[HN Gopher] After 600 hours 64 workers at Ukraine's Chernobyl nu...
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After 600 hours 64 workers at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear plant
finally relieved
Author : MilnerRoute
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-03-20 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tech.slashdot.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (tech.slashdot.org)
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| Note that, despite the headlines, the final units at the
| Chernobyl nuclear plant stopped generating power in 2000. These
| aren't like the Zaporizhzhia units which are still providing
| power to the area. Once a nuclear chain reaction stops, the
| afterglow heat reduces exponentially. By now it is exceedingly
| low, and can be fully cooled passively.
|
| Best info on this whole situation comes from the UN's "nuclear
| watchdog" (the IAEA), who now has 27 individual updates from this
| overall event.
|
| https://www.iaea.org/nuclear-safety-and-security-in-ukraine
|
| Not to say people shouldn't be allowed to rotate shifts, of
| course. But don't let the word Chernobyl freak you out too much
| is all.
| ttul wrote:
| I can think of no good strategic reason to take over Chernobyl. I
| think Putin did it just to create terror. Knowing that the actual
| risk of a catastrophe is small, it's a low risk way to make
| everyone else terrified of what Russia might do. Low cost, high
| yield - if you are a despot.
| adventured wrote:
| > I can think of no good strategic reason to take over
| Chernobyl.
|
| If you're going to try to annex Ukraine, you're going to take
| Chernobyl. Of course there are very good strategic reasons
| (including the location issue, as mentioned by another comment)
| to take over all nuclear facilities and electricity production
| in the nation you're trying to annex.
|
| What kind of annexation is it if you don't take the electricity
| production facilities and all the nuclear plants? If you do,
| what, leave all the nuclear power plants under the control of
| the Ukrainian Government and its proxies? It would be wildly
| irrational in terms of strategy.
|
| One of the first things you'd want to accomplish, if you can,
| is to seize utilities and be able to control their function
| (for all manner of reasons), as well as controlling anything
| nuclear related.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Chernobyl is along one of the very few roads into Kyiv from the
| north west of the Dnieper. If you're trying to surround Kyiv,
| you'd be very hardpressed to avoid going by Chernobyl.
| politician wrote:
| It's a great prize. They can blackmail the West for funds to
| maintain it forever now, then use the funds for other things
| like yachts.
| shrubble wrote:
| The Russians have access to the main rail line that goes into
| Kyiv from Chernobyl.
|
| And, they can't be attacked in that area with anything other
| than small-arms fire - anything explosive will be too great a
| risk to send radioactive dust into the air.
| trhway wrote:
| >I can think of no good strategic reason to take over
| Chernobyl.
|
| that speaks good of you :) For Russia that allowed for one of
| the pillars of the current Russian propaganda - (the link below
| in Russian) "It has been discovered that Ukraine was making
| nuclear weapons in Chernobyl"
|
| https://news.ru/world/ukraina-rabotala-v-chernobyle-nad-sozd...
|
| "Existing high radiations levels allowed to hide that work"
|
| Granted that stupidity doesn't work outside of Russia.
| Unfortunately inside Russia it is a hit (together with "Ukraine
| making biological and chemical weapons to attack Russia")
| kingkawn wrote:
| Most of the arguments in favor of the renewed development of
| nuclear power rely on faith in engineering culture to prevent
| catastrophic failures and avoid large-scale loss of habitability
| of areas around these plants. This faith does not account for
| conflict and significant social disruption. We are fortunate that
| so far the nuclear assets in Ukraine have not been critically
| disrupted. I hope this is not where and when we learn this
| lesson.
| AngryData wrote:
| It isn't like you have to blow up the reactor itself to disable
| a foreign nuclear plant. I see no reason why anybody would ever
| target a reactor core. There is a HUGE amount of electrical
| substation infrastructure outside of these plants which would
| take like 1/1000 the effort to damage or blow up as the reactor
| core itself and would shut the whole thing down. The only
| reason you would target a reactor core itself is to spread
| nuclear debri on purpose, which is still probably more effort
| than it would take to just make a dirty bomb and far less
| effective than a dirty bomb. Also you destroy all value in
| taking that territory, piss off every other country in the
| world likely prompting them to join the war against you, and
| likely spread the poison back into your own territory.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| With the fossil and biofuel status quo powering more than 80%
| of the world causing climate change and air pollution on the
| scale of 8 million deaths per year [1], I don't find this
| argument particularly compelling. Sure there are hazards with
| nuclear, but even in wild hypothesized scenarios the damage
| from not doing nuclear is worse. For perspective, fossil +
| biofuel kill a full Chernobyl's worth of people (short term
| plus long term deaths) every 7 hours, and counting.
|
| And as for loss of habitability, the dose rates around
| Chernobyl are elevated but not incompatible with life. Around
| Fukushima, I'd join Elon Musk in eating any locally grown food.
| Better to avoid airplanes if you're concerned about those
| levels of radiation, below the threshold known to cause the
| smallest measurable increase in cancer (100 mSv acute, 300 mSv
| annual). Good read here: [2]
|
| [1] https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1
|
| [2] https://thoughtscapism.com/2019/05/08/what-about-
| radioactive...
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| I'm not as worried about global warming as I used to be after
| taking a look at world demographics and learning a bunch of
| stuff about global supply chains and agricultural practices
| as a result of this conflict breaking out.
|
| World population is likely to steeply decline, and
| globalization plus high living standards will most probably
| go away. We just won't consume as much energy or make and
| trade as much stuff in the future.
| [deleted]
| jdkee wrote:
| Western democracies, Japan and South Korea are politically
| stable so power plant disruptions due to armed conflict on
| their territories are likely a relatively low risk.
| simulate-me wrote:
| danhor wrote:
| If prosperous (as that's usually a match for a low chance of
| armed conflicht) nations mostly expand to non-fossil energy
| sources that aren't available/viable for developing/poorer
| nations, this is an issue since their power system won't
| profit from a large amount of research & investments on how
| to run a non-fossil fuel based system.
|
| With the energy usage of non-western countries exploding
| quickly this could be a major hinderance to stopping climate
| change if all prosperous nations go all-in on nuclear and
| discourage other countries from doing so because of the risk.
|
| A non realistic scenario tbh, it's very unlikely that e.g.
| germany will construct new nuclear power plants and a lot of
| not-very-stable countries already use nuclear power as we're
| seeing right now.
| throwaway6532 wrote:
| What about Russia? What if famine strikes and the nuclear
| engineers at a given power plant starve to death?
| pasquinelli wrote:
| politically stable for now. how long is the average period of
| political stability?
| adventured wrote:
| The problem is that many of those workers won't be willing to
| return. Chernobyl is facing a disaster unless Russia drafts its
| own people in to operate it.
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(page generated 2022-03-20 23:00 UTC)