this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
300 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
59713 readers
5858 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The Soviets never sent humans into the reactor to remove melted core material. The remains of the Chernobyl No. 4 core are still there inside the sarcophagus, and I don't think anyone was making serious plans to remove them even before the Ukraine war got in the way.
(The job that got so many Soviet workers exposed was moving solid radioactive debris from the exploded core so that the initial containment sarcophagus could be built and the other three reactors on the site restarted. Nothing comparable was required at Fukushima because the explosions there didn't breach any of the cores, thus no chunks of highly radioactive graphite to shovel off the roofs. I understand that the Soviets did try robots, but radiation isn't good for electronics and, well, it was Soviet equipment in 1986—they just weren't very effective.)
They actually tried using a West German state of the art police robot but it failed. IIRC it still sits broken on the roof to this day.