I’ve watched the trailer. I have no stomach for watching people die from acute radiation sickness. I read the report on Louis Slotin some long time ago, and that was quite enough for me. It’s a horrible way to die.
But I am willing to answer your questions on the series. I was on a rapid response team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as information about the accident emerged. We were trying to think of ways to help deal with the accident.
The series is supposed to be accurate in terms of the science and the bureaucratic response, according to what I have read. But some of it may not be clear. I’ve receive a question from a longtime lurker about the explosion. The Wikipedia article looks reasonable to me, but here is a quick rundown.
The Chernobyl reactors (called RBMK type, for the Russian designation) were of a design that had a tendency to become more reactive (release more neutrons for chain reactions) under conditions under which most reactors are designed to become less reactive (release fewer neutrons). The operators did a poorly planned safety experiment and lost control of the reactor, which heated up rapidly. The water coolant flashed into steam, which was the explosion. That blew off the top of the reactor and the top of the building, leaving a smoldering mess where the reactor had been. Much of the reactor was graphite, a form of carbon. There are arguments about whether the process amounted to a fire, but it was rapid oxidation of the graphite with heat release from that, along with the heat from the nuclear reactions. My own feeling is that whatever word you want to use is somewhat irrelevant, as long as you recognize the process.
Helicopters dropped sand and boron compounds, which absorb neutrons, to deal with both processes. It took days to bring the reactor fire under control.
The RBMK reactors were widely used in the Soviet Union to produce heat and electricity along with plutonium for weapons. Many still exist but have been modified so that they behave like all other reactors and will not become more reactive in abnormal conditions the way Chernobyl #4 did.
So give me your questions in the comments and I will try to answer them.
Frankensteinbeck
Huh! I thought the difference was that Chernobyl didn’t have a dome. Thank you for the education!
West of the Cascades
Thank you. Is there a quick and reliable source of information on potentially new, safer nuclear technology? (safer in terms of avoiding this sort of thing or a Fukushima Daiichi in the future … I realize waste issues are still a limiting factor in terms of overall “safety”).
The Moar You Know
So did I. No way am I watching that.
Cheryl Rofer
@Frankensteinbeck: Chernobyl didn’t have a dome, and the building was not up to the standards of today’s commercial reactors. That was why the building was blown apart so easily. But the basic problem was in the reactor design.
trollhattan
Having watched the first installment I can vouch it’s a very grim, well-crafted piece of filmmaking.
Like a lot of world-altering events I can recall it pretty distinctly, beginning with the initial reports of radionuclide fallout from Sweden that clued the rest of the world something was amiss. Quite the bureaucracy they had there and great to see Vlad trying to bring back the “good parts.”
catclub
I am reading that as being kind of hard problem.
If ‘bend over and kiss your ass goodbye’ is one of the suggested ways to deal with it….
dimmsdale
Hi Cheryl–
First of all, I am SO glad you are a front pager here, not just for your subject expertise but also for your “process” expertise, your knowledge of how things get done (and can go wrong) in complex enterprises.
I suppose I might ask you if you could assess the current dangers surrounding nuclear power here in the US: what’s being done/been done to safeguard nuclear power facilities here, both in terms of hardening them from terrorist attacks, but also making them safer in e.g. extreme weather circumstances (if this is something you feel able to address).
A lot was talked about, post Fukushima Daichi, about making US nuclear power plants safer, but I don’t know what if anything has actually been done. Living in NYC, I’m close (TOO close) to Indian Point, and also Oyster Creek in NJ (which if memory serves was the same type of plant as Fukushima, and had similar flaws, one being that any interruption to the fuel supply for the cooling system could cause a meltdown).
(Is this what you meant by questions, by the way? Safety of nuclear plants, especially at a time when our so-called “leaders” seem to believe infrastructure can run trouble-free on automatic pilot, with deferred or no maintenance, is something that concerns me a lot.)
Thanks.
MomSense
@trollhattan:
What I find interesting about the story they are telling is that it is really about the arrogance and dysfunction of the communist party and its officials. The lying and the desperate ways in which they tried to minimize the accident and blame the truth tellers has so many lessons for us with our current trump crisis.
Cheryl Rofer
@dimmsdale: I’m fine with any questions you want to ask. This one will require more than a short comment. I’ll front page the bigger ones, which will also provide new comment threads for more questions.
Mandalay
Not entirely O/T since this is a “Nuclear Stuff” thread: The other Cole has a heartwarming and righteous rant about Mike Pompeo, after Iraq’s PM told Pompeo to go fuck his face with chainsaw:
If only our failed media had the stones to write like this. And every word is true so there’s no threat of a lawsuit.
Mike Furlan
Any comment on this article?
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269
” The first explosion consisted of thermal neutron mediated nuclear explosions in one or rather a few fuel channels, which caused a jet of debris that reached an altitude of some 2500 to 3000 m. The second explosion would then have been the steam explosion most experts believe was the first one. “
trollhattan
@MomSense:
Agree completely. Even with the bad glasses and haircuts my sense that “It couldn’t happen here” is feeble. We are lied to several times/day by our leader and his minions, with not a single day off when the lie du jour is inadvertently left in the “compose” window. A shocking cohort is not just unconcerned with this, they’re thrilled that what’s needed to “do what he told us he would” is happening. By whatever means necessary.
Mike in NC
When I worked at GE Hitachi they showed us an excellent documentary on the Chernobyl affair. Don’t know who made it but it might be out there on YouTube someplace.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mike Furlan: It’s possible. I’d like to see more modeling of the accident before I’d take this scenario as proven. The main author of the article has overinterpreted Xe isotope data in the case of North Korean nuclear tests. Relying on one isotope only, and Xe isotopes in particular, which are released from operating nuclear power stations, isn’t enough to prove a case.
mad citizen
@dimmsdale: According to Google, Oyster Creek retired in Sept 2018.
New Jersey did just approve a subsidy to keep the remaining nuclear plants operating. Uneconomical nuclear plants (not all of them) are facing tremendous market pressure from low gas prices and the throw in zero variable cost wind and solar.
jimmiraybob
The absolute necessity to adhere to party-approved alternative facts in the face of reality during the opening episode, juxtaposed with the unfolding horror, is……..memorable. And timely in a Trumpian kinda way.
The republicans, under the leadership of the Dunce King, have now achieved Sovietness.
Rand Careaga
Cheryl Rofer— a relative of mine who tends to get worked up on this particular subject contends that the aftermath of the Fukishima continues to be the greatest environmental catastrophe in human history, that its contaminants are sickening life globally, and that the projected mid-century ocean die-off will be principally due to the discharge from the accident.
I am inclined not to believe her, but have no technical competence to rebut her points, assuming that rebuttal is warranted. Your thoughts?
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@trollhattan – Well as to the “It couldn’t happen here” , look up the Hanford Nuclear Reservation…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site
I realize this one is from Wikipedia but there are many Internet resorses for info about Hanford, including the NOAA
https://darrp.noaa.gov/hazardous-waste/hanford-nuclear-site
Hanford had 9 reactors at one time has been used as a storage facility for nuclear waste since the forties:
“The weapons production reactors were decommissioned at the end of the Cold War, and decades of manufacturing left behind 53 million US gallons (200,000 m3) of high-level radioactive waste stored within 177 storage tanks, an additional 25 million cubic feet (710,000 m3) of solid radioactive waste, and areas of heavy Technetium-99 and uranium contaminated groundwater beneath three tank farms on the site as well as the potential for future groundwater contamination beneath currently contaminated soils. In 2011, DOE, the federal agency charged with overseeing the site, “interim stabilized” 149 single-shell tanks by pumping nearly all of the liquid waste out into 28 newer double-shell tanks. Solids, known as salt cake and sludge, remained. DOE later found water intruding into at least 14 single-shell tanks and that one of them had been leaking about 640 US gallons (2,400 l; 530 imp gal) per year into the ground since about 2010. In 2012, DOE discovered a leak also from a double-shell tank caused by construction flaws and corrosion in the bottom, and that 12 double-shell tanks have similar construction flaws. Since then, the DOE changed to monitoring single-shell tanks monthly and double-shell tanks every three years, and also changed monitoring methods. In March 2014, the DOE announced further delays in the construction of the Waste Treatment Plant, which will affect the schedule for removing waste from the tanks. Intermittent discoveries of undocumented contamination have slowed the pace and raised the cost of cleanup.
Kent
I was 22 and a college senior when Chernobyl happened.
It’s kind of weird but for those of us who grew up in the cold war, we pretty much just absorbed the propoganda that the Soviet Union was an evil, totalitarian Stalinist regime run by the military and KGB. It was all Berlin Wall, Soviet tanks, Soviet ICBMs, and steroided-out evil athetes wearing red CCCP uniforms like the Soviet Hockey team.
I haven’t watched the series, but it is interesting to understand now how complex Soviet society was and how many ordinary good people and actual heroes lived there and went about their lives. You heard absolutely none of that growing up in the 70s and 80s and didn’t hear any of it when the actual Chernobyl accident was happening.
Interesting (and horrifying) in retrospect to understand now how influenced we all were by American propoganda.
David C
I was fortunate to be one of the speakers* at the National Academy’s Beebe Symposium commemorating the 30th anniversary of the incident. One of my colleagues was a pediatrician in Kiev and she was called in to treat patients. She got work from her father who had heard about the radionuclide release from “forbidden” radio – BBC and Radio Free Europe.
* My day job is facilitating the development of drugs to take in case of nuclear holocaust.
Cheryl Rofer
@Rand Careaga: A quick answer – I’m headed out in a bit, will come back to the thread later.
Your relative’s concerns are vastly misplaced, but I watched the aftermath of the Fukushima accident pretty closely, and there were several radical outlets pushing that narrative. They had frightening maps of the Pacific Ocean that they claimed indicated the contamination of the ocean, but in fact were of entirely different phenomena.
The reality is that the radioactive products of Fukushima were barely detectable when they got to the west coast of the United States months later. And radionuclides are detectable in very, very small quantities.
The die-offs of species are largely related to humans altering the environments that other organisms need to live in. In the oceans, overfishing is a big reason.
NotMax
If it is not too far afield, have wondered whether there has been or are ongoing sampling and testing at Chernobyl of the effect on concrete durability of neutron and gamma ray exposure and how any in situ results correlate or vary from theoretical and small scale studies.
Realize going in that types of concrete or cement used can differ, and also that what Soviet standards for concrete mix in place were might differ in ways unique from material in use elsewhere.
James E Powell
My soviet wife and her well-placed party member mother told me that Chernobyl, more than any other single thing, was responsible for the demise of the USSR.
sylvanroad
Thank you for responding to my email so quickly! As Dimmsdale said above, we are so lucky to have you. Another question: do you know why the USSR used RBMK reactors? Was it a cost thing or something else?
arrieve
@MomSense: I agree. I don’t imagine that subsequent episodes are going to be easier to watch — I assume all of those poor firemen are doomed — but watching the bureaucracy in action was fascinating. Deny, deflect, panic about having to report bad news to the bosses. It’s all so sadly familiar.
The last scene when they made that poor man go up to the roof to look at the core which was no longer there because they didn’t believe him was just wrenching.
JGabriel
jimmiraybob:
That’s the primary reason I’m against the development of nuclear reactors in the US, despite the global safety record.
I just don’t think nuclear reactors are at all safe in the US due to a preponderance of business-people who are willing to take shortcuts in safety and construction (one such person is currently president), plus the fact that nuclear safety regulations are frequently set and (lackadaisically) enforced under irresponsible, reckless, Republican governments with a fetish for deregulation.
Hell, just for example, the current Republican head of the DoE is an utter moron who ran in the Republican Presidential Primary on a platform of getting rid of the Dept. of Energy, and, until he took over the department, didn’t even know it’s primary responsibility was managing nuclear materials and energy.
craigie
I found it fascinating, in a horrifying sort of way, that people would do things they were told to do, knowing full well it was wrong and would likely kill them
I don’t know what that says about the human condition, exactly, but it was grim to watch, and worse to know that it’s exactly right.
Cheryl Rofer
@NotMax: It is impossible to get as close to the reactor as I think would be needed to test the concrete or get samples. I suspect that concrete standards have changed sufficiently from what was used there that little useful information would be obtained.
mrmoshpotato
@Mandalay:
And I need to start keeping a list of these wonderful phrases.
trollhattan
@JGabriel:
Straight up one of Trump’s “hardy-har-har” jokes played for no other reason than it’s how he rolls. The other “joke” was Rick Fucking Perry discovering DOE controls the nation’s nukes after getting the damn job. “Ah done thought [sic] that energy was awhl!”
The Pale Scot
There’s a documentary that has a war photographer taking photos above the reactor, his photos have dozens of radio-flashes. And film of brave Russian soldiers running out covered in leaded cloth shoveling metal off the roof for 60 seconds and then retreating. If this had happened in the US it would still be burning
MattF
Cheryl— once in a while, I see mention of a ‘hydrogen’ explosion at Chernobyl, but not in your summary. A misunderstanding?
Robert Sneddon
@sylvanroad: It was cost mainly. They were also capable of producing weapons-grade plutonium, like the similar British Magnox reactors and their successors, the AGRs. By the time they were built though the Soviet Union had vastly reduced their nuclear weapons stockpile and didn’t actually need the RMBK-4 reactors to make more weapons-grade plutonium.
The big cost saving of the RMBK-4 design was in not having a containment structure although the thermal excursion of Tchernobyl-4 would probably have destroyed any reasonable containment and allowed the reactor core to burn to atmosphere anyway. Indeed it’s possible a wrecked containment would have made it more difficult to air-drop moderating materials and carry out firefighting in the area of the reactor core.
Cheryl Rofer
@MattF: There were two explosions, and people have been trying to figure out exactly what caused them. One hypothesis, mentioned in the paper linked by Mike Furlan, is that the first was a steam explosion and the second a hydrogen explosion from the reaction of zirconium fuel element cladding with the coolant water. Again, that’s possible, but I’d like to see more modeling to support it.
In some sense, it doesn’t matter exactly what caused the explosions. The existing RBMKs have been modified to remove the basic cause of the failure. I tend to be very practical and thought mostly about how the fire could be stopped back while it was happening and how things need to be cleaned up now. Seems to me that isotopic sampling back in the day, and maybe even now, might tell more about what the explosions were, but what was left of the reactor was too hot to get those samples just for curiosity.
scott (the other one)
@JGabriel:
That is an excellent point. I’ve read many, many pieces over the years about how (mainly) liberals have got to get over their aversion to nuclear if we want to seriously put a dent in fossil fuels. (Less so over the past few years, as renewables have continued to grow.) My main thing has always been what to do with the waste, as well as how long said waste lasts. But your point is even more cogent: in this time of regulatory capture, why on earth would anyone think safety is going to be any kind of priority?
My idea has always been that if a company wants to build/operate a nuclear power plant, all the major board members and their families must spend at least 75% of the year living within two miles of said plant. I’m quite confident those plants would be completely safe.
Cheryl Rofer
Leaving now – will be back in a few hours.
Mike Furlan
I read Kate Brown’s book “Plutopia” and enjoyed it very much. Now she has a new one:
“Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future”
It on on my list to read.
chopper
@David C:
i know if there’s a nuclear holocaust, i’m a take a whole bunch of drugs.
NotMax
@Cheryl Rofer
Am I entirely misremembering existence of a documentary some years afterwards about a team put together to drill though the dropped containment/mitigation material in order to try to ascertain the configuration and status of the core and discovering (essentially) that it wasn’t there anymore? Distinctly recall mentions of how spongy the concrete had become.
chopper
@sylvanroad:
unlike most reactor designs, it’s reasonably good at producing both energy and plutonium for weapons. of course, it’s also an inherently unstable design. that’s at least as i remember it.
khead
Cheryl, I have a question. Have you ever played SCRAM on the Atari 400/800? Lol.
catclub
@trollhattan: Please Read Michael Lewis’s book The Fifth Risk. It is very good.
Kent
I spent over 10 years working for NOAA Fisheries in Seattle and Alaska and still know a bunch of scientists who study the North Pacific. They are worried about a LOT of human-caused issues from overfishing to climate change. Fukoshima is not really one of them. In fact, there was more concern about invasive species hitching rides to the west coast on Tsunami debris than about radiation.
The Moar You Know
@The Pale Scot: That guy died.
Most of those guys died.
The miners they got to dig under the core – they all died, every last one. They were given bottles of vodka before their shifts to “help with the radiation”.
mad citizen
In the aftermath of 9/11, a whole new suite of powerplant protection requirements were enacted. The Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) standards, circa 2009-10, cover physical and cybersecurity. They apply to nuclear plants for the balance of the plant not covered by the NRC.
I don’t think it’s correct to charge that Republicans or anyone is lax in this area. It is one of the heaviest regulated areas of our civilization.
TenguPhule
@David C:
Something quick and painless to put people to sleep and never wake up?
TenguPhule
@mad citizen:
Aside from women’s wombs, Republicans have decided that regulations are optional to follow.
Ruckus
@scott (the other one):
I have no belief that the plants would be any safer because they would be even more expensive and that would be a determining factor. I do however believe they would never be built in the first place because of that rule, and that would make them safer.
Major Major Major Major
@scott (the other one): dealing with waste is easy. You put it in a hole. It’s the politics that make it tricky.
dmsilev
@trollhattan: The irony is that Perry has arguably been one of Trump’s least-bad Cabinet officials. At least from what I’ve heard through the grapevine, he’s largely had the good sense to realize that he’s in over his head and is willing to listen to the career personnel. Except for some hobby-horse political things like “MOAR COAL!”, that is.
The Pale Scot
Yea I know. And I know that the death and cancer total is ridiculously understated, mostly because the nuclear industry at a meeting in Switzerland a yr later demanded that the Russian rework their numbers. Just like the was NEVER a comprehensive study done of the effects of Three Mile Island. Miscarriages, cancers etc were never accounted for. The managers of nuke facilities should be required to keep their families in houses right next to the reactor.
VOR
@The Moar You Know: The movie “K-19: The Widowmaker” is a fictionalized version of a real life nuclear reactor accident on an early Soviet ballistic missile submarine. They develop a leak in the coolant system and have to send men into close proximity to the core to weld some plumbing for new coolant. Someone stocked chemical warfare suits instead of the required radiation suits, leading the XO to comment that it would be like wearing raincoats.
If you want something scary, read the wikipedia article on “Corium”.
TenguPhule
Pelosi says Trump is ‘becoming self-impeachable’
trollhattan
@catclub:
Thanks, have placed it into The List.
TenguPhule
@dmsilev:
As far as we know. For now.
JGabriel
@mad citizen:
So you don’t think it’s relevant that the President who just disbanded the task force on cybersecurity is a Republican?
The last two Secretaries of Energy under a Democratic President were Ernest Moniz and Stephen Chu. Both held doctorates in physics. Chu won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997.
The current Secretary of Energy, appointed by a Republican president, is Rick Perry, who has a Bachelor’s degree in “Animal Science.” Prior to being named Secretary of Energy, Perry wanted to abolish the DoE, which he believed only developed, promoted, and regulated energy resources, and did not know it was responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons, materials, and power plants. Every Republican Senator voted for his confirmation. Thirty-Eight Democrats did not.
And you honestly don’t think it’s correct to charge that Republicans are more lax in this area?
I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree.
dmsilev
@TenguPhule: Well, yes. He is, after all, the man who famously had trouble counting to three.
trollhattan
@scott (the other one):
At this point I don’t know how fission plants can be cost-effective, setting aside siting the things. “Too cheap to meter” has become “nobody will pay the $/KW/h this fucking electricity will cost to deliver.”
I take heart in the eventual end of Trump and a re-embrace of renewables, coupled with stronger incentives and ditching the moron’s PV tariffs. Overnight storage remains a challenge. Sunny California is at 52% renewable ATM, an additional 12.3% large hydro. Earlier in the week on a windy day renewables were over 60%.
JGabriel
@dmsilev:
Somehow, I just don’t find that comforting.
J R in WV
In another tab we’re watching the House Judiciary committee vote to hold AG Barr in contempt of congress. The Rs voting “no” all look diseased as a side effect of their treason. I think today some of them are aware of the treason for their first time. Or maybe it was more that they had to go on record in public as traitors to their oath to uphold and defend the constitution.
I was pretty scared by the Chernobyl accident, and then again by Fukushima. Which is still ongoing. I guess Chernobyl is too. When I was a kid I would never have believed I would be able to spell those names without looking the up, but they come off my fingers like Denver or Tucson.
TenguPhule
Wapo is on fire today.
Also, Barr was voted as being in contempt by the House committee.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@TenguPhule: Does the full House have to vote on that? Or is this just committee business?
Mike Furlan
@TenguPhule: He was appointed solely because he is on record as wanting to eliminate DOE. Trump is mocking the agency. Kinda like the Roman Emperor who appointed a horse to the Senate. (so the story goes)
JGabriel
@Mike Furlan:
And Trump topped that by appointing a horse’s ass to run the DoE and oversee our nuclear weapons.
TenguPhule
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Just the committee had to vote for it. Full House would be an impeachment vote.
mrmoshpotato
@J R in WV:
Added some more detail.
JGabriel
Dorothy A. Winsor:
TenguPhule:
My understanding is that the full house has to vote on contempt. As per TPM:
J R in WV
@Kent:
There are no braver humans on the planet than those who brought the catastrophe at Chernobyl slowly under control ~!!~ I weep at the thought of their sacrifices. Literally.
TenguPhule
@JGabriel: You are correct. My bad.
TenguPhule
And here the problem lies.
ThresherK
“I was on a rapid response team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”
Had no idea. FPers here continue to amaze me.
Richard Webb
One saving grace for the US nuclear power industry has been the continuing Rickover legacy. Lots of ex-Navy nucs are manning those plants.
And no, I’m not watching it, either. We were briefed on it, back in the day (“Positive coefficient? You gotta be kidding.”) and that’s enough for me.
J R in WV
@TenguPhule:
Never mind, already covered.
J R in WV
@mrmoshpotato:
Thanks for your help with details. I cannot disagree with your thoughts there.
David C
@chopper @ TenguPhule :
Nothing fun – more like growth and repair factors. Stuff that cancer patients can take to relieve the side effects of chemo and/or radiation therapies. We also work with people who prepare for the worst.
https://youtu.be/jGPetxZ3iMM
Cheryl Rofer
@sylvanroad: The RBMK was the reactor the Soviets designed for multipurpose. It was their reactor. We can legitimately complain about some of the nuclear things that the US did, but the Soviets outdid us on a number of things, not in a good way. The reactivity design flaw in RBMKs was inexcusable.
@scott (the other one): The safety record of nuclear reactors is pretty good. Except for Chernobyl, the big accidents have killed many fewer people than various fossil fuel accidents, not to mention the CO2 problem with fossil fuels. Regulation of nuclear reactors in the US has been pretty strict. With Trump, that may change.
In both these cases, something to remember is that when we learn as we go, so when we look back at the past, it’s easy to ask why people did what they did. Often the answer is because they didn’t know what we know now.
Ladyraxterinok
@scott (the other one): in frenzy over fear of airplane computer failure before Y2K there were reports executives, CEOs of Japanese, other Asian airlines were being required to fly in one of their planes at relevant times.
Dave
Off topic, but I recently got to see “Apollo 11” the new documentary… absolutely stunning, self-narrated… about an hour and a half. I was a newlywed at the time of the landing, and watched it on a small black and white tv in a motel room in Kansas (don’t ask). I was also an engineering student at the time, and was then, and still am fascinated by what we accomplished back then. Had a colleague later in my career who worked for Rocketdyne on every moon mission. He had some stories to tell.
Anyway, highly recommended, it’s in select theaters, and some IMax theaters, out on Blu-Ray on 14 May (preorder on amazon).
Bill Arnold
@chopper:
Depends on where you are located. From a chat about the HBO series with some friends, from here you can get the full 638 page book, which I have not read. :-)
The Medical Implications of Nuclear War. (1986)
Fallout radiation levels decay quickly, so temporary fallout sheltering reduces prompt fallout radiation dosages substantially. See tables starting about page 182 in the pdf (the page numbers on the document) for worldwide long term implications. There is some discussion of water supplies. Gist is that surface water would be contaminated dangerously for months, groundwater would be fine if you could pump it.
Oh and to be clear, disrupted agriculture globally for a few years, busted transportation and supply chains, probably billions starve.
This recent paper is interesting; it suggests that deaths from above-ground nuclear tests have been significantly underestimated. Haven’t looked at follow ons.
Some Unintended Fallout from Defense Policy: Measuring the Effect of Atmospheric Nuclear Testing on American Mortality Patterns (PDF, Keith Meyers, 2017)
Sam earp
@scott (the other one):
Burned nuclear fuel is the worst substance on the planet. Every commercial reactor produces 20 tons of burned fuel a year. It is not recycled in this country, and even if it were byproducts that are waste are a mega year problem.
All this burned fuel is stored on site. Even a retired reactor has a storage area where alll this really awful stuff is stored. None of the storage methods are certified for long periods.
There is no safe nuclear plant until this problem is solved, and the experts do not have a solution. The best tentative solution is a central storage site like yucca mountain, but that isn’t happening.
The propaganda about reactors is that safe means low probability of a meltdown or other severe accident. Why worry about accidents when you are pooping out 20 tons per year of the worst stuff on the planet?
Sam earp
@Cheryl Rofer:
I’d take issue with this definition of safety. Please see my comment on the burned fuel issue.
David C
Just watched episode 1. Whoa!
Has the Meyers paper been peer reviewed?
Anyway, here’s some of the stuff we do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30160600
And from a preparedness standpoint: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4295641/
Yes, our workshops and meetings can be a bit depressing.
Bill Arnold
@David C:
Kewl, did not know so much progress had been made. From this, there are a bunch of citations for animal studies on agents preventing intestinal damage. Anything promising? I remember “Rad-X”. from the original Fallout games. :-) Intestinal Radiation Injury Treatment & Management
Bill Arnold
@David C:
Thanks for the links!
Martin
Just watched it with my wife. The first episode is very much about the people and how they process the event, along with some decision making. I spent some time explaining (physics here) how a reactor works in general to my wife, how that particular design of reactor works, and so on. The scenes show debris on the ground, with no explanation of what it was (graphite moderator). You can infer certain things, but so far it assumes you were old enough during Chernobyl to at least have seen the evening news reports, or that kind of thing. So far in the narrative there’s no real science explanation at all.
Now, that may be entirely intentional to underscore that the folks on the ground really had no fucking idea what they were dealing with – so neither do you, good viewer. But at the same time, graphite moderator is pretty distinctive looking to anyone who worked in a reactor of that design, the column of cherenkov radiation headed skyward tells you quite a bit about the state of things, which should have caused greater panic among workers or any observing physicist, yet that isn’t dealt with. Were these people in denial (yes, in some cases), were they undertrained (maybe, but the USSR never had a reputation of skimping on the physics education), or is that simply being left out of the story?
Episode 1 is really about the on-site denial that shit has gone bad. Episode 2 will start with the on-site realization that shit has gone bad, and presumably focusing on the off-site coverup that shit has gone bad and/or the ‘oh fuck’ choices that they had to make – knowingly sending workers to their death in a desperate attempt to gain some measure of control.
So far, I’m pleased with it. I can read all manner of engineering studies about the faults of that type of reactor design, but the best engineered system will inevitably be bested by bad human decision making. That’s a much more interesting story to me. We need a lot more understanding of human psychology and sociology in engineering systems.
Also, for some strange reason, I’m interested in how governments cover up fuckups in order to protect themselves.
Karen
Am wondering how many aged nuclear reactors have been successfully decommissioned. By my reckoning only three have gone offline and that was due to failure rather than a purposeful, intentional cool down and dismantle — Three Mile Island, Chernoble and Fukishama. This is not a great record. On top of that, nuclear fission is a colossal waste of energy — just out the front door there is mining of uranium which is a detriment to health endeavor, then there is the enrichment process that refines the uranium in order for it to be suitable for the very specific use inside a reactor that requires quite a bit of electricity from coal? natural gas? Propane? Then there is the massive amounts of desalinized water required to keep such a reaction process clean of sedimentation and cool enough to not blow up. And the disposal of spent reactor fuel rods, the containment, the incredibly complex matter of transport. There used to be a maxim that fission was like cutting butter with a chainsaw — have not seen evidence that this has been resolved. Also human beings are fallible. Chernoble is a story that needs to be told — gruesome and awful as it was. My place of birth was outside Harrisburg PA and to this day no one can go inside Three Mile Island and it just sits there and cooks. Some times we have to be smart enough to know how stupid we can be.
David C
@Bill Arnold:
The most recent information on treatments can be found here: https://www.remm.nlm.gov
We’re making a lot of progress with the hematopoietic syndrome, but GI is still difficult. The kicker is that we assume that any treatment must begin until at least 24 after radiation exposure.
Bill Arnold
@David C:
Looks like it was not, and no citations according to google scholar.
Bill Arnold
@Karen:
Climate change is the other side. If you assume that RCP 4.5 will reduce human population by about 1/2 (4 billion) over time, then the cost of carbon is about 1 human life per 250 tons carbon. (That’s somewhat more precise than a Fermi estimate, though still back-of-the-envelope.)
brendancalling
My girlfriend is Ukrainian and was born shortly after the disaster. Her older sister was already born and their parents sent her waaay far away because they instinctively didn’t believe the Soviets. To this day my g/f worries about what she may have been exposed to.
mad citizen
@JGabriel: Simple answer is No, because there is a LOT of inertia in the federal government and its policies and budgets. I’ve seen it with the State Department continuing to fund, and even expand, programs of exchanges between energy regulatory experts and various nations; and in how the utilities, power plants and reliability standards work. There may not be any new positive action from the current administration, but it’s hard to undue progress that’s been made in the past, because utilities meet the laws and don’t go backwards. Although the Clean Power Plan never became law per se, most places are or will meet those requirements. Of course we have a lot more to do on climate change if our species wants to survive.
Another Scott
@Bill Arnold: I get the impression that paper is a chapter out of his dissertation, like the one he lists on his research page that was published in the Journal of Economic History. (He appears to be a recent Ph.D.)
I’d expect that the “excess deaths” paper will go through the peer-review process soon, if it hasn’t started already.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cheryl Rofer
@Sam earp: Spent (or used; not burned) fuel is a relatively small problem technically, and it’s included in my statement that relatively few people have died from nuclear power. It is a political problem, however, and that may not be solvable.
biff murphy
Cheryl, I tried to watch the first episode yesterday after the explosion and one of the people threw up blood all over the guy in the stairwell and, and, and, and, that was it, al done. Thanks
fancycwabs
Okay, but you’re gonna miss the big reveal in episode 3 when everyone’s superpowers manifest.
Sam earp
@Cheryl Rofer
Spent fuel has been burned in a reactor. My point is we are 50-60 years inti a megayear problem that even the nrc doesnt know how to solve. Retrospective safety figures are misleading.
Cheryl Rofer
@Sam earp: Yeah, actually they do know how to solve the technical problem. And you are more credible when you use the technical terms.
Cheryl Rofer
@biff murphy: It gets worse.