Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/25

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Subject: [Leica] Chernobyl Legacy
From: bdcolen at comcast.net (B. D. Colen)
Date: Tue Apr 25 20:06:18 2006

What do you base your final prediction on, Adam?


On 4/25/06 10:41 PM, "Adam Bridge" <abridge@gmail.com> wrote:

> Setting aside issues of a political nature, the Soviets chose to
> design a reactor plant that could never EVER be licensed in the west.
> The graphite core of the Soviet plant had a few very nasty
> characteristics: 1) it could catch on fire and 2) (the worst) it could
> have what's called a "positive alpha-T" - In nuclear engineering
> jargon that means that as the temperature of the reactor increased it
> would cause the nuclear reaction to increase in rate as well! That's
> positive feedback so when things begin to go wrong they go very wrong
> and they go very wrong very fast. Nuclear reactors are exponential
> beasts. If it takes 1 second to go from .1 % power to 10% power the
> next second will see power go to 1,000% and so on. Those zeros add up.
> Fast.
> 
> The Soviets attempted to do testing of the most dangerous sort with
> completely insufficient protection and some safety systems may have
> been off-line. (It's been a while since I read the accident summary.)
> 
> That said, the accident at Three Mile Island was serious and it was
> only the competent design of the plant and finally some presence of
> mind, that kept things from getting even worse. The operators forgot
> Rickover's dictum - repeated often in the Naval Reactor Technical
> Bulletins: "Believe your indications. When things go wrong you tend to
> see what you want to see rather than what is really there." That's
> good advice in other areas as well. When the TMI technicians, using
> core thermocouples, saw rising temperatures they chose not to believe
> them - in spite of the fact that there was almost nothing that could
> have made those readings inaccurate: we're talking about the most
> straightforward of measuring devices.
> 
> BUT the engineers who designed the plant created a design able to
> overcome not only the original accident by the almost malicious
> decisions made after the accident which made things so much worse. The
> Soviet design made things worse from the start with horrendous
> consequences.
> 
> Someday the biologists will do something MUCH worse. I hope we survive it.
> 
> Adam Bridge
> 
> On 4/25/06, Walt Johnson <walt@waltjohnson.com> wrote:
>> Marc:
>> 
>> I'm sure nuclear disasters are very complex in  engineering terms but
>> this had nothing to do with my statements.  Whether or not our system of
>> checks and balances is better that  the now defunct Soviet Union is not
>> an issue. I can't help but feel our system of CYA is far superior and
>> Three Mile Island comes to mind.  Lack luster Russian engineering aside,
>> the  reactions of our own  (edited out in my original post) Christian
>> Right salivating over a "commie disaster" is hard to deny.  Holier than
>> thou always strikes me as the unholiest of all.
>> 
>> Walt
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Marc James Small wrote:
>> 
>>> At 03:31 PM 4/25/06 -0400, Walt Johnson wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>>> Unfortunately, I'll bet many right wingers  reacted to Chernobyl much
>>>> the same way the Reagan administration did to  KAL 007. You know, God
>>>> points a finger at the Evil Empire.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> Walt
>>> 
>>> It is a bit more complex than that.  The USSR opted for cutting some
>>> technical edges which ought not to have been cut, and the Chernobyl
>>> disaster resulted.  The only "right-wing" comment on the event was to 
>>> point
>>> out the danger of allowing a single entity -- the same government agency 
>>> --
>>> to design, build, and inspect something as dangerous as a nuclear pile.
>>> (In the West, nuclear plants are designed by private industry to 
>>> government
>>> standards, and are inspected by an agency completely distinct from that
>>> which set out the standards, to ensure inspection by a neutral entity.)
>>> 
>>> There are some engineers on this List who probably can speak to more 
>>> detail
>>> about this, but I would direct your attention to the rather lengthy 
>>> report
>>> run in THE ECONOMIST, a publication of a mildly pinkish nature, around 
>>> 1986
>>> or 1987, which discussed the technical gaps the Soviets attempted to jump
>>> and did so though, in the end, unsuccessfully.  The other side is that
>>> Chernobyl was one of seeral dozens of Soviet power plants using the same
>>> technology, and the others are still in use today.  The successor
>>> governments will not tell us much about safety measures taken to ensure 
>>> no
>>> repeat of the Chernobyl disaster.
>>> 
>>> The good news is that Northern Hemisphere winds normally blow west to 
>>> east.
>>> The bad news for Sweden, a nation of appallingly arrogant insistence that
>>> it had no dog in the Cold War fight, was that the winds briefly blew from
>>> Chernobyl to Sweden.  Couldn't have happened to a better target.  But, in
>>> the future, if such a problem should occur again, the radiation path will
>>> probably spread over Russia and not over western Europe.
>>> 
>>> Mind you, I am not in favor of nuclear disasters but a well-run nuclear
>>> plant is the most effective method for the production of power.
>>> 
>>> Marc
>>> 
>>> msmall@aya.yale.edu
>>> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Leica Users Group.
>>> See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
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>> 
> 
> 
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Replies: Reply from abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge) ([Leica] Chernobyl Legacy)
In reply to: Message from abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge) ([Leica] Chernobyl Legacy)