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Chernobyl Reactor Restarted, Claimed Safe for Y2K
Ydeologi writes "Usually when you hear 'Chernobyl' and 'Y2K' in the same sentence, it's because someone's using the infamous 1986 nuclear catastrophe as a metaphor to scale the predicted impact of Y2K.
But here [MSNBC story], it's no metaphor. The Ukranians say they need money and they need electricity; this was their answer. Funny thing that Y2K concerns are preceding the more obvious ones -- say, uh, the reactor with the 'spotty' history."
The only reactors that come close to not sucking are CANDU rectors, the only 'brand' to be both deployed internationaly (hehe, sory about selling those to India) and without significant incedent.
What doesn't make sense to me is why they would bother with Chernobly anyway. Would there be anything salvagable from the original working system? I would've thought that the whole thing might have fallen apart.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
As long as the moderator rods aren't made of graphite any more...
There were several reactors at Chernobyl. One exploded, and it took a second one with it. The reactor that they are restarting was neither of these; it was only down for 5 months.
I'm getting a bit bored with these Y2k problems everyone is talking about... We all know there's not a thing gonna happen besides the sporadic blackout. Any company that is delivering any kind of service to the public has taken all the precautions that are needed. And even if something fails while generating electricity or distributing water than the worst thing that is gonna happen that the service stops for some time. It's certainly not gonna blow or anything ridiculous like that. The only ppl interested in Y2K stories are the media because they still don't understand what it stands for but did hear someone say the words computer, technology and explosion. That's it, nothing to see here, certainly no .sig
Hey, if the Ukranians really need the reacor and they say it is safe, more power to them. they are the ones who will be irradiated if the reactor blows.
Please Note: W2K is not suitable for use in nuclear reactors, life support systems, or other mission-critical applications. Manufacturer hereby disclaims any responsibility from meltdown, end of world situation, or the re-emergence of disco.
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for some reason i feel an urge to dig a fall out shelter all of a sudden. but seriously, what are they thinking? most of the workers at it will probably develop cancer and/or die from full fledged radiation sickness. ahh well.
Hmm.. If nothing else, having a giant concrete enclosed reactor nearby would be bad for morale.
M: Hey Pyotr, what's Ivan doing?
P: Oh, he's just roasting some marshmallows on reactor 4.
How on earth did they clear away all the radiation?! I thought that area would deadly for many many years. I mean, the decay would take decades (centuries?) right? Is my feeble grasp of physics missing something here?
:)
Not only that, but I thought they pretty much just built walls of cement around the reactor. Did they tunnel their way back in and switich it on?
Help me out here, if they wasn't on MSNBC, I'd swear it was some kind of prank (or at the very least, another devious plot for Bruce Perens to somehow get more Karma
Finkployd
*oops*
Upon closer examination of the article, it's the #4 reactor that was encased in carbonite, they were talking about #3
Finkployd
[T]he Ukrainian government says it needs $1.2 billion from the West to finish construction of two new reactors to replace the output that will be lost by closing Chernobyl.
There's nothing quite like nuclear suicide to raise the ante in international treaty negotiations. The Ukrainian economy has taken a harsh beating since the USSR fell apart, and they do need this electricity if they hope to get their industries cranking again.
The fact that this action will precipitate an international crisis and help get the financial aid flowing again is just an added bonus.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Gee.. It's too bad that Russia isn't 5 days worth of time zones ahead of the east coast.
If it were, when Chernobyl goes bang, we could turn off all OUR nuclear power plants in time for the fuel to cool off!
(Reference: this comment)
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I read a newspaper article yesterday about this. IIRC, the G7 nations had agreed to give the Ukraine about a billion dollars to build new reactors to replace Chernobyl, but haven't coughed up the dough yet. Since they need power, the government feels it neccessary to re-open the old plant.
(I was surprised too, I thought the whole area was going to be un-inhabitable for the next few hundred years)
Dana
(*after crawling back out from under my desk*)
I thought major portions of Chernobyl were still radioactive, and would be for another 50 years or so? I seem to remember some sort of 'discovery channel' type program about it.
The Ukranians have stated that their equipment is "far too obsolete to be affected by any computer problems."
I don't know if something was lost (or gained) in the translation though.
But it's true. Only us sophisticated countries have anything to fear from a complete meltdown of the electronic infrastructure. We're addicted to technology and the withdrawls, should it be taken away for even a minute, would be ugly.
The original Chernobyl accident was triggered by a careless 'experiment', it did not blow up all by itself. It is unlikely that such disregard of security measures will take place again at the same place.
And by the way, Roblimo:
$your_post =~ s/Ukranians/Ukrainians/g
Two of the Chernobyl reactors have been operating for many years, restarted shortly after the accident. The one that is being restarted now has been down for a normal outage since February. It's Unit 4 that is fux0red and enclosed in the "sarcophagus".
This kind of stuff is the most dangerous legacy from the cold war. Even in the west, where we at least have enough money to handle this stuff with proper security, the long term cleanup/deposit of the large amounts of highly radioactive is still an unsolved problem. We don't really know what do with it.
...
The situation in some the former eastern block, especially in the former USSR, however is much worse. These governments are cronically cash starved with some countries on the brink of insolvency. Pensions and salraies are often not being paid (or payed several weeks/months too late) and the old communist order has collapsed with (in some regions) not much of anything new to replace it. It is this abscence of government which makes the large stockpiles of nuclear fuel, weapons and waste very dangerous. Some/Much of the Russian nuclear (submarine) fleet is rotting in their harbors because there's no money/parts for repairs. Nuclear reactors (any many other vital parts of the infrastructure) don't get proper servicing/repairs. With authority breaking down to such a degree that even high caliber weapons are for sale by corrupt army officials, the question of strongly contaminated or even wapons grade materals is a serious one.
Even if we quit using nuclear power anytime soon (would be nice but don't hold your breath) we'll be stuck with large amounts of highly radioactive stuff for the next few thousand years
I was six when the Chernobyl accident happened, so my memories, and my insight, into the time are rather limited. I do remember how scared my parents were however, I do remember hardly being allowed to play outside that whole summer, and I do remember that we only got powdered milk for about six months.
Sometimes I wonder about how much time the downfall in this area took off my life, but then I come to and look at the smoke rising from the highway just a few hundred meters from my house, and wonder how much that is taking off even as we speak.
Nuclear Power as it stands is a dirty, nasty, dangerous business. We are playing with forces which we know can destroy us all, we are creating toxins and wastes that we hardly know how to deal with, and we are putting trust in that the next generations will solve our problems for us. However, it is not alone. POWER is a dirty bussiness. As much as nuclear power is a killer, so are all the other ways we have today. Anyone here going to tell me that greenhouse effect is not real? or that it isn't a bigger deal to our children than having to deal with nuclear waste? or that hydro-electric damns aren't gigantic destruction of some of our last real ecological systems?
The Ukranians need power. For them to have a chance at rebuilding their economy, they will need all the power they can get, and we cannot expect them to pay the price for the global bad conscience about what we are ruthlessly doing power our way of life. If we want that reactor shut down, we are going to have to give them an option, and we obviously aren't.
Until then, I guess we'll just have to stack up on iodine pills and hope that the wind is going the other way next time...
-
We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality. All we can do is learn the art of being irrational in a reasonable way.
I hope it safe, and I suppose it is. After all, the 1986 accident that spewed radation all over europe was caused by operator error. Hopefully they've learned, but it seems that they're being quite arrogant about it. Hold your breath europe...when we US people are partying New Year's Eve, you'll be in your radation bunkers.
But if you're already being increadibly reckless with your environment, what is the additional harm in a little nuclear fallout, should it come to that? (Nevermind that the stuff doesn't exactly respect borders or even continents.)
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Old USSR reactors mostly rely on good old-fashioned analog techonoly, so Y2K should not be a big issue. Besides, while Soviet reactors may not be as safe as their western counterpars, they are by no means unsafe. After all, what happened in 1986, happened because some engineers thought it might be a good idea to turn off safety systems an do some experiments. There have been nuclear acidents in the US too..
Well, thats _is_ what meltdowns do (reference the Hanoi Jane Fonda movie "The China Syndrome"). But not Chernobyl. It didn't melt down, it blew up.
dum spiro, spero
Nuclear Power as it stands is a dirty, nasty, dangerous business. We are playing with forces which we know can destroy us all, we are creating toxins and wastes that we hardly know how to deal with, and we are putting trust in that the next generations will solve our problems for us.
Nuclear power is considerably less dirty, nasty and dangerous than most practical alternatives today. A catastrophic failure of a nuclear power plant (and Chernobyl was about as bad as it can get) might kill a few dozen people, but perfectly normal operation of a coal or oil burning power plant kills a lot more people by releasing all sorts of nasty chemicals into the atmosphere, which then cause lung cancer and similar diseases. (I recall seeing a figure of 28,000 deaths per year quoted, but I can't find a reference right not. Oh well.) Then you have coal mine accidents, general pollution, etc. "Forces that can destroy us all" is ludicrous hyperbole, even a loaf of bread is radioactive and it contains those same forces.
Anyone here going to tell me that greenhouse effect is not real?
I will tell you that it is too early to tell. Global temperatures are rising, but not in the way it should be according to the standard global warming thoery. The reason for it may well be unrelated, as the Earth's average temperature goes up and down anyway. Less than 20 years ago there was widespread fear of a new Ice Age, ie. global cooling, based on exactly the same data.
Just the same, if the global warming theory is correct, the problem is fossil fuels. Nuclear power plants produce next to no greenhouse gases. Nuclear power is not ideal, but solar and wind power just aren't going to cut it, now or quite possibly ever, for places like Finland.
And a few links:
- http://www.oneworld.org/energy/
- http://www.newscientist. com/nsplus/insight/global/faq.html
Getting back on topic, most Russian nuclear reactors are sufficiently primitive in design that they have very little software to even worry about. Russian reactors have far worse problems than Y2K, despite everything I said above I don't exactly like living near both Sosnovyi Bor and Ignalina...A neutral view of most types of energy
The New Scientist's global warming FAQ
Cheers,
-j.
That's a pretty good point. Nuclear fission -- if safely administered -- is a lot cleaner than coal or oil.
The problem seems to be that most nuclear installations are hamstrung by typical government silliness. Its one thing to have gaft, incompetence and corner-cutting and the local Ministry of Transport/Department of Motor Vehicles. Its quite another to do it at a nuclear plant.
Any Canadians here remember the "issues" with the Pickering facility in Southern Ontario:
- The deuterium being flushed into Lake Ontario
- the lead blanket that was left in the core area that melted and damaged the safety systems
- The rather high instance of substance abuse (namely, the heroin-use needles in the garbage cans in the washrooms)
This sort of stuff scares me. How far off is Homer Simpson's work environment from reality? How do people in charge of these places sleep at night?I'm all for nuclear power if its managed well. I believe France has a very well administered nuclear energy program -- there was an article in National Geographic a few years back that compared the American and French systems (and didn't do the Americans many complements)
--srj/mmv
Well, consider that Cernobyl's meltdown could have been prevented, were it not for the fact that Chernobyl's safety mechanisms and procedures made most other nuclear reactor workers cringe even then. If they've improved since then, which I'm sure they have (even the most scatterbrained comittee of politicians, pointy-haired bosses, and Windows zealots couldn't possibly be that stupid), then more power to the Ukranians (no pun intended).
All the same, I think I'll wait a few years to see how this thing runs before I go to the Ukraine...
The stupidity of people will never cease to amaze me. Not the stupidity of putting back up a nuclear reactor, but the stupidity of the tards trying to stop it for some reason or another.
HELLO!!!! We are running ourselves into the ground with Fossil fuels (no pun intended) and there won't be any left, but NOOOO! We cant have nuclear power because that might reck the environment! Yeah, makes sense to me.
People are idiots. I hate them.
This is a general response to those who are wondering what's happening.
Only the reactor 4 (the one that blew up) was shut down. Reactors 1 - 3 never stopped working.
Nobody has lived in Chernobyl since the accident because the radiation levels are too high. Nevertheless the plant was never shut down.
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If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
This sort of stuff scares me. How far off is Homer Simpson's work environment from reality? How do people in charge of these places sleep at night?
I grew up about 20 minutes from 3 nuclear reactors in Wisconsin, and also did a research paper about nuclear power in college where I got to have a tour of two reactors. Lets just say this, if all of what I saw and learned is true for all reactors, then I'm all for nuclear power.
First of all, if you've never been inside a nuclear plant, it's truly mind boggling. The amount of engineering that goes into a plant would make any geek scream with delight. I've never seen anything more sophisticated.
With that said, there are TONS of saftey precautions these places take. They have a main control room that is operated 24/7 by many people montitoring everything. If you think that the people in there are like Homer Simpson, you're dead wrong. They don't hire bums off the street. These people go through rigorous training. In fact, training happens as long as their there. They have a second "mock" control room, identical to the real one where they go through simulations of events, and the employees are graded on thier performance. There's obviously a first test before you even get to step foot in a control room, but even after that, I beleive it's every 3 months, they have to go through training again, and must pass.
Even with that there are many fail safes built into the reactor, and you have to really be an idiot to cause a meltdown. Much of what I was told there and read about what happened at Chyrnobyl and Three Mile Island, was just that, human error, and people not reacting to simple warning signs. Those tragedies could have been avoided.
I also live an hour away from a coal burning plant, and let me tell you, that is one of the dirtiest and nastiest things I have seen. I'm not saying that Nuclear Power doesn't have it's side effects (radioactive waste), but coal plants use so much fuel for so little energy and produce so much crap. Whereas, if you filled up a nuclear reacter, you basically could just feed off that fuel for a decade before you'd have used it all up. Nobody that lives around the reactors where I live thinks twice about it. They're quiet, and clean. The only biproduct is hot water, the waste, and electricity.
And the way I see it there are many solutions for the waste. One that has been talked about extensively is the Yucca Mountains, which is in the southwest US. I believe the Trinity test was done in this area (correct me if I'm wrong). This is the main proposed site for long term disposal of all nuclear waste in the US, but it is under much debate (mainly by people who don't know about nuclear energy). If there was a good place to store the waste, Yucca Moutain is it, IMHO. Other ideas are off shore containment facilities at the bottom of the ocean, which could be a good idea, since radioactive particles don't penetrate through water very well (if at all). However, the notion of "polluting our oceans with radioactivity" wouldn't get past the public (even if it is a false claim). There are other alternatives, like space, which are less feasable, but the reality is that there are safe places for this stuff. The waste now is held in caskets. I got to see one of them with waste in it. Perfectly safe. I believe they are tested to take a 100 ft drop and not crack. Basically, to make a long story short, in the right hands Nuclear Energy is VERY safe and reliable. Don't let popular culture tell you otherwise.
As mentioned by others, this isn't what happened to Chernobyl.
It's also extremely unlikely to happen anywhere else. Very likely a core moving in such manner would hit some volitile substance (like water), vaporize it and blow itself up in the process. Or, it would burn up enough of it's U235 such that it would shut itself down.
Finally, the CANDU (canadu?) reactors run on natural uranium. Natural uranium won't react without a moderator. So as soon as the fuel moves out of the reactor vessel it'll put itself out.
Interestingly, natural nuclear reactions in the ground are not unheard of. There is a uranium mine in Africa which has a lower U-235 content then other mines. It has been postulated that at some point in the distant past it's uranium underwent a spontanious chain reaction and burned off part of its U-235.
Very well said.
I would only add that coal plants release huge amounts of radioactive contaminants along with their other chemical biproducts.
And in terms of waste, this is why we should be working on breeder reactors.
Also take into account that you have to house the depleated uranium.
Depleated uranium has nothing to do with nuclear power reactors. DU is uranium which has had it's U235 extracted for use in atomic bombs (or nuclear sub reactors). Since there is a glut of extracted U235 on the planet at the moment, no one is refining it anymore.
Depleted uranium is also not terribly radioactive. It is used for tank-piercing shells and armor, for instance. Housing it is not a problem. It is no more dangerous then any other heavy metal.
I suspect the term you are looking for is "Spent fuel."
Assuming that you think nuclear power is a good idea...
Assuming that the Former Soviet Countries have reliable industry techniques to control this stuff...
Assuming that the residual radiation in the area has subsided...
This is a very bad idea.
The reactors that melted down are not safe. They were covered with a "sarcophagus" of just plain concrete. Even last year, they were talking about the leaks from this thing getting so bad that they had to go in and repair it, but didn't have the $$.
When the reactors melted, they sacrificed thousands of soldiers that went in to put this concrete over the reactor. They didn't even give them protective equipment. All they gave them was some "anti-radiation" pills that prevented them from getting violently ill.
It's still impossible to get into the area. The residual radiation is too much, even if you don't take into account that it's leaking.
The facilities themselves are in a poor state. Iron beams that form the infrastructure of the facilities are weakened because of the extreme temperatures. Most of the switches on the control panels are melted together. This isn't like TMI, where there was an incidental release of radiation. Theis was a melt-down of critical proportions, just like a nuclear bomb went off.
The radiation from Chernobyl wasn't even reported by the Soviets. They wouldn't have said anything to the West. The only reason that we knew about this is that Finland detected the radioactive cloud over half a continent away (Geography lesson--the Ukraine is located on the Black Sea, way down south, and Finland is on the Arctic Circle). So, this radiation was strong enough to drift all the way north across eastern Europe and still be detected.
So, how do you pull off restarting the reactors?
1) Rebuilt all the facilities from scratch.
2) Get a team of *very* protected specialists to start up the equipment.
3) Network the reactors with a remote control station somewhere in Kiev.
4) Pray like hell--Ukrainians are Catholic.
Supposedly, the thing is Y2K safe, but who cares? I mean, this is such American thinking. Who cares about Y2K when there's Y-now.
I do what the voices on my console tell me to do.
Okay, now walk outside, on the cloudiest day of the year, and look around you. How many lights, placed where, and of what wattage, would you need to employ to achieve this level of illumination without your insignificant solar power???
Thousands of persons still use the sun to illuminate almost every significant activity, to dry their clothes, to warm themselves. Consider, too, the work accomplished by the sun in creating wind, harnessed by green plants to provide practically all our food, etc.
Solar power is far greater than your imagination can conceive -- it is merely our so-far limited ability to harness even a tiny fraction of this power which leaves us wanting more energy. It isn't the sun which "can't produce!"
My, my. What do you know? For years after it was built the engineers WERE Russian. Oh, by the way I am not worried at all. Also, European standard requires 16 mm thick lead (.66 inch) casing around the reactors. In ours, they installed 45 mm. That's a lot of lead.
That must have been the same week that aliens abducted the President of the United States and the CIA stole your tin foil hat.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Seriously, folks... I come by my Y2K tremors honestly.. I've worked in the technological headquarters of rather a large number of brokerages and banks. With these eyes I have observed such stupidity and ignorance as would seem incredible to a trusting soul such as yourself.
Then again, you don't know me -- so, did you read the recent story about how NASA lost the probe orbiting Mars? Seems some bright coder failed to translate correctly from metric to feet in calculating the orbit, and it burned up because it entered the atmosphere (at about 60 miles instead of 150). Of course, you have to go to BBC for the horrendous details... the authorities and their media don't want you to realize how bone-headed even NASA's coders -- arguably brighter and more motivated than most -- can be.
If you're living in some cozy suburban home with a fireplace and you have plenty of water and fuel stockpiled, or you're down south where the temperature probably won't drop much below 45 degrees (F) the week after the New Year, you're probably safe enough. But those of us in NYC and other environments highly dependent on deeply interconnected technology have plenty of reason to fear. Just a couple of months ago, a sudden, completely unexpected rainstorm that fell only on Manhattan in the early morning knocked out the subways. So the buses and cabs were also effectively out of service since so many crowded onto them. If you were on your way to the hospital that morning, or desperately needed to get to the airport, you had a tiny taste of what COULD happen here the week of Jan. 1st.
When was the last time you heard of a predicted, expected power-outage??? They still happen in the greater NY metropolitan area -- even just last summer, blocks in uptown Manhattan were completely cut off for more than 24 hours, just because of high demand during a predicted heat wave!
The real danger is that relatively tiny technical failures can quickly cascade into life-threatening consequences in apparently unrelated systems. Remember the implications of complexity theory (one good reason to read the notes prefacing chapters of Jurassic Park, regardless of how you felt about the movie).
Yeah well i saw an aritcle on "Ukrainian Industry" about three years ago??? and it seems that they are not i need of electricity like they are in need of cleaner factories. They do not even put the basic scrubbing systems on their plants that have black smoke bellowing out of them 24 hours a day.
And does mr. smartass know what do those "factories" produce? Those over-polluting "factories" are either steel plants or, and mostly -- surprise -- power plants. Coal-burning ones because this is what Ukraine has.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This is the typical reaction of the West (read US media). There is real need of the electricity there. This reactor may be spotty in it's reputation because of the accident but then that's the reason it's an accident. Do we go around asking whether US will use nuclear bomb on some country when clearly the history shows that the US is the only country that has used nuclear bombs ever and that was not an accident.
Oh, I didn't say I bought the eco-freak propaganda, but I had heard that the area around chernobyl would be uninhabitable until 20xx..guess not...
You are correct, perhaps I should have more carefully worded my statement. *Currently*, solar power is not a reasonable option. I certainly expect that to change in the future. Unfortunately, we're forced to live in the present, which, according to the article, is where the Ukrainians (sp?) are having their trouble.
Where are your facts and figures? If you're willing to decide that the Ukraine doesn't *need* the electrical power, and that you already know the expected costs and benefits, where are they?
For what it's worth, you have to accept the possibility of mistakes. Ever cross a street? The solution isn't to avoid risk, but to manage it competently. In this industry, that should mean having a well-designed plant where safety measures such as shutting down a reactor happen as smoothly as possible, and having a trained, competent staff... not by running away and pretending that the need for power isn't there.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The radiation wasn't nearly as harsh as everyone thinks. I'm not saying that there isn't any, or it won't make you dreadfully ill if you go mushroom picking in the forests nearby... Its the general fear of anything radioactive that has people thinking that just coming close to Chernobyl will cause instant death.
I personally have an uncle that was a soldier detailed in the construction of the sarcophagus. He's still fine and healthy today.
The employees at Chernobyl are bussed to and from the reactor every morning, because they're not allowed to live overly close to it. Other than that, its business as usual. Just some doors in the reactor building are welded shut. =)
If the west is so upset about Chernobyl, why don't they remember their promises of financial aid to Ukraine to build replacement reactors so Chernobyl can be shut down????
The western European countries, plus Canada and the USA backed out of their promises. So naturally, Ukraine backs out of its promise to shut down Chernobyl. Considering that in winter, in many towns, electrical power is only on every second hour, Ukraine has little choice. Ukrainian computer users find UPS backups as indispensible. =]
Anyone in the west who wants to complain about Chernobyl, they should direct their complaints to their own governments.
My 2 kopecks.
The US has around 128 Nuclear Power Plants not to mention all of our Nuclear powered Navy, which has been running for over 30 years. The Navy has lost two Nuclear subs the Thresher and the Scorpion. Neither has anything to do with nuclear propulsion Plants. One was lost the same place and time as a Soviet sub [hint], the other had a battery room explosion. There was TMI. The US had similar experience to Chernobyl with SL1 which was a portable Army Reactor "Two people Died". All in all I dont know of many other major industries with this kind of safety record. More people died making the Golden Gate Bridge.
Get a free ipod.
Having already experienced the effects of one nuclear meltdown in Tjernobyl I would not like to experience a second one. They need international assistance - now! That's my $0.02...
There are two basic complaints with Yucca Mountain.
1. A permanent dump for nuclear waste needs to be geologically stable. Five-meter-thick concrete walls don't do you much good if the earth's crust goes "pop". Shortly after Yucca Mountain was declared "stable", a fairly significant earthquake hit it. This does not inspire confidence in the site's long term ability to safely contain dangerous waste.
2. The state of Nevada has no nuclear reactors, and thus produces no nuclear waste. From what I recall hearing when I lived there, this was decided by referendum and may reasonably be described as the preference of the folks who live there. Many people thus feel that it is unjust for the DOE to dump most of the nation's waste in Nevada. Thus the omnipresent "Nevada Is Not A Wasteland" bumper stickers.
So there is a little more to the debate than "people who don't know much about nuclear energy."
-Mars
The point is that when considering a nuclear
power plant, it's more to worry about than just the energy resource being defect.
Perhaps the extra cooling that is needed, and
that is supposed to arrive at 22.31, doesn't
start because the year is 1900, and it doesn't start for 100 years...
Perhaps the reactor is supposed to stop at 04.00,
but it doesn't because the computer can't figure out what to do, because it doesn't understand the
date.
Result: the reactor operates out of limit and regulations --> it overheats, and has a meltdown
--> mayhem.
For the most part the y2k-bug is blow out of
proportions, but some parts of it is really serious.
I don't know that radiation has anything to do with the deterioration of the sarcophagus. The thing was built very rapidly in a very hostile
environment on top of a structurally unsound building. And it hasn't been kept up terribly well since.
Of course, given the economic situation in the area one really can't blame them for the lack of attention. This is definitely an instance where it's in the West's best interests to help out.
Why do people often make the assumption, that
everybody here is from the US?
Slashdot has a lot of European readers, and
Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Belgium, United
Kingdom, etc. may all suffer from nuclear
disasters in eastern Europe.
All of you that are interested in this story should seek out a documentary called "Pripyat". It played here in Olympia, WA, as part of our local film society's annual film festival (yay!) this year and it is an AMAZING sight...
Chernobyl is surrounded by The Zone, a 20km (IIRC) area that is cordoned off. There is an entire city that sits abandoned within the zone(there's a special issue of Scientific American on the stands now, an issue on gigantic engineering projects, that includes a double-page photograph overlooking this city). Armed guards control access to the zone, which is supposed to have been completely evacuated, but of course there are still people living there.
The filmmakers of Pripyat didn't do much editorializing - they pretty much just set up the camera and let it roll. Their subjects include an elderly couple who live a primitive lifestyle within the zone, a worker who travels to the zone every day for her job testing for radiation, and best of all: the Chernobyl plant safety manager! It even includes a bit of a tour of the plant! The safety officer goes on quite a bit about the heavy responsibility he bears, and then shows the camera crew how wonderful their lunches are and how they're free of charge, and then laments that he only wishes he got PAID for his job... yup, after many months on the job, this guy, the frickin' plant safety officer, still hadn't ever been paid. Talk about pushing a willie button... that oughta be enough to give anyone the heebie jeebies. That and the fact that all the controls and electronics looked vintage 1952, and the rest of the building appeared to be a little shaky in the maintenance department.
Anyway, if you have a cool video store in your neighborhood, it'd be worth your while to ask them to get it in for you when it becomes available. HIGHLY recommended!
My thinking is that we sped it up by accelerating the arms race. They strained their economy trying to spend the money both in development and in production, neglecting other critical parts of their economy in the process... which they couldn't afford.
If, say, for some reason there were no arms race (that is: there wasn't anybody else...), it would have taken longer for 'em to wind down, and it might have been a very different transition. It might have been worse -- say, a violent revolution once more. Or, it might have been better -- such as a more gradual shift towards capitalism, as the PRC is trying (but while maintaining complete political control...).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
There are other alternatives, like space, which are less feasable, but the reality is that there are safe places for this stuff.
Do we have to rehash the Space:1999 disaster!
:)
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
CANDU - CANadian Deuterium Uranium. The system is heavy-water moderated (the process of slowing down neutrons to "thermal" and therefore nucleus capturable speeds); and the heavy-water comes out of normal water (in the case of most Canadian reactors, Lake Huron). Deuterium, a naturally occuring stable isotope of hydrogen combines chemically with oxygen making heavy water. Tritium, an unstable isotope of hydrogen is _rarely_ found in nature. In the process of slowing down neutrons in a reactor, a very small amount of deuterium gets converted into tritium. In the amounts produced within the CANDU reactor, you would have to wait a _long_ time to get enough tritium for a fusion device (ie. several half lives of the substance; ie. it would decay faster than you could produce it; ie. forever) Fission relies on a greater release of energy from the splitting of a nucleus then the energy taken to split it. As iron seems to be about the limit for keeping a positive energy ballance, deuterium and tritium _cannot_ be used in fission devices. It does however turn out that in order to produce temperatures of the magnitude required for thermonuclear fusion, a "conventional" thermonuclear fission device is used. In some high-yield devices, a casing of stable, uranium is used which under the intense neutron flux fron the fusion reaction gets convertes to fissionable plutonium, drasticly increasing the power of the device. So... 1) CANDU reactors are not bomb factories (unless converted to "breeder" reactors, which is more expensive than building a custom facillity). 2) Tritium can not be used in "fission" devices. Altough "fission" devices are used to trigger "fusion" devices. 3) All reactors may not suck, but thermonuclear fission based energy does: a) The plant may be safe, but the waste material sure as hell isn't; AND it has to be put in a safe place for _hundreds of thousands of years_. c) Decomissioning of the plant is not straight forward or safe. What do you do with an intensly radioactive caldera? How do you transport it? b) The infrastructure for mining, processing and transporting nuclear material is _far_ from safe; opening up the possibility of a nasty spill (which does occur from time to time) c) The economics of all of the above are terrible. If all of the subsidies were removed, it would _the_ most expensive mass power generation system in use.
On a remotely similar topic, i caught a article in the paper this morning where the rcmp (canadian cops) are testing a new ultra tough thin screen laptop thingy at 5 grand a pop, running, you guessed it, windows 98. im glad that our guilty until proven innocent photo radar tickets are paying for the cops to have thier criminal database crash in mid-arrest. proud to be a canuck. not.
So are they holding their NYE party at the reactor this year? :)
Let me first make a summary of some of the facts known to me...
The Chernobyl plant (or Chornobyl as the Oekrainian people call it now), consisted out of 5 RBMK reactors..
The 1st reactor was brought back on line Oktober 1995 and the 4th this year, if I recall it right..
The Chernobyl plant is unique, because it was designed for two purposes:
1) Supplying power
2) Producing nucleair weapons.. This is also one of the main reasons, it lacks a containment structure.
During the construction of the plant, some engineers came to the believe, that the plant had structural design flaws in the cooling system and pleeded to halt the construction, these engineers where taken of the project and Russia made sure that the carrier ended as well..
The #4 reactor of the Chernobyl plant, exploded after series of human errors, when conducting a 'safety test'.
Before running the safety test, all three safety systems where disabled.
The test was performed to see, how long the reactor could hold out, when shutting it down and not generating power, without external power to the water cooling pumps & controls and without the backup power generators online.. Also, the emergency core cooling system was taken off-line..
The reactor was deliberaty put below a power output of 700MW, the strict minimum limit to garanty safe operations of all support systems and the reactor it self.. After a series of major human ignorance and errors that followed, mainly the work of Deputy chief engineer Dyatlov, who also lead the test, the reactor #4 finally exploded.
In the immidiate vicinity, there where about 135000 people, who where only evacuated days after the incident happend... It took around 8000-10000 lives of worksman, mostly soldiers (liquidators), to put out the fire and to seal of the reactor, by building 'the Sarcophagus'. (Almost) all people, who did the footage on the accident, by helicopter, died.
The radiation level in the surrounding environment, was much faster reduced, than scienctist would have expected, helped by a natural process called 'chitin'.
Envision how in the western world, these rescue workers would be dressed like and than look at the liquidators
Since 1996, a lot of modifications are done to the Chornobyl reactors, but the basic design, with it's flaws, wasn't changed, nor is the situation surrounding these reactors...
In 1997 Russia agreed to build more reactors, based on the RBMK models in Chornobyl..
In 1986, Russia could find 10.000 souls, who were send into their dead, to end the disaster..
In 1999, Ukrainian people know a lot more about radiation... Today, the area around Chernobyl is still inhabitat by Oekrainian people, who feel they are left alone by the government..
Unemployment is sky high, as you would expect, so no source of income and medical threatment is done under very bad conditions, by idealistic people who don't care about their own lives...
What if it would happend again now?
What if they decide to run Y2K 'tests'?
Check for more info these links: this and this
"The odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years. The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety systems." Vitaly Sklyarov, Minister of Power for the Ukrainian SSR., February 1986
I think we owe to ourselves as humans to drink cyanide. Regardless of the alleged danger. How can we advance as a species if we don't take chances? btw does your plan for advancing as a species involve upping the background radiation so we will mutate more often ???
"If there is a God, you are an authorized representative." - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Read my lips: There is absolutely zero, nada, nil chance that anything in Chernobyl will fail due to Y2K. How do I know? Because ALL of the equipment used in Chernobyl was manufactured pre-computer era. The hardware is too primitive to be affected by anything related to Y2K. Saw a documentary on it and they directly addressed the issue. So sleep tight, Ukranians. :) Y2K is literally the least of your Chernobyl worries.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
The energy plant at chernobyl had/has 6 reactors. One of them (I believe #4) was the one that suffered the accident; the others are still running although due to frequent problems repairs will soon force their shutdown too (they say in two years). Now, are Soviet reactors very good? no, they are not as safe as the U.S. ones. But as someone noted, they have never really failed either except Chernobyl #4 and that only because of negligent testing (they turned off colling system for a day). And, let me repeat, they are restarting a DIFFERENT reactor!
The russian design uses graphite to replace the huge pool of water that western reactors are bathed in, not the moderating rods. Carbon (or water) slow the neutrons down to make fission more likely. The rods (made of beryllium? in both designs) absorb the neutrons altogether, and stop the reaction.
Because the russian reactors are "dry", a fire in the graphite blocks is a definite possibility. They should have enclosed the reactor in a containment vessel like we do. Cheapskates.
I'm cool like a fool in a swimming p-p-pfft-pool
There are two real problems with nuclear power: Disposal of spent fuel (waste) and accidents. Once you analyze them, you realize there is but one problem with nuclear power: Longevity.
Accidents are the joker card in this game. Nuclear power would be fantasic -- if nothing ever went wrong. Unfortunately, one of the few constants in our existance seems to be Murphy's Law: What can go wrong, will go wrong. And when things go wrong in nuclear power, the resulting fallout (pun quite intended) can be drastic.
If a coal plant catches fire, you have a lot of smoke, some toxic chemicals, possibly explosions, the usual sort of industrial accident. But within a few days, a week or two at the outside, the fire will be out and you can start picking up the pieces.
At Chernobyl, they won't be able to pick up the pieces for hundreds of years.
Spent fuel (nuclear waste) is the second problem I mentioned. When the oil is finished burning, all your waste has gone up the stack, for better or worse. With nuclear power, the spent fuel rods must be kept until they decay to the point where they are no longer hazzardous.
Again, this process takes hundreds of years. During all that time, you keep accumulating more and more waste. You cannot handle it without special suits or robots. You need to keep it away from water, to prevent contamination of the water table. You need to do this for a long, long time.
And that is the real problem with nuclear power (or nuclear anything): Longevity. Nuclear waste remains hazardous far longer then anything else we have to deal with. Unlike a conventional industrial accident, the result of a nuclear accident may well last until your grandchildren are dead. Just creating a storage container that lasts long enough stretches our technology.
The people who design nuclear waste storage facilities spend a good deal of time trying to make the place look as dangerous as possible, using universal symbols that any human will understand. The reason why is simple: This stuff will remain deadly longer then modern civilization has been around. They have to account for anything up to and including the collapse of our society in their designs. That is the time scale we're dealing with here.
Once you realize that, you realize the problem. With almost everything else, we can afford to make mistakes. It may be bad, but we can fix the problem and move on. Not with nuclear power. Nuclear power demands perfection -- and that is one thing we cannot provide.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Having been in Munich, Germany soon after the explosion at Chernobyl, I admit that when I first saw this article it had me a bit worried. I still remember watching the news on AFN (Armed Forces Network) saying there was no danger, then turning to a local station to see a large red area right over Munich with a warning to stay out of the rain if at all possible. Despite this, I think that nuclear power is the safest, cleanest, most efficient method for generating electricity that we currently have. If the Ukraine needs to bring the rest of the plant online to kick-start their industrial capacity, more power to them! (no pun intended) Solar power is not anywhere near the efficiency level it needs to be at to provide electricity on a commercial scale. Wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric power all require very specific geography, and are still not as efficient as nuclear power. Fossil fuels are an idea whose time should have ended somewhere in the '50s. Fusion is still highly experimental and has not yet breached that elusive 1:>1 input/output power ratio. Fission-based reactors are proven technology. The reason, IMHO, that it is not more widely used is that incidents like Chernobyl and TMI tend to bring into people's minds the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We see pictures of people horribly scarred by radiation, and are irrationally afraid that a commercial reactor can do the same. Yes, the waste produced is rather more toxic than anything else, but there is far less of it, and it is produced with far less frequency. (Anybody have figures on how often a commercial reactor needs refueling?) For those people calling for money to be sent to the Ukraine instead of letting them bring this back online, I say let's send over a few competent nuclear technicians to help them bring it back up safely. And, for those who think that while I might advocate nuclear power, I wouldn't want it near my house, I say I'd like to have one _in_ my house. (Let's see anyone beat a nuclear reactor in a Geek Toy DSW) Seriously, I have no problem with the Ukraine bringing Chernobyl back online, as long as it is done safely.
--NOC Monkey (OOK!)
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Just how much time in the day do you have to read /.?
1,000 comments for calendar 27th... a slow day! We need moderation, so that you can find the most interesting things first, and then nod off when the discussion gets too trivial.
I agree that too many comments are too low on the moderation scale, but my attention span for most articles is about 50 posts; after that, it better be interesting!
of course, if you have a better idea...
Chernobyl released over one million times the background radiation into the environment- in forms that would be devastating to the whole world. The trees in the area soaked up a lot of the more vile isotopes released- but will not be able to do so again (they've already soaked up all they can...) The radiation levels at the reactor's location and the surrounding area were so high that you'd recieve your lifetime safe radiation dose in 90 seconds . Dozens being killed? Try in the tens of thousands in the area (unless it's in a truly isolated region...). Try in the millions of people adversely affected worldwide. They were truly lucky at Chernobyl the last time- what about the next "oops"?
Yes, through normal operation, a nuclear fission plant is cleaner and "safer" than a coal or gas fired plant. However, despite saftey regs, they are far more complex (in design and operation) and therefore at least slightly more likely to go prang and in a bad way at that. The catestrophic failure modes on many of the designs (esp. the ones over in the former Eastern Bloc countries) can be quite a bad thing for anyone around the things- so it's quite undesireable to have them about; no matter what you say to the contrary.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Actually I checked this out a few weeks ago, after coming across an interesting interpretation of Revelation that included the possibility of Chernobyl being the 3rd trumpet.
I did an Internet search, and found several USENET postings and a couple different websites indicating that Chernobyl does indeed mean Wormwood, and nothing saying it didn't.
Yes, I have a LOT of faith in EVERYTHING I see on Usenet
BTW: Didn't the Bible also say that we wouldn't know the hour or the day of the second comming? Please don't tell me I'm dealing with one of those poor cooks who is waiting for the $@&% "Rapture"
If I had a dime for every time some putz started babling about the "End Times" I'd have more $$$ than B. Gates. Heck, the New Testemant mentions a group of Christians who sat down, sold everything and were waiting for Christ to return. I can't remembe rif it was Paul or Peter who told them to get back to work...
The world will end when the world ends, and all the time you spend worrying about it is a bigger waster than a Pauly Shore movie.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Hrm.. well, here's my take on it
1. The ground near the plant is already screwed for the next few hundred years.. why not just open the place back up
2. Russia needs money
3. Russia needs power
4. Nuclear power is cheap.. and it works (most of the time)
5. As long as the nuclear fallout from the next meltdown doesn't hit me, I don't care.
6. If the radiation from having monitors all around my head, evern while I sleep, doesn't kill me.. I don't think that I'm gonna notice the meltdown too much
7. Safety has increased over there.. especially since we'll most likely send at least one team over to help them with the whole project.
8. By taking the risk of killing the environment, they're saving many tons of harmful waste.
9. Ok, so I don't have a 9, but I really like making long lists.
I'd like to hear what some of the rest of you think.
-NIVRAM
Chernobyl has four reactors. Reactor #2 exploded in April of 1986, and Reactor #4 caught fire in 1992 and was disabled (without a radiation-leak mishap like six years previously, however.) There are two left that still work, and one of these (#3) is what is being restarted. (I make no claims as to the accuracy of the reactor numbers; I probably mixed them up. Oh well.)
What's interesting is 1) Where the workers will live, seeing as how Pripyat is still uninhabitable, and 2) how the workers will be protected from the vast quantities of Cesium-137 still found in the region.
Er...did you say *lose* some weight to look more American? When was the last time you were there? :)
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Oh, I think I can answer those: 1. the workers will live in Pripyat because it's perfectly safe; and 2. obviously there's no such thing as Caesium-137. Don't forget, only two people died from radiation poisoning because there wasn't really an incident at all.
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Er...what's 'homeweork', and perhaps we should all do a bit more (previewing and calming down before posting, that is)? Oh-oh: isn't that a flame I see coming towards m aaaaarrrggghhhh
"We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code." Dave Clark, IETF
Bullshit, the "Monster" bomb that was detonated over Northern Russia was a 60Mton bomb, it was a scaled down version of their 100Mton bomb. The reason why it was scaled down was because if they had detonated it, the shockwave might have reached nearby cities.
I used to think the same, and I still do about Western plants, (I also have toured a few) but I have also heard horror stories about the Russian ones. One of the worst things is that the ?boron/graphite? rods that are used to stop the reaction go in from the top up in western reactors, so the holes they put them in are quite big. In the Chernobyl reactors, the rods go in from the bottom up, so the holes are small. This means that when the reactor overheats, they won't go in...
Also, western reactors have boron ball-bearings that can be squirted in as a last resort. The Chernobyl reactors don't have anything.
I dont know if aou guys are aware of this (after reading all your posts), but Chernobyl never was shut down. Reactor 4 blew, they put concrete over the ruin, and restarted the other 3... now if these 3 blew good night eastern & middle europe (including Germany where I reside)
-- [This line has intentionally left been blank]
Micah dun said:
This canard has been going around in fundy circles for a long time--specifically, ever since Chornobyl went boom (yup, since the 80's...when the same folks were also claiming Russia was Gog and Moscow was Magog and that Gorbachev was really the Antichrist). I can also tell you that those websites probably ALL got their info from the same source (the good old fundamentalist Christian rumour mill--the same one that's been spreading the urban legends about Disney movies and Proctor & Gamble being supposedly run by Satanists for God-only-knows how long) and the claim that "Chornobyl" means "Wormwood" is patent male bovine manure. :)
A little bit of fact-finding (which is how I found it was bull, btw)--Ukrainian, Russian, Belorussian, and other "Eastern Slavic" languages are VERY closely related. So closely related in fact that often they are mutually intelligible in roughly the same manner Catalan and Castillian Spanish, or Castillian Spanish and Portugese, are.
"Chernozem" (Ukrainian "chornozem") is Russian for "black earth" and refers to a very rich, black earth that exists in Ukraine. The name "Chernobyl" (Ukrainian "Chornobyl"; the official name of the town has in fact been Chornobyl since Ukraine told Russia it was breaking away from the old USSR) means "black table" and is a direct reference to the rich chernozem earth in the area.
(Warning--massive rant about to begin on how coercive fundy groups feed their memberships stuff like this. If you don't want to hear gory details and me whinge long and pissy on it, scroll to the next message now. If you are of a fundamentalist bent, you probably will NOT want to read what I am about to say next. :)
This isn't the first time fundies have been loose with the facts, btw. Nearly all of the urban legends about Disney movies having sexual references started from one or two sources in the fundamentalist Christian community (visit here for a good reference). In Sunday school back when I was young and stupid and thoroughly brainwashed, we were told (among other things) that the CEO of NBC was a practicing Satanist, that facial creams with "placenta" contained ground-up aborted babies (yes, they actually told us this in Sunday school! And for the record, stuff with placenta contains COW PLACENTA, not ground-up aborted human babies), that the ERA would force women to be lesbians, that parents should not send their kids to Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts but instead to the fundy alternatives (Royal Rangers & Missionettes) because the Boy Scouts supposedly allowed gay Scoutmasters and promoted atheism (a patent lie--they will not even let you IN if you are gay or atheist; several lawsuits have in fact been filed AGAINST the Boy Scouts because of this), and other fun tall tales. The same church has a guy who sent out fliers to the better part of my city (large metro area of almost a million people) including grocery stores that claimed all gay men were members of NAMBLA; the church members are told this and do not question it because they are literally told to avoid ALL "non-Christian" media because the media industry outside of that run by rabid fundies is run by Satanists (!). They even give out "Christian Yellow Pages" telling them not to do business except with those of "like faith" so they won't have to deal with people who might show them they are being fed outright lies by their pastor :P (And people wonder why I say that at least some branches of fundamentalist Christianity are as bad as Scientologists. They're as coercive, in any case (as I found out being brought into the Scientology debates back when the CoS was doing major net.abuse like the Cancelbunnies instead of just suing websites into oblivion); hell, at least one Assemblies of God church (the AoG is one of your biggest fundy denominations, btw--something like two million members) was actually outed as a cult on 20/20 (the "Brownsville Movement" in Pensacola, FL) and I can testify from my experience in an AoG church and from that of others who've walked away that more often than not those churches turn dangerously coercive. Pretty much they trip EVERY one of the warning signs that have been used for Scientologists; a favourite brainwashing tool [the whole "engrams" thang] is a repackaged version of good old "deliverance ministry" [the idea that anything trying to drive you out of that church--from news reports on how it's coercive to your own inner doubts--are signs of Satanic possession and you must "pray the demons out" or "exorcise" them by force...there are verified cases where people have been driven insane or even killed in these "exorcisms", and the Scientology equivalent is widely regarded as the single most damaging aspect of it], neither Scientologists nor coercive fundy groups want their members to have any outside info at all [saying slags are being done by "subversive persons"/"agents of Satan"], both exert heavy control on members [Scientologists being encouraged to join "Sea Org", fundies being encouraged to join political groups and to homeschool their kids, send them to fundy-run colleges when possible, and using "cell groups" to basically snitch on each other to make sure members stay in control], both have lots of money...I really could go on for hours on it. I've been a walkaway for something like thirteen years now, and I'm only starting to realise just HOW coercive the group was and just HOW much bull I was fed "in the name of God". And that's from one of the biggest damn churches in the COUNTRY. :P
ObY2K: Oh, and after Russia and Iraq didn't pan out as Gog and Magog and after a succession of Gorby, Boris "Where's the Stoli?" Yeltsin, Saddam Hussein, and Bill Clinton (!) didn't pan out as the Antichrist and/or Da Source of Da Comin' Pockylipse, now they're running about saying that the WWW is going to be the source of Armageddon and Y2K is going to be the Apocalypse (they were saying earlier that the world being destroyed by fire was going to be a nuclear war between the US and Russia over Israel (!)...and they were darn near jizzing themselves over it, too...it's really sickening in a way to know that the main reason they support Israel and Jews at ALL is because they are hoping Israel will get into some kind of war which would blow the entire world to kingdom-come, and they're essentially kissing God's arse by supporting anything Israel does [up to and including human rights violations] because they want to fight on the same side as the Israelis when the last war starts because they think that no matter what Israel is "God's Team"). Myself, I'm more afraid of the fundies running about spouting that crap than I am of society falling down going thud because of Y2K, because if they don't get their Armageddon they might try to make their own (and apparently Israel is so concerned about it that they've already set up a special task force just to deal with potentially dangerous fundy Christian groups--they've already had to send three groups out of Israel so far, and it's not even December yet...and also keep in mind that most fundy groups care about Israel for only three reasons--a) because they see Israelis as "God's Chosen" and hope to be lumped in with "God's Chosen" by supporting Israel no matter what [I actually heard it preached "You support them even if they commit genocide against an entire nation"], b) they are convinced Armageddon is going to break out when Israel goes to war with another country, and c) they want to be where the action is when Jesus comes back to play General Patton to the Army of Gawd). (And yes, I think I have a valid reason for worry--as I noted above and I've noted in past, I grew up in a very coercive fundamentalist group. The group has actually argued that "good people will go to hell and bad people will go to heaven" because as long as one claims one accepts Jesus this supposedly makes things alright--and then they can have carte blanche to do whatever the hell they want to do "in the name of God". They've seriously discussed bringing back the Burning Times and expanding them to ALL non-fundamentalists [Catholics even get denounced as "idol-worshippers", and Baptists as being "lukewarm Christians who don't accept the gifts of tongues"], and in a prior "Second Coming" panic in 1988 [when some guy released a book entitled "88 Reasons Why Jesus Will Come Back In 1988"] many people lost all their money by giving it to the church. Hell, MY family has in past been in financial trouble because money was given in "tithes" and "love offerings" when it was needed for food and bills :P. The group has been known to harass and picket homes of STRAIGHT people who have come out in support of gay-rights ordinances, and for well over ten years literally made the lives of an entire neighbourhood hell when they kept trying to get in construction project after construction project so they could get in additional access roads to suck in even more people [fortunately, Mum Nature intervened by a massive flood, the Corps of Engineers declared the entire area a wetlands and 100-year flood plain where further development was prohibited, and now the church is moving out to somewhere else they hope the neighbours can be bullied easier]. Partly because they ARE being coerced and the church tries it cut off every avenue of info that it doesn't own, and partly because one of the chief tenets is essentially "If you ain't with us you're a Satanist and workin' for the devil", and they are CONVINCED they are going to go to final holy war when Armageddon does hit, I seriously worry what some members of that church might do...and that's a relatively CALM one for coercive Bible-based groups, too. I'm not even gonna go into really scary stuff like Christian Identity or the really radical groups that have set up their own "Entime Camp" communities :P)
-Windigo The Feral (NYAR!)
I was in the Ukraine a couple of years ago for a 2 week trip to see a friend and do some touring around. With the sole exception of Kiev (the capital) at 5pm each night, for about 2 hours, the power would be cut. That's a country wide blackout! And the only reason for it was that they couldn't afford to provide electricity 24 hours a day. Bearing in mind that most of the population get round on electically powered Trolly Buses (Trams to you and I) everything just about grinds to a halt. I don't think things have improved much since then, if at all.
Macka
Finally, the CANDU reactors run on natural uranium.
This is also nice because it doesn't give the country an excuse to develop uranium-enrichment plants, which makes it a bit harder to build weapons[1], and also removes a potential accident source (like the recent Japanese mishap where they poured too much uranium into a mixing tank).
Interestingly, natural nuclear reactions in the ground are not unheard of.
The Oklo mine, in West Africa. Some details are here. It's pretty neat - water-moderated, and regulated because the water would boil away when too much power was produced. Sort of like a CANDU, actually.
[1] Bombs, plus the 'depleted uranium' bullets that the US seems to like spraying all over the landscape.
Didn't Chernobyl happen in 1984? I could be wrong but that's the one thing I clearly remember from Chem class.
I don't think anyone said 'millions of years', I think they said '50 years'. And, BTW, it is uninhabitable at the moment. I have no idea how they're going to do this.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Um, actually, the boy scouts will let in atheists, despite the word 'reverent' in the scout oath. (Or is it the scout law? I always got those confused.) And, I think they just don't let in gay *leaders*...I dunno, but yeah, they are getting sued for it...
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
After doing some more research on the internet, I need to rectify some facts:
Since 1986, no more that two reactors of the Chornobyl plant, have been operative..
In 1991, one of the two reactors caught fire and was taken offline and was taken back online in 1995. Currently there's only one reactor operational, the second one was taken offline in 1997 because it exceeded it's lifespan. The remaining reactor, is in such a bad shape, that it needs a half year of service for every half year of operation. Ukrainia has scheduled the last reactor to shut down before 01-01-2000, but is now probably forced to use it until end Q2 Y2K, because they still haven't received any money to finish building their new power plants and winters are very harsh over there..
Currently, Ukrainia had only power 22/24 hours, before powering up #3 and the Ukrainain public transport is largly electrical powered.
In the first year after the accident, the number of cleanup workers in the zone was estimated to be 211,000, and these workers received an estimated average dose between 165-250 millisievert (16.5 rem). In total, around 600-800,000 workers have been involved since 1986 and around 8000-10000 of them died.
Right after the accident, the main health concern involved radioiodine, with a half-life of eight days. During which those 135.000 people were not evacuated.. Today, there is concern about contamination of the soil with cesium-137, which has a half-life of about 30 years.
It is true that the reactors themself are based on old analogue technologies, but the powergrid, auxialiary control units and power backup units aren't.
The POWERGRID and NOT the reactor itself perse, is THE main Y2K concern, according to the CIA.
If the powergrid fails or miscommunication etc, the 5 powerplants Ukrainia has, have to be taken off-line. The ironony is, that reactors need power from the grid to be able be be shutdown, as the Chernobyl test disaster prooved. It is feared, that the current power backup system takes to long to get online, altough it has been improved (providing it is not hit by a y2k problem).
America has offered to send batteries and power generators and also offered to improve current reactors.. But is hindered by politics.. I'm in general anti-America, but it seems like America is the only one who cares.. The G7 still hasn't payed.
How precare is the situation of #4 at the moment?
* In 1991, the Chornobyl plant suffered from an earthquake.
* There is leaking rain water into the "sarcophagus" of unit 4, causing massive corrosion and major damage of the structural integerity as robot surveying showed. There's imminent need of $700,000 todo some very short term repairs to #4, but money lacks...
* #4 contains still 70% of it's original fuel in dust form.. The roof of the 'sargophagus' is imminent to collapse. Does the term 'fall out' ring a bell to anyone? If it would collapse, the disaster would be much much bigger than in 1986.. Providing it won't ignite the nuclear fuel in #3, causing a real global disaster, which is a real fear.
And don't forget the 1991 fire..
Russia and Lithuania still also are using 14 RBMK light water graphite reactors such as at Chornobyl. The RMBK 1000 model VVER 440-230 in Novovoronezh NPP (Russia), the same as used in Chornobyl, has already failed 17 times, during it's life...
Some article on Sovjet reactors.
Some other articles: Russia today , more info this and this
"The odds of a meltdown are one in 10,000 years. The plants have safe and reliable controls that are protected from any breakdown with three safety systems." Vitaly Sklyarov, Minister of Power for the Ukrainian SSR., February 1986
BTW if I remember correctly Chernobyl translates to wormwood, the star that falls to Earth in Revelations that poisons the water, kind of scarry ain't it
Read my plan to save the Bengals
Well, OK, let it be two atoms for a cancer. But Plutonium just stays the most toxic material known, you only need a fraction of a milligram to kill someone...
You can say the same for air.
Inject a tiny bubble of air directly into someone's bloodstream in the right place, and it will travel into the heart, block the (mumble) artery, and stop their heart dead.
The fact is that nearly anything can be used to kill someone if you do it just right. Plutonium is hardly the only substance which qualifies. This particular bit of FUD, while true, was sensationalized in the 1970s for propaganda purposes.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
rr, 17 should be 7, typo... actually it's 8, including the last one, that is 8 for the whole plant..
I was at work when I posted the initial post in this thread. I was bored. Regardless, it is good to know that a little bit of sarcasm, obviously mislabelled as 'flamebait' inspired some genuine knowledge exchange.
Since this comment actually recieved a '4,' I am happy. And for those who didn't understand that I was kidding (though I do watch Jack van Impe...it's fun), perhaps they should have read Jonathan Swift instead of Tom Swift. I thank you for your immensely thoughtful response. I learned, which should be everybody's goal.
I don't know who reads these after they are pulled down, so I guess I may be branded a nutcase in spite of a great posting about how bootlegging video games is cool in spite of the Ten Commandments.
I am my own home. - Banana Yoshimoto
Why dont we just load this stuff up in its stable glassified from and launch the suckers into the sun? While we're at it, we could use nuclear missles (*carefully* inspected nuclear missles) to launch them, and kill two birds with one stone.
this solution seems much more cost efficient than any of the other proposals (underground storage,etc etc etc) and gets around what you term "the longebity problem" quite nicely, I think. Strangely, I cant find any discussion of this idea. Has it really not ever been seriously discussed?
The truth is out there - we'll let it back in after it sobers up a bit. -The Cube