"Thank God it's Japan" - post by an ex-USSR citizen who witnessed Chernobyl | Hacker News Reader

"Thank God it's Japan" - post by an ex-USSR citizen who witnessed Chernobyl

blog.jitbit.com

52 pointsjitbit14 comments

"That the janitors were cleaning the building with bare hands and wet rags the next day."

Are you sure they weren't licking the floors clean with their tongues?

So here you have two memes popular on HN: USSR was teh suck, and Japan is filled with disciplined professionals with a code of honor prepared to fight Godzilla. No wonder this crap gets modded up.

Next time it would be nice to have an analysis of the nuclear regulations in the USSR then and Japan today, and a case study of how they were followed and what happened.

First off, the title is very misleading. How exactly did this 9-year-old "ex-USSR citizen" witness Chernobyl?

the firefighters were never even told it was a nuclear reactor

Huh? Were they blindfolded when they went out on the response call? There were a lot of uninformed rumors, and and I don't see any evidence that they were not OP's father's primary sources.

From reading interviews with the firemen who first arrived at the scene (I believe all of them died from radiation poisoning within months of the accident), it was clear that they knew where they were going. They certainly did not expect it to be as bad as it was, but it was their actions and heroism that prevented a much larger catastrophe than what the world has witnessed.

If you read Russian or are willing to suffer through automated translation, take a look at this Chernobyl expose from 1989: http://lib.ru/MEMUARY/CHERNOBYL/medvedev.txt It quotes a lot of first-person accounts and adds a unique human side to dry statistics and technical discussion available elsewhere.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster#Fire_contain... - "not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire: "We didn't know it was the reactor. No one had told us.""

Why are you quoting so selectively? Your credibility was not very high to begin with.

That particular quote reads

"may not even have known that the accident was anything more than a regular electrical fire"

Right below there are contradicting accounts quoted:

"However, Anatoli Zakharov, a fireman stationed in Chernobyl since 1980, offers a different description:

    I remember joking to the others, "There must be an incredible amount of radiation here. We'll be lucky if we're all still alive in the morning."

Twenty years after the disaster, he claimed the firefighters from the Fire Station No. 2 were aware of the risks.

    Of course we knew! If we'd followed regulations, we would never have gone near the reactor. But it was a moral obligation—our duty. We were like kamikaze.[29]"

again, at the beginning [while they were driving] the firefighters possibly didn't know the exact specifics. But, these were firefighters driving to a fire on a nuclear power plant in the country where high schoolers were taught to use radiation measurement devices. People knew the country they were living in, i was 14 in 1986 and i remember it very well how people read things "between the lines". Obviously, the firefighters got the right idea when they came. They still did their job though. The closest to depicting that i think is "K-19 The Widowmaker"

com'n, we all have this complex of "born-in-the-USSR". No need for hysteria. Occupational hazard of living in a specific type of country :) If one can't stomach it, the one should have chosen another country to born in. [or correct the mistake at first chance by emigrating later :) ]

If Japan built the reactors with graphite and without containment - they would have exactly the same situation like Chernobyl now. Thanks God, they built more advanced version of reactors.

I'm sorry, but poor (almost non-existent) communication between TEPCO, Japan Government and IAEA regarding the condition at Fukushima 1 I've witnessed in the last few days make it look exactly like USSR where I was born too.

Japanese people don't seem to be informed much better than we were when the cloud from Chernobyl passed over us (Baltic states). It took workers at Swedish nuclear plants (and today USS Ronald Reagan personnel near the Japanese coast) to notify the World that something bad was happening.

poor (almost non-existent) communication between TEPCO, Japan Government and IAEA regarding the condition at Fukushima 1 I've witnessed in the last few days make it look exactly like USSR where I was born too.

Not to mention the long history of TEPCO cover-ups at the Fukushima and other power plants.

2037: The US-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has said it agrees with the assessment of France's Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) that the incident at Fukushima should be classified as level 6 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), one below Chernobyl. Following a number of explosions and a fire at the plant which released dangerous levels of radiation, ISIS said the situation had "worsened considerably" and was now closer to a level 6 event. "It may unfortunately reach a level 7," it added.

via BBC

what the hell is the point of this post ? The guy just watched it chernobyl on TV. the crappy title sounds like he was near chernobyl.

this is nothing but link baiting. this should be downvoted.

There's a compelling argument here: that nuclear power should be used in the hands of those who can handle it. Imagine if this happened in Iran. Or in North Korea. There are parallels, are there not?

As for your dismissive tone - you don't seem to see that an interesting discussion may come of this. (Which I've just started - see above). This submission shouldn't be downvoted. Your comment, on the other hand ...

I was not near Chernobyl. My father was.... I've edited the article so it makes sense now. No linkbait meant...

I found it interesting to read.

This guy has a point!

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