Really quiet

[Amedee Van Gasse]

On 18-03-10 20:50, Michael Haney wrote:

> Oh, that wouldn't just set the blogosphere on fire, most definitely
> not.  No, it would cause an explosion that would make Chernobyl look
> like a firecracker.  Fan-boys gone totally nuclear!

Actually, Chornobyl wasn't a big explosion at all. It was just a steam 
explosion followed by a non-nuclear hydrogen explosion. You know, 
hydrogen + air oxygen + spark = explosion + water. Chemistry 101.
Sure, the hydrogen was created by a criticality incident, but that was 
only in a limited part of the core.

The real problem of Chornobyl was the graphite fire, combined with 
unlucky weather conditions.


Take the Tsar Bomb: *that* was a real explosion. The biggest man-made 
explosion ever. One quarter of the Krakatoa eruption. Ironically, it was 
one of the cleanest nuclear explosions ever, in terms of radioactive 
fallout relative to its yield. You would still need your asbestos 
longjohns :-)