Chernobyl

[Dark Falken]

I'm pretty up on Chernobyl as I'm both interested in nuclear technology and Russia.

The thing no one has mentioned, and I'm really surprised, is that more likely than not the next Chernobyl scale accident will be at Chernobyl. The reactor is still "hot". The concrete dome that's been built over reactor 4 is crumbling with age. It will collapse if nothing is done and there aren't any plans in the works for that at the moment. It's a scary prospect. HBO just recently did a documentary that focused mainly on the birth defects that are still being seen as a result of the accident, but they did visit the site...as close as they could get to it anyway, and they discussed the crumbling dome and what will happen if nothing is done. I believe the name of this documentary was Chernobyl Heart or Heart of Chernobyl...something like that. It's well worth a look as most have pushed the incident out of there mind...but the ongoing horrors the people of that region face are very real.

[Shoden]

by the time the dome completely falls which will be a long time as it has so many hard layers the uranium in the reactor will have stabled or cooled Uranium has strange propertie if the dome falls which will be another 30 years or so if nothing is done than the uranium released would be so less in quantity and Atomic properties it will just crumble most likely

[DMKA]

i saw a series of pictures by a lady who went there on her own a few years ago. ghost town.

The motorcycle chick in green? That was effing spooky...and sad. I know it's on the net somewhere. I'll post it if I find it.

But yeah, sad, sad event.

EDIT: Here it is. She's actually rode back through in spring of 2004 and added more photos.

[Ba Witda]

Just a note, modern reactors are physically incapable of melting down like Chernobyl. They have learned from their mistakes. There are basically two problems with nuclear reactors today. One is the danger of some terrorist group blowing the power plant up. The other is the nuclear waste, and what to do with it. But meltdowns aren't really a factor anymore.

Also, cockroaches aren't all that resistant to radiation. The fruit fly can take over three times the dosage a cockroach can, and there's a species of parisitic wasp that can take nine times that radiation.

What really saves insects from radiation, for those who don't know, are their short life span, simple bodies, and life cycle. They don't really live long enough for anything to go terribly wrong. Cancer's not likely to set in fast enough. Because they're comparatively simple, there's less that can go wrong, fewer gene sequences for radiation to damage. And their cells only divide right about the time they molt. For cockroaches, that's about once a week. Your DNA's most vulnerable when the cell's dividing, which is why skin and marrow cells tend to be so vulnerable. So, in non-sustained radiation, most of the cockroaches in a population will be very difficult to affect with radiation.

What really takes the cake is a bacterium, D. radiodurans, which can take as much as 1.5 million rads. A thousand rads will kill you, twenty thousand a cockroach.

[omnitarian]

Nuclear technology has come a long way since chernobyl. I've heard of reactors that are fail-safe; almost any problem imaginable will push the reactor into a harmless stagnation. Nuclear power is becoming an increasingly ideal energy source.

My physics book claims that living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant exposes you to 0.09 microsieverts of radiation per year, compared to 0.3 µSv from living within 50 miles of a coal burning plant, 1 µsv from using a computer, and 260 µsv naturally from rocks. Interesting stuff.