New russian subs

[MrRiplEy[H]]

They would live a few weeks.

Depends how you look at it. They would be already dead, just not necessarily know it yet.

[GScholz]

They would live a few weeks.

It all depends on how big the dose is. A big enough radiation dose takes out the nervous system
and you die almost immediately.

[icepac]

A few of the guys at chernobyl stood 100 feet away from the crater that used to be the reactor and looked directly into it.

A few of the other guys stood next to a piece of fuel radiating 20,000 rads per hour receiving fatal doses.

Vladimir Pravik stood line of sight to the reactor for a few hours and died two weeks later.

[kappa]

They would live a few weeks.

ummm, no..

[Arlo]

[Brooke]

 

[Nath[BDP]]

hahah

[GScholz]

 

[icepac]

ummm, no..

UM.....yes.

Proven cases carefully observed.

[GScholz]

UM.....yes.

Proven cases carefully observed.

Wow! There's actually been a case where a person has been standing in an unshielded reactor core?!  Not the crater of a destroyed reactor...

[icepac]

The Chernobyl reactor core in which they directly looked into had just suffered a huge excursion to near 1000 times the normal power levels and was far more radioactive than a properly functioning reactor.

They were also surrounded by chunks of fuel and moderator that was ejected from the core.

You will be hard pressed to find anybody exposed to a higher dose than some of those guys yet they lived a few weeks.

[Sol75]

I've done a fair share of reading on radiation, nuclear power, etc, but... I gotta say..
based on the photo provided, I would assume kappa works in the industry... so.. sorry icepac, but I'm going with him.  Plus i've read that certain levels of radiation CAN be instant incapacitation.. or nearly so... thus the purpose of a "Neutron Bomb" to kill/incapacitate tank crews quickly, at a much greater range than blast/thermal alone would.. (modern tanks are actually pretty resistant to the blast and thermal damage of a nuke, depending on range)...

Kappa, do correct me if I am wrong on my assumption about your chosen career field..

[icepac]

20,000 roentgens per hour is pretty intense which is what the fuel chunks and core of chernobyl was emitting.

[Sol75]

I would think that radiation level would definitely depend on the size of the fuel "chunk" as you put it.  Inside the core itself, sure, I could believe that level of radiation intensity, but, also remember, the 3 most important factors in reducing radiation dose.. Time, Distance, Shielding..focus on distance for this case.. no matter if they were looking into the core, standing above it, etc, there was still quite a distance between the emission and thier location.  So, while inside the core may have been 20k/hr, I doubt the persons "observing" the core would have experienced that dose rate, it would have been, while still QUITE lethal, quite a bit less than that... Whereas int he scenerio Kappa and you were speaking about (the irradiated fuel rod in open air over a fuel pool) the dose rate would be significantly higher, since the distance between the source, and the person observing, would be measured in feet, rather than tens or hundreds of feet...

Again, I don't work in this industry, nor do I have any training in it, although if I were starting out fresh and new, I would seriously consider it, I am just a person who is fascinated by all things science, and especially nuclear power/physics... so take my post here for what it's worth...

[icepac]

It's fully apparent you are not at all acquainted with what happened at Chernobyl and the doses the workers received.

There absolutely no chance that a fuel assembly from a properly shut down reactor is more radioactive than the core of a reactor that ran away to the point of ejecting it's core.

It blew off the 2 million pound upper biological shield and ejected much of the core and burning hot fuel through the roof of the building and onto the roofs of surrounding buildings.

Each piece of fuel the guys pictured are picking up with shovels is radiating 20,000 roentgens per hour and only the guys who spent hours up there actually died and nobody was incapacitated until hours later.



20 years later, the smoking hole that used to be the core is still emitting over 10,000 roentgens.

A couple of guys (sitnikov and pravik) were on top of the roof near the stack looking down into the reactor.

That's about as high a dose as anybody who has ever lived received.

They lived at least a week if not two.