'In Focus: Chernobyl Disaster'

Wow.

Such poignant captures of a horrible thing. By profession I have a better idea of what is happening currently than most. From what I can find the things happening in Japan have not reached that level, and there are many things that are different between then and now regarding what could happen. Enough that I think those scenes will not be revisited.

I hope and pray that it is so.
 
It is a terrible irony that the events at Fukushima are so close to the 25th anniversary of Chernobyl. Nuclear technology has been used in many useful ways and safely. We have also seen too many instances where nuclear technology has gone beyond the control of those who use it whether by unforeseen flaws in engineering/design, use or by pure negligence. In this business, there is little to no room for error or chance. I like everyone else hopes the situation in Japan will be brought under control and soon. Right now, the situation is slowly worsening and now involves all of the reactors & spent fuel on site. The authorities at hand(both Japanese & American) have little doubt partial meltdowns have already occurred and there has been little to no water injected into the buildings for some time. The question is, if the efforts up to now have bought crucial time long enough so that the current efforts to restore power to high volume pumps can resume high flow operations. If that can be done soon and barring pipe system damage(if they can get water where it is needed), maybe full meltdowns can be avoided. If not, 6 reactors and spent fuel pools going into open meltdown and breach could easily reach or exceed Chernobyl levels. There's still so much that is unknown at the moment. It's impossible to get close enough to thoroughly inspect any of the reactor building interiors due to the radiation levels. Just hoping for a miracle, good news soon.


Also of historical note, look up the Kyshtym Accident of 1957. It is officially listed as a Level 6 accident but the contamination zone is still very hot to this day.
 
It appears that Fukushima was designed to withstand a quake up to a scale of 8 and the resulting tsunami up to 6.5M.

Let's not overlook the fact that this was forty years ago as well.

As I understand the present situation, the plant met the quake shock as expected, however, the tsunami was far above the levels predicted.

At this time I'd suggest that any spare money one has should be invested in LNG stocks, there has been a rapid rise in the market down here.
 
There are a few similarities, but a lot of differences between Fukushima and Chernobyl.

The design of the nuclear reactors is different and also the number of lines of defence. In Chernobyl the nuclear vessel containing the core collapsed due to excessive heat. From what I can follow via the news, at least one line of defence on all the four affected reactors at Fukushima nuclear plant are still intact. The main problem there seems to be the spent fuel which can't be cooled sufficiently.

The result is the same direct radiation at the location and nuclear fall out which goes where the wind brings it. Precautions will be taken and conclusion will be drawn, however like with Chernobyl we will never know how many extra cancer cases Fukushima will have caused.

On the other side of the scale when you have a coal or oil driven power plant you will never know how many deaths have been caused by the dust coming from these plants.

Something to think about: In the Netherlands we have one nuclear powerplant, so far there hasn't been any casualty there. The rest of the power plant are coal or oil driven. In one single event in one the coal driven plants (Amer plant) five persons died and 3 got seriously injured......

By the way, beautiful pictures P, thanks for posting the link.

Cheers,
Huub
 
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