Nuclear Power and Chernobyl

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Originally Posted By: GMFan
...Some of the scientists who stayed behind for the cleanup are heroes IMHO.


Those were very good videos. Thanks for posting. It's been many years since I read "The Truth About Chernobyl" and this filled in some information gaps. It was "slow" last night, and these videos prompted me to look up a few more Chernobyl documentaries. It's interesting how the documentaries differed and offered different focus on what the problem was for such a complex story. In my opinion, as with many tragedies, it was a a mix of problems that coalesced into a catastrophe.

There were many brave souls in the Chernobyl story. To the scientists, I'd add the firemen that initially responded. Like our firemen on 9-11, the firemen of Chernobyl raced selflessly to protect others. Human spirit at its most noble.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
Is there a high school class to instruct people how to stay on subject and debate and discuss the points brought up by the other person instead of engaging in personal attacks? The post was about nuclear power and Chernobyl. There are too many people who engage in personal attacks on another person because they are unable to address the points brought up by that person. From my point of point if you are unable to debate the points brought up by the other person and have to engage in personal attacks you have failed.

And did you happen to check out the videos? How would you like that kind of a mess where you live? A little bit of common sense probably could have prevented the entire disaster in Chernobyl.

In Japan there is discussion going on about ending the entire nuclear power program in Japan. I don't think the Japanese would be talking about something like that if the nuclear disaster there had not been as severe as it was. There was partial meltdown of the core in at least one of the reactors. People risked their lives to prevent a worse disaster and many of those people will probably have cancer later in their lives.

I think we have a right to expect quality design, quality construction, and quality operation at a nuclear facility. Or is that too much to expect? I think we have a right to expect people to have enough common sense as to at least be able to figure out that you do not build a nuclear power plant on a coastline where it is certain there will someday be a massive earthquake and a tsunami. Or is that too much to expect?

So we will see if you can address the points I have brought up instead of coming up with some other silly personal attack. If you do attack me personally and not address the points I have brought up I will have to conclude that you are unable to bring up counter arguments to what I am saying. But I will not engage in personal attacks back and forth with you. You can operate at that level if you wish.


Mystic - you can't complain about personal attacks, when you yourself have been engaging in them.

Mystic – “Personal attack after personal attack after personal attack. Why is this allowed here? Can be have a debate, a discussion, without attacking the other person?”

But it’s followed by sarcastic, personal criticism a few posts later. Specifically:

Mystic – “You do know what a tsunami is-correct?”

Mystic – “But I bet you would not have been able to spell 'tsunami' without looking it up in a dictionary.”

There are other examples...So, it's OK for you to be sarcastic and personal but if you perceive that in another person, they're wrong?

Kind of makes the plea for debate seem disingenuous, doesn’t it?

Oh, but I clearly didn't finish High School...is that about right?
 
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The scientists are indeed heroes. They risked their lives and their health to find out what had happened to the nuclear fuel and to try to find solutions to the problems that came up after the disaster. And the firemen were very brave. Many of them died later or had severe health issues. There were also the soldiers who perhaps had no choice to lift and throw fuel rods and other material back into the reactor. They were ordered to do so. But nevertheless they were heroes too. And the people who built the concrete structure around the ruined nuclear power plant.

I have seen some terrible photographs from Chernobyl. Photographs that scarred my very soul. Photographs that helped form in me an image of nuclear power. Or at least an image of nuclear power if it is not done correctly. And then people like these scientists, firemen, construction workers and soldiers have to risk their lives and their future health. I have seen documentaries and I have seen various information about Chernobyl on the internet.

It is very difficult for me to support nuclear power. I know we need new power sources but after Chernobyl and after I found out a lot about Chernobyl I simply could not support nuclear power. Especially since I know we have a lot of natural gas and at least two centuries worth of coal. Not that fossil fuels are a perfect answer or anything. But they can be a bridge to the future.

In my area there are some large coal burning electrical generating plants. When the first one was built there was an accident and some men (I can't remember exactly how many) were killed. But they quickly repaired the damage and went right on operating. And in recent years they have built additional plants. Sure these coal burning facilities put carbon into the atmosphere. But nothing seems to ever go too badly wrong.

I realize it may be hard for some young people here to realize what an effect Chernobyl had when it took place. Many guys here at bitgo may not even have been born when the nuclear disaster took place. I was around and I remember very much the fear throughout the entire world. Radiation literally went around the world and I may have been exposed to some tiny amount myself. And it could have been worse. Brave human beings died and became ill to prevent Chernobyl from becoming much worse.

Now I am an old man and I have many memories. But the young do not have those memories and cannot understand. Human beings don't live long enough for an individual to realize how the world environment gets worse with chemical and nuclear contamination, overpopulation, destruction of natural resources, and all the rest. And nobody wants to hear what an old man has to say.
 
I have many memories too. I was a senior in college, majoring in Astrophysics, when Chernobyl happened.

I then spent years aboard ships safely powered by nuclear reactors.

It can be done safely.

Or, stupid political decisions about technology can be made, often out of greed, often of scientific illiteracy, that lead to the unsafe use of nuclear power.
 
It is interesting to me that the US military seems to be able to do nuclear power well without a lot of issues. American nuclear powered warships, which have been mostly aircraft carriers and submarines, seem to have operated quite well with no major problems that I ever heard of.

We have lost two nuclear powered submarines. But the first one probably was due to poor quality construction of the submarine in general and had nothing to do with the nuclear power plant. The other one may have been an accident or even enemy action and again had nothing to do with the power plant.

If civilian nuclear power plants could be built like the military ones and with good site location I would be pretty happy. Of course the military reactors probably are smaller than a typical civilian reactor.

The Russians did have problems with the nuclear power plant on one of their submarines. They lost at least one other nuclear powered submarine but that accident had nothing to do with the power plant either.
 
Originally Posted By: Rick in PA
Some may not be old enough to remember, but is curious how the "free world" found out about Chernobyl. As I remember, reports came out from nuclear power plants in the Nordic countries (Norway, Finland?). The operators of these nuclear reactors were detecting elevated levels of radiation outside their own plants. Fearing a release from their own reactors, they searched for leaks and found none. Then they determined that the source of the elevated levels of radiation was wind-born contamination coming out of the USSR.
Correct, the Swedes detected the backround radiation increase, then WE used a space based image system and noted the change in cooling water outflow (and some smoke).
 
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Originally Posted By: Mystic
I wonder how much money is being lost with the indefinite loss of all of that land and an entire city. And there could be a structural collapse. And to think it all could have been prevented.
Yuppers, we need the all seeing government to operate such dangerous contrivances, so as to save us from ourselves, but wait... the Chernobyl crew WERE government employees.
 
Originally Posted By: sayjac
Quite frankly I didn't read the OP's entire post but read enough to know there's some [censored] propoganda being posted. Bottom line, the Russians used a cheap no containment design, no matter where the final blame is placed, it doesn't change the fact that a sizable portion of the Ukraine has been forever destroyed. Also, the cancer cases that have resulted and families affected is untold and also unknown. Being cavalier about "if this" or "if that" doesn't change the horrible results the people of the Ukraine have and will have to live with perhaps for eternity.

So I couldn't care less who or what gets the final blame, at Chernobyl the results speak much more loudly. Wondering if the "quite impressive" reactor design had also been located in Saratoga County NY if it would so easy to look at Chernobyl in such a detached cavalier manner.

Now with the foolish attempt to use Chernobyl to justify nuclear power out the way, it's true the nuclear power program in the US is entirely different. The US uses a different design which unlike Chernobyl uses containment buildings. And also unlike the Russians, safety is a priority.

The biggest issue as I see it now is storage of the spent radioactive nuclear fuel. Much of it is currently being on site at nuclear power plants around the country. Perhaps the OP could petition the powers that be in Saratoga County to open a permanent storage facility to help remedy the issue. Somehow I'm thinking that wouldn't pass muster, especially in that area.

U.S. storage sites overfilled with spent nuclear fuel
The post states very clearly that the USSR DID use a containment on the Chernobyl reactor, and it failed.
 
I think what has contributed the most to new nuclear plants not being built in U.S. now is the tremendous cost to build them... not opposing politicians, environmentalists, tree-huggers, regulators, etc. Duke Energy wants to build some new nuclear power plants in the South, including one north of its closed Crystal River, Florida nuclear plant. The last figure I saw to build the proposed plant in Levy county was an estimate of $24 billion...that's a lot of dough. Florida is still a growth state and needs adequate electric available to continue to take care of its growing population now and in the future. If expensive nuclear plants aren't built Florida utilities may elect to go coal or natural gas route for new plants instead of nuclear...less expensive to build, operate, and they can be built quicker. Time will tell, there's lots of money involved, and lots of players involved. Florida needs new electric plants, and it is even in the nation's security interest that new plants be built in Florida and other states.
 
Originally Posted By: Oldasco
I think what has contributed the most to new nuclear plants not being built in U.S. now is the tremendous cost to build them... not opposing politicians, environmentalists, tree-huggers, regulators, etc. Duke Energy wants to build some new nuclear power plants in the South, including one north of its closed Crystal River, Florida nuclear plant. The last figure I saw to build the proposed plant in Levy county was an estimate of $24 billion...that's a lot of dough. Florida is still a growth state and needs adequate electric available to continue to take care of its growing population now and in the future. If expensive nuclear plants aren't built Florida utilities may elect to go coal or natural gas route for new plants instead of nuclear...less expensive to build, operate, and they can be built quicker. Time will tell, there's lots of money involved, and lots of players involved. Florida needs new electric plants, and it is even in the nation's security interest that new plants be built in Florida and other states.
+1
 
Originally Posted By: Oldasco
I think what has contributed the most to new nuclear plants not being built in U.S. now is the tremendous cost to build them... not opposing politicians, environmentalists, tree-huggers, regulators, etc.


Actually those are the reasons why they are expensive to build. The fuels are cheap, the plants operation are not that much more expensive than fossil fuel, but the regulation and all the permitting to "protect" the locals are partly designed to prevent the plants from building in their backyard.

Originally Posted By: Mystic
It is interesting to me that the US military seems to be able to do nuclear power well without a lot of issues. American nuclear powered warships, which have been mostly aircraft carriers and submarines, seem to have operated quite well with no major problems that I ever heard of.


When you have enough cooling (ocean) around you it is much easier to avoid runaway reaction and melt down. The point is, even if you have a melting core sink down in the ocean floor, the water will boil off and take out so much heat that it will gradually cool down enough to stop, after the fuels are burnt out of critical.

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If civilian nuclear power plants could be built like the military ones and with good site location I would be pretty happy. Of course the military reactors probably are smaller than a typical civilian reactor.


Not trying to be combative here, but you clearly need to read more to know WHY the navy nuclear carriers and subs are fine. Geology degree wouldn't help you here.

Nuclear subs and carrier use fuels that are enriched to a lot higher percentage of U235 than civilian reactors for safety to their crews and the compact core they have. You will not be able to easily get these highly enriched fuel for civilian reactors due to cost and proliferation reason.

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The Russians did have problems with the nuclear power plant on one of their submarines. They lost at least one other nuclear powered submarine but that accident had nothing to do with the power plant either.


That tells you how important is cooling. Any non reactor related problem in a nuclear plant today that relies on active cooling and active shutdown (needing externally powered pump to pump cooling water) could have problems that a navy reactor doesn't. The worst case a navy reactor could do is sink down to the ocean floor and have the ocean cool it, and even if it leaks, the sea water would kill the reaction and permanently stop it pretty quickly (that's why the Japanese do not want to use sea water early on, it would have scrap the plants entirely).

Originally Posted By: Mystic
In my area there are some large coal burning electrical generating plants. When the first one was built there was an accident and some men (I can't remember exactly how many) were killed. But they quickly repaired the damage and went right on operating. And in recent years they have built additional plants. Sure these coal burning facilities put carbon into the atmosphere. But nothing seems to ever go too badly wrong.


The problem with coal is not carbon dioxide, it is the sulfuric acid, NOX, soot, etc into the atmosphere. These causes respiratory problems and if you want to see true examples on how it turns on in huge amount, look at China (Beijing in particular) and how their people wear masks whenever they go outside and almost 200 days a year their air fail the US safety standard. I have a friend who works as a kindergarten principal over there and they would not let their kids to go outside to play 200 days per year.

BTW, if you spread the contaminated stuff in Chernobyl across a large area, you will get much less radiation than the output from your coal power plant emission (coal ash and exhaust air). Look it up, I'm not lying. Coal power plant has a lot more radioactive emission (coal has a lot of radioactive material) except that they are diluted to a point of background noise.
 
Originally Posted By: Mystic
I wonder how much money is being lost with the indefinite loss of all of that land and an entire city. And there could be a structural collapse. And to think it all could have been prevented.


Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not indefinite loss of all the land and city, neither would Chernobyl or Ukraine.

You need to wait till the core to cool down and radiation reduced enough before you can send in machine and crew to clean up the rest of the site. Meanwhile you have to find another plot of land to relocate the people and economy. We human civilization did that all the time over the centuries and we are fine in the long run.

How is this different from volcanic eruption that wipe out an entire city? People die and relocate, the civilization moved on. We do not in the long run of hundreds of years see problem with the "lost" of Atlantis or other great cities, states, and civilization. There will be short term pain, yes, but we move on.

Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
Again: there is no waste problem! The only problem was President Peanuthead's ban on reprocessing spent fuel. This cuts waste by about 70%! The problems with nuclear power are easily 95% due to the NIMBY and BANANA crowd.


It will still have a lot of waste, and even if we have breeder / fast reactor that burn off all the actinides we will have a lot of waste problem.

However, it would not be a million year waste problem but rather decades of waste problem with today's technology. I'm sure if we have better future technology that throw in the centuries half life waste back into a reactor to burn them again, we could perpetually reduce them even further again.

The key is, we have waste problem with today's technology and cost structure, we will have a lot fewer of them tomorrow if we have the right technology.

Don't worry, regardless of what we think China and India are leading the ways for their own national energy policies interests, and they will find a solution before we do, and we will buy it from them like we buy oil from the Middle East and other 3rd world dictators today.
 
There is technology to reduce waste even further: a few guys from MIT came up with what they call the WAMSR. That is the Waste-Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor. It's also fail-safe: without coolant, the reaction simply STOPS. WAMSR

Thorium reactors are also fail-safe: the coolant is a catalyst.
 
Originally Posted By: Jarlaxle
There is technology to reduce waste even further: a few guys from MIT came up with what they call the WAMSR.


There will be, until it is in production scale it is not yet there. Everyone including China and India claims they have the technology but until the last piece of the puzzle put together and start running in a production scale, it is not there yet.
 
Originally Posted By: HerrStig
......The post states very clearly that the USSR DID use a containment on the Chernobyl reactor, and it failed.

Not sure to which post you are referring but not the link I posted about spent nuclear fuel storage.

The Russians had what they might have referred to as some sort of containment 'system', but it was by no stretch of the imagination a containment vessel or containment building. The links below confirm that. If after reading the links you still believe Chernobyl had a true containment building/vessel then you are welcome to that opinion, and I'll respectfully agree to disagree. The differences are clearly visible in the links, what the Russian's had at Chernobyl was faux containment. It was as said, a cheap design to save money.

http://library.thinkquest.org/3426/data/cause/design.flaw.html

Chernobyl had no containment structure

Six ways Fukushima is not Chernobyl
 
Actually I did know that the nuclear reactors used by the military use more enriched uranium. But I was not sure that was the only reason they were more compact than civilian reactors. I am not a nuclear engineer. And a nuclear submarine, or even a nuclear powered aircraft carrier, is smaller than a large city. Modern nuclear powered aircraft carriers are about 100,000 tons displacement but they would be like one large skyscraper laying on its side. I have a relative who used to be involved in building nuclear submarines. I almost joined the navy after I graduated from college and I was under consideration for the nuclear program because of the physics, mathematics and chemistry I took in college.

And after even some of the worse volcanic eruptions in history, people were able to move back to where the volcanic eruption took place in a relatively short period of time. The volcanic material actually enriches the soil. It is a natural event. But a lot of people can die in such an event.

There is a lot of difference between a coal burning power plant in China and one in the USA. I live near a few big coal burning power plants and we do not have the terrible smog like you see in a Chinese city. American coal burning power plants are cleaner. I am not saying that a coal burning plant in the USA is perfect. But it is a heck of a lot cleaner than one in China. Where I live they built the first big coal burning power plant decades ago and recently they greatly expanded that facility. No terrible smog like China.

I think the radioactive material from a coal burning power plant tends to be more short term than some of the stuff you can get from a nuclear reactor meltdown. At least compared to Plutonium 239, which is a daughter product produced by neutron bombardment of enriched Uranium. After reactor fuel has been in operation for a while there will be Plutonium 239.

To recover the fuel from Chernobyl they are talking about building a huge concrete and steel structure that would cost billions of dollars in American money. It would be an immense effort.

Instead of getting into any silly arguments with anybody all I would like to see is a sane solution to the nuclear waste issue and quality design, construction, and operation and site location of nuclear reactors. Surely we can expect better than what has occurred so far. In the very least use double walled storage tanks and don't put a nuclear reactor at sea level in a location where there is bound to be future powerful earthquakes and a giant tsunami someday. Can we reach some sort of agreement that these sort of things are a minimum requirement of common sense?
 
Originally Posted By: GMFan
They built a nuclear power plant far out in Long Island, NY and they never commissioned it. Think about how much $$ that wasted...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoreham_Nuclear_Power_Plant

This is the closest nuke plant to where I live. I got to take a tour of the steam turbines in this plant as part of my senior design project in college. Neat to be inside a nuclear facility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Point_Energy_Center


That's ridiculous. What a waste of money and a perfectly good power plant! Good god sometimes....
 
The Fukushima disaster was caused by generators housed in basements of buildings which were flooded. These generators are essential for keeping pumps running to keep shut-down reactors from overheating.

In the engineering community there is huge talk about preventative measures against this sort of problem. In New York City's Manhattan borough, almost all electrical rooms and generators of most skyscrapers/buildings are housed in the basement. When these buildings were designed the engineers who decided to put this equipment in the basement referenced flood tables from over 300 years of data and determined that there was no recordable flooding in these locations (many blocks inland from the river of Manhattan).

Hurricane Sandy flooded out many of the electrical rooms of these buildings and also flooded the generator rooms. There is a huge push in the engineering community to discuss with the NEC acceptable methods to protect equipment from flooding. The NEC mandates personnel be able to exit electrical rooms through various methods such as push-bar doors and mandate number of exit doors etc. Some engineers are thinking outside of the box and considering options such as encasing electrical rooms and generators in solid concrete and installing submarine-like seal-able doors to be sealed in the event of flooding. Many hospitals in NYC were flooded and had no electric power for weeks. Sometimes it takes disasters to make things more "bulletproof."
 
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