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Comment by thow-58d4e8b | Hacker News Reader

Chernobyl sarcophagus is a massive pile of concrete - basically indestructible. Buildings made of concrete are ridiculously resilient to explosions - remember the Beirut explosion? That grain silo right next to the epicenter was still standing

Berlin has some flak towers from WW2, quoting Wikipedia:

The Soviets, in their assault on Berlin, found it difficult to inflict significant damage on the flak towers, even with some of the largest Soviet guns, such as the 203 mm M1931 howitzers. After the war, the demolition of the towers was often considered not feasible and many remain to this day

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Chernobyl's containment is not massive concrete, and cannot sustain a hit from a bomb in any way. The new safe containment structure is metal and air, it's meant to contain dust as the reactor building inside is dismantled. Watch this to learn all about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdnutU2m71o

The old sarcophagus that was build in 1986 only had concrete walls in a few key places. Much of it had huge holes and open areas covered in sheet metal. All of it was falling apart and rapidly deteriorating when construction on new safe containment started.

And remember there are 3 other reactor buildings at the site and none of them are covered by the containment structure or really any protection (Chernobyl's Soviet era design which lacks a concrete containment structure is partly why its meltdown was so catastrophic). The site cannot withstand any attack.

> Chernobyl sarcophagus is a massive pile of concrete - basically indestructible.

This is such an hilariously uneducated take that it has to be trolling.

Let's set aside the facts that the sarcophagus' 20-30 year estimated lifetime has already expired, and has previously partially collapsed, and has had to be replaced by the New Safe Confinement structure. A stray artillery shell will tear apart any 36 year old building that was structurally weakened by an explosion, concrete or not.

While the Sarcophagus and New Safe Confinement structure around the reactor contains the worst of the fallout, most of the contamination in the surrounding area was simply buried underground using bulldozers and earth-moving equipment. Explosions risk kicking up that contamination from the soil.

You underestimate the amount of nuclear material that's still in the ground around there. Vaporizing that isn't a great idea.

This is wrong on so many levels, it's almost right again.

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