HBO's Chernobyl...

[ctg]

With all that said, no, I don't regret my decision to enter and spend 32 years in the nuclear industry. I still live close to the plant I worked in and I used to analyse the discharges coming from that plant so I know exactly what's going on. I wouldn't be living so close to it if I thought there was something seriously wrong there because when I'm not there, I'm as much a part of the public as anybody else.

I asked previously about the radiation badges. We did a school trip to one of the Finnish plants, and they were showing those meters. My understanding was that it was a film that showed through exposure a sample amount of what the person had gathered during their stay? Is it true or did I imagine it? You do have some sort of personal measuring device?

Also about the meters they used, did it shock you that the managers didn't realise the difference between the readings, or that there are different sort of meters? These days the fancy ones can even identify the particles, if needed and it surprised me that the FLIR was one of the companies that do those sort of things. In fact, the technology has jumped a great deal forward since the Chernobyl happened, but none of us were ready for the Fukushima. In fact there are still no real robots that can do the things, like picking up the graphite pieces and chucking them into the pit, because they die in the high radiation environments.

The radiation shielding is still a bit of state-of-the-art kind of job, when it comes to the robots or automatons and it costs a great deal of money. The way I see the future is that we have no choice but to accept the reality as we need automatons, were it a robot, drone, android, teleprecense controlled machine or a some sort of weird hybrid. We also have to accept the reality that in space, we have no choice, it's either a nuclear or then a fusion reactor for next however long.

The simple reason is that the renewable energy, like sunlight can carry us only so long, before your panels become like sails, or then they become so enormous that they become objects in the sky, visible either to the naked eye or to the telescopes. It's also kind of funny that the only choice we can power the Moon base, during the two week long night, is a mini 10kW reactor. So, in a way, everyone of us has to deal with those things, and learn the safety procedures if we want to conquer this solar system ... or universe.

Maybe we have no choice but to create an automaton that can learn and adapt to the strict regulations. One, which would be impervious to the human manipulation and would only serve the plant, meaning that if it dies, the plant shutdown, permanently.

How do you see the nuclear industry future?

 

[Foxbat]

To answer your questions. Yes, there is such a thing as a film badge but when I started, we used Thermoluminescent Dosimeters. This is essentially a chemical compound that absorbs radiation , which excites electrons within the chemical. When you heat this compound, it releases this energy in the form of light (photons). The amount of light emitted is proportional to the dose received. In the last few years, we moved to electronic dosimeters (essentially using something similar to a light sensitive diode).

Reading these older meters is an art in itself. One old one I used was called an RO10. It had a selector switch which, when used, upped the readings by a factor of ten. It was easy to make a mistake by forgetting to multiply what you saw. Some instruments can be 'flooded' and under-read when exposed to too much ionising radiation. You really need to know what you're doing and what the pitfalls/characteristics of certain instruments are. One classic mistake is to assume that because your instrument reads full scale then that's what you have when, in reality, it could be much, much higher. The trick is when entering an area to assume the worst. Start on the highest scale and work down. If it's already full scale, then get out.

You are correct about robotic methods and many are already in use. Another practice is to replicate a piece of plant you intend to work on and go and practice. This allows you to be ready before you enter a high radiation area. The main principles of protection are Time, Distance and Shielding so if you can get up to speed and do a job in the minimum amount of time, it helps. We also used meters that extended out to about 30 feet (Distance). I've done this many times myself. We also used to train 6 times a year for disasters. It's like a military exercise. We are subjected to a horror scenario and have to deal with it (all under the eye of the nuclear regulator). If we fail, we could be shut down.

Shielding can be tricky. Everybody thinks Lead but you have to be careful. If you use only lead whilst dealing with highly energetic beta particles, you can create a phenomenon called Brehmstrahlung. The Beta particles interact with the dense nuclei of the lead and result in X rays. So, if you shield yourself with lead angainst strong beta, you could end up being subjected to X rays. The answer is to use aluminium and then lead to prevent this.

As for the future, I'm not sure it has much of a future. I believe in a mixed energy strategy and think it foolhardy to rely only on wind or other renewables that are subjected to weather. You need what is called a Base Load and only Nuclear (or perhaps Fusion in the future) can provide this. Politically, the tide is against nuclear and i don't think it's a wise situation.

Just for the record (my actual medical record). The average dose received in the UK from background radiation is 1 milliSievert per year. At the end of my employment, my dose record showed that I had received just over 9 milliSieverts total exposure. That's actually pretty good in 32 years (where my total background for that period would be around 32 milliSieverts).

 

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Russia again

The source of a gigantic, mysterious leak of radioactive material that swept across Europe in 2017 has been traced to a Russian nuclear facility, which appears to have been preparing materials for experiments in Italy.

The leak released up to 100 times the amount of radiation into the atmosphere that the Fukushima disaster did. Italian scientists were the first to raise the alarm on 2 October, when they noticed a burst of the radioactive ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere. This was quickly corroborated by other monitoring laboratories across Europe.

Georg Steinhauser at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany says he was “stunned” when he first noticed the event. Routine surveillance detects several radiation leaks each year, mostly of extremely low levels of radionuclides used in medicine. But this event was different.

“The ruthenium-106 was one of a kind. We had never measured anything like this before,” says Steinhauser. Even so, the radiation level wasn’t high enough to impact human health in Europe, although exposure closer to the site of release would have been far greater.

The Institute for Radioprotection and Nuclear Security in Paris soon concluded that the most probable source of the leak was between the Volga river and Ural mountains in Russia. This is where Russia’s Mayak facility is located. The site, which includes a plant that processes spent nuclear fuel, suffered the world’s third most serious nuclear accident in 1957.

At the time of the 2017 leak, Russian officials denied the possibility of the facility being the source, saying there were no radioactive ruthenium traces in the surrounding soil. Instead, they suggested the source may have been a radionuclide battery from a satellite burning up during re-entry into the atmosphere.

Steinhauser and his colleagues decided to investigate more thoroughly by forensically analysing 1300 measurements from hundreds of monitoring stations across Europe. They found that radiation levels in the atmosphere were between 30 and 100 times higher than those measured after Fukushima. “This was indeed quite alarming,” says Steinhauser.

Eliminate the impossible

The team excluded Romania as the source of the accident, despite the country’s high radiation levels. Each station in the country detected the radioactive plume simultaneously, which indicated the source was far enough away for it to have grown to the width of Romania.

They also excluded a satellite as the cause because space organisations didn’t report any missing at the time. The pattern of radiation through the atmosphere didn’t match the spread of radiation from a satellite’s reentry either.

Combining these findings with information on air movements and concentration levels from monitoring data, the team found clear evidence that the release happened in the Southern Urals, which is where the Mayak nuclear facility is located.

The leak was unusual because the release was limited to radioactive ruthenium. “If there is a reactor accident, one would expect the release of radioactive isotopes of many different elements,” says Steinhauser. Exactly why such a specific element was released remained a mystery until Steinhauser learned that an Italian nuclear research facility had ordered a consignment of cerium-144 from Mayak before the incident. “There are several indications that the release of ruthenium-106 was linked to this order,” he says.

Gigantic, mysterious radiation leak traced to facility in Russia

 

[Foxbat]

There was also a leak of Iodine 131 from an experimental reactor in Norway's Halden facility a couple of years ago. It is a short-lived fission product with a 7 day half-life.

 

[-K2-]

I'm doubtful that the youtube post is official (but don't know), yet here supposedly is the music (and mood sounds) from the miniseries:

K2

 

[olive]

I am afraid to watch this show. Glad to hear I am not alone. Because I know that it is going to give me nightmares. There I said it.

But I love D9 very much. I cried sobbing after I saw it. Life was fun, too. It's pretty much 'Life'. (The young woman sitting beside me in the theatre almost climbed on my lap, she was so scared, lol.) They are both OK. They have some reedemable quality.

But I refuse to view any nuclear power plant disaster as 'life!'. Esp. one that already happened. I know, I know...

 

[-K2-]

As I watch this short 5-part series again (which is available with all other HBO series at 'on-demand'), I'm once more struck by so much about this series. The pace is quick, every aspect no matter how minimal has impact and relevance following a timeline. As an example, here is the last 90 seconds of episode 1 (I'm trying to get the media to start at 1:33. If it doesn't, skip to that point):

As the series progresses you never get a break. As noted previously, the last episode right up till the end never eased off on that escalating scale in the least.

IMO, as a novice writer, the pace, flow, impact, and depth of this movie I'd like to mimic.

K2