
Chernobyl’s Hot Mess, “the Elephant’s Foot,” Is Still Lethal (2013) - gdubs
http://nautil.us/blog/chernobyls-hot-mess-the-elephants-foot-is-still-lethal?utm_source=frontpage&utm_medium=mview&utm_campaign=chernobyls-hot-mess-the-elephants-foot-is-still-lethal
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cjslep
I think this article is very well-written overall. However, there are still a
point that could use clarification.

> 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. It did not work.

Calling the incident a _routine test_ greatly mischaracterizes what they were
doing. This wasn't some sort of daily safety checklist test nor a safety
margin test, this was a full-blown _experiment_. Yes, like a science lab
experiment, but with a fully fueled commercial RBMK reactor. This is important
because the author falsely makes _routine_ nuclear powerplant operation seem
unsafe.

To properly characterize the experiment on fair grounds it is nice to mention
that the experiment they wanted to test is started by carrying out a simulated
emergency shutdown. This is huge. You don't call an emergency shutdown of a
gigantic plutonium-making-machine "routine" (Note: RBMKs have a thermal power
output on the high side). However, the bigger problem was that the authorities
running this experiment treated it exactly the same way the author did.

If the authorities did care, they would have properly trained the night shift
personnel with the experiment (or delayed the experiment altogether). The fact
that the experiment continued with the night shift that was poorly trained for
the experiment operations points to a "this is routine and should not be a big
deal" vibe of whoever was in charge. I dislike how nowadays others (such as
the the author) looking into the reactor accident keep espousing this giant
red flag.

~~~
illumen
They were doing things in their routine. Thus it's routine.

You're misrepresenting things.

~~~
EliRivers
I could write "Conduct improv brain surgery on the guy sitting next to me" in
my daily planner and it doesn't make it routine. Calling a knife a fork
doesn't make it so, and calling something routine that isn't likewise doesn't
make it so.

~~~
illumen
If you conducted brain surgery on the guy next to you routinely then it makes
it routine. Even if it's a really silly thing to do.

------
beloch
While the article does contain some interesting details, I fundamentally
disapprove of it's anti-nuclear moralizing. It's the constant trickle of
articles like this that maintain public paranoia about nuclear power. This
matters, because nuclear power allows us to meet today's power demands with
today's technology without releasing CO2 into the environment. Alternative
power sources are still some ways from meeting humanities power needs on their
own, but every megawatt of nuclear power produced keeps carbon in the ground
and gives us extra time. Yes, many will point out that several alternative
power generation sources could be scaled up to meet all of humanity's demands
right now. However, it's not being done because it's economically and
technically challenging and would take decades.

Meanwhile, fully operational nuclear power plants are being shut down. After
the Fukushima incident, Germany and several other countries caved into
irrational public fears and have begun to phase out nuclear power, replacing
it with much more immediately dangerous power sources such as coal. (It should
be noted that there are relatively few reactors in Germany that are likely to
be hit by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami.) That's carbon emission free
power that's online right now, being destroyed out of irrational fear and
replaced with what is possibly our dirtiest source of power. This is what is
going on in the world, but the author has published yet another fear-mongering
article anyways. It's downright despicable.

~~~
mohawk
I don't like fear-mongering either. But nuclear only looks cheap because a lot
of costs are externalised. Prudent calculation of costs of insurance against
accidents and waste storage for centuries make it unprofitable. Improvements
in reactor safety often leads to humans behaving more carelessly. It is a
penny-wise, pound-foolish technology, especially in densely populated areas.

~~~
kabdib
Many of the existing reactors were designed in the 50s and 60s, and are overly
complex; they grew out of designs that were used for production of nuclear
material for weapons, and safety features were bolted onto the side (this was
an era when seatbelts weren't required on automobiles!). More recent designs
are significantly and inherently safer and simply _can 't_ get into the same
kind of trouble that the older designs can.

Yet we treat all reactors the same. Nuclear = bad for some reason.

I'd much rather be getting rid of coal plants (which are _far_ worse for us
than nuclear plants in terms of carbon emissions, pollution and actual emitted
radiation) and have a national resolve to build safer, modern nuclear plants.
But the fear-mongering and bad politics make this impossible.

Alternate sources of energy can be _worse_. For instance, when you look at the
total cost of solar cells (lots of end-to-end industrial infrastructure
involving toxic chemicals and energy-hungry manufacturing) and deaths from
installers falling roofs, nuclear starts to look a lot better, even with
plants we have today.

But anti-nuke makes headlines, and gets people fired up, and is better for the
oil and coal industries.

~~~
glomph
The person you are replying to didn't say anything about Nuclear being bad.
They made a point only about cost.

~~~
vidarh
Consider that the cost of coal, solar, wind, hydro is under-estimated because
we don't take into account the externalized environmental issues and excess
deaths.

If we're going to try to account for externalized costs for nuclear, we need
to do it for all the others too, and the results would not be pretty.

~~~
glomph
Huh? We have a pretty good understanding of the externalised costs for these.
There is no mystery for storing waste and there is a very strong understanding
of how easy it is to decommission. What externalities are you talking about?

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ChuckMcM
I guess it is how you look at it. Much of this article has issues but one of
the most glaring is this one:

 _" Born of human error, continually generating copious heat, the Elephant’s
Foot is still melting into the base of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. If
it hits ground water, it could trigger another catastrophic explosion or leach
radioactive material into the water nearby residents drink."_

One of the things this 'foot' proved was that the supposition that a meltdown
would have a core melt through the ground and down into the center of the
earth, aka the "China Syndrome" was false. The reason was of course that once
the core became molten it begins to mix with the materials around it, that
causes it to become diluted until it drops below criticality and then it
ceases to be a threat. All western reactors (and all of those in Japan) have a
pool of borosilicate sand underneath the reactor as just such a final
safeguard. Should the core melt through to that, it turns the sand to
borosilicate glass which kills neutrons and stops the reaction. Leaving behind
a solid, cooling glass chunk. _Not_ contaminating any groundwater and
generally not going any further afield. It remains to be seen if any of
Fukishima's core material made it as far as the sand underneath those
reactors.

The 'foot' at Chernobyl isn't going anywhere, and in a couple of decades will
be safe enough to chop up and dispose of more permanently. Unlike radioactive
dust in the plant which was getting carried out of the containment building. I
expect that within my kids lifetime people to be living once again in the
surrounding area.

~~~
brc
I saw a documentary that showed squatter-types already were living in the
surrounding area - whatever the exclusion zone area was. They interviewed
them, but they were 'meh' about the risk. They had the place to themselves and
were pretty happy.

~~~
hobbes78
I envy the ignorant people, for they are happy...

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theguycalledtom
> a testament to the potential dangers of nuclear power.

A list to remind us of the real dangers of coal power:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mining_accidents_i...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal_mining_accidents_in_China)

~~~
afterburner
Ditch both.

~~~
vidarh
For what magically safe alternative?

(no, you don't avoid all deaths with hydro, wind or solar either; in fact
hydro has historically been one of the deadliest power sources thanks to the
Banqiao accident where a dam failure killed 171,000 - even excluding that,
though, hydro is far from free of deaths)

EDIT: Since I was being a bit snarky: The point is last I heard the number of
deaths from installation of rooftop solar is higher than the number of deaths
from nuclear power plants for equivalent amount of energy. Nuclear gets the
headlines because the nuclear incidents we hear about are big and scary and
_rare_ and get hyped up.

You don't get massive worldwide news coverage because some guy fell off a roof
while mounting solar panels and died. But he's just as dead, and it adds up.

You can't ignore the small incidents if their rate is high enough.

Overall, you could have meltdowns on a regular basis and nuclear would still
be one of our safest alternatives. Chances are it will also be one of the
alternatives with the lowest environmental impact: Less radioactivity released
than coal, by orders of magnitude; far less land area affected by development
than hydro, wind and solar.

~~~
Zardoz84
Fusion. Every ten years, plasma physics say that we would have fusion on the
next ten years. :D

~~~
adrianN
Maybe if we funded it appropriately. Actual funding has been really low:

[https://imgur.com/sjH5r](https://imgur.com/sjH5r)

~~~
emp_zealoth
It is quite depressing. The other day I've been reading an article about MRAP
vehicle program - Wiki said the cost was estimated to be 50 BILLION

------
spatten
So it's now almost 30 years after Chernobyl, so if I read this naively:

> When this photo was taken, 10 years after the disaster, the Elephant’s Foot
> was only emitting one-tenth of the radiation it once had.

the Elephant's foot will currently have 1/1000th of the original radioactivity
it had right after the disaster, and 10 years from now it will be down to
1/10,000th. At that rate it would be indistinguishable from background
radiation within a century or so (just guesstimating here, but that's a lot of
powers of 10 -- I'm probably being pessimistic).

I'm guessing that this is wrong, though, and that the radioactivity from
longer half-life radionuclides will eventually start to dominate and the
"effective half-life" will be much longer.

Does anyone have any idea how long it will be until Chernobyl blends into the
background radiation?

~~~
cnvogel
You are right, in that your guess is wrong ;-).

Total activity decrease in realistic "atomic waste" is not at all exponential.

Try a simple example:

Take a mixture of two isotopes. The one isotope has a half-life of 1 year and
there's so much of it, that the activity is 10 decays/second. There's also a
second isotope in the mix, with a half-life of 100 years, but there's 100
times as much of it, so that in total, you also get 10 decays/second.

After 10 years, the first isotope will be down to 2^-10, so only 1/1000th is
left, it will be hardly measurable. But the second one will have decayed only
1/10th of a half-time, almost everything is still there: You are now down to
half of the original activity.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxaUhDCUXNJCTjNKNFNxdDhuLTA...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxaUhDCUXNJCTjNKNFNxdDhuLTA/view?usp=sharing)

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's more complicated than that. As you point out, you don't have just one
isotope, you have a whole grab bag of stuff. Here's the wrench in the works
that adds the complexity, when a radioactive isotope decays it doesn't just go
away, it decays into another isotope, sometimes one that is also radioactive
and with its own half life.

What yoU end up with is a system of differential equations, which are actually
easy to solve if you know how, but that level of calculus is beyond what most
folks have studied.

Anyway, a situation that tends to be common is that you have one sort of
longer lived isotope which ends up producing another isotope which decays
fairly fast along a multi-step chain. This ends up producing a fairly high
level of radiation for a significant time in a pseudo steady state. But it
depends on the details.

------
acqq
Related video, also workers at Chernobyl, but another piece of the reactor:
the roof.

[https://youtu.be/FfDa8tR25dk](https://youtu.be/FfDa8tR25dk)

"Military people call such places "FRONTLINE", liquidators who worked at the
Chornobyl nuclear station called it "ROOF COATING". It was the most
contaminated, and therefore the most dangerous, place in the zone. The remains
of the roof coating of the 4th reactor. The operation on decontaminating the
roof lasted more than five months. We will tell about only two days."

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shmigheghi
Seems silly to me to just leave it sitting there for decades if its internal
heat is being generated by how the isotopes are in close proximity to each
other. Or I might be misunderstanding why it's generating its own heat.

Could they contain and cool down the waste by slicing off chunks of the mass
and containing each chunk in lead-lined boxes? Essentially re-processing the
lump into crude 'control rod' sized chunks and storing them in little lead
boxes to contain the radiation being thrown off.

~~~
Igglyboo
I think the main issue is that no one wants to get anywhere remotely near it.

~~~
shmigheghi
Clearly you wouldn't send people in there.

Is there too much radiation in the room for robots with radiation-shielded
electronics to operate?

~~~
vidarh
Consider that each passing year reduces the problems of dealing with it.
They'll want to wait as long as they can before doing anything.

------
JonahBraun
> Particles emitted from radioactive atoms are a form of ionizing
> radiation—they have enough energy to scramble atoms and molecules they crash
> into. (This is different from non-ionizing radiation, like the kind emitted
> by your cell phone, which does not have enough energy to break bonds.)

I think this is a poor explanation. Radiation from your cell phone is
electromagnetic radiation. This is far different from a radiated particle, an
actual proton or electron flying out.

Essentially a particle vs a wave, which is more of a difference than "not
enough energy". Is that correct?

~~~
iolsantr
Gamma radiation (i.e. ionizing radiation) is just a highly energetic photons.
Alpha and Beta particles are not photons, and are not referred to as ionizing
radiation.

------
chairleg
Bit off topic: On the first picture right at the top you can see through the
workers. I read that this was caused by radiation, but to me it looks more as
if they (or he) was simply moving during a longer exposure?

~~~
JonahBraun
Agreed. Anyone find an authoritative explanation on the photo? I couldn't.

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Zigurd
Is nuclear energy above or below break-even, as a whole? Or has the _cost_ of
the mess created by nuclear industry accidents and other indirect costs
swamped the profits?

------
mrschwabe
A disturbing thought is that Fukishima is an even more dire situation. The
Pacific ocean will never be the same.

Which of the 507 other plants will be the next go into meltdown? I wonder how
many of these disasters the planet can handle before it becomes inhabitable to
all life.

~~~
ori_b
The pacific ocean isn't really noticing any effects. Water is great at
stopping radiation. In fact, open pool reactors like this one
([http://www.ansto.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/45495/OPAL_...](http://www.ansto.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0009/45495/OPAL_pool_ALT_1700.jpg))
are serviced by scuba divers.

The increase in radiation in the pacific is lost in the noise when compared to
naturally occurring background radiation. There are some areas directly around
Fukushima where that is not the case, and it is a big mess, but I would
happily eat fish from the vast majority of the pacific.

A far bigger threat to our ocean is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

~~~
cnvogel
Whiel I agree with your statements, it should be noted that _sometimes_ scuba-
diving in nuclear reactor's pools isn't as safe and fun as originally
intended.

[http://www.isoe-
network.net/index.php/component/docman/doc_d...](http://www.isoe-
network.net/index.php/component/docman/doc_download/1756-ritter2011ppt.html)

[A diver not briefed on avoiding unknown objects picked up a highly activated
bolt laying on the pool floor and received a substantial amount of radioactive
dose.]

~~~
yason
This just verifies that water is a good shield against radiation. The slides
explained that any proximity to, not to mention physical contact, with the
object would be highly dangerous but having a mere 1.4 meters of water in
between the human and the object the dosage would be negligible.

