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Workers Raise First Section of New Chernobyl Shelter
An anonymous reader writes with this AP report:
"Workers have raised the first section of a colossal arch-shaped structure that eventually will cover the exploded nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power station. Project officials on Tuesday hailed the raising as a significant step in a complex effort to clean up the consequences of the 1986 explosion, the world's worst nuclear accident. Upon completion, the shelter will be moved on tracks over the building containing the destroyed reactor, allowing work to begin on dismantling the reactor and disposing of radioactive waste.'"
There are no plans to dismantel the reactor at this time, except some parts that prevent the cover from getting into place. The new cover will allow dismantelling of the current sarcophagus and protect the reactor and what remains of the building from the weather.
On top of that it wasn't because of profits that the incident happened. They intentionally disabled multiple safety triggers to perform an experiment and that's what caused it all.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Alexei Ananenko
Valeri Bezpalov
Boris Baranov
Were it not for the efforts of these three men Europe could have quite possibly been wiped out due to fallout. We are should be forever fortunate they decided to lay down their lives.
Just because the world's worst accident didn't go a wrong as it could doesn't negate that the way we were constructing plants was horrendously stupid.
I believe Nuclear has a place, even a prominant one, in fulfilling our energy needs. But let's not think that people don't have a right to be afraid.
And here's another list for you:
Number of people killed due to wind power in 2008: 41
Number of blade failures from wind power in 2008: 39
Number of wind turbine fires in 2008: 110 (in which nothing can be done, since the fire is 300+ feet in the air)
Number of wind turbine structural failures in 2008: 60
Number of wind turbine "ice incidents" in 2008: 24
Number of people killed in the US by candles per annum: 126
Number of people killed in the US due to nuclear power in 40+ years of reactor operations (currently 104 generating stations): 0
More people die from candles in one year, than have died from 40 years of commercial nuclear energy. Having reliable electric generation could save those 126 people, because they could use a light bulb instead of a candle.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Not really. They wouldn't have been sent to Siberia, as they weren't even the guys who were supposed to run the test. These were the night shift guys; the day shift - who were supposed to do this task and actually prepared for it - were told to stand by because of another plant falling out of the power grid in Ukraine. By the time the plant recevied the green signal for the test, the shifts rotated and this detail never seemed to be important to anybody. It's not widely publicized because it's not a very "interesting" detail, but this very test was attempted three times before the accident by the other crew; they failed to safely shut off the reactor on every three, but they neither blew up the reactor. (They simply aborted the test and switched back to external power for cooling.)
The primary cause of the accident is two-founded. Firstly, the reactor was not safe by design, being a positive coefficient reactor. Secondarily, the crew was utterly ignorant on even the basic principles of nuclear power, let alone the operation of their own reactor. The reason why they never aborted the test was not out of fear. They never realized the reactor was in danger! Even after the fuel rods were strewn across Pripyat, these guys reported to Moscow that the reactor is intact and being fed with fresh coolant water - even though at this point the water they pumped in only flooded the electrical controls of the other units, almost causing a second catastrophe.
The final bit of irony: the reason for the test? Israel bombed a nuclear plant in Iraq prior, and some people in Russia started to get worried if the RBMK reactors could safely shut down when NATO started bombing their power grid.
I'm impressed. That structure was proposed over 20 years ago, but the USSR didn't build it and Ukraine couldn't afford it. Navarco, from France, is building it now, and the European Union is putting up most of the money.
It's badly needed. The containment structure the USSR quickly put up (using 500,000 people in shifts) after the disaster is in bad shape. With protective gear, people can go inside for short periods, and they can see daylight.
Only 47 people were killed directly. Maybe 4000 to 9000 had their lives shortened by radiation exposure.
"We could deal with the cancer problem after a nuclear war by failing to rebuild the tobacco industry."