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Chernobyl 25th Anniversary
ZwedishPzycho writes "Twenty-five years later, and yet again we are worried about a nuclear disaster. There will be plenty of stories out there discussing the 25th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident; here is just one."
...looking for a Gravi artifact near these old buildings, see. And the detector keeps pointing me inside, so I go. The roof is gone and the moon is out but I'm staring at the detector instead of looking around.
All of a sudden I bump into this bloodsucker, and he's taking a leak. I look at him and go "hey, buddy, why are you pissing in the middle of the building?" And he looks back at me and goes "what the hell are you doing in my house?"
So I look around and realize we're in the middle of a converter room for a substation of the nuclear power plant. There's got to be 10 million volts on the wires in there.
About then I realize that only in the Zone can you walk right past a bunch of giant warning signs, into a room full of enough electricity to kill you faster than the speed of light, and the only thing out of the ordinary enough to make you notice is a blood sucking mutant taking a whiz."
Who wants some cake?
When you said yellow cake, I was picturing, you know, lemon or maybe butter flavored. This is definitely not lemon or butter flavored. It tastes like burning.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
you can see it in postings on this website: technological overconfidence. the inflated sense of mastery over a technology due to technophilia and deriving much personal worth from one's mastery of technology
which is fine when you are talking about space exploration or computers. but nuclear power?
the problem is, accidents happen. they always do. no long winded speech on safety will alter the inevitable. corners are cut, economic considerations bypass longterm challenges, things break and fall apart over time. eventually, you have a nuclear accident. well now, it's a matter of the consequences of the accident. well: you blow up an oil supply depot, collpase a coal mine, undermine a dam, etc: these are awful cataclysmic events. and 5 minutes after it happens, its over. but nuclear power, when you have an accident, it stays with you for centuries. that's the big problem with nuclear power
mankind being too confident in his technological mastery, combined with longterm effects outside of the realm of mankind's normal psychological considerations, and you can see the problem with nuclear power. mankind, in a way, isn't built to handle nuclear power safely, and so we just shouldn't use it
i'm not saying we have better alternatives. and nuclear is great, when it works. and it works 99% of the time. but the problem with nuclear, when it doesn't work that 1% of the time? unlike every other power source, really terrible consequences stay with you for centuries. and so that 1% changes everything about nuclear power in ways that any conscientious person finds very troubling and sobering
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Turns out, at least in Iraq's case, the yellow cake was a lie.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
"Nuclear blast"?
Whoever wrote the article had no clue. Chernobyl consisted of a steam explosion followed by a graphite fire of the exposed reactor core. There may have also been a subsequent brief prompt criticality incident that released less energy than the steam explosion, however the article implies that Chernobyl's radiation release was entirely by a bomb-like nuclear explosion.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I was a child in Germany when this event occurred and it did manage some interesting changes. I was six at the time and the school I went to had several tents set up outside the school where men in interesting orange, white or yellow suits would give you a once over with a geiger counter before you were allowed in. I know there was another tent set up a distance away for kids who came in 'hot', but I don't honestly remember what went on in the tent as I was always 'clean'. No recess outside for a whole year (a bunch of pent up 6 year olds is a scary thing) and if you were outside, under no circumstances were you to touch anything or put any of the plants (like blades of grass) in your mouth to make whistles. I know there were probably more rules, but I was six at the time and didn't care much outside the "some Russians made it so we can't play outside" angle. Was a military brat. I say this because since then I have read up as much as I can on the incident and am extremely interested in the history behind the disaster. I have even looked into getting one of the CHERNOBYL LIQUIDATOR medals to add to my small collections of all things Chernobyl. The lead up to the actual disaster itself is very fascinating and I encourage people to read into it. It wasn't so much a sudden 'oops!' as it was a lapse in several security and communications measures that lead up to the eventual steam explosion. The descriptions from some of the poor unfortunate first responders is enough to send chills up anyone's spine. Particularly the one I read (looking for link now actually) from a firefighter that died shortly there after describing the sensation as 'millions of hot pins and needles all over ones body'. Other interesting aspects from this were talks of the plant design itself, as well as photos of the nearby towns and abandoned villages. If anything this disaster was a wake up call for a more standardized plant design and communications methodology. My mind doesn't serve me well but the Russians had a habit of making each plant unique (someone correct me if I'm wrong?) and thus how to contain this particular disaster was by the seat of the pants moment. Oh, and if you get a chance, find the remains of the plant via google maps. I am not sure if it is still up but a year ago you could see the concrete tomb from the skies. Also look for some of the 'on site' photography done. The picture of a pipe 'oozing concrete lava' was morbidly fascinating.
"Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted." -Groucho Marx
Other 2 responses were AC, so I'll pitch in -
As stated, Chernobyl sure as heck DID melt down, the core now existing as a sort of glass slurry in something like the 3rd sub-basement.
I don't read AC A human right
If a Tunguska sized event happened over the middle of london or washington DC we'd be wishing it had happened over some remote nuclear plant instead.
hell if one had happened during the cold war over a city it probably would have started world war 3.
some things are unlikely enough and catastrophic enough that we'd all be fucked no matter what energy source we use.