Fascinating if somewhat macabre

Just found it

I am now…

Rachel

yup, worrying stuff.

One for the iplayer list – cheers.

If Chernobyl interests you then read Chernobyl Prayer…

Thanks will catch on iPlayer. Saw a documentary recently about the guided holiday visits you can take there now.

Also worth watching https://youtu.be/njTQaUCk4KY

Adrian Edmonton doing a pretty good job of serious acting

Rachel

Yep, some strange fascination about this event, and the old reactor control room is like an immense time capsule, imagine that tech compared to modern tech running power stations. The future tech of that arch is amazing, will it actually last 100 years and give them time to remove the reactor itself?!

Would love to take one of those holidays there, its not like I’m having any kids at any point!! Would be the ultimate ghost tour.

imagine that tech compared to modern tech running power stations. The future tech of that arch is amazing, will it actually last 100 y

Sadly control systems like these stay the in use even after they are obsolete so it wouldn’t surprise me if reactors from the ’80s and ’90s were still using similar systems.

working at very high heights,

working in extreme weathers

working with lots of other different trades,

working on an innovative site, using technology and equipment possible made just for that job ,

working abroad with many foreign speakers,

working on a millenium building thats going to be remebered like a modern building for many years.

whats not to love.

The risk of radiation sickness probably

Yeah, watching it.

Odd it’s taken so long to get this plan together, typical.

Sounds interesting, on my iplayer list too.

Anyone fancying a holiday, this chap runs trips to out of the way places incl. Chernobyl, some great photos on his blog. – http://yomadic.com/.

Only caught the end after spotting the thread, but will definitely be watching it later. Strange fascination with the subject. Would be amazing to visit.

Did like the guy who had the H&S job title. That’ll look good on his CV if they only skim read it!

I highly recommend “The battle for chernobyl” , got to hand it to them them ruskies sure were brave. Those poor Bio-robots 🙁

Those poor Bio-robots

Yeah shovelling the shattered graphite core off the roof with just leather and lead for protection 😯

Great program.
Pripyat is still high on my list of places I want to visit..

For those interested in the nuclear legacy of USSR

[video]https://youtu.be/c11o8o_imU0[/video]

I saw this documentary on 4 a few years ago – horrifying and fascinating. They were studying the people living around their nuclear testing sites in some bizarre experiment

There’s some awesome recent reports on 28dayslater from people who’ve been to the various sites around Chernobyl:

Pripyat

Reactor #2

Vehicle Dump

lots of other stuff

Will record this at 2.35am cheers. Remember the liquidators or whatever they called them,first people in for the clean up, enter hell do a shift come out to a handshake ,a certificate, the equivalent of £70 and an uncertain future, scary!!

Bookmarked

The yanks history of waste disposal is more than a bit suspect when you look into it. They had navy personnel unprotected booting barrels of waste over the side of ships in deep foreign waters back in the day!

Fact is nobody can be trusted with it. All governments have lied/covered up/played down accidents, contamination incidents and waste disposal.

adjustablewench – Member . Thanks for that , pretty harrowing stuff 😐
That’s going to stay with me for a while.

You used to be able to do tours of a chernobyl style reactor in lithuania and walk on its roof – the same type of roof that blew off in Chernobyl.

vongassit – Member
adjustablewench – Member . Thanks for that , pretty harrowing stuff
That’s going to stay with me for a while.

Sorry I did say it was horrifying – when I originally watched it I couldn’t believe it didn’t get more of a reaction.

A different level to an ‘accident’ such as Chernobyl

STW group visit and bike ride around pripyat 😀 Really is a fascinating place, it skates a little bit close to disaster porn I suppose but what a location, even without the reactor etc it’d be something.

Snorks aside anyway

Yep, some strange fascination about this event, and the old reactor control room is like an immense time capsule, imagine that tech compared to modern tech running power stations.

Sadly control systems like these stay the in use even after they are obsolete so it wouldn’t surprise me if reactors from the ’80s and ’90s were still using similar systems.

Try 60’s and 70’s. But until someone figures out how to remote hack a relay bank I’d rather have the old tech. There’s always a flipside.

You used to be able to do tours of a chernobyl style reactor in lithuania and walk on its roof – the same type of roof that blew off in Chernobyl.

I believe you actually meant to say reactor lid there. No big deal, it’s a huge mass designed to contain pressure and also acts as a biological shield. It’s not really any different in principle to any other PWR (or any reactor for that matter).

I’d not realised that there were 11 of these reactors (RBMK) still running.

Many thanks for the heads-up PDF.

That was a brilliant documentary. Narrated by the lovely Ms. Baxendale too!

A sobering reminder of what happened back in April 1986. In a JFK, Lennon kind of way, I can remember exactly where I was when the news of Reactor 4’s demise broke. I was on an outdoor pursuits course as part of my engineering apprenticeship. We were based at Swinton Castle near Masham, N. Yorks and as the news broke, I remember looking out of the window to see if I could see any smoke. Dick 😀

Fantastic project and what an achievement in design, communication and commissioning. Moving 36,000t of steel by finely controlled hydraulic steps was an amazing feat.

They kept mentioning that it was the heaviest object ever moved on land but it is similar weight (around 36,000 tonnes) to the decking of the Milau Viaduct.

hot_fiat – Member

I’d not realised that there were 11 of these reactors (RBMK) still running.

It’s actually not a terrible way to do it apparently, especially given the tech of the time- the failures that blew up chernobyl 4 were all things that could be fixed for the other reactors. Though, it took the disaster itself and the head of the Russian nuclear institute committing suicide to bring that about…)

The one that always surprised me was that the Chernobyl plant itself ran until 2000.

OTOH, probably best to keep them running since the permanent spent fuel storage facility for the RBMK fuel assemblies, er, doesn’t exist. So at the moment all the fuel is sat in spent fuel pools. Well, except at chernobyl obviously.

The actual disaster was a combination of poor design, very poor operation (they were doing safety tests but the paperwork was hideous with bits missing and crossed out etc) and operating the reactor on the edge of its design limits.

Whilst I think it would be much harder to happen today computer controlled systems are not infallible.

…and also russian secrecy meant that the operators of the plant didn’t have complete knowledge of its limitations and flaws, which is genius. When you read the combination of factors and the fact that all the risks were known beforehand, it’s proper facepalm stuff but at the same time, total standard human operating procedure.

Always seems unfair that people talk of human error so much though- most of the bad decisions made in the plant were a result of bad training and information. Human factors rather than human error.

The design of the plant was’nt so bad, it’s a direct copy of UK designs though certain features are missing. The whole containment project has been pretty much funded by the EU, with some of the kit manufactured in the UK.

very interesting place to see.
so surreal to walk round a city thats been abandoned and looted for the last 25 years
some pics from a visit a couple of years ago.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mhampshire/albums/72157643964846173
if anyone is considering going I recommend this guy.
http://https://www.facebook.com/experienceChernobyl
He lives in chernobyl and knows more about the place than pretty much anyone.
excuse the bad links but I dont post on here much anymore

Whilst I think it would be much harder to happen today computer controlled systems are not infallible.

It’s a similar design process to the oil and gas industry, called SIL/LOPA.

You start with a process and determine the probabiblity of an event (simplistically say: opperator sets reactor to 150%), happens once a year due to human error when he meant to type 15%.

You then have a PC that’s supposed to warn him, one in 10 he ignores it.
You then have a relief valve thats meant to prevent overpressure, one in 10 it fails to lift.
So your probability of it blowing up is 1in100 years. Which is probably acceptable for something like a water pump at a utility company when the only cost of the failure is a loss of face.

That’s your LOPA (layers of protection analysis).

Then you add SIL systems (safety integrity levels).

You can’t trust a temperature probe not to fail, or a control valve, so you add 3 of them (voting 2oo3) to the reactor, and 2x shut down valves on the inlet, so now you’ve got say a 1 in 100 year failure rate for the SIL system, 1×10^2 = SIL2. You can go SIL 3,4,5 etc, either with more sensors and valves or independant systems.

Usually nuclear plants are a level higher than oil refineries/petrochemicals, which is why almost every year sees one of them explode, but we only get a nuclear problem every 10 or so (3 Mile Island, Winscale, Chernobyl, Fukushima).

ah, makes sense tinas — we’ve been trying to promote a Bowtie style way of working / program assistance, but I don’t have sufficient industry experience to properly understand it – just the coding 🙂

Fascinating, thanks.

Programme downloaded to watch later.

It was quite interesting on an engineering scale, mildly interesting on a politics scale but extremely interesting on a devistation scale.

The tin hat ought to be painted a light blue/grey colour to blend in with the sky.

MT wasn’t the RBMK an indigenous design developed from the Soviet AM1?

The design of the plant was’nt so bad, it’s a direct copy of UK designs though certain features are missing.

That’s not correct. The RBMK is (as T1000 says) a Russian design. About the the only thing in common with any UK design is the use of graphite as a moderator – the rest is different. Magnox (the original UK design) used CO2 to transfer the heat from the fuel to the boilers, RMBK uses pressurised water; Magnox used natural uranium metal fuel, RBMK uses 2% enriched UO2 pellets. Magnox fuel is encased in magnesium alloy, RBMK fuel is in zirconium tubes. UK AGRs are also gas cooled although they do use oxide fuel, but in stainless steel tubes. The operating characteristics are quite different – the RBMK has a positive void coefficient which makes it hard to control. In the event of serious overheating, the zirconium reacts with the steam to create hydrogen, which is what exploded in the accident (zirconium/steam was also the cause of the explosions at Fukushima Dai-ichi).