Chernobyl - capping a catastrophe

[TheRealnz]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...byl-capping-a-catastrophe.html?from=promo&_r=

“The costs are enormous — the Chernobyl arch alone will end up costing about $1.5 billion, financed largely by the United States and about 30 other nations.”

Great move from Russia, they probably said " you want to stop the radiation we caused then you pay for it.....we'll supply the steel & labour then"

 

[Travis]

That sounds like one hell of a project.

 

[sylvan8798]

I find the photo of the man in the control room smoking a cigarette subtly ironic.

 

[applecorped]

Great photos

 

[Alferd_Packer]

I think they are nuts if they think that they can dehumidify it enough to prevent rust.

 

[The Norseman]

**** the Russkies. We don't supposedly have enough money to rebuild our own crumbling infrastructure, what makes it that we have all this extra money to throw at them?

 

[angrysoba]

I find the photo of the man in the control room smoking a cigarette subtly ironic.

And what's with the chef's hat and the set of jump leads to power the antique "System Control"?

 

[ehcks]

I'm not sure I understand the point. We didn't produce new uranium for the reactor, we refined it from uranium that was already in the ground, that we mined. There isn't any more radiation being created there than there would be had it been left in the ground.

 

[geni]

I'm not sure I understand the point. We didn't produce new uranium for the reactor, we refined it from uranium that was already in the ground, that we mined. There isn't any more radiation being created there than there would be had it been left in the ground.

Err no. If that was the case we wouldn't be able to extract worthwhile energy from the system. Due to the much higher rate of uranium splitting in a reactor (yes there are natural reactors however not on earth for over a billion years) the mess in chernobyl contains a bunch of fission products that are far more radioactive that uranium ore. You've also got some odds and ends that got hammered by neutrons producing lots of other fun radioactive isotopes. Unfortunately the useful ones will for the most part have decayed by now.

 

[geni]

I think they are nuts if they think that they can dehumidify it enough to prevent rust.

Eh there are some people involved who know what they are doing. Eh if all else fails give up on cleanup and flood the thing with concrete.

 

[shadron]

I'm not sure I understand the point. We didn't produce new uranium for the reactor, we refined it from uranium that was already in the ground, that we mined. There isn't any more radiation being created there than there would be had it been left in the ground.

On the average you take an atom of uranium-235, which would throw an alpha out on the average after 700 million years, and you split it to make a couple of atoms which will likely beta/gamma decay perhaps 4-5 times each in the next 300 years before gaining stability. Plus an extra neutron or two with high energies, which could ionize a bunch of molecules before slowing down enough to get absorbed and start some other poor bystander of an atom down such a beta decay track. Plus the fact that the two FP nuclei have huge amounts of ionizing potential themselves, as they are traveling nearly relativistic speeds. The fission products of any fissionable atom are always much more radioactive than the original atom was. Radioactivity is not "conserved" like mass/energy is.