HBO's Chernobyl Mini-series drops next week.

105,087 Views | 688 Replies | Last: 1 yr ago by gigemJTH12
Punked Shank
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What is BWR? Sorry.

Also, i loved the trial part of the finale. Great series and acting. I want so much more. If the do ***ishima maybe they can use non brit actors.

Im really sad. GOT - OVER. Barry - over. Chernobyl - over. Better Call Saul - delayed a year. Football season - 2+ months away.

What do i watch!?!?
Robert C. Christian
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coastsrs said:

What is BWR? Sorry.

Also, i loved the trial part of the finale. Great series and acting. I want so much more. If the do ***ishima maybe they can use non brit actors.
Women's World Cup starts this weekend!

Im really sad. GOT - OVER. Barry - over. Chernobyl - over. Better Call Saul - delayed a year. Football season - 2+ months away.

What do i watch!?!?

Women's World Cup starts this weekend.
Michael Cera Palin
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In the United States there are currently only two types of power reactors, Boiling Water Reactors (BWR) and Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR). ***ushima was a General Electric BWR design built in the 1970s.

The show talked about the soviet designed RBMK reactor which would not have passed the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's licensing process due to multiple design problems.
veryfuller
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Staff
AG
This made me laugh a lot:

https://theplaylist.net/chernobyl-russian-government-hbo-20190606/
KidDoc
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coastsrs said:

What is BWR? Sorry.

Also, i loved the trial part of the finale. Great series and acting. I want so much more. If the do ***ishima maybe they can use non brit actors.

Im really sad. GOT - OVER. Barry - over. Chernobyl - over. Better Call Saul - delayed a year. Football season - 2+ months away.

What do i watch!?!?
Sneaky Pete- Amazon prime 3 seasons.
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schmendeler
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I remember watching a nova that was really good about ***ushima and they also covered newer/less adopted nuclear power models. the sodium cooled one sounded really promising. any nuke-nerds want to share their thoughts on it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
Punked Shank
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Thanks.

And also on the USWNT...im all in on anything alex morgan. Noted!
Some Junkie Cosmonaut
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Quote:

basically, it was just an article criticizing an incredibly popular show for clicks.


why i avoid most "articles" these days.
BQCadet
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veryfuller said:

This made me laugh a lot:

https://theplaylist.net/chernobyl-russian-government-hbo-20190606/
Oh they big mad
Michael Cera Palin
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schmendeler said:

I remember watching a nova that was really good about ***ushima and they also covered newer/less adopted nuclear power models. the sodium cooled one sounded really promising. any nuke-nerds want to share their thoughts on it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-cooled_fast_reactor
I think in the long run it's going to be "permanent" solution for nuclear, but I don't know if we'll ever reach that point. If research is properly funded, and everything goes smoothly, it will probably take until the 2030s at the earliest for a commercial facility to be operating. Every time a president is elected you have no idea who they're going to pick to run the DOE, and what their opinion on nuclear energy is, meaning the research funding might magically disappear one day. There is currently a very large research team (including nuke professors at A&M) to design one but they are very far away.

In more reasonable time frames NuScale is on pace to have their Small Modular Reactor (SMR) licensed by the NRC by 2020, and have an agreement with Utah to build the first plant by 2026. Their reactor uses the same concepts as current reactors but with passive safety systems and a small scalable size meaning it won't require an upfront cost in the billions of dollars to build a plant.
Ranger222
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PWestAg18 said:

Ranger222 said:

pocketrockets06 said:

As far as the plant in Matagorda and it's prep for Harvey, the plant ran through it with its storm crew. That facility is designed to still be safe with the entire site under 15' of water from a dam failure. Below is an article that even has positive comments about their prep from the Union of Concerned Scientists who are usually anti nuke.

https://www.tpr.org/post/how-did-south-texas-project-nuclear-power-plant-weather-harvey
Talked to my dad about this last night who has worked at STP since it opened and in high positions. He said that the backup generators are stored in water-tight buildings that sit 26 - 29' above sea level. That were designed in the scenario of a direct hit by a Category 4 hurricane, with flooding that included every dam along the Colorado river giving way.

We also talked about the speed at which those backup generators can turn on -- they talked in the last episode how it would take a minute before the diesel generators kicked on (thus the reason for the safety test). At STP they turn on in 5-6 seconds, with injection into the reactor not occurring until 25-30 seconds.

He also made the comment that while Chernobyl was bad, Fu--kushima is much, much worse of a disaster as multiple cores melted down compared to the just one at Chernobyl. However, the Chernobyl explosion was an aerosol explosion, with almost all of the radionuclides being dispersed in the air. A lot of the contamination at Fu---kushima was released into the seawater aside from some aerosolized due to a hydrogen explosion. Thus, there has been less coverage because the threat wasn't as visible as Chernobyl, however the story might change in time.

One of my professors did emergency response in Japan immediately following the disaster and said given what he'd seen, he'd buy beach front property there in a heart beat. Most of the exclusion zone was precautionary, but there are some very difficult challenges ahead with the disaster in terms of keeping the cores controlled.

***ushima definitely had a much larger impact on the US industry than Chernobyl did. There are still about 20 BWRs operating in the US and they've undergone extensive research and review to ensure their safety. In fact it's been almost a decade since the disaster, and I've just started research for a masters thesis on the cooling system.

I've been out to STP before, from what I've heard it's one of the best plants in the industry. Head of the facility is in ag

I used to visit STP all the time as a kid. Visited the control room, even fished in the cooling pond. During outages they even used to take people inside the containment building for tours.

That all changed after 9/11. Now I wouldn't be able to even get into the first checkpoint gate. Its a shame.
Punked Shank
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https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424

Thought this is pretty interesting. Always love different takes for if nothing else but entertainment
A. Solzhenitsyn
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BQCadet said:

veryfuller said:

This made me laugh a lot:

https://theplaylist.net/chernobyl-russian-government-hbo-20190606/
Oh they big mad

In Soviet Russia, TV watches YOU
cbr
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A. Solzhenitsyn said:

BQCadet said:

veryfuller said:

This made me laugh a lot:

https://theplaylist.net/chernobyl-russian-government-hbo-20190606/
Oh they big mad

In Soviet Russia, TV watches YOU
Username checks out
cbr
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I read ***ushima leaked less than 5% of the total radiation of chernobyl.
swimmerbabe11
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So, wierd question... but why the all white scrubs as unis?
Is there a reason that was the code?
swimmerbabe11
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Also, the bio robot who fell and his boot ripped... WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM.. i spent a good bit of time freaking out on his behalf
BQ78
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I think I read that the bio-robots all did okay and did not have any health issues due to exposure.
swimmerbabe11
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If I have any frustration with the tv show, I would say it's probably that then... they made this whole big deal about him tripping, his boot ripping.. and then... ... ... ........

moved on.

Otherwise.. the show was beautifully well done.
ac04
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the boot ripping was just a device to help you understand the fear/panic they were experiencing in that moment. and it worked.
schmendeler
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ac04 said:

the boot ripping was just a device to help you understand the fear/panic they were experiencing in that moment. and it worked.
also, i think it further underscores that while this guy had a whole miniature story line (and thus was important to us) he was just one more semi-disposable part of this whole clean-up machine. he has his experience and then is shuffled along like so many others, and we just have to get used to it.
zgood10
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Best supporting actor goes to the dosimeters. Loved the tension just the sound of them created. You knew s*** was hitting the fan when they went crazy.
AustinAg2K
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BQ78 said:

I think I read that the bio-robots all did okay and did not have any health issues due to exposure.
None of the bio-robots died or suffered radiation issues during the clean up. However, The Soviet Union did not follow anyone for the long term, so there is no way of really knowing if the bio-robots had any long term effects from the radiation exposure. That's true for pretty much everyone involved. The Soviets didn't follow up on anything long term (granted, the USSR wasn't around long term), so that's why they say there were only 31 deaths, and you see a wide range of estimates of 4,000-90,000 other deaths.
NukeAg10
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zgood10 said:

Best supporting actor goes to the dosimeters. Loved the tension just the sound of them created. You knew s*** was hitting the fan when they went crazy.


I agree. I have no idea what civilian ones sound like, but ours sound nothing like that.
swimmerbabe11
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...what do yours sound like. Cause that noise is freaking haunting.
NukeAg10
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swimmerbabe11 said:

...what do yours sound like. Cause that noise is freaking haunting.


Well, I've never heard ours be more than a beep once a second or so, but it didn't sound like a scrambling eggs like the show.

Edit: a beep a second is basically background radiation, so just natural radiation that everything is receiving from naturally produced radiation like radon-222.
aTmAg
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It seems that the sounds they used were Geiger counters. Are those fundamentally different than Dosimeters?
Michael Cera Palin
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Old school detectors as shown in the show make that clicking sound. Modern day Geiger Counters make the same sound. The key thing to point out is that a Geiger Counter doesn't really tell you what the dose rate is, it just tells you that the detector was hit by a radiation event. In order to determine the radiation field you need an ion chamber. Modern day ion chambers make a digital beeping sound, not the "clicking" sound like the show.
Jason Ag
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I was radioactive for a time. When my doc cleared me to go back to work I went to talk to our radioactive materials compliance specialist, who inspected radioactive materials/sites for the State. He was excited that I wanted to see how radioactive I still was (he was hoping I'd ask). He pulled out what i would call a Geiger counter, and sure enough the thing clicked away. He said it was low level and the sensitivity was it turned up. An organ had absorbed more than others and he could pin point it. Which he was correct based on my follow scan.
Jason Ag
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I guess I was shooting off fewer of them. I started at 150 millicuries.
ja86
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we are all radioactive. sleep with someone and your getting a dose.

some more than others...
Michael Cera Palin
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So it gets tricky. A Geiger Counter can be calibrated to give an estimated dose. So we know that Cs-137 decays with a 662 keV (unit for energy) gamma ray. You can calibrate a Geiger Counter to a Cs-137 source and just assume every incident of radiation that hits the detector is at 662 keV and have it spit out whatever radiation field that would correlate to. This is a very rough estimate but it works for low level dose situations like the one you described.

To get an accurate reading you need an ion chamber which tells you what the actual radiation field is
ja86
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a dosimeter gives you a total accumulated amount of radiation to which you were exposed while wearing the device. A Geiger counter tells you the current exposure rate at that location at that specific time.
BowSowy
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I've read that radiation-sensitive equipment made after the Chernobyl event has to be made from metal scavenged from ships sunken before the event. Chernobyl released enough radiation to radiate all metal made since that event. Can any of you experts verify if that's true?
ja86
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I have been working in the industry a long time. I have never heard that. And it has never been a consideration in anything I have been involved in.

You have to remember that the world we live in is and always has been naturally radioactive.
 
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