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| Science & Technology |
| NUCLEAR EXAGGERATION: Is Atomic Radiation as Dangerous as We Thought? |
| 2007-11-24 |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #15 Actually, the Russians have had FIVE MAJOR nuclear accidents. Chernobyl was only the last of the series. The reactor that exploded at Tomsk killed a bunch of Russian scientists, spread contamination over a pretty wide area, but did no long-term contamination like Chernobyl. The site is greatly overgrown with vegetation. The accident at Chelyabinsk didn't breach the containment building, but did leak radioactive water into the ground. I was in England when the fallout from Chernobyl supposedly blanketed about 2/3 of the country. From what I gathered, most of the radiation was from alpha and beta particles. Most of the gamma radiation was from heavier particles that didn't reach past Scandinavia. The Brits spent a great deal of time and effort checking sheep and cattle for signs of strontium-90 contamination and cesium absorbtion, but I don't remember if they found much of anything. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2007-11-24 20:40 |
| #14 This is the German OK for our use of atomic weapons on Iran and the Middle East. |
| Posted by: danking70 2007-11-24 18:19 |
| #13 This is the German OK for our use of atomic weapons on Iran and the Middle East. |
| Posted by: danking70 2007-11-24 18:13 |
| #12 Chernobyl had only five very different kinds of nuclear problems. If you know what their rules are, it makes sense. The first was that the reactor itself was like a giant bonfire. That is why it had to be entombed in concrete, to do something like dampen the "light" given off by the reactor. Once that was done, if you were more than a given distance from it, you were okay. The tomb is unstable, however, and will need to be rebuilt. The second problem was that a lot of the nuclear material melted its way out the bottom of the reactor into its basement, "like a great big, glowing gopher", as some wit said at the time. This was a problem because the water table was high in the area, and the reactor was next to a giant lake. They actually sent a robot underground to look at the "Chernobylite", as they called it. It is still a big unknown. The third problem was and might still include the throwing of heavy radioactive particles in the air. But these are so heavy that they don't travel very far from the reactor before landing. Whether they land on water or air, then tend to sink over time, the water and soil buffering the radiation they continue to emit. The fourth problem were the two light isotopes thrown into the air in quantity. Iodine, which had a half life of about 2 weeks and is readily uptaken by the thyroid gland. It is all gone now. Mostly children were given iodine supplements, because once full, the gland uptakes no more and it is eliminated from the body as excess. More dangerous is the cesium, which is readily uptaken both by plants and by bone marrow. It has a half life of 30 years. So in 10 years, half of it will be gone. It is mitigated by burying plants contaminated with it, and by dissipation. The fifth problem is our lack of knowledge of how these problems will behave in the future. We just don't know how susceptible other life forms and people are to much of this in a real world setting, compared to in a laboratory. For that, we have to wait and see. Importantly, Chernobyl should be compared with the much more serious Russian nuclear disaster at Mayak in 1957. A conventional explosion of nuclear waste containing lots of different isotopes turned a large lush, green area like Indiana, into a desert wasteland. And it remains a desert wasteland to this day. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-11-24 17:05 |
| #11 Tres amusing, Besoker! I admit to being a sucker for our dumb chums, though - but Dad was always bringing something home from the lab. Like a rosy boa constrictor, some pocket mice and a kangaroo rat as a pet for my little brother. Err... not all at once, or to be co-located, either. That would be a little too much circle-of-life, nature red in tooth and claw sort of thing. And don't get me started on my stint in retail, where I worked in the fur salon of an upscale department store. Really. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-11-24 16:46 |
| #10 There seems to be lively animal life in the contaminated area near Chernobyl. Just a guess: I'd suspect the critters are slower-growing than usual, with extra energy going into spare protein copies. Should be easy to test using a few mice from the zone. |
| Posted by: James 2007-11-24 16:13 |
| #9 He was a research biologist, and apparently one of his duties was to trap animals, and investigate them and their burrows for residual radiation, deformations and abnormalities. SGT Mom: This bit would have no connection at all to your being a life-long animal rights advocate and militant vegetarian? |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2007-11-24 14:12 |
| #8 My father was actually one of the researchers, poking around in the atomic-testing area in Nevada/Utah in the early fifties. (Operation Plumb-bob was what it said on a framed certificate that he had for years)He was a research biologist, and apparently one of his duties was to trap animals, and investigate them and their burrows for residual radiation, deformations and abnormalities. He insists that they never found all that much. Over the years, people have found that very hard to believe, but apparently Dad may have been onto something, after all. |
| Posted by: Sgt. Mom 2007-11-24 13:21 |
| #7 The sun is a runaway nuclear reaction, you're exposed to nuclear radiation every day (Sunlight) OK, everyone panic now. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-11-24 13:06 |
| #6 Let's define terms. Radiation is like the light from a flashlight, on or off. Radioactive particles are physical objects that give off radiation at various rates. There are several kinds of radiation with different effects. And a whole bunch of different kinds of radioactive particles, each behaving very differently from the others and giving off different kinds and combinations of radiation. Particles also vary tremendously on how long they remain radioactive. On top of that, people's bodies react very differently to the same time of radiation or radioactive particles. One person can become sick from a dental X-ray, another may get a whopping big exposure of radiation with little or no effect. It matters how much you get, over what time period, where in the body you get it, and what kinds you get. On top of that, in nature, contamination with radioactive particles is often based on the chemical properties and weight of the particles. Just because something is radioactive doesn't mean it is chemically poisonous or not. And different species of plants and animals have totally different responses to all of the above. Put it all together and you end up with a range that on one side is "nuclear is harmless", and on the other, "nuclear is deadly". With all sorts of gray area in between. Most of the variables matter at all times if you are trying to figure out how dangerous a situation is. The best results you can obtain are under very controlled laboratory experiments, and even they can only allow you to predict in generalities. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-11-24 09:40 |
| #5 Don't forget all the nadrs irradiated by the foot machine at Buster Brown. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-11-24 08:43 |
| #4 I notice the absence of real serious studies of my generation who lived down wind for nearly two decades of open air nuclear testing conducted in the 50s and early 60s. I've never seen any national study that attributes various ills and infirmities, like so many other |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-11-24 08:22 |
| #3 Here's another choice quote from the article. In their view, the plant management committed "atomic genocide" against the ethnic Tatars living in the area. But as the analyses show, even this accusation is exaggerated. Double WOW!! An accusation of (1) ethnic (2) genocide usually gets a mag like Spiegel roaring for the white males responsible to be put into reeducation camps. But this time, they immediately refute it? And quote studies by other white males as the reason? Has someone kidnapped the editorial staff of Spiegel and replaced them with cyborgs or aliens or something? Or maybe they've been implanted with Halliburton Brain Controllers[tm]. |
| Posted by: gromky 2007-11-24 03:45 |
| #2 To see THAT headline - in Speigel, no less! - is just a reminder of how much the world has changed. Wow...just, wow. |
| Posted by: gromky 2007-11-24 03:33 |
| #1 Great article. While it does indeed confirm the Soviet Union's nuclear environmental rape, it also casts a lot of doubt on the hysteria surrounding exposure to radiological materials. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-11-24 03:04 |