[HN Gopher] Nuclear lighthouses built by the Soviets in the Arct...
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Nuclear lighthouses built by the Soviets in the Arctic [video]
Author : etimberg
Score : 166 points
Date : 2021-01-07 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| discordance wrote:
| In the village of Lia, Georgia, on December 2, 2001, Three
| lumberjacks discovered two 90Sr cores from Soviet radioisotope
| thermoelectric generators. These were of the Beta-M type, built
| in the 80s, with an activity of 1295 TBq each. The lumberjacks
| were scavenging the forest for firewood, when they came across
| two metal cylinders melting snow within a one meter radius laying
| in the road. They picked up these objects to use as personal
| heaters, sleeping with their backs to them. All lumberjacks
| sought medical attention individually, and were treated for
| radiation injuries. One patient, DN-1, was seriously injured and
| required multiple skin grafts. After 893 days in the hospital, he
| was declared dead after a fever caused by complications and
| infections of a radiation ulcer on the subject's back. The
| disposal team consisted of 25 men who were restricted to a
| maximum of 2 minutes worth of exposure (max. 20mSv) each while
| transferring the canisters to lead-lined drums.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_radiation_acc...
| hinkley wrote:
| > The disposal team consisted of 25 men who were restricted to
| a maximum of 2 minutes worth of exposure
|
| I'm trying to figure out how that works. One team moves the
| crane and the geiger counters near the device, the next team
| brings in the lead boxes, the next team attaches the device to
| the crane, the next team puts it in the box and closes the box,
| the next team checks that the box is working, and then someone
| else puts the boxes on a truck?
| azernik wrote:
| Probably something like that. By comparison, for certain
| areas on the Chernobyl reactor roof where the time limit was
| 30 seconds, each person would be given a shovel, go out on
| the roof, throw a piece of graphite off the roof, then go
| back inside and hand the shovel off to the next person.
| sigrlami wrote:
| With proper maintenance it is best possible source of energy in
| that regions. It's shame "green deal" gained too much hype,
| proper/safe nuclear energy most sustainable way with good ROI.
| pstuart wrote:
| Comments below show that while theoretically true, the real
| world maintenance failures do not help to promote more of this.
|
| Disclaimer: I'm pro-renewables and pro-nuclear if it can be
| done "right".
| ssully wrote:
| While I agree it's a shame nuclear energy has such a stigma, I
| think its stigma developed and solidified long before "green
| deal" was a thing.
| koolk3ychain wrote:
| I assume they're not worried about the fissile material being
| used in a dirty bomb?
| Daniel_sk wrote:
| The real damage of these dirty weapons is very limited, it's
| mostly physchological/fear. This stuff itself is not easy to
| spread with an explosion and it's not a deadly exposure either.
| You can't make a real nuclear reaction from this.
| anonu wrote:
| Great video. I am glad that we are still making serious strides
| in nuclear energy research. Nuclear is the way to reduce carbon
| emissions in a substantially significant to turn back adverse
| climate change.
| forgotmysn wrote:
| i agree that nuclear can help reduce carbon emissions, but that
| doesn't mean that nuclear waste is less harmful to the planet
| than carbon emissions are. nuclear isn't any more sustainable
| than coal or fossil fuels.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Your life expectancy is reduced right now because the air you
| breath is polluted by all kind of carbon related emissions.
| Nuclear waste is easy to manage in comparison
|
| Carbon's best case scenarios is worst than nuclear's worst
| case scenario.
| anonu wrote:
| > All of the used fuel ever produced by the commercial
| nuclear industry since the late 1950s would cover a football
| field to a depth of less than 10 yards
|
| Source: https://www.nei.org/fundamentals/nuclear-waste
| biolurker1 wrote:
| There is the off chance we will discover a way to deactivate
| them before they pollute
| dmos62 wrote:
| And it's even more likely that we'll end up reusing them,
| increasing economic efficiency of nuclear fuel.
| OnACoffeeBreak wrote:
| Could you explain how properly sequestered nuclear waste is
| not less harmful to the planet as carbon in the atmosphere?
|
| I'm my current view, nuclear waste can be sequestered and
| stored effecting only a tiny fraction of the planet while
| greenhouse gases effect the whole planet.
| forgotmysn wrote:
| i just feel like sticking nuclear waste in the ground and
| pretending that it's not a problem or won't impact the
| health of the planet is not a solution
| godelski wrote:
| Can you explain why sticking it in the ground is not an
| acceptable solution? To be clear, sticking it in the
| ground that is neither seismically active nor near water
| sources. The areas people want to stick them in the
| ground are thousands of miles from civilizations and meet
| the other criteria. It isn't like the rest of the waste
| that we just stick in the ground (like coal, plastics,
| etc that DO enter our water supply).
| purerandomness wrote:
| "properly sequestered" is the key word. There is no such
| thing.
|
| Here in Germany, we still have not found where to put
| nuclear waste long-term, and there is no solution in sight.
|
| Even if one day we find one, how do we communicate the
| potential dangers of nuclear waste to a civilization that
| is supposed to understand what we're communicating in
| 30000, 50000 years? With a fancy unicode symbol, like
| U+2622?
|
| We have no idea what people 3000 years ago were trying to
| tell us with their fancy symbols.
|
| Nuclear energy is the analogy of tech debt that can never
| be paid back, ever.
| boogies wrote:
| It's arguably misleading to even call it "waste" -- it's
| recyclable. Even if you don't recycle it, the little ceramic
| pellets weigh two hundred fifty-three thousand, one hundred
| and sixty-four (.55696202531645569620 +-) times less per
| person than gas and coal (and the difference in volume is
| presumably many times larger):
|
| https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html#howmuch
|
| > If all the electricity use of the USA was distributed
| evenly among its population, and all of it came from nuclear
| power, then the amount of nuclear waste each person would
| generate per year would be 39.5 grams. That's the weight of
| seven U. S. quarters of waste, per year! A detailed
| description of this result can be found here
| [https://whatisnuclear.com/assets/waste_per_person.pdf]. If
| we got all our electricity from coal and natural gas, expect
| to have over 10,000 kilograms of CO2/yr attributed to each
| person, not to mention other poisonous emissions directly to
| the biosphere (based on EIA emissions data [https://www.eia.g
| ov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/ghg_car...]).
|
| > If you want raw numbers: in 2018, there were just over
| 80,000 metric tonnes of high-level waste in the USA. Between
| 1971 and 2018, nuclear reactors in the USA generated 3000 GW-
| years of electricity to make this waste.
|
| > For comparison, in 2007 alone the US burned 948,000,000
| metric tonnes of coal. This means that coal plants made 32
| times more waste every single day than the US nuclear fleet
| has made in the past 45 years! Granted, coal made a higher
| fraction of the country's electricity, but the numbers are
| still crazy impressive for nuclear.
|
| > The astoundingly low amount of nuclear waste is thanks to
| the near magical energy density of the atom.
|
| More: https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html
|
| Edit: replaced "containable" in second sentence with numbers
| donarb wrote:
| Coal plants also create nuclear waste. Trace amounts of
| uranium and thorium in coal become concentrated after the
| coal is burned away, leaving high concentrations of nuclear
| waste.
| IngoBlechschmid wrote:
| I too am happy about advances in nuclear energy research, and
| would like to make a remark regarding its suitability for
| fighting the climate crisis.
|
| In 2019, just 4 % of the global primary energy came from
| nuclear power (the figure is about 10 % if we restrict to
| electricity). Hence replacing fossil sources by nuclear would
| entail large-scale construction of new nuclear reactors. By the
| time we're done building these, we will already have exceeded
| our CO2 budget for keeping below 1.5 degC at a reasonable
| certainty.
|
| Also, at the current rate, the Uranium reserves last for
| approximately 140 years; if all fossil sources were switched
| for nuclear, it would last for 10 years. This problem can in
| principle be alleviated by innovative reactor types, but
| realistically they won't be available for large-scale
| production in the next couple years.
|
| Luckily, we do have all the technology for phasing out fossil
| energy while staying within our CO2 budget: water, wind, solar,
| storage of synthetic gas, gas-fueled power plants (fueled by
| synthetic gas obtained using renewable energy). Energy
| production with these alternatives is cheaper than with
| nuclear; this fact is an additional issue for expanding nuclear
| power -- it's not economically viable.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| The Soviets sure liked nuclear energy. The only remaining nuclear
| icebreaker/merchant ship (the Sevmorput) is still in operation.
| However it's a bit tricky to actually ship anything with it as
| most countries don't allow it to enter their ports, let alone
| their water. They mostly use it to ship stuff to Antarctica.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Russia still operates multiple nuclear icebreakers. Some of
| them are brand new.
|
| As far as I know two Arktika-class ships are still in
| operation. Both Taymyr-class icebreakers still operate
|
| Then there are five new project 22220 vessels under
| construction or under order. Each of them has two reactors that
| produce. 175 MW total.
|
| Russia is planning to start building Project 10510 nuclear-
| powered icebreakers within 10 years.
| gambiting wrote:
| Not to mention the floating nuclear power plant "Akademik
| Lomonosov" just got commissioned as well.
| Alupis wrote:
| > However it's a bit tricky to actually ship anything with it
| as most countries don't allow it to enter their ports, let
| alone their water
|
| I'm curious, why is that? The US, and other nations, routinely
| sail nuclear powered ships into ports all around the world.
| Fezzik wrote:
| My hunch is that most Western countries would be hesitant to
| allow anything that is nuclear + Russian on their shores.
| This article does not answer your question, but it sounds
| like as of 12/2020 the boat may be headed to the scrapyard
| due to needing costly repairs.
|
| https://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htseamo/articles/20201225..
| ..
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Yes I thought many aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| All US ones are yes. Most of their subs too I believe.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| All current US subs.
|
| The last diesel class was the 3x 1950s Barbels,
| decommissioned by 1990:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbel-class_submarine
| tjoff wrote:
| They do?
|
| Doesn't seem to exist many civil nuclear powered ships at
| all. And barely any non-US/Russian ships, at least still in
| service. From my quick searches at least.
|
| Large nuclear military ships likely have some port
| restrictions anyway.
| manfredo wrote:
| Nuclear powered warships. As far as I know there was only one
| nuclear freighter, and it was more of a PR stunt.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| And they sent a whole load of liquid metal reactors into orbit
| too. One crashed on Canada and the others are in disposal
| orbits and will come down in a very long time... All for a few
| months worth of radar.
| dheera wrote:
| By "nuclear", my understanding is that these used thermoelectric
| radioactive batteries, not nuclear fission reactors. Big
| difference. Much lower maintainence.
|
| (Basically you get a hunk of radioactive material that heats up
| from its own radiation and harvest that heat for electricity.)
| tiku wrote:
| So why can't we have this tech with radioactive waste in our
| home or cars? With a proper lead shield would it be dangerous
| or not?
| soared wrote:
| I was going to reply saying I don't want tiny pieces of
| radioactive material all over my house/globe, but then
| realized I have a tiny explosive (battery) in my hand and
| littered all of my house.
| dheera wrote:
| People freak out when they hear "nuclear" and "radiactive",
| but there are 3 types of radioactivity.
|
| Alpha and low energy beta emitters such as those used in
| nuclear batteries are not dangerous at all if shielded
| properly. In fact they are MUCH easier to shield than
| shielding a Lithium battery from the possibility of fire.
|
| It's gamma emitters that are much harder to shield
| properly.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's more complex than that in case of a failure, because
| ingesting an alpha or beta emitter - directly, or through
| the food chain - is going to be dangerous to health.
| Can't exactly line your intestines with lead.
|
| And while giving RTGs to general population isn't the
| brightest idea, it's stupid to consider these issues as a
| wholesale dealbreaker for nuclear technologies.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Alpha and low energy beta emitters such as those used
| in nuclear batteries are not dangerous at all if shielded
| properly.
|
| Read: if there is no feasible route for them to be
| aspirated, ingested, or get into your eyes.
|
| Making a new device that has this property seems to be a
| pretty straightforward problem that we know how to do.
| The problem comes when an old device has been damaged or
| destroyed kinetically or via pyrotechnics.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yeah but when your phone battery blows you just have fire.
| You don't have to abandon your house because it's
| contaminated :)
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| It does not generate a lot of power.
| dheera wrote:
| Good question. Pity people on HN are downvoting such well-
| intentioned curiosity. I think people are working on that ...
|
| https://www.energylivenews.com/2020/09/02/us-startup-
| unveils...
|
| I'm not an expert on that tech though.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Having lots of them around, means still lots of radioactive
| accidents, because of normal accidents.
|
| And to actually power your car, I believe they have too
| little power output, so they would only make for a expensive
| and dangerous car batterie, but one you do not have to
| charge.
|
| (also, terrorists, dirty bombs, ...)
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Yes and their output is static. What do you do with all
| that heat when you're not driving?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Right now, I would say, I would not have to worry about
| getting into a cold and icy car. But in the summer ...
| dheera wrote:
| Use the nuclear battery to charge a secondary lithium
| battery, and that is the battery that the car actually
| uses to drive.
|
| Considering cars are typically used for <10% of the day,
| the battery's static output wattage only needs to be
| about 1/10 of a car's operational wattage.
|
| Basically when you get home and park your car, it just
| starts charging on its own from its nuclear battery.
| Optimize the nuclear battery size to minimize excess. If
| that battery gets full, release the excess as heat to the
| ground or sky, and also use some of it to maintain the
| lithium battery at optimal temperature. It will be only
| 1/10 of the driving wattage, so it will be much easier to
| do something with it.
|
| Or plug in the car when you get home and it can power a
| good fraction of your home.
| missosoup wrote:
| RTGs don't provide enough energy to power a car. You're
| looking at 1kW electrical maximum. The one on mars lander
| Cruiosity provides about 100W electrical power nominal.
|
| But the main reason is that people are stupid and some would
| inevitably pull theirs apart and contaminate their
| surroundings with pretty nasty radioactive material. There's
| no engineering or practical reason why we wouldn't have RTGs
| for a heap of civilian applications, the reason is that
| people suck.
|
| NASA is currently working on a 'micro' scale fully self
| contained fission reactor for the next mission to meet the
| higher power demand of the craft.
| ju-st wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| dheera wrote:
| That's only about a factor of 10 from being useful. If you
| have a 10kW battery, or 10 1kW batteries, you can use that
| to charge a Lithium battery for a day which will get you
| 100 kW for 2.4 hours per day, which sounds pretty damn
| useful for typical urban commuter use.
| staplung wrote:
| The danger depends somewhat on the type of radioactive
| material used and how much of its radiation is alpha, beta or
| gamma, it's toxicity (independent of its radioactivity,
| plutonium is one of the most toxic substances in existence),
| half-life etc. But really, the main problem with
| proliferation of RTGs is dirty bombs. If you used them in
| cars or homes you can imagine the kinds of issues you might
| have with a serious collision or wildfires.
|
| In any case, people actually once proposed cars like that!
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| It's still fission. Just natural decay without management to
| speed it up or slow it down. In reactors the fuel rods
| naturally decay slowly and can be sped up with neutrons. So
| they can be turned 'off' and adapt to changing electricity
| needs. But RTGS are very static. Principle is still the same
| though. Both decay, cause heat which is made into electricity.
| dhuk_2018 wrote:
| RTGs are also used on a lot of US and Russian deep space
| missions...
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| The Saturn mission Cassini had 72 pounds of plutonium on it.
| The Pluto mission New Horizons has 24 pounds of plutonium to
| power itself.
| hairytrog wrote:
| The most convenient decay source is Plutonium-238 because it
| does not produce any gammas during the decay which would
| require lots and lots of shielding to protect people. It has
| long half life of 87 years so a reduction in power of roughly
| 1% per year. However, it's weapons material - not okay for
| wide use. This cannot be overstated. Making nuclear weapons
| today is very easy when you have the requisite materials (Ted
| Taylor of Los Alamos used to say it would take 3 guys a few
| months starting from scratch). With today's off the shelf
| timing systems, explosives, and manufacturing, it could be
| even faster.
|
| Next up is Strontium, but that is quite dangerous due to
| human uptake in the bones. And there's polonium - very
| poisonous and too short a half life to be used.
|
| I have heard from a friend in the business of a new concept
| that generates desirable isotopes specifically for decay heat
| sources in a reactor in an encapsulated form which gets rid
| of any weapons material or processing of radioactive
| material.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge.
| ..
| Jun8 wrote:
| Fascinating! Wikipedia entry of the technology used:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
|
| The location is beautiful
| (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Aniva,+Russia,+694005/@46....)
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| There is a strange looking structure in the water just north-
| east of the light.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@46.0472783,143.4338028,652m/dat...
|
| Fish trap?
| _visgean wrote:
| maybe squid hunting? judging by the lights...
| dmos62 wrote:
| Started browsing photo spheres. Here's an awe inspiring one
| relatively close by:
| https://www.google.com/maps/@54.30123,138.6972783,3a,90y,345...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| > Most have no protection, not even fences or warning signs,
| and the locations of some of these facilities are no longer
| known due to poor record keeping. In one instance, the
| radioactive compartments were opened by a thief. There are
| approximately 1,000 such RTGs in Russia, all of which have long
| since exceeded their designed operational lives of ten years.
| Most of these RTGs likely no longer function, and may need to
| be dismantled. Some of their metal casings have been stripped
| by metal hunters, despite the risk of radioactive
| contamination.
|
| Yikes.
| etimberg wrote:
| Lots of these have been abandoned in the wild. One caused an
| incident in Lia, Georgia in 2001. https://www-
| pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
| gambiting wrote:
| I was going to post this exact link but you beat me to it
| by 14 minutes :-D
|
| All I say is - if you're not good with gore, skip the
| section about the decay process of the affected people,
| it's not pretty.
| Medox wrote:
| At least the lighthouse generators were decommissioned and
| "all RTGs are now gone" (mentioned at the end of the video).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| "Gone" as in cleaned up or as in "they disappeared and we
| have no idea where they are"? Sounds like a mix of both.
| Medox wrote:
| Gone as in taken to/from a boat with a helicopter, as
| seen at the end of the video. What happened afterwards,
| Rosatom knows.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| The worlds first nuclear-powered lighthouse in south of
| Baltimore. Nuke-battery removed many years ago. Some friends
| purchased it and made it into a retreat/bed&breakfast.
| https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=423
| hinkley wrote:
| Why would you turn an RTG device into a bed and break...
|
| Oh.
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| These are the same types of batteries used on space probes.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| This is kinda what I envisioned when people talked about
| backyard small solar reactors. I wish someone was building a
| commercial venture out of it.
| [deleted]
| hairytrog wrote:
| The materials listed on the Wikipedia page and used by the
| Russians are not practical for large scale use. It's simply too
| dangerous to have that much weapons grade material or bone
| seeking material out in the wild. Some isotopes are better than
| others, and I expect there will be strides using specifically
| generated isotopes that are not weapons grade, are not bone-
| seekers, and have much short half lives (decade not 80+ years),
| and have beta decay.
| kbar13 wrote:
| can you clarify what you mean by bone seeking? i have a very
| rudimentary understanding of radioactive materials
| GartzenDeHaes wrote:
| He probably means beta emitters, which concentrate in the
| thyroid and bone marrow.
| [deleted]
| arianvanp wrote:
| Strontium has similar properties as calcium and thus ends
| up in your bones when ingested where it will cause
| prolonged damage. Hence bone seeking
| cozzyd wrote:
| Honestly it's difficult to find another energy source for small
| remote deployments in Polar regions, where solar + battery can't
| be used for much of the year. Propane TEG's and methanol fuel
| cells are probably the best suited thing, but they have
| consumables that create logistical problems. Wind can work in
| some places, but a lot of places in Antarctica and Greenland are
| not very windy, and ice loading etc. present problems.
| Retric wrote:
| RTG's are extremely expensive, the USSR made expensive use of
| them for politics not economics.
|
| Remote applications would have lower costs but those should
| give you some idea of the reasons.
| https://inldigitallibrary.inl.gov/sites/sti/sti/7267852.pdf
| cozzyd wrote:
| The space ones are expensive partially because weight is an
| important consideration. For a terrestrial RTG, you can use
| Strontium or something else that's much cheaper (but much
| less weight-efficient).
|
| See e.g.
| https://inis.iaea.org/search/search.aspx?orig_q=RN:9398623
| generalizations wrote:
| I wonder if there's any version of that which is legal (and
| feasible?) for a civilian to build and use.
| notJim wrote:
| I found some speculation that you might be able to build
| one out of thorium from smoke detectors and lanterns, as
| in the David Hahn case, but not much. No way this would
| be legal though.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Well, for the application I was looking into this for
| (remote deployments in Greenland and Antarctica) it would
| be almost certainly politically impossible, so did not
| pursue, but I doubt it's possible to purchase Sr-90 in
| non-negligible quantities as a civilian (you can purchase
| it as a calibration source easily enough, I think, but at
| great expense).
| Retric wrote:
| That's still showing a break even around ~30$/gallon fuel
| costs in 2020 dollars for pure heating applications. It's
| hard to reach those kinds of delivery costs. It's even
| worse when you want to use RTG's for electricity as you add
| complexity and lower efficiency.
| cozzyd wrote:
| yes, but if you want to leave a device buried in the
| middle of nowhere on the ice sheet for 10 years that
| draws ~30W, an RTG is much simpler (only have to
| transport it once, no moving parts, no need for exhaust,
| etc.).
|
| Delivery and deployment costs to the middle of the ice
| sheet are not cheap.
| godelski wrote:
| They are used in space because it is much more difficult to
| use solar beyond Mars. Modern solar has helped in Jovian
| missions but RTGs are still preferred (even Curiosity uses
| a RTG for low solar radiance reasons). And beyond Jupiter
| good luck having a powered device with anything except for
| a RTG.
| cozzyd wrote:
| yes of course, what I mean is why the space RTGs are so
| much more expensive than terrestrial RTGs, where weight
| is not a consideration. For space, it makes sense to use
| the exotic plutonium isotope if it saves on weight.
| [deleted]
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