Chernobyl particles reveal unexpectedly stable nuclear fuel after 40 years | Hacker News Reader

Chernobyl particles reveal unexpectedly stable nuclear fuel after 40 years

phys.org

62 pointsgeox16 comments

"Stable" here means mechanically stable (they don't fall apart as quickly as was expected), not radiologically stable (the radioactive elements, of course, still decay at their normal rate).

The headline sounds weirdly positive... but it's "stable" as in [ed.: ecologically] "long-lived". Very much not a good thing.

For radionuclides more long-livd means less radioactive per unit of time, though. Of course uranium compounds can be toxic in the chemical sense as well, but I’m unsure if uranium compounds make it to the top threats in that list compared to e.g. arsenic and lead.

Of course radioactivity needs to be respected, and the exclusion zone is there for a reason due to factors such as hot spots.

This is "long-lived" in the ecological sense, not radiological. The grains of uranium oxide dust remain grains of uranium oxide dust, rather than breaking apart. If you ingest a few molecules of uranium oxide, it pretty much doesn't matter, you're fine¹. Ingest these dust particles, not so much. It's a question of concentration, and it seems that it's not diluting out naturally.

¹ humans contain, on average, 90µg of uranium. [https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/DU_Eng.pdf]

(P.S.: the radiological stability and lifetime of uranium doesn't make much sense to question; the dust flakes aren't large & concentrated enough to significantly shorten their half-life due to their own neutron emissions cascading and this isn't what the study was researching. Note the article talks about weathering: "It remains largely unclear why these particles weather at different rates in their environment.")

I think they mean that the fuel rods are not breaking down, aka leaching into the environment, as fast. That's a good thing.

It means "mechanically stable", which could be either good or bad depending on the question, but is generally a limited good thing.

At the least, it means these particular compounds aren't quickly breaking down into ever-smaller nano-particles that can be absorbed into living things.

This is tangentially related to the article, but it's interesting that the phrase "unexpectedly stable" triggers positive connotations. It did for me as well.

But the phrase is actually neutral, it's not making any claims if stability is a good or bad thing in this context, neither about "unexpected" stability. But given the larger context of language we read it as positive.

40 years and counting, vs 1 year for Hiroshima

Basically, nuclear bombs are much safer than nuclear power plants.

next step: use nukes as an energy source

Some of the nuclear rocket propulsion ideas propose exactly that, like Project Orion.

If you like Orion check out Project Pluto (they even built some some test bench engines)

Check out this 1970s project that proposed extracting electricity from thermonuclear explosions.

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

> A series of 50-kiloton bombs would be dropped into the cavern and exploded to heat the water and create steam. The steam would then power a secondary cooling loop for power extraction using a steam turbine. Dropping about two bombs a day would cause the system to reach thermal equilibrium, allowing the continual extraction of about 2 GW of electrical power

"Hey boss, do you think there is a chance this scheme might introduce radioactive byproducts into the ground water?"

"Shut up"

190 tons of nuclear fuel, vs 64 kilograms.

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