Trump Suing Ann Selzer is a Nuclear Disaster

Dec 29, 2024

I’ve been reading the book Midnight at Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. He goes into detail about the events leading up to the actual explosion so that you understand that it wasn’t an isolated incident. The actual disaster at Chernobyl was a product of countless corners cut and lines crossed over many years. The greatest examples of this all revolve around the control rods. Pressing the button AZ-5 sends 24 emergency control rods into the reactor along with the other 187 manual control rods. This stops the chain reaction, shutting down the reactor, there’s only one problem - that wasn’t possible.

The democrats are like the reactors we build in the west. Small, reliable, and safe, hidden away in their concrete containment buildings. Some might say republicans are one in the same. Then Trump comes onto the scene big and exciting, like the RBMKs (reaktor bolshoy moshchnosty kanalnyy) of the USSR, he doesn’t have a containment building. He says whatever he wants. He ran as a freedom of speech candidate. Trump and MAGA have been building this reactor over the last eight years. It may be big and powerful but it’s volatile and much like the RBMK’s, inconsistencies in the core create instability. Biden throughout his presidency has behaved like a PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor). A quick explanation of nuclear reactors - PWRs are water cooled, water moderated reactors. The moderator increases reactivity, the coolant decreases reactivity. When water does both jobs it creates an almost self sustaining reaction, requiring very little interference from the operators. Democracy has endured because presidents have allowed for this self sustaining reaction to occur. Creating safe and consistent power, that’s the candidate that Kamala Harris ran as. Trump is different. Like Trump, it’s very difficult to see what is going on inside an RBMKs core. The control room operators are forced to run around until they’re dripping with sweat trying to maintain balance. Biden doesn’t attack political enemies or the free press. Trump doesn’t play by those rules. RBMK reactors had so many faults that rather than attempt to fix them they decided to rewrite the operating manual. This is exactly what Trump is doing by “flooding the zone”. We are forced to just rewrite the manual. In the midst of sexual assault convictions, writing love letters to a dictator and asking generals to shoot protestors “in the leg” the smaller stuff like suing a pollster and a small Iowa paper seems like nothing. The free press is supposed to be like the reactors control rods, no matter what happens inside the core they exist separately to control the reaction. Completely withdrawn it takes eighteen to twenty-one seconds for the emergency rods to fully insert into the core. A choice was made to not install emergency motors because the people in charge thought a sudden loss of power due to a reactor dropping off the grid would be too disruptive. But those few seconds make it impossible for an emergency shut off to take place. When Trump makes journalists afraid to tell the truth he makes it impossible for them to be the safety mechanism.

Now, by suing Ann Selzer Trump is putting graphite tips on the control rods. It seems small and gets overlooked. Unlike the water cooled, water moderated reactors we use in the west, Chernobyl and all RBMK type reactors use graphite as their moderator. The moderator slows down the fast moving neutron so when it bumps into the uranium-235 it’s more likely to absorb the nucleus. When the nucleus absorbs the neutron it becomes unstable and splits, this is a process called fission. Trump acts as a moderator slowing down and manipulating the information getting to his supporters. He allows them to bump into each other and spread misinformation, increasing the reactivity of his core.

Inside the core of Chernobyl a disaster is being set into motion. Almost all of the control rods are pulled from the reactor to keep it running under the difficult circumstances their safety test created. Every time Trump goes after a media outlet for telling the truth he’s pulling out a control rod. He is desperately trying to keep power under the difficult circumstances he has created. Sexual assault convictions could easily kill a Presidential campaign. He compensates by suing ABC news for reporting it. For Chernobyl it was to compensate for a build up of xenon that was choking out the reactor. At the same time, the test caused the turbine that powers the pumps to slow. This decreased the amount of coolant water getting to the reactor leading to a phenomenon known as a positive void coefficient. When steam voids are created in the coolant it is less dense and can’t absorb enough heat or neutrons to control the reaction. This is a dire situation, all that’s left to do is pull the dead man’s switch. Pressing AZ-5 would send in all the control rods at once stopping the reaction. The operators felt comfortable pushing the reactor to this point because they thought they had this safety net to fall back on. Freedom of speech and the free press are crucial safety mechanisms to democracy. Assuming that we have these systems to rely on we feel comfortable pushing the country to this critical point. But the small faults that went overlooked create a chain reaction. Fortunately or unfortunately for us we don’t have to imagine what this can lead to. We can look back to the not distant past and see how Trump removing these control rods of information lead to mistrust. Therefore increasing the country’s reactivity, leading to fear and violence. The systems and norms this country relies on have been tested over the last nine years. They can only take so much stress before the safeties start to fail. The operators press AZ-5 and all the control rods are sent into the reactor at once. Acting as a moderator, the graphite tips spike reactivity as they descend into the channels. The heat from this spike causes a steam explosion that fractures some of the fuel rods. The control rods are now stuck at 1/3 insertion, the graphite tips fixed in place excel the reaction infinitely. BOOM.

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