
Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot”, Is Still Lethal (2013) - bryanwbh
http://nautil.us/blog/chernobyls-hot-mess-the-elephants-foot-is-still-lethal
======
dmfdmf
< _During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl
Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency
shutdown._ >

Not routine. Operators disabled numerous safety features to perform a turbine
spin-down test before shutting down the reactor for scheduled maintenance. The
power surge was due to putting the reactor in an unstable state before
shutdown. The safety features they bypassed were designed to keep the reactor
out of the unstable operating region.

~~~
std_throwaway
Nuclear power is very safe if run by sensible humans without external
pressure.

I just don't trust humans to accomplish this for the next thousand years
without fail. Even less if a nuclear power plant is run for profit. Even less
if storage of nuclear waste does not give off any profit and safe storage
needs to be ensured for thousands of years.

~~~
wojt_eu
In the mean time coal power plants kill more people than Chernobyl disaster
_every year_.

"A United Nations study estimates the final total of premature deaths
associated with the disaster will be around 4000, mostly from an estimated 3%
increase in cancers which are already common causes of death in the region."
\-
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/))

"Air pollution from Europe's 300 largest coal power stations causes 22,300
premature deaths a year"

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jun/12/european-
coal-pollution-premature-deaths)

[Edit] I just took top results from Google, without much research. My point is
that even though I fear nuclear disasters too, we should try and compare
numbers and trade-offs.

~~~
mikeash
It's true that coal kills more than Chernobyl ever did, but that vastly
understates it. Coal kills more people each year than all nuclear technology
has killed in its entire history, _including the bombs dropped on Japan_. Coal
kills in the neighborhood of a million people a year. Granted, most of those
deaths are from dirty plants in less developed countries, but on the other
hand Chernobyl was not exactly a shining beacon of safe nuclear plant design
either.

~~~
pvaldes
Sharks kill people also every year, but this fact do not makes Chernobil more
safe.

~~~
mikeash
What's your point?

My point is that concern should be at least vaguely proportional to danger.
Freaking out about thousands killed by nuclear accidents while ignoring
millions killed by properly operating coal plants is not sensible. And if
nuclear displaces coal, then it will save many, many lives.

~~~
pvaldes
This recurrent thing about how nuclear only killed one or two people or maybe
five (all in Nagasaki), is getting really tiresome.

~~~
mikeash
Are you saying we should stop discussing nuclear power's actual safety record
because it's too annoying?

~~~
pvaldes
I'm saying that discussion must stop cherry-picking and hiding variables at
will. Like breast cancer rate increased for decades, value of wipping entire
cities, billionary damage to economy, making the country easily vulnerable and
a slave of security measures, agriculture and ecological problems. The only
answer from this guys are "but coal is worse and sun can make you blisters",
you don't care for guys that also die by X! and this is a red herring. Yes,
everybody knows that cars kill a lot of people each year. Can we focus again
in the elephant foot's problem?

~~~
mikeash
What's being cherry-picked or hidden? I even tossed in casualties from nuclear
_weapons_ just to be generous.

Comparing with coal is highly relevant, since nuclear substitutes for coal. If
coal is significantly more dangerous (as the numbers would indicate) then fear
of nuclear power has ultimately killed a _lot_ of people by preventing nuclear
from further substituting for coal.

If you'd rather just talk about the dangers of nuclear power without that
context, that's entirely fair. But that's a rather different complaint from
what you've made so far. And if that's what you don't like, might I gently
suggest just clicking the little [-] next to the comments that talk about
coal? There's plenty of other discussion to be had here.

------
ucaetano
From the article:

 _" Two minutes of exposure and your cells will soon begin to hemorrhage;"_

It is sad to see this level of sensationalism in first 3 lines of the article.

Not only cells CAN'T hemorrhage by definition (hemorrhage is blood escaping
from the circulatory system, cells don't have blood inside them), but that
claim is completely made up, not present in the NRC article linked. Any decent
level of fact-checking would have caught that.

Making up fake definitions for precise medical terms for the sake of impact is
really bad journalism.

And then it's followed by:

 _" During a routine test on April 26, 1986, reactor Number 4 at the Chernobyl
Nuclear Power Plant experienced a power surge that triggered an emergency
shutdown."_

 _" If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion
or leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink."_

Which is contradicted by the article itself:

 _" Oozing through pipes and eating through concrete, the radioactive lava
flow from reactor Number 4 eventually cooled enough to solidfy[sic]."_

~~~
tomswartz07
To further point out, the test that caused the incident was not a 'routine
test'. They had purposely disabled a large number of safety catches in order
to perform a risky and ill-advised test.

The aim of this test was to determine whether cooling of the core could
continue to be ensured in the event of a loss of power.

~~~
pdkl95
Far too often I see the test described only superficially or with the
misleading political euphemism of "routine test". As you mentioned, it was a
test of of the cooling system in the even of a power loss, but even that
description softens just how insane the test was. I recommend this[1]
description of the events that lead to the test and what happened during the
test itself.

[1] [https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl#photo-
group-938...](https://leatherbarrowa.exposure.co/chernobyl#photo-group-93861)
(if the #photo-group-93861 doesn't work, see the heading "The Accident To End
All Accidents")

~~~
mikeash
Thanks for posting that link. I was familiar with the general outlines of the
test and how it went wrong, but I had no idea it was a standard test that had
been falsely signed off during the initial commissioning. Just makes it even
crazier.

------
iSnow
>Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s Foot
is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant

I don't think that's true. The corium had cooled down when they discovered the
elephant's foot. It's still extremely radioactive, but not melting hot.

------
jlebrech
Chernobyl is prime example health and safety gone wrong, the accident happened
because they were doing safety tests on backup generators.

this is the kind of scenario where the ticking off boxes mentality should not
be welcome.

things should have been done the long way, i.e giving people a blackout while
they were doing those tests.

they also gave the testing duties to the night shift because they ran out of
time.

prime example not to test things in production, but also not test things for
testing's sake (especially in production)

~~~
digi_owl
My impression was that management rammed the test through because they wanted
to be seen as effective, even as the on-site engineers warned about the risks.

~~~
jlebrech
security is where the feds should have been involved, the kremlin didn't know
for quite a long time. and had they done the safety procedure it might not
have happened.

------
quirkot
> If it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or
> leach radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink.

The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is ~1,000mi^2 ... this is 80% the size of the
state of Rhode Island. "Nearby" residends?

Whole article is just kinda sloppy

------
darawk
> The first explosion from the steam inside the reactor was enough to send the
> 4-million-pound lid of the reactor assembly through the roof of the
> building.

4 _million_ pounds? Is that right? Just for comparison, the maximum takeoff
weight of a 747 is 735,000 pounds. Less than a quarter of the weight of this
lid?

~~~
avian
Let's see. 4 million pounds is around 1800 metric tons. Density of concrete is
around 2 tons/m³, so 1800 tons is the mass of about 900 m³ of concrete. This
is a volume of a disc about 1 m thick and 35 m in diameter. Seems plausible.

Also, from Wikipedia:

Explosive steam pressure [...] destroyed the reactor casing, tearing off and
blasting the 2000-ton upper plate, to which the entire reactor assembly is
fastened, through the roof of the reactor building.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Experiment_and_explosion)

~~~
CmdrSprinkles
Similarly, one is about flying in a controlled manner that is comfortable for
passengers.

The other was basically a giant pipe bomb.

------
kbart
There is an article about that famous photo of Elephant's Foot:
[http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-
che...](http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-famous-photo-of-chernobyls-
most-dangerous-radioactive-material-was-a-selfie)

------
tonyplee
Any similar studies/pictures for Fukushima's 4 nuclear cores?

I assume they also melt down completely, true?

~~~
augustl
I wonder why there aren't more pictures and videos of Fukushima.

For Chernobyl, we even have youtubers now!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kg4vVYKc90)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHnApxVFQU)

------
brokentone
One of my favorite videos, BBC Horizon's 20 year old Inside Chernobyl's
Sarcophagus. There are details of "the elephant's foot" at around 16m.
[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-
horizon-1996-in...](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223h9r_bbc-
horizon-1996-inside-chernobyl-s-sarcophagus_shortfilms)

Most interesting thing I learned is that the primary cause of death of the
scientists who at that time were still researching the resulting decay, was
from heart failure and strokes.

------
agentgt
I read an interesting article a while back on making reactors safe using
helium gas:

[https://www.cfact.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-safety-reactors-
tha...](https://www.cfact.org/2011/03/17/nuclear-safety-reactors-that-cant-
meltdown/)

Personally I'm not terribly worried about meltdowns but rather terrorist
getting hold of the waste and making dirty bombs but even that seems fairly
unlikely (that is the pros outweigh the cons given todays technology).

------
jlebrech
how about creating electricity from Chernobyl's background radiation?
[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-online-
proceedin...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/mrs-online-proceedings-
library-archive/article/direct-energy-conversion-from-gamma-ray-to-
electricity-using-silicon-semiconductor-
cells/AD86142E057DC2D41E77AD7E28DD10A7)

~~~
comboy
They are talking about 1% efficiency while there is well tested solution of
RTGs[1] that have 3-7% efficiency. Or maybe I'm missing something.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator)

~~~
jlebrech
but at 1% efficiency how much background radiation does it absorb?

------
pasta
Related: some days ago Mammoet placed a big tent over Chernobil:
[http://www.mammoet.com/en/news/mammoet-completes-
installatio...](http://www.mammoet.com/en/news/mammoet-completes-installation-
of-new-safe-confinement-in-chernobyl/)

~~~
ifdefdebug
Wikipedia: "The total cost of the Shelter Implementation Plan, of which the
New Safe Confinement is the most prominent element, is estimated to be around
€2.15 billion (US$2.3 billion). The New Safe Confinement alone accounts for
€1.5 billion."

Tell me again nuclear power is cheap.

~~~
iaskwhy
For 100 years only. In 2116 we might need a new shelter on top of this?

~~~
mamadrood
And we will keep doing this for the next 20,000 years or so.

The surrounding area will be safe long before that but the epicentre will be
radioactive for a long time and there is nothing we can really do about it.

~~~
edblarney
In < 50 years well have robots or remotely controlled robots that can go in
there and clean it up.

~~~
manarth
We've tried this before:

\- "Fukushima robot stranded after stalling inside reactor" [1]

\- "the robot could remain ambulatory in the radiation field for only 50
minutes, and in fact the robot's lower portion was no longer responding to
commands" [2]

Poor robots, always being sent in to die alone.

[1]
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/13/fukushim...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/13/fukushima-
robot-stalls-reactor-abandoned)

[2] [http://phys.org/news/2005-12-mighty-mouse-robot-frees-
stuck....](http://phys.org/news/2005-12-mighty-mouse-robot-frees-stuck.html)

~~~
edblarney
That's why I gave a 50 year window.

Today, we don't quite have the ability.

In the future, we will.

------
janzer
(2013)

~~~
userbinator
3 years later, it is still lethal.

