Not like I really want to engage in this, but what exactly would Russian gain from that? Their capitol is only 500 km from the Ukrainian border. I get that everyone thinks Putin is crazy and therefore everything every Russian does is suicidal, but come on, we ought be able to put our emotions aside and talk about this properly.
>> I get that everyone thinks Putin is crazy and therefore everything every Russian does is suicidal, but come on, we ought be able to put our emotions aside and talk about this properly.
Thinking that putin is crazy is actually a result of talking about all this properly. Because no one in the world can find another explanation.
Putin has backed himself into a corner. The only way the Russian government seems to be willing to move forward is to control the narrative, and so far that has been spinning a false narrative about liberating Ukraine from Nazis. At this point the information curtain is dropping in full force inside the country with extreme laws being put in place punishing "lies" about the way with up to 15 years imprisonment plus cutting off external media and social media.
Chernobyl has been in Russian control since the second or third day of the war. Strategically it is a pathway between Kyiv and Russia. I doubt Russia wants to destroy it, it'll do way more harm to Russia than anyone else, but this is a war and infrastructure is being destroyed.
It's enough to have enough poorly educated people take over there and incompetence will do the rest. This is what caused the '86 meltdown in the first place.
Russia would gain more "validation" of their narrative, that Ukraine is a dangerous state run by Nazis and what not that needs to be "demilitarised" and "denazified". It's of course an outright bullshit narrative, but they keep inventing bullshit to prop it up.
The Nazis ran a scorched earch program when the end was visible (The Captain, anyone), so the Ukrainian Wehrwolf behind this is even a tenable hypothesis.
I actually got an ad(!) on YouTube about this yesterday. I was only able to record the last minute of it with my smartphone (crappy I know, but I watched in on my android tv), so I do not remember the full version. The ad was about that we do not know what will happen in Chernobyl, and it could be dangerous to the eu depending on the direction of the wind. It actually used footage from the show Chernobyl, but I highly doubt it was licensed. It ended with "STOP WAR IN UKRAINE". This was by far the strangest ad I ever watched on YouTube.
It's not that expensive for the amount of people it's shared among, works on mobile and other devices ( e.g. TVs), has a few extra features ( e.g. downloads for offline viewing) and gives more money to content creators. All in all, not a bad deal.
$2.40 per person per month for unlimited videos on any device without any hassle doesn't seem outrageous to me but I suppose it'll vary by person. I mean if you just view 3 videos a month on a desktop device it's probably not for you.
People are using ads as a way to get information about the war into Russia as a way to circumvent Russia's information firewalls. It's pretty clever really.
Some people hold that the sanctions and corporate withdrawals from Russia are having the opposite effect intended: the general populace is rallying around Putin (his approval numbers are up 10% since this has started) and will give Russians a chance to reestablish home brands rather than be reliant on a decadent, petty west.
Time will tell how it all plays out, though personally I suspect this perspective will be more right than wrong.
Well, clearly there are some promising avenues. For example, developing alternatives to fossil fuels would weaken adventurous petro-dictatorships.
It's not a short term proposition, but it's something that ought to be taken into account when e.g. considering how governments allocate subsidies or weigh long-term energy strategies (as Germany is doing now). Any initiative that strengthens the global market for oil and gas has a side effect of destabilizing the rules-based world order.
Unfortunately, adventurous dictators also control much of the worlds currently accessible supply of rare-ish minerals and elements that go into batteries and powerful magnets.
It's not a bad idea to do it regardless, but you're just trading bad for bad if your primary reason for doing so is to avoid naughty governments.
Oil and rare minerals are separate revenue streams. Let's say that a given dictator's petro-adventurism is 50% funded by oil and 20% funded by rare minerals. If you can degrade their ability to wage war by reducing one or the other, why is that "bad"?
I'm curious — do you prefer e.g. the Chinese governance model over the democratic model? I'm getting the feeling you believe that autocracy is inevitable and unstoppable, and I wonder if you believe that that fate is also desirable.
Not at all! I am merely not of the opinion that economic sanctions are reliable or effective deterrents to authoritarianism.
The cases where they have been demonstrably effective are comparatively few, and the geopolitical circumstances are substantially different in those than now with Russia invading Ukraine.
Pretending that massively investing in solar, wind and EVs will absolve us of dependency on autocratic regimes is just intellectually dishonest- we are merely trading one for another.
For the record, I do support temporarily ceasing the purchase of oil from Russia. Buying more oil from Venezuela, Iran or Saudi Arabia is not a long term answer, or rare earth metals from China (who is notably not participating in sanctions). Though Russia has yet to ramp up production, they will also become a key player in a post-fossil-fuel world as they are thought to have a full quarter of the accessible supply.
The sanctions weren't intended to prevent military conflict- the threat of sanctions was. The threat failed.
Now the question should be, will following through on the threat mitigate the harm now or in the future? Against Russia, my guess is no. They also haven't been successful against Iran or any number of other counties.
It might be said that the effectiveness of sanctions is entirely reliant upon being able to keep a weak nation weak, rather than preventing a strong nation from preying upon weaker neighbors.
'Some people' is never a particularly helpful phrase.
That said, Putin's approval ratings have always been extremely high for a leader, and war (one where you largely control the narrative in your country no less) has been a pretty consistent winner in gaining leaders popularity.
There's a sense in which even doctored polls can become (or contribute to) self-fulfilling prophecies, though. The key tactic of disinformation is to bombard the viewer with so many semi-legitimate sources that they have no time to consider each one on its merits; by the time you've seen that the "independent institution/pollster" is owned by someone with ties to X, you've already been hit by five other polls and think-pieces saying the same thing. At the end of the day, you invite the thought "is there actually a zeitgeist here, am I the one behind the times if I'm questioning what everyone else is saying" - and at that point, you're susceptible to propaganda. We should not discount Putin's purposefulness and confidence in deploying these tactics.
>>(his approval numbers are up 10% since this has started)
Is there any way to believe such a number? Isn't all independent media in Russia now banned or in hiding?
Like, I just don't see any way this could be reliably measured. If I lived in Russia and someone asked me, of course I'd say that I support the guy, I don't want to go to prison.
The numbers I saw went from 61% to 71%. I'm not sure if there is any way to get accurate, honest polls out of Russia, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that people support him now more than before, between the propaganda in the news and the impact the sanctions are having on them.
George W Bush's approval ratings also spiked after the Iraq war, when our country was also flooded with propaganda and lies about the justification for that.
> propaganda and lies about the justification for that
I keep hearing this, and yet, the NYT and the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons both confirmed that there were chemical weapons in Iraq:
> will give Russians a chance to reestablish home brands
This is delusional. There's not enough talent nor capital to replace everything from Caterpillar to Xbox, and much of what's considered domestic is partially or fully imported, eg https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501361272230752262
I read this thread and found it interesting, but the mafia boss argument seems weaker than the simple desire of all businesses to have commoditized inputs and avoid vendor lock-in. The oil and gas guys who are friends with the boss are politically secure, do they really need to worry about usurpers? This poor stifled engineering nerd vs. big dumb mafia jock narrative seems a little too indulgent of the audience's biases...
Much crazier things have happened than revitalization of national industry. Whether their leadership has the intelligence and will to do this is of course another matter.
It seems that certain kinds of economic integration such as supply-chain interdependence offer more leverage, while other kinds of integration such as buying oil and gas offer less.
Ronald McDonald has killed more people than putin, and even more than all the american presidents combined, so this is not that bad for russian health and obesity issues.
The article says the spent fuel assemblies need active cooling otherwise the water will evaporate. Really?! Even though it’s years since the reactors shut down?
The fuel assemblies are radioactive, thus heat the water. Heated water evaporates. That's all the article claims, and it's obviously true. In fact, liquid water at any temperature evaporates. What the article doesn't mention is the timescale. Is the water heated to a significant degree? Does it evaporate notably faster than any other pool exposed to the atmosphere?
The answer seems to be: not really enough to worry about.
For the spent nuclear fuel this isn't really a problem as this is over 20 year old spent fuel. Yes over weeks or months the water might evaporate but spent fuel that old is stored outside with letting it cool passively to the air all over the world (usually after around 5 years or so)
"Due to time elapsed since the 1986 Chornobyl accident, the heat load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water contained in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal without the need for electrical supply."
Zirconium can split hydrogen from H2O, but only if exposed to H2O while between about 1000 and 1500 C. You can tell by looking if the rods are this hot, because they will be emitting orange light: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1000%20Celsius%20black%...
If the fuel rods are stored indoors, that building will already be on fire before the rods get that hot.
If the rods aren’t in an enclosed volume, any hydrogen would rapidly diffuse. Eventually it would either oxidise (too spread out for “burn” to feel like the right word) or escape into space.
If they’re in a building which is on fire and while it’s on fire someone sprays water on them, then they’ll produce hydrogen.
IDK if that hydrogen would burn away fast enough to not be an explosion hazard or build up enough that it is, but it shouldn’t come up anyway because any firefighters on site ought to know not to use water in that situation.
Why do we need to safely discard of the waste if it can just be "stored outside". Are other countries overly cautious or is it a different type of fuel rod? Why can't we just reuse 1 rod for example if it stays hot for a long time?
It still needs to be protected from the elements and from nefarious actors. Which is why the US wanted to store the spent fuel in Yucca Mountain. However it turns out no one wants to have a repository of spent nuclear fuel in their state.
Because the waste ultimately needs to be stored effectively forever, going through stages of being very hot for a short time to containing substances we never want released into the environment long term.
That quote is strange. Reactor #2 was shut down in 1991, reactor #1 was shut down in 1996, and reactor #3 was shut down in late 2000. So some of the spent fuel is a little over 21 years old, not 36 as the quote implies. Still a long time, but I wouldn't expect such a sloppy comment from the IAEA.
"The spent fuel rods are over 20 years old and have very little heat to dissipate. In most plants, spent fuel that is more than 5 years old sits in dry storage cooled easily by air. Also RBMK (Chernobyl reactor type) has lower burnup than other reactor types, thus lower decay heat."
"There are indeed 20k old fuel rods in a pool. Their heat is low enough that experts I've talked to expect weeks or even months to heat the water enough to dry out the pool. Even then, natural air circulation should be sufficient."
air circulation around zirconium clad fuel rods is not a good thing. auto ignition becomes a high probability issue with the generation of hydrogen gas.
Predicting Putin is difficult at best. However, Chernobyl may have been captured simply because it's on one of the shortest paths to Kyiv. It may also be that the exclusion zone is a bit safer for troops to travel through than the surrounding areas. Residual radiation is nowhere nearly as deadly as a pissed off Ukrainian with an RPG. Also, Russians camped out in the exclusion zone probably don't have to worry about artillery or drone strikes. Ukrainian forces know better.
If you're worried about nuclear catastrophe, the taking of the Zaporizhzhia power plant is far more concerning. Russians hit one of the buildings with rocket fire. It turned out to be a training building and not one of the reactors. We have to ask if that was deliberate or if everyone (the Russians included) just got lucky. Taking this power plant gave Russian forces control over a quarter of Ukraine's power generation, which has obvious strategic value. Ukrainian forces are also unlikely to counter-attack directly, for obvious reasons, so it should be easy for the Russians to hold. Finally, taking this plant hostage dealt a huge psychological blow to a country that remembers the Chernobyl incident.
I was actually in Pushkin tunnel 30 minutes before the bomb went off. Our host family was worried sick for us after seeing the news and immediately suggested it was a false flag to drum up support for the Chechen war.
a whole nuke for a false flag seems less feasible though, for many reasons.
anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke. even if you have the uranium, you need precisely-shaped explosive lenses and lots of machined parts for a regular atomic bomb, not to mention tritium and highly-classified knowledge for hydrogen bombs. you also can't covertly test it. even if you had a nuke that got lost in the 90s, you would need to replace its tritium , and likely other components. even after all that, you might be able to attribute the radioactive material by analyzing isotopes from the fallout. it'd just be a monumental stretch to claim the Ukrainians somehow assembled their own nuke in a matter of weeks. even with Russia's propaganda I can't see anyone inside the country or out buying it.
a dirty bomb (the rumor Putin is running) is more feasible, since it's just a conventional bomb with radioactive shrapnel. but that's much less dramatic, and would be feasible to clean up without incurring many casualties, unless it's air-dropped. so I don't think a dirty bomb would be cause for thermonuclear retaliation - it plays more like using a chemical weapon.
also, as crazy as Putin is, I have a hard time believing anyone at FSB would follow an order to nuke their own citizens.
I see how isotope fingerprinting can be a big issue in the plan. No way that the world at large wouldn't recognise this as a false flag attack if they got a 99% match with known Russian military nukes.
That said, I don't see why people domestically wouldn't buy it. They could spin any number of stories, such as that a corrupt/kidnapped military/government official allowed the weapon to escape Russian custody and detonation control.
Or they could just lie. Some fraction of people will believe it, either because they are not nuclear experts, or because it's repeated so often they'll start believing it eventually.
> anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke.
One of the apartment bombings used RDX, a tightly controlled explosive only made in one factory in Russia. Compare this to the Oklahoma City bombing in the US. It used ANFO, an explosive made from ingredients commonly found on farms.
You couldn't blame a random terrorist, but you can point to the mushroom cloud and say "NATO did it" pretty convincingly on Russian state TV.
> Every design failure starts with an engineer hand-waving how something bad won't/can't happen.
Yes, but the converse is not true: when one <hand-waves how something bad won't/can't happen>, it does not necessarily mean that <there will be a design failure>.
You are trying to say that act A causes consequence B because many instances of B correlate with A. That is not sound.
This is probably a stupid question, but why are the fuel rods over 20 years old? I thought there were still functioning and electric providing reactors on the Chernobyl site (not the one that exploded) which would still be producing fresh waste.
This shows what a terrible technology nuclear power is in terms of security. Everything from fuel to waste is a potential target in times of war or terrorist attacks. So even opponents without nuclear weapons of their own can turn a conflict into a nuclear one.
So what is the argument here? We shouldn't have nice things that could greatly benefit society because terrorists or war-mongering dictators might come after them?
What if a warring nation destroyed a hydroelectric dam and it flooded an entire town? Does this mean we should give up on hydro power?
What would happen if a terrorist gained access to your city's water treatment facility and contaminated it with a bioweapon resistant to chlorine? Does this mean we shouldn't have water delivery for our cities?
What would happen if a terrorist or warring nation gained access to your country's institute of virology where you are performing gain-of-function research, and they unleash a superbug you didn't intend into the population? Should we not perform medical science then?
What would happen if you built a really tall building and a terrorist decided to fly an airplane into it? Should we not build tall buildings anymore?
None of your analogies are applicable. Nuclear power stations require extraordinary stability in a world that cannot provide it. Earthquakes, tsunamis, war, or another failure mode nobody’s even thought of yet can lead to entire states becoming uninhabitable. We should desire that the consequences of failure draw from the domain of the normal distribution. Nuclear power draws its failure consequences from the exponential distribution. And failures will always happen eventually.
Nuclear power stations on 1970s or older technology*
The newer technologies, with the much smaller reactor cores can greatly limit the destructive capabilities even to the point where a meltdown caused by some unforseen event will be entirely containable.
> desire that the consequences of failure draw from the domain of the normal distribution
Almost all interesting tech we're playing with lately does not fall in this category... and there's nothing we can do about it, that's the evolution of tech.
When interstellar-spaceships will be built, they'll practically be equivalent to "planet destroying nukes" and pretty sure accidents will happen (eg. fully scortching a planet inhabited by a few billions). AI if something ~human-level gets capable of a stretch of exponential self-improvement will be similar, but that will probably be the end of bio-humans and nothing we can do about it so no need to worry (just focus on making sure important human knowledge gets passed on to our non-human descendants).
Only way to mitigate this is to DISPERSE (establish colonies on multiple planets) and MULTIPLY (so that an accident with eg. a 99% lethality thing still leaves enough humans around to maintain a technological civilization preserving the knowledge of our ancestors). We're a bloody virus, so better embrace our nature and start to act like an effective one. There's genocide in our pasts, and there's likely exponentially more genocide in our future, we need to be resilient and accept (mass) death as part of our techno-evolution...
The argument is that nuclear pollution scorches the earth for centuries if not longer. Any of the examples you've mentioned has - relatively speaking - as short term impact. A nuclear plant shedding a plume of radioactive elements? All you can do is set up an exclusion zone.
That doesn't mean nuclear technology doesn't have advantages. It very much has. Arguably, it's both the cleanest and most consistent way of energy production at the same time.
The trade-off is security, as mentioned by the commenter, is security. If society decides to invest in nuclear energy, it has to be willing to accept the consequences of that choice.
The technology isn't "bad" in and of itself. It's context and intentions leveraging said technology which shifts perceptions towards "good" or "bad". If the Russians would clearly recognize the challenges associated with securing a captured nuclear power plant, and take them to heart, the conversation would steer into a different direction.
I think the argument is more focused around we shouldn't have nice things that could greatly benefit society because nuke plants haven't displayed a great success rate with securing their premises. The NNSA (nuke nsa) seems to be pretty strong in cyber, so I'll limit this to just physical security.
But the difference between hydro, tall buildings, etc is the critical physical security aspect nuke plants have. I agree with the point that the nuke plants seem to be capable of pretty safe operations.
But, using the 40 years of activism from the Plowshares movement[0] as one example, doesn't seem like we're capable of securing the plants from "terrorists" with the no-fail rate that I'd somewhat want for nuke physical security. As recently as '12, Oak Ridge of all places was broken into via Plowshares activists.
So if we can't track a known activist group that does this, what are our long term odds of tracking an unknown terror group with good opsec (signal, decentralized org, etc), with 100% success rate? Your comparison to virology fits here, and the two (nuke vs. dangerous medicine) seem to be treated differently in this regard, and that scares me, for one.
During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents, just a lot of concern about this hypothetical situation. To me it seems that Ukraine is trying to use nuclear concerns to stall the war and gain more international support.
Arguably the only reason this war is possible is because Germany shutdown all their nuclear plants (there are a few plants left slated to be closed this year) and now rely on Russia for oil & gas. The existing sanctions are hurting, but Russia is still collecting hundreds of millions of dollars a day in oil & gas revenue. That revenue has actually gone up dramatically during the war due to increased gas & oil prices.
Your concern is real, and we should do more to secure our nuclear power from accidents, but in practice energy dependence seems a greater threat to global security than nuclear power plant terrorism (also consider that there is some relation between Iraq exporting oil and wars occurring there). Similarly, the use of coal (which would be unnecessary with more nuclear production) is responsible for a much greater reduction of life span than terrorist attacks and nuclear accidents.
> During this war there has not been legitimate danger of nuclear accidents
By all accounts, the Russian forces fired missiles at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, and there was a fire on site. I too was somewhat dismissive of the "omg Chernobyl 2.0" rhetoric. It's a PWR, much newer design, quite like most Western PWR designs, with containment, and a lot more passive safety features than something like the RBMKs at Chernobyl. The likely outcome of a missile hitting the containment building itself is a wasted missile, and something hitting the cooling or support facilities would lead most likely to a power cut, not a meltdown, and even if there was a meltdown, it would likely be largely contained.
Still. I do think it's fair to say that firing missiles and causing explosions and/or fires at an operating nuclear power plant has some degree of very real risk of causing a nuclear accident.
They didn't actually fire missiles at the power plant. Instead a building on the premises that is not near the reactors was hit. If this was due to the Russians firing carelessly at the Ukranians then I agree there is some danger the projectile could have landed somewhere else and created actual risk of a nuclear accident.
It does seem there was very careless firing by the Russians that was targeted at Ukranians. They don't seem to have been targeting the plant in any way, but their firing could have easily damaged the plant further if the Ukranians had taken position deeper inside it. It doesn't seem there was any danger of breaching the nuclear reactor itself, but there was danger of destroying the subsystems required for safe operation of the reactor.
Obviously Russia is the one starting a war and being careless here, but it also does seem Ukraine should not station troops inside a nuclear facility but instead maintain their troops a good distance away from it.
Over the last week, workers have been tortured at this plant by the Russian occupiers. Vehicles are coming in and out of the exclusion zone, tracking radioactive materials all over Ukraine. The spent fuel is not be an issue (yet), as long as Russians hold their fire. This is all getting extremely serious - and I hope the world can one day say "we did everything we could to help Ukraine", because at the moment they certainly can't.
Source: me (and others of course)
(I'm sure deep in my comment history here there will be something about me formerly running tours at Chernobyl, I have a lot of contacts, I have met in person with two Chernobyl workers here in Kyiv just today - and I only post information I know to be 100% accurate)
> Over the last week, workers have been tortured at this plant by the Russian occupiers
I would really like to see proof for that. Not necessarily because I don't believe it, but because anecdotes backed by facts or sources are way more powerful than a random comment on HN.
>> Over the last week, workers have been tortured at this plant by the Russian occupiers
> I would really like to see proof for that. Not necessarily because I don't believe it, but because anecdotes backed by facts or sources are way more powerful than a random comment on HN.
If there's proof, you probably won't see it for months or years, at least. It's not like the Russians are going to let BBC reporters embed with their interrogation units.
The kind of military units that hold people prisoner and compel their labor are notorious for letting international reporters in to observe conditions. I'm sure you'll get your news report shortly!
> and I hope the world can one day say "we did everything we could to help Ukraine", because at the moment they certainly can't.
I've been getting some vibes from Ukraine today and yesterday - also from the president himself - that are leaning towards anti-NATO or anti-EU, because besides (some) military aid, supplies, refugees and heavy sanctions that barrel Russia into an economic crisis, they haven't interfered in the actual conflict yet.
I get that this is upsetting.
But I also understand that if NATO involves themselves more directly, the conflict will escalate - and given the apparent state and losses of Russia facing the Ukranian defenses, the escalation will involve nukes. Nobody wins then. Kyiv will be one of the first cities to be targeted, out of spite.
I much prefer Russia to be humiliated and go bankrupt and hopefully end up with political reforms and the deposing of their leader than an escalation.
If the EU contributed conventional only weapons and personnel to be used only as territorial defense in Ukraine, that is, never shooting a single shell outside of Ukraine, Russians would still have a hard time justifying going at war with the EU, NATO, let alone using nukes.
My point is that there's still some room left to help Ukraine militarily without serving Putin the pretext to declare war around the world. Sanctions need a lot of time to become really effective and something must be done to buy Ukrainians more time. I don't see what could be more effective than military help.
Perhaps the "anti" vibes are being mis-interpreted as "you're not doing enough" vibes.
It's clear to me that Russia needs to be stopped sooner rather than later (this has been clear since the first days of this war - when civilians were being specifically targeted). Putin only becomes more and more emboldened as time marches on. It just keeps getting worse. We don't necessarily get to choose how war will/won't escalate - however IMHO, bombing (for example) a maternity hospital in Europe should be enough reason to unconditionally help.
BTW, the Russian people, by any measure, are majority behind the actions in Ukraine.
> and I hope the world can one day say "we did everything we could to help Ukraine", because at the moment they certainly can't.
And what about you? Can you say your country, or your world, did everything it could to help the victims from other wars, some of which are ongoing too?
>and I hope the world can one day say "we did everything we could to help Ukraine", because at the moment they certainly can't.
I get you're not happy, and I'm also unhappy at our shitty European leaders who got cozy with Putin and got us dependent on their gas imports instead of going for energy self sufficiency like the US, so our heating bills were basically funding his war machine which is now being used against you, but claiming we're not doing everything we could is a bit exaggerated, no offence.
We obviously can't mobilize NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, but in Romania, Moldova and other not so wealthy neighboring countries, people are offering their cars and homes for the Ukrainian refugees for free, and the entire West public and private sector, has been helping Ukraine fend off Russia's cyber attacks on your country since the war started, with the US and Microsoft leading the charge and even Romania joining in[1].
I honestly hope the sanctions are hurting Russia enough to back off soon because I don't know what more we can do to help you without straight up going to war.
I know, but it's not like we (the average people) have much choice in the matter. Our stupid politicians screwed us over (and you too) and got us addicted to Russian gas over the course of decades, instead of pursuing nuclear energy double time.
Now, we can't just flip the gas switch off without society collapsing from massiv energy shortages. It will take many years until the dependency to Russian gas is reduced and by that time Ukraine might not be in one piece.
> UN nuclear watchdog says Chernobyl power cut has no critical impact on safety
The loss of power at the Chernobyl plant does not have any critical impact on safety at the site, the UN’s nuclear watchdog says.
> The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tweeted that the “heat load of spent fuel storage pool and volume of cooling water at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant [are] sufficient for effective heat removal without [the] need for electrical supply”.
Doesn't look much like a prophecy considering all the analysis by experts. Unless something more drastic happens, the plant will be fine. (The obvious caveat here is that even experts can be wrong but let's hope they're not.)
I recall there being lots of "experts" around during the Fukushima disaster, explaining that there's nothing to worry about (because insert explanation of safety mechanisms in a modern reactor that either weren't there at all or were not working).
I hope the experts this time around actually know what they're talking about. It's hard to tell armchair experts and real experts apart.
Are you are arriving at the conclusion that I'm calling people idiots because I say that scared people watch the news more often? People get scared because no one can be informed 100% of time about 100% of the topics.
When I say that scared people watch the news more often I count myself included, since this damn invasion happened I have some news channel 100% of the time because I want to know what hell is going to happen, if I have to stock up or if I need to build a damn nuclear shelter.
I do think that a big chunk of the news media is composed of a band of ruthless, unethical pieces of garbage.
Russia has a military doctrine of "Escalate to De-escalate" that they adopted in the year 2000 to deal with superior forces of NATO.
Basically the idea is that by escalating violence, threats, and otherwise increasing "risk" for the other side they can force a negotiated settlement that would be superior to what their actual bargaining position is. At the extreme, this is why Russian military doctrine allows the use of tactical nuclear weapons as they provide a last stop for negotiation before runaway Mutually Assured Destruction scenarios.
> According to several reports, including by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as a result of the effectiveness and acceptability of USAF use of precision munitions with little collateral damage in the Kosovo conflict in what amounted to strategic destruction once only possible with nuclear weapons or massive bombing, Vladimir Putin, then-secretary of Security Council of Russia, formulated a concept ("escalate to de-escalate") of using both tactical and strategic nuclear threats and strikes to de-escalate or cause an enemy to disengage from a conventional conflict threatening what Russia considers a strategic interest.[21][22][23] The lowered threshold for use of nuclear weapons by Russia is disputed by other experts.[24][25]
We're only 15 days into this conflict and it's already the largest war in Europe since 1945. It's highly unlikely that we've seen the peak of the conflict. The recent concerns on fighter jet deployment to Ukraine likely indicate that the EU and US are concerned that Russia may yet escalate further.
If it is not generating its own power for remaining operations (cooling etc.) then they could tell by reading a drop in drawn power from whatever the usual external source is?
One of the things I learned here is that Chernobyl still requires active cooling to some extent.
The failure modes of nuclear fission power are just insane. Yes I think it's true that coal has killed far more people, but the economic cost of just one fission plant failure is so high that one serious incident destroys the economics of the entire program. It also tends to make fission power privately uninsurable since once incident would bankrupt the insurance company within weeks.
How much renewable energy and storage could you buy for the containment and cleanup cost associated with Fukushima?
Other comments imply that the nuclear rods have been inactive for 20 years, and that passive - or even air - cooling will be fine. There won't be any runaway reactions or additional meltdowns, if that's correct.
If ineffective, because the IAEA and co have already indicated the risk of incidents is low. Same with the other nuclear power plant being captured; at this point I'd say the danger of Russia launching nukes is a tad bit higher than a nuclear power plant.
Besides, don't nuclear power plants have safeties built in these days in case of power loss or a lack of attendants? I've pulled up the article about control rods, if I'm reading it correctly, if inserted fully they should stop the reaction. I presume nuclear reactors have failsafes so that the control rods are inserted fully in case of incident.
The details not sure but you know they use graphite in those days that get into big trouble. Just melt down is problem. But explosion then spread out. Not sure these cool down of rods of 21 years have year. Hope not.
There are at least three different actually deployed methods for doing so, all with working principles older than nuclear. If you want to be in an energy debate knowing them is not hard.
I have to downvote you, because requiring others to spend their time explaining basic technologies as a rhetorical tactic is *rude*.
Electric heat is great, actually. My house has a heat pump and it’s terrific. It’s a mini split system so each room has a wall-mounted head that circulates hot or cold air, with a large compressor outside. The system is quiet, efficient, and clean, in fact, it’s much cleaner than ducted systems because there are no ducts to bring dirty particles in. It can be expensive when it’s cold out, but total cost of keeping the house cool and warm averages out to be a pretty good deal.
Houses here actually get support from the state for such heat pumps.
Unfortunately it doesn't help most of the citizens of Germany since most of them rent in cities and don't live in houses where they can decide and install easily.
Sounds like that's a better spot to be in for a big push to deploy heat pumps since the property owners have greater assets & financial acumen than the average homeowner in many places so you can work with one entity on upgrades to a number of households at a time. The government could announce a big program to fund upgrades, make massive order commitments with the major manufacturers so they scale up production immediately, and negotiate with installers to hire & train more staff.
The government already does that and the market for those is huge, people who can install them are in high demand. It's happening and has been for years now but this is not Luxemburg. It takes a lot of time to switch 75% of the whole population over to new heating even if everybody would do it and if it would be possible everywhere. Which it isn't. This just not a relevant time frame or topic for the conspiracy OP wanted to push here.
And already working, here in France the main leftist candidate (JL. Mélenchon) has used these events as definitive proof nuclear energy is not sustainable (France's presidential elections are taking place next month), anti-nuclear rhetoric has been one of his hobby-horses for a while now, conflating civil nuclear with military.
We are still nuclear free too - and we still don't have many military visits to our ports or marine territory considering it's illegal to have a ship or submarine with nuclear weapons or reactor. most navies won't tell you if they have nuclear weapons/reactors so basically they're not allowed here.
(but really, what are we gonna do? we have like two boats.) ;-)
France is almost completely unapologetic over any of it's past actions. They will issue lowkey official apologies, like they did to new Zealand in 2015 but nothing will change and no one will be prosecuted.
If anything, there is a huge desire to "go back to the glory days". It's pretty much the only country that is still so brazenly colonial (the concept of a francafrique is not even subject to any debate there) and they are regularly pulling "rainbow warrior" types of actions in africa even now. A good example is their complete control on Ivory Coast politics to the point of violently interfering when things don't go their way.
They even had generals openly admit on TV that they greenlit almost every type of war crimes in Algeria, with nothing of consequence happening to them even after their own confession. The past is the past, right?
So yeah I wouldn't hold my breath over the deportations happening anytime soon.
He's a running joke though. His stance on many things is outright ridiculous ( like the EU) and he doesn't stand any chance of getting actually elected. He also had very dubious stances on Russia before the invasion of Ukraine ( he's of course changed course). Nobody is taking his position on nuclear seriously. I hope.
I had no idea that Chernobyl nuclear plant was still operational after the accident, with 3 remaining reactors. The last one was shut down in 2000. Operators were comming there every day for work, nuts!
> After the explosion at reactor No. 4, the remaining three reactors at the power plant continued to operate, as the Soviet Union could not afford to shut the plant down.
> …. In October 1991, reactor No. 2 caught fire, and was subsequently shut down.
I always assumed it was totally abandoned after the accident, barring the cleanup work.
Not for reactors that have been shut down for more than 20 years. Decay heat removal from a shut down reactor is an issue for days or perhaps weeks after shutdown, not years.
165 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 237 ms ] threadThinking that putin is crazy is actually a result of talking about all this properly. Because no one in the world can find another explanation.
Chernobyl has been in Russian control since the second or third day of the war. Strategically it is a pathway between Kyiv and Russia. I doubt Russia wants to destroy it, it'll do way more harm to Russia than anyone else, but this is a war and infrastructure is being destroyed.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-without-evidence...
https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp does that, also for free.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/04/1046794/the-acti...
Time will tell how it all plays out, though personally I suspect this perspective will be more right than wrong.
It's not a short term proposition, but it's something that ought to be taken into account when e.g. considering how governments allocate subsidies or weigh long-term energy strategies (as Germany is doing now). Any initiative that strengthens the global market for oil and gas has a side effect of destabilizing the rules-based world order.
It's not a bad idea to do it regardless, but you're just trading bad for bad if your primary reason for doing so is to avoid naughty governments.
I'm curious — do you prefer e.g. the Chinese governance model over the democratic model? I'm getting the feeling you believe that autocracy is inevitable and unstoppable, and I wonder if you believe that that fate is also desirable.
The cases where they have been demonstrably effective are comparatively few, and the geopolitical circumstances are substantially different in those than now with Russia invading Ukraine.
Pretending that massively investing in solar, wind and EVs will absolve us of dependency on autocratic regimes is just intellectually dishonest- we are merely trading one for another.
For the record, I do support temporarily ceasing the purchase of oil from Russia. Buying more oil from Venezuela, Iran or Saudi Arabia is not a long term answer, or rare earth metals from China (who is notably not participating in sanctions). Though Russia has yet to ramp up production, they will also become a key player in a post-fossil-fuel world as they are thought to have a full quarter of the accessible supply.
Now the question should be, will following through on the threat mitigate the harm now or in the future? Against Russia, my guess is no. They also haven't been successful against Iran or any number of other counties.
It might be said that the effectiveness of sanctions is entirely reliant upon being able to keep a weak nation weak, rather than preventing a strong nation from preying upon weaker neighbors.
That said, Putin's approval ratings have always been extremely high for a leader, and war (one where you largely control the narrative in your country no less) has been a pretty consistent winner in gaining leaders popularity.
Is there any way to believe such a number? Isn't all independent media in Russia now banned or in hiding?
Like, I just don't see any way this could be reliably measured. If I lived in Russia and someone asked me, of course I'd say that I support the guy, I don't want to go to prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_George_W._Bush
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html
You can't trust polling numbers out of Russia but there is historical context for these types of full scale invasions to bring up approval ratings.
I keep hearing this, and yet, the NYT and the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons both confirmed that there were chemical weapons in Iraq:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/world/middleeast/question...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/world/middleeast/thousand...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/03/world/middlee...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middlee...
Did the NYT issue a retraction when I wasn't looking?
This is delusional. There's not enough talent nor capital to replace everything from Caterpillar to Xbox, and much of what's considered domestic is partially or fully imported, eg https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1501361272230752262
Much crazier things have happened than revitalization of national industry. Whether their leadership has the intelligence and will to do this is of course another matter.
It seems that certain kinds of economic integration such as supply-chain interdependence offer more leverage, while other kinds of integration such as buying oil and gas offer less.
Ronald McDonald has killed more people than putin, and even more than all the american presidents combined, so this is not that bad for russian health and obesity issues.
The answer seems to be: not really enough to worry about.
Here is a post about this by IEAA from March 3rd.
https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-8-iaea-...
"Due to time elapsed since the 1986 Chornobyl accident, the heat load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water contained in the pool is sufficient to maintain effective heat removal without the need for electrical supply."
If the fuel rods are stored indoors, that building will already be on fire before the rods get that hot.
If the rods aren’t in an enclosed volume, any hydrogen would rapidly diffuse. Eventually it would either oxidise (too spread out for “burn” to feel like the right word) or escape into space.
If they’re in a building which is on fire and while it’s on fire someone sprays water on them, then they’ll produce hydrogen.
IDK if that hydrogen would burn away fast enough to not be an explosion hazard or build up enough that it is, but it shouldn’t come up anyway because any firefighters on site ought to know not to use water in that situation.
"The spent fuel rods are over 20 years old and have very little heat to dissipate. In most plants, spent fuel that is more than 5 years old sits in dry storage cooled easily by air. Also RBMK (Chernobyl reactor type) has lower burnup than other reactor types, thus lower decay heat."
"There are indeed 20k old fuel rods in a pool. Their heat is low enough that experts I've talked to expect weeks or even months to heat the water enough to dry out the pool. Even then, natural air circulation should be sufficient."
For now I wonder when this will happen.
If you're worried about nuclear catastrophe, the taking of the Zaporizhzhia power plant is far more concerning. Russians hit one of the buildings with rocket fire. It turned out to be a training building and not one of the reactors. We have to ask if that was deliberate or if everyone (the Russians included) just got lucky. Taking this power plant gave Russian forces control over a quarter of Ukraine's power generation, which has obvious strategic value. Ukrainian forces are also unlikely to counter-attack directly, for obvious reasons, so it should be easy for the Russians to hold. Finally, taking this plant hostage dealt a huge psychological blow to a country that remembers the Chernobyl incident.
Where is Moscow geographically, in relation to Ukraine?
What is the nature of an incident at a nuclear power plant that makes it concerning for neighbors potentially for thousands of miles around?
a whole nuke for a false flag seems less feasible though, for many reasons.
anyone can build a suicide vest or IED. it's much harder to attribute than a nuke. even if you have the uranium, you need precisely-shaped explosive lenses and lots of machined parts for a regular atomic bomb, not to mention tritium and highly-classified knowledge for hydrogen bombs. you also can't covertly test it. even if you had a nuke that got lost in the 90s, you would need to replace its tritium , and likely other components. even after all that, you might be able to attribute the radioactive material by analyzing isotopes from the fallout. it'd just be a monumental stretch to claim the Ukrainians somehow assembled their own nuke in a matter of weeks. even with Russia's propaganda I can't see anyone inside the country or out buying it.
a dirty bomb (the rumor Putin is running) is more feasible, since it's just a conventional bomb with radioactive shrapnel. but that's much less dramatic, and would be feasible to clean up without incurring many casualties, unless it's air-dropped. so I don't think a dirty bomb would be cause for thermonuclear retaliation - it plays more like using a chemical weapon.
also, as crazy as Putin is, I have a hard time believing anyone at FSB would follow an order to nuke their own citizens.
That said, I don't see why people domestically wouldn't buy it. They could spin any number of stories, such as that a corrupt/kidnapped military/government official allowed the weapon to escape Russian custody and detonation control.
Or they could just lie. Some fraction of people will believe it, either because they are not nuclear experts, or because it's repeated so often they'll start believing it eventually.
One of the apartment bombings used RDX, a tightly controlled explosive only made in one factory in Russia. Compare this to the Oklahoma City bombing in the US. It used ANFO, an explosive made from ingredients commonly found on farms.
You couldn't blame a random terrorist, but you can point to the mushroom cloud and say "NATO did it" pretty convincingly on Russian state TV.
https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-power-plant/nuclear-fu...
Then you end up with self-driving cars that run over and kill innocent people and reactors that melt down because they didn't think of something.
Yes, but the converse is not true: when one <hand-waves how something bad won't/can't happen>, it does not necessarily mean that <there will be a design failure>.
You are trying to say that act A causes consequence B because many instances of B correlate with A. That is not sound.
No, there haven't been in slightly over 20 years.
What if a warring nation destroyed a hydroelectric dam and it flooded an entire town? Does this mean we should give up on hydro power?
What would happen if a terrorist gained access to your city's water treatment facility and contaminated it with a bioweapon resistant to chlorine? Does this mean we shouldn't have water delivery for our cities?
What would happen if a terrorist or warring nation gained access to your country's institute of virology where you are performing gain-of-function research, and they unleash a superbug you didn't intend into the population? Should we not perform medical science then?
What would happen if you built a really tall building and a terrorist decided to fly an airplane into it? Should we not build tall buildings anymore?
The newer technologies, with the much smaller reactor cores can greatly limit the destructive capabilities even to the point where a meltdown caused by some unforseen event will be entirely containable.
Almost all interesting tech we're playing with lately does not fall in this category... and there's nothing we can do about it, that's the evolution of tech.
When interstellar-spaceships will be built, they'll practically be equivalent to "planet destroying nukes" and pretty sure accidents will happen (eg. fully scortching a planet inhabited by a few billions). AI if something ~human-level gets capable of a stretch of exponential self-improvement will be similar, but that will probably be the end of bio-humans and nothing we can do about it so no need to worry (just focus on making sure important human knowledge gets passed on to our non-human descendants).
Only way to mitigate this is to DISPERSE (establish colonies on multiple planets) and MULTIPLY (so that an accident with eg. a 99% lethality thing still leaves enough humans around to maintain a technological civilization preserving the knowledge of our ancestors). We're a bloody virus, so better embrace our nature and start to act like an effective one. There's genocide in our pasts, and there's likely exponentially more genocide in our future, we need to be resilient and accept (mass) death as part of our techno-evolution...
That doesn't mean nuclear technology doesn't have advantages. It very much has. Arguably, it's both the cleanest and most consistent way of energy production at the same time.
The trade-off is security, as mentioned by the commenter, is security. If society decides to invest in nuclear energy, it has to be willing to accept the consequences of that choice.
The technology isn't "bad" in and of itself. It's context and intentions leveraging said technology which shifts perceptions towards "good" or "bad". If the Russians would clearly recognize the challenges associated with securing a captured nuclear power plant, and take them to heart, the conversation would steer into a different direction.
But the difference between hydro, tall buildings, etc is the critical physical security aspect nuke plants have. I agree with the point that the nuke plants seem to be capable of pretty safe operations.
But, using the 40 years of activism from the Plowshares movement[0] as one example, doesn't seem like we're capable of securing the plants from "terrorists" with the no-fail rate that I'd somewhat want for nuke physical security. As recently as '12, Oak Ridge of all places was broken into via Plowshares activists.
So if we can't track a known activist group that does this, what are our long term odds of tracking an unknown terror group with good opsec (signal, decentralized org, etc), with 100% success rate? Your comparison to virology fits here, and the two (nuke vs. dangerous medicine) seem to be treated differently in this regard, and that scares me, for one.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plowshares_movementhttps://en....
Arguably the only reason this war is possible is because Germany shutdown all their nuclear plants (there are a few plants left slated to be closed this year) and now rely on Russia for oil & gas. The existing sanctions are hurting, but Russia is still collecting hundreds of millions of dollars a day in oil & gas revenue. That revenue has actually gone up dramatically during the war due to increased gas & oil prices.
Your concern is real, and we should do more to secure our nuclear power from accidents, but in practice energy dependence seems a greater threat to global security than nuclear power plant terrorism (also consider that there is some relation between Iraq exporting oil and wars occurring there). Similarly, the use of coal (which would be unnecessary with more nuclear production) is responsible for a much greater reduction of life span than terrorist attacks and nuclear accidents.
By all accounts, the Russian forces fired missiles at the Zaporizhzhia power plant, and there was a fire on site. I too was somewhat dismissive of the "omg Chernobyl 2.0" rhetoric. It's a PWR, much newer design, quite like most Western PWR designs, with containment, and a lot more passive safety features than something like the RBMKs at Chernobyl. The likely outcome of a missile hitting the containment building itself is a wasted missile, and something hitting the cooling or support facilities would lead most likely to a power cut, not a meltdown, and even if there was a meltdown, it would likely be largely contained.
Still. I do think it's fair to say that firing missiles and causing explosions and/or fires at an operating nuclear power plant has some degree of very real risk of causing a nuclear accident.
It does seem there was very careless firing by the Russians that was targeted at Ukranians. They don't seem to have been targeting the plant in any way, but their firing could have easily damaged the plant further if the Ukranians had taken position deeper inside it. It doesn't seem there was any danger of breaching the nuclear reactor itself, but there was danger of destroying the subsystems required for safe operation of the reactor.
Obviously Russia is the one starting a war and being careless here, but it also does seem Ukraine should not station troops inside a nuclear facility but instead maintain their troops a good distance away from it.
Source: me (and others of course)
(I'm sure deep in my comment history here there will be something about me formerly running tours at Chernobyl, I have a lot of contacts, I have met in person with two Chernobyl workers here in Kyiv just today - and I only post information I know to be 100% accurate)
Hello from Kyiv.
I would really like to see proof for that. Not necessarily because I don't believe it, but because anecdotes backed by facts or sources are way more powerful than a random comment on HN.
> I would really like to see proof for that. Not necessarily because I don't believe it, but because anecdotes backed by facts or sources are way more powerful than a random comment on HN.
If there's proof, you probably won't see it for months or years, at least. It's not like the Russians are going to let BBC reporters embed with their interrogation units.
I've been getting some vibes from Ukraine today and yesterday - also from the president himself - that are leaning towards anti-NATO or anti-EU, because besides (some) military aid, supplies, refugees and heavy sanctions that barrel Russia into an economic crisis, they haven't interfered in the actual conflict yet.
I get that this is upsetting.
But I also understand that if NATO involves themselves more directly, the conflict will escalate - and given the apparent state and losses of Russia facing the Ukranian defenses, the escalation will involve nukes. Nobody wins then. Kyiv will be one of the first cities to be targeted, out of spite.
I much prefer Russia to be humiliated and go bankrupt and hopefully end up with political reforms and the deposing of their leader than an escalation.
It's clear to me that Russia needs to be stopped sooner rather than later (this has been clear since the first days of this war - when civilians were being specifically targeted). Putin only becomes more and more emboldened as time marches on. It just keeps getting worse. We don't necessarily get to choose how war will/won't escalate - however IMHO, bombing (for example) a maternity hospital in Europe should be enough reason to unconditionally help.
BTW, the Russian people, by any measure, are majority behind the actions in Ukraine.
Hello from Kyiv (my home, but I am not Ukrainian)
And what about you? Can you say your country, or your world, did everything it could to help the victims from other wars, some of which are ongoing too?
I get you're not happy, and I'm also unhappy at our shitty European leaders who got cozy with Putin and got us dependent on their gas imports instead of going for energy self sufficiency like the US, so our heating bills were basically funding his war machine which is now being used against you, but claiming we're not doing everything we could is a bit exaggerated, no offence.
We obviously can't mobilize NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, but in Romania, Moldova and other not so wealthy neighboring countries, people are offering their cars and homes for the Ukrainian refugees for free, and the entire West public and private sector, has been helping Ukraine fend off Russia's cyber attacks on your country since the war started, with the US and Microsoft leading the charge and even Romania joining in[1].
I honestly hope the sanctions are hurting Russia enough to back off soon because I don't know what more we can do to help you without straight up going to war.
[1] https://www.bitdefender.com/ukraine/
You said it yourself - you are FUNDING this war.
Honestly, no offense taken.
I know, but it's not like we (the average people) have much choice in the matter. Our stupid politicians screwed us over (and you too) and got us addicted to Russian gas over the course of decades, instead of pursuing nuclear energy double time.
Now, we can't just flip the gas switch off without society collapsing from massiv energy shortages. It will take many years until the dependency to Russian gas is reduced and by that time Ukraine might not be in one piece.
> The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tweeted that the “heat load of spent fuel storage pool and volume of cooling water at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant [are] sufficient for effective heat removal without [the] need for electrical supply”.
Now it looks like it was a prophecy. I wonder if the Strelok is alive today?
I hope the experts this time around actually know what they're talking about. It's hard to tell armchair experts and real experts apart.
scared people watch the news more often.
When I say that scared people watch the news more often I count myself included, since this damn invasion happened I have some news channel 100% of the time because I want to know what hell is going to happen, if I have to stock up or if I need to build a damn nuclear shelter.
I do think that a big chunk of the news media is composed of a band of ruthless, unethical pieces of garbage.
Basically the idea is that by escalating violence, threats, and otherwise increasing "risk" for the other side they can force a negotiated settlement that would be superior to what their actual bargaining position is. At the extreme, this is why Russian military doctrine allows the use of tactical nuclear weapons as they provide a last stop for negotiation before runaway Mutually Assured Destruction scenarios.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_nuclear_weapon#Risk_o...
> According to several reports, including by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, as a result of the effectiveness and acceptability of USAF use of precision munitions with little collateral damage in the Kosovo conflict in what amounted to strategic destruction once only possible with nuclear weapons or massive bombing, Vladimir Putin, then-secretary of Security Council of Russia, formulated a concept ("escalate to de-escalate") of using both tactical and strategic nuclear threats and strikes to de-escalate or cause an enemy to disengage from a conventional conflict threatening what Russia considers a strategic interest.[21][22][23] The lowered threshold for use of nuclear weapons by Russia is disputed by other experts.[24][25]
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60638949
The failure modes of nuclear fission power are just insane. Yes I think it's true that coal has killed far more people, but the economic cost of just one fission plant failure is so high that one serious incident destroys the economics of the entire program. It also tends to make fission power privately uninsurable since once incident would bankrupt the insurance company within weeks.
How much renewable energy and storage could you buy for the containment and cleanup cost associated with Fukushima?
Besides, don't nuclear power plants have safeties built in these days in case of power loss or a lack of attendants? I've pulled up the article about control rods, if I'm reading it correctly, if inserted fully they should stop the reaction. I presume nuclear reactors have failsafes so that the control rods are inserted fully in case of incident.
This nuclear Astro-Turf is really jumping the shark these days...
You think this is in any realistic way affordable or even doable in a significant time? Seriously?
[1]https://de.statista.com/infografik/11385/art-der-heizung-und...
Most of them rent a flat[2] in a city [3].
So heat pumps are nice and you even get money from the state to install them but they're not doable by most of the people.
[1] https://de.statista.com/infografik/11385/art-der-heizung-und...
[2] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/171237/umfrag...
[3] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/152879/umfrag...
I have to downvote you, because requiring others to spend their time explaining basic technologies as a rhetorical tactic is *rude*.
Unfortunately it doesn't help most of the citizens of Germany since most of them rent in cities and don't live in houses where they can decide and install easily.
We are still nuclear free too - and we still don't have many military visits to our ports or marine territory considering it's illegal to have a ship or submarine with nuclear weapons or reactor. most navies won't tell you if they have nuclear weapons/reactors so basically they're not allowed here.
(but really, what are we gonna do? we have like two boats.) ;-)
If anything, there is a huge desire to "go back to the glory days". It's pretty much the only country that is still so brazenly colonial (the concept of a francafrique is not even subject to any debate there) and they are regularly pulling "rainbow warrior" types of actions in africa even now. A good example is their complete control on Ivory Coast politics to the point of violently interfering when things don't go their way.
They even had generals openly admit on TV that they greenlit almost every type of war crimes in Algeria, with nothing of consequence happening to them even after their own confession. The past is the past, right?
So yeah I wouldn't hold my breath over the deportations happening anytime soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
From your link:
> After the explosion at reactor No. 4, the remaining three reactors at the power plant continued to operate, as the Soviet Union could not afford to shut the plant down.
> …. In October 1991, reactor No. 2 caught fire, and was subsequently shut down.
I always assumed it was totally abandoned after the accident, barring the cleanup work.
> IAEA sees no critical impact on safety.