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unixronin: Galen the technomage, from Babylon 5: Crusade (Default)
Unixronin

December 2012

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Thursday, March 25th, 2010 12:22 pm

Crank alert!

Yo, people.  If there was a hitherto unknown green, verdant landmass at or near the North Pole holding a polar opening 890 miles across into the interior of the hollow earth, we would have seen it from orbit by now.  (Actually, never mind orbit ... intercontinental flights cross the north polar region every day.)

Remember, kids, just because you saw it on the Internet doesn't mean it's true ... and this is a classic example.  This is so crackpot loony it's not even wrong.

Thursday, March 25th, 2010 09:48 pm (UTC)
I didnt think the russians still had a nuclear icebreaker in service?
Thursday, March 25th, 2010 09:52 pm (UTC)
I was correct, the Lenin has been out of service since 89, and now serves as a museum ship...

When launched in 1957, Lenin was powered by three OK-150 reactors.

In February 1965, there was a loss of coolant accident. After being shut down for refueling, the coolant was removed from the number two reactor before the spent fuel had been removed. As a result, some of the fuel elements melted or deformed inside the reactor. This was discovered when the spent elements were being unloaded for storage and disposal. 124 fuel assemblies (about 60% of the total) were stuck in the reactor core. It was decided to remove the fuel, control grid, and control rods as a unit for disposal; they were placed in a special cask, solidified, stored for two years, and dumped in Tsivolki Bay (near the Novaya Zemlya archipelago) in 1967.
Monument of the icebreaker "Lenin" in memorial to Conquerors of the Arctic in Murmansk

The second accident was a cooling system leak which occurred in 1967, shortly after refueling. Finding the leak required breaking through the concrete and metal biological shield with sledgehammers. Once the leak was found, it became apparent that the sledgehammer damage could not be repaired; subsequently, all three reactors were removed, and replaced by two OK-900 reactors. This was completed in the Spring of 1970.

Details of these accidents were not widely available until after the fall of the Soviet Union.

so thats at least not possible
Saturday, March 27th, 2010 08:51 pm (UTC)
Probably not a nuclear one, but I remember reading that there is an old icebreaker being used by Arctic tourists -- for a price. Tim Cahill wrote an article on it a few years back, and was not happy that it was being used by the idle rich for things like chasing polar bears.