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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33390 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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How many people has Chernobyl killed? Hydroelectic dams have killed many thousands:

  • St. Francis Dam, 1928, 431 people

  • Dnipro Dam blown up by RKKA, 1941, 3000 people? 20000 people? (no one counted Soviet civilians during WWII)

  • Möhne Reservoir bombed by RAF, 1943, 1579 people

  • Vajont Dam, 1963, 1917 people

  • Banqiao Dam, 1975, 26000 people killed directly (PRC number one!)

  • Machchhu Dam, 1979, at least 1800 people killed

  • Sayano-Shushenskaya Dam, 2009, 75 people killed

I think the argument, at least as presented in the Miniseries, is that without the massive sacrifices of the people responding to the Chernobyl disaster the actual impact would have been cataclysmic.

So its one of those "it only turned out okay because a lot of people were aware of the danger and worked hard to prevent it" things.

Unfortunately, a lot of the responses were... completely pointless. One example is the... boron? (I forget) they tried to dump via helicopter onto the core. Almost all of it missed the core entirely, and did nothing.

My understanding is a lot of the higher-ups knew their efforts were doing nothing, but that people had to see them at least pretending that they were doing something that worked.

without the massive sacrifices of the people responding to the Chernobyl disaster the actual impact would have been cataclysmic.

That part was a lie/fantasy. Maybe plausible in story-lie but not describing reality at all.

Even intentional release of all irradiated material directly into atmosphere by deliberately mixing it with flammable material and burning it would not cause what was described there.

Not doing anything with burning power plant would be even less problematic.

(yes, it would kill many people - but would be nowhere close to various fantasy stories about irradiated magical ghouls roaming Europe that some present as actually likely)

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