Chernobyl - HBO/Sky *Spoilers*

The Ukrainian language word for "wormwood" is чорнобиль or "chornobyl"
If you don't know what 'wormwood' is, look up ye olde end-time phrophecy.


Here's a question, if there is a (direct) mass solar flare upon the earth (bit like an EMP),
that burns up an amount of the global supply of transformers (not easily replaceable),
what's going to keep the many similar off-line nuc-plants from overheating or meltdown?

I'd say it'd be interesting to visit, but I don't think I would be overly keen on it, even after this length of time.

What would concern me is that the comparisons to 'only as much radiation as a high altitude flight' or X number of chest x-rays or way less than a CT scan don't actually take into account the dangers present which are not really just the dose of measurable rays. They are 'clean' sources or radiation and can be switched on/off like a light bulb. They're not 'dirty' contamination of a site.

At a nuclear disaster site like Chernobyl or a weapons testing site etc you've a whole load of radioactive material scattered into the immediate environment and that can be potentially directly inhaled as dust, swallowed or enter your body in food or water supplies. When that's in your system, the issue is more that you can have a radioactive particle sitting in the middle of a biological system, incorporated into a bone or other cells. That means you've a little radioactive particle sitting there emitting gamma rays or alpha/beta particles for potentially decades or your whole life, that is what would worry me as it increases your long term risk of certain cancers.

I'd suspect somewhere relatively wet and biologically active like Chernobyl will probably be cleaner than a dusty site like some of the US test facilities in deserts. A lot of the materials would either have washed away or have been absorbed into biological systems - plants, fungi, insects, etc that would have concentrated them up and effectively removed them from being free to blow around in the general environment.

But, even so, personally I'd prefer to just keep a safe distance.

On the risk of solar storms:

The big risk with that is that long power lines act as an antennae for electromagnetic fields, so when the storm happens it induces serious currents on those lines and that's what blows transformers. In a lot of a cases, transformers would trip out i.e. open breakers / blow fuses when they're overloaded, so it might not be that bad. In the sense that you might get a grid shutting down for a few hours, or days until all of those are reset, with some damage here and there.

The power companies are aware of the risks and do design to some degree to avoid it. No power operator wants to be exposed to billions of € of damage.

In terms of power to run pumps at nuclear plants, you're talking about small, local power systems that are generating locally and also quite likely have heavy shielding around them are not very susceptible to this kind of issue. So in a power plant, the energy wouldn't be travelling over long lines from local generators, so in general should be OK.

If it's an absolutely enormous event though you could be looking at currents induced on absolutely everything and even electronics in personal devices being wrecked. In that case, we'd be totally hosed.

The other thing that's changed a lot is that all of our long distance, and even most of our local communications traffic (beyond the last mile to your house unless you've FTTH fibre like Siro or Eir's equivalent) goes over fibre optics. The cabinets in the streets for broadband (cable or VDSL) and the telephone exchanges are all connected by fibre, not copper. So, there wouldn't be the quite the same risk to those networks as they're carrying light through glass fibre which is not in anyway impacted by magnetic fields.

If you'd gone back decades ago we were much more dependent on things like long distance copper lines with hundreds / thousands of copper strands, or coaxial cables. We were also much, much more dependent on microwave links than we are today, and that's even only going back to the 1990s.

Taking out communications satellites would be hugely problematic, but not nearly as bad as it would have been in the 70s, 80s and 90s as very little traffic goes by satellite these days, it's all fibre. It would obviously have huge implications for TV broadcasters, some communication services, GPS / Galileo (and similar), weather forecasting and all sorts of other satellite systems.

In general it wouldn't actually impact aircraft, as they use surprisingly primitive navigation systems that don't involve satellites. Shipping could be quite drastically impacted though as they're heavily reliant on satellite navigation.

Why would others here know when it'll be on DVD or if it'll be on RTE? :pac:

Give it an auld Google. Or watch it on HBO maybe?

Anteayer wrote: »

But, even so, personally I'd prefer to just keep a safe distance.

Agree with this, not worth the risk to even visit.

Anteayer wrote: »

On the risk of solar storms:

The big risk with that is that long power lines act as an antennae for electromagnetic fields, so when the storm happens it induces serious currents on those lines and that's what blows transformers. In a lot of a cases, transformers would trip out i.e. open breakers / blow fuses when they're overloaded, so it might not be that bad. In the sense that you might get a grid shutting down for a few hours, or days until all of those are reset, with some damage here and there.

The power companies are aware of the risks and do design to some degree to avoid it. No power operator wants to be exposed to billions of € of damage.

In terms of power to run pumps at nuclear plants, you're talking about small, local power systems that are generating locally and also quite likely have heavy shielding around them are not very susceptible to this kind of issue. So in a power plant, the energy wouldn't be travelling over long lines from local generators, so in general should be OK.

If it's an absolutely enormous event though you could be looking at currents induced on absolutely everything and even electronics in personal devices being wrecked. In that case, we'd be totally hosed.

The other thing that's changed a lot is that all of our long distance, and even most of our local communications traffic (beyond the last mile to your house unless you've FTTH fibre like Siro or Eir's equivalent) goes over fibre optics. The cabinets in the streets for broadband (cable or VDSL) and the telephone exchanges are all connected by fibre, not copper. So, there wouldn't be the quite the same risk to those networks as they're carrying light through glass fibre which is not in anyway impacted by magnetic fields.

If you'd gone back decades ago we were much more dependent on things like long distance copper lines with hundreds / thousands of copper strands, or coaxial cables. We were also much, much more dependent on microwave links than we are today, and that's even only going back to the 1990s.

Taking out communications satellites would be hugely problematic, but not nearly as bad as it would have been in the 70s, 80s and 90s as very little traffic goes by satellite these days, it's all fibre. It would obviously have huge implications for TV broadcasters, some communication services, GPS / Galileo (and similar), weather forecasting and all sorts of other satellite systems.

In general it wouldn't actually impact aircraft, as they use surprisingly primitive navigation systems that don't involve satellites. Shipping could be quite drastically impacted though as they're heavily reliant on satellite navigation.

It's difficult to estimate the damage from a CME today such as that 150yr ago (or EMP in present day from NK).

Power companies after all have to satisfy stakeholder profits, before doubling up on expensive transformers for a 500/1 low risk scenario.

One article suggested a 10% survival rate within 12mths of a grid shutdown, mainly due to lack of power/water/transport and all essential utility services for considerable periods of time, until full system rebuild (excluding any risk to nuc power plants, in places less advanced than Japan).

On the plus side, there would be less instagrammersnapchatters, and could still navigate by the stars, and CB/radios (if stored in cages) would still transmit.