Chernobyl

Elephant's Foot, Chernobyl Reactor

Detroit Steve sent me a link to a good story about the melt down at Chernobyl. It's a good story because because it is short and it gives clear overview of how and why radiation is dangerous. It's also three years old, which means it was written before the new shield was erected over the site. The new shield is an enormous steel structure that was erected next door and slid into place over the old sarcophagus.

Chernobyl

Pripyat marches and the Chernobyl Nuclear facility in the background

Reading about Ukraine on Borepatch and Alexander's Cartographer's Newsletter and I come across this picture and I just gotta share. Chernobyl has appeared here before.

Chernobyl Revisited

I got an update from Elena today:

New Chernobyl photoalbum is here: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/foodtrip.html
Photos were taking during my trips to Chernobyl area with my project "Pluto's Realm", here is link: http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/plutosrealm.html
Thank you, for support.
Elena
www.elenafilatova.com

Chernobyl

Chernobyl nuclear power station

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.

Elena Rides Again

Visit to Chernobyl with Elena Filatova
Miscellaneous Stuff
Unknown left a comment on an old post alerting me to this new video from Elena and her daughter (!). Elena is famous (at least in my book) for the story she told about riding her Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle through Chernobyl several years ago.

Ukraine

Russian military engineers install a pontoon bridge over the Oka River

This photo is from a Russian military exercise on the Oka River. The closest it comes to Ukraine is about 200 miles when it goes through Volgograd on the way south to the Caspian sea. It looks cold. The photo accompanied a Defense Blog post about a similar bridge being setup on the the Pripyat river in Belarus. That river runs by the Chernobyl disaster zone which is only about 70 miles north of Kiev. Belarus and Russia are allies, so if you were a paranoid conspiracy theorist (or even just an amateur war gamer) you might take this as evidence that the Russians are indeed preparing to invade Ukraine.

For a while I was taking Putin at his word that he had no intention of invading Ukraine, but then I heard from California Bob who studied Russian in college and worked in Eastern Europe for a year or two. He says Russians are liars. Duh (smacks forhead). Of course they are. The ones we are hearing from are politicians and diplomats and you know the old saw about how to tell if a politician is lying? His lips are moving. Why should we expect eastern politicians to be any different than western ones? Of course he is lying.

This morning it finally struck me why Russia would want to invade Ukraine. Up till now it made no sense to me. Why would he want to start a war over this place? But now I realize that it is the continuous provocation by the USA that has prompted this response. They asked us to leave the Ukraine alone, but we keep pushing to align Ukraine with the west. You keep poking the bear and eventually the bear is going to come out of his cave swinging his big bear paws.

I don't quite understand why we (the USA) are pushing NATO on Ukraine, other that we want to pick a fight with Russia. It's kind of weird. Maybe somebody is thinking long-term strategic planning for world domination, but then I read other reports that say Russia is on the ropes with a falling population and GDP. I suspect there are some people who just can't bear the thought of having a competitor. Kind of reminds me of the mean old son-of-a-bitch from There Will Be Blood - "I have a competition in me. I want no-one else to succeed." It's not enough to just beat them, you have to stomp them into the ground.

Major Russian Gas Pipelines to Europe

Then there's the whole natural gas pipeline thing. Ukraine is getting roughly $3 billion in tariffs on the natural gas being piped from Russia, across Ukraine to Europe. Rumor has it that the younger Biden had something to do with that and that's why Ukraine paid him so much money. This is just nit compared to the $200 billion* that Europe pays for Russian natural gas. 

Ukraine, Chernobyl (red marker) and Volgograd (far right)
Black line shows 820 mile east-west distance across Ukraine
Click to embigenate

Russia built a new pipeline, Nord Stream 2, to supply western Europe with natural gas. The pipeline is complete but has not been 'certified', which, near as I can tell, is political doublespeak for Biden doesn't want his commissions from Ukraine impacted. Okay, the slightly better reason is that Ukraine depends on that gas tariff revenue and any reduction is going to have a negative effect on their economy which could lead to political instability. Maybe they ought to figure out how to do something useful besides sucking up Champagne, caviar and cocaine. Meanwhile winters in Europe are cold and natural gas prices are soaring, which, I dunno, might lead to political instability in western Europe. Nord Stream 2 might alleviate that, but hey, let's poke the bear with another stick. Maybe we can get him to come out of his cave and take a swipe at us. Frigging morons.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has squashed an Israeli proposal to build a natural gas pipeline across the Mediterranean Sea to supply Europe with natural gas. There is an existing natural gas pipeline from the Middle East to Europe that goes through Turkey. The proposed pipeline would probably have a negative impact on the tariffs Turkey is collecting. 

If Ukraine and Turkey could put their people to work in productive employment maybe they wouldn't be so desperate for these tariff revenues. But that's not how politicians work, especially pack animals. All they are looking for is a way to squeeze more money out of the masses. If the masses get squashed, well who cares? They were just peasants anyway.

If this goes the way it looks like it is going, Ukraine is liable to become another Syria. Won't that be just wonderful.

* that's my best guess. I did some calculations, but putting them into a coherent format would take time and I have other things I need to do. That's also why there is a shortage of links in the last half of this post.

Update January 2024 add distance caption to last map.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Day 36

Oil is still pouring out of the hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Lots of people are working to try and stop the leak, and lots more are trying to clean up the mess. It may be weeks or even months before they manage to stop the leak. It might be never. This could end up being a worse environmental disaster than Chernobyl. Then again, they might plug the leak this afternoon, or it might stop spewing oil all by itself. Who knows? The future is cloudy, I cannot see.

Meanwhile, if we can't stop the leak, we might be able to do something to mitigate the damage being done by the oil. Here's my big idea.

Offer a bounty for each barrel of oil recovered. With the amount of oil being spilled, it should be easy to scoop up some fraction of it. Each barrel recovered is that much less environmental damage and that much less clean up required. Also, it might be possible to separate out the water from the recovered oil and use the resulting oil as oil.

We would need some place to receive the collected oil. Possibly a tanker on site along with a floating dock, pumps and lines to transfer the collected oil from the collector to the tanker. And then we would need a method to separate the oil from the water.

The only question is how much of a bounty would it take to make a difference? I think a thousand dollars a barrel would probably pull every boat within a hundred miles of the Gulf Coast into this operation. A dollar a barrel? Well, maybe a couple of guys in a Greenpeace skiff. Somewhere in between there I think we could get measurable results for less than the national defense budget.

Motorcycle ride through Chernobyl

Elena and her Kawasaki Ninja. The most amazing website I have ever seen.

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Isotopium

Isotopium Chernobyl - Game Teaser
Could this be the next step in gaming? Some Ukrainians have combined video games and RC (Radio Control) model vehicles into a game that is played over the internet.

Isotopium

It looks like fun.

Isotopium game page here.
Kickstarter page here.

Blogs I Read

There are five or six blogs I read every day. Not all of them get updated everyday, but a couple usually are. And they post links to other stuff, and if I am interested in the post, I will follow the link. I hardly watch TV at all anymore, except sometimes I wll watch something I have recorded from the military history channel, usually about WWII. That's always interesting.

Blogs I read:

• Dustbury
  
• View From The Porch
  
• The Adventures of Roberta X
• Stu Savory's Blog
• Syaffolee
• Rocketboom

And then there's Elena, who did the photo essay about Chernobyl.