A girl by the name of Elena took a motorbike ride to Chernobyl and put up this website. This is absolutely mesmerizing; each photo more interesting than the one before.

http://www.myownlittleserver.us/chernobyl

1 minute the people nearby had lives and the next...

Terry O

Hello Terry,

The link is no longer available,

Regards,


Rolly Angeles
Teacher

Since the disaster was very much man made it proves the point of having strict rules and stick to them when playing with serious operations. Also pointing at the fact that the decision makers must have a technical bakground to be able to judge what is supposed to be acceptable and what is not regarding innovative procedures and "enhancements" made in an operating plant. So it drastically describe what happens when the "paper" operation of a plant don´t control the real world properly. Piper Alpha platform disaster in the north see is another example. So it´s correct, reliability is much more than the work with the hardware. It does however help if the people working with the hardware also have their heads turned on and have good knowldege of the plant´s workings.... So if you work in a nuke or other heavy plant and need to cut out 1 or more trip chains to perform a test, think again! Olov

Hi Terry,

I Googled the web and found this site -

http://www.kiddofspeed.com

Is this the same Elena?

It certainly is an eye opener

Alan Daykin

Working at a nuclear plant we are educated on the events like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Two totally different events yet both impacting the community. One thing to keep in mind is that creating (electricity) at Chernobyl was a bi-product of the actual reason for the site. Either way with both there are significant procedures and rules that apply now for prevention. After the training and education from working with nuclear power I have come to believe that todays nuclear power industries are some of the safest places to work.

I did take a look at that slideshow before it disappeared. It was a surreal journey with an eerie narrative.

But also raises the question of safety of nuke plants which, like Jason, I have to chime in on.

TMI was the absolute worst-case combination of equipment failures and human errors for the US nuke industry. The result? No deaths. A relatively insignificant release of contamination. At least one of the multiple barriers remained intact (the containment building). Not anywhere on the scale of Chernobyl, Bopal, but stil the industry did learn a lot from that event.

I rarely say never or always, but Chernobyl could never happen in a US plant. Impossible from the standpoint of design. Also impossible from the standpoint of the organizational factors. If anyone in our business reads the things those guys did, including the very few people involved in a tremendously dangerous test, the willingness to disable multiple safety systems and not abort when anomolous indications were seen... you will see that it is just stupifying and light-years outside the realm of anything imaginable in US plants.

Thanks Alan - yes that is her!

Good google searching!

Terry O