Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl | Hacker News Reader

Radiation Spikes at Chernobyl

zetter.substack.com

140 points8organicbits129 comments

These may not be radiation spikes at all. They supposedly don't match what should be happening if they were real, so:

The patterns led him to conclude that the data was likely manipulated — either by a remote hacker or someone with direct access to the server that processed the data.

Qui bono?

"OK, guys, we'll just hack into these radiation sensors to manipulate the data feed, and make them display highly elevated level of radiation for a few minutes. Then we'll reset them back to normal... muwuhahahaha [evil laugh]...."

And the part where Russian soldiers take the server offline because they know the data is fake and they want to avoid a panic…

What?

If the Russians are doing it they can just stop

If the Ukrainians are doing it the Russians don’t know they’re doing it

None of this makes any sense, why would either side care about this? I’m now more inclined to believe it was just a weird sensor issue or for whatever reason the traffic through the area caused the sensors to (accurately or inaccurately) read higher - just because there’s absolutely no clear motive and it would be asinine for any of the actors involved to be doing this.

> If the Ukrainians are doing it the Russians don’t know they’re doing it

wouldn’t that explain it rather cleanly? aren’t there plenty of asinine actions taken in war?

speculation, yes. the cost will likely be downvotes for me. that’s ok. taking your sentence, let’s run with that and show a possibility.

ukraine fights asymmetrically. you have seen this with drone boats, drones dropping bombs, drones taking prisoners, soldiers on e-bikes, etc. scrappy. (many americans dig this subconsciously - echoes of the revolutionary war ringing in their ears from centuries ago.)

russia seems to fight… dumb. brute force. big stick. not the country, not the people, but the military operation - dumb. crude.

if you were a smart, ukranian allied (but maybe not even affiliated) hacker and you wanted to make the russian military look worse, you amp up the damage signals from their march into cez. who cares how plausible, it just needs to be upsetting. russians + radiation. done and done.

if you were a dumb russian, upon learning that “you caused this massive radiation spike,” you might want to hide the evidence - the sensor data. because you don’t want to deal with the fallout, no pun intended.

if you were a smart ukranian hacker, you might get real quiet now, because oops those modified values aren’t exactly going to blend in. but it doesn’t matter. the dumb russian believed your ruse, and hid your manipulation, thinking it their failure. which might be better than you hoped.

the motive can be quite simple. hurt the other side. it doesn’t need to be rational, and the execution can be anything but. which, once all sides are involved, can look more like chaos.

or maybe it was nothing of the sort.

It never implies that it was Russia who took the server offline. It says that, if Russia was responsible, it was likely Ukraine instead. There are a couple of different credible explanations at the end, which specifically mention motive.

> Qui bono?

It’s „cui bono“ because it’s using dative case i.e. „whom is the favor“.

Declination of the Latin relative pronoun „qui“ is the following for the masculine genus:

qui

cuius

cui

quem

quo

Sorry for being a grammar nazi.

I don’t want to imply that this is what happened here. But that scenario has absolutely happened.

Interesting until the extended meditations on "why didn't anyone look into this more?????" -- as laid out, IAEA knew and said so publicly, the readings were few and transitory (30m-2h), and if there was a hack, there's 0 real evidence and it's not clear to me it'd be worth disclosing publicly (Russia hacked nuclear radiation in a headline for a schoolboys prank level 'hack' that is completely unprovable)

A bunch of sensors don't just give very high readings at once by chance. There is a reason. If it had just been one sensor that would be another matter (and perhaps it needs to be replaced...)

It doesn't make sense as a prank in that it was only a few sensors and not persistent, it's not like they drew a dick with the results or set them to over 9000.

Looking at the reported patterns of the spikes (just a few widely seperated sensors having their stored aggregated data routinely being corrupted at similar times of day) there's another highly probable cause.

Brittle software and data management.

According to the linked third party piece and the Wired reporting things are going wrong at the first aggregate server that collates all the sensor data.

The first port of call for the regular data admin HN crowd would be bad cron jobs, sloppy scripting, glitchy deamon whacking memory, .. a thousand possible causes all of which have happened before in the history of remote sensor data aggregation.

It's likely persisting as ground zero is in a war torn country at a place that likely faces time, resource, and staffing challenges; and it's likely being "ignored" at the higher action levels as the data has been looked at and random spikes are being filtered away and there's a big yellow post it note somewhere to look into the root causes as soon as possible (which may take some time).

Any such investigation would also want to look for an upgrade or reconfiguration at the time of the invasion, to explain the prior absence of the phenomena.

Some sort of reconfiguration to work around problems caused by the invasion, maybe?

No shortage of suspects - see the linked article - gear was ripped out by the Russians left right and centre, very likely data routes | repeaters have been cut | bombed | replaced.

Even with a distributed network of sensors largely remaining untouched there's still been sufficient kicking of the system to make "supposedly robust" data pipelines fail in interesting ways.

On the central aggregate server there's a good chance some well written never failed script is encountering a never before experienced failure mode on one or two checks, causing a cascading issue that spills the coffee at 11:11 pm every third day.

Heiseinbugs are the worst.

Hm. if the sensors are free running counters and interruptions to the collection infrastructure cause the counts from multiple time intervals to be combined this would result in a false rate spike.

A question I'm not seeing is: what types of sensors are they and what can trigger them?

Can they detect X-rays? EM Interference? Can dust or high humidity cause false readings?

Maybe it's the kickoff of dust but not necessarily because the dust is radioactive

Or radio jammers?

So what? There is no conspiracy here. There are lots of other sensors not in Ukraine and they didn't report zilch. This entire article is just crazy talk.

> The IAEA sent experts to do a radiological survey in the CEZ in April, but their focus wasn’t on determining the cause of the spikes. Investigators instead wanted to determine if Russian soldiers who dug trenches in a small section of the CEZ had released dangerous levels of radiation in that area that could have sickened the soldiers or anyone else who passed through that area. (The IAEA determined the radiation levels from trench-digging could not have made the soldiers ill.) Three months later, the Ukrainian government invited Greenpeace to conduct its own radiological survey of the areas where Russian soldiers had camped, and they also did not look into the cause or veracity of the February spikes. (They concluded that the radiation levels where the soldiers camped were three times what the IAEA reported and accused the IAEA of being untrustworthy because IAEA Deputy Director Mikhail Chudakov, a Russian, is a long-term official with ROSATOM, Russia’s state atomic corporation.)

Interesting.

The article asks a lot of questions about the Russians’ thinking but I think the most likely answer is that they were just uninformed and unorganized. It’s very unlikely they had any sort of calculated plan. They thought they were going to get all of Ukraine in 3 days. The dumbasses digging radioactive dirt probably didn’t even know about Chernobyl to begin with.

The story of Russians digging holes and getting radiation poisoning was propaganda, just like Ghost of Kiev. The levels of radiation in the soil are not high enough to cause radiation poisoning, except for very few hotspots that they'd have to go looking for. It's mostly alpha radiation left which is dangerous only if radioactive particles are inhaled.

I'm more inclined to believe the IAEA. Also,

>They concluded that the radiation levels where the soldiers camped were three times what the IAEA reported

Three times more is not much when talking about radiation. Flying in a plane exposes you to about that much more radiation compared with being on the ground at sea level.

> It's mostly alpha radiation left which is dangerous only if radioactive particles are inhaled.

As someone who's dug a few ditches in my day, I'll testify that dry dirt is pretty easy to inhale.

Exactly. Dig a ditch and tell me you don't taste and smell dirt. Even in wet soil, you can't dig a ditch without ingesting some of it.

Maybe not enough to hurt you, but that depends entirely on how spicy it is.

He is right, that part of the exclusion zone is relatively harmless. Greenpeace has the coordinates in their report, if i am not too far off people still eat mushrooms from such conditions.

The story here seems to be tanks driving off the roads, not the digging at the camp site.

I recall seeing a heatmap of residual radiation levels produced in (I think?) 2015 and the reported location of the trenches was very close to the hottest part of it.

I posted the sources in the edits of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37182828#37183914

Do you have another position for the trenches?

Your comment says 26km distance from the plant, I can only say that this really doesn't look like 26km.

https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1511709947809181698?s=20

This feels like arguing that asbestos isn't dangerous in many forms (it isn't or doesn't have to be) and then denying that people got sick at an asbestos shoveling contest.

> The story of Russians digging holes and getting radiation poisoning was propaganda

You're going to have to source that argument, because there's an awful lot of evidence of Russian-dug trenches there.

To clarify, yes I believe they dug trenches (there's pictures), no I do not believe they suffered from acute radiation syndrome.

Nobody knows if they did or not, since the Russians are not talking. There was only speculation as to how much poisoning the troops likely would have suffered (which would depend on the actual soil composition where they dug). The dosage was not zero and most certainly not safe.

That's a far cry from "OMG PROPAGANDA!"

The main point, of course, is how reckless and stupid it was.

Ehh, that’s mostly a semantic argument.

People without acute radiation syndrome / radiation poisoning can still face significant long term health effects. So yea nobody’s hair was falling out, but they still had sufficient radiation exposure to have long term impacts.

However, these are also soldiers in a war. Their risks of being shot or bombed etc drastically outweigh the risks from radiation here.

There’s no semantics about it.

Radiation exposure isn’t binary.

We’d have to know the type, intensity, and duration to make predictions about any possible expected adverse health outcomes.

It’s a semantic argument because saying nobody got Radiation poisoning doesn’t mean nobody was harmed.

People found out through researching what and where these people dug into the soil roughly what their long term heal impacts where.

Also Greenpeace investigated, so they are not a credible source after all the lobying and protests they did in Germany and which closed down nuclear power stations. The Ukrainians invited Grrenpeace likely to amplify the concerns. It was likely another propaganda attempt, as opposed to actual research.

The pictures from their report are a bit problematic. They sprinkled in pictures of the power plant among the pictures of the trenches. https://media.greenpeace.org/shoot/27MDHUHQAT5X

Looks quite professional, but I have zero trust for an organisation who's fundamentalist members scream and chain themselves to railings and raiway tracks.

https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/59219/tschuss...

>The dumbasses digging radioactive dirt probably didn’t even know about Chernobyl to begin with.

Not probably. Definitely. Saw a couple of interviews with people who worked there while Russians took over the place. They said that most of the had no idea where they are (i.e. what Chernobyl is, what happened there, etc)

I’m going to call BS on this. Even if such videos existed, it’s completely implausible for something like that to true. Imagine asking random New Yorker’s what 9/11 was. Chernobyl is pretty close to being equivalent in terms of fame and media coverage. I’d be extremely surprised if you could find even 1% of people from a random sample who, when asked about Chernobyl, would respond with at least some vague statement about nuclear contamination and radiation.

such videos existed. personally saw it. a couple of station employees been interviewed in ukrainian about how things went down while russians occupied the area. filmed outside. intermixed with deserted russian camp with bunch of trash and some trenches.

chernobyl happened almost 40 years ago. there were a couple of generations in russia ever since. chernobyl wasn't even in russia. why would random russian rural dudes (majority of army. people from major cities are rare) will know that it happened ?

> Imagine asking random New Yorker’s what 9/11 was. Chernobyl is pretty close to being equivalent in terms of fame and media coverage.

The mistake you're making is projecting your personal experience onto others, and extrapolating your personal account to everyone.

In the meantime, the Soviet union employed a massive censorship and disinformation effort regarding the Chernobyl accident, and Russia's invasion force deployed throughout Ukraine is renowned to originate primarily from remote regions of the Russian federation.

Just because you have access to the internet and CNN and benefitted from living in a society where information flows freely, that does not mean that random people from Buryatia enjoyed the same privileges.

Everyone knows about Chernobyl. Most likely what they didn't know was where they are. I saw too many videos of soldiers asking locals for directions in the first days of war.

You underestimate Russia's induced ignorance about Chernobyl. Most of these 20-year-olds were from remote, shit-poor areas of Russia, and even if they went to school of some sort, it didn't matter much. You think those textbooks mentioned the incident? No.

To this day, Chernobyl is a pain point for Russia - f--k knows why because it didn't even happen there. When HBO's Chernobyl came out, Moscow went into a full-blown hysteria. They released their own show with an alternate version of events, where the whole explosion was a CIA operation.

So, no - they didn't know. That's 100% plausible.

That hysteria wasn't caused by the ignorance of Russia's population. Everyone knew about the disaster for a long time. I know this because I lived there until recently.

> Everyone knew about the disaster for a long time.

I think you're falling into the mistake everyone is like you, and has access to the info you had access to.

In the meantime, there is plenty of documented evidence that Russian soldiers who were ordered to move into Ukraine were totally oblivious to the area they were occupying. There are even comical reports from the start of the war on how Ukraine thwarted the advance of some Russian columns towards Kyiv by switching road signs.

You’re right. I just want to highlight that any ignorance of Chernobyl is more likely a general failure of Russia’s education than anything ideologically driven.

Russia's a big place. Rest assured, as an American, I could find plenty of Americans who have no idea what happened at Chernobyl or why it would make a less-than-five-star campground.

Gorbachev is quoted as saying that Chernobyl was the beginning of the end of the USSR.

Nobody likes to talk about that stuff. Ideologues most of all.

I’m always impressed that the RMBK was 3.5GW… just for the core that exploded. There are 3 other cores functioning.

France’s reactors (other technology) are 0.910-1.3 Gigawatts (x60 cores)[1]. Chernobyl must have been the powerhouse for half of the country.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Fr...

It wasn’t 3.5GW for the reactor but the plant as a whole. They had four reactors, 1x800MW and 3x1000MW.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_Nuclear_Power_Plan...

Do you know the name of the show, I’d like to watch it

It's also called Chernobyl: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14780354/

> So, no - they didn't know. That's 100% plausible.

No, it's not plausible. Stop making shit up.

You're both way off.

I asked four of the youngest people I know (ages 19-22) what Chernobyl was and only one knew. And only because of the TV show.

You have no idea how little the average youngster cares about stuff they didn't personally experience. Almost nobody is reading history articles on Wikipedia for fun. It's just Tik Tok, Insta, and Youtube.

For the majority of them, certain subjects will just be mentioned in passing 5 minutes in a history lesson, and it exits the student's brain within days, if not as soon as the bell rings.

Outside of Russia? Come on. Most young people know of Chernobyl because of the TV show. The tourism there spiked after HBO rolled it.

The former USSR is a totally different matter. It's a very well-known and painful, very close part of history. Not knowing about it is a shocking level of ignorance and miseducation, and yet - this is what we have.

20yo westerners are not watching HBO shows about old Russian scientists. If they're watching HBO at all, they're watching Euphoria. It takes a certain mindset and a modicum of appreciation for history to watch Chernobyl.

I don't think it's a stretch to think a 22yo Russian farmer signed up for the military is just as disinterested in history.

In Czechoslovakia right after the WW2 the Colorado Potato Beetle has shown up and started decimating potatoes. Communist government renamed it on American Beetle and started claiming that USAF are dropping it from planes to punish us for choosing socialism.

So rural Russians knowing nothing about Chernobyl is completely in realm of possibilities.

I've never heard of that in my life - got a link to back that up?

Here directly from horses mouth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GjQ4piS2d4

It is propaganda from 1950s (2 years after the communist putsch) so it is pretty loaded against West in general.

* Milada Horáková - Executed by communist government in fake process. 27th of June 1950

* Oldřich Pecl - Executed by communist government in fake process. 27th of June 1950

* American Colorado Beetle = Mandelinka Bramborová (its common neutral name)

* American Beetle = Americký Brouk (propagandistic name)

Translation:

Those clouds are not bringing blessing. Those clouds are coming from the west. Together with clouds American imperialists sent American Colorado beetle on our republic.

Father with son has found the American Colorado beetle. This is it! The American Beetle, latest tool of American barbarism. We found it where it does not belong, on the wood instead of potatoes, we found it on the junkyard, American Beetle is climbing wall.

The beetle is spread via wind and planes from our west and south borders. It is spread by secret western agents bringing it in boxes. Those who sent it to us expect that this beetle will find its way to our potatoes. They expect that it will lay thousands of eggs and red-orange larvae will come up.

What is the aim of American imperialists? Their aim is to use the most dangerous potato pest to destroy our advanced potato industry! They want to hamper our nutrition, our livestock farms and industry for whom the potatoes are important resource.

Those bottomless larvae are culture of nuclear warmongers. But our imperialists gentlemen were planning wrong. Or government did decisive measures. Decisive measures to deflect wicked attack of our enemy. But they could have already known that in the West. In our country we do more than we talk. We all and especially youth, pioneers, are getting into a fight. We will find every American Beetle, and destroy it. Every place of its occurrence will get disinfected. Every place of its finding will get properly marked. We will involve technology into fight against the vermin. We are putting all our strength into saving our work. This is our direct defense against attack of our enemies.

We won't let them pupate under the ground. We will find them and we will destroy them. That's our answer to enemy attackers. We got rid of (Milada) Horáková, we got rid (Oldřich) Pecl, we will get rid of American Colorado Beetle, the American Beetle. We will defend our harvest and our fields from American disease. We don't want foreign, but we won't give up ours.

Looking for some pre 2020 content about Russia and Chernobyl...

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nunn-lugar-russia-pr...

> Documents from the highest levels of the Soviet Union, including notes, protocols and diaries of Politburo sessions in the immediate aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, detail a sequence of cover-up, revelation, shock, mobilization, individual bravery, and bureaucratic turf battles in the Soviet reaction, according to the “Top Secret Chernobyl” e-book published today by the National Security Archive.

> Key sources include protocols of the Politburo Operational Group on Chernobyl that were published in Russian by the journalist and former Supreme Soviet deputy Alla Yaroshinskaya in 1992. The posting today begins with Yaroshinskaya’s essay (written exclusively for this publication) reviewing the Chernobyl story and her own efforts dating back to 1986 to document and expose the lies and the secrecy that surrounded the disaster.

> "The fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel tells us about our own heroes is a source of shame that the pro-Kremlin media apparently cannot live down," Shepelin writes.

How the Soviet Union stayed silent during the Chernobyl disaster - https://wapo.st/3shRS4M

> Information inside Russia was sparse, too. Russian residents and even some officials were left unaware that the accident had occurred. In the news reports that trickled out, Soviet media stated that nuclear accidents like Chernobyl were "virtually impossible."

> ...

> The Soviet Union's refusal to release any information speaks to the mentality of the Kremlin. Perhaps the best explanation of trying to make sense of this mentality came from Ellen Goodman writing in 1988, shortly after the accident:

> Exactly a year ago, in Moscow, I had a conversation with a young journalist who acted as interpreter. After a session with three bureaucrats, which bored him as much me, we went to a local coffee shop and talked about journalism and censorship.

> Andre was among the elite of his Soviet generation. He was informed about America -- down to our frequent-flyer coupons -- and not reflexively defensive about the Soviet system. Yet, at one point, animatedly debating our countries' attitudes toward information, he reached for this analogy, "In the U.S.S.R. we do not tell a patient if he has cancer. Many times we treat people like they are children to be protected."

> And in many ways, those living in the Soviet Union at the time would have agreed.

---

While I can't say for certain, the reporting suggests that there is a deliberate willingness to collectively forget about Chernobyl within Russia.

As someone born in Russia, I can assure you that since the 1980s everyone in Russia became well aware of Chernobyl. In my oblast there were furious protests against the construction of a nuclear power plant, and Chernobyl was likely their main cause. My parents told me some horror stories about the cleanup crew of Chernobyl when I was a kid.

as somebody who born in russia you can't represent everybodies in russia knowledge. in case you don't watch them, go watch some of zolkin videos where he asks russian solders questions about history and ukraine. very enlightening

Sure, you can always cherry-pick someone from a remote village so this can't be literally "everybody", but it's absurd to claim that the majority of the population doesn't know about Chernobyl. It was a very hot topic in Russia for a long time, and in the 90s the government lost control over the information space of the country so the information about Chernobyl was spreading freely. The younger generations can learn about the topic from either their parents, or from pop culture things like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and even HBO's miniseries (freely available on Russian torrent trackers that are quite popular).

Sure, you can always cherry-pick someone from major city so this can't be literally "everybody", but it's absurd to claim that the majority of the population knows about Chernobyl.

For christ sakes, as you state, there is a whole new generation that was born after 2000 in russia. 90s are out and there is control of information> it doesn't matter that they can learn about this topic from internet or hbo or stalker (yes, sure, all gamers will assume that game is based on real events). if they are not taught about it, they won't know.

did you see new history books in russia btw that were published a couple of weeks ago ? do you see the new versions of history been on tv ? the laws about spreading "false information about ussr in wwII" ?

Listen, I left Russia last year. I lived there my whole life, and I saw how the government was handling this topic with my own eyes. Putin likes to twist history to his whims, but the topic of Chernobyl specifically wasn't as affected by this as you seem to think. The worst thing I've seen is one conspiracy-loving TV channel pushing theories about the disaster getting caused by aliens or the Americans, but no one tried to pretend that the whole thing never happened. I know about all of these things too well, don't try to school me on this topic.

i never said that topic of Chernobyl was affected in media. and i never said that majority do not know about it. i said that a bunch of russian solders occupying Chernobyl had no idea where they are and that based on Zolkin interviews history is taught in russia not in optimal way (probably at least outside of major population centers, which are not exactly russia anyhow)

Alright, I misunderstood you then, sorry.

> you can always cherry-pick someone from a remote village

Which hilariously enough is what they do when drafting and recruiting new soldiers...

> Sure, you can always cherry-pick someone from a remote village (...)

The bulk of Russia's invasion force is comprised by people from remote villages.

You're talking about people who risked their lives, and many died, to pillage washing machines and indoor toilets.

Do you really think the literacy level and access to information from the average Russian grunt on the floor accommodates this info? Many didn't even knew where in the world they were stationed.

Fair enough, it’s just really mind-boggling to me that someone doesn’t know. I’m not a villager, but I’m not a blue-blooded Muscovite either. Perhaps my experience of Russia is still too elevated compared to that of an army’s grunt.

Removing or altering location signs[1] in a war zone is common but I wonder if that extends to safety signs [2]. There are many there, as far as I can tell. You probably don't want an army accidentally walking though a place like that and spreading radiation to the locals. Given the poaching and looting concerns, I'd guess the sign coverage is quite dense. Anyone visit before?

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44492/ukrainians-are-m...

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=entry+to+chernobyl+exclusion+zone+...

Lots of the Russian soldiers come from regions without widespread indoor plumbing, to put some perspective to how backward and disconnected some people are.

Don't see how a country's infrastructure issues are related to people backwardeness. The same people who use outhouses probably also have smartphones. It's like saying people who live in remote Canadian villages without road access are backward.

Russia doesn’t work like that.

The level of brainwashing and propaganda in the terrorist state of russia is truly staggering.

Owning a smartphone isn’t a magical key to free access of objective truth, and even if it was, it certainly doesn’t intrinsically provide motivation for average babushka to go and seek information that contradicts the narrative that they themselves need to believe to continue to have a sense of identity.

Do you think the average person in Nunavut knows about Chernobyl? I’m somewhat skeptical but I spend time out there once in a while, I’ll have to ask.

Oh man, in my experience having a smartphone doesn't say anything about ppl intelligence and the level of their education. There are some extremely poor regions in Russia and in those regions education system is also usually poor, bc good teachers migrated to better regions

Infrastructure like communications network for self study or schools for learning are limited.

I won't underestimate the ignorance of young people about anything happened before they started to realize that the world is larger than their home. This is about all generations.

And specifically:

> Everyone knows about Chernobyl.

And everyone knows about Tienanmen, the difference in what they know is made by the country where they live.

Compare this poll from 2019 with the expected values from Western Europe where probably 100% learned it from the news, for many many days.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1040923/how-russians-lea....

The poll is a bit strange though because despite asking how did they learn of the disaster "at its moment of occurrence" they list internet, social media, books and movies.

BTW, the Chernobyl TV series was not available on general TV in Russia AFAIK.

It's just a terrible title. The question was "On April 26, 1986, there was an explosion at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. How did you learn about this accident?"

If that was the question, how it comes that 33% answered one of

From documentary films

From social media and the Internet

From fictional films/ TV shows

From books

Already books, films, social media and the internet on the very first day of the accident? Fiction, maybe.

The key here is that the question doesn't actually ask "how did you hear about it on the day of the accident," but "how did you hear about it"?

Just the title of the graphic says that, incorrectly. It's a poll that includes 18-year-olds done in 2019, it's clearly not intended to be only asking about the moment of the incident.

> "accused the IAEA of being untrustworthy because IAEA Deputy Director Mikhail Chudakov, a Russian, is a long-term official with ROSATOM, Russia’s state atomic corporation.)"

Fair enough, such a team might be biased..

> "Three months later, the Ukrainian government invited Greenpeace to conduct its own radiological survey"

Lmfao, of all the organizations they could have called on, they picked Greenpeace? Anything Greenpeace says about anything nuclear can safety be assumed a lie until proven otherwise. They have negative credibility.

Greenpeace Germany didn't really pull that one off (IMHO).

I went looking to see if the commissioned an independant industry standard radiometric spectral survey .. they flew a drone themselves at 100m altitude (standard for big heavy crystal packs - bit high for some lightweight count detector) recording gamma CPS (counts per second total, not banded to identify types of radiation).

They did hire a UK company to compile sat data images (to identify areas of interest)

What's missing from their release is a detailed radiometric techical report - gear that was used, calibrations, raw data, processed "normalised data" etc.

Greenpeace press release:

https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/54762...

McKenzie Intelligence Services: https://www.mckenzieintelligence.com/

MIS- Chornobyl Report: (32 pages) https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20220718-greenpeace-...

(FWiW I did some decades of radiometric environmental survey work related to geophysical exploration and IAA inspections)

Being from the West, it is very difficult to think that information black out can be achieved at such a level that younger generations would know nothing of a disaster on the level of Chernobyl.

You dont really need a blackout. How many people can actually tell you the size and location of the contamination? Even the official limits of the exclusion zone are nonsense dating back to Soviet Bureaucracy. Wind meant there are contaminated areas outside and harmless areas inside. Also like the article stated, they are unlikely to have experienced any negative impact themselves.

Also, the Greenpeace statement mentions fires, which are a far far better explanation for a spike in measurements. https://www.greenpeace.org/international/press-release/54762...

They also have pictures and mention the Russian camp was at "Stantzaya Yanov" which i cant find a reference to outside of the Greenpeace report. But i would suspect that wouldnt be directly in front of the very visible sarcophagus.

edit: Maps in the report https://www.greenpeace.de/publikationen/20220718-greenpeace-... Page 6 says the camp was 26km from the plant.

edit1: Estimates from https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/10/339/2018/

https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/10/339/2018/essd-10-339... with longitude and latitude and Greenpeace puts the camp at 51.1663, 29.9645 SSW of the reactor. Which would put it in a safe area. Meaning they were right to be not worried if the trenches were at the camp.

edit2: It being the byproduct of Russian navigation efforts is quite a compelling explanation. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/unprotected-russian-sol...

How about Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan? Atomic Lake? Hundreds of nuclear weapons tested all over the steppe - and open to the public. If you were an American soldier deployed there would you have a single clue you shouldn’t be digging near Opytnoe Pole? Or avoid catching fish from Lake Chagan?

Or a Russian soldier deployed at the Nevada test site?

I think not knowing is quite plausible.

exactly, I know the pyramids exist, but would you actually fund them on google maps without using the search bar?

You can tell by the signs.

The point is the camp site was fine from a health and safety perspective. There are more heavily contaminated areas outside and it saw little impact due to the weather back then.

Which leaves either damage to roads that might not have seen much use before (doubtful, they have police driving around to catch real life Stalkers), lost Russians or the fires Greenpeace mentioned.

Some context for the heightened readings would be nice. Especially in comparison to the fires in March and 2020. They seem to be an obvious cause.

edit: Vehicle impact sounds quite likely https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/unprotected-russian-sol...

Maybe dont drive tanks through the red forest.

https://www.google.com/maps/@29.9717687,31.1322225,620m/data...

I knew they were outside of cairo, which means close to the river generally. and was just going to walk the nile but "sphinx cafe" showed up when I got close. You can seem the ok from sattelite view no the top right half.

I was just going to look for giza but I found them before I saw giza pop up. I didn't search I scrolled from north america.

it's not they are small and hiding from you either. i would have suggested similar to your approach to follow the river. as you approach, you will see them.

I wonder if just street viewing down the river would lead you to them

How many Americans, younger or not, would raise an eyebrow if invited to go camping around Hanford? The Russian soldiers might have heard about Chernobyl, but had no idea a) that they were there or b) how far the contaminated zones extended.

I tend to agree with your overall point, but the comparison is not a particularly good one; you are comparing knowledge of a black site decommissioned in the 1960s to one of the most famous events in human history.

I think "most famous events in human history" is probably overstating it, and even then it wouldn't be well known anyways.

Outside of the HN bubble, the average 18 year old person (even in america, as opposed to russians) would not be very informed about Chernobyl. I'd say Chernobyl is a lot less famous than WWII or 9/11 or events of that sort.

And even for big historical events... if you go to a Taylor Swift concert and asked the people there about it, 50% would probably have no clue about most historical events. For example, my 24 year old younger sister doesn't know what a floppy disk is, or what the Berlin wall is. I'd bet you can take any regiment of fresh 18 year old US Marines and tell them they're doing military exercises in Pripyat and they'll mostly ask if there's going to be air conditioning or if there are hot girls around.

I think what you say is overall plausible, however in western Europe many more people would know what happened in Chernobyl. To be frank I am not sure that would be the case in Russia tho, and even more so in the cohorts of young soldiers that camped close by.

Around the time the Shuttle program was ending, I made a casual reference to Soyuz to a Russian national. "Huh? «Union?»" No man. Soyuz, the space rocket. Literally the only way to get to the ISS right now. Your country's manned space program. That Soyuz? "If you say so."

Amazing they even kept it going! We've over here twisting ourselves in knots in embarrassment that we let our only spaceflight system sunset and are reduced to begging rides from Putin, but his citizens don't even notice.

Would they know who Yuri Gagarin was? I would assume they would teach that a Russian was the first person in space while at the same time ignoring embarrassing things like Chernobyl in the classes. Just like I'd assume that they teach defeating Hitler, but ignoring the things Stalin did.

Yes, they definitely know who Gagarin was, but that’s because that knowledge is a useful tool to further entrench a deep sense of chauvinism in russia.

> a black site decommissioned in the 1960s

That's a bit dismissive for possibly the most radioactively contaminated area in the western hemisphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site

https://thatoregonlife.com/2021/10/hanford-washington-nuclea...

A lot of the soldiers are also just barely in their 20's. Many come from very impoverished areas of Russia where access to independent sources of information is very limited (no independent local media, western media hard to access without decent access to the internet) and education has long been eviscerated to serve the needs of the state. Their parents are also not likely to be good sources of information as they are similarly little-informed.

They might literally have never heard of Chernobyl even as a place until they were deployed there.

Much could be said about things that Russia is bad at, but disinformation, propaganda and revisionism are not those things. They're really good at those. And they've been good at those things for a really long time -- multiple generations.

> How many Americans, younger or not, would raise an eyebrow if invited to go camping around Hanford?

You're grossly misrepresenting the facts. The Russians who were digging trenches in Chernobyl were a part of a full blown invasion force directly organized by Russia's regime from the very top. Russia's plan to invade Ukraine and dig in and around Chernobyl was specified from the very top of the chain of command, and enforced throughout the whole chain of command way down into individual orders sent to the Russian grunts in the ground.

These were no average randos who just felt compelled to dig a hole in a camp site.

It's entirely absurd to pretend that Russia's top echelons were oblivious to Chernobyl, and it's outright stupid to misrepresent a full blown invasion force executing battle plans as random people camping somewhere who just felt like digging a hole.

The US National Park Service hosts free tours to the B Reactor at Hanford! https://manhattanprojectbreactor.hanford.gov/

You could(/can?) also travel the exclusion zone as a tourist. Including to one of the excavator claws where the adventurous couch warriors are able to test their meter and make selfies.

The even dumber are getting smuggled in for illegal tours. Meaning you get somebody who knows the area and run past the patrols and sleep in the ruins. Quite stupid but there is youtube. They are also coming after the people who stole all the scrap metal.

Chernobyl is also not the only place, people also visit abandoned cold war bunkers which can look quite amazing. But are also often heavily contaminated and off limits to the public.

Some examples are at @ExploringtheUnbeatenPath (NATO command bunker) and @shiey (Chernobyl) on youtube. Legal options are already quite nice and dont give you too much cancer. In Russia you will also go to Prison for a very long time when caught climbing a derelict antenna, let alone visiting bunkers. If i recall they got very annoyed when Russian teens climbed all the Stalin towers.

If you’re posting here, you probably have some degree of bias.

Of course the millennial crowd interested in engineering is going to know about Chernobyl. But if you ask the average Gen Z not associated with tech or engineering, I bet they’d have no idea.

Between Stalker and Call of Duty they probably know at least something. And documentaries about Chernobyl were common on Russian TV.

How much do you know about The Red Scare in the US? I'm American and barely know anything about it.

It's just not really talked about and not, as far as I know, due to fear of being imprisoned for it.

Ugly history is often "forgotten" even when there is no compulsion to "forget" it.

I'm also American and The Red Scare was taught in my high school. That being said, the Battle of Blair Mountain, the Tulsa Race Massacre, and the MOVE bombing were left out of my curriculum.

And there can be other distracting factors. The biggest massacre of Native Americans in what eventually became the Continental US is largely forgotten by the modern US in part because it occurred during the Civil War at a time when there was no TV, internet, etc.

The date: 29 January 1863.

It gets remembered by various names and various sources give different counts for how many died. Wikipedia says 250 Natives were killed. Other sources say closer to 500.

https://boaogoi.org/

You are too optimistic about Russian education system in poor regions.

Even ignoring tons of corruption and the fact that many teenagers are skipping school to do house/agriculture/other work, consider the fact that those schools are severely underfunded and good teachers migrated long time ago for a better life to bigger cities and even if they have internet, that doesn't meen the information they consume is educational type. I've seen some similar regions when I've visited Russia when I was in school and it looked depressing and I've only visited a bit of west part. The eastern russia is has much bigger problems in this regard, aside mybe from big cities.

And that's just abt education, other comments abt how soldiers maybe didn't know where they are or were thinking that all Chernobyl is a thing of past may be also true

> They thought they were going to get all of Ukraine in 3 days.

The claim of a 3-day takeover has never been official. It came from a random article that was erroneously published. The reason it was written stems from the fact that many news agencies prepare drafts for various scenarios. To rely on a news article as evidence of one country's legitimate plan to invade another defies common sense.

It was said by main propagandists who are the official mouths of kremlin on national tv channels. Also it was said by Lukashenka.

>Greanpeace

I can’t say I’m inclined to trust a source with the unofficial motto of “It does not matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”

Not to mention how they consider doing things like paying people to torture animals on film for propaganda campaigns acceptable, and multiple incidents of them ramming ships.

Is this true?

http://www.noahide.com/infiltration/greenpeace.htm

There are plenty of sources online. There are several videos on YouTube of them ramming ships.

I'd probably not use that one, myself, given the other links on that site do somewhat tend to detract from its credibility.

"So it is entirely possible that Obama is already planning to declare a national emergency and suspend the elections this year [2012]."

"With such forces at his disposal, you can be sure Obama is now actively planning a new Holocaust against the Jews in America as well as in Israel."

I admit I don't watch the news as assiduously as I used to but I'm pretty sure I'd have heard about that happening.

If Ukrainian people (whether state sanctioned or independent) manipulated the sensors to amplify concern about Russia’s invasion —- it would not be remarkable.

Deception, misdirection, sabotage, these are all crucial elements in every war.

> Deception, misdirection, sabotage, these are all crucial elements in every war.

If the Ukrainians tampered with the sensors, the Russians undoubtedly knew about it. In such a scenario, the deception and misdirection are aimed at the rest of the world. If that is the case, there are much more similar manipulations taking place.

This is assuming relevant russians are competent, which is very far fetched... (source: inside info from russian friend who's been following the war)

Agreed, but if would also be self-sabotaging. Their emergency services are stretched thin. And the population does not believe that the government can deal with a nuclear threat. It can cause a panic among population, within and outside of Ukraine and the sentiment might be hard to control.

Obviously we are not privy to all relevant information, personalities, bureaucracies, etc etc, to be able to make such a strong claim as “would also be self-sabotaging”.

A more reasonable claim, may I offer, would be something like “that may turn out to be…”

I am 100% certain, that fall out from a panic from a nuclear threat is as unpredictable as stock market. Surely there may be enough idiots in any government who might think that they have a grip on public opinion strong enough to direct it.

We're talking about nSv/h here. Even a ten-fold increase is still negligible and even less what you would measure in some regions of the world from natural background radiation in places like Ramsar in Iran.

suspecting the sensors or collection network has been subverted; does it make sense to presume the normal looking signal is the true signal and the abnormal one is false data? would the opposite assumption have testable traces?

just letting paranoia run free, if theres some later "dirty bomb" whose signatures match chernobyl debris, can that now be tied to either party or has reasonable doubt been established, anyone could have been smuggling some 'stuff" out in that period?

I imagine that the prior data is consistent with the contamination being distributed by the wind from the reactor fire, and thereafter being subject only to the weather, and to a lesser extent, geological and biological processes. It seems unlikely, however, that the unusual features of the spikes can be explained by natural processes alone.

3.6 - not great, not terrible

Maybe it is not that these few sensors were hacked, but that these are the only ones that weren't.

The Ukrainians played it down and claimed it was because of fires and Russian military vehicles driving around in the area were stirring up the radioactive top layer of soil.

Why would they have faked the sensor data?

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