Chernobyl thoughts

1. What if the wind was blowing south towards kyiv

2. What if there was that second Explosion that many feared to take place.

3. Since it was spring flood seasons and the reactor is at the confluence if the pripyat and dnipier rivers, could there be more contamination to the water ND of course the supply of water down stream, most notably would be kyiv.


What would be the reaction of a major and historically important city taking the fill brunt of the disaster
 
In reality, the wind was blowing in perhaps the best possible direction, somehow managing to more or less avoid all major towns.

But if it blows over Kiev, we have no precedent for such a thing but it would have to be chaotic. It is not possible to keep it secret but it is not desirable to evacuate everyone at once. There will be significant exposure and possibly cases of sickness, even if most people survive. If the second explosion takes place AND the wind is blowing south, I don't even want to think about how bad it could have been. But besides releasing much more radioactivity, it certainly makes it harder to work to contain the existing fires and you get releases going on longer. Maybe the wind changes direction and causes contamination in many other cities. I think what happens is that the disgrace of abandoning the third most prominent city in the country leads to a much greater outrage in the all of the USSR and particularly among Ukrainians, who will probably want to leave the Soviet Union after such a disaster. I don't think the country could handle this and might collapse or have some kind of coup.
 
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trurle

Banned
I think what happens is that the disgrace of abandoning the third most prominent city in the country leads to a much greater outrage in the all of the USSR and particularly among Ukrainians, who will probably want to leave the Soviet Union after such a disaster. I don't think the country could handle this and might collapse or have some kind of coup.
Very likely, the effect will be opposite. Having millions of Ukrainians displaced, many of them to Russia, losing a solid chunk of industry and having a costly cleanup program will make any Ukrainian leader think twice before breaking ties with Moscow.
1. What if the wind was blowing south towards kyiv

2. What if there was that second Explosion that many feared to take place.

3. Since it was spring flood seasons and the reactor is at the confluence if the pripyat and dnipier rivers, could there be more contamination to the water ND of course the supply of water down stream, most notably would be kyiv.


What would be the reaction of a major and historically important city taking the fill brunt of the disaster

I do not believe the evacuation of Kyiv (Kiev) can be realistically decided. More likely outcome is curfew and army units employed for systematic street cleaning do reduce radioactive dust deposits (similar to IOTL actions in moderately contaminated city of Gomel, but on much larger scale). Most contaminated neighbourhoods may be declared off-limit, and people re-settled locally. Will be also large voluntary migration out of city of Kyiv (Kiev), but i do not believe the city will lose to migration more than a quarter of population in ten years after disaster. Radiation-related deaths in few-thousands range within a year are realistic too (IOTL, Chernobyl directly attributable deaths were just 34).
 
The clean up effort would be emence.

If the second Explosion occurred I could imagine more contamination also in the sniper, and waters down stream.

Possibly even in svestopol
 

trurle

Banned
The clean up effort would be emence.

If the second Explosion occurred I could imagine more contamination also in the sniper, and waters down stream.

Possibly even in svestopol
The second explosion would indeed contaminate Dniper (Dnepr) river. The alternative Kyiv (Kiev) water supply route would be to have pipeline pulled from Supiy river, which is about 80km to east. About a month of hasty work? Meanwhile, the supply would be done with water trucks. Toiled will still be flushed with radioactive water, just drinking water need to be imported.
 
Very likely, the effect will be opposite. Having millions of Ukrainians displaced, many of them to Russia, losing a solid chunk of industry and having a costly cleanup program will make any Ukrainian leader think twice before breaking ties with Moscow.


I do not believe the evacuation of Kyiv (Kiev) can be realistically decided. More likely outcome is curfew and army units employed for systematic street cleaning do reduce radioactive dust deposits (similar to IOTL actions in moderately contaminated city of Gomel, but on much larger scale). Most contaminated neighbourhoods may be declared off-limit, and people re-settled locally. Will be also large voluntary migration out of city of Kyiv (Kiev), but i do not believe the city will lose to migration more than a quarter of population in ten years after disaster. Radiation-related death in low-thousands level within a year are realistic too (IOTL, Chernobyl directly attributable deaths were just 34).

My wife is from gomel, the villages around the South of the city are in the exclusions zone. Other areas like kalinkovichi and mozyr took higher levels of radiation than gomel.

In my opinion it would depend on how much contamination exists. If the water sources are contaminated.

Obviously we could clean up Nagasaki and Hiroshima after ww 2. But look at fuckashima and even the chernobyl region today. Long term radiation. This effects the food chain for humans.

Heck maybe worse would be if the windows blew over western Ukraine and the bread basket areas
 
Very likely, the effect will be opposite. Having millions of Ukrainians displaced, many of them to Russia, losing a solid chunk of industry and having a costly cleanup program will make any Ukrainian leader think twice before breaking ties with Moscow.


I do not believe the evacuation of Kyiv (Kiev) can be realistically decided. More likely outcome is curfew and army units employed for systematic street cleaning do reduce radioactive dust deposits (similar to IOTL actions in moderately contaminated city of Gomel, but on much larger scale). Most contaminated neighbourhoods may be declared off-limit, and people re-settled locally. Will be also large voluntary migration out of city of Kyiv (Kiev), but i do not believe the city will lose to migration more than a quarter of population in ten years after disaster. Radiation-related deaths in few-thousands range within a year are realistic too (IOTL, Chernobyl directly attributable deaths were just 34).
True, a total evacuation would be undesirable in most cases. The big advantage for a city is that decontamination is at least somewhat feasible because of the hard surfaces. Power washing buildings should remove most radioactive particles. What little soil there is can be removed. This is safer than evacuation up to a point, but in a worst case scenario it might be difficult to keep up everyday life for long.
 
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What second explosion? Most experts considered this fear to be unfounded. Contrary to the popular fears, the water level below the core catcher was not nearly sufficient to cause a steam explosion.
On the other hand there are signs that the pile of wrecked fuel rods thrown outside of the reactor vessel went critical again in the days after the explosion went critical again, additionally irradiating the responders. But going critical in this case means getting extremely hot and emitting neutron radiation, not an explosion. The main vector for the radioactive contamination was not the first explosion, it was a massive pyrocumulus formed by heat from burning graphite, which carried a lot radioactive particles to high altitude and distributed them widely. As a comparson, the contamination in Fukushima, despite the containment being breached by three subsequent hydrogen explosions, there was no fire afterwards - no graphite moderator - and so the only dangerously contaminated area outside of the plant perimeter is a downwind strip about 2-3 km long and 400 m wide; in Chernobyl the equivalently contaminated area is several dozens of km2. The rest of the evacuated territory around Fukushima is in principle safe to visit and even return, but it is one of those things where it is better to err on the side of the caution.
 
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Obviously we could clean up Nagasaki and Hiroshima after ww 2. ...

Not much to clean up at those two detonations. They were at high altitude, 3,000+ meters. The plasma bubble probably did not touch the ground, & not much was sucked up into it before it collapsed. Mostly a few microseconds of intense radiation & little surface contamination.
 
Not much to clean up at those two detonations. They were at high altitude, 3,000+ meters. The plasma bubble probably did not touch the ground, & not much was sucked up into it before it collapsed. Mostly a few microseconds of intense radiation & little surface contamination.
well the bomb was only 1 percent efficient.. and Chernobyl released something like 500 times the amount of radioactive particles.

also after the cities were destroyed it was all shoveled off into the ocean - along with the first several feet of topsoil. another thing to note is that while yes they were airbursts and neither bomb was efficient - but both cities sit on the ocean so most materials went out to sea.

little boy was detonated at 600m and fat man around 500m not 3000 meters
 
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