Chernobyl clean-up expert slams Japan, IAEA

[steve2470]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/us-japan-nuclear-chernobyl-idUSTRE72E5MV20110315

By Michael Shields

VIENNA | Tue Mar 15, 2011 11:52am EDT

(Reuters) - Greed in the nuclear industry and corporate influence over the U.N. watchdog for atomic energy may doom Japan to a spreading nuclear disaster, one of the men brought in to clean up Chernobyl said on Tuesday.

Slamming the Japanese response at Fukushima, Russian nuclear accident specialist Iouli Andreev accused corporations and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of willfully ignoring lessons from the world's worst nuclear accident 25 years ago to protect the industry's expansion.

"After Chernobyl all the force of the nuclear industry was directed to hide this event, for not creating damage to their reputation. The Chernobyl experience was not studied properly because who has money for studying? Only industry.

"But industry doesn't like it," he said in an interview in Vienna where the former director of the Soviet Spetsatom clean-up agency now teaches and advises on nuclear safety. Austria's environment ministry has used him as an adviser.

[Zoeisright]

1. The truth.

Hard to take, for a lot of people. But it's the truth.

[ensho]

2. true

nt

[jpak]

3. K&R - TEPCO is obfuscating and spinning like a top

yup

[meow mix]

4. k&r

[Angry Dragon]

5. Just a little irony

The Russians leading the world in the truth........

[xchrom]

6. recommend

[Statistical]

7. What a way to deflect blame.

Chernobyl was run by the Soviets and it was hid by the Soviets.
Profits had nothing to do with it. It was a STATE OWNED entity.

The Soviets didn't study the issue because they didn't want results published.

"The Chernobyl experience was not studied properly because who has money for studying? Only industry."
I don't know MAYBE THE SOVIET GOVERNMENT. You know the people who built, ran, operated, and eventually blew up Chernobyl. The same people who ignored scientists in the west (and dissenters in their own country) that RBMK design was inherently unstable and dangerous. Maybe the same government who decided not to build containment structures (something no other country has done not even China). Many third parties did try to study the Chernobyl disaster they were blocked at ever turn by the government. Records were destroyed, people put in prison, experts silenced.

Funny this guy doesn't remember that. Revisionist history.

[BeFree]

8. Ummmm

The Soviet government WAS the industry.

Funny how you don't grok that.

[PurityOfEssence]

9. Hold on a second there...

The Soviet Government was broke by this point, and it was of its own doing.

Truly, he should have implicated governments in this, too, since they DO have money to do some studies, but perhaps he's implicitly saying that the western governments are beholden to industry.

If the Soviets obfuscated, that still doesn't excuse the overall lack of serious concern. It was largely fobbed off in this country as Soviet incompetence and cheaping out by having reactors without containment vessels. Our industry was more concerned in clucking with superiority and sneering at the primitives who had it coming anyway. From this vantage, his points are very fair: the industry basically buried any unpleasant realities and dismissed this incident as something done by the sloppy and inferior.

The fundamental point being made here is fairly valid: if the industry was sincere about making their methods safe, they could have learned more and applied some expensive remedies, but that was not their intent; their intent was to pronounce themselves virtuous and safe without incurring any pesky expenses.

Hey, any libertarian'll tell ya: a few lives here and there just don't matter; the important thing is that no individual should ever be limited in his ability to get rich. Any true Wall Streeter will tell you that even the possibility of catastrophic failure shouldn't restrict someone from making as huge a pile as desired.

It seems fair to say that the industry was more interested in absolving itself than truly being concerned with the inherent problems and trying to fix them.

[Statistical]

10. Hardly. After TMI significant changes were made to US reactor designs.

"the industry basically buried any unpleasant realities and dismissed this incident as something done by the sloppy and inferior."
Chernobyl WAS sloppy and inferior. The dangerous design made it impossible for operators to even halt fission. The lack of containment dome gave rescue crews really no good options to mitigate the damages.

"The fundamental point being made here is fairly valid: if the industry was sincere about making their methods safe, they could have learned more and applied some expensive remedies, but that was not their intent; their intent was to pronounce themselves virtuous and safe without incurring any pesky expenses."

Significant changes were made after TMI both in the US and around the world. There was little to learn from Chernobyl because
a) that type of disaster is simply not possible. That isn't to say nuclear reactors can't fail but they can't fail in the manner chernobyl did.

b) Very little information is available on Chernobyl SPECIFICALLY because the SOVIET GOVERNMENT BURIED THE FACTS. Today there is still no definitive answer on what caused the second hydrogen explosion at Chernobyl.