ELI5

why does russia still use 4 of its RBMK-1000s?

it doesnt

wikipedia says it does

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_Russia

Leningrad, Kursk and Smolensk

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBMK#List_of_RBMK_reactors

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That sounds like a bad idea, you go first.

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Yes, they do, but they have been modified since Chernobyl. They are still positive void coefficient reactors, but they have a lot more active safety features now. They also have containment structures built around them.

Very big reactors. A lot of people depend on those.

They didn't think they were meltdown proof, and had a big book of shit that was DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU WANT A MELTDOWN.
In doing experiments in different shut down procedures to harvest more waste heat, the team at Chernobyl basically did everything in the big book of what not to do and lo and behold, it suffered a meltdown.
They still use them both due to the economic collapse of the 1990's meaning they didn't have capital to replace them and because you do have to do some legitimately stupid shit to have a meltdown occur.

>ELI5
Fuck off redddit faggot

Nuclear energy doesn't exists, retard. It's just a smokescreen to hide government secret experiments, that's why those facilities have such tight security

umad

maybe you need to touch so graphite in order to get convinced

The limitations of RBMKs were considered a state secret. There were procedures, which the operators grossly ignored, but they also were kept in the dark about how unstable low void coefficient type reactors were at low power which is where Chernobyl's accident happened.

RBMKs are now better documented because of the fall of the soviet union, and now the operators are better trained and more advanced computer systems are in place to prevent operation outside of the safety envelope. But the fact remains that as water boils off in that big reactor, power actually goes up rather than down. Pressurized water reactors like used in most of the rest of the world have a sort of deadman switch because as the water boils off the power actually goes down. That's not to say they are perfectly safe.

hot + water = steam
Extremely hot uranium touch with water that make stem and steam have larger volume that water and this led to steam explosion.
Normal reactors (not communist ones) have big containment building that contain radioactive steam form releasing to environment.

negative void*

In the show, they said the reactor spiked because the control rods were tipped with graphite, but I was taught at school that graphite is a moderator and is there to slow down the reaction.

What gives? Am I remembering it wrong?

Following Legasov's death,[20] all remaining RBMKs were retrofitted with a number of updates for safety. The largest of these updates fixes the RBMK control rod design. The control rods have graphite tips attached, which prevent coolant water from entering the space vacated as the rods are withdrawn. In the original design, those displacers, being shorter than the height of the core, left columns of water at the bottom when the rods were fully extracted; during insertion, the graphite would first displace that water, locally increasing reactivity. Also, when the rods were in their uppermost position, the absorber tips were outside the core, requiring a relatively large displacement before achieving a significant reduction in reactivity. These design flaws were likely the final trigger of the first explosion of the Chernobyl accident, causing the lower part of the core to become supercritical when they tried to shut down the highly destabilized reactor by reinserting the rods.

>(and also number of cancer victims)
actually around nuclear powerplants are less cancer victims.
Cars accidents happen too, do you want to ban cars.

Nuclear reactions can get very complicated because all sorts of different isotopes are created.
Sometimes the control rods can have the opposite effect on the short term than what they have on the long term.

>The limitations of RBMKs were considered a state secret.
That's so retarded, what did they expect when the operators didn't know their reactors in their entirety?

>imagine knowing this little about what's happening when water gets into the reactor core without separation

Nuclear is safe, when done correctly.

But even when done correctly, environmental variables exist, such as tsunamis like what happened with Fukushima.

Ideally you build a plant in an area with a low incident of natural disasters.

building Inland on the south east is good because tornados and hurricanes really are not a problem in that area provided you build far enough away from the coast.

I think the only real issue is the nuclear waste that is created. If we could shoot it into space that would be fine, but currently there exist no feasible way.

They expected them to follow protocol and procedure.

The accident was 50/50 their fault and a deign flaw.

Had they not been fucking around with "experiments" on a live reactor none of this would have happened.

That being said, they should have had access to the full history and design of the reactor.

State secrets are understandable but the main guy at the plant should have known at least.

Nuclear waste is hugely exaggerated as a problem.
Sure it kinda sucks having to babysit it for eternity, but the quantity is really small.

nigga I just drove past a few a week ago.

It was a complicated broken system of governance that was incentivized transferring blame rather than problem solving. They thought that by having procedures they could avoid issues without telling their operators the real limitations of the system. To have a limitation was embarrassing. High up, they knew what the issues were, but RBMKs were easier to manufacturer than the safer pressurized water reactors that were also proposed. Budget was tight, it was a race to beat the Americans in yet something else, and most of all they needed the power quickly. The reason plants 1,2 and 3 were still running long after Chernobyl was because those areas needed power and didn't have another way to get it.

I see, so basically the tips were entirely out of the reactor core, and in order to reinsert them they need to push against the water and that creates a spike for reasons probably only nuclear physicist would understand?

Also I think they mentioned the control rods being also made of Boron, is that the main component to actually preventing reactivity?

Coal power plants are way worse for health. The real argument against nuclear power is cost.

I wonder what is more likely, space travel getting powerful enough that each flight contains some nuclear waste that gets shat out at some point in the journey, or some sort of incredible discovery occurs that can increase the rate of half-life for nuclear waste to make it completely depleted in one's life time?

Ideally we'd use solar, hydro and wind exclusively.

Mainly Solar aided at night by natural gas plants.

Imagine how many panels you could place in areas like AZ. The entire state could feasibly run off solar during the day and nuclear/natural gas at night.

Coal powered plants need to go.

The tips of the control rods were graphite, which is a moderator not a control. They did this to increase the peak power output of the reactor, reduces parasitic loses. A moderator slows down nuerons so that a controlled reaction can take place, but it increases the power. As water was converting to steam, more heat was being made, more pressure, as more water boiled off reactivity went up, more heat, more steam... more pressure... positive void coefficient. Chernobyl was a steam explosion.

Boron soaks up neurons, it slows the reaction.

Most likely people just just stop giving a shit about nuclear waste.
Humanity created far more toxic chemical waste and nobody tries to shoot that into space.

Worst thing that can happen is some illiterate fucks thousands of years from now discover that not only will all that chemical waste laying around kill you but also entering concrete building means death.

>Humanity created far more toxic chemical waste and nobody tries to shoot that into space.

Because the nuclear waste can not be disposed of otherwise.

It stays dangerous almost forever.

You can destroy chemical waste in at least an acceptable way. it at least can not stay dangerous forever,

The issue with nuclear is the crazy half lives of like 50,000 years.

the only safe design is a molten salt reactor of thorium
but this will never get traction because well..thorium is literally EVERYWHERE

salt reactors dont even need cooling in case of an emergency the fluid drops down and cools itself

>Ideally we'd use solar, hydro and wind exclusively.

But we don't live in an ideal world and nuclear waste should really be at the bottom of our list of things to worry about.
It's almost as if people obsess over nuclear waste just to not have to think about the real threats to our environment.

Moderator slow down neurons, and slow neutrons have bigger Cross section that fast neutrons. RBMK was cooled with (light) water and water acts as neutron poison and decrease reactivity wen tipes of control rods were inserted graphite pushed out water that drastically increase reactivity, this led to steam explosion

yeah the shit's submerged in a tank of water and the water shields everything

Jow Forums is like r/gaming of technology...

the graphite acts as a medium that moderates the reaction
the rods were zirconium ones which for few second or up to minute once inserted they actually increase the power output
the problem is since the reactor was already low on water when they inserted the rods zirconium started to melt and that process creates hydrogen
that hydrogen was being added to the already pressured hydrogen inside the reactor making it going critical

So how does graphite work in this regard? It prevents the neurons between fuel rods from colliding with other fuel rods, but doesn't prevent the reaction completely?

I really should just read Wikipedia, I remember being fascinated by radioactivity at school, best part of physics!

go to wikipedia dipshit

The whole area has slightly higher eradiatied levels than normal but any abrupt change is shielded behind multiple different layers of materials.

Lead being used to slow down and dampen atomic particles and other materials are laid after it to attempt to reflect a "tumbling" particle.

Plenty of waste product is created from water and spent uranium cores that will stay radiated with a shelf life of thousands of years.

When the zirkonium cladding overheats it reacts with water to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is explosive.

>You can destroy chemical waste

You could in theory, but more often than not it's simply dumped.

>The issue with nuclear is the crazy half lives of like 50,000 years.
But even if you multiply the "problem" by 50.000 it's still no big deal.

We are talking very small quantities, easily limited to specific areas not something that would affect the world as a whole.

...

Apparently the "waste" is discarded for economic reasons, because they can no longer power large power stations to 100%. Wouldn't that mean this "waste" could still be fuel for something smaller?

suck my asshole

They are radioactive that's why they are built in massive concrete bunkers and forests and people tend to die around them.

Anything radioactive is a potential energy source, yes.

It's also possible to make proper fuel from nuclear waste.
That's a very complicated and expensive process right now, but maybe in 50 or 100 years time people will pay good money for nuclear "waste".

>you will never teabag the elephant's foot

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In a thermal-neutron reactor, the nucleus of a heavy fuel element such as uranium absorbs a slow-moving free neutron, becomes unstable, and then splits ("fissions") into two smaller atoms ("fission products"). The fission process for 235U nuclei yields two fission products, two to three fast-moving free neutrons, plus an amount of energy primarily manifested in the kinetic energy of the recoiling fission products. Because more free neutrons are released from a uranium fission event than thermal, neutrons are required to initiate the event, the reaction can become self-sustaining - "a chain reaction" - under controlled conditions, thus liberating a tremendous amount of energy.

The probability of further fission events is determined by the fission cross section, which is dependent upon the speed of the incident neutrons. For thermal reactors, high-energy neutrons are much less likely to cause further fission. The newly released fast neutrons, moving at roughly 10% of the speed of light, must be slowed down or "moderated," typically to speeds of a few kilometres per second, if they are to be likely to cause further fission in neighbouring 235U nuclei and hence continue the chain reaction. This speed happens to be equivalent to temperatures in the few hundred Celsius range.

So a neutron moderator is just a medium that reduces the speed of fast neutrons, thereby turning them into thermal neutrons capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction involving uranium-235 or a similar fissile nuclide.

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>they are built in massive concrete bunkers and forests

No they're not.

Usually they are build on the border with some other country.
That way you get fewer protests.

They literally bury radioactive waste in the ground. Let that sink in for a moment.

>like what happened with Fukushima
But even with that, they were told it was unsafe to keep the backup generators where they were because they were susceptible to flooding, but they choose not to move them because the degree of flooding required to cause an issue was considered sufficiently unlikely.

It'll be safe in 10,000 years. No worries.

oh no think about the mole people...

They literally throw coal waste (which is both radioactive and toxic) into the air for people to breath.
Let that sink in for a moment.

>forests and people tend to die around them

Lol no.
Here are some active Chernobyl-type reactors surrounded by miles ton of dense forest.

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If you start poking into the ground you can expect to find a wide range of deadly things.
Far more future miners will die from mine gas and coal dust than they will from nuclear waste.

Ah that makes more sense, thanks user! So I suppose a remedy to the RBMK reactor is to have control rods constructed of boron-graphite-boron so the tip of the rod reduces reaction for hopefully long enough that the graphite won't cause the core to go critical before the final absorbing Boron can shut down the core completely?

Why is burying radioactive waste so bad?
Where do people think that radioactive materials come from in the first place?
They literally just put it back where it came from.

If it sinks why bury it?

Uranium is enriched or something, I don't think what goes into the reactor is exactly what comes out of the ground.

Natural uranium is only very sightly radioactive.
The fission products they put back are far more radioactive than the uranium they were made from.

Just boron, or make the graphite tips extremely shallow (when they say the graphite was just the tip of the RBMK rods, it was actually the first 1/3rd!). They may have been running into cooling issues or something, not sure of the thought process on having so much graphite on the end of the control rods. The post-Chernobyl workaround was to just leave more rods in the reactor completely, so I think 30 or 40 rods are in permanently at any given time so that there is always boron present. I think before the disaster they were supposed to always have 16 in, but they pulled them all out to get the power to go up very fast because before the safety test they accidentally lowered the power too much. I'm a little rusty on the specifics.

Because if it leaks (which it probably will because salt water is surprisingly corrosive over time) then it will poison entire oceans.

My guess is probably an economic reason, if graphite increases the reaction then they probably wanted to squeeze out as many Mw out of each fuel rod. I think their were plans for RBMK-24000 which would have been even more powerful than any current NPP. So they must have counted on graphite a lot to produce that much energy?

As long as it doesn't happen in my lifetime, why should I care?

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I live exactly 25.55 KM from a nuclear reactor.

How fucked am I lads?

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>"we want green energy"
>doesnt put money into research
everytime

Oh that's exactly the reason for why they tipped them with graphite, I'm just not sure why they used a 1/3rd of the rod up with it. I think they were using it as a displacer. I have a book somewhere that explained more about RBMK design

>t.american education

They would also require less uranium enrichment by using carbon rods.
To generate energy you need a chain reaction, else it would just fizzle out, and that's actually pretty hard to achieve.

Enriching uranium to a point where it can sustain a chain reaction all by itself is an expensive process and requires a big amount of energy.

Normal people are already taxed to death.
And rich corporations generally prefer to keep the status quo.

Research what? How to install solar panels?
Shit is easy.

>Radiation is bad.
False. Radiation doesn't do shit and won't kill you.
youtube.com/watch?v=YmcJXniibK4

Russia is the leader in Nuclear energy.
youtube.com/watch?v=-2iZt-K6Nao
They currently build reactors that produce no radioactive waste as they can run on different kinds of radioactive fuel, including the traditional nuclear waste.

>proofster.jpg

it can't comrade

>why are nuclear plants not radio active by itself?
They are, but only a very little bit. Check a place thats far away from a nuclear plant or nuclear silo with a Geiger counter and check a place near one. The difference will be audible, but usually still harmless.
>why is it only dangerous when it explodes like in Chernobyl?
Because all the REALLY radioactive shit goes out?

This, it was actually an American stealth ICBM fired from Langley, Virginia that was designed to create an embarrassing scandal for the USSR while a significant accident in the US gets covered up, if the US accident were revealed then Chernobyl would be the government's proof than their own incident wasn't that bad.

Bane?

People are retarded. The reactor cores are kept underwater a few feet of water which is almost perfectly effective in keeping radiation contained.

There is less radiation per hour (microsievert) 10 feet from a reactor hull than on a 1 hour flight at cruising altitude.

The ruskies fucked it up because they had no clue what they were doing with the technology they stole from the west in the cold war espionage conflicts

They ran an experiment and didn't figure there would be massive air bubbles from the hot reactors pushing out an exceptionally high power output.

Fukushimia was build on the coastline of an ocean, in a country that was prone to tsunamis, without any real protection against the event.

IMO Fukushimia was the worse accident in every way. All the reactor contents melted through to the water table. Cleanup efforts have been slow (probably since they know it's already as bad as possible).

That's not exactly right. The plans for that RBMK style reactor were """leaked""" to the USSR by the CIA with intentional flaws that the KGB were suspicious of (Unlike in the series, KGB already knew exactly what the problem was as soon as they heard it had exploded) but didn't have the pull to speak out against these glorious USSR and totally not stolen designs before it had already become an issue. Same idea though, just not as hands-on.

It's coal, gas, or nuclear. Which do you want?

>gorrillion people will die for trillion years in billion kilometer zone

The show exaggerates everything A LOT especially the soviet authorities for drama so take everything with a grain of salt it is not a documentary.

the cathedral and powerful pushing anti nuclear propaganda and pre-programming again

Nah that conspiracy theory is dumb because the USSR wouldn't just accept a design directly """" leaked"""" from the CIA and especially a design for a reactor that isn't used anywhere in the US.

I mean Alex Jones isn't THAT retarded..right?

Wrong:
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leukämiecluster_Elbmarsch

Visit with Google Chrome and auto-translate. See that map? The colored parts are where exceptionally many people have cancer (leukemia). KKK is the nuclear power plant.

(((coincidence)))

Oh, and the cars: You're aware that unsafe cars are being banned from the streets, right? You can't drive around town without brakes. Cars being banned from time to time is a reality already.

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reminder nuclear is cheap and safe
waste is a meme it's literally fuel for other reactors
everything from the media and governments is made to make them scary because big oil and others don't want decentralized power so they over regulate the shit out of it

The average person is a literal retard who would be scared of solar if you told them it harnessed nuclear energy. Disregard them.

The only issues with nuclear reactors have been cutting corners/general negligence (Chernobyl) and design flaws (Fukushima Daiichi). The truth is nuclear power is a virtually limitless source of clean and consistence power. Also look into molten salt reactors.