K340A: The Brain Computer of Chernobyl Duga Radar [video] | Hacker News Reader

K340A: The Brain Computer of Chernobyl Duga Radar [video]

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161 pointsadmp46 comments

Oh, I visited it in 2015. There were some very odd-looking huge boards with pins inserted into them that I assumed were ROMs. Also panels that were clearly intended to display some part of the state of the CPU. Here's some pictures I took:

https://sun9-70.userapi.com/impf/c621621/v621621231/20f0d/vL...

https://sun9-67.userapi.com/impf/c621621/v621621231/20f5d/i8...

https://sun9-28.userapi.com/impf/c621621/v621621231/20f53/cf...

edit: these ROM "cassettes" appear in the video at around 12:40

Yeah... those are the "constants value" generators... those who initally were shipped with non-magnetic pins, those of the "prank".

That prank reads like it was taken out of that CIA sabotage field manual...

That's a strange machine. It's too bad so little is known about how it attached to the rest of the radar system. It's clearly a special purpose machine, one with manually programmed ROMs, built to do a very specific task. But what? Did it beam-steer the radar? Process the returns? The special-purpose I/O gear that must have been present is gone. The console is clearly just a programming and debug console, not something for seeing what the radar was seeing.

The US's main over the horizon radar of that era was Cobra Mist.[1] It never really worked well. Too much interference, supposedly. Trying to bounce radar off the ionosphere is inherently iffy. The US instead deployed line of sight radar chains, such as BMEWS. This required sites strung across northern Canada, but worked.

More modern over the horizon radars do work, but have much more compute power behind them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_Mist

> So little is known

That's also why there's even a conspiracy theory about the Duga. It obviously hasn't been proved but the idea is that the Chernobyl reactor accident would be a U.S sabotage targeting the Duga.

With the goal of spreading radioactive fallout over Poland, Germany, France, and Italy?

https://realchernobyl.com/en/map-of-pollution

I mean, it's not like the worlds most diabolical intelligence service would have access to a weather report. Unless, the real was to elect Greens in those countries so that they would decommission nuclear power and need to build a natural gas pipeline from Russia! What better way to serve the long term foreign policy goals?

yeah that looks stupid. I just said that this theory exists. It's related to the fact that "we dont know what the Luga was for". As often, when people dont know exactly, they imagine things. That's all. I'm amused ;)

Chernobyl blew up because of intense operator stupidity. Also it did not stop producing power, the last reactor was used till 2000.

I know. Everybody knows. There was a test. During this test they managed to highlight a serious design flaw ;) It's clear, it's documented.

What I say is that eventually a marginal frame of people dont believe that fact and instead prefer to believe something wrong ;)

For instance: "chernobyl accident was meant to impeach the Duga to ever work".

> More modern over the horizon radars do work, but have much more compute power behind them.

Yes, and it also requires exotic clocks.

A few years ago, a story appeared about the Australian JORN over-the-horizon radar system. The University of Adelaide developed a highly precise cryogenic sapphire oscillator with jitter measured in attoseconds. The oscillator enhances radar performance by improving measurements of Doppler phase shift. They claim this oscillator is the highest precision clock yet created.

Despite all the downsides of OTH radar, it's still under active development and in the field.

https://www.adelaide.edu.au/ipas/real-world-impact/defence-s... https://spectrum.ieee.org/for-precision-the-sapphire-clock-o...

You used to be able to easily visit the Duga Radar, legally, via one of the many tour companies that offered Chernobyl tours. Back in 2018 I visited myself, I believe with this company, as part of a conference: https://chernobyl-tour.com/tours_to_the_chernobyl-2_duga-1_e... At least then Chernobyl had been turned into quite the tourist destination with enough tours running that there even was a giftshop at the main checkpoint.

Unfortunately due to the proximity to the Russian/Belarus borders the whole area is closed right now due to Russia's invasion (Russia even occupied Chernobyl briefly). But it'll probably reopen sooner or later.

> At least then Chernobyl had been turned into quite the tourist destination with enough tours running that there even was a giftshop at the main checkpoint.

I still remember the dinner they serve at the end, where they present food made using "locally grown crops" (grown in clean soil)

Best bread I've ever had.

Dunno if we ate at the same place. But at the end of my tour they also served us dinner, and it was excellent. One of the first times I had borsch.

The Russian soldiers occupying Chernobyl apparently ignored the warnings and dug trenches in the contaminated soil. And unsurprisingly came down with radiation sickness.

source?

ah.

https://www.newsweek.com/russian-soldiers-struck-radiation-s...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/red-forest-c...

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/31734

A good article on how unlikely they had ARS:

https://www.reddit.com/r/chernobyl/comments/twab17/is_radiat...

I'm not going to make any assertions as to who is right, but some of the assertions in this reddit post conflict with the data from the other articles.

> there are no photos or eyewitness accounts.

The other resources provide satellite images of excavations and eyewitness accounts from Ukrainian hunters and biologists.

Anyway. Do your own research, come to your own conclusions.

Hm. I would have thought the worst of the radioactivity had decayed by now.

The current level in the Red Forest is 0.1-10mSv/h. So in a month one would get 0.07-7Sv - already a death/live lottery depending on where one was located during that month that the Russian soldiers spent there. Yet the real kicker is that Russian army drove armor and dug trenches in the Red Forest. Disturbing soil there immediately makes a hot spot with many times increased level. And moving armor and digging raised the dust which means the soldiers got breathed a lot of that stuff in which is much worse for the health than even that increased background level. So, yes, low hundreds (judging by the number of soldiers brought just to that Belarussian hospital) of Darwin awards are due here.

Russian presence there was documented by multiple sources - i at the time saw much from Telegram, Ukrainian and oppositional Russian sources - and here for example is more typical Western source:

https://www.npr.org/2022/04/07/1091396292/satellite-photo-sh...

I saw many times people just doubt that story without any specific reason, and i'm yet to hear what specifically they doubt - the radiation levels? Russian presence? or may be the arithmetic of the levels multiplied by the length of the presence?

Your own link downplays the radiation level to "basically harmless" and attributes the problems to a psychosomatic response.

Which I personally would doubt. Such a determination could only be made by on-site measurements. By now, radiation should be highly localized in certain areas and soil formations through rain wash-off and intentional burying of contaminated surfaces. So while a lot of places might be harmless, there should be some that are definitely not.

Whats more, the red forest due to proximity and wind conditions, got the major part of the heavier isotopes. The combination of those can be extra-nasty due to their gamma energy, bioavailability and half-life when compared to the lighter stuff that spread out over Europe.

>Your own link downplays the radiation level to "basically harmless" and attributes the problems to a psychosomatic response.

Yes, my link contains facts - the images - and statements by the "experts" who somehow didn't provide any numbers to support their opinion. I posted it for the facts while naturally expecting that people here would be able to separate chuff from the real stuff just like you did.

Wrt. "psychosomatic response" - that takes the crown. Whatever "expert" conjured it, s/he never seen Russian army where basic everyday soldier existence is one continuous "psychosomatic response".

Both Cs137 and Sr90 have half-lifes of about 30 years. So of what was deposited, just under half of it is left. It'll likely be centuries before the exclusion zone is really just a bunch of land again.

Some russians are still there. But tours still happen.

Lazerpigs recent video, around 32min. https://youtu.be/cDyq95F49BQ?si=xnmja9ehVVnOhZ0r

There are no russians there for two years. Absolutely no tours happening, it's a completely closed are and heavily guarded.

There are some tours still happening. But its now (supposed to be) only state/military approved delegations in some kind of official capacity: https://www.chernobyl-tour.com/english/161-visiting-chornoby...

It's possible some people still sneak in of course. But you're risking a non-zero chance of getting accidentally shot by a Ukrainian soldier mistaking you for a Russian infiltrator, let alone the legal consequences.

You're quite correct that Russia has been entirely pushed out. Heck, I would not be too surprised if Chernobyl tours reopen to the public after Ukraine occupies the part of Russia next to Chernobyl (maybe even Belarus if they do something stupid).

I literally posted a video of a recent tour.

Any government can invite anyone anywhere they deem necessary. There are no tours for mortals.

As a child of the Eastern bloc, I appreciate the attention that Soviet tech is getting from this YouTuber. As Slavic language speaker, however, I find his videos unwatchable because of the unsettling breathy marble-mouth narration and deer-in-the-headlights talking head cutaways.

I am conflicted.

That's the Russian Woodpecker. It would wreak havoc on the HF bands.

Right. This gives us a glimpse of the control systems trying to get useful data out of it.

I started watching the movie "Divergent" and it's reused to be the security fence (https://divergent.fandom.com/wiki/The_Fence)

This sounds like something you'd run across in the Zone.

fancy a picnic?

The brain scorcher

photos: https://www.arcanumurbex.de/photos/military-objects/duga-1-r...

I don’t speak Russian or any other language written in Cyrillic, but I learned the alphabet years ago for reasons. It has come in handy when looking at pictures of computers and other tech, where many of the words are cognates with English. Words like “register” and “control” are clear in some of the pictures linked to here.

I’ve also learned how to read a language’s phonetic alphabet.

Always funny when someone asks “hey, can you read this $language”, then I read it out aloud to them.

Then they ask what it means and I’m like “oh, I have absolutely no idea, I just know how to read it”

Those old Soviet over-the-horizon radars would cause interference here in the west, especially close to the borders where I lived. Sounded like a chopper.

Other interference memories is Soviet TV suddenly fading in and out on your screen.

Yes. That’s why Duga was known as the Russian Woodpecker, as it would put out a series of pulses on UHF bands that would (apparently, to someone who had never heard a woodpecker) sound like a woodpecker. This is probably what you were hearing, as it sounds more like a chopper than a woodpecker to me, too.

https://youtu.be/aOMVdOc9UbE?si=VuNjeoCMvherWwql

I grew up relatively near 'RAF' Fylingdales and the signal from the US BMEWS was so strong that it would interfere with listening to tapes because the tape heads would pick up the magnetic flux 'thrum.... thrum' of the radar sweeps, whenever you got within about 2km of it.

Although Duga was an impressive infrastructure project, I don't really think there is anything beyond theory suggesting it could have detected ICBMs (or done much of anything else for that matter); and although the computational technology is interesting and exotic, it was almost certainly lightyears behind computers in the west. Cray-1 was already in production at Los Alamos in the 1970s.

This was a culture that said Chernobyl's reactor design was safe. Far less avarice would be required to suggest that a giant lattice of metal with exotic computers inside of it could actually do something useful.

Another one worth mentioning is the Fialka. It was a cipher machine used all the way up to the 90's. It was only a little better than the Enigma and lagged far behind what the western world was using. Not sure why they bothered to try to destroy most of them. It's interesting from the technology perspective just how far behind the soviets were in some areas. Fast forward to today and China isn't in the same boat. A lot of their technology is on par and there are even areas where they surpass the west.

This comment seemed overly dismissive, so I took 20 minutes to read on Over-the-Horizon Radar systems. They do work and a lot of countries have developed and operated suck systems including the USA, the UK, Canada, France and China.

The prototype Duga radar was able to detect Soviet launches from Kazakhstan and the Pacific. The Soviet Union also maintained a number of other such systems and Russia still develops and uses similar types of radars.

Amazing. What is OS?

Almost certainly there wasn't an OS, but algorithms (the word "software" probably isn't appropriate here) that did numerical calculations to attempt to detect (in theory) patterns of ionospheric disturbances that would (again, in theory) correlate with an ICBM.

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