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Chernobyl's Sarcophagus, Redux
Lasrick (2629253) writes "With the news that a multinational consortium is to the halfway point in constructing a huge stainless steel hangar that will sit over the ruined site of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, Dan Drollette looks in the archives of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and compares notes on the sarcophagus that was built 25 years ago, and the one that is being built now. 'No one really knows what went into the "concrete cube;" even the amount of concrete claimed to have been used is suspect, as it would form a volume larger than the sarcophagus, wrote nuclear engineer and author Alexander R. Sich in his 11-page article, "Truth was an early casualty."' Let's hope this new sarcophagus lasts longer."
I believe the structure should appear from space as a giant band-aid.
"Truth was an early casualty."
That's a great line.
If by taking responsibility you mean reburying the highly radioactive blob and unspent fuel which will continue to work its way to their water table...then yes they are.
A true example for the rest of the world.
The truth is we can't adequately cope with runaway reactions of any scale. The best we can do is try to keep the scale small which doesn't produce enough power to be useful. We also don't have a solid plan on what to do with the waste products besides weapons proliferation.[lots of ideas, no solid plans]
Nuclear energy is clearly something we are all bad at.
On a positive note, deeds such as this involving international assistance reinforce my retarded optimism that humanity might rise above tribalism into something astonishing.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Bury it in the ground and send the bill to the tax payer, then claim it's really cheap to run because you don't need to include disposal of nuclear waste as they're paying for that in othe rways.
but they are taking responsibility for the mess
The EU is paying for the new shelter, not Russia or Ukraine. The construction of the old shelter/sarcophagus is a lie. They're still running about 10 of these RMBKs in Russia proper.
And somehow, in your mind, this qualifies as "taking responsibility."
turn the tide of popular opinion
The problem of popular opinion about nuclear is a symptom of cheap fossil fuels. Give people a little energy scarcity and they'll warm right up to nuclear. Until then they'll indulge the the nuclear hysteria they've been trained with.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
If you like your concrete shelter, you can keep it.
If you do a cost-benefit analysis of risk, nuclear energy is less problematic than fossil fuels, believe it or not, even with occasional accidents. Fossil fuels harm and kill a good many due to air pollution, and perhaps general climate disruption due to the green-house effect.
There is something psychologically more fearful about dying from radiation than dying from lung cancer even though the second is significantly more prevalent.
Perhaps because in our movie-shaped imaginations, too much radiation creates 3-eyed mutants with lumpy heads or giant city-eating monsters; while lung cancer merely produces dead people with screwed-up lungs.
It's hard to produce a scary movie based on lung cancer. Dawn of the Coughers just doesn't have the same freak-out punch as zombie mutants or Godzilla. Hollywood needs to get more inventive.
Table-ized A.I.
No one really knows what went into the "concrete cube;" even the amount of concrete claimed to have been used is suspect, as it would form a volume larger than the sarcophagus
The core melted a hole through the ground deep enough to hit the water table where it exploded on contact with water, then caused a steam explosion that was so powerful some of the material hit the jet stream. The heat continued causing hydrogen build up and further hydrogen explosions.
They tried to pour molten lead into the cavity but that just boiled and caused the radioactive steam to also carry lead vapor as well, making it even more toxic. So they gave up and filled it in with concrete. No one has any idea how large the whole was, if there was a chamber at the bottom from the water reservoir or multiple explosions. I don't find it the least bit suspicious that the amount of concrete poured into a random unexplored hole in the midst of the greatest man made disaster in history might be a bit off.
"Truth was an early casualty."' Let's hope this new sarcophagus lasts longer."
Apparently sensationalism is still alive and well.
Didn't somebody else say there are about 10 identical plants
No, nobody said their are 10 identical plants. I said their are about 10 other RMBKs operating in Russia. The actual number is 11 and the list is here.
None of these reactors are "identical." They've all incorporated various design changes during construction and retrofits since. Regardless, they all have a high positive void coefficient and low power instability. Operated incorrectly every one of them is still capable of exploding and burning and their containment is no better than Chernobyl's.
The GP can somehow claim that won't happen, and I lack the crystal ball that says hes wrong, but there is nothing in physics that precludes another RMBK steam explosion.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
The EU is paying for the new shelter, not Russia or Ukraine. The construction of the old shelter/sarcophagus is a lie. They're still running about 10 of these RMBKs in Russia proper.
The new shelter is not even on the same scale of intent as the old sarcophagus. Never mind the shortcomings of the sarcophagus, its intent was to be a shield for radiation. It is falling in due to its own weight, and hasty construction. But as of now it is serving its purpose, although badly in need of repair.
The new shield is nothing more than dust cover. Made of thins sheet steel, it is designed to keep the dust of future work on the sarcophagus contained. It is not itself designed to block radiation. Its mostly dual concentric layers of 1 mm thick correlated sheet steel and aluminum held up by a system of trusses. It is not designed to be radiation proof.
Once in place, the new structure should contain radioactive dust, preventing any atmospheric contamination should the old sarcophagus collapse. The new building is expected to last anywhere from 100 to 300 years.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
EPA allows far less than FDA. If they just quietly say they want the EPA levels to match FDA, because why should we have two sets of numbers? Skip the details and complicated reworking of the whole thing, most folks wouldn't even look up from twitter. For example, EPAs Maximum Contaminant Levels assumes regular consumption over 70 years, accepts that one in a million will die. FDAs single dose Derived Intervention Levels accepts 2 in ten thousand. If pesky calculations like this are somehow kept out of the discussion, they might get it done without too much noise. It does legislate away an expensive problem.
That's two posts so far in which you've called it "RMBK". You might want to spell it right. It's RBMK - Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalnyy.
Three full core melt-throughs are sitting in sandstone, leaching to the pacific/atmosphere without any control or sarcophagus at all, since march 2011.
You mean that people would glow with approval?
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I'm sure you know you've got a logical fallacy there; being bad at one thing doesn't rule out the possibility of being bad at lots of other things.
But the USA could have put out the Centralia coal mine fire any time we wanted to - just divert half the Susquehanna river into the mines for a year.
Nobody's going to do that, though, because the right wing likes pollution and hates bailing out farmers and non-millionaire "little folks", and the left wing is just too cowardly to do anything that necessarily entails large unforeseeable consequences. And there does not appear to be any political representation of the middle view (or middle class, for that matter) any more. So Centralia burns and we will continue to relicense America's aging nuclear plants until they fail.