Can you tell me about the Ural Mountain Nuclear disaster?
464450
Ural is not a single mountain, but a whole ridge (like Rockies in US). I haven't heard of a major nuclear disaster there, not even sure if there is a reactor there since there are not that many people live there.\n\nThe big nuclear disaster in Soviet Union was Chernobyl, which is in Ukraine and quite far from Urals. In 1986, a negligent experiment resulted in reactor meltdown, resulting in direct irradiation of immediate surroundings and discharge or radioactive dust into atmoshpere, with winds carrying the fallout as far as Scandinavia. Now the plant is shut down, the reactor is encased in conrete 'sarcophagus', and all the settlements for miles around are abandoned.
588471
Wow, both of these answerers got it pretty wrong (it wasn't a revolution that ended the USSR for starters).   This is still at tremendous subject however - I couldn't answer it without a few hours of writing I'm not willing to do to help you avoid your homework, so I suggest you start researching.  Even the wikipedia entries on the USSR, Afghanistan and Chernobyl would be good places to start.
749900
I actually saw a documentary on this, on the channel "Discovery Civilizations".\n\nBasically, it said the whole area is tectonically unstable and laced with pockets of underground gas.  There was an earthquake, that resulted in liquefaction of the sands, and the entire cities slid right into the sea.  The fires were the result of friction lighting the gas pockets on fire.   \n\nIt would have been horrifying to behold.
228704
try looking up "nuclear" energy..you will find more info i am sure.
196938
(I have rearranged the paragraphs from theage.com's article cited below).\n\nPavel Hlava, an immigrant construction worker from the Czech Republic, shot footage of the first plane hitting the north tower as a 4WD vehicle he was riding in entered the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel en route to lower Manhattan. \n\nThe footage, obtained by The New York Times, was taken by a Czech immigrant construction worker whose son at one point came close to accidentally erasing the rare, chilling footage, the newspaper reported on its website today. \n\nThe only videotape known to have captured both planes slamming into the World Trade Centre, and only the second image of the first strike, has surfaced on the eve of the second anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. \n\nFederal officials investigating the Trade Centre collapse are trying to obtain a copy of the hourlong tape, which could cast light on the cause of the north tower's collapse by helping to determine factors including the exact speed at which the first plane travelled, The Times said. \n\nThe only other known footage of the first plane's impact came from a French film crew making a documentary about a probationary firefighter. \n\nHlava, who made the tape looking at the camera's relatively low-resolution LCD display, told the Times he did not see the first plane as he focused on the towers. \n\nBut the tape shows a whitish object hitting the tower, followed by dust spurting from the tower's side and a silvery, expanding cloud. \n\nPassing through the tunnel, Hlava, his brother and his boss heard a radio report that a small private plane had hit the World Trade Centre, straight ahead outside the tunnel. \n\nThat hardly prepared them for what they saw when they emerged: the north tower, looming over them, bursting with flames. \n\nAs Hlava continued filming, the second jet shrieked behind him. He caught the plane as it crashed into the south tower, exploding into an orange fireball and sending papers flying in every direction. \n\nLater, after crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, he focused on the buildings again as the south tower tilted to one side and collapsed. \n\nHlava and his brother, Josef, unsuccessfully tried to sell the tape in New York and in the Czech Republic, the newspaper said. \n\nHlava said through a Czech-language translator that language difficulties hindered his ability to sell or release the tape to the media. \n\nHe also said that so much time had passed that he had doubted there was still interest in the tape. \n\n"All his friends, they told him, 'Hey, you made a mistake. You waited too long'," translator David Melichar told The Times. \n\nHlava's boss, who was driving, also had strong objections to selling the tape, Melichar said. \n\nHlava and Melichar's numbers are not listed and attempts by The Associated Press to reach them were unsuccessful. \n\nIn the weeks and months after the attack, the tape sat in Hlava's apartment in the Ridgewood section of Queens. \n\nOn one occasion, Hlava said he noticed that his son was playing with the video camera and erasing the tape. Hlava snatched the camera away before either of the plane impacts were erased. \n\nA friend of Hlava's wife obtained a copy of the tape and traded it to another Czech immigrant to pay off a bar tab. \n\nAnother woman learned of the existence of the copy and brought it to the attention of a freelance news photographer who took the tape to The Times.\n\nThe photographer, Walter Karling, who now describes himself as Hlava's agent, said it had not been sold to any television station. The Times said it had not paid for the tape. \n\nKarling's number was not published and he could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press. \n\n\n- AP
409141
heres a show we did on depleated uranium http://www.philipdru.com/rokke_stream.html\n\nwe're tryin to bring things like this to peoples attention. tough going though, nobody wants to listen. weve gotten through to some people, makes it worth it. http://scotthortonshow.com/
23868
Almost 80,000 people lost their life in this worst ever earthquake in this area.\nIt happened on 8th of October 2005.\nIt was of 7.6 megnituide.\nThese days earthquake hit areas are under very very cold weather. Snow is falling their and they people dont have homes still living in camps n tants provided by Gov. and UNO. they dont have schools, hospitals, clean water.\nCauses told by some geologists were the movement of plates under that area.
424743
It dramatically decreased the chance of total nuclear annihilation, because many of  the thousands of nukes that the Soviets controlled were decommissioned.   It probably increased the chances of a nuclear terrorist attack, because a number of nukes, nuclear material, and Soviet Nuclear Scientists were stolen, sold, or hired on the black market.   This allowed a group with 20-40 million dollars to become a limited nuclear power.   Don't worry about the country with 500 nuclear weapons.  Just worry about the guy who wants just one.
385600
I love nuclear power - Chernobyl was run by a bunch of resentful communists - with very little grasp of anything technological - now they have 2 heads and 12 fingers to show for it!
100632
Hair breadth from utter destruction- too many close calls\n\nOn October 27, 1962, a Soviet submarine officer named Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov reportedly refused to comply with the launch of a nuclear warhead while apparently under attack by a U.S. warship near Cuba.\n\nSeptember 26th, 1983 - Colonel Stanislav Petrov disobeys protocols and fails to launch Soviet Missiles after his early warning system indicated 5 missiles launched by the US at the Soviet Union.\n\nJanuary 25, 1995 - A peaceful scientific rocket is launched off the coast of Norway. To the east, in Russia, radar operators mistake the launch for a nuclear attack by the West. A deadly process -- nearly on auto-pilot -- is triggered. Within minutes President Yeltsin has been alerted of the attack. For the first time in history, the Russian nuclear briefcase is activated.\n\nI believe they're a necessary evil, especially in this age of rogue states and leaders.  The nearness to calamities, however, from false alarms makes them scary, and these are only the enemies false alarms, i wonder how many US false positives there have been since 1950.
721779
Personally I think it was destined to fail to begin with. Look at the methods of control that were used and the rampant corruption within the government. It’s a wonder it managed to stay afloat as long as it did. Reganomics really didn’t have as much to do with the USSR’s collapse as much as the slow attrition of the US economy and the world governments against a rapidly eroding communist regime that was finally becoming aware that their empires threshold of domination was long gone. In short, Reganomics was just the last straw that toppled the ‘evil empire.’ I think the true turning point in the sway of power within the USSR was the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. This upset the greater population to such a degree that the government would never again manage to maintain its sway of power to the effect it once had. The world view of the their government had a major impact and further exposed not only to the world the level of corruption the Russian government had, but also caused the Russian people to become more acutely aware of what the greater overview the world had of their government, and as such for once the Russian people agreed with them wholeheartedly. \n\nAgain in short, Reganomics was just the last straw.
732390
http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylinformation.htm\n\nTry amazon if you are ordering from the States.
104789
For a good outline of what happened, see:\nhttp://quakeinfo.ucsd.edu/~gabi/erth15/lecture09/vesuvius.html\n\nThis appears to give some pretty good information regarding it also:\nhttp://www.vesuvioinrete.it/e_storia.htm
1067986
The Tunguska Event.\n\nA huge non-nuclear, sub atomic explosion in the skis over Siberia. \n\nThe theories around the cause of the explosion are varied;\n\nStray Anti-Matter particle.\nComet/ Meteor overheating and exploding on entry.\nSolar Particle disruption caused by mass sunspot activity.\nBy product of a Solar Mass Ejection event. \nA Primordial Black hole.\n\nOne theory I read stated that according to the "math" the instantaneous opening and collapse of a wormhole would release the same amount of energy.\n\nAny way, it happened in 1906, but a "rescue" mission wasn't sent for 10 years because at the time that part of Siberia was so remote they had to build railways roads and bridges to get there.
935485
On April 25th -26th, 1986 the World's worst nuclear power accident occurred at Chernobyl in the former USSR (now Ukraine). The Chernobyl nuclear power plant located 80 miles north of Kiev had 4 reactors and whilst testing reactor number 4 numerous safety procedures were disregarded. At 1:23am the chain reaction in the reactor became out of control creating explosions and a fireball which blew off the reactor's heavy steel and concrete lid.\n\nThe Chernobyl accident killed more than 30 people immediately, and as a result of the high radiation levels in the surrounding 20-mile radius, 135,00 people had to be evacuated. \n\nConstruction of the plant began in the 1970s, with reactor no. 1 commissioned in 1977, followed by no. 2 (1978), no. 3 (1981), and no. 4 (1983). Two more reactors, no. 5 and 6, capable of producing 1 GW each, were under construction at the time of the accident.\nThere are two conflicting official theories about the cause of the accident. The first was published in August 1986 and effectively placed the blame solely on the power plant operators. The second theory, proposed by Valeri Legasov and published in 1991, attributed the accident to flaws in the RBMK reactor design, specifically the control rods. Both commissions were heavily lobbied by different groups, including the reactor's designers, power plant personnel, and by the Soviet and Ukrainian governments.\nRight after the accident, the main health concern involved radioactive iodine, with a half-life of eight days. Today, there is concern about contamination of the soil. Several studies have found that the incidence of thyroid cancer. So far, no increase in leukemia.Scientists fear that radioactivity will affect the local population for the next several generations. However, there is little evidence so far of this.\nThe issue of long-term effects of Chernobyl disaster on civilians is controversial. Over 300,000 people were resettled because of the accident; millions lived and continue to live in the contaminated area. On the other hand, most of those affected received relatively low doses of radiation, there is little evidence of increased mortality – cancers or birth defects among them – and, when such evidence is present, existence of a causal link to radioactive contamination is uncertain.
949255
The death yesterday of a former Russian secret service agent in London is a matter for the police and related agencies. I would not wish to pre-judge its cause or who was responsible. \n\nThe implications of the availability of poisonous, highly radioactive, materials are frightening. Individual assassinations are only one sort of resulting threat.\n\nWithout going into specifics, the lack of control of radioactive material after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a matter for great worldwide concern. Nuclear proliferation leads to several very serious concerns about the availability of radioactive material to terrorists from sources in more than one country.\n\nBefore people get ideas into their heads about the sale of radioactive materials, can I point out that these are very nasty stuff? Unscrupulous people selling them are unlikely to be fussy about health and safety issues and those buying them are likely to poison themselves, quite apart from receiving large doses of radiation. Not a good idea at all.
1170603
okay. well, in a nuclear reactor, uranium or plutonium is bombarded with neutrons in order to force it to split and release huge amounts of energy. elements with 92 protons and up will nearly always absorb a neutron and split without hesitating.\n\nin a nuclear reactor, the uranium is highly enriched, which means it contains certain uranium isotopes that are less stable than others, therefore making it easier to split (and it IS weapon grade). it is kept at what's called the critical mass level. subcritcal mass wont sustain a chain reaction, and supercritical mass will cause a runaway chain reaction, like in an atomic bomb. the control rods in the reactor can be pushed in and out of the core, which contains the uranium (U) or plutonium (Pu). when the rods are all the way in, the reaction comes to a halt, when they are all the way out (they never are) the reaction reaches supercritical levels and escapes control. (this happened at chernobyl). there are other ways for a reactor to reach the supercritical level, the control rod material plays a part, the coolant, and of course those controlling the reaction. control rod material is very important, because if the material the rods are made of do not absorb enough neutrons, they will allow the reaction to continue (this happened at chernobyl, the material actually caused an increase in reaction speed and power). the coolant must have a very low void coefficient, (the void coefficient tells how much of the liquid is gas pockets at any given time. water has a high void coefficient) or else the gas pockets will allow extra heat to build up, therefore allowing the reaction to escape control, and possibly melt the core, as what happened at Three Mile Island. \n\nin short, a nuclear reactor cannot cause a thermonuclear explosion, because all current nuclear reactors are fission reactors, and thermonukes are fusion. however, the fission reactors in operation CAN cause an explosion (and it IS a nuclear explosion. nuclear particles and waste material are ejected from the reactor when it explodes. this can cause acute radiation poisoning in surrounding area), if they are not very carefully, precisely, and intelligently monitored.