The containment building of new nuclear power plant has to withstand impact of large, commercial aircraft used for long distance flights, with aviation fuel loading typically used in such flights.
Containment buildings for nuclear reactors are the strongest non-military buildings ever build. You need something much stronger than a small airplane, or simple drone, missile to breach it. Even a 155mm artillery granite or a anti-tank missile is not enough. You would probably need specialize bunker buster munition, or nuclear explosion.
The Russian army will not directly attack nuclear power plants in Ukraine. They could not gain much from release of radioactive material as the radioactive material would also migrate to Russia. The Russian army is attacking the infrastructure connecting power plants to the grid, to deny the electricity production. (And is attacking must power infrastructure in Ukraine).
Maybe this will help to revitalize the US solar manufacturing. In Europe there is almost no solar manufacturing, just importing solar manufactured in China.
For comparison the Bhopal disaster (which is much less known in the West) that occurred on 3 December 1984 in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India caused deaths in the range 3928 to 16000.
A government affidavit in 2006 stated the leak caused 558,125 injuries including 38,478 temporary partial injuries and approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.
I think it's an error that International Atomic Energy Agency classified both Fukushima nuclear accident and Chernobyl nuclear accident on International Nuclear Event Scale Level 7 (major accident).
In both the amount of released radionuclides and health effects of the accidents, Chernobyl accident was much, much bigger than Fukushima.
Most of Europe drinks water from underground aquifers, which could not be affected by Chernobyl. Even breathing with air with radionuclides from Chernobyl in far distance from Chernobyl power plant didn't cause much radiation dose to the population. It was eating contaminated food and drinking contaminated milk that cause most radiation dose for population.
The precise mechanism was: radioactive particles fall to ground, or are washed to ground by rain, which concentrates them on vegetation with a lot of surface especially leafy vegetables, grass. Leafy vegetables are eaten directly by humans. Grass is eaten by cows, which again concentrates the radionuclides in milk. Humans drink milk, eat cheese concentrated from milk.
Not all radionuclides produced in nuclear fission have the same health impact on population in case of a nuclear disaster. To have a significant health hazard a radionuclide needs to have 3 properties: volatility, half-life, bioaccumulativity.
Volatility - some radioactive elements (heavy metals) are not moved far away by air, some radioactive elements like radioactive noble gases dilute very fast.
Stuff with a short half-life will transform into stable elements before migrating far. Stuff with with very long half-life will not produce much radiation during human lifetime.
Bioaccumulativity, radioactive stuff needs to stay in body to do damage. If it's eaten and then pooped out next day it usually doesn't cause much damage.
Most dangerous for general public in case of nuclear disasters are:
Iodine-131 (half-life 8 days): Iodine is stored in thyroid gland and stays in for long time in body. Especially children need a lot of iodine per kilogram of body weight. In regions where there is not enough of iodine in food (lacking seafood, table salt without added iodine), human body will try to get every bit of iodine from environment and hold it in body as long as possible.
Cesium-137 (half-time 30.04 years) : Alkali metal that forms salts. Has tendency to accumulate in soft tissues.
Strontium-90 (half-time 28.91 years) : Chemically similar to calcium. Has tendency to be incorporated into bones, teeth and stay in body for very long time.
Big part of radiation dose to the population could be prevented if the Soviet state didn't tried to cover up the Chernobyl and would prevent people from eating local food and milk, because most of the damage is done by eating iodine-131 in the first weeks after accident. Timely administration of potassium iodide tables would also help.
Chernobyl liquidators were affected with much broader range of radionuclides (radioactive stuff that did not migrate far) and with much high concentrations (radioactive stuff was not diluted much).
Direct deaths: 2 killed by debris (including 1 missing) and 28 killed by acute radiation sickness.
There many estimates about impact of Chernobyl disaster. I think the most comprehensive study is from Chernobyl Forum.
"On the death toll of the accident, the report states that 28 emergency workers died from acute radiation syndrome and 15 patients died from thyroid cancer. It roughly estimates that cancers deaths caused by the Chernobyl accident might eventually reach a total of up to 4,000 among the 600,000 cleanup workers or "liquidators" who received the greatest exposures."
"In August 1975, the Banqiao Dam and 61 others throughout Henan, China, collapsed following the landfall of Typhoon Nina. The dam collapse created the third-deadliest flood in history which affected 12,000 km2 (3 million acres) with a total population of 10.15 million, including around 30 cities and counties, with estimates of the death toll ranging from 26,000 to 240,000."
"After the disaster, the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government remained silent to the public, while no media were allowed to make reports."
"The official documents of this disaster were considered a state secret until 2005 when they were declassified."
Indeed, and large parts of the reason has nothing to do with geography. The same applies to Denmark and the rest of the Nordics.
Obviously solar will be decreasingly useful as you get further to the pole, but the Nordics aren't worse off than Alaska or Canada in that regard, and both do solar to some extent AFAIK.
It has lot to do with geographic latitude and weather patterns. The amount of electric output per amount solar installed strongly affects the profitability of solar installation (if you don't count of government subsidies).
And summer isn't when you need the power anyway, so its very inefficient since northern winters has barely any sunlight at all, its close to 0 from solar power then. In warmer countries you want power in the summer for AC during the day, so there it matches usage, but in northern countries solar isn't very useful at all.
> but the Nordics aren't worse off than Alaska or Canada in that regard
Nordics are much further north than Canada, most Canadians live further south than Paris and Paris is a lot further south than even Denmark that is much further south than Finland.
Energy production doesn't have to be profitable, but no private investor would invest into a unprofitable business.
If energy production in Denmark would not by profitable, the Government of Denmark could nationalize the energy production, or push households to install more solar and sell the energy at predefined price to the grid, or increase taxes to pay out subsidies to make energy production profitable again for private investors. Or combine all this approaches.
For plant growth also very important is the ambient temperature, which in Denmark higher than for example in Canada at similar latitude. This caused by Gulf Stream. Its carrying warm water northeast across the Atlantic makes Western Europe and especially Northern Europe warmer and milder than it otherwise would be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise
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