Remember Chernobyl - GreenHybrid

GeekGal · #1 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 09:56 AM

On this day, take a moment to Remember Chernobyl.

Quote:

The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded during the nighttime hours of April 26, 1986. It remains the single worst nuclear accident in history.

How much have you thought about Chernobyl, about radioactive accidents/incidents and their effect on life? If you're like most of us, you think very rarely if at all of such things...

I encourage you to visit the following website -- Chernobyl journey

It's a personal website from a young Russian woman whose hobby and life's work seems to be travelling on her motorcycle the roads in and around the Chernobyl "dead zone", chronicling those who still live here and the natural life that's reclaiming the irradiated lands. She writes in broken English, but it's an interested read with eerie descriptions and photos of a place where time really does stand still -- at least, time in the way we humans measure it.

For more learning and thinking, visit: http://www.allplanet.com/russia/picnic.htm
or visit Google's search results for "Chernobyl".

lakedude · #2 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 01:18 PM

I very much enjoyed the motorcycle tour when I first read it. Some are claiming this story is a fake. I don't know who to believe?

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/20...true-thing.asp

GeekGal · #3 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 01:41 PM

Thanks for the note about the motorcyle journey site (second link in my post). I wasn't aware there was any dispute on its veracity.

Still, I hope that doesn't diminish the interest in the first link -- the photography and accompanying narration is what prompted my post, moreso than the motorcycle journal.

lakedude · #4 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 01:56 PM

From Wiki:

Quote:

The disaster released over four hundred times more radiation than the atomic bomb of Hiroshima.

brick · #5 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 04:18 PM

National Geographic had a good article on Chernobyl in the April (I think) issue. It's hard to get my mind around the magnitude of the disaster. That alone makes it positively terrifying. Fortunately we don't have to worry about that kind of accident around here! It really makes me wonder what the Russians were thinking when they decided to build plants using that technology. The loss was completely avoidable and yet it happened anyway

AZCivic · #6 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brick

It really makes me wonder what the Russians were thinking when they decided to build plants using that technology. The loss was completely avoidable and yet it happened anyway

Not to mention the lack of a containment dome. That was problem #1. Never assume you have a fail-proof design, no matter how good it is. Every other reactor in the world has a multi-foot thick containment dome.

Delta Flyer · #7 (**permalink**) 04-26-2006, 08:05 PM

The Soviets took chances. Western reactors should not be compared to Eastern European ones of the Cold War era.