President cites Ukraine intelligence that Moscow has mined Zaporizhzhia nuclear station and sent away staff

    • chaogomu@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      29
      ·
      1 year ago

      A modern nuclear plant is not a bomb, and cannot be made into a bomb without a lot of work.

      Just laying down mines and structural charges might not actually be enough to spread radioactive material outside the plant. See, modern nuclear plants are designed in such a way that they can survive a direct strike from a small missile without breaking containment. The reactor itself will be inside a giant steel tank, which is surrounded by a 3-meter thick, lead impregnated concrete wall.

      What it will do is render the plant inoperable, meaning that there will be no power, and there will be a long, expensive cleanup of the plant itself.

      There’s a lot of sensitive shit that can easily be broken. Turbines, cooling lines, that reactor casing itself, the inside of the reactor if anyone is brave or stupid enough to put a bomb there, and all sorts of other places that would render the building into a scrap heap.

      As a note, a bomb inside the reactor itself would be bad, but not necessarily “cause a meltdown” bad, not unless the people planting the bomb knew exactly how to set things up.

      That said, trashing the inside of the reactor would make things incredibly difficult to recover from. Like, do a full cleanup, tear the plant down to the ground and rebuild it from there. (because of that steel pressure chamber and massive concrete block).

      Anyway, the tldr; this is bad, but not regionally bad unless you live in the region and get electricity from this plant. It will also suck balls to clean up.

      • Drusas@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        24
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m aware it’s not a bomb. I was in the radiation affected area in Japan when the power plant melted down. It doesn’t need to be a bomb to release radiation.

        • datgooddude@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yea, isn’t a nuclear power plant fucked, when they destroy the means to cool it down? I just think there are a lot of ways to fuck with a power plant. pls correct me if I’m wrong :)

          • chaogomu@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            No, there are a lot of ways to fuck shit up, but the main point of how these things are built is to make sure that the radiation stays inside.

            A modern plant can have a full meltdown and not release anything outside the plant.

            Three Mile Island comes to mind. It was a full melt down of one of the reactors (there were several reactors in the plant) and no radiation escaped the building.

            The absolute worst case here would take actual knowledge of the plant’s systems to bomb things at the right times in the right order to create a half-assed dirty bomb.

            The more likely is another Three Mile Island style meltdown, but with added radiation hazards inside the plant itself.

          • assbutt@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Don’t perpetuate the fear-mongering bullshit. Educate yourself. There is no reason to fear nuclear power. The entire world should be running on nuclear power right now.

          • Japan@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Yes, which is why Tokyo is the most rad city on earth. The mayor wanted Tokyo to evacuate but it would cause too much panic about Japan and loss of face. So people just breathed.

        • dismalnow@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          If Daiichi taught me anything, is that you can cause catastrophe by depriving a nuclear plant of auxiliary power.

            • dismalnow@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Looks like neither of us wanted to write a dissertation… because of fucking course it’s not that simple.

            • Entropywins@kbin.social
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              What does race have to do with it… sounds like an engineer told other engineers how to handle an incident…

              Homeslice edited his comment to say foreign now which is a reasonable thing to say

              • Japan@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                0
                ·
                1 year ago

                What does race have to do with it… sounds like an engineer told other engineers how to handle an incident…

                It’s got nothing to do with race, why introduce that? There were Japanese AND foreign engineers there at Fukushima trying to help.

                • Entropywins@kbin.social
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  If you would ha e said foreign I wouldn’t have commented you said white engineer and looks like you edited your comment so bravo good job

                  • Japan@kbin.social
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    0
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    @Entropywins

                    Guess who invented nuke power? Hint they are light people
                    Guess who invented the station the Japanese build? Hint they are light people
                    Guess who was the engineer who helped the Japanese understand his own native technology? Hint they are light people

                    If I had said Asian instead of Japanese would you have not preferred that also?

      • Hyperreality@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Chernobyl wasn’t a bomb either.

        Apparently Zaporizhzhia’s different and safer than Chernobyl, but the IAEA have reportedly warned of the potential for a catastrophic nuclear disaster. Fallout across Europe.

        I don’t think any of us are experts in soviet era nuclear power plants, but given Russia almost certainly blew up Kakhovka dam, I don’t think you need to be an expert on Russia to know what they’re capable of.

      • 1chemistdown@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        All they need to do is stop water from flowing without quenching the rods. Super easy if you know what you’re doing.