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Vast New Tomb Now Covers The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Site (slashdot.org)
The final stage of the Chernobyl clean-up took over 20 years to build -- and will seal up the site for the next 100 years. Slashdot reader MrKaos writes:
30 years and seven months since the explosion...the project known as the 'Shelter Implementation Plan' has been rolled into place, sealing the crippled Chernobyl reactor. More than 10,000 people were involved in the project, which includes an advanced ventilation systems and remote controlled robotic cranes to dismantle the existing Soviet-built structure and reactor. This sarcophagus -- or New Safe Confinement -- is taller than the Statue of Liberty and larger than Wembley stadium.
Over one million people worked on the initial clean-up, the BBC reports, calling this new sarcophagus "the largest object people have ever moved," and its installation was apparently pretty surreal. "World leaders jostle with global executives and anonymous men dressed in full camouflage as platters of shrimp, foie gras and cheesecake are passed around by white-gloved staff...just 330 feet away from the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history."
Over one million people worked on the initial clean-up, the BBC reports, calling this new sarcophagus "the largest object people have ever moved," and its installation was apparently pretty surreal. "World leaders jostle with global executives and anonymous men dressed in full camouflage as platters of shrimp, foie gras and cheesecake are passed around by white-gloved staff...just 330 feet away from the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history."
Most of the high level stuff will have decayed significantly by then. Send workers in, chop up what's left, seal it up in drums and throw it in an abandoned salt mine.
Or, technology might be available to recycle it into new nuclear fuel.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Instead of futzing around with a 1.26 GiB torrent, you can just watch it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The existing sarcophagus is already at end-of-life. Some of it has already fallen in and the rest is waiting to collapse. It was a rush job at the time. As well as that, it is just a simple, static covering. The new construction is weatherproofed in and out, made of much more modern materials and enjoyed the luxury of planning and worldwide expertise. It also has a remotely-operated series of cranes and platforms which will be used to dismantle the doomed interior which will mean it's not only averting another catastrophe (existing structure collapsing) it is also designed to actively "solve" the problem of what to do with the place.
It sounds impressive. There was an "explosion" of water to steam, then the reactor fire.
Many people think the reactor exploded like a bomb. There's also many people who think that happened at Three Mile Island. It seems the media tends to exaggerate, and even lie for effect.
Not that it matters much, it's just most people accept what they read. People are still telling me Russians hacked voting machines. And that the Speaker's Mace and Paul Ryan's logo is Nazi symbology. Even people who are normally intelligent. The internet has made things worse in some ways.
This is Slashdot, you have to hope that one of the comments will take pity on you and give you a link:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170101-a-new-tomb-for-the-most-dangerous-disaster-site-in-the-world
Most plutonium is pretty safe.
Pretty much only Pu-238 and Pu-241 are alarmingly dangerous, and any that is there will remain alarmingly dangerous for between hundreds and thousands of years. Isotopes like Pu-237, Pu-243, Pu-245, and Pu-246 have mostly all decayed by now, while Isotopes like Pu-239, Pu-240, Pu-242, and Pu-244 all have such long half-lives that while "dangerous", are not alarmingly so to varying degrees (you could safely handle Pu-244.)
"His name was James Damore."
The deadly dose of Plutonium for a 80kg human is something like 60 micrograms. I guess to get the exact number you can google for it.
So much to your idea of safety.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Because of alpha decay. Best not to eat or breathe it. But washing your hands, wearing a mask and not having lunch on the worksite would keep you all safe and happy. Plutonium in non critical amounts is easy to work around. The rest of the stuff, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It would nice if there were some primary sources in this post.....
Apologies, I've had food poisoning all week and not enough energy to filter out what I thought were the best primary sources, many of which are pdfs that I'm still getting through myself. Here are the ones that cover the salient details:
I would link to the Ukraine body of law that governs all this this however I don't speak the language.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The deadly dose of Plutonium...
Which isotope?
Plutonium 239. As an oxide it is an inhalant, plutonium chloride and nitrate is organically bound easily in the blood and bones because they are iron analogues. These are the main concerns for bio-accumulation of nuclear industry effluents persistent in the environment for 24,000 years and why I'm optimistic that NSC is going to help control the release of any more of these effluents into the environment.
...for a 80kg human is something like 60 micrograms.
you would have a solid number instead of a vague guess that you can back away from later.
In 1944 , Robert Stone, the head of the Plutonium Project Health Division, made the earliest estimate of a permissible burden for plutonium by scaling the radium standard on the basis of the radiological differences between radium and plutonium. Those included the difference in their radioactivities and that of their daughters and the difference in the average energy of their alpha particles. The result indicated that, gram for gram, plutonium was a factor of 50 less toxic than radium, and the standard was set to 5 micrograms.
In July 1945, Wright Langham insisted that the 5-microgram standard be reduced by a factor of 5 on the basis of animal experiments that showed that plutonium was distributed in the bone differently, and more dangerously, than radium. Thus, the maximum permissible body burden for plutonium was set at 1 microgram.
Following those experiments, discussions at the Chalk River Conferences in Ontario, Canada, (1949 to 1953) led to further reductions in the plutonium standard to 0.65 micrograms, or 40 nanocuries, for a maximum permissible body burden. Since then, no further changes have been made.
Considering that the experiments were part of the Manhattan project and some of the subjects involved were not informed some of the specific results may still be classified.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.