Amazing Photos of Chernobyl "dead zone"

[Dr Fate]

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-revisited/

Check these out- compelling and amazing.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. I've seen it before, but thanks for the reminder.

I have relatives who lived far north of there, and the govt planted radiation counters in the area. they stayed indoors a lot that season and luckily refused to drink any milk.

[donheld]

2. Here's a better link.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chernobyl-land-of-the-wolves/chapter27.html

[Swamp Rat]

10. That could be New Orleans

Homes look like that just a couple of miles from me.

[donheld]

25. Sad but true I'm sure

Our country has fallen too far for words.

[JeffR]

3. Thanks Dr

These are incredible. And not to trivialize it, it occurs to me that there's an eerie similarity to the Bush Hellhole Ranch in Crawford in some of these pics.

Good post.

[RufusEarl]

4. Nuclear

Everyone should take a look at these photo's, and when someone mentions nuking something show them these pictures.

[Extend a Hand]

5. wow

I'd never seen these. I hope people remember this when Rethugs start pushing nuclear power in the face of declining oil.

[benburch]

6. This has been sort-of debunked.

This person probably did not ride a motorcycle alone through the area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidofspeed

However, the pictures seem to be real and to have been taken during an organized tour of the area.

[OKNancy]

7. Yeah, I remember reading that she went with her

husband in a car.

[Xithras]

11. Yeah, the story is fake but the pics are the real deal.

You can actually take tours through the area during certain times of the year and the whole site has become a macabre tourist attraction. The lady who took the pictures did so on an organized tour.

The pictures and sites were thought to be legit for many months until someone in the Ukranian government heard about it. Since entering the zone alone is highly illegal, they launched an investigation and eventually figured out that she'd made the story up to add interest in the photographs. Most people didn't care, since it was the photographs that were of interest, and not her story.

[RufusEarl]

61. Pictures

These pictures may not be real, and she may not have taken them. But the fact is Chernobyl happened, and has laid wast to the land and it's a good reminder that nuclear power is not a safe alternative energy source IMHO.

[Leopolds Ghost]

92. Uh, yeah. Those photos of the reactor are not real.

And there's a damn good chance she simply bribed her way in.

Any of you guys ever seen the polished, coffee-table-book photojournal of the exclusion zone inside a US nuclear test site (including photos of the craters?)

[truebrit71]

8. Wow! Nuclear Power? No thanks!

The fact that they are having to re-build the sarcophagus speaks volumes about the danger of nuclear power plants.

There is no doubt that there was human error involved in this, but just think about this. Every nuclear power plant is built by the LOWEST BIDDER. Not the best, the most advanced, THE CHEAPEST.

Yeah, THAT sounds like a good idea.... :eyes:

[benburch]

12. Bullshit.

Nobody builds the sort of reactor they ran there. It was a stupid design from the git-go.

Even a 70s-era pressurized water reactor of American design is immune from this sort of calamity.

And there are newer designs, CANDU, pebble-bed, and HTGCR that are failsafe.

Nuclear power CAN be done safely, and needs to be a part of our energy future. However, it should never, ever be run by a for-profit corporation, as they tend to cut corners on safety.

I speak as one who has worked in nuclear power safety system design.

[Dr Fate]

13. But they are still subject to terror attacks. n/t

n/t

[benburch]

15. Not really, no.

The only feasible attack is on the spent fuel stored at the site. And that is only because we won't let a long term waste repository be built.

[Dr Fate]

18. Er- okay. Safe as milk then. Nothing to see here. n/t

n/t

[benburch]

27. Not safe as milk...

But every bit as safe as coal power.

However, do understand that a nuclear plant is a very expensive form of energy. Especially when decommissioning costs are factored in. But it is energy you can rely upon to bridge the gaps in biofuel, wind, and solar, and hence valuable.

[havocmom]

22. Then there are the spend fuel rods.

Those of us in the West sorta think the power companies back east can keep 'em in their gardens if they are so damn safe.

[benburch]

42. Right now, they do.

Above ground.

They are better off buried.

[havocmom]

45. Just so they keep them in their own yards and don't send a bunch

to mine. Bein as how they keep tellin us they are so safe an all ;)

The west is NOT the moon, there are lots of people here. Nor is it a dumping ground for stuff big companines want to hide. They sold many on the idea of 'safe, clean power'. Let them eat the hell left over from it.

[benburch]

49. This is entirely a political matter.

There are many places in the USA where a repository could be built. Yucca Mountain was only one of a number of candidates.

Personally, I don't care where, but we need to have an underground waste storage site, and Yucca has been built already.

[MadHound]

56. And Yucca Mtn sits in a serious fault zone

IE earthquakes. With some low level volcanic activity nearby. And the EPA dye tests have already shown that anything that gets to the floor of Yucca Mtn will wind up in Las Vegas groundwater within two weeks.

Yucca Mtn. is completely unsuitable, especially for material that is going to remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years and longer. Those containers degrade, even the best of them, after mere hundreds of years. Do you really want to hand that problem off to future generations? Not a very nice thing to do to our children's children's children.

And like I'm saying downthread, there is absolutely no need to do so. We have plenty of clean, renewable alternative sources of energy. We don't need nukes, coal, natural gas etc. etc.

[benburch]

65. Yucca Mountain has been there for Millions and Millions of years.

There may be earthquakes there, (and there is no spot on the planet without earthquakes) but obviously the mountain does not care.

[MadHound]

81. Yucca Mtn. has been labeled as Class 4, High Probability of Earthquakes

By the US Geological Service. There are 33 faults in the immediate area, with two that run directly underneath Yucca Mtn. In 1992 there was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake in the Yucca area which caused $1,000,000 in damage to the DOE's Field Operations Center.

And no, Yucca Mtn hasn't been there for millions and millions of years. Yucca Mtn is a collapsed caldera of an extinct volcanoe from just a few hundred thousand years ago. Yesterday in geological time.

And no, the mountain doesn't care. It will shake, rattle and blow. And all of that radioactive waste stored inside it will spill, break open and get loose, getting into the groundwater from Yucca to Las Vegas to Southern California. LA that is. Is that an acceptable risk to you?

[CabalPowered]

96. In fact there was 4.0 the day it recieved a certain certification

from the NRC. I don't remember the exact date but it was in the late 90's.

[JVS]

67. Considering that the area has already been used to blow up 900 nuclear...

weapons, putting used fuel rods there seems to be a drop in the bucket.

[MadHound]

82. LOL friend, you have no clue as to what is and has gone on

First off, a great deal of the waste from our atomic testing blew east, all over the rest of us. Major problem when it started showing up in the milk from cows in Wisconsin.

And Yucca Mtn is designed to hold 77,000 tons of radioactive waste. All in one place. All sitting on top of two earthquake faults. All sitting on top of the caldera of an old volcano. All sitting on top of cracks in the ground that percolate down to groundwater that leads to Las Vegas and Southern California. All sitting in metal, wood and plastic containers that can, and will degrade within hundreds of years.

Sure, it may not be a problem for us(but we're not for certain), but it will certainly be a problem for our children's children's children. Don't you think it's bad enough that we're passing on the 8 trillion dollar debt?

[JVS]

103. Did the underground tests blow East? The land's already contaminated.

Also, as far as used fuel goes, this stuff won't be left to sit there and ignored because it still has huge amounts of nuclear fuel in it. The only reason that it is temporarily "waste" is that it is still cheaper to mine and refine uranium than it is to refine the waste (but not much cheaper) So thinking that this stuff is going to sit in a box is not being realistic. It should be regularly inspected and transferred to new boxes when necessary until it is needed for fuel. As far as the kids go, how about not giving them a planet with no icecaps, no sources of energy, and a desert in what used to be the bread-basket of the country?

[MadHound]

105. Actually some of it did indeed

Though certainly not as much as the aboveground tests. My high school chem teacher remember that he would go and take swipes off of his car the day following a test, above or below ground, and then bring those swipes into the school's geiger counter, just to watch it dance.

[JVS]

107. The point is that land is already contaminated. Keeping a storehouse...

there doesn't significantly add to the risks.

[MadHound]

110. Yeah, right, whatever

Gee, and I guess adding a few hundred thousand more gallons of oil to a spilled oil slick won't add significantly more to the risks of those on shore either:eyes:

You add more radioactive waste to Yucca Mtn, the more radioactive particles will get into the groundwater underneath, and thus a higher quantity of particles will wind up in the groundwater of Las Vegas and southern California. And the larger amount of these particles will be consumed by people.

Sorry, but your logic is just wrong friend. You add more waste to a certain area, the larger the number of cancer clusters, the higher the number of people being contaminated.

[benburch]

112. Can't win an argument with facts, so you turn to condescention?

Not good. :(

[MadHound]

114. And you call yourself an engineer?

Surely if you are one you realize that adding more rad waste to one particular area will mean that more rad waste gets into the groundwater. That my friend is a fact that even you can't let escape you.

[MadHound]

53. Bury the spent fuel rods? You've got to be kidding me

Gee, sorry, but I happen to like my groundwater clean, thank you very much. I don't care what kind of container that you put your rods in, it is still going to deteriorate given time. And once it does, even if the rods still aren't emitting, there is always that danger of consuming heavy metal particles, quite toxic. No thank you.

[benburch]

57. Bury them well below the aquifer.

Nobody is advocating putting at the level of your well water.

[MadHound]

58. You do realize that matter does percolate to the surface

Meaning that particles of heavy metal could indeed come back up. Besides, one can't get down far enough to put it below some of the really big aquifers, you know, the ones that entire regions depend on for their water. Too far down to bury, thus, we'll bury the spent fuel above the line of those big aquifers, and since water will percolate throught that soil, it will slowly but surely take those heavy metal toxins right on into those big aquifers. Sure, it might take a few hundred years, but hey our great great grandkids can deal with it:eyes:

[benburch]

62. You seriously underestmate the time scales we are dealing with here.

Also, even if we stop right now using any nuclear power, what would YOU do with the waste?

Assume I just put you in charge of all existing high level nuclear waste. You get 100 billion dollars and free reign. How do you ensure the safety of what we already have?

[MadHound]

80. Yes, I realize that the half lives of radioactive fuel can be measured

In the millions of years. One of the things that is a huge negative about using nuclear power. I also realize what those barrels of rad waste are constructed from, and they won't last even thousands of years. Steel rusts, plastic degrades, it is all a matter of time.

And you can give me all the money you want, but I still won't be able to come up with a satisfactory solution to the waste problem. And that right there is the whole goddamn point, nobody knows how to safely dispose of the waste. So until we figure that problem out, why in the hell should we continue to create more, more, more, when we already have technologies that don't pollute and that can supply out entire electrical needs? Seems a bit crazy to me.

[benburch]

87. Problem is that we DON'T have a viable alternative.

Yes, we CAN and SHOULD exploit available wind, solar, geothermal, and hydroelectric power (poor fish!) to the maximum extent possible, but those are not and cannot be sufficient. The only alternative we have to nuclear to underpin the whole system and keep things working is coal.

How many coal miners do YOU want to kill today?

How many kilotons of TNT do YOU want to explode removing whole mountaintops in formerly scenic West Virginia? (Have you ever seem that?)

How many more tons of carbon are YOU willing to add to the atmosphere to keep the lights on?

And yes, many years from now, after a lot of as yet undone research and development, we might be able, finally to power the country with just renewable resources, but we do NOT know how to do so today.

[MadHound]

89. LOL, friend, solar and wind technologies aren't pie in the sky

They are off the shelf technologies, ready to go to work NOW. In the time that it takes to put up one nuclear reactor(7-10 years) you can put up a hundred plus wind farms, with each individual turbine cranking out enough power to run 1500 average households.

You complain about blowing tops off of mountains in W. Virginia, how the hell do you think that they mine uranium? How much radioactive dust do you think those miners would inhale? How much fallout would plague the surrounding countryside.

Once again, the 1991 DOE survey, using 1991 technology(not future tech, but that which was available fifteen years ago) found conclusively that there was enough harvestable wind energy in three states, North and South Dakota, along with Texas to supply ALL of our electrical needs, including growth factors, through the year 2030. Now I'm not proposing that we blanket those states with wind turbines, but that statistic right there goes to show that we have the resources AND THE CAPABILITY RIGHT NOW to supply all our energy needs, domestically, cleanly, renewably.

You are trying to guilt trip me about miners and carbon. Doesn't work, because we have the technological means available right now to do away with mining, carbon, and nuclear. I suggest that we do so, ASAP.

[benburch]

90. You have simply no idea of the limitations of the systems you propose.

I am an engineer and have been an advocate of wind and solar for my entire life. But I know they are not a panacea. You seem to think, without any engineering knowledge of the realities, that they are.

If you feel guilt because you kill people every time you turn on the lights, its because you should.

Lord knows I do.

[MadHound]

93. Well you may be an engineer,

But apparently the ones in the know at the DOE don't agree with your analysis. I would much rather take their word over that of some anonymous poster on a political chat board.

You say you feel guilt every time you throw a switch, well then start doing something about it other than promoting another energy source with huge downsides in the mining, manufacturing, usage and waste storage process. Uranium is another finite resource, and we should learn the lessons of our past and stay away from such resources. Rather, lets us go with renewables. That way nobody gets hurt in the process, including our future generations.

[benburch]

95. Used to be a DOE employee...

And I would like you to cite where they say that we can power the country on 100% renewable electricity in the near term.

You made the claim. Now cite the study.

[MadHound]

104. 1991 National Wind Resource Inventory, published by the DOE

Sorry, there are no links directly to the study in question. Either it is only available in paper form, or this oily administration has scrubbed it completely.

However just for your edification, I've included some links that refer to this 1991 National Wind-Resource Inventory. And I must say, I apologize here. I made the mistake of stating that the three states in question were North and South Dakota, along with Texas. Apparently I'm wrong, it is Kansas, not South Dakota. But the good thing is that wind power can indeed be harnassed in all fifty states. Anyway, here are the confirmation links, just so you don't think I'm lying about this report.

<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1272/is_2716_133/ai_n8688119>
<http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/PB/PBch9_ss3.htm>
http://www.earth-policy.org/Alerts/Alert14.htm]
<http://www.motherearthnews.com/Alternative_Energy/2005_February_March/The-Short-Path-to-Oil-Independence>

We have the capability friend, we had damn well better start using it.

[benburch]

111. You don't understand what you've read at all.

You have wind. But you do not have the capacity to use that wind with current technology in such a way that you can power the nation. DOE does not make that assertion here.

Show me where the DOE says that we can run the country on 100% renewable sources in the near term.

NOBODY thinks that they can do that except you.

We need wind. God I wish we'd build those wind farms.

But the capacity they cannot generate, ESPECIALLY reactive capacity which they cannot, will have to come from fossil or nuclear.

Your heart is in the right place, but you clearly do not understand the technologies or their limitations.

[MadHound]

117. What part of this don't you understand?

"In 1991, the Department of Energy published a "National Wind Resource Inventory" in which it pointed out that three states--Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas--have enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy national electricity needs. Many were astonished, since wind power had been considered a marginal energy source. They would be even more amazed today, since the DOE's projections were a gross understatement--as they were based on the wind turbine technologies of 1991.

The average turbine in 1991 was roughly 120 feet tall, whereas new ones are 300 feet high, the equivalent of a 30-story building. Not only does this more than double the harvestable wind regime, but winds at higher elevations are stronger and more reliable."

Sounds like all we need to do is to start building wind farms. Off the shelf technology friend, that would take less time to implement than building new reactors.

And from Europe: "In 2003, the European Wind Energy Association projected that, by 2020, wind power would provide electricity for 195,000,000 people--half the population of Western Europe." Gee, that's over two thirds the population of the US. If Europe can do this, why can't we?

Here's some more resources for you:

Offshore wind energy in Europe from EWEA and Greenpeace, Wind Force 12: A Blueprint to Achieve 12% of the World's Electricity From Wind Power by 2020 (Brussels and Amsterdam: 2002), pp. 25-26. According to Debra Lew and Jeffrey Logan, "Energizing China's Wind Power Sector," Pacific Northwest Laboratory, March 2001, at www.pnl.gov/ china/ChinaWnd.htm, China has at least 275 gigawatts of exploitable wind potential, roughly equal to the current installed electrical capacity in China as reported by DOE, EIA, "China," EIA Country Analysis Briefs, at www.eia. doe.gov/emeu/cabs, updated June 2002. According to the 1991 assessment of wind energy resources in the United States, Texas, North Dakota, and Kansas would be able to produce 3,470 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh), approaching the 3,779 billion kWh used by the United States in 2001, as reported by DOE, EIA, "United States," EIA Country Analysis Briefs, updated November 2002. See D. L. Elliott, L. L. Wendell, and G. L. Gower, An Assessment of the Available Windy Land Area and Wind Energy Potential in the Contiguous United States (Richland, WA: Pacific Northwest Laboratory, 1991); maps available from AWEA at www.awea.org/projects/index.html, last updated 23 January 2003.

You keep insisting that this can't be done friend, but I've shown you time and again that it can be, and Europe is indeed doing so. Why do you refuse to believe the facts in front of you? Is it that being a former nuclear engineer, you want a resurgence of nuclear energy in order to benefit yourself? If so, that's being mighty damn selfish, especially considering that your skills and talents could transfer over pretty readily to the wind industry.

There is no need for nuclear, coal, gas, or other such energy generating strategies in our national energy plan. If we put out mind and our will to the problem, we can, with current off the shelf technology, build enough wind farms, and build up our eletrical grid in order to use this power if need be in order to supply our own energy needs, and export such energy to other countries. The US has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind energy, don't you think it's about time we started fulfilling that potential?

Look at the facts friend, they're right in front of your face.

[truebrit71]

19. A failsafe Nuclear Powerplant...now THAT'S bullshit...

Nuclear power should have NO place in future energy plans...

Which is worse, a for-profit corporation or a gummint....NEITHER is qualified to play with nuclear power....

[benburch]

28. Do you have any engineering understanding of the technologies I mentioned?

It would seem not.

[truebrit71]

37. I have enough engineering knowledge to know that NOTHING is failsafe..

..and that if a coal or oil-powered plant has an accident the surrounding area doesn't glow in the dark for the next three hundred years....

[benburch]

41. And in that you are wrong.

Yes, there are failsafe things.

And a coal plant spews radioactive material into the air at an alarming rate. Most coals are fairly radioactive. In the USA I've seen estimates that there are ten excess cancer deaths per year as a result of radiation from coal fired plants. And coal plants cause cancers by other means too. For example, fluoride emissions.

And then there are the miners who work in the pits and open-air mines, and who die from their employment at an alarming rate.

[truebrit71]

44. At the same rate as Chernobyl? Really? Wow, I guess greenpeace..

..and those other guys have COMPLETELY missed the boat on that then, haven't they? Coal plants are as radioactive as nuclear ones...

Well boys and girls I've learned something new today...


:eyes:

[benburch]

47. More people have died mining coal than died from Chernobyl.

Or ever will die from Chernobyl. If use use coal based electricity you kill people to get it.

Chernobyl was a stupidly designed plant that was the result of the Soviet Bureaucracy wanting to combine domestic power with weapons enrichment on a really huge scale. No sane engineer would contemplate such a plant for domestic power production today, EVEN in the former Soviet Bloc.

And Greenpeace are not known for their scientific accuracy...

[Generic Other]

51. Isn't Hanford built with the same plans?

I hate that place. Like the shadow of death clinging over the water supply in my state. Only a matter of time befors the waste contaminates the Columbia. Downwinders get sick. The people who work there have a suspiciously high cancer rate. Women of child bearing age can't work there.

People who live nearby have to have alarms in their homes to warn them to flee in case of an accident.

Safety is a joke. They have machine-gun welding soldiers, but no real concern with leaks, accidents, contamination, etc. I once went on a tour of the place. Trust me. It didn't look all that much safer than Chernobyl.

Wind and water power for me.

[benburch]

55. Hanford is not a power reactor.

It is a weapons reactor. The weapons program is notoriously out of control and should not enter into this debate on domestic power reactors. I would not want to live near Hanford or Oak Ridge either.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

31. there are some promising ideas of power generation.

but, that requires funding, testing and planning.
three things that the current admin is incapable of doing. especially when it has to do with science.

[benburch]

34. I fully agree with that.

We need to be researching and testing these things.

[FloridaPat]

20. When the Chenobyl accident happened, I was watching the news

on CNN. Everyone but CNN - including our gov't - noted that there were no reactors like that in Chenybol. However, CNN had more information. There are three in the US - owned by the gov't. I think they are all in the NE USA.

As for your for-profit comments - I know people who worked in a nuclear power plant as engineers. They had to work 12 hours a day 7 days a week for months at a time to keep they maintained.

[phusion]

21. Regardless....

What about the waste?

That will ALWAYS be a problem.

[benburch]

23. The amount of high-level waste is really quite small.

The big problem with it is that we cannot, politically, decide where to inter it.

[phusion]

24. and rightfully so

who wants radioactive waste in their backyard?

[benburch]

32. Were Elgin, IL a suitable place for it, I'd want it right here.

Right now, the situation is intolerable. All the high level waste EVER is above ground either in spent fuel pools or in dry cask storage at the reactor site.

It needs to be put into storage far underground in a geologically stable place.

[ladjf]

33. Only for 250,000 years. You shouldn't be so impatient.

[MadHound]

35. Well, having worked in nuclear power safety system design, you should know

That the number one cause of nuclear accidents isn't the tech friend, it is human error. And that no matter how many technological safeguards you put in place, human error can, has and will trump them every time. Hell, TMI was supposed to be the most technologically sophisticated reactor in the country, if not the world. Yet it was the failure of a human being to turn a valve, compounded by other human errors throughout the expanding crisis, that finally led to the partial meltdown and release of radiation.

As long as humans are involved in the design, building, implemination and operation of a nuclear reactor, there will always be the chance for a catastrophe. And given the scope of damage that can come from such a mistake, we shouldn't be even taking that sort of risk.

And we don't need to take that sort of risk, not when we have alternatives that can easily supply us with all of the electricity we need. A 1991 survey of US energy resources found that there was enough harvestable wind energy in three states, North and South Dakota, along with Texas, to supply the entire US electric demand through the year 2030, including factoring in for growth. And this is with fifteen year old technology! Wind turbine tech has proceded apace, and we can wring a lot more energy out of the wind than we could fifteen years ago.

And then there is the question of waste, namely where are you going to put it? Yucca Mtn? That's a laugh. The EPA did a dye study on the Yucca Mtn facility years ago and found that the dye they dropped down the cracks of the Yucca Mtn floor found its way into the water supply of Las Vegas within two weeks. And you can't tell me that any current container that they make for rad waste is going to hold up over the long term, I know better. Metals deteriorate, plastics break down, we're talking thousands of years here friend, minimum, and the material that rad waste is stored in simply can't hold up over even a tenth of that time, much less thousands of years. Do you really want to hand that kind of enviromental time bomb onto future generations?

Another problem with nuclear power is that the US is starting to run out of uranium. This means that we'll have to do our importing from countries like Brazil and South Africa. And thus, instead of being strapped over an oil barrel we'll be strapped over a uranium capsule, switching one finite resource for another. No thank you.

Nuclear power should be relegated to the dustbin of history. We have plenty of clean, renewable alternatives that can power our entire country, with enough left over for export. It is high time we started switching to them, and get off this addiction to finite energy resources, whether it be oil, coal, natural gas, or nuclear. Anything else is just asking for trouble.

[benburch]

36. Proper plant design mean that human error cannot endanger safety.

You still might trash your nice nuclear plant, but the public will not be endangered.

Properly designed nuclear power systems are necessary if we want to keep the lights on and reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

Yes, some day, fusion will arrive. I've been told it is coming in ten years. I've been told it is coming in ten years every year since the 1960s.

[MadHound]

38. But do you really want to take that chance

We have heard that line often enough, yet it has been disproven time and again. So why take the chance? We don't need to, we have plenty of wind, solar and other alternative, clean, renewable resources that we don't even need to mess with nuclear, so why bother?

And I noticed you didn't even touch on the subject of waste, hmmm.

And I'm not talking about fusion or any other pie in the sky energy source. Read my post, enough harvestable wind eneryg, using fifteen year old tech, to supply ALL of our electric needs through the year 2030, including growth factored in. Why shouldn't we use it?

[benburch]

39. Yes I really do want to take that chance.

People die in black mine pits almost every week so you can have coal based electricity.

And I do touch on waste in some other postings in this thread.

The problem with wind, solar, and biofuels are that they depend on a power source that is not constant.

We need to implement them, but we ALSO need to back them up with a power source that IS constant. Like nuclear power.

In the best of all possible worlds, the average nuclear plant would be ticking over at 15% of capacity on the average day waiting for it to get too cloudy for solar, or too calm for wind, or too dry for biofuels to be grown... Then it would be able to very quickly take up the slack and keep the grid functioning. This is another reason why I say a for-profit corporation cannot be allowed to run them. There is no real profit to be had in owning a plant that exists as backup only.

[MadHound]

46. Do you have any concept of the national electrical grid?

If you did you would realize that we can ship electricity from one part of the country to another, virtually at the speed of light, minus going through a few routers, etc. This is how Enron was able to make big bucks pumping and dumping, shipping electricity from Texas to California to whereever, back and forth, up and down.

So if wind isn't blowing in Texas, we route in eletricity from wind that is blowing in Montana, or solar that is in sunshine in AZ, or wind that is blowing off the Gulf Coast, etc. etc. Wind is always blowing plentifully in this country somewhere, and the sun is always shining plentifully somewhere. Harvest, route it, ship it on down the line. We don't need a "constant source" friend, for Mother Nature, in all her wisdome and beauty is a constant source.

No nukes, coal, natural gas, non-renewable sources needed. That is the beauty of a NATIONAL ELECTRICAL GRID.

[benburch]

48. Yes I know it well.

And I also know its limitations, which you seem not to. Wheeling electricity long distances is very inefficient, and it is really not possible to power a whole region completely with wheeled power.

[MadHound]

52. Yes, coast to coast is a bit impractical. however

You can run it over five hundred miles with little degradation in the amount of power. So, let's say that there is no wind blowing in Northern California. Just pick up that wind or solar energy from Southern Cal, or Neveda, or Oregon and ship it on in.

And apparently it is possible to power a whole region with wheeled power, Enron did it plenty of times, wheel it in from Texas, forcing Californians to pay through the nose, and if they didn't, wheel it right back out again. If Enron can do it, I'm sure that other companies can do the same.

[benburch]

64. You are imagining a grid that does not exist.

It has nowhere near the wheeling capacity you believe it does.

[MadHound]

78. It has enough wheeling capacity that it enabled Enron

To roll electricity in and out of California, from Texas, on a moments notice. It has enough wheeling capacity that it enables my local nuke plant to transmit electricity up to 250 miles away. It is real enough that we can have a large network of wind and solar facilities, large enough to supply the US with electricity without having to resort to nuclear, coal, natural gas, or any other fossil fuel.

[benburch]

86. When the grid is near its capacity it does not take much to break it.

That is what Enron did. They were not moving that much electricity anywhere, but were creating a shortage and so gouging the price.

Once again, you imagine a grid that is far more robust and capacious than the one we have. What we have is useful because it insulates us from single points of failure.

A turbine fails at a thermal plant in Lincoln, NB, when that utility is pushing near capacity. It will take them 36 hours to fire up their reserve plant. During that time, you can, very wastefully, drawn in power from Montana and Iowa, and Minnesota and the Dakotas and keep the lights on without a brown-out of more than a few minutes duration while you switch things in. If, however, you had multiple sources go down at once, the grid will NOT be able to help you, and likely your intertie breakers will trip and you will be in a blackout.

[MadHound]

91. The thing is that it has been shown in court documents

That the California electric grid was not close to capacity. It has also been shown that Enron was either moving or withholding between 30 and 45 gigawatts worth of electricity daily during their run. The reason their were rolling blackout is because Enron would withhold that energy, and California plants couldn't take up the slack on a short notice. That is how Enron was gouging. It wasn't an overload of the grid, it was an undersupply of electricity.

And quite frankly, we should build up our grid, concurrently with building up our solar and wind. That way we could indeed transfer energy smoother and faster. Gee, what a concept.

But no, instead you want to stick with nuclear. Messy to get out of the ground, with human error always looming over us, and no viable solution for the waste except to pass the whole mess on down to our children:eyes: Now how damn foolish is that?

[crispini]

76. The national electric grid doesn't exist.

There are three: east, west, and Texas. I remember this when we had the big blackout.

And the grid wasn't really built to do what you say. Here's a really good article:
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.html

[MadHound]

79. Then explain how Enron was able to make tons of money

Shifting power in and out of California, back and forth from Texas? How does my local nuke plant transmit electricity 250 miles away?

No, it isn't "national", you're right. But it is possbile to transmit electricity long distances, from one region to another. Transmit it from long enough away that while the wind may not be blowing in Sacromento, it will be outside of Reno, and that electricity can power Sacto.

And gee, wouldn't it be better to work on expanding that grid rather than building more nukes?

[crispini]

83. Apparently,

what Enron did was Not A Good Idea. From that article:

Prior to deregulation, which began in the 1990s, regional and local electric utilities were regulated, vertical monopolies. A single company controlled electricity generation, transmission, and distribution in a given geographical area. Each utility generally maintained sufficient generation capacity to meet its customers’ needs, and long-distance energy shipments were usually reserved for emergencies, such as unexpected generation outages. In essence, the long-range connections served as insurance against sudden loss of power. The main exception was the net flows of power out of the large hydropower generators in Quebec and Ontario.

This limited use of long-distance connections aided system reliability because the physical complexities of power transmission rise rapidly as distance and the complexity of interconnections grow. Power in an electric network does not travel along a set path, as coal does, for example. When utility A agrees to send electricity to utility B, utility A increases the amount of power generated while utility B decreases production or has an increased demand. The power then flows from the “source” (A) to the “sink” (B) along all the paths that can connect them. This means that changes in generation and transmission at any point in the system will change loads on generators and transmission lines at every other point—often in ways not anticipated or easily controlled (Figure 2).

(snip)
In the four years between the issuance of Order 888 and its full implementation, engineers began to warn that the new rules ignored the physics of the grid. The new policies “ do not recognize the single-machine characteristics of the electric-power network,” Casazza wrote in 1998. “The new rule balkanized control over the single machine,” he explains. “It is like having every player in an orchestra use their own tunes.”

In the view of Casazza and many other experts, the key error in the new rules was to view electricity as a commodity rather than as an essential service. Commodities can be shipped from point A through line B to point C, but power shifts affect the entire singlemachine system. As a result, increased longdistance trading of electric power would create dangerous levels of congestion on transmission lines where controllers did not expect them and could not deal with them.

Electricity is, after all, a physical thing, even if the physical thing (electrons) is very, very small. To me, it just doesn't make sense according to the laws of physics to propose transmitting it from NYC to California, for example. The signal is naturally going to degrade over time and distance.

And I think you're comparing apples and oranges -- a transportation method to a generation method. I don't really know whether going out and building lots of wind, solar etc. are a viable alternative to nukes -- I certainly think that we should start making the effort to switch over to renewables. But I guess the basic idea of a moderate use of nukes doesn't bother me as much as what we are using NOW-- coal and petroleum and contributing to global warming, which is bad bad bad! I really think if we don't come to grips with global climate change at once, we are all going to be killed off anyway. It may already be too late.

[benburch]

85. He simply has no idea of the capacity of the "grid". nt

[MadHound]

106. I know enough about the grid to realize that if Enron can swing

30 to 45 gigawatts in and out of California on a daily basis, our electric grid can handle moving around some regional wind power.

[benburch]

113. You sinply don't understand what you are talking about.

Study.

[MadHound]

118. Then explain to me how Enron

Can shift 30-45 gigawatts of eletrical power, daily, between Texas and California? Since we can run power that far on our eletrical grid, surely it can handle moving a few gigs around a few hundred miles.

Enron did it, so why can't others?

[MadHound]

88. I'm not proposing going from NY to CA, and that isn't what Enron did

Enron was shifting power from Texas to California, and apparently with minimal difficulty. Given the fact that weather conditions vary from state to state, even county to county, you could easily transmit electricity generated by a wind turbine farm in a radius of five hundred miles with little difficulty, and possbily further.

And what is to say that while we are building a wind/solar network to generate the electricity, we could also upgrade the infrastructure of our electrical grid in order to handle this increase in transmission? In fact you could run special lines that would do nothing but transmit electricity between various regions. This would employ many of those workers who previously were employed by coal, gas and nuclear plants.

And I commend you for wanting to get rid of coal and gas fired plants, I fully agree with that goal. But given the vast quantity of wind and solar energy that we have in this country, we absolutely, positively don't need to switch over to nuclear power. Nuclear waste is just one more problem that we are handing down to future generations, tens, hundreds and thousands of years in the future. Do we really want them to wake up some day and find out that their water supply has been contaminated, that their food supply is radioactive? That would be criminal, especially considering that we do not need to do so, since we have readily available viabe alternatives.

In addition, we need to learn the lessons of history. Right now, our energy needs have got us bent over the foreign oil barrel. Our own domestic supplies are relatively minimal, and thus we have been forced to increase our oil imports. Thus we find ourselves paying through the nose for this energy. The same situation applies to uranium, the raw ingredient needed to power a reactor. Our domestic supplies, the ones that are economical and easy to get to, were never that great to begin with, and our usage rate over the past sixty years has deleted them further. Right now there is an estimated 74 million tons of US uranium reserves in the ground. Ninety four percent of the most economical deposits(sandston mines) were discoverd decades ago in the 1950s. Now then, estimated usage in the US is aprox. 10 million tons annually. I think you can do the math. Granted there are certain factors that will mitigate this equation, the conversion of weapons grade material for use in power plants, recycling of "spent" fuel, yet still and all, if we increase our nuclear power usage, we will quickly be in the same situation vis-a-vis uranium as we are currently with oil.

We don't have to go down that dead end road. We have the capability to supply all of our own energy cleanly, renewably, and domestically with wind and solar. In fact if we work it right, we could once again become a net energy exporter. If we would invest in the R&D and the infrastructure that is required, the US could experience a tech boom involving alternative energy sources that would make the dot com boom look like a recession.

But nuclear power should be thrown on the scrap heap of failed technologies. It is too dangerous, both in operation and waste disposal, and it is a finite resource. Rather our country should make the right choice, the intelligent choice, the only sensible and sane choice. Otherwise we all will pay the consequences, for generations to come.

[DetroitProle]

71. fusion is still a loong way away...

we can do it, truth be told, but it takes far more energy to produce the reaction than we get out of it. Give it another 40 years, by which time I doubt there will be much life left on the planet anyway.

[benburch]

74. Exactly.

And I would very much like to see us not get to the point where be burn fossil fuels until we destroy the planet.

We need nuclear power to do that in the time scale we need to do that in.

Nothing else is well developed enough to deploy in time.

[Junkdrawer]

66. I worked in Nuclear Safety (circa 1975) and IMHO the problem is fuel...

Uranium is scarce and expensive. Reprocessing and breeders are what the industry always talked about. Ask the Japanese about breeder reactors. And as for transporting plutonium around, you may
want to read this from Harvard Law:

http://www.ccnr.org/harvard_on_mox.html

Here's the table of contents:


INTRODUCTION
I. THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND THE RISKS POSED BY PLUTONIUM

II. PREVENTING THEFTS OF PLUTONIUM


A. Employee Security
1. The Rights of Public Employees

2. Recently Enacted Legislation

B. Covert Surveillance

1. Informers and Infiltrators

2. Wiretapping

3. Warrantless Wiretapping under the ''Foreign Security'' Exception

4. Summary

III. RECOVERING STOLEN PLUTONIUM

A. Emergency Searches and Seizures

1. Methods of Searching for Plutonium

2. The Warrant Requirement

3. The Particularity Requirement

4. The Demise of the Fourth Amendment

B. Martial Law and the Restoration of Order

1. Judicial Review of Declarations of Martial Law

2. Military Jurisdiction Over Civilians

3. Accompanying Infringements of Civil Liberties

IV. MANDATORY REVIEW OF THE CIVIL LIBERTIES
IMPACT OF PLUTONIUM RECYCLING

CONCLUSION

[benburch]

68. But you don't need Uranium.

A Thorium reactor is entirely practical.

In any case, if we decommission all of our nuclear weapons, we could power the country for years...

[MadHound]

94. At our current usage rate, no, we can't

And the conversion process from bomb to power plant fuel is energy intensive, dirty and dangerous. A foolish risk to take when we've got clean renewable off the shelf technologies ready to go.

[yardwork]

69. That's not what I've been told by nuclear physicists here in the U.S.

The U.S. has a bunch of reactors that are FAR from immune from melt-down.

And don't forget Three Mile Island. It has happened here, and will likely happen again.

[benburch]

72. And what were the consequences of Three Mile Island?

Answer; A ruined reactor, and a very small release of radiation. No deaths. No injuries.

Chernobyl was not a disaster because of the meltdown. Chernobyl was a disaster because of a steam explosion in a badly designed plant that was NOT in a containment shell which exposed graphite moderator (not used in American domestic power plants) that then BURNED. It was the fire that was the big problem. Had Chernobyl been a more conventional reactor there would have been nothing to burn. Had it been in a containment shell, there would have been no significant release of radiation.

Chernobyl was a dual Domestic/Military reactor and was not designed to the sort of safety standards we find mandatory here.

And there are more modern reactor designs than the once we built back in the early 70s that are far less likely to suffer an accident that causes loss of the plant.

[leftofthedial]

9. whew

[shireen]

14. Stunning. Haunting. Sad.

thanks so much for the link.

[trumad]

16. I actually mirrored this girls site for a while

and have corresponded with her.

I got a gazillion hits and could barely keep up with the bandwidth.

[Yollam]

17. Haunting stuff - definitely worth looking through.

As with Hiroshima & Nagasaki - never again - I hope.

[Swede]

26. In the summer they send Belorussian children to my hometown in Canada,

to rebuild their immune systems. The immune system is worn down by the radiation. I imagine children from all around the area must be sent around the world for this reason.

[phusion]

30. Yes...Cuba has been a big supporter in this

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/9922,lerner2,6169,1.html

The sun beats down on the tanned children frolicking on the beach just east of Havana. Over the sound of the surf, their high-pitched voices taunt each other, not in Spanish, as you might assume, but in Russian. Oddly enough, the dozens of children cavorting comfortably on this stretch of Caribbean sand are from the Ukraine, and they are not at a resort, but at a beachside hospital run by the Cuban government for young victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Thirteen years ago this spring after the world's worst nuclear mishap, Tarara, as the hospital is called, is a showcase for the fiasco's lingering medical mess. The children being treated here are victims not only of the catastrophe but also of the larger breakdown of the Soviet empire. The mismanagement of the nuclear reactor, the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and its republics, and the resulting failure to clean up the Chernobyl area and provide adequate health care have conspired against Tarara's young patients. And the fact that Cuba is still taking them in speaks to the small country's valiant insistence on providing humanitarian aid despite its own declining fortunes.

[girl gone mad]

29. Is this the Ukrainian motorcycle girl?

It's been posted here a few times before.

I think of her riding her motorcycle through the empty streets of Chernobyl. SHe says she is being safe, but I worry.

Edit: I should have read some of the earlier posts. It looks like she really wasn't riding a motorcycle around Chernobyl by herself, but was on a guided tour. I always thought her account sounded sketchy, but had chalked it up to poor English.

[NNadir]

40. This site, which gets linked regularly is a well known fraud. Sigh...

Elena made the whole thing up.

Sorry folks.

Here is a real tragedy of real dimension involving real lives: Global climate change.

Here is one of the zillion websites exposing what really is going on with this dopey business:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/05/fraud-exposed-and-true-thing.asp

The number of people who die every day from the pollution of internal combustion engines (including those on motorcycles) outstrips the total deaths from Chernobyl (during the entire course of the event) by a factor of hundreds.

The difference between nuclear energy and fossil fuels, is that people don't give a rat's ass about the deaths from fossil fuels, which is why the earth's atmosphere as a whole is dying.

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[Occulus]

50. Are her photos real, though?

THOSE are what tell the story, not her commentary....

[benburch]

54. Maybe.

Some of them are obviously real. Some of them may just be abandoned places that have the look she was seeking.

Since we know she made up the primary story, we cannot know how much else she made up.

[Occulus]

59. I've been digging around, and found this:

http://chernobyl.in.ua/en/home

This appears to be a book written by someone who was given the same tour "Elena" took, and by the same guide, even. It appears it was only recently published; the preface was written in September 05.

The panorama I posted below *is* the same place in which some of "Elena's" photos were taken; you can see the Ferris WSheel in the background, and that same wheel appears in "elena's" photos.

I guess we can safely say some of "Elena's" photos are, in fact, legit. As to which, I've no idea.

[NNadir]

60. The story is that about 4000 people may ultimately die from Chernobyl.

Less than 200 have actually done so.

One could take a motorcycle tour around West Virginia strip mines and make many emotional photographs. However energy decisions should not be based on marketing and emotion. It should be rational. It must be rational if humanity is to have any shot at surviving global climate change.

Every day tens of thousands of people die from air pollution and no one cares.

And that is the real story.

[benburch]

63. From 1993 to date there have been 478 deaths in American coal mines.

I don't have data from the past, but I can assure you it is safer in terms of total deaths per ton mined now than it ever has been because technology require many fewer people to do the work than in prior eras. My guess is that the last century saw at least 20,000 deaths in US mines.

And the deaths are not likely to end any time soon. Certainly not with current management of the mines being what it is.

But this is "OK" with people.

EVEN Chernobyl, which was a stupidly designed reactor with a mixed military/domestic mission has caused fewer deaths than coal mining, but we accept that.

We kill people every time we turn on the lights.

And that is without considering pollution deaths and deaths due to Global Warming.

But I guess that the deaths of poor folks in the mines don't matter to the average Liberal because its not in their back yard...

[Occulus]

43. Even though she didn't actually rtide through this area,

but was on an organized tour (amazing how there's no indication of this from the photos, though), these are some very very haunting and sobering images.

edited to add: Being taken in by a fraud really chaps my ass, but it makes me want to know about what it's really like there.

Here's a panaorama of the area from a different source. Simply delete the spaces around the "-" mark; it's a big image and I don't want to steal the bandwidth.

http://www.web-axis.net/~pulse/chernobyl/prypyat - panoramic.jpg

[Texasgal]

70. Amazing pics...

Thank you for posting them. Chills are running up my spine right now...wow.

[gristy]

73. Very interesting overall, Dr.

This observation was especially interesting: "Taking such a walk with no special radiation detecting device is like walking through a mine field wearing snowshoes."

[Pachamama]

75. I love her "Motto": "Good girls go to heaven. Bad ones go to hell. And...

.....girls on fast bikes go anywhere they want."

:kick:

[mogster]

77. Woohoo - I saw those in 2003

Amazing story from an amazing girl.

Actually, it was these pictures that woke me up, because I tried to debate Chernobyl on the net afterwards and was viciously attacked for being a 'peacemonging anti-nuclear activist'. Which ..er.. today might be true, but back then I was a 'peacemonging political bimbo' that didn't even know that my country had entered the 'coalition of wet and willing', and subsequently had taken side regarding the 'for us or against us'-part.

Here's the pic I posted back then, at a non-political board for php and mysql.
Imagine; this is the most dangerous place on earth:



The radiation in this room will fry you in a matter of millisecs.

[Leopolds Ghost]

98. Shit, how do they take those photos? If ya believe some folks here,

'They must have been fraudulent -- Someone else musta took them!
Nothing to see here folks...' :eyes:

[mogster]

120. The tale is in the images

And if that girl didn't ride the bike, she did a pretty good act. I was riding with her, so I would know ;-)

[triguy46]

84. Debunked. n/t

[Leopolds Ghost]

97. There's a damn good chance she simply bribed her way into the zone.

Any of you guys ever seen the polished, coffee-table-book photojournal of the exclusion zone inside a US nuclear test site (including photos of the craters?)

Yes, Chernobyl didn't happen. :eyes:

[triguy46]

101. I'm not questioning Chernobyl, we know it happened,

her account is what has been debunked. A good story nonetheless.

[Greyhound]

109. By who? no link.

[triguy46]

115. Gotta go find it, it was over a year ago, will post it when I find it

Because I loved it too, first saw it about 3-4 years ago and mailed it to all my physicist friends. felt rather taken in by it all.

[Redstone]

99. A. Fucking. Mazing.

Thanks for posting this.

Redstone

[Xenotime]

100. Fake

[Greyhound]

108. Why would yo say that? I've been aware of her site for quite some time

and I see nothing to indicate that it is fake. Do you have any reason to think it's fake, or are you just a troll?

[eppur_se_muova]

102. Even without accidents...LONG TERM effects of normal reactor ops...

discussed in this article:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=42612&mesg_id=42612

[leeroysphitz]

116. Chilling.

The "genie" is well and truly out of the bottle.

[Igel]

119. It's not the first such zone.

The first dates from the '50s. Also in Russia. It's much less widely known, since it didn't result from a reactor. It was hushed up, and uncovered by some sleuthing.

Even sorting out what actually triggered the disaster was difficult. But doing so possibly prevented having a repeat at Hanson. Waste was stored improperly over a wide area, radioactive substances leached out and were preferentially deposited at a certain depth in the soil. They built up faster than they decayed, and eventually got quite hot. Then the groundwater rose, hit the hot spots, immediately superheated, and erupted. A semi-natural "dirty bomb". But a great resource for studying the effect of fall-out. Three villages were evacuated.

There's also be evidence reported that something similar's happened naturally--and entirely underground, I think--in Africa where there's sufficient naturally occurring uranium.