Chernobyl Revisted: The Human Toll

“These are pretty intense. I didn't make it all the way through.

http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/?GT1=8019”

“human troll? a lot of those around here”

“ya, i know what you mean.

http://www.thebackpacker.com/trailtalk/thread/17594,3.php”

“OK. next time I log in can I get an update of what's been posted? I mean throw me a frikken bone, people!”

“BTW - I forced myself through all of them. I think everyone should see them. Not sure I want to see them again”

“we HAVE to see united 93
we HAVE to see chernobyl victims

you people are sadists today”

“Sheep are being contaminated still, 20 years later...

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10393-chernobyl-haunts-the-norwegian-uplands.html”

“And your point is????

Lets remember this was a nuke facility like NONE in the West, it had no containment enclosure, it used an outdated and poorly designed load and unload system and was run by the best that the Socialist Paradise could give us (LOL).

Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen. You need to contrast it with the design and operation of nuke facilities in the west. The sad truth is if this nation had a few more nuke reactors turning out power our dependence on oil would drop.”

“Mushrooms draw radioactivity from soil faster than anything else? That's interesting.”

“UM...tree...would that do something special to the mushrooms?”

“"According to the UN 7 million people are affected, half of which are children."

7 million people know about it and think it's sad? There's not anywhere close to 7 million sick, according to the UN.

"In Belarus alone, almost 5 thousand children are victims of Chernobyl."

True. Children 0-15 years old who breathed the radioactive iodine that was in the air during the first ~month and a half after the accident have developed thyroid cancer - of which very few have died, but many have had their thyroids removed and require medication for life.

While I think 13 Chernobyl-style reactors continue to operate in the old soviet block, there is nothing like them in the western world. The last one in the US was a plutonium breeder at Hanford, WA that shut down in the 80's. The French experimented with this style reactor in the 60's, but melted some fuel and wisely went with an American pressurized water design for their reactor fleet that provides most of their electricity. They've never had an accident with these reactors.

The nasty thing about Chernobyl is that they burned their reactor for 10 days, sending all that nastyness into the atmosphere. The most deadly isotopes decayed within a few months, but there is a lot of caesium contamination locally that will be significant for 200 years.

But keep in mind that the area around Chernobyl has been economically depressed for hundreds of years and there has always been more sick people there than other places. When the government is offering money for people who are sick, don't you think the line gets really long? The World Health Organization (dozens of countries offering grants to researchers) doesn't back up the anecdotal claims that get into the small-time media. While the incidence of leukemia was expected to rise based on Hiroshima studies, that has never happened. Other than thyoid cancer, diseases are happening at pretty much the normal rate.

The Chernobyl story has always been fascinating to me as a worker at an American nuclear plant. I'm confident that most of what we hear is emotion without scientific basis. While the laws of physics prevent the same thing from happening at one of the commercial U.S. plants, it could happen again at one of those shoddy Russian RBMK plants.
last edited: 10/30/06 9:08:43 AM”

“But...the libbies told us the Communist/Socialist way was the perfect way...they were going to defeat us militarily and scientifically...do you mean the media lied....? Nah...you mean the Soviets weren't the worker's paradise they told us?”

“Well, XL, I was just reporting an interesting fact and wasn't expecting to get into yet another 2-week discussion about why nukes just aren't the solution to global warming or our dependence on oil. I know you've seen my discussions about this very subject in the past with Sarge...

I really wish they were the answer. It would be great to go the route France has (which now gets 80% of its electricity from nukes), and fire up a few dozen new reactors so we can thumb our noses at OPEC and become Kyoto-compliant.

Chernobyl is the most dramatic example of what can go wrong with nukes. Its on the far end of the bell curve. Its all the other nukes in operation today, sitting in the middle of the bell curve that are the problem. It doesn't matter if we are talking poorly designed reactors like Chernobyl, or theoretically well-designed reactors like the light water reactors in use in the US today. They all have the same problems that make them dirtier than coal, and use more resources than all the electricity they produce in their lifetime. They aren't the pollution-free, free energy solution the world hoped they would be 30 years ago.”

“the banning of nuke plants has destroyed the environment”

“No, humans have destroyed the environment, and it only took 100 years.”

“No, I'm right. You're wrong.”

“< fingers in ears >

la-la-la-la-la-la




^ joke above
Glad to see you can have some fun now, Sarge.

:-)”

“radioactive sludge is totally cool and fun to play with.”

“Save energy by mixing it with Playdoh and letting the kids play with it in the dark.”

“tech you are right I remember when the predicted the world would be destroyed in 15 years....lets see that was in 1980's..yeop right on target.

Why can't you realize that Global Warming is a religion not a fact?”

“Glad to see you can have some fun now, Sarge.

Nothing has changed since November of last year.”

“"Chernobyl is the most dramatic example of what can go wrong with nukes. Its on the far end of the bell curve. Its all the other nukes in operation today, sitting in the middle of the bell curve that are the problem. It doesn't matter if we are talking poorly designed reactors like Chernobyl, or theoretically well-designed reactors like the light water reactors in use in the US today."

So the problem was not the poorly-designed Pintos that exploded in a fire ball when rear-ended - it was all the other cars that never had that problem?

That's the most stupifying argument I've seen on the internet in a while.”

“Toe jam, thats like using the Saddle Bag test that 60 minutes did and claiming all pickups are poorly designed...you are using FLAWED (sadly liberal) logic to condemn the entire industry.
If we used that theory every time the libbie ideas crashed (as they do all too frequently) the libbies would be jumping off buildings left and right...hmm kinda a neat idea.”

“let's look at Mexican plastic surgeons and judge them all by that example

let's look at Jerry Springer and judge all television by that standard

let's look at Air America and judge all talk radio by that standard

let's look at USA on trailtalk and judge all liberals by that standard

let's look at Hillary Clinton and judge female sexuality by that standard

come on guys - let's get real here”

“let's look at Hillary Clinton and judge female sexuality by that standard
moonglo
8:49:20 AM
10/31/06
I hope you have money Moonglo, because that's going to take a lot of therapy to get those images out of my mind.
”

“Yeah thanks Sarge....Lumber the only way to get rid of the visual is to give it back....

Margaret Thatcher naked in the snow....”

“"Margaret Thatcher naked in the snow...."

Buns-up kneelin'...............oh yeah!!”

“They should create another slide-show that shows people with asthma because of coal burning power plants or people with black lung disease because they mine coal.

Based on some stats that I've seen it isn't even close which is better. Coal plants kill people, but it's hidden because the impact is spread across a wide area, it's hard to track and it's usually a contributing factor among several.

The real course of action is to diversify. We should have some nuke plants, some coal plants, some dams, some wind and solar, some biofuels, etc.

And, of course, we should reduce use.”

“reducing useage only extends the inevitable

by using it at an alarming rate, we are more able to scare the begeebus out of people to find alternatives”

“I thought Bill Maher had a good point last night when I caught him on HBO.

The Dems should be BRAGGING about the fact that they are completely different from the current administration instead of pandering to the middle ground. Sheesh.”

“LOL! I guessed b4 hitting your profile that you were from CA. Right on ... LOL!

That we're opposite approach only works for the extreme lefties.”

“dismemberedtoejam - You are comparing apples to oranges. Pintos had a design flaw that other autos do not. ALL nukes have the same flaws. They all produce copious amounts of pollutants because it takes massive amounts of other fuel sources to dig/refine/ship/use/store the uranium, and also build/run/dismantle all reactor sites. What is used to do all that dirty work? Coal, oil and NG mostly. Then you have all the nuclear waste that we still don't have a good solution for, and the average 20% industry downtime due to problems that need to be fixed..... all of this is why I say all nukes have the same problems. Pintos vs. all autos is a bad analogy.

reformed lurker - I am by NO means promoting coal/oil as the best solution. Hardly. In past discussions I have only endorsed one solution - green energy. Solar electric, solar thermal, wind, ocean wave, ocean current.

Solar electric for instance needs far less energy and materials (embodied energy) to produce as much electricity over the 20 year lifetime that a nuke will actually produce electricity. Those same solar panels will still be producing about 85% of their original output for another 20 years. So the 40 years it takes to design, build, run and dismantle a nuke, I can get clean electric for those whole 40 years from my solar panels. And then I can recycle the panels to make new ones without worrying about storing anything toxic.”

“Talk to me when someone builds a 1200 megawatt solar generator.”

“Actually I shouldn't be an ass. The argument you make for all the industry needed to make a nuke plant is exactly the one I always hear for why solar power is going nowhere. Making solar panels creates huge amounts of toxic waste. But it's the same for all industry. We can't even sell food anymore without producing ridiculous amounts of plastic to wrap it in.

All those feel-good generators produce tiney amounts of power. So it's unknown how many mountains and coastlines we're willing to ugly up and make inaccessible to you and me by cluttering them with a ton of green micro generators. Amazing to me, wind power is actually starting to make a dent in the industry due to an obscene amount of government money being spent. But the technology is improving. Try to count the megawatts when you think of alternate sources of power.

I'm against any more nuke plants being built until we recycle the waste, turn the nasty stuff to glass and bury it in Navada, as per the original idea. Right now, because high level waste is a political football, we do the most irresponsible thing possible with it - make the plants keep it on-site and try not to make too big of a mess. Strange how that's not a problem in Europe & Asia. The commercial nuke plants in most of the world are running a lot better than you know. They are very reliable and make huge amounts of power. They are also extremely clean and safe places to work.”

“Any of you ever have the fun and excitement of working a multivehicle wreck?

Real fun when you have cars sandwiched together, you are trying to sort out dead from dying. But you know..no one has mentioned outlawing cars or even controlling drivers.

Remember. More people have died in Teddy Kennedy's car than in American Nuclear Accidents.”

“"Talk to me when someone builds a 1200 megawatt solar generator."

We're building a plant right now with the capacity to manufacture 250MW/year, with contingency plans for 500MW. This company plans to be $1,000,000,000 company by 2010.

"Making solar panels creates huge amounts of toxic waste"

We commissioned the first 25MW line just this past week. I'm not aware of any toxic waste. Can you elaborate?”

“"Try to count the megawatts when you think of alternate sources of power."

Reactors have an average uptime of about 79%, so over its lifetime your 1200 Mw rated reactor will really produce 950 Mw/hr.

It would take about 3 square miles of 200 watt panels to get the same output per hour as your 1200 megawatt reactor. Cost is about $6.5 billion all told. You get 8 useable sun-hours in the southwest, annual average, or about 33% uptime. Except the PV panels will produce for 40 years (panels installed in the late 70's are still producing 85% of their original output and are going strong today, 30 years later). So your $6.5 billion actually buys you twice as much electricity over the lifetime of the plant. Then you'll only need a few million 40 years from now to dismantle the whole thing.

According to one source I found online, "The final 20 U.S. reactors cost $3 to $4 billion to build." That doesn't include the billion or so to run the plants, and the billion or or so to decommission the plant. I found the actual numbers and posted them on another thread if you really want me to find them. Let's say its about $7 billion grand total. Total time to design/build/run/decommission a plant is about 40 years. Total time you get electricity is only half that. 40 years of a PV plant gets you 40 years of electricity, at around $7 billion.

So here's the numbers :
PV: $7 bil, 40 year lifetime, 950 Mw/hr for 8 hours/day average lifetime
Nuke: $7 bil, 20 year lifetime, 950 Mw/hr for 19 hours/day average lifetime

I don't have the time to convert the initial investment into future dollars, but its easy to see that PV would win hands down since it stretches out twice as long as nukes.”

“Oh, and what toxic waste? The silicon that gets chopped off the edges gets recycled. The embodied energy that went into producing a PV panel gets earned back in about 2 years. The embodied energy that goes into making all that concrete and steel for a nuke barely gets paid back, if at all.”

“quick - Name something more deadly than the sun.

That's what I thought.

Solar energy kills.”

“"So here's the numbers :
PV: $7 bil, 40 year lifetime, 950 Mw/hr for 8 hours/day average lifetime
Nuke: $7 bil, 20 year lifetime, 950 Mw/hr for 19 hours/day average lifetime"

Both of those numbers are fictitious. There are no 950 MW/hr solar generators - the combined production from all of them in the U.S. is prolly a couple thousand MW. And I have a hard time believing a PV cell could sit in the sun for 40 years and still work. The U.S. nuke plants in operation are mostly >20 years old now - 20 years is the length of the initial operating license, but they all get extended. The plant where I work has always had a capacity factor >90% and it's about average. In the 90's there were several plants shut down for a long time because of regulatory problems, but not lately. And they are ridiculously expensive, but so is solar (and the toxic waste is not from silicon, but the metals in the PV cells).

I'm happy to hear about solar power getting somewhere, but it's not a factor yet in the power production industry. But the initial point of all this is the fact that the Chernobyl-style reactors are like a car that speeds up when you let your foot off the gas. A loss of coolant causes an uncontrolled power excursion as opposed to American reactors that shut themselves down. There are a bunch of highly trained people trying really hard not to screw up operating those plants all over eastern Europe. That's apples to our oranges.”

“Really? I researched the numbers, did the calculations (explaining most of what I did as I did it). Interesting that you just dismiss them as "fictitious" without going out and finding your own facts to refute mine. There are way more than a couple thousand Mw of PV installed in the US. A couple thousand is the total production capacity of US PV manufactureres - per year.

As I said, PV cells installed on homes in the 70's are still producing 85% of their original rating today.

As for there not being any plants of equivalent size as nukes are now, but if the billions spent for nuke subsidies went instead to PV subsidies, then we would. It's all about the nuke lobby in Washington and the lack of one for the PV industry.”

“lets talk something that HAS DESTROYED lives for over 40 years...lets talk families ripped apart, crime and a destruction to society on a level that would stun the terrorists...lets talk almost 8 TRILLION dollars expended and failure after failure.

WE are talking the WAR ON POVERTY. Not some BS whiney little Green Peace crap we are talking lives ruined and people in conditions where multiple generations will grow up in semi government slavery.”

“Here's numbers on PV watts shipped between '96 and '05:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/solarphotv/solarpv.html

424,807,000 (425 Mw/hr)

times average US insolation per day (5.5)

equals 2,337 Mw per day

equals 853,187 Mw per year


-------------------------------

Life span of all nukes decommissioned in the US to date: 13.4 years

I didn't have the time to add in the current life span of the 104 currently operating nukes, but someone once did and that's where I got the number ~20 from. My data was pulled from appendix B of this link: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/nuregs/staff/sr1350/v18/sr1350v18.pdf”

“I was curious so I just ran the numbers for the first 56 of 104 actively operating nukes. Average operating time = 26.2 years

Adding in the 27 dead nukes with the 56 live nukes = 22.0 years operating time. Pretty close to the "20" number I was floating.

You can see that the license has nothing to do with how long a nuke actually operates.”

“"But the initial point of all this is the fact that the Chernobyl-style reactors are like a car that speeds up when you let your foot off the gas. A loss of coolant causes an uncontrolled power excursion as opposed to American reactors that shut themselves down." - toejam


Well toejam, I just read a fact sheet on the NRC's web site, and Three Mile Island reactor 2 did indeed "shut [itself] down", due to non-reactor issues in the plant. But that shutdown is what then CAUSED the loss of coolant, from a stuck pressure release valve and then operator error. Funny that the automatic shutdown ended up causing half the core to melt, and then a subsequent radiological release to the environment, equivalent to an entire year's worth of radiation for anyone at the site's perimeter... http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

So it would appear that American reactors also are like cars that speed up when you take your foot off the gas, when they get only a little help from the driver. I feel safer now.

Oh, and did anyone hear about Three Mile Island reactor 1, which had to do an emergency shutdown yesterday? http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/03/america/NA_GEN_US_Nuclear_Plant_Shutdown.php”

“"Making solar panels creates huge amounts of toxic waste"

We commissioned the first 25MW line just this past week. I'm not aware of any toxic waste. Can you elaborate?”


I might be able to shine some light on this. The thought is that since everything produced finds its way to a landfill one way or another, the decomposition of the panels themselves would contribute to leachate in the fill. If by chance the liner (if there is one) fails, the toxic by-product from the solar panels would add to an already saturated leachate.”

“I don't think that a thin-film solar panel is toxic to begin with.”

“Anyone ever hear of a Stirling engine?

Sunlight heating hydrogen which expands and powers an engine & generator...something like that.

Supposed to be 200 year old technology.
The Swedes use it to power submarines. Don't ask me how they get sunlight into a sub!

They're supposed to be building a 500MW Stirling engine in California.”

“techntrek untill you can offer a solution that is safer and cost effective I will stick to nuke plants.

Oh and please be honest with your numbers. The reason Nuke plants are so costly is because of all the change orders forced on them by the anti-nuke crowd. The process is a simple one. They fight the initial design. they fight the site selection. After construction begins they demand design changes and get construction halted while the goverment reviews the case and implements them. On more then one occaision they have fought for changes to the original design and after they were implemented they turned around and demanded they be removed.

All of this nonsense forces the cost of construction from 3 to 10 times the cost of normal.

As to the safety issues Id explain why chernoble cant happen to ours but I really dont think you care.

The simple truth is there is no safe, cost effective and enviromentally acceptable method of producing the amount of energy we use every day. At the moment you may choose only one of the three.

PS. didnt I read somewhere about windmills killing lots of birds....”

““I don't think that a thin-film solar panel is toxic to begin with.”

The one produced in the past employed the use of toxic substances. As to whether or not they still do, I was told they were by my enviromental geology prof. Of course, this does not make it absolute. Hopefully, someone with more knowledge than I will chime in with a confirmation, or correction.


I have heard something a while back about that engine, but I haven't had the time to really look at it.

btw -- I've visited that site you posted a while back for the company you are doing work for -- thanks for posting it. It's good to see something like that happen. IMHO, due to the infrastructure, Michigan could and should be a powerful and natural leader in the producton of alternative energy products.”