
A Nuclear Jet at Chernobyl Around 21:23:45 UTC on April 25, 1986 - quakeguy
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1384269
======
gumby
It was interesting that there were firm denials at the time, yet everyone was
used to propaganda (yes, fake news) so it wasn't at first clear if there was a
coverup or the claim of a problem was western misdirection!

But reports from neighboring countries pretty quickly put that to rest, and
then the narrative switched to the heroics of the emergency workers (who were
indeed heroic and, sadly, literally self-sacrificing.

The plume traveled over northern Western Europe, but West Germany, at least,
didn't take any immediate action. 15-20 years later there appeared to be a
slew of unusual cancers (e.g. my mother in law's tear duct; my friend's mother
salivary gland...unusual ones in accretive tissue. But I don't know if there's
been any systematic survey to see if there was an assignable increase in the
death rate, or if I am just divining a signal from what's actually small-n
noise.

~~~
alexeckermann
Theres some studies done of the effects of Chernobyl over the years since. Of
note are the WHO and the Chernobyl Tissue Bank.

[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/)
[http://www.chernobyltissuebank.com](http://www.chernobyltissuebank.com)

I went to a talk by Prof Geraldine Thomas, of the Chernobyl Tissue Bank and
Imperial College London, sharing her insights and research into radiation and
its effects on the body. The key takeaway from the talk is to take into
account the type of release, what radionuclides were exposed to the public and
their half-life, and then what the passage of that particular element is
through the body to determine what damage can be done.

A notable example is of Iodine-131 causing of thyroid lesions and cancers in
the direct aftermath of an event because of its short half life of alpha decay
directly into tissue that bioaccumulates Iodine, keeping the alpha decay
focussed on a very specific tissue. Other heavier elements tend to (I am not a
biologist or nuclear scientist, paraphrasing from a talk a couple years ago)
can leave the body without being bioaccumulated, having only released
'tolerable' amounts of alpha decay into a broad area of tissue.

It would be interesting to know if those "unusual cancers" were in some part a
result of radionuclide exposure from Chernobyl or the result of other factors.
But I — a nobody with a causal subject matter interest — would be hesitant to
suggest that there was causation in absence of a hypothesis based on biology
tied to the known Chernobyl emissions. Either way, we can find out more about
radiations effect on biology if a study takes place — or if there is already
one out there?

~~~
trhway
the reports you're referring to are very docile to say the least.

"Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any
increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents."

Except that according to official numbers Belarus, which after the explosion
was right down the wind from it, has overall 1.5 times higher cancer rates
than Russia or Ukraine have (Russia and Ukraine have the same rate) with some
cancer rates being 2x-3x in the Gomel and Mogilev region - the regions right
next to the Chernobyl. Such cancer picture is a new development compare to
pre-Chernobyl years.

>It would be interesting to know if those "unusual cancers" were in some part
a result of radionuclide exposure from Chernobyl or the result of other
factors.

Anybody is welcome to suggest such "other factors" which would explain the
overall rate increase after Chernobyl with the distribution of rate so that it
clearly increases in the regions closer to Chernobyl, while these factors must
also be Belarus specific compare to Russia and Ukraine.

~~~
myth_drannon
The Belarus officials like to play with the numbers to get money from
different foreign organizations. I'm not saying there are no health
implication from radiation fallout in these regions but x2 sounds like
statistics are used to drive someone's agenda. Instead if blaming drinking and
smoking (and trying to solve the societal ailments that are causing that) they
blame radiation, because it brings them money.

~~~
trhway
you can google it yourself. NCBI has a bunch of works on Belarus situation. If
anything, real situation coming from people sounds even more gloom than
official numbers.

I specifically mentioned Russia and Ukraine because such factors like
drinking, smoking, food, genetics, lifestyle/habbits are very similar across
all 3 countries and thus can't explain those post-Chernobyl appeared high
cancer rates in Belarus.

------
rdtsc
> It is concluded that the two explosions in the reactor that many witnesses
> recognized were thermal neutron mediated nuclear explosions at the bottom of
> a few fuel channels and then some 2.7 s later a steam explosion that
> ruptured the reactor vessel. The nuclear explosions formed a plasma jet that
> shot upward through the still intact refueling tubes, rammed the 350-kg
> plugs, and continued through the quite thin roof and then some 2.5 to 3 km
> into the atmosphere where the meteorological situation provided a route to
> Cherepovets.

That's pretty crazy. It ended up as a nuclear canon firing 350kg (700lbs)
projectiles straight up into the atmosphere, right through the roof. Even more
odd is that some lab, for a completely unrelated reason (building a liquid
oxygen and nitrogen facility) was sampling noble gases from the atmosphere.
And then someone could go back and draw these conclusions more than 30 years
later.

------
paulgerhardt
Previously theorized by Charlie Stross in a significantly more fanciful, but
riveting take: [https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-
tail/](https://www.tor.com/2012/07/20/a-tall-tail/)

~~~
le-mark
That was new to me, thanks! Excellent example of pulling several plausible
ideas into one outlandish tale.

 _Sure, it’s a devil’s brew, but who wouldn’t say no to a specific impulse on
the order of twelve thousand?_

That kind of Isp is great for interplanetory/interstellar cruising, not so
much for getting off the pad. That's why ion engines aren't used to get to
orbit; thrust to weight matters when starting from zero m/s.

~~~
Zaak
Isp just says how efficient you are at turning reaction mass into delta-v.
Nuclear rockets can attain both high Isp and high thrust.

------
cmurf
_We decided to analyze this scenario in detail, but the project was postponed
at the time [1987] due to the lack of high-quality, high-resolution gridded
weather data covering April-May 1986 for driving the dispersion model. When in
2016 the high-resolution regional reanalysis for Europe was published and
extended back in time to 1980, it became possible for us to perform good-
quality dispersion modeling._

Wow.

------
ribs
I’m just reading the abstract at the moment, but this paper says that there
was a -nuclear- explosion, not just a steam explosion?

~~~
dboreham
It's always been known that there was a nuclear explosion, it was just called
a "power excursion" so avoid frightening the children.

~~~
QAPereo
It was an excursion... mind you that if you drenched me in gasoline and tossed
a match I’d be, “In a state of accelerated thermal decomposition.” That’s not
a lie, it’s just a bland way of saying that I’d be burning like a Yule log.

------
kurthr
And there is a large new release of Ru-106 somewhere in Russia... what's going
on?

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/21/russia-
radioac...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/21/russia-
radioactivity-986-times-norm-nuclear-accident-claim)

Posted on its own:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15746240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15746240)

~~~
mikkom
Russia has just confirmed that they too have detected it, previously they
denied they have detected anything

> The highest concentration was registered at the station in Argayash, a
> village in the Chelyabinsk region in the southern Urals, which had
> "extremely high pollution" of Ru-106, exceeding natural background pollution
> by 986 times, the service said.

> It did not point to any specific source of the pollution, but the Argayash
> station is about 30 kilometres from the Mayak nuclear facility, which in
> 1957 was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.

[https://phys.org/news/2017-11-russia-extremely-high-
radioact...](https://phys.org/news/2017-11-russia-extremely-high-radioactive-
pollution.html)

~~~
kurthr
Note Ru-106 has a half-life longer than a year (373 days) so it's not going
any where quickly except the ground water.

------
frik
" _Russia reports radioactivity 986 times the norm after nuclear accident
claim_ "

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/21/russia-
radioac...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/21/russia-
radioactivity-986-times-norm-nuclear-accident-claim)

"Russia’s meteorological service has confirmed “extremely high” concentrations
of the radioactive isotope ruthenium-106 were found in several parts of the
country in late September, confirming European reports about the contamination
this month."

Events repeat, denial at first for a month and than downplaying the accident
and the contamination of larger part two continents.

------
MrBuddyCasino
There was a documentary some years ago on TV where a guy who repeatedly had
gone inside the Chernobyl power plant came to the same conclusion. He based
his theory on the amount of core material that was found, and which was less
than expected, meaning that some of it must have been consumed in a nuclear
explosion.

Thats all I remember, and I can't find the source anymore.

------
madengr
I can see how voids in the water cause an increase in neutron flux, but I
thought water was needed to slow the neutrons, and that fast neutrons result
in reduced reaction.

------
amenghra
Chernobyl journal by a Elena Filatova, who biked around the ghostly place a
few years later, is worth reading: [https://www.elenafilatova.net/post/the-
chernobyl-journal-vol...](https://www.elenafilatova.net/post/the-chernobyl-
journal-volume-1)

~~~
josephcooney
Apparently she took a bit of artistic licence with some of the things she
wrote, although the pictures are real, the place is real, and she did visit
there.

[http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/chernobyl_trip](http://hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/chernobyl_trip)

~~~
audiometry
I remember how furious the slashdot community was over this!

------
0xbear
I still remember the reports on TV from there at the time. Initially there was
a flat out denial that anything happened at all, but once the scale of the
catastrophe became clear (within about a day), and it became clear that it
can’t be swept under the rug, we started seeing the coverage of unbelievable
heroics that people would demonstrate. I mean literally firefighters pouring
water into the molten reactor core by standing at the edge of it, and then
dying the same day from radiation poisoning. The radiation was so strong that
the TV helicopter filming the reactor from above (which in itself was heroic
given the kinds of shit suspended in the air) would show the most radioactive
part with sort of a haze. Endless streams of trucks pouring concrete, etc,
etc. It was 30 years ago so I don’t remember much, but man to get the
Secretary General to admit such a bad fuckup — that was something truly
extraordinary.

~~~
smsm42
Note also this was very close to May holidays (May 1st etc.) when people
customary go out, with kids, some go camping, etc. Kiev - a city with
population over 2 millions - is 90 km from Chernobyl, and nobody there knew
what's going on for a while. I'm not even sure there's any statistics of what
health effects this produced. And of course when it was known there was no
proper information on dealing with radioactive contaminations, mostly
everybody would go by wildest rumors and home remedies. No tools for measuring
radioactivity either anywhere to be bought, people made their own eventually.
Etc., etc.

~~~
trhway
> I'm not even sure there's any statistics of what health effects this
> produced.

My post with some effect summary for Belarus
[https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=15737928&goto=threads%...](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=15737928&goto=threads%3Fid%3Dtrhway%2315737928)

~~~
smsm42
AFAIR due to the weather patterns Belarus got a lot of the fallout and Kiev
area was affected much less.

