Chernobyl

I have checked and we saw the same one in the UK, so I have personal knowledge and I do not think this bore any relation to reality.

As one of the few people on earth who have fought a Class A fire (Fight at all costs, personnel safety is not a factor, what my boss used to call a " throw another enlisted man on and carry on" fire!), and one of even fewer who have been first on the scene, as has been said in other contexts your training kicks in and you go into auto mode.

Standing in a drencher at 2.00am unblocking the door of a nuclear workshop while covered by armed police with drawn weapons as the Two Man rule doesn't apply and the fire alarm is tearing itself off the wall tends to concentrate the mind a bit, but don't tell me I was any more efficient or even braver, for want of a better term, than my Russian counterparts because that is patently false; as we saw at Fukushima. Those guys knew they were dead but stayed in post.

Grunts, in whatever field, are the same the world over. We might twitch but we don't panic!

For the record it was a false alarm, lighting strike, and I did not require post traumatic stress counselling, though you're the first people I have ever told about it.!
 

I don't have HBO. But the word coverup makes me think of when our ex governor Christie Todd Whitman said there was no health risk for those who risked their lives working at the 9/11 site. Of course that turned out to be untrue. Also that the dangers of the Fukushima disaster in Japan were downplayed by the government.
 
https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/dark-tourism-chernobyl
I never heard the term "Dark Tourism" before reading this. Apparently, there has been a big spike in tourism to Chernobyl since that HBO series!

I know absolutely nothing about radiation and how long it lasts, but isn't the half life of that stuff supposed to be thousands of years? How safe can that possibly be as a place to visit? Really, just so people can get "interesting" selfies?
 

If Covid hadn’t scuppered my long planned trip I would have been at the edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone around now...it’s a big tourist spot!
 
Granted the Russian culture is careless in the majority of their culture meaning a lack of checks and balances. There have been two incidents of them having their finger on the button ready to push.
 
fmdog44 said:
Granted the Russian culture is careless in the majority of their culture meaning a lack of checks and balances. There have been two incidents of them having their finger on the button ready to push.
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The Russians, IMO, do not do a good job with nuclear anything. Remember the movie, “K-19, The Widowmaker?” Supposedly, the movie was based on facts. It was about a nuclear sub that had reactor problems.
 
C'est Moi said:
This movie was based on the book Voices From Chernobyl, by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature.
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I haven't seen this documentary on the subject. I don't have HBO, but I'll watched a number of documentaries on the subject. I'll keep an eye out for it. I have seen stuff based on this book.
 
Phoenix said:
I haven't seen this documentary on the subject. I don't have HBO, but I'll watched a number of documentaries on the subject. I'll keep an eye out for it. I have seen stuff based on this book.
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There are some good videos on YouTube. It’s also available on Comcast via “On Demand.”
 
911 said:
There are some good videos on YouTube. It’s also available on Comcast via “On Demand.”
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Thanks. What I meant to say was I have watched a number of documentaries on the subject. I used the wrong word. I don't have Comcast. In Oregon we had a nuclear power plant and voted it out. Now they want to bring it back....not if I have anything to say about it. Supposedly this time it will be safe. In a pig's eye.
 
Phoenix said:
Thanks. What I meant to say was I have watched a number of documentaries on the subject. I used the wrong word. I don't have Comcast. In Oregon we had a nuclear power plant and voted it out. Now they want to bring it back....not if I have anything to say about it. Supposedly this time it will be safe. In a pig's eye.
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Actually, the only down side to nukes is getting rid of the spent plutonium. Other than that, it is safe, now that we have learned more about it and it’s cheaper after the plant is paid off. I think France is 75% powered by nuclear energy.
 
911 said:
Actually, the only down side to nukes is getting rid of the spent plutonium. Other than that, it is safe, now that we have learned more about it and it’s cheaper after the plant is paid off. I think France is 75% powered by nuclear energy.
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The waste is the point. It's totally unacceptable to pollute the ground with it. Just because someone does it, does not make it okay. We are poisoning the planet. We don't have the right. Maybe we deserve to go extinct.
 
Phoenix said:
Thanks. What I meant to say was I have watched a number of documentaries on the subject. I used the wrong word. I don't have Comcast. In Oregon we had a nuclear power plant and voted it out. Now they want to bring it back....not if I have anything to say about it. Supposedly this time it will be safe. In a pig's eye.
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Just to clarify, this is not a documentary; it is a movie mini-series.
 
I recall that incident at Chernobyl so vividly as it more or less coincided with the China Syndrome movie and TMI. What a stupid situation Chernobyl was all around. One of the engineers wanted to throw the rods when he saw what was happening and was terrified to do so as his manager was an idiot who was appointed by a relative not for his expertise and intelligence, but because he was family. Sick. None of that should have happened. Those in the line of the fallout cloud all over Europe were livid and rightfully so. That nuclear winter believe it or not draws tourists from all over and while there is a restricted area of where one can view anything at all, it is sad that one would even want to go there. Helicopters have to have special protection and can fly only to a certain level in that space. Sadly the sarcophagus covering the site is eroding and now lives will be endangered again to re cover it.
 
Looking at these pictures and videos makes me physically ill. Nuclear fission was developed primarily as an energy source. Didn't take man long to find it's destructive uses. But, if reactors are run properly by well educated in the field, they are safe.
 
Phoenix said:
The waste is the point. It's totally unacceptable to pollute the ground with it. Just because someone does it, does not make it okay. We are poisoning the planet. We don't have the right. Maybe we deserve to go extinct.
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Here in the U.S., we have been recycling the used junk. However, the issue is that if we continue to build nuke plants, we will need to also build additional recycling plants and that's another whole story.
 
911 said:
Here in the U.S., we have been recycling the used junk. However, the issue is that if we continue to build nuke plants, we will need to also build additional recycling plants and that's another whole story.
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Not everywhere in the US is recycling stuff. The county I'm in stopped doing that as a result of China canceling our contract after the trade war started during this administration. It's a conservative county and they have no interest in finding a new place to recycle the stuff. We can't vote them out of office because no one ever runs against whoever is in power. The nuclear waste is more lethal than a lot of waste. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in 30 years). Plutonium -239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. High-level wastes are hazardous because they produce fatal radiation doses during short periods of direct exposure. Until there is a way to make it harmless, it is unacceptable that we are still doing it. We are killing the land and the life on it. We are doing that.
 

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