7 ms·

Chernobyl was almost the largest disaster in all of history. I'm not saying nuclear reactors are unsafe now, but the reality is that a true disaster at a nuclea

by pfisch 3mo ago

Chernobyl was almost the largest disaster in all of history. I'm not saying nuclear reactors are unsafe now, but the reality is that a true disaster at a nuclear power plant literally means the end of huge amounts of land, enough to end entire countries or large parts of continents. You can't say things like that about walking or other types of transport...

stackghost 3mo ago
Chernobyl's reactors were fundamentally unsafe designs from an engineering perspective, to say nothing of the perverse incentives at play because of the Soviet political system. We've learned a lot since the RBMK was designed in the 1960s.
- markvdb 3mo ago
  Not convinced. The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects. Nuclear could become less unsafe once humanity has found ways not to go commity horrble violence every other generation.
  - stackghost 3mo ago
    >Not convinced. What, if anything, would convince you?
    - markvdb 3mo ago
      Compact, mass produced nuclear energy projects with no nuclear proliferation risk and radioactive waste management time limited to less than one human generation's professional career span. That seems like a decent baseline to me. Not sure if fission will ever be able to reach that. Fusion perhaps? I'd certainly like to see that researched with high priority. In the short to medium term at the very least, I see more economic potential in simple, modular tech. Cheap generation using solar, wind and water. Matching supply and demand better through storage and interconnects. I'd also be very interested in actual research on how to actually lower demand, in beating the Jevons paradox.
      - DennisP 3mo ago
        Some of the GenIV designs would be compact and easily mass-produced. You'll never get waste management below about 300 years with fission, because that's basically what you get from the fission products. But the really long-term stuff is plutonium and other transuranics. Those are unburnt fuel. Fast reactors and some molten salt reactors are supposed to eliminate that. Bury the fission products for 300 years and they're back to the radioactivity of the original ore. As an American this seems like a long time to me, but when I lived in Germany it didn't so much. We had a brewery in town that had been operating continually for 800 years. Proliferation resistance gets complicated but some designs are a lot better at it than others. Almost everything requires at least some enriched fuel for startup, even if unenriched works after that. CANDU reactors don't require enriched fuel at all but they don't achieve the waste requirement. Some designs let you extract usable weapons material from reactor fuel (including current CANDU reactors), with others there's no way to extract fissile that's easier to enrich than natural uranium ore. It might be doable to centralize startup fuel production in nuclear powers, and use reactors that take unenriched fuel after startup, have no way to extract weapons-grade material, and consume the transuranics. Fusion of course would fix a lot of this. D-T fusion does produce a lot of neutrons that you could use to make plutonium, but you need those neutrons to make more tritium. You get activated reactors parts but those fit your time requirement.
        markvdb 3mo ago
        > You'll never get waste management below about 300 years with fission, because that's basically what you get from the fission products. That's at least one and probably more like five wars over the reactor territory. I'm mildly optimistic about fusion's potential...
        DennisP 3mo ago
        Bear in mind the decay is exponential, so most of the radioactivity is in the near term. There's no fissile, and by mass it's about 1% as much as we're getting now from conventional reactor spent fuel. Encase it in glass and bury it, and you're probably good. I'm mildly optimistic about fusion as well. One big advantage is regulatory; fission reactors can be safe if you design them well, but fusion reactors can't do much damage even if they're terrible. The NRC has already decided on a much lighter regulatory regime for them.
  - vkou 3mo ago
    > The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects. I guess we should stop having large, complicated projects. Potable water mains, road and rail networks, the power grid, the internet, bridges, medicine, etc, are all too complicated for humans to manage. I mean, nuclear is only the safest form of energy generation that humanity has ever produced, but you're absolutely right.
    - crote 3mo ago
      What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk? Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control?
      - vkou 3mo ago
        > What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks? People drink contaminated, unpotable water and die. > What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails? People die. > What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk? Life-critical infrastructure that depends on the communication fails in a bad way and people die. > Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control? People die. Nothing in life is without risk. Nuclear reactors spiraling out of control have killed fewer people per KWH generated than any other source of energy that human beings have come up with.
      - dosisking 3mo ago
        Hypothetically, a train could derail, the train was carrying nuclear waste, the derailment occurred in a highly populated area, near a Virology Lab. The lab was damaged, which released a deadly form of Smallpox, which spread to every corner of the Earth, killing every single human. That would be pretty bad, but not sure if it would be the absolute worst.
        roenxi 3mo ago
  - DennisP 3mo ago
    The problem with Chernobyl was that (1) it didn't have a containment dome, and (2) it was designed so as the temperature increased, the reaction sped up. It was fundamentally unstable. Neither of these problems is true of more recent reactors. We don't make bridges safe by getting humans to cooperate better and cross bridges one car at a time. We make them strong and stable so humans can drive however they like and the bridge is fine. That's how all engineering works, and it applies to nuclear reactors just like anything else.
  - Moldoteck 3mo ago
    Chernobyl was triggered by humans but the ultimate problem was it's design. And it shows - Fukushima was triggered by tsunami, but ultimate problem was again the design. But since the design was much better, the impact is much milder vs Chernobyl
    - troupo 3mo ago
      > Fukushima was triggered by tsunami, but ultimate problem was again the design. And honestly it wasn't, not really. It was hit with a record-breaking earthquake and a record-breaking tsunami... and more lives were lost due to evacuation than to the plant shutdown.
      - Moldoteck 3mo ago
        The design was bad in the sense they backported generator placement from US BWR projects in basement. It makes sense in US but risks in Japan are different Yes, radiation killed zero. Evacuation - thousands
AngryData 3mo ago
To be fair Chernobyl was designed what, 15 years after the invention of nuclear technology? Even discounting all the politicial and management control problems, the engineering and scientific knowledge of nuclear reactor design was still in its infancy. Imagine if we judged the safety of automobiles on pre-Model-T cars. Or steam boilers and engines on the first 20 yearrs of their invention.
- crote 3mo ago
  What's the worst accident involving a Model T, maybe a dozen dead? Early steam boilers aren't going to be much worse either. Nuclear accidents are essentially unlimited in size. Nothing else can do that kind of country-sized - let alone it being permanent. Chernobyl showed the potential impact. Fukushima showed that even several decades down the line things can still rapidly run out of control. All the knowledge and experience in the world isn't going to save you when something unexpected happens and things are just waiting to spiral out of control.
  - themaninthedark 3mo ago
    Steam boilers have a lot of regulation, all written in blood. Entire boats would explode killing most/all onboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiler_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiler_explosions
    - pfisch 3mo ago
      Do you understand the scale of Chernobyl if they had failed to stop the meltdown? Half of eastern europe would be uninhabitable. It would've killed 100s of millions.
- mpweiher 3mo ago
  It's even worse: the problems of that reactor type were, in fact, well-known at the time. Which is one of the reasons that reactor would never have gotten an operating license in any western country. Oh, and not having any containment.
foobarian 3mo ago
Isn't that a little hyperbolic? Sure cancer rates will be elevated wherever the fallout blows but it's not going to end anything.
- danielheath 3mo ago
  In terms of severity, Chernobyl was a long way from the worst case. If the core had melted down to a body of water, the steam flash could have vaporized it & ejected it high into the atmosphere. That's city-ending, if not quite "continent rendered uninhabitable".
- Moldoteck 3mo ago
  The problem is more about Chernobyl affecting global nuclear deployments imo
triceratops 3mo ago
> Chernobyl was almost the largest disaster in all of history Not at all hyperbole when you consider how badly it poisoned the well for future nuclear projects.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
leonidasrup 3mo ago
When ranking Chernobyl accident for death toll (95–4,000+ deaths) it's very far behind Failure of Banqiao Dam (26,000–240,000), behind 2023 Derna dam collapse (11,300), behind the world's worst industrial disaster - Bhopal disaster (3,787–16,000), behind 1979 Machchhu dam failure (1,800–25,000), about as deadly as Halifax Explosion (1,950 deaths). Most tragic thing is that Chernobyl accident could have been prevented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disaster...

by pfisch 3mo ago

stackghost 3mo ago

Chernobyl's reactors were fundamentally unsafe designs from an engineering perspective, to say nothing of the perverse incentives at play because of the Soviet political system. We've learned a lot since the RBMK was designed in the 1960s.

markvdb 3mo ago
Not convinced. The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects. Nuclear could become less unsafe once humanity has found ways not to go commity horrble violence every other generation.
- stackghost 3mo ago
  >Not convinced. What, if anything, would convince you?
  - markvdb 3mo ago
    Compact, mass produced nuclear energy projects with no nuclear proliferation risk and radioactive waste management time limited to less than one human generation's professional career span. That seems like a decent baseline to me. Not sure if fission will ever be able to reach that. Fusion perhaps? I'd certainly like to see that researched with high priority. In the short to medium term at the very least, I see more economic potential in simple, modular tech. Cheap generation using solar, wind and water. Matching supply and demand better through storage and interconnects. I'd also be very interested in actual research on how to actually lower demand, in beating the Jevons paradox.
    - DennisP 3mo ago
      Some of the GenIV designs would be compact and easily mass-produced. You'll never get waste management below about 300 years with fission, because that's basically what you get from the fission products. But the really long-term stuff is plutonium and other transuranics. Those are unburnt fuel. Fast reactors and some molten salt reactors are supposed to eliminate that. Bury the fission products for 300 years and they're back to the radioactivity of the original ore. As an American this seems like a long time to me, but when I lived in Germany it didn't so much. We had a brewery in town that had been operating continually for 800 years. Proliferation resistance gets complicated but some designs are a lot better at it than others. Almost everything requires at least some enriched fuel for startup, even if unenriched works after that. CANDU reactors don't require enriched fuel at all but they don't achieve the waste requirement. Some designs let you extract usable weapons material from reactor fuel (including current CANDU reactors), with others there's no way to extract fissile that's easier to enrich than natural uranium ore. It might be doable to centralize startup fuel production in nuclear powers, and use reactors that take unenriched fuel after startup, have no way to extract weapons-grade material, and consume the transuranics. Fusion of course would fix a lot of this. D-T fusion does produce a lot of neutrons that you could use to make plutonium, but you need those neutrons to make more tritium. You get activated reactors parts but those fit your time requirement.
      - markvdb 3mo ago
        > You'll never get waste management below about 300 years with fission, because that's basically what you get from the fission products. That's at least one and probably more like five wars over the reactor territory. I'm mildly optimistic about fusion's potential...
        DennisP 3mo ago
        Bear in mind the decay is exponential, so most of the radioactivity is in the near term. There's no fissile, and by mass it's about 1% as much as we're getting now from conventional reactor spent fuel. Encase it in glass and bury it, and you're probably good. I'm mildly optimistic about fusion as well. One big advantage is regulatory; fission reactors can be safe if you design them well, but fusion reactors can't do much damage even if they're terrible. The NRC has already decided on a much lighter regulatory regime for them.
- vkou 3mo ago
  > The problem is with the human layer of managing large complicated projects. I guess we should stop having large, complicated projects. Potable water mains, road and rail networks, the power grid, the internet, bridges, medicine, etc, are all too complicated for humans to manage. I mean, nuclear is only the safest form of energy generation that humanity has ever produced, but you're absolutely right.
  - crote 3mo ago
    What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails? What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk? Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control?
    - vkou 3mo ago
      > What's the absolute worst that could happen when a water mains breaks? People drink contaminated, unpotable water and die. > What's the absolute worst that could happen when a train derails? People die. > What's the absolute worst that could happen when a backhoe snacks on a fiber trunk? Life-critical infrastructure that depends on the communication fails in a bad way and people die. > Now, what's the absolute worst that could happen when a nuclear reactor spirals out of control? People die. Nothing in life is without risk. Nuclear reactors spiraling out of control have killed fewer people per KWH generated than any other source of energy that human beings have come up with.
    - dosisking 3mo ago
      Hypothetically, a train could derail, the train was carrying nuclear waste, the derailment occurred in a highly populated area, near a Virology Lab. The lab was damaged, which released a deadly form of Smallpox, which spread to every corner of the Earth, killing every single human. That would be pretty bad, but not sure if it would be the absolute worst.
      - roenxi 3mo ago
- DennisP 3mo ago
  The problem with Chernobyl was that (1) it didn't have a containment dome, and (2) it was designed so as the temperature increased, the reaction sped up. It was fundamentally unstable. Neither of these problems is true of more recent reactors. We don't make bridges safe by getting humans to cooperate better and cross bridges one car at a time. We make them strong and stable so humans can drive however they like and the bridge is fine. That's how all engineering works, and it applies to nuclear reactors just like anything else.
- Moldoteck 3mo ago
  Chernobyl was triggered by humans but the ultimate problem was it's design. And it shows - Fukushima was triggered by tsunami, but ultimate problem was again the design. But since the design was much better, the impact is much milder vs Chernobyl
  - troupo 3mo ago
    > Fukushima was triggered by tsunami, but ultimate problem was again the design. And honestly it wasn't, not really. It was hit with a record-breaking earthquake and a record-breaking tsunami... and more lives were lost due to evacuation than to the plant shutdown.
    - Moldoteck 3mo ago
      The design was bad in the sense they backported generator placement from US BWR projects in basement. It makes sense in US but risks in Japan are different Yes, radiation killed zero. Evacuation - thousands

AngryData 3mo ago

To be fair Chernobyl was designed what, 15 years after the invention of nuclear technology? Even discounting all the politicial and management control problems, the engineering and scientific knowledge of nuclear reactor design was still in its infancy. Imagine if we judged the safety of automobiles on pre-Model-T cars. Or steam boilers and engines on the first 20 yearrs of their invention.

crote 3mo ago
What's the worst accident involving a Model T, maybe a dozen dead? Early steam boilers aren't going to be much worse either. Nuclear accidents are essentially unlimited in size. Nothing else can do that kind of country-sized - let alone it being permanent. Chernobyl showed the potential impact. Fukushima showed that even several decades down the line things can still rapidly run out of control. All the knowledge and experience in the world isn't going to save you when something unexpected happens and things are just waiting to spiral out of control.
- themaninthedark 3mo ago
  Steam boilers have a lot of regulation, all written in blood. Entire boats would explode killing most/all onboard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiler_explosions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_boiler_explosions
  - pfisch 3mo ago
    Do you understand the scale of Chernobyl if they had failed to stop the meltdown? Half of eastern europe would be uninhabitable. It would've killed 100s of millions.
mpweiher 3mo ago
It's even worse: the problems of that reactor type were, in fact, well-known at the time. Which is one of the reasons that reactor would never have gotten an operating license in any western country. Oh, and not having any containment.

foobarian 3mo ago

Isn't that a little hyperbolic? Sure cancer rates will be elevated wherever the fallout blows but it's not going to end anything.

danielheath 3mo ago
In terms of severity, Chernobyl was a long way from the worst case. If the core had melted down to a body of water, the steam flash could have vaporized it & ejected it high into the atmosphere. That's city-ending, if not quite "continent rendered uninhabitable".
Moldoteck 3mo ago
The problem is more about Chernobyl affecting global nuclear deployments imo

triceratops 3mo ago

> Chernobyl was almost the largest disaster in all of history Not at all hyperbole when you consider how badly it poisoned the well for future nuclear projects.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

leonidasrup 3mo ago

When ranking Chernobyl accident for death toll (95–4,000+ deaths) it's very far behind Failure of Banqiao Dam (26,000–240,000), behind 2023 Derna dam collapse (11,300), behind the world's worst industrial disaster - Bhopal disaster (3,787–16,000), behind 1979 Machchhu dam failure (1,800–25,000), about as deadly as Halifax Explosion (1,950 deaths). Most tragic thing is that Chernobyl accident could have been prevented. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disaster...