Talk:Chernobyl disaster/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Chernobyl disaster. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

→

Archive 5

Miscellaneous comments

is it true that the accident will make the area polluted for 50000 years?

Wormwood

Common Polyn Made Bitter

As discussed in name origin, the Ukrainian chornobyl means Common Polyn (known in English as mugwort), while wormwood in Ukrainian is actually Bitter Polyn. Revelations 8:11 says,

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

The particularly striking phrases are:

the third part of the waters became wormwood
because they were made bitter.

There is no doubt that, poetically speaking, what once was "Common Polyn" was made "Bitter Polyn" because of the contamination. Perhaps the prophecy could be ruled false if Revelations read: the name of the city is called Wormwood because the city name Chornobyl clearly does not translate to Wormwood. However, the scripture does not say city--it says star. The Revelator could have been referring poetically to the bitterness of the event itself. Taken this way, it is doubtless true today that many people associate the star or explosion at Chornobyl with the word wormwood. The final decision is a matter of one's personal faith. -- Jeoff Wilks 11:30 AM, 04 Nov 2004 (EDT)

I'd say the matter of personal ignorance. Chernobyl explosion didn't look like star at all. When I am drunk, I can come up with even more poetic associations. By the way, what did Revelations say about internet and wikipedia? "And sands will melt and spiders made of molten sand will entangle the meek and devour their souls" -- Mikkalai 20:59, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Being intolerant of another's view with less than solid sarcasm doesnt prove your point - sober or drunk. -- 192.85.47.2 10:15, 22 March 2005 (UTC)

Please don't drop bombs here. I am tolerant as long as someone doesn't try to impose them on me. Also, please explain why "spiders made of molten sand" (you know, silicon for modern chips is produced of sand, hence this is a 100% indication to internet that entangles our souls) is sarcasm? Or you don't like the word "drunk"? Are't you aware that there is a widespread perception that alcohol and drugs "frees" imagination, and that shamans and medicinemen use hallucinogens? -- Mikkalai 16:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This is encyclpedia, i.e., about facts, not views. For millenia gypsy fortunetellers could fascinate you about your fate in no less blurry, but cocnvincing words. -- Mikkalai 16:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The paragraph on the meaning of the word in the "Chernobyl and the Bible" section needs cleaning up badly. What is written here on the talk page makes more sense than it. I do not understand the facts so I am unable to clean it up, but I'd be willing to help the grammar and/or make it more understandable if I had the facts. -- Renesis13 21:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Amount of radioactivity

Quoting from the article: "... the 3,000 billion GBq of radioactivity released from the reactor."

It's not that I'm an expert in radioactive matters or something, but I think this information isn't quite clear and is perhaps wrong. It seems excessive to me to use 4 digits, the word billion and the prefix giga. The figure expressed could be better written as "3 × 10²⁴ Bq". But, is this correct? Or too big, or too small? -- Amorim Parga 17:04, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)

I don't know if the number is right either, but a Bq is such a small unit that I think everything is measured in GBq, just as you might say 10⁹ kg. On the other hand, I think billion may be a poor choice of word in an international encyclopedia. -- Andrew 07:09, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

FWIW, the big food irradiation sources are measured in PBq. -- Pakaran . 17:34, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Further to Andrew's comment I agree: as the number differs depending on which isde of the atlantic you are. 84.9.71.156 00:29, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Iodine

Right after the accident, the main health concern involved radioactive iodine, with a half-life of eight days. Today, in addition to radioactive iodine, there is concern about contamination of the soil with caesium-137, which has a half-life of about 30 years.

Is radioactive iodine really still a problem? If its half-life really is only eight days, then it shouldn't be a concern unless it's a major decay product of something with a longer half-life. --Andrew 07:09, Apr 26, 2004 (UTC)

According to the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency 2002 Chernobyl Report, the primary remaining environmental contaminant is ¹³⁷Cs, which is found in the hightest concentrations in the surface layers of the soil of the area. I can find no mention of radioactive iodine (¹³¹I) being a current concern (nor any mention of it being a decay product of known contaminants). -- 24.195.204.246 21:55, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

Citation

I removed this: "(see World Health Organization, page 154; Ivanov, Tsyb Studies, page 159; European Commission Program, page 159; Ukrainian Studies, page 160; and Swiss-Belarussian Paper, page 162)." because I don't understand what the page numbers are refering to. Rmhermen 19:10, Apr 27, 2004 (UTC)

Just so folks know, this has been linked from /. I am watching it and will revert any stupidity, if I happen to be online. -- Pakaran . 17:34, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Kidofspeed

Do you have evidence that this is a hoax, anon? -- Golbez 18:03, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Yes: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/05/26/girl_photoblogs_cher.html -- Pavel Vozenilek 19:40, 25 August 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, that's not evidence, that's a word of mouth. -- Elde 04:05, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Not exactly a hoax, but not entirely as it looks either. This was discussed at length on slashdot a while ago. -- Kim Bruning 08:13, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I read, and partcipated in, the Slashdot discussion. The same objection obtains there as I made here, the evidence of a 'hoax' is nothing but word-of-mouth and blogged friend-of-a-friend. I agree that the story probably contains some elements of untruth, but those seem largely chargeable to dramatic license not a wilfull hoax. -- Elde 07:23, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Whichever you decide (or even if you don't decide), the page needs something more than just "she wrongly claims". This just confuses readers. (If it's bogus, why is it linked, and if it's not, why do you say it's a false claim?) Idea: "(she claims to have entered the area by motorcycle, but some have disputed this)".

Then again, if you follow those links enough, it sounds like there are some serious doubts to the accuracy of the photos, even if you don't assume she took them from her motorcycle. So maybe we simply shouldn't link to it. (Or even: give it its own page, explaining why it's a hoax.) -- 4.16.250.58 21:20, 2 September 2004 (UTC)

This discussion really belongs to the Elena Filatova page and its talk. -- Mikkalai 22:58, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

However, the Chernobyl page does have an external link to her site, so I believe it's worth just mentioning the fact that there is some question. -- Kierant 4 Oct 2005

Sarcophagus

The sarcophagus is discussed in the section "Chernobyl after the accident", yet it's construction seems to be nowhere described. -- Elde 00:48, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A current worker at the plant has told me that in May this year there was a very significant problem which required very large numbers of fire appliances (fire engines) to be called to the site. He believes it was a new leak from the sarcophagus. I've not modified the main page because it's still effectively hearsay; does anybody have any corroborating evidence? -- KieranT 01:57, 4 Oct 2005 (BST)

There doesn't appear to be any mention of this in any English-language press reports I can find (and I have access to Factiva, a commercial newspaper search service which has pretty much every major English-language newspaper and a whole heap of other things in it). If true, I would have thought Greenpeace would have a) heard about it, and b) been sending out press releases all over the place. There's nothing on their site about such an accident, either. So if it did happen it's been kept very quiet. --Robert Merkel 06:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm extremely wary of "conspiracy theories" but the incident allegedly took place just two days before the Eurovision song contest. -- KieranT 11:49, 4 Oct 2005 (BST)

In any case, unless you can find a published claim to this effect it's not really appropriate for the Wikipedia; see Wikipedia:No original research. If your own investigations turn something sufficiently compelling up, you'll have to find some other way to get the word out, such as Wikinews.--Robert Merkel 12:00, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Containment

Is there any source for:

At the time of the accident, it was widely believed that the reactor had no containment. Later investigations found that the reactor had infact two containment systems, which when combined created a safer shell than the majority of containment vessels csorrounding reactors in the USA and other western nations. If a similar senario had occured in a US reactor (if this was possible) the containment vessel would have also been damaged.

In all my reading, I have never heard the claim that it had containment. The claim that it is better than in USA reactors seems POV. So I reverted this. -- pstudier 05:38, 2004 Nov 16 (UTC)

I am the writer of the above comment. I base the comment on general reading I have made over years of interest in Chernobyl and other russian incidents. My main source for the above is taken from [1]. I have included the relevant section below.

"NRC Commissioner Asselstine testified before Congress that Chernobyl had a containment structure that was stronger than those surrounding some U.S. nuclear reactors. The Chernobyl containment design was based upon the theory of pressure suppression containment. This same concept is used in nearly half the reactors in the U.S., 38 designed by General Electric and 9 designed by Westinghouse. According to the NRC, GE Mark I designs have a 90% chance of containment failure during a core melt accident. The NRC has acknowledged that the containments are not designed to cope with such accidents." -- Kach 14:05, 16 November 2004 (UTC)

This appears to be based on confusion as to what is meant by "containment". See (the updated) RBMK page for a discussion as well as a much more detailed reference. The short version: All RBMK reactors have some containment, needed for normal operation, but when it comes to the last-ditch emergency containment, early RBMK designs had none at all, but by the time Chernobyl was built, a partial containment system had been added to the design. It dealt only with the pipes at the bottom of the reactor.

Now, whether the large two-meter-thick concrete domes completely covering modern reactors would have actually helped any with this accident, I certainly can't say; but the Chernobyl reactor certainly didn't have one, or any analogue.

The article referenced from RBMK contains more information on the accident; if someone feels the urge to merge it in, that would probably be a good idea. -- Andrew 20:03, Nov 25, 2004 (UTC)

Containment does not cover a single failure type, but multiple types. Containment for a steam explosion is quite different from containment for a core meltdown. Chernobyl was a steam explosion. The above quote of "90% chance of containment failure during a core melt accident" is not relevant. -- 24.22.8.53 01:31, 2 February 2005 (UTC)

According to the World Nuclear Assocaition (WNA) (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf31.htm) the RBMK reactor design lacked a full contaiment, at least in the western sense. Furthermore the

point is irrevlent because a Chernobyl type accident is impossible in a LWR. -- 24.46.124.22 02:36, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Redundancy

...When outside air contacted the graphite moderator of the core, the graphite began to burn. The fire dispersed most of the radioactive contamination.

...After part of the roof blew off, the inrush of oxygen combined with the extremely high temperature of the reactor fuel and graphite moderator sparked a graphite fire. This fire greatly contributed to the spread of radioactive material.

The above quote, from adjacent, paragraphs seems to say twice that the graphite burned when the air reached the hot graphite, which seems redundant to me. (But I don't know how to fix it).

And I don't think sparked is the right word, since no spark was involved. How about 'caused' or 'ignited'? -- RJFJR 15:16, 24 December 2004 (UTC)

The article's a mess

Upon rereading (in the wake of a few conflicting edits) I noticed that it's practically impossible to find anything in the article. So I went through and added subsections. In the porcess it became clear that the article's really a mess - information strewn randomly around. I'll try some tidying, but the article won't look great for a little while yet. -- Andrew 20:30, Jan 10, 2005 (UTC)

Meltdown? I don't think so...

The article states the following:

On Saturday, April 26, 1986 at 1:23:58 am local time, the fourth reactor of the Chernobyl power plant - known as Chernobyl-4 - suffered a catastrophic nuclear meltdown that resulted in a series of explosions and fire.

This is complete nonsense. The reactor did not suffer a meltdown. It suffered a steam explosion. BIG differences. The steam explosion was caused from the excess steam exploding (high pressure forced the lid off) the containment vessel and (essentially) blowing the lid of the containment vessel. Although the rods started to melt, they never liquified to the point of seperation from the fuel rod and never touched the containment vessel, thus not a meltdown. This information is easily verified in almost every other encyclopedia and the various books out about Chernobyl. If you want nuclear meltdown, go see Three Mile Island. -- Borisborf 21:27, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

See Talk:Nuclear_meltdown#Chernobyl Accident, where exactly this issue was discussed.

A few quotes (which I wrote):

Perhaps more convincingly, the following site, which appears authoritative, claims there was a meltdown.

http://www.chernobyl.info/index.php?userhash=864065&navID=10&lID=2

Specfically, they say

"At temperatures of over 2000°C, the fuel rods melted. The graphite covering of the reactor then ignited. In the ensuing inferno, the radioactive fission products released during the core meltdown were sucked up into the atmosphere."

They also give specific references, which are unfortunately in what appears to be German.

and

Incidentally, the following site:

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/heroes/borovoi.htm

describes scientists chipping a piece off an "elephant's foot" of molten and refrozen fuel in the basement.

"[...]they found the elephant's foot was made of uranium and zirconium from the reactor fuel rods and silicon from sand packed around the reactor vessel. As the reactor core burned at thousands of degrees, molten fuel had apparently eaten through the concrete floor and oozed into the warren of rooms below, where it cooled and hardened. The uranium in this "Chernobyl lava," it turned out, was too dilute to threaten a new nuclear reaction."

and

"In May 1988, they drilled through concrete walls into the reactor pit itself–and found it empty. All of the fuel, it appeared, had either been blown out in the explosion or had oozed into the lower rooms as a dilute lava."

However, it does point out that the lava was too dilute to be critical (this was one of the reasons people ran into a radioactive building to look around). So while the core melted, it seems like no liquid critical mass was formed. But has such an event ever occurred?

I should say that I'm no authority on the subject, and there's a tremendous number of conflicting reports on the subject, but after much searching on the Web and several visits to the university library, this is the best conclusion I can come to. If you have reliable references describing whether or not there was a meltdown, that would be highly valuable. Please do post them!

I should say that I don't like what our article says at the moment, because what actually happened was an explosion and then a meltdown - the explosion was certainly not a result of the meltdown.

--Andrew 04:53, Dec 9, 2004 (UTC)

Updated the short summary to reflect the sequence of events. -- Andrew 23:06, Jan 12, 2005 (UTC)

Technically a meltdown did occur (after the initial steam explosion) -- but how important is the meltdown relative to everything else? If you look at effects to the reactor and the environment, the initial steam explosion and resulting prolonged fire caused by far the most damage to the reactor and harm to human health (via spread of radioactivity). The meltdown was relatively minor in it's consequences. -- 24.22.8.53 01:50, 2 February 2005 (UTC)

You're quite right. I think the problem you're objecting to is that people read "steam explosion" and think "bad news" but they read "nuclear meltdown" and they think "unimaginable disaster", which is just wrong. I think it's basically a result of the China Syndrome and early scientific uncertainty about how meltdowns happen. In particular, it seems as if they tend to extinguish themselves more easily than was feared, so that a reasonable plant design can make them a realtively minor component of any accident where they occur. In particular, we know how to design containment that can deal with a meltdown. (Chernobyl's did, and their containment was nothing to write home about). --Andrew 03:56, Feb 2, 2005 (UTC)

Casualties

I realise the figure's contoversial and confused, but the estimated number of long term casualties at least warrants a decent sized discussion. Anyone? Psychobabble 08:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It does. Here are some claims that could be a starting point for further research:

8,000 deaths are attributable to Chernobyl, with more dying every year. Another 3.5 million are badly sick because of Chernobyl, a third of them children. - Candian Broadcasting Corporation
UNSCEAR's "Exposures and effects of the Chernobyl accident", 2000. This report is often quoted, but everyone seems to read it differently. It's a tough read.
no radiogenetic disturbances of health have been found - "The Truth About Chernobyl Is Told" by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc, 21st Science and Technology Magazine. Winter 2000-2001 issue. The author is from UNSCEAR.
Over 11,000 cases of thyroid - Chernobyl - A Continuing Catastrophe by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Often quoted, but the original statement is ambiguous.
Future cancer deaths will be about 6,660 - attributed to the IAEA by WISE Amsterdam, but I couldn't backtrace. It suggests that Chernobyl increased rates of disease other than cancer and calculates 50,000-70,000 cancer deaths based on radiation.
My estimate in 1986, based upon releases of various non-iodine radionuclides, was 475,000 fatal cancers plus about an equal number of additional non-fatal cases, occurring over time both inside and outside the ex-Soviet Union - "Chernobyl's 10th: Cancer and Nuclear-Age Peace" By John W. Gofman, M.D., Ph.D.

This is going to be a tough one to research. I found lots of people misquoting each other, so try to backtrack to the ultimate source. Here are some things that I think could be said now:

International nuclear agencies generally limit the death toll to 31, but are continuing research.
Independent sources have placed the estimate in the thousands, and news media have preferred to report numbers in this range.
It has been unusually common for journalists to misquote scientific reports on this issue.

I hope this is a start. -- Yannick 03:01, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the correct figure is hard to come by. Basically, you have four general categories: 1) Immediate fatalities ( due to burns, injuries, radiation poisoning ): 31 people 2) Thyroid cancers. These typically occur among those who were children at the time of the accident. Keep in mind that less than 1 in 10 diagnosed children die. 3) All other cancers. This one is hardest to measure. Many of deaths from this category haven't even occurred yet. A lot of old people die from cancers. When a 70 year old man dies from lung cancer, you can't really tell if his cancer was caused by Chernobyl or he would have died anyway. You need to have accurate statistics for exposed and non-exposed people who otherwise live in identical conditions. 4) Birth defects and mutations. Some say there aren't any, others disagree. --Itinerant1 06:38, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

On the advice of State doctors, a great many fetuses were aborted following Chernobyl. I suggest that these are victims as well. Benjamin Gatti

Detailed technical information

There is a page here that has extensive technical details concerning the Chernobyl accident, that I for one find utterly engrossing. I'd really like to include some of this information in the article; I'm a complete WikiNewbie (tm), so if I screw something up feel free to correct me. -- Ataru 23:04, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Simpler explanation

For those of us who arent physicists or nuclear reactor enthusiasts, this whole article seems like a foreign language. It would be greatly appreciated if a summary of the events could be given in a more simplified format for the general public to read and understand. -- 222.152.99.78 10:00, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

AZ-5 IS the rapid emergency defense button

Please check before you casually "revert vandalism." -- 24.215.202.168 04:26, 3 July 2005 (UTC)

Please check your edits before you casually accuse someone of casually reverting vandalism. I saw the extra "r" you threw in there[2] and assumed the rest of the edit was in bad faith, too. My apologies for that, but please be more careful in the future. —HorsePunchKid→龜 July 3, 2005 04:52 (UTC)

Sabotage claims...

Sorry, but is the idea that Chernobyl was the result of Western (and that means presumably American or British) sabotage given credence by anyone except conspiracy theorists?

Leaving aside any moral considerations for the moment, it would seem to be an incredibly risky act. If proven (at least to the satisfaction of the court of public opinion) it would have queered any chance of warming relations, would have strengthened the Soviet government in response to a renewed external threat, and would have split NATO in two. The political fallout would have brought down any Western government involved. And for what? Yes, the political consequences of Chernobyl were ultimately positive as far as the West was concerned, but it seems that Gorbachev was headed in that direction anyway. Moreover, trying to predict the result of such actions is extremely difficult (witness the horribly mistaken geopolitical analysis that drove the Iraq war).

So given the lack of plausibility behind the tale, and the lack of evidence presented here, is it actually taken at all seriously? --Robert Merkel 00:57, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Firstly, our embassy page is actually here [3]. To answer your question : no, certainly not. Never even heard of it. And I believe this to be the result of a certain western tendency to underestimate security on russian nuclear plants and army bases. That the warheads are somehow lying aroung, ready to be stolen or sold to someone for a bottle of vodka and so on and so forth. This is not true nowdays and certainly wasnt true 20 years ago, when anything goverment-related was taken gravely serious. And anyway, the picture of the accident is anything but sabotage. It is known that the accident happened as a result of a buildup of small human error mistakes (stupidity, actually), so it is very unlikely that the whole control room staff involved in the accident were actually western-paid saboteurs (I wonder how all those people came to work there and stayed in the first place, given that preceding Gorbachevs ascencion, 1984 and 1985 were filled of various KGB activity. So, the answer to your question is a most definite NO -- 83.237.192.204 05:59, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, and I forgot. We had lots and lots of theories in newspapers in the beginning of 90s lik that Stalin was a zombie from outer space. And in those times you couldnt tell a reputable newspaper from a tabloid, because they were all basically the same, mixing accurate information with hoaxes, for commercial value. So, beware of early 90s russian sources and be very careful about what you believe ! (except for historical value, that is ;) -- 83.237.192.204 06:07, 18 August 2005 (UTC)