Chernobyl 26 April 1986

[Carsten Wiethoff]

As you all know, one reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded that day.
I remember vividly the time around that and the change in attitude towards all things nuclear and Russian that it created in me and probably all over Europe and Russia.

Last night my sleep deprived brain produced a vision so horrifying, but so real that I want to share with the forum in the hope that there is more research potential out there than I can ever muster myself.

From the perspective to alter the minds of large parts of the population in Europe and Russia it is hard to imagine a more effective PsyOp than Chernobyl, with the goal of crushing the Soviet Union and bringing the parts under control, at the same time effectively stopping all serious touching of nuclear energy, let alone nuclear weapons in Europe sans France and Britain.

How impossible is it that some combination of CIA, Mossad, MI5 and possibly French services and/or nuclear industry would dare to blow up a reactor?
How would that scenario fit with what was going on there?

I know that there is a myriad of material on the issue of Chernobyl, but I cannot currently research it myself.

I did not sleep well tonight.

Carsten

[Magda Hassan]

As you all know, one reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded that day.
I remember vividly the time around that and the change in attitude towards all things nuclear and Russian that it created in me and probably all over Europe and Russia.

Last night my sleep deprived brain produced a vision so horrifying, but so real that I want to share with the forum in the hope that there is more research potential out there than I can ever muster myself.

From the perspective to alter the minds of large parts of the population in Europe and Russia it is hard to imagine a more effective PsyOp than Chernobyl, with the goal of crushing the Soviet Union and bringing the parts under control, at the same time effectively stopping all serious touching of nuclear energy, let alone nuclear weapons in Europe sans France and Britain.

How impossible is it that some combination of CIA, Mossad, MI5 and possibly French services and/or nuclear industry would dare to blow up a reactor?
How would that scenario fit with what was going on there?

I know that there is a myriad of material on the issue of Chernobyl, but I cannot currently research it myself.

I did not sleep well tonight.

Carsten

It is easy enough to have nightmares about nuclear explosions and accidents and radiation illnesses. Chernobyl was just the latest in a chain of nuclear disasters - Sellafield fire and Three Mile Island just to name two. Where I live we have the history of the French nuclear testing and all its fall out and the British exploded a few nuclear bombs in Australia itself. All above ground testing. Nuclear power is deadly, un-necessary, expensive and too tied to the military insanity.

I find your scenario unlikely. If anything an accident on that scale and one which does not contain itself with in the borders of any one country only serves to make people realise the common links and the vulnerability of all human beings regardless of nationality and other constructs. We live on one planet together. Sink or swim together. The powers that seek to control always seek to divide not unite. Race, nation, religion. People living next to nuclear power stations in France, US, UK also saw that a Chernobyl could happen to them too. The peace and disarmament movement in all nations grew hugely and threatened many who profit from and prefer the atom whether peaceful or war like.

The accident in Chernobyl was caused by human error. Had SOP been followed it would not have happened. There is no evidence of sabotage at any stage.

Construction of the plant began in the late 1970s, with reactor no. 1 commissioned in 1977, followed by no. 2 (1978), no. 3 (1981), and no. 4 (1983). Reactor 4 was scheduled to be shut down for maintenance and after 2 years of operation was nearing then of its fuel cycle. The reactor had also been operating for 2 years with out a safety feature. Even when reactor 4 was not actively operating it still needed water to cool the core. The reactor had 3 diesel generators as back up but these took 15 seconds to start up and up to 60-70 seconds to attain full speeds. This one minute difference was considered too long. It was expected that the mechanical energy from the rotational momentum of the steam turbine could be used to generate electricity to run the main cooling water pumps, while it was spinning down. In theory, it should have been able to provide power for 45 seconds and thus bridge the power gap between the onset of the external power failure and the full availability of electric power from the emergency diesel generators, but it needed to be tested. It had been tested several times in the past unsuccessfully even with refinements. Because it was seen as a 'simple' experiment it should not have had any detrimental effect on the safety of the reactor nor considered necessary to involve the head engineer or scientist but this was against SOP. The experiment was that the reactor would be set at a low power setting and the steam turbine run up to full speed, at which point the steam supply would be closed off and the turbines allowed to freewheel, thereby supplying the necessary electricity to keep the water pumping until the generators kicked in. The day shift had been instructed about the test and were ready to go. There was a special team of electrical engineers present and the power was reduced to 50% but a Kiev power station unexpectedly went off line and requested that further reductions be postponed due to the need to meet heavy demand of evening peak time. The Chernobyl plant director complied and the test was postponed. At 11 pm the Kiev power plant controller gave the okay for the power down to resume but by this time the day shift was gone and the evening shift was also getting ready to go and the night shift was yet to start at midnight. Having waited for many hours the supervising electrical engineers were no longer in the best state of concentration and the shift engineer operator had just been on the job for 3 months with out supervision. The power down (from the 50% already down) was conducted during the shift change over. For some reason the operators continued to lower the power and took it too far down almost to shut down. They then brought the power back up but the changes in temperature had also created chemical changes in the water causing it to behave differently and other chemical changes occurred. The test was continued and all went well with getting the generators to kick in but the power down of the turbines caused the water flow to decrease and caused the water to flash to steam and causing a positive feedback loop to occur. At some stage the SCRAM command was executed but it had all gone pear shaped by then. Increased pressure, heat build up, fracturing fuel rods causing blockages (which had a design fault), increase in reaction rate, first a steam explosion followed by a hydrogen explosion. All of this disaster has been caused by a break down standard operating procedures and human error. I can't see any evidence of sabotage from foreign sources.
I don't know if this is of use to you as it is in Russian but it is by the vice chief engineer of Chernobyl and the man in charge of the test. He also blames the plant design rather than human error http://www.lib.ru/MEMUARY/CHERNOBYL/dyatlow.txt
and one from the IAEA http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publication...3e_web.pdf in English


I would never expect France to take part in a nuclear sabotage as they are too heavily invested in the nuclear industry to see anything endanger that little fiefdom of theirs.

The Chernobyl explosion (and Three Mile Island) put an end to a bright nuclear industry future until recently when it has been resurrected as an unimaginative solution to peak oil and global warming. I see your scenario as a lose lose situation and an unlikely choice by TPTB. As it is they had other plans to achieve their aims and were successful with those. Far more deadly than Chernobyl by the looks of the mortality rates since capitalism was forced on them.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Magda, I value your educated opinion highly.
I still think in terms of geopolitics, Chernobyl may have accelerated the fall of the Soviet Union, by chance or on purpose.
I agree, for the European nuclear industry it was a hard hit, reacted by heavy counter propaganda, about how harmless this all was.
I happen to have worked as a student with Siemens at Erlangen, and I participated in an "information meeting" held a few days after the event. Even to me as a young, unsuspicious student some sentences sounded like pure mind control.

Anyway, I do not control my nightmares, and as much as I hope for a believable negative result, I am not there yet.

Carsten

[Keith Millea]

I don't have nightmares when I smoke pot.:vroam:

[Peter Lemkin]

The details are known quite well exactly what happened, why, who made what [wrong] decisions, etc. It was just an accident..NOT everything is a conspiracy by the intelligence agencies. There are several good films that detail the events I have [and show in my Environment classes]. I can try to find the urls to them, if wanted. Sadly, all nuclear reactors are susceptible to catastrophic failures. The French design has the best safety record. The problem of the waste [radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years] is one of the big problems, failure and terrorist attacks [real or false - doesn't matter], they usually expel large amounts of super-heated water into rivers or oceans - killing plants and animals and lastly, they are not carbon neutral as the industry would have you believe. Look at Helen Caldecott's webpage , articles, lectures or books.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Thank you Peter.
Currently I do not have any time to view these films, or read books on Chernobyl.
Hearing from you that you feel you know the truth, what went wrong, combined with the fact that I never heard anywhere even hypotheses of black op activity related to that gives me some level of limited confidence in the official story.
But that was the case with most cases, at least for myself, I simply believed what I was told.
And to think that the CIA would have had to have only one sleeper in the control room, doing the wrong thing in a critical situation, having that much effect on the world situation, troubled me.
And, certainly, there have been sleepers in critical positions, that have never been detected and never will be. So the complete absence of any "conspiracy theory" regarding Chernobyl, may not be very reassuring.
Still, for the time being, I have other priorities and will leave it at that.
But if anybody is feeling like researching, and happens to find anything on that, please do inform us.

Carsten

[Magda Hassan]

Thank you Peter.
Currently I do not have any time to view these films, or read books on Chernobyl.
Hearing from you that you feel you know the truth, what went wrong, combined with the fact that I never heard anywhere even hypotheses of black op activity related to that gives me some level of limited confidence in the official story.
But that was the case with most cases, at least for myself, I simply believed what I was told.
And to think that the CIA would have had to have only one sleeper in the control room, doing the wrong thing in a critical situation, having that much effect on the world situation, troubled me.
And, certainly, there have been sleepers in critical positions, that have never been detected and never will be. So the complete absence of any "conspiracy theory" regarding Chernobyl, may not be very reassuring.
Still, for the time being, I have other priorities and will leave it at that.
But if anybody is feeling like researching, and happens to find anything on that, please do inform us.

Carsten

There were design flaws in the Russian plant model which got put to the test when it was under pressure. There were also managerial problems in the plant between the different groups of workers there. It was in part because of this event that Gorbachev instituted his policy of Glasnost and Perestroika. To break down secrecy and create better avenues of communication. That was the idea anyway even if it was totally abused by some. While there are and were sleepers there in the country at the time there is no proof that there were any at this particular plant or that they had a plan to do such a thing. There was much more productive work happening in corrupting key individuals (Shevardnadze etc) to collapse the USSR financially by looting it. And as we see it worked. No unpredictable radiation fall out to deal with either just trillions $$$ transferred to the West. So, Chernobyl played its part in the counter revolution there but by accident rather than design. No doubt exploited by those who wanted the USSR system undermined. It was unfortunate that it was Gorbachev who was General Secretary at the time instead of some one less naive. Never in any of my discussions with pro-soviet Russian/Ukrainians has any one ever thought that there was a black operation in play in the event. There were many others not reported though.

[Jan Klimkowski]

There were design flaws in the Russian plant model which got put to the test when it was under pressure. There were also managerial problems in the plant between the different groups of workers there. It was in part because of this event that Gorbachev instituted his policy of Glasnost and Perestroika. To break down secrecy and create better avenues of communication. That was the idea anyway even if it was totally abused by some. While there are and were sleepers there in the country at the time there is no proof that there were any at this particular plant or that they had a plan to do such a thing. There was much more productive work happening in corrupting key individuals (Shevardnadze etc) to collapse the USSR financially by looting it. And as we see it worked. No unpredictable radiation fall out to deal with either just trillions $$$ transferred to the West. So, Chernobyl played its part in the counter revolution there but by accident rather than design. No doubt exploited by those who wanted the USSR system undermined. It was unfortunate that it was Gorbachev who was General Secretary at the time instead of some one less naive. Never in any of my discussions with pro-soviet Russian/Ukrainians has any one ever thought that there was a black operation in play in the event. There were many others not reported though.

Magda - yes, yes and yes.

If there is a conspiracy/black operation related to Chernobyl, it is in the post-event cover up.

Eg the limited information given out as radiation spread across Europe.

Eg the suppresson of the truth about medical conditions and birth defects suffered by those directly affected by Chernobyl.

[David Guyatt]

Nuclear power is deadly, un-necessary, expensive and too tied to the military insanity.

Magda, I am not very familiar with the pros or cons of arguments for nuclear power, but in the UK we are in the midst of a debate on the subject. The government (thanks to that old Bliar guy) argues that for a green future, nuke power is the essential choice above a combination of renewables and old power (coal, oil, gas etc).

It seems that a number of apparent Greeny scientists are increasingly in favour of nuke energy as the best of all possible evils to stem global warming before the world tips over the edge of no return (arguably, it seems, this event might have a time horizon of no more than 10 years).

Thoughts?

[Magda Hassan]

Nuclear power is deadly, un-necessary, expensive and too tied to the military insanity.

Magda, I am not very familiar with the pros or cons of arguments for nuclear power, but in the UK we are in the midst of a debate on the subject. The government (thanks to that old Bliar guy) argues that for a green future, nuke power is the essential choice above a combination of renewables and old power (coal, oil, gas etc).

It seems that a number of apparent Greeny scientists are increasingly in favour of nuke energy as the best of all possible evils to stem global warming before the world tips over the edge of no return (arguably, it seems, this event might have a time horizon of no more than 10 years).

Thoughts?

Well, IMHO and FWIW, I don't think it is necessary at all. There are plenty of other alternatives. Tidal, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal for starters. All of which are pretty simple to do these days and safe to run and have no deadly by products that last 100's of 1,000's of years. If they breakdown they just breakdown. A major disruption to the supply of energy but not a major catastrophe to all living things. Also these systems can be decentralised which is great for avoiding terrorist (and false flag) targets or even just accidents. If one goes off grid there are others to take the slack and people and business can supply their own so life goes on smoothly. If every building had their roof made of pv material and used wind turbines all that energy can be fed back into the grid (which we already have so no new infrastructure) when there is no or low energy needs of that building - while asleep or empty or shut down after business hours etc. Plus there are things that don't cost a cent like changing building codes so that nothing new can be built or renovated with out incorporating sustainable energy design at every stage. Also changing people from mindless consumers to thoughtful adults costs nothing but does require political will. Then there is retro fitting. Where exactly is this energy needed? Housing? Industry (which ones) ? Military? Construction (of what)? Basically, society needs to change though. Much less consumption, less waste, more repair, more self sufficiency and self reliance etc. Business hates that.

I see the promotion of a nuclear 'alternative' under the guise of a supposed 'clean and green' alternative to nasty old dirty energy which is going to run out anyway as just another corporate grab for power and domination of the worst kind. The pressure is on to choose right NOW when there has been lots of time to implement gradual changes to other alternatives and I believe there still is. Nuclear energy has never been cheap. It is in fact very expensive and has had to be constantly bailed out by government and cannot be self sufficient financially. That is not even allowing for the cost of cleaning up another Chernobyl which will also be borne by the tax payer as it will be seen as an externality by the private nuclear industry. Nor does it account for the safe storage for the 500,000 years of the highly toxic and radioactive by product of the industry. They have yet to even come up with a solution for that apart from shunting it off to some one else and making it their problem (another one of those externalities).

And what it all comes down to is that they want to keep the corporate model above all else to keep the consumer dependent and needing to buy a basic necessity - energy. If people can supply their own and get it free and forever, plus use it to plug in their electric car, that is not good for their profits. It is un-necessarily complicated and no one can set up their own reactor so we would be dependent of these nuclear industry corporations for our energy. The nuclear industry works like any other corporation in the western world. Isn't that comforting? And it is tied in with the military through their use of nuclear arms. Even if solar and wind supply half the energy needs it is half the coal being used now. That would take pressure off and time to make a rational decision.

The very best case nuclear scenario is by using thorium. Thorium nuclear reactors don't use uraniuam, they can use nuclear waste as fuel and they only produce a very small percentage of low level nuclear waste with a half life of about 500 years compared to conventional reactors which have a half life of about 500,000 years give or take a thousand. They produce no plutomium therefore no bombs and can never reach critical mass and therefore can never explode like Chenobyl or Nine-mile Island. But is 500 years really okay? You prefer to die from arsenic or cyanide? They can still be blown up or flown into and pulled apart in earth quakes. Thorium and uranium are still finite resources and then we are back to square one again anyway.

The sun is just a giant nuclear reactor in the sky and if it ever runs out it will be when we are long gone. Same for geothermal. By the time the earth's core cools down we wont be able to live here anyway. We will always have the sun, the earth and the wind and the tides. All else can be consumed. Do it right the first time.