Your video, Chernobyl NSC Arch Being Moved Into Place, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Blame presumes guilt. There's no guilt in voting for your interests, even if others don't understand them.

Reasons for those voting decisions are interesting, but also very hard to get since the media ignores everything between the coasts, and even the diverse internet is so full of filter bubbles that you're basically funneled straight into echo chambers. At least on my end, the Silicon Valley/Hollywood culture is drowning out everything else -- and I'm a commie outsider who doesn't give a shit about celebrities or "save zones".

That said, the election is just the most recent culmination of an ongoing, decades-long development. But that's beyond the point, so...

Populism trumps business as usual if business as usual leads to Detroit, Cleveland and Camden. Or the rural areas on the coast of Louisiana, which were hit much harder than New Orleans and still look worse than Chernobyl, 11 years after the fact.

So the question is: did you a) fail to provide an alternative, b) fail to make a convincing case for that alternative, c) decide against trying to convince those that think differently, or d) not even realize that not everybody shares your perception of reality.

Given the tone of the reactions, the collective damnation of Trump voters as (insert any insult in the book), I'm thinking that d) is a much bigger issue than anyone is willing to admit.

In short, I blame George R. R. Martin. If he had published The Winds of Winter by now, all would be well.

Why do you people need to keep reminding me such horrors exist? Can't we just stick to happier things like Chernobyl or Jeffrey Dahmer?

Did you know Google has street view's of Chernobyl and Pripyat.

Your video, 30 Years After - Chernobyl 4K, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

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Important to have an actual measure of radioactivity. There's a pretty wide spread between banana level and chernobyl level.

I haven't been able to find a number for this exact plant, but the same process in Idaho listed here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0734242X05800217

This article states the highest radioactivity concentration from at 1780 Bq/kg primarily from Radon.

For reference, the potassium in Bananas makes them radioactive with a concentration of 82 Bq/Kg. So from that perspective, it's 20 times more radioactive than that same amount of Banana pulp.

I'm not sure how to directly translate, but the American standard for Radon in basements is set as being lower than 150 Bq/m^3. So your typical basement already is deemed acceptable when every 10 m^3 of basement air holds as much radioactive radon as a kg of the waste being discussed. The acceptable basement standard unquestionably takes up a much larger space, but it's mass would drastically less. I'm not an expert, but from that it almost sounds like a coin toss to whether breathing air at the highest threshold or drinking this stuff undiluted is worse for you in the long haul.

Chernobyl was a big cock-up allright, as was Fukushima, although that seems to have been less severe.

What would you say is the most dangerous form of energy production we have now? What about the safest? Look up "Deaths by terawatt hour", you might be surprised.

Even wind power has killed about 3 times as many people per TWH produced as nuclear, AFAIK mainly due to the amounts of steel and concrete used in constructing the plants, the production of which is relatively dangerous. Coal is on a different planet altogether, killing about 1500 times as many people per TWH as nuclear.

Even if you assume the total deaths from nuclear power production are underreported and underestimated by a factor of 10, that would still only put it on par with solar power in terms of people killed to produce energy.

Now, nuclear isn't a cureall solution to our energy problems. Even if we wanted to, we simply couldn't build enough power plants to cover all our energy needs with nuclear, you've got the storage issue, you've got the issue of plant placement, and in general relying on one technology alone is a bad idea.

Still. Coal. 1500 times as deadly. How many articles and videos have you seen on how scary coal is? What gives?

Actually, I understand exponential decay just fine thanks, and it's still nowhere close to 500 million years.

Besides, nuclear waste is a localised problem. Sure, it's pretty goddamn awful wherever it is, but carbon is a global problem. We can decide that say, Australia, should be a nuclear wasteland, and the rest of the world would be pretty much ok. It'd suck for the barrier reef though.

Radiation isn't really anything close to a "destroyer of worlds". Even around Chernobyl, there are still plants and animals living there.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/wildlife-chernobyl-exclusion-zone-bears-wolves-rare-horses-roam-forests-1477124

Cool, I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with @kir_mokum, he just didn't actually make any points.

I agree that nuclear weapons are not really an issue when it comes to building power plants. Personally, I think it's hypocritical in the extreme for the people with the nuclear weapons to tell others they can't have them. I'd much rather no-one had them.

"Germany has literally tons of the stuff just laying around"
Depends on what you mean by "lying around". No, it's not out in the open, but it is just "lying around" in the sense that they have shitloads of it (in one site alone they have nearly 126000 barrels) and they're not doing anything with it. Waste disposal *is* a serious issue with current nuclear technology.

As for deaths, I suppose what gets people about nuclear disasters is that other disasters tend to be more short term. From a media POV: if some people die in a coal mine, that's sad, but they were miners and it's over pretty quick, but dying kids from Chernobyl make great TV!

I tend to agree that it's probably safer in the long run.

I don't understand. If you are selling at 5kw/h during daylight, why are you seeing only slight decline in your bill? It should be near zero, if not a check written to you if you are careful to not use much at night. I went from $4-500 per month electric bills (we have an electric hot tub that sucks major juice) to $30 bills in summer, and under $100 in winter. My system cost around $40K, and I got back around $5K (and lost out on tons more because when I bought it the tax rebates didn't roll over and I didn't use them all). I live in N California, where it's incredibly foggy, and it still took under 9 years to pay for itself in savings. Had I been able to use all the rebate (like you can now, it rolls over until you use it up) it would have been a year earlier paying itself off. Since the system should last 20 years, that's a great deal, even for you at 11-15 years to pay itself off, that's still 5-9 years of free juice, and 20 years of never losing power (if you have batteries).
Another benefit is from decentralizing power production. That makes you immune from most failures or any possible attacks on the system.
I do agree, it's not a perfect solution, and not 100% pollution free, but it's a great solution for most, if done right. The carbon costs are relatively small, and a one time event.

I'm all for nuke if done responsibly, which means not on coastlines, built with failsafe design features that don't require power to halt the reaction and store the fuel, and not experimented with to get a bit more power out (which caused Chernobyl and 3 mile island as I understand it).

Hydro, on the other hand, is always incredibly damaging to rivers, which along with providing the water we need, feed what little wildlife we have left. I am against any new hydro projects and advocate removing the failing one's we have now. They are short lived under the best of circumstances, but the damage they do is often permanent.

True, but on subs they are kept to strict standards with military precision, while many land based ones have issues stemming from being stationary (they heat the water in one spot, and that must be dealt with, etc) and more importantly, they constantly experiment to try to get more out of them...which caused Chernobyl and 3 mile island. The lax standards have caused more, but less damaging issues.
All that said, I agree a fresh design could likely benefit both land and sea based reactors. I recall a Canadian design that was a 'warm' reactor that never made steam, so was incredibly safer to run constantly, from at least 15 years back. Not sure what happened with that.

Your video, Haunting Drone Flight Through Remains of Chernobyl, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Chernobyl is in Ukraine, not Russia, FYI.

Ulrich Beck, 1986:

“Whereas the utopia of equality contains a wealth of substantial and positive goals of social change, the utopia of the risk society remains peculiarly negative and defensive. Basically, one is no longer concerned with attaining something ‘good’, but rather with preventing the worst.

The dream of the old society is that everyone wants and ought to have a share of the pie. The utopia of the risk society is that everyone should be spared from poisoning”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/THE-VEGETABLES-OF-TRUTH

The embedded video taken below the reactor at Chernobyl is rather nightmare-inducing.

In 2 years it turned into that? That's nuts..
Detroit is turning into Chernobyl.