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The Mystery of Chernobyl
A bitter dispute is raging over whether the fallout zone is a wasteland or wonderland. Now, a team of scientists is heading back into the contaminated area to find out the truth.
In 1999, this Professor of Biological Sciences from the University of South Carolina travelled to the site of the world's most horrific nuclear accident, alongside Professor Anders Møller, an ornithologist and evolutionary biologist from the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. Their on-site research has sparked an intense controversy over the effects of radiation on humans and animals – one which they hope their latest trip into the fallout zone, which sets out in two weeks, will help to resolve.
The 30-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl and the abandoned town of Pripyat is now home to animals (Photo: Reuters)
The basic facts of Chernobyl are well known. At 1.23am on April 26, 1986,
reactor number four at the Soviet nuclear power plant (sited in modern-day
Ukraine) exploded, after an electrical test went horribly wrong. The
radioactive material released was hundreds of times greater than the fallout
over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, polluting about 80,000 square miles of land
across Europe and spreading radioactive rain as far as north-west Ireland.
In the wake of the accident, more than 300,000 people were evacuated and an 800 square mile exclusion zone created around the reactor. Yet recently it has been reported that the abandoned town of Pripyat has become a wildlife haven. There have been sightings of wolves, bears and moose wandering through the deserted streets, and swifts swoop round abandoned office blocks.
The implication is that if wildlife can return so soon, nuclear radiation – and nuclear power – might be less dangerous than has been suggested. James Lovelock, the creator of the Gaia theory, has even written that the natural world "would welcome nuclear waste as the perfect guardian against greedy developers… the preference of wildlife for nuclear-waste sites suggests that the best sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry farmers and developers".
According to a UN report in 2005, long-term cancers caused by Chernobyl will eventually kill about 4,000 people: an alarming total, but less than predicted. In fact, in an age of "dirty bombs" and nuclear proliferation, Chernobyl functions as a grim experiment into the consequences of extensive nuclear fallout. Although radiation levels have dropped significantly over the 23 years, there are still "hot" regions. Prof Mousseau says that the most contaminated areas measure 300 microSieverts per hour on the Geiger counter, the equivalent of 1,200 times normal radiation levels, or 15 times as much as a chest X-ray. "Long-term exposure would be deleterious," he adds drily.
The real problem, however, is environmental contamination of radionucleotides, caesium, strontium, and plutonium, which have half-lives of 30,000, 29,000 and 24,000 years respectively. Since this means that over that time period, these chemicals will decay to half their previous concentrations, they will contaminate the land for years.
"What you need to worry about is eating the food, because ingestion is the main way that one becomes exposed to radiation poisoning here," says Prof Mousseau.
And despite the stories about nature thriving in the Chernobyl area, Prof Mousseau is not convinced. The first discovery that he and Prof Møller made was that birds in the fallout zone were suffering increased levels of genetic mutations. The pair examined 20,000 barn swallows and found crippled toes, deformed beaks, malformed tails, irregularly shaped eyes and tumours. Some birds had red plumage where it should have been blue, or blue where it should have been red.
Thanks to the contamination of the food supply, bird species have declined by more than 50 per cent in high-radiation areas. Only a fraction of the swallows are reproducing, and of those that do lay eggs, only five per cent hatch. Fewer than a third of birds survive to become adults. Prof Mousseau and Prof Møller could confirm that these abnormalities were genetic by examining the swallows' sperm.
One of the pair's most interesting findings, outlined in a paper last year, is the connection between antioxidants, radiation and plumage colour: in other words, birds with the brightest plumage are more likely to die.
The explanation is simple. In humans and birds, antioxidants help to quash the effects of radiation. "Birds that migrate long distances and have bright plumage, such as swallows, have a very high metabolic rate and produce a lot of free radicals as a by-product, which damage their tissues," says Prof Mousseau.
"They then use stockpiles of antioxidants in their blood and liver to offset this potential damage. Females allocate large amounts of antioxidants to their eggs, which is the reason why the yolk is bright yellow."
But at the end of the birds' migration route, their energy reserves need to be replenished. "What appears to be happening is that in highly contaminated areas, they simply can't do this." As a result, swallows and great tits are unable to maintain their bright plumage and channel sufficient antioxidants into their eggs, and few chicks hatch.
The insects that they feed on are suffering, too. In the most contaminated areas, there are fewer butterflies, bumblebees, grasshoppers, dragonflies and spiders. "The fact that insects, including pollinators, are sensitive to elevated contaminants has a significant impact on the rest of the ecosystem," says Prof Mousseau.
It seems like a portrait of an ecosystem in crisis – so how have other scientists reported the opposite? Dr Robert Baker and Dr Ronald Chesser, from Texas Tech University, conducted their own study, published in the journal American Scientist in 2006: "We were surprised by the diversity of mammals living in the shadow of the ruined reactor only eight years after meltdown."
Their long-term studies contradicted those of Professors Mousseau and Møller, describing the region as "thriving", with a wild boar population 10 to 15 times higher in the exclusion zone than outside. They also failed to find any type of elevated mutation rate, or evidence that survival among animals living around Chernobyl differs from those in clean environments.
"Chernobyl is not a lunar landscape," says Prof Mousseau. "You can hear birds and mammals, spot the occasional wolf and fox, there are trees and plants – so it's not a complete desert. The reason for this misunderstanding is because there is a quiltwork of contamination, so you could have lots of organisms in one area, and none in another. To a trained biologist, though, it's very obvious."
Those are fighting words – particularly as both teams will shortly publish papers about mammals in the region that have diametrically opposed results.
For his part, Dr Chesser says: "I think that the discrepancy between our work and that of Møller and Mousseau stems from their inattention to details. I will go no further than that. I have no doubt that our work is accurate."
Prof Mousseau is equally forthright: "I'd rather avoid discussing specifics of their work, but no other folks apart from us have been rigorously counting organisms and measuring their distribution and the background contamination. Their work is based on anecdotes."
Regardless of who is right or wrong, there is another tragedy here. Prof Mousseau has started working with the Hospital for Radiation Biology, in Kiev, on a long-term study of humans who live in the area: more than 11,000 adults and 2,000 children in the Narodichesky region, 50 miles from Chernobyl.
Prof Mousseau says that the incidence among locals of cancer, birth defects and reduced lifespan is alarmingly high.
"There is a growing mountain of information that all points to significant consequences to the human population of chronic radiation exposure," he warns. "What will be the consequences for the children of these children?"
- Posted in
48 Comments so far
Show AllA woman who lives in Kiev created a blog detailing her travels through the Chernobyl wasteland on motorcycle. It has some very stunning and somber pictures of her journeys and very good commentary of the pics. It is indeed a wasteland and wonderland at the same time. It should be required viewing for anyone who advocates building more nuclear reactions.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html
Okay, is anyone else NOT surprised that the PRO nuke "scientists" are from TEXAS TECH? That alone should give anyone reading their "study" serious reason to question. I wouldn't trust them at all.
In fact, they point to the "inattention to details" of Professor Mousseau when it sounds to me (admittedly just from this article) like he has been VERY thorough and THEY are the ones who are doing a mere look around and calling it intensive study. But then, what do you expect from Texans? This is the state that thought W was one of them when he was raised in Connecticut. I don't expect high levels of thinking from them, that is for sure, and so far I have NEVER been disappointed in that.
I saw a TV program about this area on Discovery or Animal Planet, and it looked pretty good to me. That is, it look as though the area shown in the program had recovered significantly, with all sorts of animals and plants flourishing. And calling scientists corrupt because they come from a research institution in Texas is just plain silly. I'm not saying I trust them, but I'd have to have a better reason not to, such as a nuclear organization funding them. What interested me is that they expected to find a wasteland, and instead found a flourishing ecosystem.
...but I'd have to have a better reason not to, such as a nuclear organization funding them.
Actually, even the source of funding, is not it itself a reason in itself to invalidate a scientific study, unless there is evidence of strings attached to the funding.
Damn, WJM - you took the words right out of my mouth! Texas should be allowed (encouraged, even) to secede. Heck, why stop at Texas? How about most of the southern states? I wouldn't classify folks there as the brightest bulbs on the string, to say nothing of their compassion, wisdom, or sense of justice.
Dontcha think maybe there is wildlife concentrated in the area because it is an area from which all the humans have fled?
The wildlife don't know about the silent radiation, but they can sure tell that there aren't any of those loud lumbering nasty humans around...
absolutely...debating the results of two dissimilar studies with contradictory results for a while my occupy, but would not a third study, perhaps by a respected, unbiased, and international scientific team with specific criteria to systematically investigate go a long way toward settling the matter?
endless rebuttal is too often mistaken for effective address...
It's great that an ecosystem is still flourishing in the area, but I don't think I'd move there. A lot more study has to be done before I'd do that. I'll take my Tucson polluted air which aggravates my COPD to a 'radiated paradise'.
Wildlife may do fine in a contaminated area that is unacceptable for humans simply becaue of their lower life spans, and much, much lower reproductive ages. A bear lives about 25-30 years, but can reproduce at 3 years age, deer reproduce at 1 1/2 years and rarely leve more than 10 years even in a no-hunting area. So there is much less opportunity for mutations, and almost certain reproductive success before any radiation-related maladies would show up.
The whole comparison is apples and oranges. The presence of wildlife has nothing to do with accptable safety for humans. That 300 uSv/hr hot spot mentioned would provide a maximum allowed US occupational annual dose in only one week).
Exactly what I thought.
James Lovelock has either lost his mind or sold his soul to the nuke industry, or possibly both. I wonder what the tens of thousands of indigenous people who live in the tropical forests would think of his suggestion to make their home a nuclear waste dump.
Exacto. It's not the presence of radioisotopes that lets wolves and elk return, but the absence of people. Trading cancer forever increasing for contaminated wildlife is a fool's bargain.
I think he's just ignoring the difference between non-humans, who live their lives "naturally", and modern western humans who spend a lot of time obsessing over health and longevity. People in pre-industrial societies also live "naturally" without obsessing. They don't have access to "strenuous" healthcare, and so they stoically accept that they get what they get and if they don't get much then it's just bad luck.
So if people in the tropical forests were given a chance to live in a contaminated place that's rich in prey animals and so forth, they might well think it's a good idea, if their deathrate didn't go up noticeably.
Didn't you follow the story about the indigenous people of the Amazon who came out of the rainforest this spring and summer by the thousands and put their very lives on the line to keep polluters out of their jungle homeland? About one hundred of them were slaughtered for peacefully protesting, but they kept it up until they forced their own government, police force, army and the multinationals to back down. I think these people know a lot more than you give them credit for about devastating contamination.
And yet people in the US choose to live in houses whose cellars produce non-trivial amounts of radon gas, increasing their cancer risk. The benefits of living in the house make the risk worthwhile, and so they accept it. Similarly with other risks: people accept them because they think they're getting something back or they have no other choice that seems better.
Your example of the Amazon demonstrates that people won't accept a risk when there's no upside for them, if they can help it. But Lovelock was suggesting that there might be gatherer-hunter people living in a depleted area who'd choose the benefits of a greatly enriched catchment area such as that around Chernobyl even with its risks (and they are only risks).
I'm not arguing for doing it, I'm just defending Lovelock against the claim that he must be demented or a sellout.
let's not forget 3 mile island and the farce/coverup that was the investigation
in short, it was much worse than reported
no surprise there
“According to a UN report in 2005, long-term cancers caused by Chernobyl will eventually kill about 4,000 people...”
“only” 4,000 cancer deaths? – that’s a big lie ... Let us take a look at the facts using only one cancer incidence in the (former Soviet) Chernobyl fallout area as an example: thyroid cancer
Owing to the chemical affinity of iodine for the thyroid gland, the hazard from exposure to radioactive iodine (I- 131) was recognized early and thought to be well understood.
For the Western part of the (then still existing) USSR the predicted cancer cases were 1,200(UNSCEAR)IN THE NEXT 40 YEARS.
By 1994 alarming reports of increases in birth defects, leukemia and other cancers (especially thyroid cancer in children) had been reported from the Soviet Union.
In Belarus the childhood thyroid cancer rate had increased to ONE HUNDRED TIMES its pre-Chernobyl level...
Seven children were even BORN WITH THYROID CANCER.......... (!)
The overall total in children was 450 excess tyroid cancers in the FIRST TEN YEARS and for the under 15 age-group alone (in the areas into which the evacuees were moved)
In 1993 there were 2,039 registered cases in Belarus (adults) and more than 3,000 in Ukraine (reported in the British Medical Journal). Between 1987 and 1999, more than 26,000 radiogenic cancers were registered; by 2000, 11,000 patients had already died.
“For the general number of people in different countries who will have cancers from the Chernobyl Cs-137 during their lifetime (about 951,000 PERSONS ...),
it is necessary to add the number of cancer cases as a result of irradiation by I-133, I-135 (mostly thyroid cancers) and more than 25 other short-lived nuclides, including strontium, plutonium and americium, uranium and hot particles.”
Scary truth at: http://www.euradcom.org/publications/chernobylebook.pdf
The “error” of the “official” estimates of cancer as a result of Chernobyl is more than obvious.... The risk-factor calculations are not based on independent science and are not reliable. We have to understand that
- the supralinear dose-response relationship is NOT used in establishing risk assessments....
instead they pretend that the relation is linear: say a dose of “50” has produced 100 excess cancers, than a dose of “5” will only mean 10 more cancers, etc.
- statistics from short, external exposure to a high dose (based on Hiroshima studies) have been used as the basis for risk models but no distinction has been made between chronic, internal ionising radiation (from ingested or inhaled alpha or beta emitters) and short external radiation (gamma rays or x-rays);
- the physical “model” talks about “energy absorbed by a certain organ mass” but at the cellular / genetic level even very small doses can cause big harm (genetic damage / instability / cancer)
The nuclear industry could only be built on a huge pack of lies and we are still fed systematic disinformation... More information (also about “depleted” uranium) can be found here:
http://www.greenaudit.org/new_page_33.htm
http://www.greenaudit.org/ecrr_2006_chernobyl_20_years_on.htm
“The nuclear establishment is conducting a war against humanity. “
John Gofman (fmr. Advisor to the AEC)
hmmm...Superfund communes...absolutely free and, except for the radiation, pristine lands available for orgiastic, tribal, pot-loving hunter\gatherer\gardeners...live spontaneously and naturally, just not so long...
Anarchy Acres...if illness and death are certain, celebrate the now...
this may be where we all end up one day, anyway...
hell, one could argue we're there already, but that we're only getting the illness and death part, without the freedom...
See if the Texas Tech folks want to live a year in chernobyl. Don't you just love the spin the nuclear boys put on their insanity and industry. You need to follow the full 70 year story of Japan's nuclear victims. Our world is held at the brink of nuclear destruction each and every year as the insanity continues. Truth is the pro-nuclear boys won't be happy until their sifting through the ashes of their dead children after the final blast. No one knows the long term human and planetary cost of nuclear posioning - bottom line.
Everybody should read Svetlana Alexievich, Voices of Chernobyl, which is an oral history of the disaster by a Belorussian journalist who spent a year in the contaminated zone and got very sick herself.
Everybody should read Svetlana Alexievich, Voices of Chernobyl, which is an oral history of the disaster by a Belorussian journalist who spent a year in the contaminated zone and got very sick herself.
davejiowa..You obviously don't know anything about scientific research. There isn't an agenda, there is taking samples and checking your field work carefully. Yes, their findings are surprising but that doesn't mean it's wrong. They are not concluding that the area isn't dangerous, just that some organizisms can survive amazingly well. They aren't suggesting that anyone live there; as scientists and fellow humans they know very well the costs of using nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
Just because it is Texas Tech ... don't paint them with the same George W. Bush paint brush... These professors teach there, there isn't a stupid pill taken as part of the hiring practises.
Amazing how easily people on this site will rush to judgement with no evidence. Do your research and think.
"There isn't an agenda"
This isn't exactly true. No scientific research takes place acontextually. Every academic with whom I work --- whether scientist, literature scholar, or artist --- has tenure to worry about, grant monies to pursue, administrators to appease, etc. Human beings ALWAYS have agendas, which is not so say your overall point is incorrect. We just need to remember that science isn't miraculously agenda- and value-free.
I wonder if the birds and animals they see are only the survivors out of a large number of others which have succumbed from cancers, etc.
You have to have a certain amount of bio-diversity to sustain an ecology. I think a lot more study is needed, but it seems as though nature is doing a better job of recovery than we thought possible.
James Lovelock shows no indication of being bought out by the nuclear industry.
There are reasons why some environmentalists are changing their minds about nuclear power.
Chernobyl was grossly mismanaged at the time of the accident; the engineers were forced to run the plant well in excess of its design limitations while all of the safety features were purposefully turned off for a test.
If Chernobyl had a containment dome, as do all US nuclear power plants, the crisis would have been averted.
The growth of nuclear power was brought to an abrupt halt after Three Mile Island, but coal plants are going up all over with barely a whimper of protest.
In terms of air quality and CO-2 emissions nuclear power plants are vastly superior to fossil fuel.
30,000 people a year die in the US alone because of coal plant pollution.
The planet will soon not be able to support life as we know it because of climate catastrophe.
The consequences of some carefully monitored nuclear waste buried in the ground pale in comparison to the consequences of burning fossil fuels.
Nuclear power is the environmental solution and I am in no way associated with the industry.
Nuclear power might give us time to develop a solar infrastructure and other sustainable means of power production, but it is not the answer to our problems. It is definitely NOT the environmental solution, at least not on this planet.
Nuclear power won't give us any such thing. We have about 60 years left of nuclear fuel AT PRESENT RATES of use. It provides a very small percentage of our energy, which means, of course, if we increase use enough to make it significant, we shorten that time considerably. (And growth rates have a way of eating up new finds at an astounding rate.) Nukes are expensive, slow, anathema to the free market (insurers won't touch it without socialized protection), leaves a terrible waste problem and produces a significant amount of carbon, from mining and processing to building concrete and steel nuclear generators. And don't talk to me about breeder reactors, aka the Generators of the Terrorist Economy.
We have, on the other hand, far more free solar and wind "fuel" than we could ever use intelligently. They are safer than nuclear and virtually terrorist- and accident-proof. Even though both are cheaper than nuclear power, they (and conservation, always the first and most important step) cost something to build--capital expenses, building materials, etc. Why should we take needed capital away from the obvious immediate and inevitable long-term solutions to give it to a heavily subsidized bridge to nowhere? Conservation, solar and wind are ready now to step in and provide the energy we need. The only limit to how fast we do that is how much of our energy capital we decide to spend on building them. Every nuke plant, coal plant, gas plant and oil-driven car we build takes away from the progress we could be making with clean energy. How does that make any sense at all?
There are also environmentalists, scientists who support Genetically Modified foods. GM foods are pretty damn popular among quite a few people in the scientific community. Not all of them are bought or thinking only of grant money.
Lovelock hasn't been bought. So he is sincere. Sincere people make mistakes too.
And of course you would have been more than happy to have been living a mile downwind from TMI, or Chernobyl. In fact, if you can, you plan to relocate a mile downwind from the nearest nuclear plant, where hot fuel rods are stored in containment pools protected by a flimsy metal barn as at TMI today. There would of course be absolutely ZERO chance of a hurricane or tornado hitting that shed and sucking all that waste up into a funnel cloud to be widely distributed over an area of possibly hundreds of square miles including your back yard. Oh, yes, you would be ecstatic were that to happen a mile from home. Good for you. You should invest heavily in nuclear power.
Let's not defend Chernobyl or coal plants. However, they're poor reasons to support nuclear power, which is by no means anything like an environmental solution.
A dome would have likely helped Chernobyl, but they have not prevented all accidents in the States, all of which go unpublicized until they reach a point at which the immediate effects are undeniable.
And most releases of radiation are not accidental, but simply take place because the plant is shut down and therefore not monitored.
The phrase "carefully monitored nuclear waste buried in the ground" in no way describes the waste from American plants. This has been sunk into volcanic trenches in the Pacific, buried in trenches without even concrete on the bottom to stop the nuclear materials from seeping into the aquifer, dropped off of boats in metal containers that often crumple before they hit bottom, but will rust anyway, get incorporated into weapons to be vaporized on one or another battlefield and lushly distributed into the atmosphere and surrounding areas.
The growth of nukes may have come to an end after TMI, but the emissions from TMI did not, and have cut a swath of cancers downwind from the plant since.
May I take it that you do not include radioactivity as a factor in air quality?
The hit we will get from global warming remains unknown, though it must be considerable. Still, "will soon not be able to support life as we know it" seems excessive, frankly. The effects of dissemination of nuclear waste among us are straightforward, despite the author's presumptions of "mystery."
We know that this will continue to kill humans for many times longer than human history - provided we have humans around to kill. We may reasonably assume that parts will be deliberately distributed to maximize lethality at certain points - witness DU ammo.
I think you have mis-observed, but either way, the cases against both nukes and fossil fuels are strong, and neither are necessary or viable for long.
We need to look at truly alternate energy and considerable lifestyle changes as well.
Jeevee
SHAMEFUl DISGRACE to this country's officials.
My wife did a lot of work for the "Children of Chernobyl" and she and I were invited to meet with the Belorussian secretary to the UN many years ago. What many don't understand is that when the accident occured, Russia did what was considered a "reponsible" thing and seeded the clouds to cause as much of the radiation to fall as quickly as possible. Much of this fallout is in Belorussia. People were evacuated 40 km from the incident cite, but when they discovered that the radiation levels were still above 'safe' they did not have the money to move the people further away. The economics of the time also played an important part, in that the people had to eat what they could find, and that meant eating the fruit coming out of contaminated areas.
The "accident" at Chernobyl was not. They were trying to see how far they could go without having an incident. Because of the design of Russian reactors, (more efficient than the water cooled use here, but more difficult to make abrupt changes on), the reaction time to initiate cooling, prevented a shut down of the reactor... most of the rest is history. I suspect that the 'death' toll from this accident will be many times more than the 4,000 estimated, but that is just an opinion.
As far as nuclear power in general, the pressurized water systems used here in the US are fare safer than the sodium cooled ones in Russia. Also, our heat exchangers are totally enclosed within a reactor compartment, unlike the Russian's. GENERATION of power by nuclear IS safe, the problem comes with the 'spent fuel'. I also see a problem with "corporate controlled" nuclear power, in that the profit motive is incentive to cut corners or 'edit' reports. Until such time that we've established a set policy for our waste, I'm against more nuclear power plants, but do accept that the industry itself is basically safe. (IMHO)
The industry is not safe, even between accidents.
The light-water plants are defective in that they cannot keep the material from leaking. The water rusts the divisions between core and the world outside, and humans cannot approach key parts to make repairs.
Certainly spent fuel is a problem. It is not just a problem of policy, however.
Also, spent fuel is far from the only "waste" problem. Everything that comes near the fuel becomes radioactive, thus eventually radioactive waste.
That includes people who get exposed.
But more than that the problem is that we have no technical way to properly dispose of this waste, and the problem is of ridiculous proportions. We must store this stuff many times longer that human history.
Let's recall too that if the Soviets blew Chernobyl on purpose, they acted no more callously in that than did the American government in deliberately and repeatedly placing troops and farmers in the line of fallout in the 40's, 50's, and 60's, and presumably with the DU ammunition from Gulf I to the present.
There are things the government should run. A nuclear industry is not one of them. At the same time, your criticism of the the warping of motivations and decisions by profit motive is good and could go further.
The problem I have is that the whole world in general treats nuclear power as the most dangerous energy source. Coal and oil get what amounts to as a free pass.
Shape the debate in terms of the environmental/ecological reality--coal and oil are far worse. There is nothing good to say about them except for cheap.
Nuclear power has problems, but it takes its place in line behind some of the fossil fuels.
We need to shut down coal plants first, then think about replacing nuclear.
I have watched the CEO's of utilities manipulate environmentalists in this fashion...."Well we may see more nuclear power plants if we can't build the coal plants."
It works. They share a good snicker.
No nukes!
That's even more important than the coal issue, which is enormous itself. The coal plants will largely disintegrate after they're shut down.
The nukes are more toxic, and will remain toxic for many times longer than recorded human history.
Of course, the same CEO's also manipulate environmentalists with statements similar to what you imply: "Oh, if we can't build the nuclear plants, we may see more coal plants."
The snicker's just as nasty.
Nukes are no solution, no part of a solution.
We need major lifestyle changes as well as alternate energy sources. Certainly alternate energy is the thing that could be instituted in a large way quickly, but people are working on other options in terms of lifestyle as well.
For particularly remarkable example, take a look at the beautiful, comfortable, reasonably inexpensive self-contained homes called "Earthships" and made by a guy named Mike Reynolds out near Taos.
These places take neither electricity nor water from the grid and are fairly low-tech. They
They've actually got instructions for do-it-yourselfers.
The large mammals typically have much shorter life spans than humans, therefore receive less accumulated radiation and die before they can develop cancers, leukemia, and mutations. The succeeding generations however will probably be affected.
Good point.
Moreover, animals do not usually live towards the end of their natural lifespans while in the wild. As they become weak, they succumb to other problems.
Naturally, the "researchers" will go to Chernobyl and find what anyone would expect: the healthy animals that are left, occupying the niches left by whatever other animals were killed.
The article is an extreme example of card-stacking.
Kit - type into Google - Magnum Chernobyl. Check out the photos and see the effects. Make your own call.
thanks kit for that link...........the photos are devasting and in the narrative one statement should be heeded:
'it took less than a week for chernobyl to become a problem for the entire world'.............
(they are referring to the fallout that circumnavigated the earth after the accident)
That is the whole point. Nuclear power is 99% "safe". But when an accident happens thousands may die. Accidents WILL happen to one out of a hundred plants. Do you want to be living near the one that "blows".
Nuclear power is not safe between accidents. The design used in almost all plants is fundamentally defective. The 30-second version is this:
The core must be cooled.
The nuclear material enters the primary cooling fluid.
The steam generator tubes must go through the primary fluid to enable heat transfer.
The steam generator tubes must be metal.
They rust.
The nuclear materials leave.
When there is enough leakage, the plant shuts down. That enables machines to wash out the critical areas and release more radiation while the plant is down and therefore not monitored.
Of course, none of this deals with waste storage.
In all cases, what enters the plant leaves. If it leaves slowly, that does help quite a lot, but it does not mean that everything is fine or "safe."
Really, the biggest problem is not the occasional accident that may take out a city here or there, but the larger addition of radioactive materials to airways, oceans, aquifers, and all the materials that we all use to live.
These effects will increase by actions already taken, and the accidents will tend to increase as the plants continue to deteriorate.
for a fictional account of chernobyl read 'wolves eat dogs' by martin cruz smith............
Another example of creating a false debate, brought to us by Texas Tech and the UK Telegraph and the nuclear power industry.
Any good photographer could make Hiroshima look like a "wonderland."
What a pile of radioactive crap.
-30-
In the US, we discard the radioactive waste after one use, which amounts to eating a meal by taking one bite out of each of 10 hamburgers and throwing the rest away.
Why? Because of proliferation concerns.
It makes no sense whatsoever, especially since other countries do not exercise the same caution.
Reprocessing of nuclear fuel as Europe does would expand the cycle tremendously.
I don't buy the argument that if we spend on nuclear infrastructure we won't spend on wind and solar infrastructure.
Corruption is what prevents us from maximizing our use of wind and solar before we make up the difference with more dangerous sources. Utilities can't make money off of something that is free as readily as they can from fossil fuels. They can't say, "Oh the price of wind just went up so we have to raise prices."
Currently, there is so much resistance to nuclear power, we just keep burning fossil fuels, and a few token windmills go up across the country.
Thanks to the activists that have prevented us from further travel into this mayhem.
The way the US discards waste does not comprise caution.
The Federal government claimed it could resolve waste. It has not, nor has it approached a solution.
Now the power companies themselves are suing the government.
So we paid to store the waste. Now the government will reimburse the powercompanies, and the taxpayers will pay the bill for storage all over again.
And the storage is not even effective or safe.
There is no mystery here.
No one close to this is the least bit surprised that there are plants and animals in Chernobyl. This was a leak, a severe leak, but a leak, not a bomb. And a huge killer of animals has been removed from Chernobyl: there are no people.
Let's recall first that Chernobyl was a small event compared to what could have happened, and that many Soviet prisoners died to prevent it from becoming larger than it was.
Next, the presence of animals does not mean that all those animals live to ripe old ages and visit with their grandchildren, as some of us might wish to do. It means that some young animals can survive for a few years. It gives no count of the animals stillborn or deformed, who will perish shortly after birth, leaving little record for cursory examination.
May I assume the team of scientists will be decked out in protective suits?
This is really quite simple. We have cases of longterm and short term exposure to nuclear radiation, and we know pretty thoroughly what it does. It kills not every single person or organism, but many, some quickly and some slowly.
The pattern of cancers from Three Mile Island in the 1980's, after the famous leak, follows the prevailing westerly wind northwest to southeast from the plant, expanding and fading slightly.
Data exists from hundreds of plants and from quite a few explosions in Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and in the South Pacific during the 20th Century.
A lot of this data has not been made public because there is no statute of limitations for many of the crimes committed by corporate and government personnel, including the withholding of this information itself.
There is no mystery here. The results described fit existing theory exactly.
I agree entirely with bardamu about the reason there are lots of animals at chernobyl--because there are no people, not evidence for the safety of nuclear power.
Chernobyl is not a safe place to live.
However, Chernobyl won't happen with today's nuclear power plants in the US. The thick walls of concrete would prevent the radiation leak.
Do I like radioactivity in the air? No. Coal plants release radiation into the air every day.
You pull a big pile of filth out of the earth which contains arsenic, sulfur, carbon and yes uranium. It is burned and released straight into the atmosphere with no monitoring or controls. Nuclear power plants in contrast are carefully controlled.
Why be so afraid of nuclear waste buried in the ground?
Radioactive materials are already in the ground naturally. It is radioactive when we pull it out and it is radioactive when we return it. That is not perfect, but it's not nearly as scary as what coal is doing to our planet.