| You have to admit that the setup of this experiment makes riding a motorcycle, without a helmet, with a .1% BAC, look like more responsible behavior. The other people in the room got a couple years’ worth of rads from his mistake didn’t they? I’m sure they rationalized not using an apparatus for this due to embrittlement, thermal expansion, response time, or all three. But from the perspective of someone looking back on this era 50 years later (now 80), Jesus fucking Christ. Carpenter’s pencils as spacers would have saved his life. In fact Wikipedia says he was a dumbass: > The standard protocol was to use shims between the halves, as allowing them to close completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power excursion. > By Slotin's own unapproved protocol, the shims were not used. The top half of the reflector was resting directly on the bottom half at one point, while 180 degrees from this point a gap was maintained by the blade of a flat-tipped screwdriver in Slotin's hand. The size of the gap between the reflectors was changed by twisting the screwdriver. Slotin, who was given to bravado,[11] became the local expert, performing the test on almost a dozen occasions, |
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| ▲ | hinkley 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Those people died before they knew they were fucked. At some point acute radiation exposure makes it so they can’t even dose you with morphine properly. Same thing happened at Chernobyl if I recall. At some point potassium chloride is a mercy. | | |
| ▲ | jcgrillo 4 days ago | parent [-] | | That's something that seems to be missing from how people perceive the threat of nuclear weapons. It's pleasant and convenient to believe you'll instantaneously combust in a fireball as hot as the sun, but actually only very few people will be so lucky. Mostly it'll take days, weeks, months, and years. Not seconds or fractions of seconds. | | |
| ▲ | wbl 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is Soviet propaganda. The real number from Nagasaki and Hiroshima was about half of the casualties were instant. Furthermore fallout is much more understood: after a few short days of hiding inside, the radiation levels will have fallen to where normal life can largely resume without fear, reducing the number of slow casualties. | | |
| ▲ | jcgrillo 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you have any sources to back these claims? Also, what specifically do you mean by "half the casualties were instant"--is it that "of those who died, half of them died instantly" or "of those killed and injured, half of them received their injuries instantly". Or is it some other thing? I think you're falling into exactly the sort of trap I was talking about, that the enormity of the devastation is so unimaginably great that it's difficult to imagine what it would actually be like, and to (somewhat lazily) conclude "well, it'd probably be instantaneous". But, for example, this analysis doesn't support that idea at all: https://thebulletin.org/2020/08/counting-the-dead-at-hiroshi... | | |
| ▲ | wbl 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Your source says "most died on the day of the attacks, and all within a few months". Your source also says that cancer rates are not as high as commonly believed. | | |
| ▲ | jcgrillo 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Right, so not instantaneous? Or is this also "soviet propaganda"? | | |
| ▲ | wbl 3 days ago | parent [-] | | As instantaneous as arial bombing generally. |
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| ▲ | cess11 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | In Scandinavia we're still sending samples of hunted wild boars to check for cesium. Large parts of Belarus are quite contaminated and the local tyrant is the reason we know very little about how it affects the population in those regions. |
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| ▲ | underlipton 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Same with accidents involving nuclear power generators (and their waste). Most people on HN won't have the chance to engage in Slotin's flavor of bravado... But the kind involved in recklessly, breathlessly advocating for nuclear power? Quite common, here. | | |
| ▲ | sgarland 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I have operated a nuclear reactor. There is nothing in common with this tragic experiment. We have strict procedures that are rigidly followed, and are at all times far, far away from fissile material. We don’t suffer bravado. | | |
| ▲ | underlipton 3 days ago | parent [-] | | And when we build dozens more, to cover the capacity nuclear pushers assure us that actual green energy can't? Chernobyl happened. Fukushima happened. Three Mile Island (almost) happened. That's an incident on almost every continent with more than one large reactor. You absolutely suffer bravado, and it's not isolated by culture or geography; it's bravado that's baked into the widespread use of the technology itself. To lack bravado would be to accept that human civilization, in this stage of development, is incapable of responsibly utilizing nuclear power generation at-scale. | | |
| ▲ | sgarland 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Chernobyl happened because they didn’t have enough spare capacity in the grid to allow the more experienced day shift to do a spin down test, and instead of moving the test or ensuring the right people were on site overnight, they let the inexperienced night shift run the test. This, because management didn’t want to look bad, and they didn’t listen to the engineers. Fukushima happened because their backup generators flooded and couldn’t provide emergency power to remove decay heat. They flooded because management didn’t listen to the engineers who spec’d a much higher (and more expensive) sea wall. Three Mile Island can’t be blamed on management in the same way, but indirectly in that they allowed a culture of accepting defects to fester. Operators had so many inoperable or inaccurate alarms and meters that they were initially unaware of any problems, and then they didn’t trust / believe the readings they saw. Nuclear power, when built and operated correctly, with strict procedural compliance, is incredibly safe. The U.S. Navy has over 7500 reactor-years of safe operation spanning over 75 years, with zero reactor accidents. I am all for wind and solar where it’s feasible, but you simply cannot beat the density of nuclear fuel, nor its ability to provide 100% base load day in and day out. If you want sustainable green energy (and I do), it must involve nuclear power; fossil fuel plants cannot be replaced by anything else we currently know of. | | |
| ▲ | raxxorraxor 13 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Reactor accidents will happen with enough reactors. And Chernobyl and Fukushima show that the consequences can be quite severe. Fukushima had "luck" that there was a lot of water involved, which is a decent radiation absorber. We also know that radiation doesn't disperse homogenously, so it could just enrich the food chain at specific points, probably without us noticing. And there have been incidents on nuclear subs as well. This is not against using nuclear power, but you should not downplay the risks. Because if something happens, the consequences can be devastating. There is also the problem with nuclear waste, which isn't really solved either. | |
| ▲ | underlipton 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Nuclear power, when built and operated correctly, with strict procedural compliance, is incredibly safe. The U.S. Navy has over 7500 reactor-years of safe operation spanning over 75 years, with zero reactor accidents. What this says to me is that it's unfeasible at-scale unless it's a nationalized venture administered by a workforce with literal military discipline. |
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| ▲ | 542354234235 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Cost vs benefit. Nuclear power has less deaths per kWh than any other source, including wind and solar. Flying is safer than driving by orders of magnitude, but a scary high profile plane crash effects people more than mundane everyday car crashes. Saying to stop using a lower risk option because you are personally more scared of it isn’t exactly a compelling argument. | | |
| ▲ | KerrAvon 3 days ago | parent [-] | | what? how do you measure deaths per kWh for solar power and get anything above background noise? | | |
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| ▲ | hinkley 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | People gave their lives so Chernobyl didn’t destroy every well in Eastern Europe for a thousand years. |
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