger deally is safer. seems like a very complicated way to boil water in either case. i have worked at several com-ed (IL) nukes as an employee of a roofing contractor and observed that any problems seem to originate with the suits. the techies and security people were knowledgable and competent and for the most part polite and courteous . it was the PHBs of the operation that effed up the most.
Serenity now, insanity later.
I'm not going to get into this argument, but I have to point something out to you:
If you use the same highlighting (ie, bold for previous posters comments, standard text for your own) there isn't a whole lot of point in posting anonymous, is there?
SB
It's old. The more humans I meet, the more I like my cats. At least they are honest.
Parent's current sig:Why? It doesn't affect karma. Set your Funny modifier negative in preferences if you don't have a sense of humor.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
You make some great points about the media.
s 7. html
Here's an EXCELLENT article about the Red Team-Blue Team hypocrisy in politics and media today:
http://www.centraloregonian.com/PCOGuestOpinion
I recommend you read it and share among those
you associate with.
"That isn't such a good deal, people from other countries constantly come to the US for healthcare. Not to mention, many of the european countries are going to have to cut back on socialist programs like universal health care in 20-25 years because there will be way more people retired than working."
They're already coming to the US now for healthcare. Canada, which has a highly touted health care system (touted by socialists, like Kerry-- who would bankrupt us with his bullshit health care plans), has waiting periods that can be several weeks (4-6 averages?), even for serious operations. An increasing number of ill or injured Canadians continue to come to the United States for health care.
There's alot of hidden costs associated with "free' socialized health care... not to mention the layers of bureaucracy that have to be dealt with. After they get around the bureaucrats, you're still going to have people using up more and more of what they perceive as "free".
These people should have read some Heinlein.
TANSTAAFL. There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
All to often people associate Americans lacking medical insurance with lacking medical care. If you're bleeding to death, or seriously injured in some other way, you're GOING TO GET MEDICAL CARE in the United States. It's pretty much by law. However, the hospital is going to expect you to get on a payment plan to pay them back. What is so bad about this? Nothing. It's morally acceptable, and it's efficient.
"You are right about this, go out and VOTE people. If you don't like the current political parties, find one that appeals to you or make your own and VOTE. While you may think that a third party vote is "throwing your vote away" a third party only needs about 5% to get federal campaign funds for the next election."
When the system is built for as little change as possible, and those that are capable of altering the system start to merge, the only sensible vote is to not vote at all... which is a vote for all intensive purposes. Even few enough people vote, then our government will begin to lose legitimacy and inevitably you'll find some radical changes in politics or our government structure outright -- which no matter where you stand on the political spectrum, you have to agree with.
Speckpot?
The main problem was that the "condition" was created artificially, as a part of a dangerous experiment that no one of the reactor's designers would approve. Without that there would be no disaster. There may be a lot of nitpicking about safety of the design, however people that were stupid/ignorant enough to run that experiment, would be likely stupid/ignorant enough to compensate for the safety of any other design, too.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
HAHAHAHA! All the Federal programs you mention are SUCH standard bearers for providing quality and inexpensive care. NOT! The only reason I've ever heard of anyone to ever go to a VA hospital was that it was 'free', not because they receive quality care. When the Feds passed Medicare/Medicaid in 1964, they essentially gave the healthcare industry a blank check with little oversight or controls. In my own family's experience, it wasn't uncommon for a hospital to bill the Feds for procedures that weren't done (even after the patient was dead!) and even after it was reported there was an error, they still paid the erroneous amount. Take a look at http://www.academyhealth.org/2003/presentations/do cteur.pdf and look at the GDP chart. Take a ruler and draw a line using the US's spending from 1965 (right after M/M was passed) to 1970 and extend it out. It pretty much tracks the rate of spending until 1995. Do the same with the segment from 1960 to 1965. It results in a line that is at a rate of change that is similar to Canada's, the UK's, etc. Any surprise that this change is after the Feds decide to take over payment for a significant portion of the population? No. Have working conditions or pollution gotten significantly worse since 1965? No. If anything, they have gotten better. Who limits what companies can sell pharmacuticals in the US? The Feds. Who would also limit the supply of docs? Again, the Feds. But there is a good reason for both of those*.
Also, the last I checked, Promote does not equal Provide, which is what you want it to do. *Requiring that companies only sell safe products and that the physicians aren't quacks helps contribute to having (or promote) a good health care system for all.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Has anyone seen K-19 with Harrison Ford? The sub has a story like the Titanic where things go wrong right from the start, then things go to hell when the reactor powering the sub overheats. The submariners who have to go in and fix it come out with their skin falling off and a few die. Very moving.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
That's not to say that they are the only reason, just a major one. I don't know whether or not they helped popularize insurance packages that took care of everything from regular doctor visits to intensive care. That is another culprit along with malpractice lawsuits. Like Medicare/Medicaid, it imposes another layer of bureaucracy on top of the system and the providers spend a significant portion of their time & energy filling out paperwork instead of helping people. I think /. has had a story or two about doctors rejecting that entire mess for regular upfront payments (like what was very common to pre-mid 60s). They can spend more time with patients and can make as much money seeing fewer people. It also gives people an in-your-face financial reason to stay healthy. My sister is starting her residency and she has said that it's crazy what little piddly things people run to the emergency room for. It drives up the hospitals costs and slows down access for people that really need it. It's almost as if you wanted your auto insurance to pay for someone to check the air in your tires.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
This won't be completely off topic, I hope - I was 12 and living in Romania when it happened. As you know (since you are all well-read Slashdot readers) Ukraine is not very far from Romania, and the radioactive cloud hit us pretty soon afterwards. I remember distinctly how frantic my parents were, trying to feed us vitamin C and iodine, along with bottled water. My brother was eight at the time - five years later he was diagnosed with epilepsy. Have been wondering ever since if Chernobyl had anything to do with it. More interestingly even - he is now completely healthy, due to the fact that it was discovered early and he followed a strict treatment for a long time. For those of you who have bothered to read this weepy story all the way, here's the final irony: for the past eleven years I have been living in Japan, I married the most beautiful Japanese woman (well, of course she's the most beautiful, she's mine ) and we're about to have a child in January. And we live in Hiroshima.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. -- G.B. Shaw
What Alexander Yuvchenko and the others went through that night was incredible. They and the men who built the protective shell around the reactor are heroes for risking their lives to prevent radiation from escaping. I certainly wish that people like this would be treated well instead of being stigmatized. They risked their lives and did the right thing instead of running away.
Alexander, I salute you!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Oh?
Yeah... Technically, you just implied it.
You can't take the sky from me...
If you use the same highlighting (ie, bold for previous posters comments, standard text for your own) there isn't a whole lot of point in posting anonymous, is there?
It protects his precious karma...
See, he's the sort of person who wouldn't even risk karma to back up his opinions.
But thanks for pointing that out, I wouldn't have noticed his AC reply if you hadn't pointed that out. He provides a nice second example of revisionism in there, its amusing : )
You can't take the sky from me...
Has anyone seen K-19 with Harrison Ford?
No. No one has.
No, you make a signifcant overgeneralization. You make it sound like poor people are dying on the street from lack of health care. The US has Universal health care. ANYONE can walk in to a hospital off the street and get heath care if anything serious is wrong with them and the hospital MUST take them and MUST give them the same treatment and it comes out of the American taxpayers wallet.
Not true. Emergency rooms must take you in and treat your SYMPTOMS enough to STABILIZE you then they can throw you out.
But that does nothing to solve the problem.
Emergency room visits are much more expensive than Dr. visits. Why not give people the Dr. visits and keep them out of the emergency rooms? I would hate to be in a car wreck and die because the ER was full of people with the flu...
And what happens to the health care system once the government takes over? In places like Canada it the average time it takes is 2 weeks to see a doctor. How motivated will the nurses and doctors be to take care of you? Ever been to motor vehicles in the US? That is what you can expect if the US government takes over health care. It's been proven time in and time out, taking away choice and handing an industry over to government never works as well as letting the free market decide things.
I am glad that you have good personal experience with all of the other countries medical care. But Since all I have is strictly anecdotal evidence, I can only give that... I have two Canadian friends who work here in the states, and both have health coverage in the US. For most things they drive back to Canada for health care because they like the system there better, and our HMOs suck. I work with 5 people from the UK and one from Germany. All 6 prefer their former health care to our "managed care" options. And I have had GOOD health coverage for my entire career, and it still takes me two weeks to get in to the Dr. In fact, even if I paid CASH I couldn't get in to see my Dr. in two weeks... And forget about dental coverage....
Oh, and I have never had a problem at the DMV either - except it took quite a while to get a slot to take a test once, but nothing major...
Damn, you beat me to it. It's a cool as heck site.. (The website, not the nuclear site...)
The bottom line is that this was not caused by an improper design - as it was used for some 30 years before and since the accident, albeit with some later modifications (IIRC) - but due to human error. This is obviously a tech site, so a better solution to nuclear stations would be completely eliminate the human factor. Why can't we have computers monitoring absolutely everything? From gas levels, to water levels, to the state of important components, and so forth. What do the human technicians do at this time that a computer cannot? We can certainly have a human present to monitor all the statistics, but to eliminate all control which would allow such a catastrophe to take place.
I don't consider the loss of life of Chernobyl to be significant in quantity, as compared to war, non-nuclear accidents, disease, famine, et cetera - which is not to say that life lost due to the accident is insiginificant (on the contrary, of course) - but its greatest blow was to the field of Nuclear Energy. As others have pointed out, it is potentially much more cleaner, but the stigma which was created as a result of the accident has had tremendous effect on public opinion. I would wager that more individuals have died pursuing other means of energy production than nuclear, but that hardly matters in the eyes of the uninformed public, politicians, and so forth. Sad, really.
I can't get the image of the ionized blue air out of my mind. It must have been deathly beautiful.
A blog like any other.
Or "fanar," as the "ik" after it implies it is small or cute...or generally along those lines. :)
A blog like any other.
That is a common claim that is misleading. Plenty of people come to Europe for high-quality care, too. (Right here in my city in Germany is a well-known medical college that gets patients from around the world, all the time, for special operations and treatment.) You just don't hear about that in the American press, apparently.
I'm an American living abroad, and am well acquainted with both European and American health care firsthand. As someone who is chronically ill, I don't stand a chance of getting insured in America in any reasonable way; in Germany I'm fully covered, no questions asked, and fairly cheaply in comparison, with a better quality of coverage than I had with the HMO I was with in America (at the time I was still insured on a policy I "inherited" from my parents' coverage).
Not to mention, many of the european countries are going to have to cut back on socialist programs like universal health care in 20-25 years because there will be way more people retired than working.
Another myth, by the way: most European countries I know of don't have socialized medicine, but do have real universal coverage (as in, everyone's insured and can get a level of care at least as good as any given HMO in America, if not far better).
Germany, where I live, is an excellent example of a universal system that generally works quite well. The Netherlands and Switzerland have broadly similar systems. None have state ownership of the system, none have provider monopolies. France has a single-payer system with private supplemental insurance (while allowing competition between providers); the others have competition and free choice between insurers and providers.
Ireland and the UK do have honest-to-God socialized medicine (single-payer and single-provider) -- and have lousy care, that is true. Meanwhile, Sweden has socialized medicine and has pretty decent care overall.
Universal health care actually saves money, apparently -- the European countries I named above (aside from the UK, Ireland and Sweden) all have universal coverage, yet spend far less as a proportion of GDP than the US does on health care. IOW they're spending less and getting a better effect. And by a number of measures, Germans are living longer and healthier than Americans in spite of living unhealthier lifestyles (far higher smoking rates, far higher alcohol consumption, fairly similar obesity rates).
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
My wife's dad worked there to contain the aftermath. Thankfully, he didn't have to do anything that dangerous, and he's still in good health.
Actually, the "liquidators" are recognized with honors, and they are entitled to benefits from the government by a special law; they undergo regular health inspections, therapy and stuff.
That engineer's position, however, is more ambivalent. People still can be found who are quick to blame everyone who worked there at the time of the accident.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bush was the guy caught holding the bag when a global consensus on WMD proved incorrect... to this date, inexplicably so.
I can understand people disagreeing with Bush and his actions, but when they start out with ad hominem labels such as "warmonger" and charges of lying that enjoy no support in fact, they lose the ability to argue the merits of their viscerally-held opinions.
tone
When did Germany and France say there was no WMD?
Wednesday, 22 January, 2003
Speaking on French television, President Chirac said "an extra delay is necessary" to give the weapons inspectors more time to search Iraq for banned arms.
French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Wednesday in Paris they were not convinced a war with Iraq was necessary while U.N. arms inspectors were still searching Iraq for weapons of mass destruction.
France, Russia and China -- all permanent members of the council -- have made it clear they will not be rushed by any pressure from Washington for action against Saddam Hussein, and have backed a call by U.N. inspectors for more time to carry out their searches in Iraq.
And lets throw in the Beligians in there, while we're at it:
Belgian Foreign Minister Louis Michel said the planning pandered to the "logic of war." In an interview with Belgian daily Le Soir today, Michel said: "Iraq seems ready to cooperate. Let's not rush things."
You can't take the sky from me...
Free Waterfall Sr: Good way to avoid frostbite folks: Put your hands between your buttocks. That's nature's pocket.
Leela: Uh...I think I'll go check on Bender.
Free Waterfall Sr: Watch that he doesn't pick your pocket.
There sure seems to be a lot of nuke engineers from russia living in the US. When I was in elementary school one of my friends dads was a nuke engineer from russia and now one of my cow orkers is a former nuke engineer from russia. They are everywhere. I spell it "nuke" because I do not know the correct way to spell it, I have depended on spell checkers for far too many years and now without one I cannot function properly. It is sad. Like not being able to do basic arithmatic because you forgot your calculator at home.
The major reasons for the rise in healthcare expenses are the shortage of doctors compared to the demand for their services, and the shortage of medication compared to the demand for it. That drives up the cost. Having worked in an emergency room for an 800 bed hospital bordering NYC, I know that incoming patients are prioritized by proper management, triage, so minor treatments don't make major treatments wait. If the pre-med and medical schools weren't focused on screening out the less ambitious earners, and instead on educating the maximum number of competent doctors, there would be more service to go around. If more scholarships for living expenses were offered by rural communities in exchange for work contracts there, these healthcare crises would largely disappear as the economics normalized.
Not only was I pre-med, and worked full time in several hospitals, but I also have worked in many sectors of the medical insurance industry. The amount of waste due to unavoidable duplication of effort in a competitive business was dwarfed by the waste due to mismanagement and greed. The government is no model of efficiency, but the private administration of healthcare and its finance is also bad. And at the breaking point. We need to apply true economics to this essential service market.
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make install -not war
In Texas I was aquainted with many boiler-makers who had breathing problems from all the asbestos dust. Also there were plants making a powder called "carbon black" that was even finer than soot that was harmful if breathed. I agree, dust can be very harmful.
But I must confess that my reason for writing was that I noticed your question about my stance ona particular issue to me a while back in a Journal that is now archived. I think it deserves a response. The best thing I can do here is point you to my journal where the debate happens frequently.
A good progression might be, First, Second, Third, Fourth. Though there are many other notable articles.
I saw K-9 with Jim Belushi, is that close enough?
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.
Those controls are there for a reason.
Otherwise, disaster could strike like what happend in Japan back in 1999 on September 30th. where 'taking shortcuts' produced deadly results.
There's a difference between being picky about disposing of a ladder that's as radioactive as a coleman lantern filament you can buy at walmart, and making fuel.
One can obviously kill you. The other might make you ill if you hugged it for five years.
Appropriate controls for the risk involved. That's all I'm saying.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.