[HN Gopher] Plutonium Mountain: The 17-year mission to guard rem...
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Plutonium Mountain: The 17-year mission to guard remains of Soviet
nuclear tests
Author : jmillikin
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-06-03 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.belfercenter.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.belfercenter.org)
| Arainach wrote:
| The link to download the article seems broken.
| brettermeier wrote:
| I think it should be this PDF:
| https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NunnLugar/2015/64.%202013.08.00%2...
| wffurr wrote:
| It wasn't immediately obvious, but the article is on the site
| as html if you scroll past "the latest from Belfer". The
| article body is weirdly far from the title.
|
| Ah the article is also not the paper. It's a long summary.
| raddan wrote:
| Actually it's just the paper's introduction.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| The russians left a scary amount of radioactive material in
| random places after the union fell :/ I'm reminded of the Lia
| Radiological Incident (three men irradiated by the remains of
| soviet RTGs) and the 1997 Tbilisi, Georgia incident where 11
| servicemen were irradiated by a radioactive source in a jacket,
| left over from soviet training
| perihelions wrote:
| Don't forget the space nukes [reactors]! Some of them exploded,
| and stringed the planet with Saturn-like rings of nuclear
| dust[0]; others are slowly oscillating towards Earth like the
| blade from the Poe story, to impact sometime a few centuries
| from now.
|
| [0]
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20190033494/downloads/20...
| ( _" The NaK Population: a 2019 Status"_ (.pdf))
| lupusreal wrote:
| To be clear, nuclear reactors, not nuclear bombs. It's
| droplets of the liquid metal they used as coolant in their
| nuclear powered ocean radar recon satellites.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's both nuclear fuel and droplets, although the clouds of
| metal droplets are much easier to track by radar. Several
| of the space reactors did explode (were observed to break
| up and fragment).
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Similar accident in 1980 when a lost Caesium-137 capsule in a
| quarry became mixed into a concrete wall of a bedroom in an
| apartment block in Kramatorsk, killing several people and
| making others ill, for 8 years before it was found:
|
| https://www.curiousarchive.com/death-in-apartment-85-the-kra...
| voidUpdate wrote:
| If you ever want to have a worrying afternoon, have a read of
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_orphan_source_incident.
| ..
| ikekkdcjkfke wrote:
| I now want a bluetooth geiger counter hooked up to my
| smartwatch with sound effects
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Here you go: https://www.radiacode.com/
| boringg wrote:
| Thats a much smaller list than I would have expected
| considering it covers the entire planet.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, this one is super scary...
| e2le wrote:
| Not entirely related. Some scam health products are made with
| radioactive material[0,1] (thorium dioxide) and can be found
| in wands, baby clothing, pendents, cards, wristbands, face
| cream, toothbrushes, and more.
|
| Even more concerning given that these products will shed that
| radioactive material into the environment and be ingested by
| humans. The "quantum wands" as shown in the YouTube video are
| filled with a sizeable quantity of thorium dioxide powder and
| is possible to forcibly open.
|
| They are illegal but continue to be sold.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7TwBUxxIC0
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BA5bw1EV5I
| lupusreal wrote:
| Somewhere in China is a businessman incredibly pleased with
| himself that he found a way to sell the toxic waste left
| over from rare earth processing to new age hippies.
| mseepgood wrote:
| Or the 2006 London incident, where a Putin critic was
| irradiated by a radioactive source in his stomach.
| Havoc wrote:
| Who would be crazy enough to go into soviet tunnels full of
| questionable radioactive stuff? I'm sure there is fun glowy stuff
| down there but surely that is a rough risk ratio for even
| desperate people
| kibwen wrote:
| See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident . It's
| not implausible.
| oersted wrote:
| Weird how we ended up making real-life objects that "curse"
| everything and everyone they touch with "invisible evil death
| magic". It's right out of a fairy tale.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Germs are already a bit like that. A lot of these
| superstitions were not bad for infection control, even if
| the underlying mechanism was not understood (much like the
| Standard Model, incidentally).
| pyrale wrote:
| Lead and abestos have been in use since antiquity.
| wildzzz wrote:
| Unless you work with lead or eat off of leads plates all
| day, the risk of exposure is low. Even lead pipes are not
| as scary once they have been mineralized. Same with
| asbestos, it's the workers that handle it that are at the
| most risk. An asbestos tile or insulation just sitting
| there is not a huge risk.
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| I think as well as the obvious connection to nuclear
| warfare, part of the public fear of nuclear technology
| comes directly from how highly radioactive objects mimic
| the idea of a "curse".
|
| In reality there's many forms of industrial pollution that
| are arguably scarier than nuclear waste, but none are quite
| so eerie in how their harm is caused. Even though it
| represented the very worst practices for these materials,
| the idea of a place like Lake Karachay where even half an
| hour on its shore would have killed you without you even
| knowing you were doomed is really unsettling. I don't think
| nuclear technology should be avoided, but there's
| definitely a formidable image problem here I think.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Chemical pollution is a lot scarier in a way, since it's
| much harder to detect. Even absolutely tiny amounts of
| radioactive contamination its existence to cheap widely
| available detectors. But I think chemical pollution is
| easier to ignore since it's harder to detect.
| wat10000 wrote:
| A lot of chemical pollution lasts literally forever, too.
| It's kind of funny the way the mind works. "This will
| remain dangerous for ten thousand years" somehow sounds
| scarier than "this is always dangerous."
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Lake Karachay
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Because it almost certainly isn't actually glowy, they just
| look like tunnels, maybe with some scrap inside that can be
| sold off, and not everyone knows that it has radioactive waste
| inside or what it can actually do to you. The average person
| knows a lot less about radiation than you do
|
| https://xkcd.com/2501/
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >In the post-Soviet vacuum of the early 1990s, the conditions
| at Semipalatinsk-21 resembled the apocalypse that nuclear
| weapons have long portended. A city of 40,000 that was once
| serviced by two daily direct flights from Moscow had been
| transformed into a dystopia of a few thousand stragglers and
| feral dogs whose main challenge was finding food and
| warmth...In the winter of 1995, Kairat Kadyrzhanov, a
| metallurgist living in Semipalatinsk-21, confronted the
| scavengers at Degelen to alert them that radiation might be
| present in the tunnels. "My wife and children are starving,"
| one of the scavengers told Kadyrzhanov, as he recalled it.
| "What am I supposed to do?"
| ivl wrote:
| There are many people who die every year going into tunnels
| without knowing if the air is safe to breathe where they're
| exploring.
|
| Do you think they'd be worried about radiation?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| People looking for bomb grade plutonium, of course. But also
| scavengers who have no idea, there's been plenty of incidents
| with abandoned nuclear material.
| rdtsc wrote:
| Anyone desperate to make a buck on scrap with no other jobs
| around. Especially in 90s things were pretty bleak in post
| Soviet states.
|
| Now imagine the appeal of selling any of this radioactive stuff
| to a shady buyer. Now it's even more appealing.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| (2013)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6257899
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130822102920/http://thebulleti...
| r721 wrote:
| Related story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41617207
| acc_297 wrote:
| Funny anecdote from the full article
|
| "Equipment provided by Raytheon as part of a multi-million dollar
| contract broke the winter after it was installed. One U.S.
| official said most of the detectors had been designed by Raytheon
| for the desert environment of the U.S.-Mexican border. The
| Kazakhs, on their own initiative, sourced equipment designed to
| withstand Siberian winters from a Russian military supplier; it
| cost half the amount of the U.S. contract, and easily survived
| the winter."
| alistairSH wrote:
| We overpaid for equipment not fit for purpose... Not sure I'd
| call that "funny". Depressing or maddening, maybe.
| soneil wrote:
| Possibly. We'd need to know whether the Siberian equipment
| could survive Nevada to make that call.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I'm kind of surprised that if there was enough plutonium left
| they were worried about someone taking it, they never recovered
| it themselves. In the Manhattan project, plutonium was so
| valuable it made the value of gold look like a doorstop. I guess
| by the 50s, plutonium would have been available at every corner
| drugstore then?
| rdtsc wrote:
| Once they had a process to make it and enough to fire off
| hundreds of tests it probably wasn't worth to waste time to dig
| through the rubble and then separate it all out again.
| epistasis wrote:
| This reminds me of the massive risks that Chernobyl presents to
| this day, as Russia has attempted to destroy the newly installed
| $2B protective sarcophagus, on Feb 14 with a drone:
|
| https://world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chernobyl-protective...
|
| The highly engineered protective cover was designed to carefully
| maintain air pressure to confine the site. The hole caused by
| Russia threatens all of that, as the Russia's drone lit a fire in
| the waterproof insulation. The destruction of this basic
| weatherproofing threatens the entire structure, which was meant
| to last for 100 years without anybody being required to get close
| to it. Repairs are, well, difficult. A more detailed examination
| of the structure and its risks is here in a 12:39 video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW4BEqDS_wM
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Classic russian. Target something for no reason other than
| psychological impact. Same reason why they bomb civilians etc.
| The Ukrainians meanwhile bomb Russian bombers.
| johnshades wrote:
| Also see: https://www.vice.com/en/article/plutonium-in-the-hills-
| how-d...
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(page generated 2025-06-03 23:00 UTC)