I was inside RBMK 1500, and have a few questions :)

[mheslep]

Try to explain that to the public. Many will hear "nuclear" and completely ignore all rational arguments.

Perhaps, though I think the public taste for nuclear is finally on the up, especially with some of the more serious people in the environmental movement now contending that nuclear power is the only serious alternative to fossil fuels (e.g. Patrick Moore, Hansen, the film Pandora's Promise). The US has a dozen or two startup companies working in innovative nuclear.

 

[jim hardy]

My grandmother's family had a distinctly different experience with Russians who came in 1933 and seized all their grain and food. The entire family starved to death, except my grandmother.

I think nuking Moscow might be not the worst idea.

I understand. I apologize for stirring unpleasant memories.

 

[Salvador]

Ok Nikkkom , it's not entirely about how fast they died but the fact that they received lethal doses in a very short amount of time and would have died anyway.both the reactor workers and the station's fire brigade all of them irradiated themselves to absurd levels.Without looking much into the details I see that every one of them died the same year.

As for the history , I think people from both sides tend to come to wrong conclusions and overestimates.The young folks these days don't estimate at all they just don't care since they are so pulled away with the whole living for today thing going on these days.
The Cold war and and USSR was too complex of a thing to be simply labelled as "bad commies figuring how to destroy the capitalist piggies americans" :D I doubt statements like these are serious ways to look at history.
Don't worry Nikkkom , my family was sent to Siberia and my father grew up there and only later returned to Latvia.But Latvia was first declared as a country and made sovereign because V.I.Lenin overthrew the Czar and did the October revolution and then granted us freedom from the Russian empire.
Yes the organization he created later took that freedom away under the lead of Stalin, but what else did you expect ? they were the winners and no matter how much the westerners try to claim their prizes , the Russians fought with the Germans and took most of the hits.I'm not trying to be biased here but we must understand that if not for the Russian effort and the USSR we would speak German today , and God forbid they would have had more time and would have probably got the A bomb , think about that.

Everything has a brightside to it , the Cold war made the world advance much more than it probably would have without it , It was after the USSR put the first man into space that the USA ramped up all of it's resources and with the help of a top nazi rocket engineer of Jewish decent that they made the Saturn V and put themselves on to the moon.If not for the space race this would have all probably happened a lot later.
USSR was the biggest socioeconomic/military experiment ever conducted on a global scale on a territory nearly half the landmass of entire Earth , so judging something as big as that with few simple words even for those who had lived through it is rather silly.

That being said I must admit that of all the knowledge I have myself over the history of affairs , and it's quite a lot since i have been always keen on history , I must say that the average American doesn't come close to the fanaticism and mind twisting evil genius living inside a Russian who is determined to take over world with the help of a ideological monster machine.
But then again think about the Germans whose fathers came home from a days job of killing hundreds of Jews and then sat at the dinner table with their wives and children like nothing ever happened.No need to always portray just the Russians as the bad ones.

@Jim , well I wouldn't say that you were taught all wrong, well the only wrong thing about the western propaganda is that we all live in caves here eating Chernobyl leftover first aid kits.But to be honest the USSR ideological machine and as I pointed out earlier it's many secret service agencies on top of which ere the KGB were really wicked organizations and their absolute genius is still somewhat hidden and misunderstood by the rest of the world.
If you whine about your NSA tapping your phone calls and the CIA keeping the Guantanamo bay that is just silly , to my understanding that is nothing bad and doesn't come anywhere close to what the KGB did , back in the day probably the worlds most sophisticated and determined intelligence agency which worked with methods ranging from simple interrogation to mass killings and then using a bulldozer to make the grave hole because the bodies were so many they gave up on diggin with shovels.
Just remember that there was no congressman to cry out for help no news agency to hear your cover worthy story and no one to help you if you became the enemy of the state.

On the other hand let me give a conflicting opinion nikkkom , my grandfather worked his whole life as the director of the biggest port in the LPSR socialist republic , he even was able to refuse the invitation to the Communist party and keep his high ranking job , even though he had surveillance on him for this decision.

P.S. which country are you from Nikkkom ?Judging by what you said about your grandmother I would say you are from Ukraine ? Stalin made them starve in the 1930's because otherwise they refused to join the collective big farms and wanted to keep on going each with their own small one.

I must admit a grave sin especially if I were to live in US , when you saw that sickle and hammer on that ship Jim didn't you think to yourself oh, what a lovely and inspiring insignia ? Of course this was far from the truth but I must admit that the symbolism of empires and oppressive regimes are somewhat cool to look at as it gives you this feeling of might etc.Oh , just a crazy thought along the way , would anyone love to visit Chernobyl someday ?I am obsessed with old places and forgotten places especially if they have to do with science and technology , I have written down a list along the years of places I would love to visit.They include old silver and later uranium mines , some working nuclear reactors besides the one I got myself in , and many other objects most ofther travelers don't even know exist.
sadly it all comes down to money , the one thing we hoped would become unnecessary once we achieve total Communism ... :D

 

[nikkkom]

Don't worry Nikkkom , my family was sent to Siberia and my father grew up there and only later returned to Latvia.But Latvia was first declared as a country and made sovereign because V.I.Lenin overthrew the Czar and did the October revolution and then granted us freedom from the Russian empire.
Yes the organization he created later took that freedom away under the lead of Stalin, but what else did you expect?

Mass executions and suppression of all political opponents of Communists started under Lenin, not Stalin.

the Russians fought with the Germans and took most of the hits.I'm not trying to be biased here but we must understand that if not for the Russian effort and the USSR we would speak German today

The Russians fought *on the German side* in 1939 - they attacked Poland from both sides. Whereas the West fought against Germans from the very beginning.

"Taking most of the hits" is not a thing to be proud of. Especially since USSR had more tanks, more airplanes, more artillery than Germans at the beginning of their clash. If anything, its *Germans* who should have lost in 1941.

I am not at all sure that Germans would have won against UK+US.

USSR was the biggest socioeconomic/military experiment ever conducted on a global scale on a territory nearly half the landmass of entire Earth , so judging something as big as that with few simple words even for those who had lived through it is rather silly.

I can write twenty pages about it. I'm actually would love to talk about it in detail - it's amazing how little understanding of what actually was happening in USSR, how it worked, why it failed, exists in American left. Especially worrying is that they think they can build a "working socialism". They can't. No one can, because that system can't work.

 

[Salvador]

Well yes we should then just open a cleverly thought through topic on another subforums otherwise this thread already has so much politics in it, that I'm starting to think nuclear reactors run on Trotsky's spilled blood which the USSR obtained when Stalin ordered to " enrich" Trotsky's head with an axe, while he was hiding in Mexico.

Yes Russia indeed first signed the The Molotov Ribbentrop Pact whicg meant that at first Stalin was secretly working together with Hitler only later on Hitler made a fool of himself and made the historic mistake that many before him had made and always failed , he attacked the USSR in hopes of invading Russia.In the words of the great Jeremy Clarkson from the Top Gear times , "Some say , that nuclear reactors in the USSR are 100% safe and clean because they reach their critical mass using nothing but Lenin's books about class warfare stacked in a pile which is then moderated and kept under control with a few insertions of "Mein Kampf".
As far as Chernobyl and RBMK's go I actually found a good description by a fellow member here years ago quite randomly , here's the thread
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/rbmk-slovakia-and-bulgaria.298382/

post #8 by Morbius , very brief yet detailed and good explanation for those who don't know yet , just in case.

 

[mheslep]

it's amazing how little understanding of what actually was happening in USSR, how it worked, why it failed, exists in American left.

Unfortunately there never was a Nuremberg Trials equivalent for Stalin's terror. Nor Mao's. If there had been, I suspect the rise of a militaristic dictator running Russia would be as likely as swastika sporting strong man being allowed to run modern Germany.

 

[Salvador]

Oh I don't know folks , if you are interested maybe we can have a nice chat in some subforums here on PF , we still have one were free speech is allowed right?

As for what you said @mheslep , I can't fully agree , first of all Russia is no Germany the mentality has a big difference.Second of all nobody judges the victor , atleast not in a all out world war.Thirdly nobody also judges those who go strong and keep their power.Russia hasn't fallen into enemy hands in the last couple of centuries , only regime changes but in Russia a regime change doesn't mean the same as elsewere it doesn't imply that the next one will condemn the previous.

And after all do you really think that just because Stalin died as a national hero and had no trial the people of Russia or around the world don't know he used to run the biggest slaughter machine in the history of mankind? Many hate him and many praise him and their both Russians , one really has to drink with Russians and live there to truly understand how one country slain by it's own ruler can still love him and follow his footsteps , it's somewhat their mentality and the communists knew that all to well and used it successfully throughout the years but this is a topic for atleast a book as thick as The Decameron which I'm reading right now.

All in all don't judge Stalin by his blood , no leader of USSR Russia at that time could have went entirely without blood , you can't control a monster machine wihout some sacrifice of your own.For those of you who know history , Lenin said shortly before his death that he has created a machine that seems to got out of control and work against the very revolutionaries themselves.That's a clue , those who think deeper will understand.
You have to give Stalin credit for his love for architecture , just to give you folks a different perspective , here's a recent CNN link showing Moscow metro stations , and I must say I find them extremely beautiful.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/21/architecture/moscow-metro-stations-david-burdeny/index.htmlThe offer still stands if anyone wants to have a in depth thread about some of the biggest things in human history , soviet socialism including maybe we should make a thread , I love politics and history just as much as I love physics , sadly I happen to be better at the first than the second.

 

[mheslep]

...Russia hasn't fallen into enemy hands in the last couple of centuries ...

Sure it did, it fell into the hands of the Bolsheviks and Stalinists , who murdered tens of millions, as did much of Eastern Europe. I'm not sure the Nazis could have done worse. You really want a thread on on Hitler vs Stalin, how Stalin wasn't so bad, had to be done? I think Saddam Hussein said something similar before they hung him.

 

[Hornbein]

a territory nearly half the landmass of entire earth

Not a chance. Maybe a tenth is my guess.

6%. The USSR was 6% of Earth's landmass.

 

[jim hardy]

The offer still stands if anyone wants to have a in depth thread about some of the biggest things in human history

I'm terrible at history because i cannot remember names of people or places.
I would read with great interest such a history thread but couldn't contribute much.
I value the input from you folks around Russia - it's eye opening...

Since i can't remember details i have to look for patterns.
Late nineteenth-early 20th century was a time of drastic change.
US War Between the States was the first big one where information and supplies could move faster than muscle power. Telegraph and steam railroads...
Nietzsche pushed idea of "noble races" .
US pretty much eradicated its American Indian population . And grabbed territory from Spain and Mexico by conquest . (Did we set an example or just continue a European paradigm ?)
Art of War became highly mechanized . (Great White Fleet)
Radio created Instantaneous mass communication .

Seems an environment where adolescent civilization is bound to make mistakes learning to use these newfound muscles.
Lincoln's "Address at the Lyceum" describes the power seeking personality type that's apt to avail itself of such opportunity. And did.

I hope you guys start a thread in General Discussion.

old jim

 

[Salvador]

With all due respect @mheslep the opinion you expressed kind of reminds of so many others coming from westerners and I have a problem with that as they are somewhat surface like and full of the information the west has been presented with in order to paint the world the way the US government wants it.

Saying Russia fell into the hands of Bolsheviks in 1917 is like saying America fell into the hands of it's European settlers who demanded freedom from the British Empire.You fought and declared independence in 1776 because you were tired of the queen telling you what to do.
The Russians followed Lenin because he was a revolutionary and a turn around,a light of hope into the otherwise centuries long Russian Czar empire system.
Lenin was no enemy to Russia , you think the Czar didn't kill any people ? I think if we would look closer into the very American history we would find certain killings in the name of the new born country , although yes I can't deny the only ones doing it on such a grand scale and in the name of something never before seen were the communists.

As for the nazis , trust me they could have done worse they simply didn't have the resources and the time to do it any longer , the Russians did have both of them and still do.No need to say one was worse than the other.

I once spoke with one guy in the university and he was of Russian descent , he said that the only way Russia can be held together and somewhat contained to not become a threat for the world is for it to have a strong leader.You people just don't understand that democracy is not meant for everyone and doesn't need to be.
Trying to see the world in such light is as much of a utopia as that by the communists to dream of a future were everyone would become nice and honest.
Those who think Putin is evil and bad should inform themselves and consider the alternatives , the ones who also seek that chair.

P.S. When would the time finally come when people would stop being so ignorant about world history and the state of affairs , the lowest possible state that we could drop to is when everyone starts answering with answers like "France is a continent" or "The Eiffel tower is located in Sydney and the Russians want to place a Lenin sculpture on top of it."I'll think about that option to have a chat in the general discussion subforums alhtough from both past experience with people from Continental US and also some answers in this thread I doubt that would be a useful exercise.I like to learn physics , when one tries to straighten a political argument the majority is just too weak and can't take it so nothing but flame wars arise from it.

 

[mfb]

This is a nuclear engineering thread. No politics here please.

 

[Salvador]

Yep this thread went offtopic but mostly due to my weakness to such topics as discussed here.
I will provide no further unnecessary answers in this thread and rather open one in the general discussion if I decide so.

 

[jim hardy]

mea culpa as well. Center rudder