General Chat

http://goo.gl/LjSukI

Ummm....unless the monitoring agencies are keeping this under-wraps, it must be contained.

Google says it is less than 100 miles from Donetsk or Crimea. That's ok then.

from April 28 1986

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/big/0426.html

My friend´s father in Romania contracted leukaemia as a result of Chernobyl.
He has lived a reasonable life but is currently in the final stages of lung cancer.

If it gets into the atmosphere then the radiation can get every where.

When Chernobyl occurred the rain brought it down onto northern pastures. Not at dangerous levels, but there all the same.

Following the Chernobyl disaster, restrictions were imposed on five thousand sheep rearing farms in North Wales.
Sheep had to be brought down from higher levels to lower level pastures, and then scanned for radiation before being released into the food chain.

Over twenty five years later more than 300 farms were still subject to radiation monitoring.

This inconvenience is of course nothing compared to the devastating effects to those living in a wide area of Chernobyl, in particular newly born children.

Hopefully, the full facts of this latest incident will be released soon.

Unclear to me whether this incident relates to the nuclear side i.e. to the steam production, or a problem with a turbine/alternator train, or even a circuit-breaker malfunction.
Only the first of those should give rise to unease.
The second would be quite unusual.
The last is a (fairly) regular event, and not related to power generation.

Ukrainian language web site says it is circuit-breaker and the reactors are running normally although no power can be taken off. They say it will be fixed by the 5th.