Chernobyl 4 "Radioactive Volcano": Images from the Humus Project

My search for information on Chernobyl has taken me to some very strange places.

This morning, I found this image on a fascinating Italian Chernobyl website, The Humus Project, or Progetto Humus, at http://www.progettohumus.it [the page this image appears on is here]. Look closely.

I can't verify its authenticity (unfortunately, many of the images lack captions or explanations) but it appears to be a shot of the glowing core of Chernobyl Reactor 4 shortly after the explosion. The timestamp on the image reads 01:23:59. But is it 1:23:59 AM on April 26th, 1986?

Thinkquest Library states that the containment lid of Reactor 4 blew off at 01:23:44 am, while the German 'Society for Plants and Reactor Safety', GRS (Gesellschaft für Anlagen und Reaktorsicherheit, in their technical report "The Accident and Safety of RBMK Reactors" [5Mb PDF file]) places the time of the explosion at:

01:24:00

Recording of the shift supervisor: "Strong impacts, the shutdown systems stop before reaching the lower end position ..." Reactor excursion with more than 100 times of the nominal power. Explosion and destruction of the reactor core. The upper plate of the reactor is hurled up, all pressure tubes break off. Core material and burninggraphite parts are ejected. The reactor is burning, further fires start in the surrounding. Massive release of radioactive fission products.

If this photo is genuine, then it would be the first time I've been able to track down an image of the reactor in the earliest stages of the accident. I have not yet found an image of this type anywhere in Chernobyl literature, either on video, in books or and other source. Where did this come from, considering that the former Soviet Union did not inform the outside world of the explosion until days later? Was there a camera trained on the reactor? Did the image come from a flight over the reactor later than the timestamp indicates?

Humus Project Chernobyl Video streams
Google Directory page for Science > Technology > Energy > Nuclear > Safety and Accidents > Chernobyl.
Belarus Guide on Chernobyl Information
Humus Project English version (Progetto Humus, Italy)

Will A.L.I.C.E. "Swallow Up The Earth"?

[UPDATE: Needless to say, A.L.I.C.E did not, in fact, swallow up the Earth. - LR]

Both the fact and fiction about CERN's soon-to-be-completed Large Ion Collider, or "ALICE," seem as strange as anything Lewis Carroll put to print in a chemical-indiced haze; some are concerned that in theory, our planet may end up literally "falling down the rabbithole."

The "Wonderland" metaphor extends to CERN's own press on the project, where Carroll's young protagonist appears frequently on the site's pages. From the CERN Project site:

The ALICE Collaboration is building a dedicated heavy-ion detector to exploit the unique physics potential of nucleus-nucleus interactions at LHC energies. Our aim is to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where the formation of a new phase of matter, the quark-gluon plasma, is expected.

The existence of such a phase and its properties are key issues in QCD for the understanding of confinement and of chiral-symmetry restoration. For this purpose, we intend to carry out a comprehensive study of the hadrons, electrons, muons and photons produced in the collision of heavy nuclei. Alice will also study proton-proton collisions both as a comparison with lead-lead collisions in physics areas where Alice is competitive with other LHC experiments

A lone voice in the wilderness, James Blodgett of the Albany, NY-based Risk Evaluation Forum, is afraid that ALICE may potentially have a rather nontrivial "Doomsday" flaw:

There is a risk that a physics experiment scheduled for 2007 may destroy the earth.

Recent developments in string theory suggest that mini-black holes may be created in the next generation of particle colliders. The possibility that the upcoming Large Ion Collider at CERN might produce mini-black holes is predicted by several articles cited in our "references" section. Go there. Their idea is that gravity might be much stronger than expected (We calculate up to 10^33 times stronger) at very small scales if the inverse square law becomes an inverse hypercube law at small scales due to extra dimensions.

Extra dimensions at sub-atomic scales are a strong prediction of string theory. String theory is considered fairly plausible by many physicists. The authors who predict mini-black hole production expect these holes to evaporate via Hawking radiation. But Hawking radiation has never been seen nor tested. It is based on a quantum theory which is widely accepted, but also widely regarded as strange. If mini-black holes are created and do not evaporate they could implode the earth.

Understandbly, both sides of the argument qualify as arcane topics - even if the potential consequences could be...how shall I say...spectacular. Very Strange stuff, indeed. J.R. Labbe of the Star-Telegram [registration required to access online articles] says,

Founded 50 years ago, CERN is (in English) the European Organization for Nuclear Research, the world's largest particle physics center. This is where really, really smart people study what matter is made of and what holds it together. To do that, you need a really, really huge particle accelerator.

And that is what has Blodgett worried. Because the CERN scientists are getting ready to throw the switch on one honking big collider.

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) [a.k.a. the ALICE Project] is a particle accelerator which will probe deeper into matter than ever before," says the CERN Web site. "Due to switch on in 2007, it will ultimately collide beams of protons at an energy of 14 TeV. Beams of lead nuclei will be also accelerated, smashing together with a collision energy of 1150 TeV.

"A TeV is a unit of energy used in particle physics. 1 TeV is about the energy of motion of a flying mosquito. What makes the LHC so extraordinary is that it squeezes energy into a space about a million million times smaller than a mosquito."

More discussion on "ALICE Swallowing the Earth"?

FuturePundit
Star-Telegram: "If The Earth Disappears, He Was Right"
Blodgett's own posting on SciScoop
A related Black Holes Forum message on www.astronomy.net
CERN Tutorial: "What Is Quark Matter?"

Got MOX?

Shikoku Electric Co.'s Ikata No. 3 reactor is likely to become the third facility in Japan to go "pluthermal" - to use MOX, or mixed-oxide, fuel for power generation. From the Asahi Shimbun:

Shikoku Electric Power Company...Monday informed the Ehime prefectural government of its plans to burn MOX nuclear fuel there by fiscal 2010.

Pluthermal power is controversial because it uses plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, or MOX. Under this method, plutonium extracted from spent nuclear fuel is burned in reactors originally designed for uranium fuel. Pluthermal power is key to the nation's nuclear-fuel recycling program.

Critics warn the pluthermal method carries more health and safety risks to reactors originally designed to burn only uranium fuel. Shikoku Electric Power's plan follows those of Kansai Electric Power Co. and Kyushu Electric Power Co. Kansai Electric Power got the green light from the Fukui prefectural governor in March for its plan to burn MOX at its Takahama nuclear power plant. Kyushu Electric Power in late April notified the Saga prefectural government and the town of Genkai that it plans to burn MOX as early as 2009 at one of its reactors there.

Under Shikoku Electric Power's plan, no more than 16 of the 157 uranium-fuel elements in what are called fuel bundles-groups of fuel elements burned in a reactor-will initially be replaced with MOX at the No. 3 reactor in Ikata. The number of MOX elements will eventually be increased to about one-fourth of the bundle, with the maximum set at 40.

Greenaction-Japan is a organization which opposes the use of "pluthermal" (a Japanese term combining the words "plutonium" and "thermal") power, citing increased safety concerns:

Over the last several years the government and electric utilities have argued that the pluthermal program is a method of recycling precious resources. They claim that it is in Japan's best interest to extract the uranium and plutonium contained in spent nuclear fuel rather than directly disposing of it as some countries do. The argument used is that Japan is an energy poor country which needs to conserve uranium resources and use plutonium for energy security purposes.

Recently promoters of the pluthermal program have begun to argue that the program is also necessary in order to reduce the amount of surplus plutonium accumulated as a result of overseas reprocessing. Since mid- 2001, the Japanese government and electric utilities have put forward yet another argument for the pluthermal program. They claim that without the pluthermal program Japanese nuclear power plants would be unable to continue to produce power...The use of MOX fuel increases the risk and severity of a nuclear accident. When using MOX fuel, the control rods' capacity to function is reduced and power output is less stable and harder to control.

The NRC has a quarterly publication called the MOX: Mixed Oxide Fuels Newsletter, "published quarterly to highlight recent news and events associated with the NRC's licensing of a mixed oxide fuel fabrication facility." The lastest March 2004 issue [PDF file] among other things, talks about the

...October 2003...DOE fil[ing of] an application for license to export up to 140 kilograms of plutonium dioxide to the Cadarache and MELOX MOX fuel fabrication facilities in France. The plutonium would be used to fabricate four MOX fuellead test assemblies, which would be returned to the U.S. for proposed MOX fuel qualification tests in the Catawba Nuclear Power Station. [a two-unit power plant located on Lake Wylie in York County, S.C.]

MOX is (pardon the pun) a highly-charged topic in the United States as well, as the anti-mixed-oxide site Nix-MOX clearly demonstrates with its "Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Use of MOX":

"MOX IS A BAD IDEA!! MOX infrastructure supplies all the pieces needed for making plutonium a desirable commodity, while it claims to dispose of it. MOX legitimizes the production of plutonium by foreign countries, and creates a market for something that could used in a weapon of mass destruction. Plutonium is dangerous and should be kept out of our economy and out of our commercial reactors."

Illinois: "Nuclear America"?

With half the state's electricity generated at nuclear power plants, Illinois qualifies as "highly dependent" on this form of energy; and with 11 currently operating commercial reactors, it's tied in first place with Pennsylvania for the "Most Nuclear Plants." Not on the list? The now-decommissioned Zion 1 and 2 Nuclear Plant near Gurnee, IL, or the decommissioned Dresden 1 plant in Morris. from the NRC's Decommissioned Plants Section:

Zion Units 1 and 2 were permanently shut down on February 13, 1998. The fuel was transferred to the spent fuel pool, and the owner submitted the certification of fuel transfer on March 9, 1998. A public meeting was held on June 1, 1998, to inform the public of the shutdown plans. The owner has converted the turbine-generators into synchronous condensers and have isolated the spent fuel pool within a fuel building "nuclear island." The plant has been placed in SAFSTOR, where it will remain until about 2013 when the decommissioning trust fund will be sufficient to conduct DECON activities. The owner will retain the spent fuel until it is accepted by the Department of Energy. The owner submitted the post-shutdown decommissioning activities report (PSDAR), site-specific cost estimate, and fuel management plan on February 14, 2000. A public meeting to discuss the PSDAR was held on April 26, 2000.

Zion may be out of service, but the Village of Gurnee maintains a webpage detailing the emergency evacuation procedure in event of an accident at the plant.