The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966(coal-seam-gas.com) |
The USSR used a nuclear charge to stop a gas well fire in 1966(coal-seam-gas.com) |
The USSR had a whole program to investigate peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs), called Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy. [1] Sadly, some of these experiments went rather wrong, unexpectedly releasing lots of radioactive nasty near populated areas. The US also did this sort of thing from 1961 to 1973, and the program was cancelled in '77. [2]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Explosions_for_the_Nati...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY
According to the video, people have detonated 2053 nukes, and America has the dubious distinction of having detonated over 1000.
Maybe we'll end up using nukes as kind-of-morse code communication? ;>
I know that this seems deep into tin-foil-hat territory, but do you recall Chelyabinsk? Lots of evidence to point to it being hit by an AMM (probably Gazelle) with a mini-nuke warhead.
> And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more - Isaiah 2:3-5
I'm an unabashed fanboy, but in any event, Lessons Of Darkness is highly, highly recommended.
the wording on that makes me very suspicious of what was found "under surface of the ground" after they resumed drilling the gas/oil...
Edit: yep. apparently this is Public Relations Speak. The wikipedia for the US plowshare tests do mention that all gas they extracted after using nukes to open way had very high levels of radiation and they could only be used in a few industrial places.
If we were realists about Nuclear energy like other forms of energy, we should have been entering a golden age of Nuclear right about now.
Seems a little hare-brained to me, but they took it pretty seriously back then. Of course, it was all just theoretical, which might be the reason nobody brought it up in this discussion.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_%28nuclear_propul...
The project team wanted to blow a path for a railway line through California’s Bristol Mountains; they wanted to use nukes to expand the Panama Canal; and they wanted to use underwater explosions to carve out a harbor in Alaska.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-us-once-wanted-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plowshare#Natural_ga...
True, it didn't wipe out ALL life in the gulf. Hurray!
ITYM Transocean / Halliburton spill...
More about this earthquake: http://www.tashkent-info.narod.ru/en/e_ze.htm
(Although in terms of safety I suppose I'd much rather be on team nuclear than team TNT. But Hollywood can add the requisite tension and danger.)
Soviet Russia was not big on detecting radiation in public.
This whole article is about how a controlled explosion was the best strategy against a big fire, and then you rock up and chime in with "actually controlled explosions are the best strategy against big fires".
Duh! That's what the article was talking about!
It's like everyone was talking about how the sky is blue, and you come along as say "actually the sky is blue".
This may well be the community for you, but just be aware that a lot of people are justifiably frightened of what can happen to online communities.
I think a good rule of thumb would be 'would be a waste of someone's time to read this comment'. People value the possibility that we can learn valuable things on Hacker News, but that becomes impossible if you have to wade through layers and layers of pointless jokes.
Not intending to be unwelcoming, but I think it can be a surprise.
In general, comments in this community move the discussion forward. I'd argue that your original comment added nothing to the discussion and was not intended to, which was the reason I downvoted it.
So jokes are strongly discouraged (with a few rare exceptions), as are memes, clichés, image macros, or anything like that.
Further the nuclear industry is one with a very poor track record of promises versus delivery. The cheap power, for instance, tends to turn into expensive power when plants need to be refurbished at mind-boggling costs (such as here in Ontario where we've gone from the cheapest power in North America, courtesy of huge hydroelectric benefits, to one of the most expensive because of our nuclear legacy). And the waste issue remains a significant issue.
Nuclear was a great alternative to fossil fuels. It is a very poor alternative to alternatives (wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, etc), and simply increasing energy efficiency.
But new reactor designs (thorium, etc.) avoid the black swans and all of the interdependent complexity. We should be deploying them.
(Not entirely sure if that's because people with serious illness are scared of the work "nuclear", or if it's because the President couldn't pronounce it...)
It's especially weird in Carter's case since he was supposedly a trained nuclear engineer.
In any case, I'm not sure people realize just how little waste has been produced by volume. Even with the once-through fuel cycle, it's a manageable issue. The biggest problem remains NIMBYism and posturing. It might not be a silver bullet, but it's the damn closest to it.
Thorium reactors do not work reliably (just have a look at those that where actually built). The current designs do not work - we don't even have an idea how to do it right in theory. They absolutely are not less complex and are not in any way safer than any other nuclear reactors.
"The painstaking process required each team member, including Carter, to don protective gear, and be lowered individually into the reactor to disassemble it for minutes at a time. During and after his presidency, Carter indicated that his experience at Chalk River shaped his views on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, including his decision not to pursue completion of the neutron bomb."
That's not a good example to use for jokes because people can justify lighthearted humor as an improvement to their day. Having fun is healthy for you, and whatnot.
I think a better way to deal with it is to say that there's a time and place for comedy and HN is not usually that place.
The problem is that some vague reference to a shitty movie isn't fun. There's no witticism in his comment is there? He's effectively saying "this situation can be related to one in a movie".
Not exactly hilarious, is it?
But I viewed the parallels as interesting and thought others might be interested as well. In the future I'll be sure to make my comments dead pan serious without any humor.
Please provide any kind of reputable source as to how the Chelyabinsk meteor was actually a nuke warhead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelyabinsk_meteorite
"Type: Ordinary chondrite LL5" (i.e. stony, not iron)
I haven't seen any reports that the remnants of the meteor are radioactive?
I couldn't find a good document from a quick googling, but this was high on the list: http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/log2013.html 81 launches and 3 failures. I don't particularly like those odds.
Besides: nuclear had its chance - they blew it because of greed and sloppiness, the usual thing that happens when large organizations deal with complex issues. I am 100% sure that even with novel reactor designs the same "human factor" would generate accidents like we have seen with the old designs.
A lot of smart people being very very sloppy.
Stopping making more doesn't make the problem go away (...at least for many thousand years). I'm more optimistic that current waste will be reprocessed or stored safely if nuclear power generation continues than if it all gets quietly forgotten.
So the answer to "into what" would be to collapse into the oil-filled voids within the floor.
It's just something I heard on the news when this was news. Maybe it was complete nonsense. Sorry if I offended anyone with my comment!
I have heard the same speculations you refer to in the news, but I think they instead refered to the topmost portion of the well being destroyed, creating cracks in the top of the shaft of the well and allowing oil to leak in all directions. I am not a geologist, so I don't know how plausible these worries were.
Weeks after watching his films (for example The Cave Of The Forgotten Dreams) I would talk in his voice in my head.
What are the other two?
Usually known as fiction.
Or fiction intended to be taken as fact, which is either a hoax or a gag, depending on context.
This also works in reverse, of course, notably with Fitzcarraldo, where he replicates an insane feat of human ingenuity that wasn't actually part of the real life Fitzcarrald's story.
In any event, all of Herzog's movies are worth viewing from my highly fan-boyish perspective.
1) Refers to fireball hot enough to blind and cause second degree burns, and references two nature papers which say the energy discharged is inconsistent with airburst models http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/nov/06/chelyabinsk-m...
2) Residual radiation of fragments wouldn't be expected, as the Gazelle system uses neutron bombs, not uniquely in ABM systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb
Fine - it's not definitely the case that this happened, but there's enough information floating about to make it far more than plausible.
"Neutron bomb" is another name for an "enhanced radiation weapon" - basically an H-bomb designed to give off large amounts of neutron radiation. So you would expect anything close to the explosion of such a device (and therefore exposed to a very high neutron flux) to have pretty clear indications that would be easy to test for.
these guys http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=24108904 suggest that it doesn't help the bacteria work, but doesn't suggest any enhanced toxicity.
There are plenty of links to reliable sources there. Which page were you looking at?
Filmmaker Adam Curtis mentioned the risks of the type of boiling water reactors cooling systems such as those in Fukushima I,[36] and claimed the risks were known since 1971[37] in a series of documentaries in the BBC in 1992 and advised that PWR type reactors should have been used.
Fukushima had been warned their seawall was insufficient to withstand a powerful tsunami, but the seawall height was not raised in response"
Still no indication of greed, sloppiness, cut-corner mentality and general incompetence?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov
You could argue that it was or wasn't as big of a disaster as expected, but the corexit comment was certainly relevant regardless.
Damage from corexit would have be factored into initial concerns.