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UN: Consequences Remain Decades After Chernobyl Disaster:
The United Nations says persistent and serious long-term consequences remain more than 30 years after the explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
The world body is marking International Chernobyl Disaster Remembrance Day on April 26, the 34th anniversary of the accident that spread a radioactive cloud over large parts of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia.
Chernobyl: How did the world's worst nuclear accident happen?:
Efforts to downplay the scale of the disaster began within government itself — infamously exemplified by the Soviet foreign affairs minister's attempt to allay a more senior official's concern for residents' health with the assertion that they were celebrating weddings, gardening, and "fishing in the Pripyat River".
Three days later, the alarm was raised by Sweden, where the radiation was picked up at a nuclear plant.
The Soviet Union denied that an incident had occurred, but with Denmark, Finland and Norway also voicing concerns shortly afterwards, it eventually became impossible to hide the accident from the international community.
However, Moscow continued to downplay the true scale of the catastrophe, failing to tell even its own citizens to stay indoors and allowing the capital's May Day parade to go ahead a week later. The ensuing secrecy surrounding the handling of the disaster in the years that followed, and the reluctance to warn citizens of the scale of the danger they continued to face, means the true toll is continually being revised.
(Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday April 28 2020, @12:42AM (1 child)
Most of the "waste" is actually fuel. If you re-process the waste, 95% of it is perfectly good fuel, the rest will last 250-500 years before it decays to background levels. That's a long time, but in the same time, the carcinogenic coal ash will still be carcinogenic. It's a far cry from the FUD about needing to store it for 10,000 years.
Most of the induced radiation in the plant equipment itself will be short lived.
It would be interesting to see an apples to apples comparison, how much would coal power cost if the coal plant had to live up to the standards of a nuclear plant (including emission of radiation).
As for manager related damage, I'm not sure anyone has found a solution for that yet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dry on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:58AM
The guillotine?