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Comment by doener | Hacker News Reader

Firefighter have access now:

https://twitter.com/bnonews/status/1499555239351005194?s=21

https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1499555095817728023?s=21

"According to Andrey Tuz, spokesman of the press service of the nuclear power plant, there is no threat of radiation spread."

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And now Russian forces have entered the building and are fighting inside.

Apparently Ukrainians have surrendered now.

What a nerve wrecking situation. In the heat of the moment deciding when is the right time to surrender. Probably the smartest decision of the day.

Where do you get those news? Would you mind sharing the link?

There's a telegram channel:

https://t.me/UkraineNowEnglish

https://t.me/UkraineNow

Ukraine TV live on YouTube.

Links please !

Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR) has a banner to ICTV Ukraine live stream on its frontpage. The channel is in Ukrainian, though.

Link to ICTV stream through ERR: https://jupiter.err.ee/otse/eri6

About the ICTV channel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICTV_(Ukraine)

About ERR's decision: https://news.err.ee/1608518996/err-adds-current-time-ukraini...

For context, access to ERR's own Russian news site was blocked in Russia a few days ago.

TSN: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXoJ8kY9zpLBEz-8saaT3ew

One of the channels that broadcasts (24/7) stream which is mentioned in the message above + periodically posted short clips of the news

UATV English

https://youtube.com/c/UATVEnglish

Same happened in Chernobyl. Workers in the plant granted the free pass and were allowed to keep running the plants. The young soldiers just can't do it and is in their most interest to keep the plant operations safe. A figth inside a nuclear plant can't be win and starting it would be a moronic disaster. Even the dumbest soldier is aware of that.

But is still a risk. People does not act rationally in a war. If it continues for a lot of time any depressed 19yo soldier could say I'm sick of this, decided to suicide and destroy half of the EU with him. The objective of probable Ukrainian genocide has been upgraded to possible European genocide as a bonus.

On the other hand, Putin seems to crave for another countries joining the war so he can "show the nazis" to Russia.

Nuclear power stations don't go boom so even if a war was raged inside a power station it wouldn't take out half of Europe.

What could happen is safety systems could be compromised causing a meltdown and that would carry the risk of spreading radioactive matter to the local environment. And if the local environment gets sufficiently contaminated then weather patterns, sea tides, etc could spread the radiation much further. But it's a slow risk (when compared to a nuclear weapon) so it is still possible to contain the damage to within a few miles, which I acknowledged is still bad but a much better outcome than half of Europe being contaminated.

The Chernobyl reactor suffered a steam explosion that destroyed the containment chamber and lead to an open air reactor core fire. Fukushima suffered several hydrogen gas explosions that also caused explosive venting of radioactive material and severe structural damage.

So yes nuclear plants can explode extremely violently and that can disperse huge quantities of radioactive material. They’re not nuclear detonations as in an atomic warhead, but the consequences can still be catastrophic and as at Chernobyl the fallout can be similar to that from a nuclear weapon. In fact when scientists in Russia initially detected the radiation from Chernobyl they at first assumed there must have been a nuclear explosion if done kind.

You're literally arguing the same points I made:

+ It's not the fission material that explodes (like in a bomb)

+ The explosion is relatively small

+ Radiation is then dispersed to the wider area via atmospheric or tidal conditions (like smoke drifting) rather than as a direct result of the explosion

All points I was making too.

> but the consequences can still be catastrophic and as at Chernobyl the fallout can be similar to that from a nuclear weapon

I never said there wouldn't be radioactive fallout nor that it wouldn't be catastrophic. I said it's a slower risk (days rather than seconds), easier to contain (relatively speaking) and it wouldn't take out half of Europe.

You're not actually disagreeing with anything I've stated despite phrasing your comment as if it were a correction.

Chernobyl was caused by several days of mismanagement. It wasn't something that happened over night. Fukushima took more than 24 hours after the tsunami for the first hydrogen explosion and the others were several days later. And it was a week after the tsunami before the situation escalated into a meltdown too.

To be clear: I'm not saying waging a fight inside a nuclear power station isn't a dangerous and stupid thing to do. What I'm saying is it's not comparable to a nuke exploding.

I disagree on the conclusion that damage to a nuclear reactor is a 'slow risk'. The Chernobyl explosion and open rector core fire, which spewed vast quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere, occurred within a few hours and minutes of the mistakes that triggered them. It's plausible to imagine a few artillery shells into a plant's cooling system could lead to a similar chain of events and a catastrophic explosive contamination event.

> The Chernobyl explosion and open rector core fire, which spewed vast quantities of radioactive material into the atmosphere, occurred within a few hours of the mistake that triggered them.

Chernobyl was a very unique situation though. They almost engineered that disaster to happen with the mistakes that they made. We've learned a lot since then too. That all said, you do make a very strong argument with your next sentence:

> It's plausible to imagine a few artillery shells into a plant's cooling system could lead to a similar chain of events.

Indeed. That is a very good point.

> So tell me, how does a rbmk reactor explode?

Edit: This is a joke based on TV series Chernobyl. A Chernobyl reactor did infact explode and the logic was that it exploding was impossible there for it did not explode.

Stop spreading FUD. The plant has six VVER-1000/320 reactors.

They don't

Chernobyl disaster was first detected in Sweden, and in this nuclear plant would be like six Chernobyl, is closer to Europe than Chernobyl was and we can add the 3 reactors still active in Chernobyl also in hands of clueless 20 Yo soldiers. Some of those people claimed that they don't really know whom are fighting, or what are doing here.

By the way, I never say that I was concerned by an explosion blowing half of the continent, but the effects on Germany for example, were measurable and still last. We shouldn't be so naive as to ignore the risk.

I think that your prevision of just a few miles, enough so Putin will have this safe perimeter, is too much optimistic

Chernobyl was a different era and mismanaged for days too. If something happened to the Ukrainian power station we'd know about it sooner (the proof of that is the fact that we know enough to have this discussion to begin with) and could react sooner. We've learned lessons from other meltdowns and nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents that have happened since Chernobyl and thus are better equipped and educated to respond. This applies as much to Russia as it does Europe, Japan and America too.

> I never say that I was concerned by an explosion blowing half of the continent, but the effects on Germany for example, were measurable and still last.

Your comment is very misleading then if that's what you meant:

"If it continues for a lot of time any depressed 19yo soldier could say I'm sick of this, decided to suicide and destroy half of the EU with him."

^ that reads to me like a pretty instant cause and effect, which a nuclear meltdown is not. If you were talking about over a prolonged period with no decontamination nor mitigation efforts put in place, then it really was not clear from your comment. And I'd argue that is a result of far more than just the actions of a depressed 19 year old soldier in isolation.

> I think that your prevision of just a few miles, enough to Putin have this safe perimeter, is too much optimistic

You're now conflating accident with intention. If Putin intentionally wants to contaminate half of the EU then that's a whole different argument to an accident happening during a capture of a power station or a depressed solder committing suicide (which was the original context you defined and the context I was responding to)

I'm not trying to dispute that the risk of contamination if one damages a nuclear power station is both significant and worrisome. I'm just saying it's not an instant effect (as your post implies) and thus measures can be taken to contain the worst of it to relatively a localized area.

Anyway, I think we both agree that nuclear power stations don't make good war zones :)

Thankfully the reactors are behind the camera streaming the administrative building. Hopefully nothing goes wrong during the takeover. The reactor containment itself is robust, but the potential for human error in a war that keeps escalating should not be discounted.

Internet speculation is that the power plant will be shut down once taken over. Which at least minimizes the ongoing risk of human error. Heck, shutting down is probably a far simpler process than continuing to run - nuclear power plants are designed to be shut down if necessary.

Well, shutting down nuclear reactor is not a simple process — it has to be actively cooled for weeks after being disconnected, which requires power, which you don’t have because you shut it down. So there should be either on-site generators (burning fuel) or external power . That’s why power stations usually have multiple reactors which are serviced on schedule, so it always has some generation happening.

None of it can be relied on during the war.

Shutting down and not having power to cooldown is how Fukushima happened. Emergency shutdown drill is how Chornobyl’ happened

> Emergency shutdown drill is how Chornobyl’ happened

And not being informed of well-known (in higher Soviet echelons) serious reactor flaws, like the grafite on the rods being inserted into the reactor core initially spiking the fission process significantly.

Shutting down is a much safer condition than operating. The decay heat decreases massively over time (huge difference between minutes / hours / days /weeks) and gets safer the longer it has been off.

Also if it's online, the electricity needs to go somewhere: any disruption to the electrical grid and it'd have to go off - probably at a bad time. Better to go through the shutdown in a planned manner while the outside situation is (relatively) stable.

What would happen if the grid connection was severed by bombing? Is there no emergency shutdown mechanism where the output is just dumped into some artificial load?

Then again, a 5700MW resistor might require a bit of cooling.

First, reactor protection systems will start reducing power down to 40% nominal if the turbogenerator load disappears (search for URB in https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/...).

The power would not be dumped into a resistor: the power would be dumped in form of heat with the turbogenerator disconnected from steam. I expect that you can "just" dump it in the condenser and use the standard cooling of the condenser to dump it into the local body of water. If that's insufficient, one can dump steam from the secondary loop into atmosphere (which necessitates adding water there). You can play with a vver-1000 simulator and see how many of these things work; the simulator whose manual I'm citing above can be easily found on the internet.

It's reactor heat -> (heat exchanger) -> steam -> (steam turbine) -> electricity.

If you disconnect the load, you need to stop putting steam through the turbine and dump it somewhere else (i.e. a condenser). All steam turbine plants (including coal) have something similar.

Stoo the turbines and dump the st team/heat into the lake instead?

I was about to mention that reactors often have fuel generators but I remember that the invading force is famous for selling the gas from their tanks to pocket the money…

Given the quality of Russian supply planning and execution it seems as if the biggest danger could be emergency generator fuel supplies getting forcefully repurposed. Good luck doing a safe shutdown...

I mean, they're also designed to run, and they do that most of the time.

Given the continuous need for cooling and containment, and within the context of a war, does it really matter if a fission power plant is running or shut down in terms of environmental security?

Russian forces have been destroying substations to kill electricity and this is the largest power station in Ukraine. It is not unreasonable at all to think that shutting it down and making it hard to get back up (to destabilize or shut down the Ukrainian power grid) is part of the Russian attack strategy.

It seems trivial to cut the big power lines if you want to cut power?

Ukraine is a big country. Meanwhile, this power plant represents 40 % of Ukraine's nuclear power generating capacity, which in turn is responsible for ~50 % of power generation. So this one plant is around 20 % of the total generating capacity in Ukraine.

Since Ukraine is no longer connected to the Ex-Soviet power grid, it is now an isolated grid and has to generate all electricity domestically. That's why the Ukraine is trying to create an interconnection with the EU grid as quickly as possible.

They're much less hazardous in a "cold shutdown" state. Decay heat is highest immediately after shutdown and decreases over time.

Anything can go wrong AFTER takeover. Russians can convert power plant into nuclear landmine and blow up it on retreat. This is war between two nuclear states, so nuclear weapon will be used eventually.

> This is war between two nuclear states, so nuclear weapon will be used eventually.

Ukraine is not a nuclear state as it does not have nuclear weapons.

We promised to not have it in return for not being invaded, so technically we are a nuclear state without any weapons present at this moment (as far as publicly known).

Since we have both technological expertise and practical means (from uranium ores to delivery systems), it’s a matter of time.

No nukes means not a nuclear state.

The former nukes belonged to the USSR and only they had the codes to arm them.

So tell us, which of the letters in USSR is for "Russia"?

RSFSR - Russia is officially recognized as continuation state of USSR by the UN

Can you point to an official document, such as voting by UN members, to put RF into security council of UN? I cannot find any. RF is not a founder of UN, so it puzzling for me, how they are able to sit permanently in Security Council. Is there an exception for RF in UN statute written somewhere?

I wondered the same thing recently. Found this legal academic analysis of the succession of member states.

The conclusion part made me think that the subject was negociated between constituant parts in the devolution treaty. However the paper does highlight that the UN is under ever more pressure for rule-based functioning and transparency, so who knows.

Personally if it were me, I'd rather try and get Russia's membership or voting rights suspended, based on the fact that article 4 states that the UN is for peace loving nations. In the current climate this has a chance of passing in the general assembly, where the veto can not be used. Russia has evoked article 41 'right of self-defense' but that seems problematic.

Another question is if you want to exclude Russia. It sets a precedent, and erodes the position of the UN if not (near-) unanimous. The previous vote had 144 out of 193 voting against Russia, with only 5 against (Russia, Belarus, Venezuela, etc)

https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

> Can you point to official documents, such as voting by UN members to put RF into security council of UN?

No idea, I haven't seen any. Another thing Russia inherited from USSR war nukes as well as debt.

> from USSR war nukes

edit (I misspelled): from USSR was nukes

Turns out it's just inertia, also the last constituent member of USSR to leave (and thus logical successor) is... Kazakhstan

Not just inertia, but also military and nukes

None, but unlike Ukraine, russia had the codes and took them when they left the USSR

>so technically we are a nuclear state without any weapons present at this moment

You'd still be prevented by NPT (which Ukraine is part of) like all other non-nuclear states, even without the Budapest Memorandum.

-Unless the Russian forces have way better connections than we give them credit for, they can not control which way the wind blows. At the moment, the winds come from the southeast, so a lot of the fallout would end up in Russia.

As far as I can tell, this power station is in the south-east. A wind from the south-east would dump fallout in central Ukraine, not Russia.

-Most definitely, but there'd be plenty to spare for Russia, too.

Blown up nuclear power plants are equal opportunity weapons.

Judging from the way this war develops, it’s nit like they care about Russia that much

I wouldn’t count having nuclear power plants as being a nuclear state. There’s a world of difference between power plants and weapons. A war between two countries with nuclear weapons would be on a whole other level.

I’ve read/heard the point is to destroy the reactor for the Russians. They’ve attempted to reach out to the Russians to no avail. It produces 1/4 the country’s power.

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