I'm going to assume one already knows about the Chernobyl Reactor #4 meltdown accident on Apr 26, 1986.
I've seen a lot of information about the building and installation of a "sarcophagus" to contain the radiation. But evidently I didn't note any of that information because I can't find it.
The sarcophagus was installed in 2016, and it now shows up in satellite images. It was built on the bare land on the left of this image where the radiation levels were lower, and then it was rolled into place when completed.
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| Satellite |
I fired up Google Earth to get an image of its construction position.
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| Google Earth, Nov 2016 |
This is the previously available image.
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| Google Earth, Jul 2013 |
This is the post that motivated these notes.
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TechTimes posted More than 30 years after the world’s worst nuclear disaster, Chernobyl is finally seeing real hope. Scientists have slashed airborne radiation in the exclusion zone by nearly 50%—without digging, chemicals, or waiting centuries. The breakthrough comes from Swiss-based Exlterra, whose NSPS tech uses high-speed positrons to neutralize harmful isotopes like cesium and strontium, all while leaving the soil untouched. What once took 24,000 years to decay could now take just five. ☢️ A turning point for Chernobyl—and maybe the whole planet. 👉 Here’s how they did it — https://engineerine.com/chernobyl-47-less-radioactive/ |
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| Chernobyl - 1986 posted |
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| Chernobylite posted The supporting installations for the reactors at the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant were immense in scale, reflecting the Soviet ambition to build one of the world’s largest nuclear facilities. Each reactor block was served by a complex network of auxiliary systems, including enormous cooling water intake and discharge channels from the nearby Pripyat River, vast pump rooms, kilometers of reinforced piping, and electrical switchyards capable of handling high-voltage transmission. The turbine hall alone, stretching across multiple reactor units, was one of the longest industrial buildings in the USSR. Beneath and around the reactor buildings lay extensive service corridors, cable tunnels, and emergency systems, all encased in thick concrete for radiation shielding. These installations were designed not just to support power generation, but also to enable control, maintenance, and – in theory – rapid response to malfunctions. The scale of the infrastructure made the site a self-contained industrial city, demanding constant coordination among thousands of workers. Virtual photo by JackHammer [What is a "virtual photo?" At first, I thought this was AI generated, but I don't think AI would make the "Chornobyl" spelling error. The reason for noting this is Ken's comment.] Ken Kaminski: Yeah, cooling water pumps for 1000 MW reactor are humongous. We had four, 13,000 hp, 500,000 gallon per minute pumps for the two plants at Diablo. Each plant moved about 1,000,000 gallons per minute! Phil Dunesky: How many photos on this site are AI? Wojciech Pazdur: Phil Dunesky none. These are either photos from the Zone or screenshots from one of the Chernobylite games |
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| Yaroslav Krchk commented on the above post So real) |
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| engineerine [The article keeps repeating "no excavation and no chemicals" but it doesn't say boo about how the positrons are generated. I thought generating antimatter particles was hard. Could positron bombardment also be used to clean up nuclear waste so that we don't have to deal with the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) problem?] |
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| Chernobyl Чернобыльской posted The remains of the No. 4 reactor, photographed from the roof of reactor No. 3 |
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