http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/ki.../chapter1.html


This is an absolutely gripping photo essay.

 

Hi Mongo:

___Working in the nuclear industry, I know what happened at Chernobyl w/ great detail but I have not seen the impact as Elena has so eloquently and emotionally put into words and pictures. Her pages were very moving …

___If you have been or are in contact with her; please pass on a thank you from me. I am passing on the link to others as a reminder of what some have had to go through in the former Soviet Union as well as the Ukraine in the area of Chernobyl in particular. My step mother and step father were native Ukrainian’s so it brings the area and the torment of those that had lived there that much closer to my heart.

___Good Luck and God Bless

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

Well. I am not in contact with her on any p[articular level. However, I have seen that particular link through the USA Today website and posted up where I originally found it at Notquitereality.org. It is also on Nates site at Biodieselnow.com.

It is amazing that this came amazingly close to happening some 30 years almost right here in the good ole USA.(3 mile Island of course) Can you imagine perhaps Harrisburg PA right through to Philadelphia being uninhabitable for over 600 years!!!

I an only hope the nuclear industry in this country employs nothing less than the brightest and most conciencious engineers that are in the field today. This is stuff that should be handled gentler than glass.

 

Hi Mongo:

___Believe me, nothing like Chernobyl ever came close to happening at TMI U2 in PA. Approximately 2/3 of the core did melt but it was contained in what all western based reactor designs have and call a Containment structure. This structure was designed for the exact reasons that happened at TMI. When a Core melts and the entire RCS (Reactor Coolant System) or a large percentage of it is turned to steam, the size of the structure is large enough to contain the mixture of H2O and radioactive gases below ~ 50 #’s so as to not break the Containment structure or vessel. This is what saved TMI … From my understanding; the maximum dose received from someone off-site was < 50 mRem. Being a nuclear plant worker, I have received more then 50 mRem in a day just doing a higher then normal dose job if that helps you quantify what amount of radioactivity was released from TMI as well as what 1 individual received. Most everyone else received doses far smaller then this and in fact, were probably much closer to background then the anti-nuke zealots would have you believe. I do have to be careful as there were significant releases as measured at the purge exhausts but it is what actually accumulated that matters … Every citizen in the US as an example receives between 100 and 300 mRem/year from natural occurring radiation just by living on the planet. All bets would be off however if the fuel itself does not stay in a specific geometry, fuel cladding had split open, the RCS piping ruptures, and then the containment itself were to be breached in some fashion. There would have to be quite a bit of damage to knock out all of these fission product barriers to even come close to a TMI like event let alone one the magnitude of Chernobyl.

___The Russian designs did not add this containment structure on any of their plants to save billions of rubles in the cost of construction … I don’t want to go too far out here but the Russian based designs have what is called a Positive moderator coefficient core structure of a completely different makeup then what western based designs use. As the fuel in that specific type of core heats up, more neutrons that can produce the next generation of fissions becomes likely. This cycle can get out of hand in seconds as what happened at Chernobyl with all the safety systems being removed as they were. In the US and every other Western based reactor design that I know of, the cores are negatively moderated throughout most of the fuels cycle. In other words, as a core heats up, there are less fissions producing a particular speed neutron which in turn creates even less fissions in each successive generation. This continues until a lower equilibrium (power for all intents and purposes) is reached. Another item (the most damaging in the case of Chernobyl) was that there was an outside grid engineer/manager/military individual running some very ill advised coast down from power tests at Chernobyl (he outranked the senior manager(s) running the plant). He had the Licensed Operators place every safety system available in a non-functioning configuration to perform this grid power availability after trip and coast down test. The safety functions would have prevented the non-sensical test so this outsider ordered the multiple safety functions removed from service. There were plenty of operators and managers that that did not want to do this but were basically forced to do what they were told as you can imagine how the old Soviet system worked …

___Here in the US, if someone were to remove a safety system(s) like that (even one), he would be removed first from the control panels, then the control room, and then the plant site by armed guards. There is also a highly trained hierarchy to prevent that kind of non-sense from happening anywhere in the west that I know of. Anyway, even with TMI’s multiple failures, the containment was the last line of defense and it held as it was designed to do. Today, the nuclear industry is held to a std. so much higher and far beyond those days so many years ago that it is an entirely different industry imho. About all I can add is that there are much higher trained operators and managers, much better controlled plants and the equipment that resides in them, and a much stronger group of industry watchdogs looking over everyone’s shoulder to make sure screw-ups like those in the past never happen again. I cannot give you an example of how well trained and safe the plants are because of this training and absolute adherence to specifications the plant has to be in at all times for 100% safe operation but it was a task as noble as when Kennedy decided we were going to the moon. TMI was definitely a wake up call and the Industry has not forgotten nor has it ever been in such straights in terms of safety since.

___On the other side of the coin, the Power industry as a whole has a problem facing it because of all the wheeling of power. This is where privatization and the all mighty dollar at all costs come into play. What is unsafe today imho is not the power production from the nukes, coal, gas, hydro, and even a few wind power plants that supply your power but the wild swings that power sales are generating on lines that were not designed for it … The recent Northeast blackout was just another symptom of this and I can only hope the future will provide more power reliability but not that much has changed since the last big one. I am not all that confident of a higher reliability in the near future either … At least the Load Dispatchers around the country have more guidance as to when they can isolate the overloaded sections into islands so an event cannot cascade into something much bigger. Like anything else where money is involved, there isn’t any one company paying to upgrade the grid. For all intents and purposes, deregulation placed the company that used to own the grid at an extreme disadvantage to keep it upgraded as IPP’s (Independent Power Producers) simply tap into it and start selling power at whatever the grid price is or through whatever contract sale they have setup previously. I do not know much about Grid ops so I may be speaking well beyond my actual knowledge in this last paragraph.

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

That is some insightful Information Wayne. Thank you for the clarification.

 

Well, Chernobyl was indeed a major catastrophy and a horrible accident, but obviously her coverage of it was politically inspired.

I'm sure that you are aware of the deatils of how the acccident took place and its not as though there were not safetly measures in place, in fact it was a very bizzare situation where the problem was caused by a human error of one of the operators, who violated the safety prodecures and did something that he was told not to do.

Basically, the operator screwed up and then tried to fix his mistake, but only made it worse.

This lead to a horrible tragedy.

As for the cleanup crew, yes, that was another tragic element to the whole ordeal, but the truth is that there was no other possiblity. Once the problem existed it had to be dealt with and the fact is that there was no safe way to deal with it.

It was a tragic accident, but there is really no need to politicise it the way that she did. I mean comparing a new 2000 Ninja to old 80s motorcycles and calling them wimpy? What exactly is the point supposed to be in that? Taking stabs at the May Day parade? Obvoiusly there were politcal motivations behind the article.

 

Hi RationalRevolution:

___It was not just one operator but the entire system and the entire control room that was running this stupid coast down test. They were actually trying to power the reactor feed pumps off I would assume the UAT’s on coast down of the Main Generator? One of their Nuclear Science lead’s said a TMI could never happen in the Soviet Union back in 1984 (2 years before Chernobyl) because of their (the Soviet’s) superior technology. Unfortunately, Soviet designed Graphite moderated cores had positive reactivity added when the control rods were inserted for the first few fractions of a meter, they had a huge amount of positive reactivity added when steam voids appeared in the flow channels, and below 20% power, they were unstable as all hell. Add in no containment structure and it’s a wonder they didn’t do this long before Chernobyl. I read a great report from Argonne on it just last week. Some of my earlier diatribe from above is correct but they high lighted some details I hadn’t ever heard of before. If I can get it in electronic format, I can post it here … Those poor bastard fire fighters didn’t stand a chance

___Good Luck

___Wayne R. Gerdes
___Hunt Club Farms Landscaping Ltd.
___Waynegerdes@earthlink.net

 

Well yes, but it comes down to the fact that this was an accident caused by human error of someone who was dissobeying the regulations.

The fact that "even more" safety systems weren't in place is an issue, however, the author, as well as other people of course, often portray this incident as a product of malicoius intent, or something of that nature, which it obviously wasn't.

Well perhaps the issue is to complicated without getting into a bunch of other issues which I don't really care to get into, but I found her approach to covering the issue to be largely just diatribe. I mean "the bison ran away because they wanted to go back to America" I mean come on

Okay, we get it, she didn't like the Soviets

I'm assuming that she is a Ukrainian nationalist, and I'm not going to begrudge the Ukrainians their complaints, but its still an obviously very biased and emotionally based politcal piece.

Its also interesting how, the Soviet firefighters who had to go in to help contain the Chernobyl catastrophy were "poor bastards" and not "brave men" or "heros" etc.

What exactly was supposed to be done? Once it was out of control, what else could they do? It was certianly a tragedy and you are right, those guys didn't have a chance, but at that point "something" had to be done.

Criticism of the whole affair is perfectly legitimate, I just didn't find her's to be very useful, except as a part of the on-going anti-Soviet Ukranian Nationalist movement, which, for all its legimiate concerns, goes off into a lot of nonsense as well.

 

I know I'm bring back up an old thread, was looking for info on "steam cleaning a hybrid's engine bay" and didn't find anything worth while, but did find this thread. Just wanted to post this incease anyone didn't hear it when it made the news, her story was pure fiction, she didn't ride a motorcycle around chernobyl, her and her husband staged a lot of the photos so they'd have more effect.

http://www.badweatherbikers.com/buel...?1087357647%22

 

Wayne,

Do you have any information regarding the NRTS "accident" that occured during the early 1960's? I attended a conference there in '62 or '63 and heard some veiled references to an "incident."

If it will help as a reference, it was about the time that Phillips Petroleum was replaced as manager of the facility.