The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation 55
fm6 writes: "Not surprising, but still pretty sobering: Russian communities downwind from cold-war-era surface testing sites are experiencing 50% increase in mutation rates. I'm reminded of Terry Tempest William's term: Virtual Uninhabitants."
So much for... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:So much for... (Score:3, Interesting)
Mutation means the random changes that allow creatures to evolve, though that's not all these changes do. They also cause cancer and the like, and are the reason that radiation exposure leads to cancer.
Evolution involves more than just these random changes, however. It also involves the recombination of these through sexual reproduction, and the survival of the best of them through natural selection. Therefore, the fact that mutation still is present does not mean that evolution will occur.
Re:So much for... (Score:1)
Re:So much for... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:So much for... (Score:2)
Did this... (Score:2)
No X-Men. Sorry. (Score:2)
Re:No X-Men. Sorry. (Score:2)
I stand corrected! (Score:2, Funny)
Delitted (Score:2)
Delitted (Score:2)
Coming soon to a mailbox near you.. (Score:2, Funny)
(titles taken from actual spam-messages I've gotten during the last couple of months)
Re:Coming soon to a mailbox near you.. (Score:1)
Who wants a man with bigger breasts?
Sorry.
Happened right here, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
We just bought some rural property in southern Utah. My wife was searching for plant zone information for our area and happened across a link discussing the sterility and cancer rates of people in Cedar City and Parowan. I can't find that link, but a quick search turned up several relavent sites:
http://www.downwinders.org
http://www.eq.state.ut.us/EQRAD/fallout.htm
Cedar City! (Score:2)
Don't forget the US (Score:4, Informative)
http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/Fallout/conten
How do you count mutations? (Score:2)
US & Nukes (Score:1, Offtopic)
What worries me is situations like this in the future. This is just (!) after some atmospheric testing. In 10-30 years, when all the US nuclear reactors go offline, all the fuel rods and other radioactive waste (I'm not sure, but I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable if I knew that I was drinking water formerly used as steam heated by uranium) have to be dealt with. Right now, as a previous [slashdot.org] slashdot story has noted, the US will be dumping its nuclear wastes in an earthquake-prone area likely to contaminate the water table in the area of Las Vegas. Even a small amount of radioactivity, as seen in this story, can cause mutation, to say nothing of the level of contamination during that Japanese disaster a decade or three back. Think about what happens when a large US city is exposed to bunches of radiation. It suddenly becomes not far off on another continent, but in our own back yard too late to do anything about it.
Write your congressman about Yucca Mountain. Hope that state's rights prevail and the governor of Nevada can nix the project. It's our future. This isn't something like the DMCA or the SSSCA - this is nuclear waste in our back yard.
Re:Yet you feel free to use electricity (Score:4, Interesting)
Right now, world-wide, nukes and solar cost $.10-.20 per KWH. Solar is so expensive because there just hasn't been enough research into it. Nukes are expensive because, again, using subatomic particles to heat water is really quite inefficient. Coal is about $.08-.09 per KWH. It's in pretty good supply, and will last beyond my lifetime.
However, hydro power is only $.03-.05 per KWH. That's cheap. And it's renewable. Wind is also about $.05 per KWH. Geothermal is $.10 per KWH. Those are cheap! However, the US government is not putting any money into these projects, as they suggest a distributed micropower solution instead of the current centralized macropower gig - that won't sit well with the commercial energy industry.
Also, you say 'right now' in your post - it's right now and looking like forever. There haven't been any new nuke plants commissioned since 1979. All orders after 1973 have been cancelled. Nuclear power is on its way out as a consumer power supply.
Re:Yet you feel free to use electricity (Score:2)
Wrong wrong wrong! No new nuclear plants have been ordered since 1979. There were several plants that completed construction and low power testing and received full power licenses all through the 1980's and even the first part of the 1990's! Look up the Seabrook Station (1990) [seabrookstation.com] in NH and check out it's entering commercial service date. Also ANO2 (1980) [entergy-nuclear.com], San Onofre (1984) [nucleartourist.com], Diablo Canyon (1985) [pge.com], Commanche Peak (1993) [txu.com], Watts Bar (1996) [doe.gov]. I could go on and on. But facts aren't going to dissuade you obviously, never mind.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:1)
Let me spell it out for you: Not approving Yucca mountain doesn't cause that waste to disappear. Instead it's kept in big swimming pool like storage tanks close to populaton centers.
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I agree, that's a big problem. The US spends millions a year trying to contain wastes in temporary storage facilities. But putting it in Yucca Mountain doesn't keep nuclear swimming pools away from population centers; instead, it creates what amounts to a giant nuclear lake just a little ways away from one major population center.
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So approving Yucca mountain is probably the safest thing to do. Even the greenies know that.
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That would be incorrect. It's no safer than the current alternative of temporary storage, but when (not if) the waste gets loose, it only affects Nevada.
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So why are the greenies still raising a stink ? Because they have to make sure that Yucca mountain is so expensive, politically as well as financially, that no new nuclear power plants are built. (That's their goal, whether or not it is smart is a separate issue.)
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No new nuclear power plants have been commissioned since 1979. All orders for nuclear power plants since 1973 have been cancelled. You're ill informed.
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So the Greenies are yapping and suing but they know they don't want to win. They just want to make sure that the conservatives don't get the idea that now that we have Yucca mountain, they can start putting nuclear power plants in every county.
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Not everyone who is concerned about Yucca Mountain is a greenie. The greenies are not some sort of worldwide secret organization.
Countries around the world are halting the use of nuclear power. France, who gets most of its power from nukes, has cancelled all new projects. The Scandanavian countries, also heavy users, are scaling back as well. The only country that isn't is China, but equating them with being worried about their populance doesn't have any real precedent.
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There is no reason why you can't on one hand have the position that current waste should be stored in Yucca, but no new plants should be built to make more waste. Which is probably what will happen as a result of the political balencing act.
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Balancing act? Again, there haven't been any new power plants in most 20-something's lifetimes. You don't seem to be old enough to remember Three Mile Island. Or old enough to read the above article.
There are several better ways of going about this - I won't go into detail, but they are: shoot it into the sun (bad idea), put it under the ice caps (bad idea), store it in the Pacific muck (good idea), put it in a subduction zone (no one knows if it's a good idea), or store it under the water table of a large city (bad idea) - oh, wait, that last one is already being done.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:1)
of course, a boat accident would probably be worse than Yucaa mountain being damaged, considering how the ocean currents could really distribute the waste.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:1)
As I understand, subduction zone dumping goes like this: an area is picked around a subduction zone (like the coast of California, if I remember my geography correctly - not the transform fault). The waste would be buried/dropped as close as humanly (or robotically) possible. Hopefully in a short period of time (this could be a long period of time, don't know exactly how long), they'll be subducted, melted, etc.
The major problem is with volcanoes. If those long half-life isotopes stick around for the next Mt. St. Helens, a lot of people won't be happy. No one really knows if this could happen or not. Certainly not me.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:2)
You left out that it's actually 95 miles away, under 1000+ feet of rock, stored inside some of the toughest corrosion resistant metal containers known to our science, those containers inside thick (I mean meters thick) concrete vaults.
"That would be incorrect. It's no safer than the current alternative of temporary storage, but when (not if) the waste gets loose, it only affects Nevada."
May not be safer (it seems much safer to me), but what is harder to watch and keep secure, 50+ sites or 1 site?
"No new nuclear power plants have been commissioned since 1979. All orders for nuclear power plants since 1973 have been cancelled. You're ill informed."
See my previous post in this thread, you are the ill informed person here, so much so that you lose quite a bit a credibility, since the facts are so easily checked.
"Countries around the world are halting the use of nuclear power. France, who gets most of its power from nukes, has cancelled all new projects."
Because they are quite happy with the reserve margins they currently have in their generation, not from some irrational fear of nuclear waste.
"There are several better ways of going about this - I won't go into detail, but they are: shoot it into the sun (bad idea), put it under the ice caps (bad idea), store it in the Pacific muck (good idea), put it in a subduction zone (no one knows if it's a good idea), or store it under the water table of a large city (bad idea) - oh, wait, that last one is already being done."
Yeah, all of these methods of final disposal can be accomplished even if Yucca mountain is filled. Yucca mountain is a storage site fer cripes sake! This stuff isn't going to be "dumped" off the back of a truck and buried. By the very nature of the design of these cannisters, they can be moved again at a later date if a more safe storage idea is agreed upon. Also, you left out our best (from an engineering point of view - never the one chosen of course) and that is MOX fuel reburning and reprocessing fuel. But that is a whole different argument.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:2, Informative)
The water used in the reactor vessel passes through a heat exchanger and transfers the heat to another cooling system, and that's what ends up in the cooling towers. You'll never touch 'steam heated by uranium', it's 'steam heated by other steam'.
Not all reactor designs are so safe. Be glad you live in the US. In former Soviet states, some reactors use liquid sodium as a moderator (at least, they use it in nuclear subs). I don't know all that much about power plants, but I've been told that this is very scary when it breaks.
So forget the radiation, a more immediate effect than radiation is 'thermal pollution' - eg all that heat has to go somewhere, and in coastal areas, putting it back in the ocean basically kills the ecosystem deader than the radiation ever could.
Hazards of an industrial civilization... but most of us would be dead already without it.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:2)
Well I know of at least two studies that lasted over a decade and they both show mixed effects to thermal pollution. I.e., some species populations exploded in the 15 - 25F warmer area near the plant outfall pipes, and some species populations fell. As to the effects on marine plants, the noise level in the data was too high to really conclude anything at all (the variations observed were within the parameters of natural variations in plant growth).
There is a definite effect, but is the effect of sufficient widespread damage to warrant shutdowns? I don't think so.
Re:US & Nukes (Score:1)
Radioactive Water (Score:1)
Talk to a Nuclear Physicist sometime, we live bathed in radiation our entire lives. All joking aside, we all glow in the dark on some wavelength. =P
Re:US & Nukes (Score:2)
Our precious bodily fluids (Score:1)
"Mr. President, we must not allow a mutation gap!"
Sorry, anything concerning the cold war makes me think of Dr. Strangelove!
Semipalatinsk (Score:1)
Having seen the environment there, I'm surprised that there's still life there in any form. It's a fairly barren-looking area, and at certain places (such as the lake,) Geiger counters essentially let out a steady buzz even all these years later. There is also a lab filled with stillborn, mutated fetuses.
I have seen many shocking instances of how depraved humanity can be. Public executions, nazi concentration camps, and similar things, but none stood out in my mind as boldly as Semipalatinsk. If nothing else makes it remarkable, it's the fact that this was done to their own people.
Here are some info sites:
http://www.isar.org/isar/archive/ST/Semipalatin
http://www.well.com/user/fine/journalism/kazakh
http://www.newtimes.ru/eng/detail.asp?art_id=22
Funny... (Score:2)
It seems that, at least in the short term, the animals and plants are better off with nuclear waste because humans have moved from these areas...kind of sad knowing your species is worse than cancer causing nuclear radiation isn't it?
http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/chernobyl/wildlifeprese