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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?
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?"
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.
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.
What the hell is wrong with you? He's absolutely right; I was up by columbia (116th) then and a few days after, and even there you could smell the dust. When we visited near the site it was absolutely lung-clogging. I was incredibly thankful that I didn't have to live or work there.
Read jack phelps dot net
That's cuz it was later shown to all be a hoax.
o gs_cher.html
http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photobl
Google is your friend.
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
No, that's not correct. For example, over 3,000 people died in one week in 1952. The problem is the makeup of most coal. From this link
Coal is one of the most impure of fuels. Its impurities range from trace quantities of many metals, including uranium and thorium, to much larger quantities of aluminum and iron to still larger quantities of impurities such as sulfur. Products of coal combustion include the oxides of carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur; carcinogenic and mutagenic substances; and recoverable minerals of commercial value, including nuclear fuels naturally occurring in coal.
MORE NUCLEAR MATERIALS ARE RELEASED BY COAL BURNING THAN ANY NUCLEAR PLANT HAS EVER RELEASED. That's a VERY important thing to know, because COAL KILLS PEOPLE.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
the sad part is, some of them are still running ...
The following is the Paper everyone will link to. And the following provides some nice diagrams to look at
And just for kicks: Some really freaky pictures. (The second one really gets to people, he is working IN the bloody thing!!)
Sunny Dubey
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 believe that's correct. The greater mass of Alpha particles causes them to be more easily deflected than beta particles. Gamma radiation has a near-zero mass, so it can penetrate most forms of matter. (Penetration being the act of "missing" most of the matter.)
No, the greater mass of alpha particles (2 protons and 2 neutrons, basically a Helium nucleus) makes them more difficult to deflect, not less. However, other factors have an impact on the scattering cross section, including particle charge and energy.
Gamma particles have a zero rest mass, since they are simply energetic photons.
I think you may be getting confused by Neutron radiation, which is the most massive type of radiative particle. Neutrons do a LOT of damage due to their mass, but they don't actually have a lot of penetrating power.
No, Neutrons are less massive than alpha particles.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
For those not versed in things nuclear (and why positive temperature coefficient of reactivity reactors are a BAD IDEA), a good background on the accident and nuclear power in general.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
...as those in the UK might realise, the newspaper The Guardian also published today a much longer and more detailed article with Sasha Yuvchenko, another engineer working at Chernobyl at the time who survived the disaster. He too comments on the excellent medical care he recieved. Read it here.
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...
Sadly enough you are probably right.
The best example for nuclear power safety is the fact that after 50 years of operation of hundreds of Nuke power plants only 1 serious accident occurred - and that was at a poorly designed USSR station that would never have been allowed to be built in the US.
But, nowadays, we have some relaly, really, really fail safe designs that could be used like the Pebble Bed Reactor that can never ever melt down even assuming a complete and total failure of all safety backups, coolant etc (of course, it could still cause contamination if a break in the cooling or such occurred).
Now, OTOH, you have people like the US Navy who have a *perfect* record for Nuclear safety simply because if their was ever an accident the Navy knows that would likely be the end of all their Nuke powered boats (helluva a motivator eh?)
No, beta particles are deflected more in a magnetic field than alpha particles are, all things being equal.
Alpha particles are essentially helium nuclei, they have a charge of +1 and a mass of 4. Beta particles are electrons, they have a charge of -1 and a negligible mass when compared to an alpha particle (each proton is about the mass of 1800 electrons). Gamma particles are high-energy photons with no charge and essentially no mass at all.
When they are ejected in the same direction with the same velocity through a uniform magnetic field it is the beta particle which will be deflected more. This is due to the fact that both particles will have the same force acting upon them, but they have a different mass. Since the alpha particle has much more mass it will be deflected a lot less by the force and so it will curve less than the beta particle. The gamma radiation will not curve at all because photons have no charge and will hardly be affected by a magnetic field.
As for deflection, the alpha particles take up a lot of room. When they encounter other material they are much more likely to have a collision than beta particles which have a very small volume. This means that the alpha particles usually only travel a small distance through a material before slowing down enough to be stopped. Beta particles get slowed down less because they tend to be able to slip right past the atoms (actually past the nuclei) in the material. Gamma particles penetrate the furthest because they really are only captured occasionally by atoms and quite a large percentage will manage to get through even a couple of feet of low-density material.
Sapere aude!
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.
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)
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
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
I got my copy several years ago when I was researching the politics of obedience and whether engineer subordinates should be responsible to authority or the laws of physics for a course in Ethics.
The book, "The Truth about Chernobyl", by Grigori Medvedev (ISBN 0-465-08775-2) ( English translation - by the way very well done ) Copyright 1991 by Basic Books, Inc.
( Incidentally, from my research in Ethics, I just about got the feeling that if you were gonna toe the line on Ethics, you had better work for yourself.).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
Slashdot is proof that Sturgeon's Law applies to mankind.
Fissioning U-235 releases about 200 MeV/fission, or about (2e8 eV/fission)(1.6e-19 J/eV)(6.02e23 fissions/235 g)(0.075 g) = 6e9 Joules per tonne of the more enriched coal. That's about 1.6 megawatt-hours of heat, that can be derived from fissioning the U-235 in a tonne of coal.
Bituminous coal has an energy density of combustion of about 25e9 Joules per tonne, or about 7 megawatt-hours of heat from burning a tonne of coal.
At first glance, the combustion seems to win, especially when you consider that you can only get about 10% of the energy out of the uranium without reprocessing. But if you use the U-238 too (to make plutonium, which will then also fission in a conventional reactor), you get about 100x as much energy as from fissioning just the U-235. Of course, that takes reprocessing the fuel at least once, which is energy intensive, and there will of course be losses in the system. So maybe you only win by 30x. The fission should yield about 50 megawatt-hours of heat in a proper breeder-reactor setup. That's more than ten times the heat of combustion. Even "crappy" coal with only 1.5ppm of uranium in it could match the energy of combustion.
Wow.
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).