Abandoned Nuclear Lighthouses

By Queuebot in Pictures on Jan 17, 2009 at 3:26 am

The Northern Soviet waters were equipped with a string of lighthouses to mark the treacherous passages through the dark times of the years. To make these remote beacons autonomous, they were powered by small nuclear reactors. EnglishRussia has the fascinating story of how that all turned out, along with some pretty cool photos.

Then, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unattended automatic lighthouses did it job for some time, but after some time they collapsed too. Mostly as a result of the hunt for the metals like copper and other stuff which were performed by the looters. They didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign and ignored them, breaking in and destroying the equipment. It sounds creepy but they broke into the reactors too causing all the structures to become radioactively polluted.

Link – via darkroastedblend

Tags: lighthouse, radioactive, russia

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Adam Stanhope
Jan 17th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Does anyone have any idea how the nuclear power for a lighthouse would work?

Usually nuclear power involves using controlled nuclear fission to heat water into steam which in turn turns turbines to generate electricity. The nuclear reaction heating water into steam does exactly the same thing that burning coal or oil does.

This is clearly not how an unattended nuclear power lighthouse would work.

Can anyone describe how it might work?
Andy Ominous
Jan 17th, 2009 at 11:32 am
They’re not exactly nuclear reactors. They’re radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs). They use the heat from nuclear decay to generate energy. They’re still seriously radioactive, and it’s a serious concern that they are being left unguarded since the Soviet ones are full of strontium-90 that could be weaponized into a dirty bomb.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator
Andy Ominous
Jan 17th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Err, when I said not *exactly”, I mean not at all. And When I say they used the heat to generate energy, I meant they used it to generate electricity. It’s early for me.
jodie
Jan 17th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
@ Andy Ominous

hehe, you did better than i could at high noon. ummm, when i said “high noon” i meant ever.
Christophe
Jan 17th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Wow. I want one at home.

@ Andy Ominous : cool, I’ll to bed less stupid tonight.
Vlad
Jan 17th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
A number of people died as a result of stealing the radioactive sources. Direct exposure kills you in approximately one to three days.
steve smith
Jan 17th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
So does that mean that all the looters probably died from trying to break in and steal stuff from the lighthouses? Cool, In the old days they would probably have called that place cursed.
Nathan Miller
Jan 17th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
This isn’t scary at all…
Adam H.
Jan 18th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
No, the scary thing is that during various political upheavals, maps have been mislaid and now some of the locations are lost.

Not that I’m saying you should be worried about any dangers, be they windblown or of terrorist origin. If you were a terrorist, would you journey halfway around the world into the coldest inhabited country in the world, just to look for old RTG lighthouses that have been misplaced, just so you could put the strontium in a dirty bomb?
Nathan Wallace
Jan 19th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Wow, it exactly like something out of Half Life 2!
vbasic1
May 21st, 2010 at 9:05 am
Thankfully, they have all been removed, decontaminated and replaced with Solar installations by the Russians and the Norwegians.

http://www.barentsobserver.com/russia-removed-radioactive-lighthouses- from-arctic-coast.4525112-16149.html

Earlier stories especially from the russianenglish
website showed these as being abandoned and
forgotten. I’m glad they didn’t forget and fixed
the problem

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