Chernobyl to be covered in steel »
Posted by: JamesMarcus 11 months, 3 weeks agoThe authorities in Ukraine have approved a giant steel cover for the radioactive site of the world's worst nuclear disaster--Chernobyl. Ukraine has hired a French firm to build the structure to replace the crumbling concrete casing put over the reactor after the 1986 accident.
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
actually you missed the ind-paki issue - main issue is :::::
What the hell do nuke bombs have to do with fission reactors
Answer : Not a Damn thing
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HMMace11 months, 3 weeks ago
I was 17 when we used the a-bomb--next in line for the invasion of Japan---Truman saved my llife..and maybe a million more..The Japanese deserved it for pearl harbor alone..then there was the Baatan death march, any one remember that..The rape of nan-King..the Korean mass murders?? Yes, we used it, and I am glad..and maybe we should use it again, to save our lives..
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KSUmarksman11 months, 3 weeks ago
not really, Iran would have little capability to inflict massive damage on us (probably 1 or 2 bombs). We have more common sense (or some would say that we don't have the guts) to not turn all of Iran to glass. Retaliation would probably be the destruction of major cities followed by a land invasion of what's left.
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kobzikov11 months, 3 weeks ago
You know if you posted "First". Then your post might have had more relevance or intellect behind it.
Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and there is no evidence that Iran plans to build one.
Nuclear weapon use would not even result in long term radiation of the kind that has been experienced in Chernobyl in the first place.
So unless you are suggesting that Iran is planning to build poorly made nuclear power plants all over the world that would result in subsequent reactor explosions, what you said makes no sense whatsoever. And suggesting that Iran plans to construct nuclear plants all over the world is equally absurd.
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
OOPS - I didn't read the rest wich should have neg'ed you
Nukes don't have the same effect as Chernoble .... what the heck do you think you know ??
Chernoble is nothing compared to a modern nuke bomb .... and as far as reactors go, chernoble is an exception, those type of reactors where shut down ages ago, normaly cooled reactors present virtually no threat to the puplic, they are closed sealed housing units.
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
DO YOU HAVE ANY CLUE OR JUST BABBLE ......
what does an outdated reactor that was a screw up (except for that the US govenment is in controll of three identical reactors stateside) have to do with nuces, which Iran doesn't posses much more than Iraq did.
Reactors arn't nuke bombs get a clue - or move back into your cave but get of the net,
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Shadowx55x11 months, 3 weeks ago
must have seen the simpsons movie and got the idea from that....? i dunno
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
we're talking reaktors - not bombs - maybe Iran actually would like to have some clean long term electricity - save the planet from oil burning polution - ge a thought.....
No I'm not a total naive fool, but then Iraq didn't have what our monkey in charge claimed .... so lets get back to reactors - cheap clean electricity - chernoble was out dated operated by a broke and desperate for survial government.
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nata011 months, 3 weeks ago
Hmm strange... To prevent infection with radiation it is necessary to build lead cover. Steel - improper protection against radiation. Right after 1986 accident USSR built lead protection. And that saved many lives...
But now Ukraine going to build steel cover and trying to hide real state of affairs. So after the end of constraction they may say "Look! Now its safe here!". But i think that will be a lie.
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sotiris-k11 months, 3 weeks ago
The shielding you refer to is important only when humans are nearby and above. If nobody is around for several km it doesnt matter what you cover the area with . The key feature of any structure now is not radiation shielding but durability and capacity to stop any leaking of the emitters outside because the problem is not stopping the emitted radiation (ie aphpa particles , gamma, neutrons ) but rather the ability of the emitters to ultimately diffuse away from the site and radiate from other locations.
In general the negative effects of exposure to radiation are maximal when you have through, food ,air, water etc ingested the material and is now deposited in your bones and tissue radiating from inside forever. Most of the hard particles emitted today anyway are scattered upwards in the sky , they never find any human target . If the material leaks outside however in the environment weather can transfer it everywhere hence the importance of enclosure and containment.
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joeblowe11 months, 3 weeks ago
Lovely - USSR builds a piece of crap nuclear reactor, it fails, then the rest of the world has to pay to contain it pretty much forever. It might in fact be a good idea to leave a hole in the top of that new cover then just keep dumping in molten lead until it's full. Then recycle the steel. Then, of course, everyone for miles around would start crying about lead poisoning.
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KSUmarksman11 months, 3 weeks ago
there are many reactors of the same type still oparating without incident, looks like the engineers (local Ukrainians) were not as well trained as their Russian peers
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xlegultx11 months, 3 weeks ago
You do know that there were some U.S reactors of that same model at that time?
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lycase11 months, 3 weeks ago
many countries have launched nuclear tests the US is the only country to use one in war and we had no idea wat it was capable of and it saved millions of lives in the process. since then the 1940s we have worked hard to prevent any such attack again. also the Atom bombs we used bak then are nothing compared to the nukes of today
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Dionys11 months, 3 weeks ago
A lot of modern historians place the end of the war on a number of factors. The current, best theory says that the idea of the Communists marching into Japan destroying the unbroken line of Emperors (excepting of course one Empress) was the strongest threat and reason for Japan backing down.
The bombs the US dropped may have been intended to help stop the war, but there were a number of other factors involved (such as wanting to test out just exactly what a nuclear weapon did in multiple places). After the destruction of the first, a second bomb was inhumane at best.
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KSUmarksman11 months, 3 weeks ago
another factor is that around the same time as the bombs were dropped the Soviet Army under Marshall Rokossovsky (sp?) overran the million man Kwantung Army in Manchuria and Korea in something like a week. (The Soviets were seasoned vets used to fighting the well trained Germans, so the swiftness of their victory against the Japanese, who did not even have 1 adequate tank design or the German level of training, is not at all surprising)
This victory cut off the last source of food and other raw materials to the Japanese mainland. They would have to surrender or starve.
Now to be fair to Truman, he had no reliable data on when the Soviets would strike and just how devastating and swift their attack would be.
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Grancher11 months, 3 weeks ago
Don't forget that the very clear demonstration of the power of nuclear weapons has framed much of the global power game since 1945. Without a such a clear demonstration World War two may well have been closely followed by a war between the USA and the USSR in which the same bombs would likely have been used, though perhaps there may have been more of them. The destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima served as a warning to the world as to the power of nuclear weapons. The lull in their use in war, and the extensive testing of nuclear weapons, that followed has allowed people the time and opportunity to better understand the effects of the the bombs and to widely disseminate the the idea that nuclear technology is extremely dangerous. Had the bombs not been used in such a high profile way, they may well not have captured the world's attention, leaving people ignorant of the magnitude or even the existence of the danger that nuclear weapons present to the human race.
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bilbo_baggins_oo11 months, 3 weeks ago
Learn your history!!!
The Germans had been defeated but Japan and the Asian front was another story. Japan was not going to surrender, they knew the population was behind them ready to die for their cause. Why did they not surrender after the first bomb was atom bomb was dropped...it took a second bomb and the prospect of total annihilation for them to finally bow to our will and surrender. (which didn't end all the fighting)
About 250,000 people died in those two bombing.
Battle of Okinawa cost about 200,000 lives including 100,000 civilian, 12,500 U.S.
May not have saved millions but 100,000s of lives probably
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kobzikov11 months, 3 weeks ago
"Japan was not going to surrender, they knew the population was behind them ready to die for their cause."
Japan knew that the war was unwinable. That is a fact.
The only thing they could pin their hopes on was negotiating a favorable surrender. That is all. Allies were not interested in negotiations, they demanded an unconditional surrender as per Potsdam Declaration. So Japan was faced with a limited number of choices, surrendering to USSR, since it didn't demand an unconditional surrender or inflicting a large amount of casualties on invading army in hope to use their remaining strength as a leverage.
"Why did they not surrender after the first bomb"
If your argument is that Japanese people were ready to die for their cause, then why would they surrender after 2nd bomb?
Japan would have been incapable of causing high casualties anyway since it lacked the capability to wage modern warfare due to severe shortages in oil, food, scrap metal, etc.
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
Actually, there is some lack of information here on your part... The US decided that they could defeat Japan originally but that for global sake it was more important to defeat germany. Was Japan goin to surrender easely - no more - no less than the germans, but by that time losses where mounting and an invasion into a small area with limited access difficult .... AND NO DOUBT THE BOMBS KILLED THOUSANDS AND SAVED TEN TIMES AS MANY
BUT I REGRESS - WE WERE DISCUSSING ELECTRIC GENEREATING REAKTORS - WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU MORONS.
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Databyter11 months, 3 weeks ago
A land invasion would have caused incredible loss of life to both sides.
There would really be no reason for the Japanese to surrender. They had significant geographical and supply advantages.
The battles would have been by necesity a trench to trench and house to house extermination of every living thing that could hold a weapon over the entire country.
Given the choice's and the technology there really was no other choice.
Certainly the Japanese would not have hesitated to use the weapon on it's enemies if they had the capability.
There is no question the bomb took many lives, but there is no question it saved alot more and ended the war much sooner.
As the previous poster said "Learn your history".
And I will add 'Don't change history to justify your current politics or your country bashing'
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kobzikov11 months, 3 weeks ago
Think about what you are saying. If the waste is hazardous and can be used to build a bomb, then it makes sense for people to care, don't you think?
If you are asking why now, it's because sarcophagus used to seal off nuclear reactor and its contents is dilapidated and is falling apart. It wasn't a long-term solution, it was more like a patch. Also since radiation has somewhat decreased over the years a better solution might be implemented now that it's not as bad as it used to be.
Though half-life is not over for a lot of isotopes that were spread in the area seeped into ground water and that were absorbed by nature. Some byproducts have a half-life of millions of years like I-129 ,Tc-99, Zr-93, or Cs-135.
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
with one minor oversite - those isotopes and their (not 20 or 40 year) half life of 20,000 years exist naturally, all over the place
But
if we'd build breador reactors (now admitadly they are potentialy dangerous) one for every 10-20 'currently standard' reactors, we could actually 'shorten' the half life decay and reduce our nuclear wast by 85% and generate more electricity.
Cool field nuke reactors like chernoble have been dead for years - the US has 3, all in the hands of the NRC and currently shut down. The newer closed and watercooled units have an infinaticimal risk factor in comparison... going to you dentist is mor hazardous, crossing the street more dangerous.
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Grancher11 months, 3 weeks ago
It is rather frightening actually to think that all it takes to have a nuclear reactor spewing radioactive material into the atmosphere is lack of maintenance of a site far away in a country I know very little about...
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Mr-opinion11 months, 3 weeks ago
nope - almost none - Chernoble used to coal field desperson for cooling - that was ended back in the mid 60's ..... newer reactors are 1000% safer, but don't compare them.
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web_design_sydney11 months, 3 weeks ago
"there are many reactors of the same type still oparating without incident, looks like the engineers (local Ukrainians) were not as well trained as their Russian peers"
The Chernobyl disaster was the result of an experiment which was performed into the efficiency of nuclear reactors at limited capacity with the removal of cooling rods (i.e. they wanted to run the reactors with less nuclear fuel by removing cooling rods). Because the reactors were not designed to do this it caused a meltdown and leaked radiation.
They originally tried to seal the reactor in a lead sarcophagus but were unsuccessful in containing the radiation. It seems to me that they're doing this a little late. The real solution is to use nuclear reactors for medicine and legitimate research but not for power since all reactors cause some fallout and this accident wouldn't have occurred if they were performing the experiment under proper authority and environment :)
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web_design_sydney11 months, 3 weeks ago
Also, in relation to Hiroshima the casualties were quite low compared to the fire-bombing of German cities in WWII, the difference was that it had no American casualties in the delivering of the bombs (as opposed to hundreds of pilots being shot down). Also, take into your discussion of nuclear war between America and Iran that the nuclear bombs of today are more sophisticated and powerful - 25 megatonnes as opposed to about 20 kilotonnes for the bombs used on Japan in WWII. Bombs dropped by either party would be devastating for a large area and it is unlikely that either party would be prepared to commerce nuclear war under counterstrike theory.
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Submitted By:
JamesMarcus
James Marcus is a writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and ...
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