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Chernobyl reactor to be buried in steel coffin 22 Years later

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KIEV, Ukraine - Twenty-two years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, work is under way on a colossal new shelter to cover the ruins and deadly radioactive contents of the exploded Soviet-era power plant.

For years, the original iron and concrete shelter that was hastily constructed over the reactor has been leaking radiation, cracking and threatening to collapse. The new one, an arch of steel, would be big enough to contain the Statue of Liberty.

Once completed, Chernobyl will be safe, said Vince Novak, nuclear safety director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development which manages the $505 million project.

The new shelter is part of a broader $1.4 billion effort financed by international donors that began in 1997 and includes shoring up the current shelter, monitoring radiation and training experts.

The explosion at reactor No. 4 on April 26, 1986 was the world's worst nuclear accident, spewing radiation over a large swath of the former Soviet Union and much of northern Europe. It directly contaminated an area roughly half the size of Italy, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

In the two months after the disaster, 31 people died of radioactivity, but the final toll is still debated. The U.N. health agency estimates that about 9,300 will eventually die from cancers caused by Chernobyl's radiation. Groups such as Greenpeace insist the toll could be 10 times higher.

The old shelter, called a "sarcophagus," was built in just six months. But intense radiation has weakened it, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and rain and snow are seeping through cracks.

Officials say a tornado or earthquake could bring down the shelter, releasing clouds of poisonous dust.

The first step, shoring up the sarcophagus, is almost complete, Ukrainian and EBRD officials say.

Later, the 20,000-ton arch — 345 feet tall, 840 feet wide and 490 feet long — will be built next to the old shelter and slid over it on railtracks.
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But remember, nuclear power is safe according to our Congress. It can't happen here. What a tragedy this is.
JanforGore

8 responses // Chernobyl reactor to be buried in steel coffin 22 Years later

  •  

    Great job,truly in the spirt of current. be sure to check out our pod " No al Muro" we love to here your feedback.

    Last_House
  •  

    @JanforGore, "But remember, nuclear power is safe according to our Congress. It can't happen here. What a tragedy this is. "

    it CAN'T happen here, because none of the commercial reactors in the united states are "graphite moderator" core types of reactors.

    graphite? you know, like CARBON.... like CAN BURN????

    none. and i believe there's only one other graphite-moderated core reactor in operation in the whole world.

    and obviously, in several decades since Chernobyl and TMI, there has been NO progress towards IMPROVING safety OR reliability of ANY reactor designs ANYWHERE in the WORLD....

    what a biased, unreasoning, unrealistic view!!!!!!

    a very good friend of mine recently took a job at GE Nuclear in eastern NC, and they're working on a new, safer, more efficient nuclear power plant design....

    and have you ever heard of the new THORIUM atomic reactor????

    virtually NO high-level waste.

    nah, must be fiction.... don't start here....
    http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/348

    or here, heaven forbid!
    http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/19093.asp

    did you read MY entry about the new gasoline refinery complex being constructed in India? on-line around the end of this year [2008] and will increase gasoline cracking capacity about 5% ABOVE THE WORLD'S CURRENT CAPACITY!!!!!!!!

    not that a 5% increase in supply could have any effect on world gasoline prices, even if they plan for lots of that gasoline to be delivered to the USA....

    nah, never happen.... i predict lower gasoline prices in '09, which should actually forestall the coming recession of '10. make a copy of this and save it for next year to rub my nose in. :))))))))))))))

    plusaf
  •  

    Don't tell me accidents cannot happen here. Three Mile Island proved it can. Nuclear power can never be safe as far as I am concerned.

    JanforGore
  •  

    @JanforGore: Don't tell me accidents cannot happen here. Three Mile Island proved it can. Nuclear power can never be safe as far as I am concerned. "

    does "accident" mean "incident where nobody dies"?

    and would you please give us your definition of "SAFE"?

    would you like EVERYTHING IN LIFE to be 100% SAFE? yeah, me, too, but build a bridge and get over it... nothing is 100% safe. it's a tradeoff between what you want and what you're willing to pay for it...
    as in Falk's FIRST Law. .... http://www.plusaf.com/falklaws.htm

    welcome back, and glad to see your logic and references are consistent with your past attacks....
    i'll have to rename Vierotchka's link to add you....

    http://www.plusaf.com/falklaws.htm#40th

    done!

    enjoy!

    keep up the "debate."

    plusaf
  •  

    Its embarrassing and kinda sad to say that I've never heard of the Chernobyl incident. Maybe its me, or maybe its my generation. Anyway, how are they going to take down the original one without getting contaminated?

    ipodrulz
  •  

    @ipodruiz, here's PART 1 of my reply to you [and for what it's worth [very little], to JanforGore, too... part 2 will follow...

    PART ONE:

    no, as the article and link show, they're going to encase it in concrete.

    it was an old, cheap design, using blocks of graphite (yes, carbon!) as the moderator, or material to slow the neutrons down to the right speed to sustain the reaction in the nuclear core. without a moderator, that much fissile material becomes a bomb. lots of energy output, but only for a VERY short time... :))))))

    when "something went wrong" in the reactor, it overheated and the graphite caught fire. think of graphite in this case being like lots of charcoal briquettes... when one caught fire, it spread quickly to many others, causing the core to collapse and lots of radioactive material to be swept up in the smoke and fire and deposited across many square miles of Russia. MANY people died from radiation sickness in the days, weeks, months and years after that.

    google " chernobyl " and you should get more info on the disaster than you'll ever want to see.

    the thing is, that, plus Three Mile Island in eastern Pennsylvania scared the crap out of millions of people who were leery of nuclear power to start with, equating a reactor with The Bomb in their minds.

    therefore, for them, this was proof that any and all reactors are completely unsafe and never should any more be built, and mass movements opposed construction of reactors in the US ever since.

    the fact that Europe uses them like crazy [and no reported "accidents" damaging people or property] and China has a few dozen or more in-plan for the immediate future is no argument for the case of nukes.

    remember, nukes=bombs=dead people. in their minds.

    so, with the ongoing belief the there is NO possibility that ANYONE can improve on the design or safety of ANY nuclear reactor ANY time in the past OR future, they go on opposing them.

    sort of like, Nader and the Corvair: "Unsafe at Any Speed." yep, some flipped over and some WERE unsafe, but redesigns eliminated that hazard from them pretty much [and old volkswagen beetles also flipped for the same reasons...], GM stopped making one of America's "first and only" economy cars.

    it's called the "Law of Unintended Consequences": you try to fix something and the cure causes problems that might have been foreseen, but in the haste to pass the legislation, well, SHTF a little ways down the road.

    plusaf
  •  

    PART TWO.... [continuation...]

    there will be some great articles in the upcoming Time Magazines that make some of the same points i tried to make a few years ago when the US Gummitup began to pass all the gasohol-from-corn subsidies. the Time articles are brutally honest about the Unintended Consequences that resulted, including riots and starvation today in so many countries around the world.

    laws and subsidies like that are well-intentioned, but rarely based on good economics and science.

    Jeremy Rifkin and his ilk totally oppose ANY kind of genetic engineering of plants.

    unfortunately, that's what humans have been doing with corn and wheat, for example, for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

    it's just faster now, with new genetic science technologies.

    Rifkin, you could easliy say, is one reason that there is so much starvation in the world today: crop yields could have been multiples of what they are today if he hadn't been a roadblock.

    again, the theory in his and his followers' minds being that there IS NO TOTALLY SAFE way to do it.

    as Werner Erhard used to say, "if you want a TOTALLY SAFE life, we can do that: we'll just remove most of your organs, hook you up to a bunch of machinery to keep your blood flowing and remove waste material, and float you in a tub of tepid water."

    life=dangers. critical thinking and science can reduce the dangers to manageable levels, but it's fairly impossible to reach EXACTLY ZERO DANGER, and that's what so many folks ask for.

    problem is: they don't realize, or worse, don't admit that's what they're asking for!

    if they did, it might be easier to prove that it's unattainable, so STOP DOING IT!!!!

    and i'm ragging on THEM, not you....

    keep asking questions and learning.
    don't join the club and become a victim of Falk's 40th Law! [see above for link.]

    :)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

    plusaf
  •  

    @JanforGore.... "Don't tell me accidents cannot happen here. Three Mile Island proved it can. Nuclear power can never be safe as far as I am concerned. "

    the key words in your message are the following: "....as far as I am concerned."

    that's a belief, unfounded in fact and un-measurable by your own statements....

    if something can never be safe, AS FAR AS YOU'RE CONCERNED, you should be able to include cars, medicine, crossing the street and every other risk from toenail-cutting [caused gangrene and loss of part of his leg for my maternal grandfather...] to bungee-jumping and sky-diving.

    your FEELINGS are just not enough reason to stop all progress and research into making things safer.

    if you'd campaigned against the crank starter for breaking wrists and arms back in the early 20th century, maybe we should have never developed the electric starter for cars....

    or seat belts, or air bags, or adaptive braking or anti-collision radar, or, or, or....

    see where that takes you?

    no, i didn't think so... so come back with your usual insults, please, i'm lonesome tonight... [actually, i'm not...]

    remember you're now part of http://www.plusaf.com/falklaws.htm#40th ... another step towards being immortalized on the web...

    hugs, anyway.... :))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

    plusaf

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