Guys

Check out this site - an absolutely chilling and captivating look at Cherynobyl reactor meltdown. Something I guess we all took for granted at the time - fascinating, devastating, unspeakably sad, but true - the content is so gripping. The site can be down at times but keep trying it's well worth the wait


http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/

Sandro, thanks for sharing that. Your discription of the site was very accurate.

Roger

...Sadly, incredible... May God help those who survived, and those that didn't...Very Sad...
Russ

Thanks Sandro, I maybe would never had known what this disater had done.I never realised how large some of the cities were.I must read the link that djk gave me about the children of Cherynobyl.

[This message has been edited by dougwells (edited 04-12-2004).]

My wife was in Eastern Europe when it happened. I forgot how far away she said she was. Maybe 100-200 miles. I'll ask her Tuesday. She said the goverment never said anything. About a week later word spread what happened from the British or US news.

Tom

wow- very unnerving. Makes me wonder how much we know about US nuclear power safety.

[This message has been edited by chi spark (edited 04-13-2004).]

I wonder how it is that the Cherynobyl area will be uninhabitable for hundreds of years, but those Japanese cities we nuke bombed back in WW2 have been rebuilt and are lived in today.

As for US nuke power, supposidly our plants are of better designs and have better containment. That Three Mile Island plant was ruined but little radiation got out.

i'm not so familiar with nuclear physics, but is it true that inside of the concrete block, it's still melting hot?

Primarily, the vastly different amounts of radioactive material released.

Hiroshima was one bomb, with a few kg of plutonium, some percentage of which was converted into energy. The bomb was detonated at some distance above ground level, allowing much of the fallout to be dispersed by the winds.

Chernobyl involved the release of hundreds if not thousands of kg of radioactive material at ground level. Much of the radioactive material fell in the surrounding area, contaminating the ground, the water table, and the crops growing near the site.

The Chernobyl reactor was essentially blown up by extreme mishandling. Instead of water it used graphite, i.e. coal, as moderator. Even a child can tell you that coal burns. It is no wonder the radioactive material spread like it did. It is not possible to cause the same level of damage in a western reactor or modern Russian reactor, although you can still have a meltdown.

Unfortunately, some really scary reactors remain in use. The Leningrad 1 and 2 reactors are even older and unsafer than those of Chernobyl and situated next to St. Petersburg.

[This message has been edited by C-H (edited 04-13-2004).]

A site to make one think indeed.

The contrast between the two little girls happily walking through the city park before the accident and the kindergarten with its abandoned toys and photos after the meltdown really bring the disaster into perspective.

Here's some more on Chernobyl:
http://www.ccoc.net/sub_pages/explosion.shtml

Sandro,
Thanks a heap for posting that!.
I must say, I've yet to see a site as coldly realistic as that one.
What I couldn't get over was the reason for the explosion.
A bunch of scientists, running a Power Station with no load on it?.
Good Lord!.