|
Post by nuclear1 on Jan 2, 2015 16:59:24 GMT 9.5
The first major clue is that the report is from ENEnews. I don't put much stock in anything from that website. They put out so much sheer volume of crap that a person could spend all their free time trying to refute what they publish.
|
|
|
Post by eclipse on Sept 4, 2015 12:05:22 GMT 9.5
Hi all, while Chernobyl's 'New Safe Confinement Dome' will include various cranes and cutting tools for demolishing outer buildings that might be in danger of collapse and trying to tidy up the site, has anyone investigated how to cut up the core? Would ultra-hard shielded robots be able to cut up the core into manageable pieces, put it in shielded caskets and get it to a reprocessing plant? The Russians are working on reprocessing for the BN800. I'm wondering what obstacles there are to cutting up the core and reprocessing the actinides and at least getting some money back from this absolute financial catastrophe?
Also, why not plasma arc burn everything else under there, creating good sized vitrified synrock lumps that can be buried or dropped to the bottom of the ocean? Otherwise the *billions* spent building this arc will be wasted as we have to build it *again* in 100 years! Instead, if this arc goes over the site and they get busy extracting useful waste and synrocking everything else, by the time the arc needs to be replaced won't it just be disassembled and at least this primary pollution site declared clean?
|
|
peterc
Thermal Neutron
Posts: 30
|
Post by peterc on Sept 7, 2015 17:25:34 GMT 9.5
Yes, with modern robot technology it should be possible to remove the most active bits and store them safely. But there are strong vested interests in keeping Chernobyl as a big problem.
There was a BBC documentary recently which showed people living within a couple of miles of the site. The reporter was cajoled by locals (against the pleadings of his producer) into drinking plum schnapps distilled from plums from the neighbourhood!
The trouble is that with modern technology, radiation is detectable at extremely low levels, and so it will never be possible to declare anything "radiation free", as demanded by the greens. The situation is comparable with arsenic in drinking water: it's virtually universal at some level, but we have to accept that below a certain threshold it's insignificant.
|
|
|
Post by Greg Simpson on Sept 12, 2015 11:16:06 GMT 9.5
The Russians are working on reprocessing for the BN800. I'm wondering what obstacles there are to cutting up the core and reprocessing the actinide and at least getting some money back from this absolute financial catastrophe? Otherwise the *billions* spent building this arc will be wasted as we have to build it *again* in 100 years! Fuel for BN800s is cheap. Just leave the mess where it is for the 100 years and deal with it then. It will be much safer and cheaper if we wait.
|
|
|
Post by eclipse on Sept 13, 2015 20:56:20 GMT 9.5
Hi Greg, yes, given that a standard decommissioning practice of intact nuclear reactors is to wait 50 years for it to 'cool down' in SafStor mode, then I guess you have a point about waiting 100 years and then dealing with it!
|
|
|
Post by Roger Clifton on Sept 20, 2015 11:50:33 GMT 9.5
Fascinating though the corium is, the significant problem at Chernobyl is radioactive dust. During the power surge, volatile fission products had expanded abruptly, turning several tonnes of active fuel into powder(*). Collapse of a part of the sarcophagus would risk making some of the dust airborne again, contaminating the adjacent downwind farmland. Hence the ARC, encapsulating the material while it decays. (*)To be more accurate, it would have been flashed into an aerosol. The link speaks of most of the mass of the modern particles as being UO2 fused with ZrO2 from the cladding, indicating temperatures exceeding 2650° C. At that temperature and with such a large surface area, the particles would have evaporated many of their more volatile fission products, which would have then cooled into even smaller, glassy particles. Some would have joined the "hot" cloud that wandered across Eastern Europe, but much of it must still be littered around the site.
|
|
|
Post by zinfan94 on Oct 21, 2015 13:10:50 GMT 9.5
Japan's Health Ministry has announced the first case of leukemia in a Fukushima worker linked to radiation exposure. The worker received 15.7 MSV during a 14 month work assignment. (see Bloomberg report dated 10-21-2015) They don't explain how they concluded the cancer was likely caused by the exposure.
|
|
|
Post by Roger Clifton on Oct 22, 2015 9:17:55 GMT 9.5
Japan's Health Ministry has announced the first case of leukemia in a Fukushima worker linked to radiation exposure. The worker received 15.7 MSV during a 14 month work assignment. (see Bloomberg report dated 10-21-2015) They don't explain how they concluded the cancer was likely caused by the exposure. It seems to be a legal concession rather than cause-and-effect. Of all the leukaemia cases routinely appearing, this one coincided in the right time window with a legally significant dose, so the defence can't prove their innocence. It would be hard to begrudge support to the worker concerned. If this assertion appeared in a scientific paper, it would be rejected as "cherry-picking". Healthwise, 15 mSv in 14 months is trivial, less than the 20 mSv/a in Australian health-and-safety regulations for nuclear workers.
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jun 13, 2019 21:04:14 GMT 9.5
There is a new book by Plokhy on Chernobyl, recently reviewed in the Moscow Times. The review suggests that this is quite an authoritative source.
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jun 24, 2019 20:59:31 GMT 9.5
Serhii Plotky Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe Basic Books 2018 May 15
"spellbinding" --- from a review
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jun 28, 2019 19:40:55 GMT 9.5
How HBO got it wrong on Chernobyl James Conca 2019 Jun 27 Forbes
HBO had no understanding of radiation.
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jul 1, 2019 15:39:29 GMT 9.5
How HBO's "Chernobyl" Gets Nuclear So Wrong Michael Shellenberger 2019 Jun 06 Forbes
Much harder hitting than the James Conca review, referenced in the previous comment.
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jul 2, 2019 9:41:33 GMT 9.5
Top UCLA Doctor Denounces HBO's "Chernobyl" As Wrong And "Dangerous" Michael Shellenberger 2019 Jun 11 Forbes
Robert Gale, MD, weighs in. Authoritative.
|
|
|
Post by engineerpoet on Jul 2, 2019 13:31:07 GMT 9.5
|
|
|
Post by David B. Benson on Jul 28, 2019 22:06:49 GMT 9.5
|
|