I bet you didnt know that

Fourier

Very interesting.

See here anybody else:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5GTvaW34O0

Go to 33:55

Thanks for the info cdeb.

A five megaton explosion conventionally could not raise a city as far away as Minsk and irradiate Europe, but this guy is a physicist who worked at Chernobyl, so obviously I am missing something. I'll check back in after I read the original papers.

cdeb

It could be wrong of course! Interested to know if you find out more.

Also, a tablebase is a chess term to describe the solutions to all possible positions with 7 or fewer pieces left on the board.

I meant "water table" in my original post!

Fourier

Okay this turned out to be fascinating.

What confused me was:
(a) How could a fission plant yield a megaton level explosion. That range is conventionally associated with nuclear fusion.
(b) 5 megatons is not enough to destroy or raise (translation used in documentary), which I took to mean "level", a city that far away.
(c) How could something of only 5 megatons affect Europe.

First about point (b), this is a quote from Vassili Nesterenko, a Belarusian physicist who worked on the disaster. It's just a translation issue from Belarussian to English. He just means "mess up", "ruin", "make useless", "leave uninhabitable". Of course being uninhabitable "destroys" a city, so this is just my confusion over subtitles.

More interestingly (a) and (c). So basically after the meltdown, a slowly descending ball of molten electric cables, concrete, graphite and uranium from the reactor core, etc descended into the ground. This was basically the melting remains of the reactor and all its equipment, melting walls and gathering them into itself as it descended.

Emergency workers tried to put it out, by spraying it with thousands of kilograms of water.

However underneath the entire reactor complex lay tons of uranium waste. It was found that if the molten ball, the water from the emergency services and the uranium waste came into contact it would result in a nuclear fusion explosion. Here's how:

Basically the heat of the molten ball was enough to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in the water. If the molten ball then hit the uranium waste, it would provide enough heat and additional uranium to cause a nuclear fission explosion. The fission explosion would then provide enough heat to allow the hydrogen from the water to undergo nuclear fusion like in the core of the sun. To the tune of 5 megatons, hence point (a).

The explosion would kick hundreds of tons of irradiated concrete and cabling and plastic high enough into the air to cause incredibly toxic nuclear fallout all over Europe for years. The radioactive plastic would in particular be highly mutative to organic life. Hence (c).

Apparently French scientists doubted this conclusion, but it was reconfirmed in simulations by Grigori Medvedev, chief engineer at the plant. It has since been reconfirmed in other simulations and is quantum mechanically valid.

So holy **** :eek:! Close call!

Thanks for this cdeb, I would have naively thought the same as the French teams. Can't beat Soviet nuclear know how!

mzungu

The Killers' song "Mr Brightside" has spent 200 weeks in the UK chart - 14 years after being released. It peaked at number 10 back in 2004 but ever since streaming data was introduced to the UK charts in 2014 it has experienced something of a renaissance. According to the Official Charts Company, "Mr Brightside" has been streamed 45 million times in the last year alone and has averaged 878,000 plays and 696 downloads per week in 2018 so far.

According to the BPI (British Phonographic Industry), it’s also the most-streamed song of any track released before 2010.


100 in the charts this week: Link

cdeb

Fourier wrote: »

Okay this turned out to be fascinating.

What confused me was:
(a) How could a fission plant yield a megaton level explosion. That range is conventionally associated with nuclear fusion.
(b) 5 megatons is not enough to destroy or raise (translation used in documentary), which I took to mean "level", a city that far away.
(c) How could something of only 5 megatons affect Europe.

First about point (b), this is a quote from Vassili Nesterenko, a Belarusian physicist who worked on the disaster. It's just a translation issue from Belarussian to English. He just means "mess up", "ruin", "make useless", "leave uninhabitable". Of course being uninhabitable "destroys" a city, so this is just my confusion over subtitles.

More interestingly (a) and (c). So basically after the meltdown, a slowly descending ball of molten electric cables, concrete, graphite and uranium from the reactor core, etc descended into the ground. This was basically the melting remains of the reactor and all its equipment, melting walls and gathering them into itself as it descended.

Emergency workers tried to put it out, by spraying it with thousands of kilograms of water.

However underneath the entire reactor complex lay tons of uranium waste. It was found that if the molten ball, the water from the emergency services and the uranium waste came into contact it would result in a nuclear fusion explosion. Here's how:

Basically the heat of the molten ball was enough to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in the water. If the molten ball then hit the uranium waste, it would provide enough heat and additional uranium to cause a nuclear fission explosion. The fission explosion would then provide enough heat to allow the hydrogen from the water to undergo nuclear fusion like in the core of the sun. To the tune of 5 megatons, hence point (a).

The explosion would kick hundreds of tons of irradiated concrete and cabling and plastic high enough into the air to cause incredibly toxic nuclear fallout all over Europe for years. The radioactive plastic would in particular be highly mutative to organic life. Hence (c).

Apparently French scientists doubted this conclusion, but it was reconfirmed in simulations by Grigori Medvedev, chief engineer at the plant. It has since been reconfirmed in other simulations and is quantum mechanically valid.

So holy **** :eek:! Close call!

Thanks for this cdeb, I would have naively thought the same as the French teams. Can't beat Soviet nuclear know how!

I think I should point out that since my last post, I've walked home from the pub. In the same time, you've worked all that out. That's bloody efficient!

Ipso

Fourier wrote: »

Okay this turned out to be fascinating.

What confused me was:
(a) How could a fission plant yield a megaton level explosion. That range is conventionally associated with nuclear fusion.
(b) 5 megatons is not enough to destroy or raise (translation used in documentary), which I took to mean "level", a city that far away.
(c) How could something of only 5 megatons affect Europe.

First about point (b), this is a quote from Vassili Nesterenko, a Belarusian physicist who worked on the disaster. It's just a translation issue from Belarussian to English. He just means "mess up", "ruin", "make useless", "leave uninhabitable". Of course being uninhabitable "destroys" a city, so this is just my confusion over subtitles.

More interestingly (a) and (c). So basically after the meltdown, a slowly descending ball of molten electric cables, concrete, graphite and uranium from the reactor core, etc descended into the ground. This was basically the melting remains of the reactor and all its equipment, melting walls and gathering them into itself as it descended.

Emergency workers tried to put it out, by spraying it with thousands of kilograms of water.

However underneath the entire reactor complex lay tons of uranium waste. It was found that if the molten ball, the water from the emergency services and the uranium waste came into contact it would result in a nuclear fusion explosion. Here's how:

Basically the heat of the molten ball was enough to separate the oxygen and hydrogen in the water. If the molten ball then hit the uranium waste, it would provide enough heat and additional uranium to cause a nuclear fission explosion. The fission explosion would then provide enough heat to allow the hydrogen from the water to undergo nuclear fusion like in the core of the sun. To the tune of 5 megatons, hence point (a).

The explosion would kick hundreds of tons of irradiated concrete and cabling and plastic high enough into the air to cause incredibly toxic nuclear fallout all over Europe for years. The radioactive plastic would in particular be highly mutative to organic life. Hence (c).

Apparently French scientists doubted this conclusion, but it was reconfirmed in simulations by Grigori Medvedev, chief engineer at the plant. It has since been reconfirmed in other simulations and is quantum mechanically valid.

So holy **** :eek:! Close call!

Thanks for this cdeb, I would have naively thought the same as the French teams. Can't beat Soviet nuclear know how!

Just a pity about their Mr Burns level of health and safety.

Capt'n Midnight

Fourier wrote: »

Okay this turned out to be fascinating.

What confused me was:
(a) How could a fission plant yield a megaton level explosion. That range is conventionally associated with nuclear fusion.
(b) 5 megatons is not enough to destroy or raise (translation used in documentary), which I took to mean "level", a city that far away.
(c) How could something of only 5 megatons affect Europe.

Most of the energy from a H-Bomb is typically provided by Depleted Uranium. But yeah it's the excess neutrons from the fusion that drives it.

One of the uses for neutron bombs was for anti-ballistic missiles, the stream of neutrons was supposed to cause some fission in incoming ICBM's , hopefully enough to cause a fizzle.


If you could remove all the control rods at once bad things happen. In the most extreme case there was the SL-1 reactor which went prompt critical too fast for negative feedback caused by boiling coolant to keep up. For a short time it was pumping out 6,000 times it's design power.


Fallout from a dirty bomb could spread fallout over a larger area.

Fourier

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Most of the energy from a H-Bomb is typically provided by Depleted Uranium. But yeah it's the excess neutrons from the fusion that drives it.

When you say "most of the energy" do you mean "most of the energy to initiate it"? Most of the total energy comes from the fusing of light nuclei.

EDIT: What's surprising about the Chernobyl case and what I was missing is that the light nuclei is provided by the water. I never would have thought "free floating water" delivered in an uncontrolled manner could provide fuel to a fusion reaction.

I want to pick a husband from this thread, it's full of so many interesting people. I'd never get bored.

New Home

I bet you didn't know your significant other wouldn't be too happy to read that, Candie.

New Home

New Home wrote: »

I bet you didn't know your significant other wouldn't be too happy to read that, Candie.

It might prompt him to up his game though.

cdeb

Couple of other Chernobyl snippets...

On the roof of reactor 3 was some hugely radioactive material from the blast which needed to be sealed in reactor 4. Robots were used to push the stuff off the edge, down to other robots at ground level to move further on.

But the robots died from the radiation in due course; it destroyed their electrics. So the Soviets got in 5000 bio-robots, which is exactly what it sounds like. These were reservists who had to go on the roof and shovel the stuff off the edge. But it was so radioactive they could only stay up there for less than a minute. So up, shovel maybe two loads, then down again, immediately replaced by a new crew.

Many died anyway.

At least 500,000 people were involved in the clean-up operation. The cost was 18 billion roubles - $18billion in 1986 terms; maybe $80 billion now. Having to deal openly with the West on the matter helped bring about glasnost. So Chernobyl basically bankrupted and ended the USSR.

The first the Kremlin heard about it was when Sweden rang asking them about high radiation levels. France, curiously, long lied about having any radiation pass over it.

"Chornobyl" is also the Ukrainian word for the wormwood plant. The Book of Revelations says the end of the world and the day of judgement will be heralded when a bright star comes crashing to earth with fire, and that star's name will be Wormwood. The Bible was hardly predicting nuclear Armageddon of course, but it's still one hell of a freaky coincidence.

The plant remained in operation - generating electricity - until 2000.

normanoffside

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

‘Play it again Sam’ was never said in Casablanca, rather it was the title of a later Woodie Allen movie and play.

italodisco

I've never seen a baby pigeon or a Nigerian family with a dog as a pet

Lol

Ted_YNWA

italodisco wrote:

I've never seen a baby pigeon or a Nigerian family with a dog as a pet

All the Nigerian who e-mail me have no families full stop.

Always looking to offload inheritance.

normanoffside

A ‘Try’ in Rubgy is so called because touching the ball down behind the goals originally gave you a ‘try’ at scoring a goal via a kick. There was no points value for the ‘try’ itself.
A try was subsequently awarded by 1 pt ( a kick or ‘conversion’ being 2 then 3). Eventually the value of a try rose to 2, 3, 4 then 5 points with the value of the original ‘goal’ or conversion falling back to 2 points.

Oldtree

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

I'm in a state of shock.......... I believe you

mzungu

During World War II, the crew of the British submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer called Pollyanna aboard their vessel for six weeks (it was a gift from the USSR).

The crew of the T-class HMS Trident were given a gift of a reindeer by a Soviet naval admiral while on operations fighting the Germans in the Arctic Circle in 1941. Not wanting to refuse a gift from their allies, it was decided that Pollyanna would come aboard, and so she shared the confined space with 56 crew members. It wasn't all plain sailing though (yep, pun intended) as Pollyanna had to eat scraps of crew members food after she devoured the barrel of moss (left for her by the Russians) quicker than expected. She also developed a taste for condensed milk, an old wartime favourite in the UK. She ate the navigation chart, but thankfully the crew made it back safely to the UK where HMS Trident landed at Blyth in Northumberland.

Not one for slumming it, she insisted on sleeping nowhere else but the Captain's quarters (under his bed).

How did they get her on board? They lowered her through the torpedo tube. One problem though, due to her liking of condensed milk, she put on weight and had trouble trying to squeeze her way out the way she came in. It took a dockside winch and a crewman with a broom to get her out.

Pollyanna was given a new home at Regents Park Zoo (now London Zoo) where she remained until after the end if the war. It was said whenever she heard a loudspeaker or siren she was said to have ducked down as she did when on the submarine.

In 1947 she died, coincidentally within a week of her old ship, HMS Trident, being decommissioned and scrapped.

Franz Von Peppercorn

Omackeral wrote: »

Everyone knows that 'ultimate' means final or last .
I'd say most people know that 'penultimate' means second last.
I wonder did you know that 'antepenultimate' means third last? What a great word. You don't hear it all that often.

Please don’t tell George Hamilton.

SuperS54

mzungu wrote: »

During World War II, the crew of the British submarine HMS Trident kept a fully grown reindeer called Pollyanna aboard their vessel for six weeks (it was a gift from the USSR).

I wonder if the Russians in fact expected the crew to eat it rather than bring it home! It seems like an odd gift to give a submarine crew otherwise, unless it was a massive p%$$ take!

wildlifeboy

SuperS54 wrote: »

I wonder if the Russians in fact expected the crew to eat it rather than bring it home! It seems like an odd gift to give a submarine crew otherwise, unless it was a massive p%$$ take!

it was a Trojan reindeer filled with Russian midget assassins

Buford T. Justice XIX

normanoffside wrote: »

‘Play it again Sam’ was never said in Casablanca, rather it was the title of a later Woodie Allen movie and play.

The line in the film was 'You played it for her, you can play it for me', iirc.

ohnonotgmail

Buford T. Justice V wrote: »

The line in the film was 'You played it for her, you can play it for me', iirc.

There is another line in the film "Play it once, Sam" said earlier in the film by Ilsa.

Franz Von Peppercorn

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

There is another line in the film "Play it once, Sam" said earlier in the film by Ilsa.

Yeh. Similarly while nobody said “beam me up Scotty” there was a “Scotty, beam me up” and “three to beam up, Scotty”. And lots of “beam us up”

I’m still in shock about the “pity the fool” claim. My mind remembers him saying it.

py2006

Surnames and the origins are very interesting. Some are based on the occupation of your ancestor e.g. Cook, Baker, Clark, Fisher, Smith, Taylor and Carpenter etc.

Interestingly, if you have the surname Farmer you ancestors collected tax for the crown. They were Fermier's. Eventually making enough money to buy land, growing crops on it etc and eventually the name became more anglified to farmer!

There ya are now...

cdeb

Those are all English surnames though, not Irish ones.

py2006

cdeb wrote: »

Those are all English surnames though, not Irish ones.

Eh, so? A lot of people in Ireland have English surnames.

cdeb

Well true. But most don't. Just said it was worth pointing out on an Irish site.

The fact that Irish surnames are so different to English ones is interesting of itself. Most are clan-based, though those with "de" in it - de Barra, de Paor, de Búrca - are Norman invaders.

Ipso

py2006 wrote: »

Surnames and the origins are very interesting. Some are based on the occupation of your ancestor e.g. Cook, Baker, Clark, Fisher, Smith, Taylor and Carpenter etc.

Interestingly, if you have the surname Farmer you ancestors collected tax for the crown. They were Fermier's. Eventually making enough money to buy land, growing crops on it etc and eventually the name became more anglified to farmer!

There ya are now...

I wonder what this one means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_****ebythenavele

Ipso

cdeb wrote: »

Well true. But most don't. Just said it was worth pointing out on an Irish site.

The fact that Irish surnames are so different to English ones is interesting of itself. Most are clan-based, though those with "de" in it - de Barra, de Paor, de Búrca - are Norman invaders.

And Walsh, which is one of the top five surnames in the country.