Technical accuracy of the Chernobyl miniseries.  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 03:23:41 am
content: First of all, I know it is common on all the “based on a true story” movies to take some artistic license, to enhance the narrative or to create suspense or drama. Otherwise it would be a documentary.I also understand that most if not all movies have consultants which help them set the correct zeitgeist. Reviewers for this movie, many who claim to have been Soviet citizens during the accident, mentioned that the series depicts the era very accurately.But this is a technical blog, and that is what I am interested in. How accurate are the technical details portrayed in the series? I can’t claim to be a nuclear expert, but the accident has interested me significantly and have read many accounts. From my LIMITED knowledge, it appears that the series is quite technically accurate, although there are some minor simplifications to maintain the tempo of the narrative.What do you think?

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 04:14:23 am
content: https://youtu.be/EEl_Zk14z7A

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 09:30:04 am
content: Thunderf00t shines again: he purposefully misinterprets what was said so he can "bust" his own errorStoryabout "thermal explosion": they believed that molten core will find it's way into 7000m^3 water vessel - very rigid vessel, spewing very radioactive pollution high in the air and fallout would *pollute* huge area rendering it uninhabitable. They never meant thermonuclear explosion blast as thunderf00t veryconvenientlylaughably for his debunking agenda, assumes.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 10:48:18 am
content: Yep i'm with ogden on that one.Obviously it wouldn't be a nuclear explosion, but never underestimate the power of steam when it has nowhere to go. A faulty runaway residential water heater can demolish a house. Scaling this up 10 000 times makes for quite a boom. Making things worse is the concrete containment around likely being quite a bit more sturdy than a water heater, so it would be able to build up a lot more pressure before giving up and blowing up. When you have the molten core sitting on top of that you would end up with the said molten core raining down all around the area. The damage is in the form of flinging the radioactive material all over the place, not in the blast wave of the explosion. Tho the explosion would have likely still been enough to critically damage the other reactors near it and cause even more problems.

author: mzzj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 12:20:34 pm
content: LONG read:https://fissioreaktori.wordpress.com/hbos-mini-series-chernobyl/Most gross error in my eyes is the firefighter turning radioactivehttps://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/06/why-hbos-chernobyl-gets-nuclear-so-wrong/#93be639632f6

author: Homer J Simpson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 12:37:15 pm
content: Chernobyl Anatoly Dyatlov’s interview

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 12:52:09 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 13, 2019, 10:48:18 amExactly. Even w/o "boiler explosion" huge plume of steam would form highly radioactive cloud, much bigger than that created by fire and evaporation of firefighting water:https://earthlymission.com/radioactive-fallout-from-the-chernobyl-disaster/.Quote from: mzzj on June 13, 2019, 12:20:34 pmError of whom? - Medics who did not know that patient is not radioactive if properly cleaned or error of HBO showing that medics did not know? What I find gross - that many are literally obsessed about insignificant details or exaggregations of this monumental film/series. I experienced that soviet time myself and what I can tell - HBO did very good job showing it. Writer of Forbes article: Michael Shellenberger, "I write about energy and the environment". Clearly proponent of nuclear power. Thank you for link to LONG, but good read:https://fissioreaktori.wordpress.com/hbos-mini-series-chernobyl/

author: mac.6
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 01:07:21 pm
content: Quite frankly you don't want to look at Chernobyl for accuracy beside the very basic facts (yes the reactor did blow up), there was an excellent documentary a few years back about it, way better with archival footage, but less drama.It's like that with every movie, even critically acclaimed ones. Did you go to omaha beach? it has nothing to do with the omaha beach you see in saving ryan's private, in the film it seems a little beach, where in reality it's not.Oh, and spaceships do not make noises in space. Neither go anywhere c.

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 01:56:30 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 13, 2019, 10:48:18 amWith the molten core material entering the water tank, there would be a nich opening / pressure relieve. The water would only slowly heat up from the top, so not a large amount of superheated (> 100 C) water to produce a lot of steam fast. So the "explosion" would be more like the lava fow into the sea, producing a stream of steam that can escape to the top. So expect this to be way less violently than the initial explosion.It could still release quite some of the fission products from the molten fuel and transport it up. With the initial explosion much of the fuel was still contained in the fuel rods. The contact with water can mobilize some of the fission products. These extra fission products could very well be a problem to Kiew or Minsk (depending on the wind direction) - not immediately deadly, but a danger to the polulation. So it was a good thing they avoided that extra release of steam.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 02:06:14 pm
content: I fully understand that. Movies are not documentaries.Drama and suspense must be added to maintain interest in persons who are not technically versed.And fortunately it did not include cheap romantic scenes to make the movie more appealing. When the female scientist, Ulana Homyuk first appeared, I thought to myself: "A romance with Legasov will happen very soon".Fortunately, it did not happen.Returning to thetechnical discussion...... there is a repeated claim throughout the series, that the during the first weeks of the accident, it was releasing as much radiation per hour as a Hiroshima-level bomb. Would that be an exaggeration?I also was interested by the control room's computer shown in the background. Certain scenes were shot at the Ignalina power plant in Lithunia, a sister station to Chernobyl. I ignore whether that computer was the real or was it was only a prop.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 04:07:44 pm
content: Life is too short, pretending as an avg. joe sometimes is fun and less stressful.Cmon guys, its too much expecting a technical accuracy as NatGeo or Discovery channels, from a company that makes lots of money and even broke world's record on viewers on making this ...

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 13, 2019, 11:43:33 pm
content: The soviet administration had a poor understanding of the risks at the time of the accident (as did most people at the time), and while it was probably a good idea to reduce the risk that the molten core could fall into a basement full of water (for various reasons) it was hardly "likely be fatal to the entire population to Kiev as well as a portion of Minsk" as the woman in the video said. But then I assume (I haven't seen it) the tv-show doesn't claim this was the actual truth, but at most what they think someone in the soviet administration might have believed was a risk at the time, which doesn't say much about the actual risks involved as we understand them today.I don't think it matters if the tv-series is accurate or not though, it could be 100% accurate and it would still give a very one-sided negative view of nuclear power, focusing on one bad accident but failing to show how this compares with the risks of other power sources. So it's hard to not see it as anti nuclear propaganda. I just wonder why it shows up at this moment in time.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 12:01:52 am
content: Quote from: apis on June 13, 2019, 11:43:33 pmNow when it is known that it did not happen, armchair nuclear experts can draw their highly educated conclusions how fatal or not, it could be to population. Right.QuoteYou haven't seen TV show, yet somehow have strong opinion that it is anti nuclear propaganda. It is not. The same way "Air Crash Investigation" TV series is not anti-airplane propaganda, film Titanic is not anti-boat propaganda and so on.

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 12:27:59 am
content: Quote from: ogden on June 14, 2019, 12:01:52 amI am just here to say that "Air Crash Investigation", also known as "Mayday" and "Air Emergency" and "Air Disasters" and "Air Crash" and "Dangers dans le ciel" and "Danger dans les airs", is a Canadian TV series.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 05:40:44 am
content: That woman scientist in the video was supposed to represent the scientific community as a whole rather than an actual person in history (Explained in the directors commentary).But yeah nobody knew for sure what would happen, not even the scientists. But they ware sure to express there concerns about what might happen and how bad it could be, especially when the government was massively underestimating the scale of the problem.But yeah i could see how this series could scare people about nuclear power, especially the ones that live close to a nuclear plant. Modern plants are better designed, better built, better understood and ran without a big political pressure on them. At the same time they are the only reliable clean source of power we have that is essentially infinitely expandable. Sure there is some nuclear waste coming out of it, but the stuff is not nearly as highly radioactive as people might think, and the stuff can be buried in a safe place. The only comparable alternative is burning fossil fuels where we dump the waste right into the atmosphere. Until we invent fusion the best way to combat CO2 emissions is to build more nuclear plants. But given how Fukushima scared everyone about it, i don't think its not going to happen anytime soon.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 09:47:05 am
content: Quote from: Berni on June 14, 2019, 05:40:44 amWell... None of nuclear countries have operational underground nuclear graveyard. Search internet for "nuclear waste disposal problem". Just US story alone:https://youtu.be/YgVyPwhkoJs. UK's 12BN UKP nuclear waste disposal project of a century is stalling. Japan can't find where to put Fukushima's waste and so on. It can be considered "clean" only if we ignore waste. Everybody is concerned about emissions of fossil burning plants, but seemingly nobody cares about nuclear waste "emissions". They are just put away for next generations to take care of. Corporations have to earn money today, politicians have to take lobbying benefits from said companies today.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 05:10:36 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 14, 2019, 05:40:44 amI think this was pretty clearly underlined in the last episode where during the trial it was explained that the nuclear reactors in the USSR where build very cheaply and the USSR was the only nation in the world which didn't have their nuclear reactors inside a bunker.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 08:42:20 pm
content: Well yeah we don't necessarily have nuclear waste disposal as sorted as we should, but we do know how to do it. For pollution from coal plants we don't really have any way of keeping the pollution out of the widespread environment. We are already trashing a lot of our environment with regular garbage.But fusion reactors will also generate radioactive waste. There are no spent fuel rods to get rid of, but the particle bombardment does turn the inside radioactive, so any old parts that get replaced inside as part of maintenance end up being radioactive waste and a lot of things that have been in contact with these things are also considered dangerous waste.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 08:53:18 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 14, 2019, 08:42:20 pmBut the big question is: how dangerous is it really? And for how long? There are lots of toxic agents on this world like Chlorine, Fosgene gas, nerve toxin, etc which need careful storage (remember the time in the 80's when the greenies wanted to ban Chlorine). Not to mention the unholy idea of storing CO2 underground which stays a ticking time-bomb until the end of the earth. Greenpeace et al would like to make use believe that radioactive waste is dangerous until the last isotope has fallen apart after a million years or so. By that time the radioactivitity level has fallen way below natural radiation levels for hundreds of millenia already. The fact is that highly radioactive waste decays quickly (highly radioactive inherently means that it will decay quick!) and after only 100 years the radioactivity levels are way more manageable.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 09:11:32 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 14, 2019, 08:42:20 pmUnfortunately knowledge is not enough. Somebody have to do it as well. Energy companies earn from nuclear energy but waste disposal is problem of government. I find it absurd that company in profit can sue government over nuclear waste disposal dispute and f...gwin 68 millions.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 09:31:13 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 14, 2019, 08:53:18 pmInformation is widely available. Just look for it. Start withvideoI mentioned.QuoteSorry to say, but laughable comparison. Most of toxic substances can be simplyincinerated.Quotehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_nuclear_fuel

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 09:50:57 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 14, 2019, 09:31:13 pmBut that isn't happening. Lots of that awful stuff lying around. And Chlorine is being transported in large quantities on a daily basis.QuoteThat page says absolutely nothing because it doesn't say what the radiation levels are! It is exactly the point I made in the part you left out. The Dutch agency charged with storing spend nuclear fuel states on their website that the radiation levels emitted by highly radioactive material decays so significantly in 100 years that the storage requirements are less strict and cumbersome to meet after that period. These are the people who are supposed to know and I rather take their word for it.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 10:02:22 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 14, 2019, 09:50:57 pmCitation please. I would like to see how uranium(236) and plutonium decays to safe levels in 100 years. Really.Quote from: nctnico on June 14, 2019, 09:50:57 pmWe talk about disposal here, not storage. If nuclear waste could be as easily incinerated as toxic substances, we would not have this conversation.

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 10:57:05 pm
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on June 13, 2019, 02:06:14 pmAccording to Wikipedia, the total release of Cs and Sr (which are the main longer time critical isotopes) was something like 500 times that of a small nuclear bomb. So crude estimate of 1 bomb equivalent per hour is in the right ball park. The comparison is a little difficult, as a bomb will have more short lived isotopes.At the Chernobyl disaster the fuel was relatively new (still the first load) and thus the reactor had a smaller (e.g. 1/4) than normal contend of radioactivity than a normal older reactor. The new fuel was also part in causing the accident - with old fuel the same type of accident would be less likely.Nuclear waste needs to be stored for quite a long time - but at least it does decay by it's own. Chemical wast that is just buried with quite often stay the way it is for an even longer time.Incineration is only an option for some chemical waste.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 11:07:02 pm
content: Quote from: Kleinstein on June 14, 2019, 10:57:05 pmWe talk about incineration oftoxic substances"like Chlorine, Fosgene gas, nerve toxin, etc". Which of named toxic substances can't be incinerated please?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 11:26:39 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 14, 2019, 11:07:02 pmTry to burn Chlorine for example (or better: don't if you value your health because with Chlorine you'll likely end up with another nasty chemical).

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 14, 2019, 11:42:57 pm
content: They are buildinga deep geological repository in Finlandnow. A similar repository is planned in Sweden. Everyone was happy about it (including the locals in the municipality where it was supposed to be built), but the anti-nuclear lobby have managed to stall the process with appeals and bureaucracy, so it's currently in legal limbo. Since so little high level waste is produced (per unit energy) it's not a problem in the foreseeable future though. In the Netherlands they store all their waste ina smallish building.As long as we have coal power plants polluting the air, land and sea, with air pollution killing millions every year, ocean acidification, mercury poisoning, global warming, etc, it's crazy people worry about nuclear power which is arguably one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy we have. And of course, coal also produce radioactive material:"In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant—a by-product from burning coal for electricity—carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy."(source)Coal doesn't have a waste storage problem since they get to dump their waste in landfills and the atmosphere for free.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:57:11 am
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on June 13, 2019, 03:23:41 amCan’t tell much about other technical details, but the mechanics of the explosion (slowing down the reactor that was affected by xenon poisoning, restarting the reactor by retraction of almost all control rods, going ahead with the experiment and shutting down water pumps that led to boiling that introduced positive feedback into the system through positive void coefficient of reactivity, attempted unsuccessful reinsertion of the control rods when it was too late) were depicted accurately in the last episode of the series. The design flaw of RMBK control rods that were indeed tipped with carbon, is also well known fact.

author: coppercone2
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:57:33 am
content: the dudes driving the truck into the radiation were probably sloshed IRLKGB cover up

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:59:38 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 14, 2019, 08:53:18 pmWhat are you talking about nctico?Radioactivity level, from nuclear power plant waste, remain dangerous for thousand and ten of thousands of years. You are off by of factor or 100!

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 01:35:35 am
content: Quote from: SkyMaster on June 15, 2019, 12:59:38 amnctnico probably wanted to say that short-lived isotopes are more radioactive per amount of isotope, than long-lived isotopes are.For example, half-life of iodine-131 is 8 days, which means that 50% of its atoms would undergo beta decay in 8 day. Half-life of uranium-235 is 700 million years. It would take ten orders of magnitude longer for U235 to decay, than for the same amount of iodine-131. In other words, short-lived iodine-131 isotope is about ten orders of magnitude more radioactive than long-lived uranium-235.More dangerous fast decaying isotopes have already vanished in Chernobyl zone. Only slower decaying isotopes are remaining. They are less radioactive. 100 years down the road it would still be dangerous to live there (simply because there are NO minimum safe limits of radiation), but not as bad as it was back in 1986.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 01:51:27 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 01:35:35 amLOL, then you should leave earth as radiation is everywhere, especially if you take a flight in airplane. Actually 30 km away from power plant, in most places radiation is about as natural level. What is dangerous is stumbling on hot spots, particularly inhaling radioactive dust particles.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 02:23:48 am
content: Quote from: wraper on June 15, 2019, 01:51:27 amRadiation causes mutations. Mutations lead to cancer. It is all probability game. Game of what happens first: some DNA molecule being struck by gamma photon leading to that fatal mutation, or the carrier of the DNA molecule being hit by a bus first. The greater the exposure to ionizing radiation, the higher chances of getting cancer. There is no minimum limit that guarantees you from cancer. Natural level is safe only because you can’t get lower exposure than that, not because it is harmless.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 02:42:38 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 02:23:48 amYou can say that just about everything besides radiation. Such as food you eat and air you breath, and your genes to begin with. Chance you will get cancer with 0 radiation and 10 times of average natural radiation level is about the same. Many places on earth have higher natural radiation levels than close proximity to Chernobyl power plant.

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 02:55:52 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 01:35:35 amThis is highly debatable. Seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesisEven then, the no-threshold is bogus (not just for radiation, but also CMR stuff that regulations are annoyingly paranoid about). At some point your chances of negative symptoms are so vanishingly small they're not quantifiable anymore.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 03:01:26 am
content: Quote from: wraper on June 15, 2019, 02:42:38 amWith 0 radiation you would get zero probability of radiation-induced cancer.Here is what EPA says:“Exposure to low-levels of radiation does not cause immediate health effects, but can increase the risk of cancer over a lifetime. There have been studies that kept track of large numbers of people who were exposed to radiation, including atomic bomb survivors and radiation industry workers. These studies show that radiation exposure increases the chance of getting cancer, and the risk increases as the dose increases: the higher the dose, the greater the risk.”https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-health-effects

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 03:03:28 am
content: And this is highly opposed: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_no-threshold_model#Controversy)Quote from: Wikipedia on Linear no-threshold model

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 03:11:58 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 03:01:26 amDoes it even matter if radiation in particular is cause to say 1 in 10 000 cancers? In such case you just reduced chance getting cancer by 0.01% by going to zero radiation.QuoteAnd you happily omitted what's written right next after that:Quote

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 03:24:25 am
content: KaneTW, thank you for the link:“The linear no-threshold model (LNT) is a model used in radiation protection to quantify radiation exposure and set regulatory limits. It is most frequently used to calculate the probability of radiation-induced cancer at both high doses where epidemiology studies support its application but, controversially, it likewise finds applications in calculating the effects of low doses, a dose region that is fraught with much less statistical confidence in its predictive power but that nonetheless has resulted in major personal and policy decisions in regards to public health.”So despite some opposition, which is understandable because of challenges to validate LNT model at its lower end, the model is the most frequently used and thus is widely accepted, which confirms what I wrote above.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 03:37:48 am
content: Quote from: wraper on June 15, 2019, 03:11:58 amBecause it does not contradict to what was quoted (the lower exposure - the lower cancer risk).If your point is that population in that part of the world (especially male population) has higher chances do die from vodka or drugs overdose, than from radiation above the natural levels - I would completely agree with you. I also accept the LNT model that roughly says: when your radiation exposure is halved, your chances of getting cancer from radiation are also halved.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 03:41:39 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 03:37:48 amMy point is that while you say that even small radiation makes it a dangerous place to live, in actuality it's such a small contributing factor to expected lifetime that it's basically on noise level in statistics.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 04:00:16 am
content: Quote from: wraper on June 15, 2019, 03:41:39 amPlease allow me to steer this back into discussion of the movie.From what I understand, the impact of the Chernobyl disaster on life expectancy of population was never assessed. Official record states “up-to 50 direct casualties” and “up-to 4000 indirect” (I am quoting Russian Wikipedia), and gives nothing quantitative about health impact on millions who were exposed to radiation fallout.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 10:27:16 am
content: Well these long term health effects are quite tricky to quantify.Even a perfectly healthy person that lived in some sort of shield to protect them from all natural radiation could still get cancer. Things like UV light or carcinogenic chemicals can also damage DNA. Even if you are not exposed to those, still the processes inside living cells are not 100% reliable. There is always a tiny chance that something might damage it(like oxidants), or that the DNA does not copy perfectly when a cell divides. Because of this cells have repair mechanisms that constantly fix damage to it, but these are also not 100% reliable, especially if there is too much damage. But even then when "bits get flipped" in DNA that will in a lot of cases do nothing, or cause a cell to do something too radically different and die, its only when the DNA changes in exactly the right way to cause the cell to successfully uncontrollably replicate is when you get cancer.Ionizing radiation is just one method of many that can "flip a bit" in DNA. So technically yes no amount of ionizing radiation is safe, but below certain levels its contribution to DNA damage is going to be so small that the other DNA damaging methods overshadow it.And since the effect of damaged DNA is the cell doing the wrong thing or dying all together (As well as radiation disturbing other cell processes) is why radiation sickness happens after short exposure to intense radiation. The cells have to work hard to repair the damage and a lot of dying cells around puts a heavy strain on the body. There is a chance a cell turned to cancer and survived, but if not while the person survives the massive surge in cell death, then they can recover perfectly fine. Just that the more radiation they got the more the odds are stacked against them.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 11:20:47 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 04:00:16 amNot true. Report here:https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/pub_meet/chernobyl-accident-health-effects/en/

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 11:58:20 am
content: Quote from: apis on June 14, 2019, 11:42:57 pmThis does not pass even simple logic test. If coal ash would be 100 times more radioactive (per electricity unit generated) then there would be radiation exclusion zones around each coal plant. Only part of fresh Chernobyl nuclear fuel was enough to render huge area uninhabitable. I am not aware of single uninhabitable zone around any coal plant. Do you? Editors' note clearly indicates that article is utter BS: "As a general clarification, ounce for ounce, coal ash released from a power plant delivers more radiation than nuclear waste shielded via water or dry cask storage.". Unshielded waste X is 100 times more dangerous than properly shielded waste Y. Isn't that kinda obvious?QuoteNot for free, but I agree that there shall be pollution tax first for coal, then oil and gas, then nuclear as well. We are going there, but not fast enough.https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/markets_en

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:07:31 pm
content: What? Nuclear power plants have basically no radiation leakage during normal operation. You're going on a complete tangent here.Coal ash concentrates radionuclides found in coal, including primarily alpha-emitters. These get inhaled and cause significantly higher damage (20x equivalent dose) than the same energy of beta or gamma radiation (which would be nuclear power plant or waste leakage).

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:39:30 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 15, 2019, 11:58:20 amDoes your logic test not recognize that nuclear power plants do not explode normally? While coal power plants emit them constantly in small amounts. And yes, coal contains radioactive elements. Coal ash gets them in concentrated state.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:42:19 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 15, 2019, 11:58:20 amWell obviously they are comparing the radiation from coal waste that is dumped directly into the environment against the radiation that escapes a running nuclear plant and radiation leaked from properly stored radioactive waste afterwards.Coal plants could certainly be cleaner than a nuclear plant of the waste was captured and stored in an underground bunker, but that's not practical because there is a lot of it(Especially if you include the hard to store CO2). The amount of hazardous material(radioactive isotopes, mercury, sulfur etc) in coal is a tiny percentage of its total mass. But we burn millions of tones of coal each year and this results in a significant amount of said hazardous material to be sent up the chimney in to the air or just dumped someplace in the form of ash.So the reason why nuclear plants are significantly cleaner in the end is just because they produce so little waste that it can be practically stored in an underground bunker. Tho the actual fuel rods are not just tossed out into the waste, they collect those to extract the plutonium for making nuclear bombs or radioisotope generators for spacecraft. The leftover uranium can be enriched again to make new fuel rods and leaving you with a bunch of the leftover stable non radioactive isotope of uranium. This stable uranium could be thrown in a landfill and cause less harm to the enviorment than a lot of the other stuff we throw in the garbage like the usual heavy metals (tho it probably wouldn't leave the process quite that pure so it would still be considered hazardous, but not that badly). Yet uranium reprocessing is slow end expensive so it ends up piling up.I fully agree that the current way we manage both radioactive waste and CO2 might not be all that good, but building more nuclear plants and shutting down old coal plants is right now the best thing we can do for the environment without sacrificing any of our humanly comforts. Better taking care of nuclear waste can give us nuclear plants that are pretty much as good as this futuristic fusion power. Sure coal is still safer than nuclear power, but im pretty sure that a massive fusion reactor blowing up would be a VERY bad situation too. So are we just going to keep using coal after we invent fusion just because it could also spew radioactive crap everywhere on catastrophic failure like a nuclear plant?

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 12:49:23 pm
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 04:00:16 am"up-to 4000 indirect" is in line with what theInternational Atomic Energy Agency have said.For comparison, a recent study on the effects of air pollution from coal power plants in the US estimates52000 premature deathsevery year. In Europe we also have a lot of coal power and higher population density so the number would be higher here. We could have a Chernobyl scale accident every year and coal would still be worse.Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 01:35:35 amIt's also that radioactivity decays exponentially, not linearly as people tend to assume, so it halves with a certain period (halflife). That means most of the radiation disappears in the beginning, but it never reaches zero. When it is considered safe depends on what radiation level you decide is safe which is pretty arbitrary. Mercury, lead and arsenic are dangerous for an eternity, yet we can del with those elements without much problem.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 01:29:06 pm
content: Quote from: apis on June 15, 2019, 12:49:23 pmWell our solution for hazardous materials like arsenic and mercury is the same as for nuclear waste. Just fill a barrel with it and put it somewhere safe.We can easily take care of things like chemical weapons because they are compounds of elements. And most of these compounds fall apart into something different once heated up hot enough. Most of these elements tend to be harmless as they are things like oxygen or nitrogen or carbon, while others like phosphorus or fluorine are so reactive that they will quickly grab something and turn into a more harmless compound where they are stuck and unable to react with anything else.For things like mercury you can't decompose it as its already an element, its not very reactive so it won't quickly bind to other safe elements, and when you do react it with other things it usually forms harmful compounds (Many of them way more dangerous than mercury itself, especially if they are water soluble), and even then these mercury compounds are usually not stubernly stable so even if a safe mercury compound is made and dumped in the environment there is a good chance something is able to break it up and release the mercury.Yes radioactive waste takes a long time to burn itself out because of the logarithmic curve, but after a few hundred years its pretty low. There are also natural uranium, radon.. etc deposits underground that are pretty darn radioactive too. Sure the long lived isotopes might take milions of years to decay but they are no worse than natural uranium that we haven't dug up yet and is still down there. The problematic highly radioactive short lived isotopes burn out to reasonably safe levels much much faster. But that mercury is no safer after 1000 years of sitting in a barrel.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 01:40:13 pm
content: Quote from: SkyMaster on June 15, 2019, 12:59:38 amSource? There are a few common mistakes people make about safe radiaton levels and containment/shielding requirements. As others already pointed out the radiation level decreases exponentially. So after a relative short time (100 years) most of the radio activity is gone and the material is much safer & easier to store and handle.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 04:17:46 pm
content: I do like these threads. There is still a lot of vague hand waving regarding "nuclear radiation" and the dangers/health effects, both by the public and qualified scientists. There is still quite some debate over what one considers "safe limits", with some calling them too low, and that feeds into the public's fear. It's a bit like EM radiation, certain drugs and even vaccines, but with those there is an overwhelming consensus, with a minority still paranoid about the dangers - nuclear radiation is far more split - you can find a highly qualified doctor to claim that there are no safe levels, and you can find an equally qualified person to claim that current safe limits are far too low.What makes matters worse is, it can be quite hard to get hard numbers on these things, because ionizing radiation and its damage relies on so many other factors: the radioactive elements, radiation type, method of exposure, be it ingestion through water, inhalation of particles, food sources, and absorption is dependent on chemistry!. Sure we can measure radioactive sources fairly accurately, but only with standards like distances, exposure times and standardized shielding (clothing). All this adds up to a pretty large ambiguity, so whilst some err on the side of caution (almost to the point of blind fear) and claim "no level is safe"the reality is almost always "it depends".And with things like death toll, that includes those who died from non-radiation effects - toxic substances released from construction materials that cause chemical damage rather than ionizing damage.I vaguely remember a documentary on the disaster back in the 90's where several "scientists" (we just have to take the documentary's word on that) claimed that the death toll was tens of thousands, but investigation put it at less than 300, with a possibility of it increasing to 2000 - that is one hell of an error margin. It focused on cancer rates in the following decades and pointed out the survival rate for thyroid cancer was 98%, where-as the guesstimates assumed that thyroid cancer was 100% fatal - as it projected the total death-toll based on the current rate of diagnosis.I guess the arguments will always go from one side that believes we can turn the planet into a radioactive wasteland (there just ain't enough fissile material for that) to the other extreme that nuclear is far safer than any other source. I guess its clear I'm for nuclear power, as the apparent immediate dangers of it are less than the dangers of fossil fuels, nothing is completely safe, everything is a risk/benefit analysis. The fact that Chernobyl exclusion zone is now full of thriving wildlife is at least an obvious sign such a disaster didn't cause the kind of barren wasteland the 50's comics wanted you to believe.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 10:02:18 pm
content: Quote from: apis on June 15, 2019, 12:49:23 pmWell the same IAEA report that you quoted estimates economic impact of Chernobyl disaster as “hundreds of billions of dollars”. Not to mention 2,600 square km of land that will remain uninhabitable for thousands of years. So yeah, you can have Chernobyl-scale accident every year. May I only ask to have accidents somewhere else? Preferably in a galaxy far far away.PS. Whether IAEA can be trusted in conducting unbiased investigations is another story. After all, if you ask industrial associations of coal miners and coal-fired power producers, they will have different view on detrimental of coal industry on people life expectancy.

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 10:06:45 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 15, 2019, 01:40:13 pmWith all due respect, you have been misled; just like everybody else here who think that radioactive waste in no big deal and after 100 years it is safe.100 years is about three generations; which is already a very long time. But the Truth is radioactive waste emits dangerous level of radiation forseveral thousands of years. It is so bad that nobody knows what to do with radioactive waste.For almost 50 years, several countries were dumping their radioactive waste to the bottom of the oceans; which is now illegal. Today, every countries who operate nuclear power-plants accumulate the radioactive waste in temporary locations; because they don't know what to do with it.Radioactive waste is one of nastiest stuff that Men created.Oh you want a source...http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx"Within a period of1,000-10,000 years, the radioactivity of HLW [high-level waste] decays to that of the originally mined ore."And this is coming from "World Nuclear Association". They are promoting nuclear energy and are therefore downplaying the negative side, yet they still come up with these ultra-long periods inseveral thousands of years.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 10:15:48 pm
content: Quote from: SkyMaster on June 15, 2019, 10:06:45 pmAgain, without knowing what the radiation level of the originally mined ore is, you can't say anything about the danger. You are cherry picking meaningless numbers here.Quote from this website:https://talknuclear.ca/2014/08/just-how-radioactive-is-uranium-ore/Well, a handful of raw uranium ore actually has about as much radiation as 10 bananas – a “bunch” that is. But, how could that be? It’s simple really. Banana’s are radioactive because they contain trace amounts of the naturally occurring radioactive isotope potassium–40, just like uranium ore contains trace amounts of the naturally occurring radioactive isotopes uranium-238 and 235. Shocking isn’t it?A quote from the site you linked to yourself:Unlike other industrial toxic wastes, the principal hazard associated with HLW – radioactivity – diminishes with time. At present, interim storage facilities provide an appropriate environment to contain and manage existing waste, and the decay of heat and radioactivity over time provides a strong incentive to store HLW for a period before its final disposal. In fact, after 40 years, the radioactivity of used fuel has decreased to about one-thousandth of the level at the point when it was unloaded.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 10:26:18 pm
content: Quote from: SkyMaster on June 15, 2019, 10:06:45 pmI don't see anyone claiming it is "safe" after 100 years. The word wassaferwhich is a relative term.Quote from: SkyMaster on June 15, 2019, 10:06:45 pmIt's true that we don't really know what to do with it, but it is also true that such waste can be contained - sealed drums and a underground lined room will do it. Part of the danger isn't the radioactivity, it is the fact many of these heavy metals are chemically active, and can corrode the containers and subsequently leach into the surrounding soil. There have been and still are some very clever people working on ways to mitigate these problems - we can't solve it to make it "perfectly safe" but they can work on ways to store and contain it.Again, no-one is claiming this stuff is "safe" (and absolute term). Also, I haven't read any statement hear claiming there is an agreed and effective form of storage. But how many people have been killed by radioactive waste compared to those from fossil-fuels?

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 10:40:02 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 15, 2019, 10:15:48 pmYou are the prime example of that, you seem to have no idea what you are talking about, but are assuring everyone nuclear waste is safe. Are you really that ignorant or just trolling?Finland are spending €800 million on a waste storage site which is expected to store waste for 100,000 years. They are not doing that for shits and giggles, nor because the waste is probably so safe you can spread it on your roses in a couple of years.

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 11:06:18 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on June 15, 2019, 10:40:02 pmYou run the risk of being told that you are cherry picking meaningless numbers. PffftI rest my case.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 11:12:32 pm
content: Quote from: donotdespisethesnake on June 15, 2019, 10:40:02 pmAnd where does the 100,000 years number come from? There is no data to support needing such a long term storage from a technical point of view. The reason why they choose that number is much more likely to satisfy public opinion. In 100,000 years the surface of the earth will have changed so much that the storage facility is extremely likely to be compromised long before the 100,000 years have passed.

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 15, 2019, 11:58:44 pm
content: Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organizationhttps://www.nwmo.ca/en/Canadas-Plan/Canadas-Used-Nuclear-Fuel/How-Is-It-Stored-Today"Although the used fuel's radioactivity decreases with time, chemical toxicity persists. The used fuel will remain a potentialhealth risk formany hundreds of thousands of years."Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility - How Toxic is Nuclear Waste Over 10 Million Years?http://www.ccnr.org/usgs.htmlCCNR COMPLETE DIRECTORYhttp://www.ccnr.org/#HLWFrom "19th REFORM Group Meeting, Salzburg Austria, September 1, 2014"FACTS:There are 100s of radioactive poisons with distinct biological pathways.We do not know how to destroy or neutralize these wastes.Nuclear wastes are dangerous for millennia, even millions of years.Disposal = abandonment: this approach is not scientifically certain.Lack of precedent: humans have never safely “disposed” of anything.USA has tried 8 times to locate a disposal site and failed all 8 times.Germany has two failed underground repositories: Asse II, Morsleben.WIPP, the only Deep Geologic Repository in USA, recently failed."No data"? Yeah right

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 12:03:08 am
content: Quote from: SkyMaster on June 15, 2019, 11:58:44 pmBut the chemical toxicity is no different than that of other toxic substances. That is what I already wrote a few posts ago. If you put a barrel of Chlorine or CO2 in the ground it will be toxic until the end of time too. There is no need to be overly hysteric about nuclear waste in that respect; it needs to be treated as toxic chemical waste (mostly heavy metals) at some point.

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 12:16:30 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 12:03:08 am

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 12:21:49 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 15, 2019, 11:12:32 pmFact that you are not aware ofdatadoes not mean that it does not exist. It's all around the internet. Particular report is not only one.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 12:34:51 am
content: From the same document:“The general and widely publicized belief about spent fuel is that it is dangerously radioactive for millions of years ... this perception is incorrect”. “With radioactive decay, the dose rate associated with any radioactive material decreases with time. By the time 1,000 years have passed, there are no significant fission nuclides present, and the dose rate reflects the natural uranium content and the remaining transuranic nuclides”.The table is interesting but only applies to handling the spent fuel or sitting on top of it (30cm distance). Increase the distance and the radiation levels will drop by inverse-square law law.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 12:59:09 am
content: Quote from: vad on June 15, 2019, 10:02:18 pmAn accident like that is expensive no doubt, but also very rare, if you divide the cost by the energy produced by nucelar power plants it's not so bad. In the end it's how it affects peoples health that is most important. The Chernobyl accident is the worst that can happen and it still caused less harm to peoples health than Coal power doesin one yearin the U.S. alone.People still inhabit the "uninhabitable" zone and they kept operating the other reactors at the Chernobyl power plant for many years after the accident. You don't wan't children to grow up there, because children are more sensitive to radiation, but it's not a wasteland, more like a flourishing nature reserve.Nuclear power isn't perfect, but what many people fail to realise is that it is better than the alternatives. If we compare the economic cost of the damages that coal plants cause with the damages from nuclear power plants, coal is again way worse (just consider the health care cost the air pollution cause). Unless there is an accident, nuclear cause near zero emissions, and what little waste is produces is carefully taken care of. Coal power plants on the other hand just dump their waste in the atmosphere and landfills.Quote from: Buriedcode on June 15, 2019, 10:26:18 pmWhy should we compare with the originally mined ore though? A nuclear physicist once showed that after 100 years 10% of the waste has about the same amount of radioactivity in it as the original mined ore. The reason that it's more radioactive is that it's not as diluted as the original ore. But if you store the waste in the mine the ore came from and 10% were to leak after 100 years you basically have the same amount radioactivity loose in the mine as when you started. Of course, the storage is designed to not leak for 100000 years, but that doesn't mean it's all that dangerous for 100000 years. If you bury things deep in the bedrock in a geologically stable area you can be pretty sure it will stay there for many thousand years. And 100000 years is still much better than an eternity, like we have for arsenic and mercury.Quote from: Buriedcode on June 15, 2019, 10:26:18 pmThe so terrifying nuclear waste has killed, If not zero people, it is in the single digit range. And it can't be stressed enough: the study I posted before shows that air pollution from coal power plants kill about 50000 every year, in the U.S. alone. And that is just the air pollution. Coal also cause acidification, global warming, mercury pollution, and all kinds of other problems (lots of coal mining deaths for example).

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:10:08 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 12:34:51 amSo you say that you are fine to store 1000 years old nuclear fuel rods in your backyard or what? This is ridiculous

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:47:29 am
content: In my backyard, no. In a radiation-shielded warehouse in reasonably leak-proof and shielded containers, yes.Actually I'm fine with radiation sources of that intensity just being in my house in a safe somewhere. 0.8mSv/h unshielded is lower than what I've worked with during my Physics bachelor.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 02:12:03 am
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 01:10:08 amWhere did anyone say they were OK with storing storing nuclear waste in their back yard? Where did anyone claim nuclear was was "safe" ? Lots of straw-mans going on here.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 09:24:33 am
content: Quote from: KaneTW on June 16, 2019, 01:47:29 amThat was exactly my point - that your backyard have same radiation limits as common landfill sites. Even after 1000 years nuclear waste can't be sent to landfill but still must be stored preferably underground and guarded as well. Argument that after 100 or even 1000 years nuclear waste is "more manageable" is laughable. It still requires significant effort/money to transport and store, it's still dangerous waste.Armchair nuclear "experts" easily talk about how safe/clean nuclear power is, how easily manageable waste is - maybe because they believe that it will not impact them directly? Why do we need radiation monitoring in landfill sites of Latvia? - Because nuclear power is clean? Hell no! It's because 33 years of radioactive decay is not nearly enough. When it can impact you or your descendants, you do not want to take even slightest chances. Of course fossil plants pollute more, kill more people but nuclear power is far from clean. Of course we better build nuclear plants than coal-burning plants but please do not fool ourselves by suggesting that nuclear power is "clean".QuoteClaim was not "safe" but "clean". Here:Quote from: Berni on June 14, 2019, 05:40:44 amI argued that nuclear energy can be considered as "clean" if we ignore waste disposal problem. Undeniably US, UK and not only are fine examples of this serious problem.Quote from: apis on June 16, 2019, 12:59:09 amWith same success we can conclude that chemical weapons are "clean" and "safe" -becauseif people had not been killed by stockpiles.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 10:36:19 am
content: Those who say that nuclear waste is easily manageable - Japan needs your help. NOW.By 2021 they will have 14m cubic metres of contaminated soil and 1.37 million tons of contaminated water.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/11/fukushima-toxic-soil-disaster-radioactivehttp://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201903190042.html

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 11:00:43 am
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 10:36:19 amThe people in Bhopal (India) also need your help.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 11:14:55 am
content: Im not trying to say nuclear power is completely clean, just that compared to other ways it is the cleanest reliable source of large amounts power that we have invented so far.Sure solar and wind power is perfectly clean (Ignoring the process of building them) but they are not reliable and are unpredictable due to being very weather dependent. Hydroelectric is better because rivers have a bit more of a steady flow and there is a decent amount of water storage behind a dam, this also lets them adjust the power output very rapidly to stabilize the grid in the case of transients. Unfortunately (in Europe at least) we have already used up most of the nice geographical locations where a large hydroelectric dam makes sense, so we can't just keep building more of them.Here in Slovenia we have about 10 decently sized hydroelectric plants 40 small hydroelectric plants, 6 coal fired plants and some wind and solar dotted all around. But we also have a single nuclear plant, yet that thing is producing about half of all electricity we make! Its even a pretty small plant with a single reactor. As far as i know the spent fuel rods end up being shipped off to the US, but we do end up having to deal with the rest of the low radioactive waste (Like old spare parts and equipment that became radioactive because of being around the core). And yes we don't have a proper place to put it and nobody wants it.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 12:19:16 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 11:00:43 amThere's space pollution as well. So what? How does chemical contamination of Bhopal can be argument in discussion about nuclear waste management problems? You somehow imply that we shall send nuclear waste to Bhopal or what?

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:09:21 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 16, 2019, 11:14:55 amRight. Nuclear iscleanerthan any other energy sources we consider as reliable. Agreed.QuoteHydro actually is not that "clean" as we would like. Environmental impact is negative, thankfully not in form of pollution but "just" lost land and some migrating fish resources that we have to (forcibly) replenish in result.QuoteGood. Perhaps you shall consider one more, just do not leave waste for your grandchildren to handle. This is what I stand for here in this discussion - nuclear is good, but take care of your s***t as well. Please.QuoteYes. People do not want it, nor politicians want it. Do you even have any idea of potential nuclear graveyard site location? Even US have problems finding such...

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:10:34 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 16, 2019, 11:14:55 amI agree that hydroelectric is good, however it can be very dangerous.When, for example, the Banqiao dam failed it killed 26,000 from flooding, 145,000 died from subsequent famine and epidemics, and about 11 million became homeless. It is also very destructive to the local environment, in and near the rivers in which it is placed.

author: TerraHertz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:13:12 pm
content: https://www.rt.com/news/461348-chernobyl-disaster-tarakanov-hbo/https://www.rt.com/news/461152-chernobyl-general-tarakanov-reacts-hbo/Not for the faint-hearted: The Children of Chernobyl. (video)This is a greatly abbreviated version of an original much more harrowing documentary. Google the same term for more on that topic.If you want to really feel the atmosphere of the Exclusion zone:http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/A Ukrainian woman who likes to go exploring the Zone on her motorbike. Father is a nuclear scientist, and she knows what she is doing.But put aside all talk of half-lives and how long radioactive contamination takes to become 'safe' (ask the people of Iraq about how 'safe' DU is, and check out the current tragic and still rising birth defect rates.) Put aside that Chernobyl is not the worst contamination disaster, Fukushima is, and still ongoing. Most of the major food growing area of Japan is contaminated, Tokyo really _should_ be evacuated (but that's impossible), the Nth Pacific Ocean is dying, and the US West Coast is getting seriously hit, while both Japan and US governments are actively suppressing related news. Such as the shocking childhood thyroid cancer rates in Japan now.Forget all that. You know why I oppose any and all use of nuclear fission power?Because Earth regularly gits hit by major meteorite impacts. Every few tens of thousands of years. Geological record is clear. The most recent big one was probably the Hiawatha crater in Greenland, about 12000 years ago. That one nearly sent Homo Sapiens extinct worldwide. If we'd had civilization and hundreds of nuclear power plants, along with thousands of tons of high level radioactive waste in containment dumps at that time, it would have sent ALL LIFE ON EARTH extinct, for a million years.Having one or two (or five- Chelyabinsk, Semipalatinsk, Komsomolets) nuclear contamination disasters is bad enough. We can survive that. Massive natural disasters happen, and life can survive that too. But not a natural disaster that smears dozens, hundreds of nuclear plants and waste dumps across the landscape. That's a terminal event. Background radiation level goes higher than any complex lifeform can reproduce in reliably over multiple generations. Even if it doesn't kill everything outright.Don't even bother prattling on about 'meteor defenses.' We can't. And by the time we can, we'll have fusion power anyway (much safer, no high nuclear weight long-life isotopes, no tons of radioactive fuel in reactors.)

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:24:45 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 01:09:21 pmIt was mentioned before thatFinland is constructing one(payed for by the nuclear industry). Sweden was about to build one too and the locals were positive about it, but the anti-nuclear lobby have made appeal after appeal, so it's currently in legal limbo. It will happen eventually, but there's no reason to rush it (because there's so little waste produced).(This is pretty controversial, but depositing the waste on the deep ocean floor in asubduction zonewould probably be the safest alternative, but it's politically impossible.)

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 01:48:07 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 12:19:16 pmIt has already been established that the radiation drops to safe levels in an overseable amount of time (a couple of hundred years). What remains are toxic (not radioactive) materials and in that respect there is no difference between toxic spills like the one in Bhopal. In the end you have to put things in perspective and look at it objectively without all the stigmas. At some point they'll probably clean the Bhopal disaster and they'll run into the exact same problems as with the contaminated soil from Fukushima.

author: ogden
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 02:14:54 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 01:48:07 pmPerhaps you shall actually read some reports anddo not watch Simpsons cartoon so much.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 02:25:38 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 01:09:21 pmWhat about damless hydroelectric, a little like wind power but far more predictable?

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 02:40:00 pm
content: Quote from: apis on June 16, 2019, 01:24:45 pmIn the Netherlands there is a fund setup to build an underground storage somewhere around 2100. The cost is estimated at around 2 billion euro by that time (between 0.2 to .5 billion in today's money).

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 04:17:09 pm
content: Quote from: TerraHertz on June 16, 2019, 01:13:12 pmRadioactivity is bad, and the reactors contain quite some activity, but things are not that bad. The Chernobyl reactor spew out much of it's inventory of fission products, especially caesium. So even an older reactor can only be about 10 times as bad, worst case. The actual uranium is usually not really mobile and will usually stay inside. There still is the closed zone around Chernobyl, but even this area is not absolutely non inhabitable - wild life around there does thrive. It's just not healthy - but so are some cities in China.However the argument with another disaster striking and leaving us with the nuclear waste not yet send to final disposal and nobody caring about this and the fund's set aside in dollars or bonds getting worthless is a real problem. So even the temporary storage used to wait for the first few decades should worst case withstand at least a few centuries - just in case. I don't know for sure, but chances are most reactors and storage facilities are not that bad - though nothing guarantied. So even if abandoned chances are good most of the material will stay inside. Things also get better in a few centuries with especially the more mobile isotopes down to a much lower level - not really safe, but already a lot less dangerous by than.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 06:47:27 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 01:09:21 pmWe had planned some waste storage site, but i think the project was halted because unsurprisingly the people anywhere near it protested against it.There have been also plans to add a 2nd block to the existing nuclear plant, no idea how far that is but id also expect people in the area to also be against it being built. Despite these being fairly modern reactors. The plant began operation in the 80s and uses the same reactor design as the one that melted down on three mile island, but despite the meltdown has not caused any significant contamination (Tho its not the same model as its made by a different US supplier).And yes a large dam can indeed be incredibly destructive if it fails (As history has proven). But the environmental impact of them can be pretty low. Here we have some rivers that run inside of deep valleys. This allows the water level to be raised quite a lot without actually flooding a lot of land, while the small bit of it that is flooded is part of a steep hill so its not really useful for much else. So yes hydroelectic power does have an environmental impact but in a good location its fairly minimal, while sometimes also serving as flooding control for some of the down stream areas as the dam can help smooth out large surges in flow due to abnormally heavy rainfall.Also we would still find those hydro dams very useful even if we replace all coal plants with nuclear, due to the fact that current designs of nuclear plants are not made to change the power output very rapidly, so they do need other plants to take care of any sudden surges in demand. Areas that don't have enough hyroelectric to handle it have to keep a coal plant in "hot standby", burning coal and ready to send out more power at the push of a button, wasting the heat energy in the process. Tho natural gas plants tend to be used to help there because they can ramp up power faster (Those are essentially giant stationary jet engines with a generator strapped to it)

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 08:27:39 pm
content: A small error in the above: a small lake contains only a little bit of power. For hydro to make sense you need a huge lake (and a large supply of water).

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 08:53:51 pm
content: Actually it's the height... Locally we have relatively small lake Bajer in the mountains feeding water through the tunnel down to a power plant that is at the sea level... there is 658,5 m of fall, installed power is 3x35MW. It is used as a peak supply plant, with pretty much instant regulation time. It is a part of a hydro system that is reversible, so sometimes they pump water back. That is rarely needed though, because surrounding mountains provide ample water.

author: Buriedcode
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 09:31:08 pm
content: Quote from: ogden on June 16, 2019, 12:19:16 pmYou were the one who made the comparison between nuclear waste and chemical weapons. So he made the comparison between chemical weapons and chemical spills. The difference is of course, chemical weapons are designed to intentionally harm humans. Nuclear waste and chemical spills aren't. Your comparison is almost like comparing nuclear waste to nuclear weapons.You have repeatedly tried to imply that those who don't immediately agree with you play down the dangers of nuclear waste.No-one is claiming nuclear waste is easily "managable". The terms used were all relative. Safer,moremanagable. Cyanide issaferthan the botulinum toxin - it doesn't mean I would like to drink it.No-one is saying it is safe enough to be put in general purpose landfills. It is pretty nasty stuff, but itcanbe contained, it is a pity not every country has done this.No-one is saying it is an ideal for of energy production and that it doesn't have any problems. No form of energy production is clean. The production of lithium batteries is hell on the local environment. Fossil fuels - if we ignore the obvious carbon problem - produce vast quantities of carcinogens and have stained our cities. Natural gas is "cleaner" but releases a fair bit of methane into the atmosphere - a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. When people call nuclear power "clean" they do not mean in absolute terms - nothing is "clean" - but compared to alternatives, its waste is far more concentrated, and therefore has thepotentialto cause less harm if properly handled.As forQuote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 01:48:07 pmThe point here is "overseeable amount of time". This spans many generations which is certainly achievable., and I think it is somewhat misleading to claim that all wastes radiation level has dropped to safe levels, because it depends on the isotopes in question. But you should realise we don't just collect all the waste, package it up, and bury it - it is processed.http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspxI'm unsure why Bhopal was brought up, but if one is comparing the deaths and injuries from nuclear power generation to deaths/injuries/legacy of the Bhopal spill, then I think you really should google the numbers. Here, I have done it for you:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_by_death_tollAnd Bhopal...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 09:36:04 pm
content: In the end the problem with nuclear waste is that it is not radioactive but toxic. The parallel with the Bhopal disaster is that just like at Fukushima a large area has become contaminated with toxic materials and that when cleaned the soil has to go somewhere. The difference is that Japan has the money to do a cleanup operation and India does not.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 09:55:32 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 09:36:04 pmThe difference is that chemical contamination is much easier to deal with. Put chemical protection on and you're free to do the job. If you have radioactive contamination, no protection will save you when you need to deal with highly radioactive source of contamination, which happens at Fukushima. They try to patch the problem here and there, wandering around. But they can do nothing about actual source of contamination.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 11:11:51 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on June 16, 2019, 09:55:32 pmOnly the plant itself is highly radioactive. The surrounding land not so much; the radiation levels are not dangerous to your health. However the partikels can be toxic when ingested or inhaled.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 16, 2019, 11:50:36 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 16, 2019, 11:11:51 pmThe problem is they have leaking radioactive water. Therefore they need to do something about reactors which isa very bigpain in the ass. Here are water tanks they are collecting that crap into.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 12:45:06 am
content: Quote from: 2N3055 on June 16, 2019, 08:53:51 pmTo be completely accurate power is proportional to the height times the flow (think power=voltage*current).

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 05:23:41 am
content: Quote from: wraper on June 16, 2019, 11:50:36 pmThat's a photo from Fukishima. They have so much of that contaminated water because they pumped lots and lots of sea water into the damaged reactor to cool the nuclear fuel. This water ended up flooding the facility and needed to be pumped out before it leaks down into the ground and sea (Well some of it already did leak).Water flowing trough the core of a normally operating reactor wouldn't be nearly as bad, The water does become a bit radioactive so it can't be poured down the drain, but i have no idea whats the half life of the stuff that ends up in it. The real nasty isotopes stay inside the rods when things go to plan.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 08:32:14 am
content: Quote from: Berni on June 17, 2019, 05:23:41 amNope, it's never ending ground water. They have 1.1 million tons of that stored already.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 02:27:52 pm
content: I only hope that these tanks can withstand the next big earthquake.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 02:37:37 pm
content: Ah yes sorry i did miss the fact how much natural ground water is getting in to the facility

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 04:09:03 pm
content: The main sources of radioactivity they have in the water at Fukushima should be Caesium and Strontium with a half life of some 30 years. So the same isotopes that are the main contamination from Chernobyl.The problem is not that these are toxic, but it is the radioactivity. With lower levels the problems is that these elements get into the food and the radioactive strontium can collect in the bones.For the water it makes sense to store it for some time and not release it to the ocean. Still it would not be a real disaster if after another earth quake some of the water would end up in the ocean.The difference for the clean to a chemical spill is that there is no good way to separate the radioactive contamination from the soil. For many chemical contaminations the soil can actually be cleaned and the waste volume reduced.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2019, 11:11:35 pm
content: It wasn't just a magnitude 9 earthquake,it was a record level tsunami. According to Wikipedia: 15,897 deaths, +2 (Overseas), 6,157 injured, 2,533 people missing.The nuclear accident which killed 1 person (again wikipedia) is really only a small part of the damage the tsunami caused.It makes no sense to look at the nuclear accident as an isolated event.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 12:13:23 am
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on June 17, 2019, 02:27:52 pmWell, they are not that bad actually. That water is processed to remove contamination but tritium (hydrogen-3 isotope) still remains. They are seriously considering starting dumping that into the sea.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 04:34:45 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on June 18, 2019, 12:13:23 amTritium isn't very dangerous to begin with because it only emits Beta radiation. Dillute it enough and it doesn't give any problems.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 05:10:58 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 18, 2019, 04:34:45 pmBut in form of water it can be ingested and deal the damage. It's the same with many other radionuclides, they are basically harmless as long as stay outside of you but once they got inside, they pose a serious danger.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 05:30:01 pm
content: Many years ago, the Caterpillar company used to post ads where it detailed a tough infrastructure problem, and how it had been actually solved (with the help of Caterpillar machinery, of course!).The ad would end with the phrase:"There are no simple answers, only intelligent compromises."Or a similar wording.Which falls right into the topic we are discussing.There is no question that electrical energy is one of the essential pillars of modernization. As humanity evolves, the per capita energy demand is and will be increasing.The problem is compounded by the fact that the World's population is still growing, and that population segments that previously required little or no electrical energy, are now connected to the grid.The end result? An ever increasing electrical demand.And from all of the very useful topics above, we can conclude that there is absolutely no energy source that is 100% issue free. So to paraphrase Caterpillar's ad, for electrical power generation and distribution there are, and there will be no simple answers, only intelligent compromises.Which essentially means that a mix of ALL the power sources will have to be used in the foreseeable future: Coal, oil, gas, geothermal, tidal, hydro, wind, solar and of course nuclear.How much of each? How to minimize the environmental impact? Responding to those questions my friends, is precisely the not-so-simple-answers.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 05:59:48 pm
content: The reason that tritium is not so bad is that organisms don't hang on to it as much as things like strontium.The calcium that is used to build bones is not so common in our food, so the body tries to grab any that it comes across and use it to build bones. But because strontium is chemically pretty similar to calcium it goes trough the same biological mechanism and builds bones just fine too. So once it gets in it will stay there. To make things worse sea life does the same thing, concentrating the hazardous isotopes but later on get caught by fisherman that then eat them and get a large dose of these isotopes.The form of tritium that's problematic is the one that ends up replacing hydrogen in water. Very hard to separate from normal water because it acts just like water, the body uses it just like water too so it does hang around inside of you. But the difference is that humans give off a lot of water, most of the water you consume ends up coming back out in days or weeks as humid breath, sweat. urine..etc so if you happen to consume tritium contaminated water it will simply pass back out of you and tritium levels gradually falling back to nothing after drinking normal water again for a while. Unlike the strontium that will likely stick around in your body to your grave.One use for tritium water is tracing underground water paths. They dump some of that radioactive water into a stream or cave and then test all the water ways around the area for tiny amounts of tritium with very sensitive equipment. Of course they don't dump large amount of it in, just enough for the equipment to detect.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 06:32:29 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on June 18, 2019, 05:10:58 pmThat is not correct. Tritium is only dangerous in large quantities. The limits for Tritium in drinking water aren't zero. The WHO advises a limit of 10000bq/l for drinking water.

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 10:02:58 pm
content: Quote from: wraper on June 18, 2019, 05:10:58 pmYou're confusing things. Alpha radiation is only dangerous inside. Beta and gamma are dangerous both in and outside.Tritium decays by beta emission, so it's dangerous both in and out. Of course, the total dose you receive when you ingest it is larger. That's a secondary effect.On the other hand, Polonium-210 (to take a famous alpha decaying nuclide) is harmless outside your body but delivers a lethal radiation dose in less than a microgram when ingested or inhaled.

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 10:22:20 pm
content: Quote from: KaneTW on June 18, 2019, 10:02:58 pmNope, it's you confusing things.Quote

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2019, 11:17:03 pm
content: Hmm. I see, it's a specific case of the beta emissions being low energy. Doesn't apply to general beta decay though.

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 05:33:58 am
content: Well the notion behind beta radiation being more dangerous is that these beta decays usually happen at very high energy.The higher the energy of that shot out beta electron the farther it will get before it stops. The really high energy stuff can get deep into things before it stops so it can easily make it deep into your body from just standing next to it. Metals in general tend to be very effective at stopping beta particles, human flesh not so much.The one that is a real bastard to stop is Gamma rays. Those are just really high energy electromagnetic waves that will basically go trough anything. Thick lead shielding is needed to keep those back. But they have so much penetrating power that they actually start becoming a bit safer again. Flesh is so bad at stopping them that most very high energy gamma rays can pass straight trough you and keep going without doing anything. For this reason X-Ray machines have the X-Ray tube behind a metal window that stops the low energy gamma rays and only lets the high energy ones come trough and hit the patient. This reduces the radiation exposure while providing a image that is just as good. And this is why they sometimes cover parts of you with a ridiculously heavy lead blanket as its the only thing that will stop those high energy rays.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 02:58:03 pm
content: Quote from: Berni on June 19, 2019, 05:33:58 amGamma rays and X-rays are not the same thing. While they both are types of electromagnetic radiation (together with radio waves, infrared radiation, visible and ultraviolet light), gamma photons have more energy than X-Ray photons. The higher the energy of gamma and X-ray photons, the lower crosssection they have when interacting with normal matter (atoms). The lower the crosssection - the lower absorption rate of rays passing through matter - the higher penetration power of the rays.So, while you can safely shield yourself from X-rays by a thin layer of lead (like they do during medical X-ray imaging), don’t expect same efficacy when shielding from gamma radiation produced during gamma decay of many isotopes. You need walls of lead as thick as 0.5-1.0 meter, to get any reasonable protection.

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 03:26:04 pm
content: No, both statements are wrong.X-rays and gamma rays can have overlapping energy ranges. Gamma rays are emitted by the nucleus whereas X-rays are emitted outside the nucleus.The amount of shielding depends on the intensity, and half an inch of lead will attenuate 50% of 2MeV EM radiation, or 100% of <300keV (e.g.https://www.eichrom.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/gamma-ray-attenuation-white-paper-by-d.m.-rev-4.pdf)Nothing needs meter thick lead walls unless you work with monstrously powerful linacs. Most labs just use ~5cm thick lead bricks.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 03:26:17 pm
content: The most extreme form ofgamma rays/x-raysradiation is cosmic rays which can have energies as high as 3*1020eV (about 50 J)! (Which is part of why it was so ridiculous that people were afraid of the high energy collisions at the LHC, cosmic rays can have many million times the energy).

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 04:47:02 pm
content: Okay yes i do agree i shouldn't have called radiation from an xray tube gamma rays because they don't originate from radioactive decay.But the energy level has nothing to do with it being called gamma or x rays. Tho it appears astronomers are calling ones below 100 keV X-Rays while calling the rest Gamma rays, simply for the reason that x ray tubes don't produce such high energy radiation. Yet this high energy radiation often comes from things that is not nuclear decay, but instead as antimatter annihilation, high energy colisions and other violent physics events. So technically they should be called x rays. All depends on who you ask.In any case the result is the same sort of electromagnetic radiation and its a stubborn little bugger to stop.And you do indeed see meters of special dense concrete around very powerful particle accelerators. There are scientists working around the place while its running, so they really want to make sure they don't let too many of those rays escape.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 05:01:53 pm
content: Quote from: KaneTW on June 19, 2019, 03:26:04 pmLol. That is a very entertaining (and completely wrong) definition of bands of electromagnetic spectrum. If physicists were to define bands by the emission source, they would have run out of letters of Greek alphabet. Even worse, in case of gamma-ray bursts, the source and the mechanism that produces the burst is unknown. Are you saying astronomers are not allowed to call gamma-ray burst the gamma-ray bursts?Quote from: KaneTW on June 19, 2019, 03:26:04 pmIntensity of radiation is not the same as the wavelength / energy of individual photons. One hairy guy got Nobel Prize in Physics for his 1905 paper on this topic.PS. And to attenuate 2 MeV gamma rays by the factor of million you would need 0.25m thick lead wall. For higher energies and higher attenuation - the wall has to be even thicker. So what’s your point here?

author: Kleinstein
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 05:50:48 pm
content: The original definition of x-ray and gamma ray is indeed from the source (electrons vs nucleus). However gamma ray is sometimes also used for just EM radiation with very high energy (e.g. > 100 keV). Many gamma ray sources are relatively high energy (e.g. 100-500 keV range), however there are also low energy ones. AFAIK there is even one example know with gamma rays in the near IR spectrum.Tritium is special in that it emits very low energy beta radiation. So it is stopped as easy as the usual alpha radiation. In addition the activity measured in Becquerel does not care about the energy, but just decays. So a lot less (e.g. 10-100 times) energy released from tritium than most other isotopes at the same level of activity. This results in different (higher) activity limits for tritium in many cases.Other isotopes sending out beta radiation often also emit gamma radiation - there are very few pure beta emitters. For the reactor the Cs137 is such a combined beta and gamma emitter. The danger if ingested is more due to the beta radiation, but when checking for contamination one usually measures the gammer emissions. Also externally (e.g. now at Fukushima) the gamma part could well be the more problematic part.

author: vad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 06:21:57 pm
content: Quote from: Kleinstein on June 19, 2019, 05:50:48 pmThat’s an old archaic definition. Over the past century great many sources of high energy photons have been discovered that don’t fall into this simplistic electron vs nucleus source pattern: annihilation of particle-antiparticle pair (other than electron-positron pair), high energy collisions in particle accelerators (other than collisions of electrons or nucleus), gamma-ray bursts, x-rays emitted by matter that surrounds and is ejected from neighborhood of black holes, etc. Defining bands by wavelength is a proper way of describing EM spectrum.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 07:08:36 pm
content: I think gamma radiation just means em-radiation (originally at least). People categorised radiation as alpha, beta and gamma, where alpha is helium ions, beta is electrons and gamma is em waves, based on how it behaved (electric charge for one thing). (Now we also know of neutron radiation, but it's not called delta radiation). Later people understood that there's a whole range of phenomena that are all just em-waves of different wavelengths.

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 07:44:40 pm
content: Quote from: apis on June 19, 2019, 03:26:17 pmCosmic rays are ions (atomic nuclei) at very high energy, apparently coming from supernova and similar violent galactic events. When these hit the atmosphere, they produce showers of charged particles and gamma rays that rain down on the surface.So, while a cosmic ray SHOWER does PRODUCE gamma rays, the "cosmic ray" itself is not a gamma ray. Yes, being pedantic.Jon

author: jmelson
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 07:54:56 pm
content: Quote from: KaneTW on June 19, 2019, 03:26:04 pmWell, also particle accelerators can produce protons and neutrons. These can penetrate remarkable amounts of shielding.I work occasionally at some particle accelerators. Most have at least 1 m of shielding, and I think it is mostly for the Proton/Neutron problem.One facility (HIMAC in Chiba, Japan) had over 2 M thick walls, and they also had beam stops inside the vaults that were about 2 m thick, with steel plates plus concrete, in ADDITION to the shield wall. Then, they'd place a chunk of aluminum right where the beam came out as it would degrade the neutrons a bit better, I think. The HIMAC was used during the day for cancer therapy, and generally ran Carbon ions at 1 GeV.We did have a situation at the Notre Dame tandem linac when running protons at about 10 MeV where they went through the shield wall and caused alarms to go off in the next vault. That was going through at least 1 m of concrete.Jon

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 08:49:35 pm
content: Accelerated protons and neutrons are a wholly different beast and yeah, those penetrate pretty far I believe.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 08:51:55 pm
content: That is not what they taught me in physics class. Protons and neutrons are very large particles and therefore have a limited penetrating ability.

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2019, 08:57:52 pm
content: They don't, at normal speeds. At significant fractions of c they just poke a hole. (https://indico.gsi.de/event/6912/material/slides/)

author: Berni
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 20, 2019, 05:36:18 am
content: That's a very interesting PDF.Never seen it explained what happened if something gets in the way of a particle accelerator beam. I did expect it to do some damage but i didn't think it would near instantly drill and cut trough things so quickly and destructively like some sort of fictional giant laser in movies.

author: borjam
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 20, 2019, 06:18:35 am
content: Quote from: Berni on June 20, 2019, 05:36:18 amhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoli_Bugorski

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 07, 2019, 09:31:26 am
content: Quote from: nctnico on June 15, 2019, 11:12:32 pmIf only they were as well informed as you