Chernobyl on HBO

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:As horrible as this incident is, I hope rehashing it in this miniseries is not bad PR for nuclear power. A lot went wrong in this situation, and a lot has changed since then.

Really? This is your concern? There are, perhaps, millions of individuals dealing with radiation-induced cancers and birth defects related to the Chernobyl disaster. And that's just one incident.

I really hope that nuclear power does not spread. We have other options. I'll take tar sand oil before more nuclear power.

Then you really know nothing.

Educate me.

PS - do you work at one of these "public affairs" groups that are trying to shape the narrative online about this mini-series?

My spouse is a former nuclear engineer. I certainly don't understand nuclear power to the depths that he does, but he's been blathering on endlessly about the Chernobyl miniseries, so I pick up a thing here and there.

The type of reactor built for Chernobyl has never been built outside of the USSR. A Chernobyl type incident couldn't be replicated in the US because we simply don't have reactors like that. The physics are different.

There's never been a death in 50 years of the US using nuclear power. There's been three historic incidents in all that time. The horrible one, Chernobyl. The one where there was some containment leakage and the lasting impact is unknown, Fukushima. And three mile island, where it was completely contained and no one was injured.

The space it takes to run a nuclear power plant is incredibly small compared to the power generated.

Most of the waste is recyclable. The small amount that isn't recyclable is exactly that....small.

It's cheap, low impact to the environment, safe, and doesn't use land which could best be used for other purposes. I'll never convince people of all that, of course. Some people are still afraid of air travel, and the incidents of accidents are historically low...but that's not on the news.

Uh, an entire reactor unit at TMI that cost millions to build and millions to clean up (and it's still not entirely clean) has never produced a watt of electricity since. And the accident could have been prevented if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the company that built the unit had listened to their own employees who warned them of the consequences of a particular malfunction in Babcock and Wilcox nuclear reactors.

Back in the day, they said that nuclear energy would be too cheap to meter but nowadays even plants that haven't had catastrophic accidents are struggling financially because natural gas is a whole lot cheaper than nuclear power. The Perry Nuclear Plant in Ohio is probably going to close unless it gets subsidies from the government. That's not what they promised us. This line about nuclear power being cheap is an old story that never came true. https://www.news-herald.com/news/ohio/perry-nuclear-power-plant-to-close-in/article_919062bd-55d0-5229-8c43-821f26ddb90b.html

Ok.

Yeah, that's what I'd expect you to get from the American Nuclear Society. Try reading this: https://climatenexus.org/climate-news-archive/nuclear-energy-us-expensive-source-competing-cheap-gas-renewables/

Nuclear Capacity and the Power Grid
Many nuclear plants are aging and nearing the end of their lifetimes. Fifteen nuclear plants (six that have closed since 2013 and nine that have announced retirement between 2019 and 2025) represent just over eighteen gigawatts of generation and approximately eighteen percent of total U.S. nuclear capacity. They face high operating costs and competition from cheaper gas and renewable energy sources, making the business of running many of the nation’s nearly 100 nuclear plants unprofitable.

The conventional model for operating the power grid revolved around “baseload” capacity — supplying the grid’s minimum power requirements from plants that need to run continuously because they cannot easily start and stop. There were mostly coal and nuclear power plants. But that model is becoming obsolete as renewables and natural gas supply more and more power to the grid. These technologies can ramp up and down quickly, which is another reason baseload power is becoming obsolete. Innovations like active grid management, regional transmission lines and energy storage provide the coverage that baseload power previously generated. As gas and renewables ramp up and the grid becomes more efficient, the need for large baseload generators drops substantially.

I don't know where the latter quote came from, but it's BS. The only reason that solar and wind are competitive at all is because they are highly subsidized, and/or mandated in some states. They are also trying to make a positive out of a negative -- wind and solar are intermittent (i.e., they only work when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining) which is destabilizing to the transmission system. Natural gas plants can be ramped up and down to compensate, in most cases, but it makes the plants run very inefficiently and actually produces more carbon emissions than if you just let the gas plants run as baseload power.

They are trying to argue that we don't need baseload power because they are anti-nuke and nuclear power (as well as hydro, which they also hate) are the only zero carbon emission electricity sources that are not intermittent and can be dispatched as needed.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I was scheduled to go on a trip to the Soviet Union two weeks after the Chernobyl accident. We were supposed to go to Kiev for a few days but that got rescheduled and we spent those days in Vladimir and Suzdal. I remember our American guides talking about how they figured that most produce in the USSR came from nearby farms so that it was probably okay to eat it in Moscow and Leningrad (later St. Petersburg) but I noticed that our guide wasn't eating butter on her bread or ice cream. I figured I shouldn't eat it either but it's hard to be in the Soviet Union and not eat ice cream!

Also there was a famous picture of the destroyed reactor vessel in Pravda, the official newspaper - which was shocking at the time because the Soviet government was basically admitting that there was a problem. I think it was also considered a sign of the coming of glasnoct (but I may be remembering that wrong - 86 seems too early for that).

Anyway, I'll never forget our Soviet guide standing in the front of the bus and showing us that picture in Pravda. I think she was trying to show that maybe the government wasn't as closed off as it seemed (and as it was in reality).

I am the PP from Minsk. I don't know if this is true, but the prevailing opinion at the time was that the radiation went west, was detected outside the country, and the news were announced over Voice of America, and the USSR couldn't keep it silent. But certainly, there was no stomach at the time for the kind of scary government actions that took place in the 1930s or even 1950s. But until then, they didn't bother telling anyone and the news didn't travel that quickly. These days, with cell phones and social media, things would be completely different, though the rumors would still be a huge problem, I'm sure there'd be a lot of conflicting information going around.

Hi, I am also from Minsk. The way we found out - our neighbor worked in Borovlyany, there was some (research?) facility there. Bottom line, they had the equipment to measure radiation, and they picked it up. They first got worried that something happened at the facility, then they got worried even more when they realized that whatever happened did not happen in a close vicinity, and yet it was enough to set off their equipment, so must be something major. But of course the May 1 festivities went on - I don’t think there even was an announcement before that.

Is that how it got out to the international community as well- a facility in Sweden picked up the radiation levels? Craziness.

Nuclear plants check everyone who comes into the plant for radiation. That way, they know everyone comes in "clean," and any radiation they pick up on their monitors in the plant must come from inside. I visited the plant in Sweden that picked up on the Chernobyl radiation, and as we were being monitored on the way in, they mentioned that this was how the west found out about Chernobyl. The workers coming into the plant were setting off alarms. This is also how it was discovered that basements in the northeast U.S. sometimes have radon issues. Workers coming into nuclear plants in Pennsylvania were setting off radiation alarms.

I'm not all the way through the show, but one thing that hasn't been emphasized is the fact that the Russian reactors effectively had no containment vessels around the reactors (they were basically an aluminum shed). In addition to a completely different reactor design, U.S. reactors have massive reinforced concrete containment vessels that surround the reactors. The work that has been done there since the accident has been to build containment structure(s) that a U.S. reactor already has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So... how long before we get fusion energy?

Fifteen years from whenever you ask.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Apparently Russia hates the miniseries so much they're making their own version blaming American spies for tampering with the reactor

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424/amp

Not smart. Russia should make a movie called Katrina or Flint.

Yes way to steal the first comments under the article. How very clever of you!

How does that change the point?

It doesn't just feels kind of like plagiarism if you don't comment something more like, "the first comment under the article says they should have made a movie called Flint, an apt observation" or whatever.

This is an anonymous forum, not a research paper.

[Anonymous]

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What do you think happened to French colons in Algeria in 1962, which had a govt supported by the USSR? To Jews throughout the mideast, to South Asians in east africa, etc. Decolonization is unpleasant to both colonisers, and minorities who had been under the protection of colonial authorities. USSR never worried about that though.

Note, all the citations are to problems in central asia - not to the Baltics, whose independence and sovereignty are most challenged by Russia now - the central asian countries get along politically with Putin though.

First, Azerbaijan isn't in Central Asia.

Second, if you think local Russians in the Baltic republics did not experience discrimination and disenfranchisement, you aren't paying attention.

Azerbaijan is close to Central Asia (right across the Caspian) and has historic and demographic parallels. The main difference seems to be that Putin supports Armenia vs Azerbaijan.

And yes, I have followed the Baltics. Countries that were annexed illegally to the USSR, where the russian speakers are "settlers", where they did not adopt local languages, were used to extinguish independence, and lived in large enough numbers to threaten sovereignty. And the discrimination they faced in citizenship was not at all comparable to the threats to life and limb faced by many of the minorities I mention above regarding decolonization.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Apparently Russia hates the miniseries so much they're making their own version blaming American spies for tampering with the reactor

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424/amp

Not smart. Russia should make a movie called Katrina or Flint.

Yes way to steal the first comments under the article. How very clever of you!

How does that change the point?

It doesn't just feels kind of like plagiarism if you don't comment something more like, "the first comment under the article says they should have made a movie called Flint, an apt observation" or whatever.

This is an anonymous forum, not a research paper.

You don't have to take my comment to heart, but now everyone knows you didn't think of it so we both win.

[Anonymous]

Read up on Hanford. WA.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The men on trail, the men in charge that night, did they just not really understand the science at all?
Yes, the rbmk reactors had a fatal flaw, but those men didn’t seem to have a handle on the science. Not at all. What were their qualifications?

+1

I kept saying that during almost the entire series.

I think that was the point- they did not know about the graphite tips because it was kept secret. I think they also didn't have enough education and training either, but no one knew about the fatal flaw. Even those that did.

And the man in charge was a deranged, abusive, lunatic under pressure from a dishonest, ego-driven government. This was a masterclass in bad management and leadership.

Qualifications for managerial positions in soviet Russia weren't necessarily based on specific expertise. They were favored by the state for whatever reason.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The men on trail, the men in charge that night, did they just not really understand the science at all?
Yes, the rbmk reactors had a fatal flaw, but those men didn’t seem to have a handle on the science. Not at all. What were their qualifications?

+1

I kept saying that during almost the entire series.

I think that was the point- they did not know about the graphite tips because it was kept secret. I think they also didn't have enough education and training either, but no one knew about the fatal flaw. Even those that did.

And the man in charge was a deranged, abusive, lunatic under pressure from a dishonest, ego-driven government. This was a masterclass in bad management and leadership.

Qualifications for managerial positions in soviet Russia weren't necessarily based on specific expertise. They were favored by the state for whatever reason.

Thank you. After the final episode it really drove it home.