Chernobyl

More from the 4th April number of the NYRB, this time concerning the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, an event which I remember because I was in Helsinki at the time, attending a discussion of the proposed standardisation of the SQL database language, not that many miles away.

The  main story seems to be that for what might be called sociological reasons, the immediate reaction by the Soviets was poor and the subsequent follow up was not much better, with secrecy, sloppiness and stinginess all taking their toll. And the nuclear industry in the west is accused of not being that much better, of talking down what might happen when there is an accident, admittedly far more likely in the Soviet Union of the 1980's than in the west of today, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in 2011 notwithstanding.

Interesting stories about contaminated berries from the Ukraine finding their way into the world's food chain, including one about a lorry full of such berries being stopped on the border between the US and Canada because a Homeland Security operative happened to detect some radioactivity. A story which, I might say, cursory search by Bing and Google fails to corroborate, with the only relevant hit being this very article.

The general tone of the article is rather anti-nuclear power, without attempting any proper balance of costs and benefits. The reactors at Chernobyl did, for example, produce a very large amount of electricity, even if they were shoddily built to a now suspect design. But that said, the large nuclear industry is no doubt as protective of its interests as the tobacco industry was of its, so it is hard to know what to think. Beyond our paying a very stiff price for the Chinese to get dug into our critical national infrastructure at Hinkley Point. About which a rather bullish account is to be found at reference 3 - and a rather less bullish one at reference 4. Where would we be without Wikipedia?

In any event, at least one member of our governing class, one Dame Elizabeth Periam Gass, has done well out of it, cashing in 230 acres of her Somerset estate for the knock-down price of £50m. That should keep her in corgis for a bit.

PS: there was also a suggestion that the whole sorry story was one more nail in the coffin for the centuries old association of the Ukraine with Russia. As far as the Ukrainians were concerned, it was all their fault. All someone else's fault.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=chernobyl. The only three posts in the system that touch on Chernobyl. But a useful by-product has been a reminder that the template for the first volume of this blog sometimes truncates month views, with the result that my archive copy is short to that extent. But truncated posts can still be found by search, as here. I think I once found out what was happening, but the answer is lost in my mists of time. Nerd time. But see reference 2.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/08/.

Reference 3: https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_station.