The Battle of Chernobyl: THE documentary disaster

[Christophe]

The documentary is now SUSTAINABLE (because it is hosted here) visible at this address:

https://www.econologie.com/telechargemen ... s-silence/

[Christophe]

The Battle of Chernobyl may not be quite over: this morning the plant was disconnected from the network...



It no longer produced electricity since the year 2000 but here we are talking about the power supply for maintenance...especially the swimming pools (if there are any?)...

Pools of nuclear waste which begin to boil after a few days due to lack of cooling and which contain hundreds of tons of more or less radioactive nuclear waste.... well that's not going to do it...

[Remundo]

should ask a specialist what the power supply is for.

[Christophe]

Maintenance...Remundo...

For a nuclear plant in operation, you can have an idea of ​​the internal needs by comparing the gross and net production of the plant...by digging you can find them. It's not insignificant, it's around a few % of nuclear production (a few tens of MW)... but it's in operation!

At the stop, assume that it takes a few hundred kW or even a few MW...

Moreover, the case of Chernobyl is very particular because I think that the sarcophagus must be constantly monitored with probably hundreds of sensors...and for that you need energy!

[Remundo]

I doubt that there are still pools of waste to be cooled in Cherno

But I could be wrong.

And who does the maintenance there? With the Russian invasion, a beautiful mess...

[Christophe]

The waste is stored for several years in our power plants... more than 10 years it seems to me but the RBMKs use less enriched Uranium, it's another technology... so when cold, I don't know if there are any left swimming pools, I don't know the Russian policy of waste reprocessing either...

The answer should be easily found on the internet.

What is certain is that monitoring the sarcophagus requires power...

[Remundo]

normally the fission products are stored for a few years for partial cooling and directly in the power plant. Indeed this requires heat exchangers and rather muscular water circulation pumps (around 1 MW)

Then they are still hot, but can be handled and then enter the pools outside the plant.

finally, after a few more years, in nuclide treatment/separation facilities.

Since the accident took place in 1986, for me there are no waste cooling pumps in Cherno.

That said, there must be an emergency generator in Cherno, the big danger for me is above all the guys responsible for maintenance... are they still there? What do the Russians want to do...

short... to be continued.

[Christophe]

Er, the plant was shut down in 2000, eh... not in 1986...

There were 3 other reactors that continued to operate...I don't know what the lifespan of the teams working there was...and how many teams had to be replaced...

Reactor 4 was the cause of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, but the plant continued to operate with the other reactors until December 2000 while the cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat had practically become ghost towns.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrale_ ... Tchernobyl

Yet it was more sovietism after 1991...

RBMK reactors use near natural uranium...less "active" than PWRs/EPRs...I presume the waste is less "dirty" too?

[gegyx]

Ukrainian authorities announced that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was disconnected from the main energy system. At the moment, the emergency operation of the power plant is supported by diesel-electric generators, however, within 48 hours they will stop their work, which will lead to the failure of the cooling system of the spent nuclear fuel storage and this threatens to increase radiation.
“Standby diesel generators will supply the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and its facilities for 48 hours. Then the cooling system of the spent nuclear fuel storage will be turned off, which will threaten radiation leakage,” said Dmitry Kuleba, head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
Read more on: https://avia.pro/news/hranilishche-otra ... lazhdeniya

Who cut the power???

[Christophe]

That's remundo, on this page there are gross and net power indications for the RBMK:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A9ac ... s_de_force

The RBMK-1000 needed 75 MW to operate...in "standby" certainly much less...but, for example if it's 1000 times less, bin 75 kW is already a lot to provide with a Diesel group !!