Well judging by how long you have been here mheslep and your area of interests (checked your stats out of curiosity) I assume you must know the approximate physical dimensions of a second generation RBMK 1000/1500 reactor. The first RBMK reactors had each reactor in a separate reactor hall/ building with only a common turbine hall but the later reactors were incorporated into blocks by two keeping the common turbine machine hall. Stations like Smolensk have only the latter ones while stations like the Leningrad nuclear power plant have only the first types since it was built earlier , stations like Kursk and the now famously infamous and also closed Chernobyl or originally V.I. Lenin nuclear power plant had both the old style and the new ones.
This can be easily seen in any picture from the Chernobyl plant as the first two reactors are kind of small and separate while the unit 4 had its neighbor right behind some thick reinforced wall in the same block –unit 3, which above everything else kept operating years afterwards.
The thing why I’m saying this is that the newer double reactor blocks were not only among the most powerful fission reactors at the time but their physical structural dimensions were quite large compared to any western reactor of near similar power level. I think they were the largest in size of any other fission reactor.
Even though it is not clear to my what difference does it make to build hem in such an arrangement since the power output is the same as the older ones.
So when you say whether they needed 110m , well they absolutely needed 110m because the height of the roof of the reactor hall (might have changed a few metres since the original roof was destroyed and the sarcophagus built in place) is about 95 m , so technically a 30 floor building. The middle of the reactor is even higher where the chimney rests upon.
One of my friends visited the site recently and he too said that he was amazed by the size of the reactor. I also assume from what I have read that the arc is cladded with some radiation absorbing material from inside which makes it even higher since otherwise its just a giant steel ribbon and would let wind and particles straight through it.
The other question to which I too would like to know the answer is whether it really was worth the money , I tend to think that much like all other nuclear related stuff the dangers of the blown reactor are exaggerated , given people have even been in the ruins of the reactor hall and near the lava like rocks formations of fuel and concrete what can happen to anyone who stands kilometers away from those , pardon my ignorance but I also fail to see how wind or rain could make any significant amounts of dust and then take them miles away to do any harm , and if some are taken just a bit and settle inside the exclusion zone , what difference does it make , no one is going to reside there for the next 100 years anyway.
Speaking of rain and moisture and wind , maybe they could have just used a batter and more sophisticated greenhouse film to cover the block and simply change it every 5 years or so.
After all the sarcophagus isn’t the main structural support of the block anyway if I understand correctly it’s just a means of trapping all the poisons inside.
Ok that’s a bit of philosophy right there.
After all if I read correctly what others have said here they will not dismantle the reactor or even attempt that anytime soon even under or inside or with the help of the new arc.
And quite frankly is it even logical and needed to dismantle the power plant especially when you have an arc that costs 1.5 billion sitting on top of another older metal and concrete shield sitting on top of a pile of crap that itself sits on mostly intact and very strong reinforced concrete structural elements and can’t pose any real danger anymore as long as it is inside and around hundreds of tons of steel and concrete. Dismantling would mean taking up space or building a new special waste site which itself would cost millions if not more then transporting etc etc and still the exclusion zone would probably not benefit from that at all.
