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Vast New Tomb Now Covers The Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster Site (slashdot.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the set-in-stone dept.

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."

7 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Where are the Nuclear power fans now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One failed reactor =

    25 years of cleanup effort
    $235b cost (which of course - tax payers all around Europe are shouldering)
    thousands of lives lost
    ecological repercussions for centuries to come in the region

    Stop nuclear power now before we have more accidents like these.

    1. Re:Where are the Nuclear power fans now? by ColdWetDog · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be fair, it was one reactor that would not have ever been built anywhere but in the Soviet Union (no containment dome) run by people dumber than a animated TV show (The Simpsons).

      Of course, nobody suspected that the oh-so-smart Japanese would site emergency generators where they could get flooded when the containment wall was overrun (just like their consulting geologists told them it would).

      If engineers ran the world, things would be more boring but quite a bit safer. Instead we get the Soviet Union, the Universal Kleptocracy and, god help us, Donald.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Where are the Nuclear power fans now? by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      We lose more than 235bn a year from people skiving from work (and that's in GBP, not USD!).

      We lose more than 235bn a year.

      "Abolishing open borders 'could cost Germany â235 bn'"

      "20 global banks have paid $235bn in fines since the 2008 financial crisis"

      "Brexit risks losing the UK £235bn in trade"

      Those are JUST the search results for that exact number. In the grand scheme of things, worldwide, one $235bn accident every 30 years is really chickenfeed. Especially against the entire energy market and its ramifications.

      Big numbers are only scary when they are bigger numbers than anything else. And they are made more scary when, like your 235bn and some of those above, they are basically made up to sound scarier.

    3. Re:Where are the Nuclear power fans now? by ledow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      How many people has coal-fired, gas-fired, oil-fired power stations killed?

      Just because it's not in one nice incident all wrapped in a nice little sarcophagus for you, it doesn't mean it was casualty-free.

      Again, RELATIVELY SPEAKING, nuclear is safer, cleaner, less impact on the environment, cheaper, and even cheaper to clean up if it does go wrong than almost ANYTHING else.

      Even solar has a human cost, you just don't see it because people aren't lying on the floor outside every solar power plant.

  2. Wild Life by Max_W · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Strangely the wild life is booming in the Chernobyl Zone. Just google "wild life in Chernobyl zone" and see Images.

    It seems there is nothing worse than a Homo sapiens for the nature.

    1. Re:Wild Life by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm not sure it's all that strange. Keep in mind that wildlife will still likely thrive even with high birth defect rates, early deaths by cancer, and other unpleasant side-effects from living in higher-than-normal radiation. We would find such a situation appalling among humans, but nature is a bit more brutally pragmatic about such things. Human populations obviously have a much more detrimental effect on populations than radiation.

      On the plus side, this gives us a great model for what a post-apocalyptic world should look like 30 years after the bombs fall, or whatever other disaster strikes. It's sort of eerie. I've never like the Fallout aesthetic that implies nothing grows in an irradiated region, even if I understand *why* they did it.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  3. Re:100 years? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm pretty sure Cthulhu has already awakened and he has an orange comb-over.

    Four years of this. Hooray.

    (Translation: Jesus Christ. Shut up.)