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ZZR1100-Faster Than a Speeding Neutron.

9K views 27 replies 16 participants last post by  tomk2 
#1 ·
A chilling tale. I couldn't help but think on my last business trip how being in airports made me think of "Blade Runner". The future is apparently now. I didn't really grasp the size/scope of the tragedy of Chernoybl. Now I live within sight of 3 nuke plants. We missed out on a 4th recently, labor costs too high here. They are going to place it on the Gulf coast, lower, non union labor rates. What happens when a hurricane hits them. It's all depressing. I can't help but recall, from the military, the concept of "heroic response", what you do after a unit takes a lethal dose. I think I'll go buy a new bike, maybe that will make me feel better.
 
#2 ·
Nuclear plants have come a long way since the 1970's and the technology is considerably more predictable and controllable with the current generation of reactors. It is hard to compare an accident like Chernobyl, at an aging facility with poor maintenance, poor worker education and few safeguards, to a modern western nuclear station. They are literally two different worlds.



I've visited her site quite a bit, though, and her description of the woods off the main highway glowing faintly at night or the houses seemingly preserved in time due to the rapid evacuation or death of the inhabitants, is eerie.



 
#3 ·
I recall when the last 2 plants were built here. This place was like Dodge City. Transient workers working 7 12's. Every was available in town. The stories of sabotage to lenthen work ect.... were scary. Note: After the plants are built the number of personnel required to run them are very low. Major work is performed by traveling crews. No cheap power zone to attract business that employ people. The promise of property tax reduction disappears. Warning siren tests. Escape route plans updated every year. Storage pools full. Above ground storage. Security issues, 9-11. Still the economy would have been helped here. I'm guessing the the increase in number of facilities wouldn't have impacted the risk assesment that much. Besides I would assume that we would have a concentration of man power working in the field along with emergency plans that have been worked out better than an area that would be new to the nuclear industry. This county is heavily invested in power production. A large oil fired power station exists in the city limits, we lost those property taxes though, and there are at least 2 small hydro facilities in the city limits, others in the surrounding area.
 
#4 ·
#5 ·
Disinformation campaign, or counter disinformation campaign. I have no clue. I'm begining to yearn for the time when I was young, ignorant and had no knowledge of such terms.
 
#6 ·
I've got Bob at Johnson & Wood looking via the parts hotline. Will advise. Also, I can ship anywhere on Earth via my inexhaustable supply of shipping agents, even to the CIS.
 
#7 ·
So not the same thing.

Don't let Chernobyl cause you a great deal of fear. The reactors in the US are totally different in design than what was in Chernobyl.

In the US we use light water reactors. They are thermally sable. That means the hotter they get the less reactive they get. Chernobyl used a graphite moderated reactor. The hotter they get the more reactive the get so you can have a massive run away reaction.

The moderator in Chernobyl was graphite. AKA coal. It burns. The Moderator in US reactors is water. It doesn't burn.

The reactor in Chernobyl didn't have a containment building. All power reactors in the US have containment buildings.

It is impossible for a light water reactor to fail in the same way as the Chernobyl reactor did.

Frankly I can not imagine anyway for a light water reactor to fail and cause anywhere near the damage of Chernobyl with out the operators doing it intentally.
 
#8 ·
I'm inclined to believe her, to be honest, until proven otherwise.



Russia, even in the modern age, has had a reputation for covering up offical accidents (K-19 anyone?) well past the old Soviet era. I don't think it is a stretch at all to think that they would look at a site like this with trepidation and try to discredit it or the author.



The poster to Neil Gaiman's site, for example, offers up lots of what look like facts (organized trip, officials debunking the site) but without any real hard data. There are no quotes from officials that someone could follow up on, no names of people he spoke to, no copies of the tickets, etc. We are expected to take his statements at face value simply because he says so and is ostensibly writing about Chernobyl. Even if I search him out and find that his book is now out and on the shelves, that doesn't mean that he is somehow more qualified than the person putting up the site. Imagine if writing about liberals made Ann Coulter an expert on them. Shudder.



She makes no claims at being a journalist or scientist, has no ads on her site and simply takes donations via Paypal. With all the snappies and videos on her site, you know her bandwidth costs are going to be pretty high and unless her site sees more donations than everyone else trying to earn a living that way, she likely doesn't even cover the costs of hosting the site. She was Slashdotted a couple of years ago, so you know that a zillion people visit the site ... and that ain't cheap.



So, no real financial incentive, pictures on the site show the bike in situ, the site is still up (if someone really wanted it down, it would go down), scenes from the stills match scenes from videos taken in the week after the disaster, etc. Like the person who submitted to Neil Gaiman's site said: why would anyone go to this length?
 
#10 ·
Re: So not the same thing.

Yeah I know how reactors work. I've been through the visitors center here. I'm also a believer in anything with a higher percent chance of occurence > 0 will inevitably(sp?) happen. It's all how you manage the risk. I've met Murphy. As I thought that I'd implied, I just as soon as have had a 4th built here, purely for selfish reasons. There are still some sticky issues out there, ie waste storage. Oh yeah we're going to send it all to the Russians to process for other nations. Well at least I slept well last night.
 
#11 ·
One thing is true. Anyone who spent anytime near enough to a radioactive forest to actually see it glow would be dead within hours. Also a forest radioactive enough to glow would be a completely dead forest and not a forest at all.



Anyhow I'm in serious need of a new Speed Triple. Anyone can donate $ to me anytime.
 
#12 ·
True or not, it makes for a fascinating and chilling read. That said, I'll pass on buying someone a new motor. Perhaps she should ride an old Russian bike and pick up spare parts on her Chernobyl treks... seeing as they're just sitting their rusting waiting for their half-life to end. ;-)
 
#17 ·
Maybe i'll send her this old Bultaco Lobito that's been sitting in the backyard with weeds growing throught it...word is it's impervious to the effects of radiaiton. Like a roach.
 
#19 ·
Re: So not the same thing.

"I'm also a believer in anything with a higher percent chance of occurence > 0 will inevitably(sp?) happen."

Well that isn't true. There is a finite chance of anything happening. Including you changing in a giant bar of chocolate. Quantum physics is strange stuff. It is just that the odds of it are so great that it will probably never happen in the lifetime of the universe.

The waste from reactors is a problem. BTW the US doesn't ship it to Russia. Right now it is stored at the reactor sites. There are many options that they are looking at to get ride of it. It is possible that it can be recycled, or "burned" or if necessary buried for long term storage. The last option is my least favorite but the simplest.

I never said that it was fool proof. Just not worthy of the amount of worry you seemed to have over it. US reactors just can not go kaboom like the Russian design did. And unlike the Russian reactors we put ours in containment buildings.

If I was you I would sleep soundly. You are about 10 million times more likely to die on your bike than by a reactor accident.
 
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