This is nonsense fear mongering. It didn't "just wake up" in any sense, the reactivity has been monitored for years and did rise slightly after 2017-2019 as the New Safe Confinement reduced the amount of rain getting into the structure.<p>Here's a Reuters link of the same damn thing from six months ago: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/chernobyl-staff-record-rise-nuclear-activity-within-safe-limits-2021-05-12/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/chernobyl-staff-record-rise-nu...</a><p>The journal article they refer to was from work done in 2020. <a href="https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ta/d0ta09131f" rel="nofollow">https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2021/ta/d0ta0...</a><p>Work done to better understand the decay process going on in the post-meltdown structure is interesting, but none of it notes any real risk of significant criticality in the remnants of the core.
Wonderfully scary. Scientists have two theories: water is getting in, causing startup. And, water isn't getting in, preventing dampening down.<p>Ie, they have no idea. Both A and not-A are being hypothesised.<p>The meetings must be quite confrontational. If only we had two Chernobyl to run A/B testing on.
Nuclear power is far too risky and even if all goes well, the waste problem is mostly unsolved (some solutions exists but who knows how many years they are stable), and the sourcing of uranium is a environmental and health problem, too (cf. the situation in Niger).<p>Anyway, I don't know why I even write on HN about this topic since most of the crowd is pro-nuclear anyway and will either ignore this article or play it down and praise the technology…
This article is very poorly written unfortunately.<p>It goes into multiple "we don't know, but here's an option" paragraphs which give no useful information.
No Loginwall frontend:<p><a href="https://scribe.rip/chernobyls-blown-up-reactor-4-just-woke-up-74bedd5fc92d" rel="nofollow">https://scribe.rip/chernobyls-blown-up-reactor-4-just-woke-u...</a>
> Underneath reactor 4 there is still nuclear fuel that is active and which will take around 20,000 years for it to deplete. The uranium is too radioactive for anyone to live in the city<p>Bullshit. The uranium is contained and not a threat to anyone. Even in the same building (reactor 3) it's quite safe.<p>What makes the city dangerous to live in is the cloud of particles that spread over the wide environment immediately after the accident, something that wouldn't have happened if only the Soviets had added a containment vessel.
What happened at Chernobyl is the kind of thing that theoretically can't possibly happen at hundreds of other nuclear reactors around the world. Which is kind of frightening.
What’s the worst possible scenario with this situation? Could the reactor explode like a nuclear weapon or something? Or is it just going to escalate into more and more radioactive output? And if the latter, how far away from the site might the effects be seen?
Ok, I know nothing about nuke power. That said, I have a few questions:<p>Nuclear power is just about making steam isn’t it? Its ultimately about using heat to boil water, isn’t it?<p>Why can't they continue making steam from this reactor? Its not exactly cooling down, is it?
Nuclear energy is fantastic and environmentally friendly for the first 50 years.<p>It’s the next 9,950 years that no one has been able to complete successfully.
Last week: This antinuclear idiots are dumb, nuclear is totally safe, we have planned any possible scenario, all the smart people love it...<p>Today: cric, cric, cric...<p>Always the same history. Sigh.