Chernobyl...18 Years Later 971
abysmilliard writes "A young Ukrainian woman has posted a photo journal of her motorcycle rides through Chernobyl and the area surrounding it. Included are pictures of the now-emptied city, maps of current radiation levels, and a discussion of how the area has changed. While the english is quite broken, it's often rather surreal, as well, with quotes like, 'I don't know how sound the silence to those tourists that they can not stand it, but to me after hitting a red line on my bike tacho it sound like all those ghosts cursing 1100cc kawasaki engin.'"
An anglefire site (Score:5, Informative)
I'm saving a mirror now, if necessary, I can mirror.
Dangerous? (Score:3, Informative)
Yep. Especially when you're wearing jeans, which will be ripped through in a half-second if you were to fall off the bike. I don't ride a motorcycle, but I do know only the truly stupid ride without motorcycle pants+jacket/suit, especially if the roads aren't in great shape and you'd be lucky if days went by before someone happened to pass you by. Same goes for riding without a helmet- dumb, dumb, dumb.
the text (not much without the pictures, i know) (Score:1, Informative)
Mirror (Score:4, Informative)
Mirror is the site gets overloaded or bandwidth exceeds limit (which can happen with angelfire).
Re:An anglefire site (Score:5, Informative)
If somebody were to give this unfortunate person Angelfire's highest "element plan" [lycos.com], it would cost $15 for the setup and $14.95 for the first month, and give her 30 GB of monthly traffic. That might be enough to survive a slashdotting.
MIRROR :) (Score:-1, Informative)
Pompei (Score:5, Informative)
(She - apparently by mistake - skipped page 16, which you can access by modifying the URL manually.)
Radiation exposure in Kiev (Score:5, Informative)
Hidden page (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:4, Informative)
When the bomb went off, you could actually see the bones in your hands from all the X-rays that were emitted from the bomb.
How exactly does this work? When have human eyes been capable of seeing the x-ray portion of the electromagnetic spectrum? Or, is there some grain of truth in this, in terms of the visible light being so intense that it's possible to see vague impression of bones within your hand? I suspect the latter.
Re:Facinating (Score:2, Informative)
You'd have to find a very remote wheat field. I grew up in the rural Midwest, and even in the middle of a field you could still hear planes flying high overhead, cars driving on the highways miles away, almost-inaudible buzzing from power lines, birds and bugs(depending on the time of year), and more. There are very few places in the world that are truly silent, but I could imagine that the Chernobyl area is one of them.
Re:Mirror (Score:2, Informative)
And just so it's a clickable link... http://unbolted.llarian.net/chern/ [llarian.net]
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gamma World (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Sad graffiti... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.geocities.com/pripyatcity/argazkiak.ht
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:2, Informative)
The funny (sad) thing is I had a science teacher in the 7th grade (1985?) who said the exact same thing "and the x-rays from the bomb allowed people to see their bones".
We were talking about the made-for-TV movie "The Day After". For you young 'uns this was a movie about nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The movie did actually depict, during the nuclear flash, being able to see the skeletons of people. Complete and utter bullshit.
Re:What is the scale? (Score:4, Informative)
Dunno if that's accurate...
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Gamma World (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Makes you think... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:I've been to Ukraine... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes and no. The West has repeatedly offered to build replacements of a safe design: not just the US, but France and others. However, the West wants to keep control of the money and construction: Kuchma et al aren't exactly known for being good, honest men with the dinero, ya know?
Hell, Kuchma's government isn't exactly known for being good at anything other than lining their own pockets and killing journalists.
Re:Gamma World (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
The RBMK reactors have a positive void coefficient. The rod control mechanisms had been manually disabled for the turbine coast-down experiment (because they kept ramming in the rods, something which should have served as a Big Clue to the operators that what they were doing was a bad idea). When the cooling water began to boil, the reactivity jumped due to that positive void coefficient and the power level spiked 3-4 orders of magnitude in some milliseconds. That flashed the cooling water into steam, which exploded and blew the top off the roof. The 3,000+ degree graphite moderator was now exposed to open air and burst into flame and it was good night, Gracie.
Read Medvedev's book. Hell, read _any_ book.
Re:Gamma World (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pompei (Score:1, Informative)
'Glowing' radiation doesn't exist (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:there're many 'Chernobyl's in this world... (Score:4, Informative)
Dartmouth researcher poisoned by 2 droplets [denison.edu].
Odd that this happened (semi-recently) at my school, and nobody's ever mentioned it in ANY of the chem classes I've taken...
Re:Makes you think... (Score:5, Informative)
The graphite moderator reactor has a positive temperature coefficient, so it is inherently unstable. The fact that the graphite burns isn't too neat either.
Re:What is the scale? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Sad graffiti... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes. The WayBack Machine [archive.org] has at least some of it.
(can we
Re:there're many 'Chernobyl's in this world... (Score:4, Informative)
Now let's say she ate tuna EVERY meal for a whole week...that adds up to what, 21 meals of tuna? How many tuna sandwiches have you had recently? In 21 weeks will you have consumed enough to otherwise qualify you as "mercury poisoned"?
I'm glad the general public has such a say in how our food is raised because, yes sir, I loves me that good old American heavy metal poisonin'! I'll fry it up in my recycled radioactive-waste frying pan!
Friendly public reminder (Score:5, Informative)
Links to the Story (Score:1, Informative)
Here are a couple of links to read the story. fairly short, just a couple of pages.
http://www.plazaboricua.com/anil/archivo/fabula
http://home.earthlink.ne
http://www.dchsenglish.com/dchsenglish/ass
There you go!
~Shodekiagari
I have mirrored it. (Score:5, Informative)
http://ryans.northernwatercolour.com/chernobyl
I also included page 16 which she mistakenly skipped in the linking, it shows a swimming pool.
Medvedev's book... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:5, Informative)
Cherenkov radiation is not observed in air (you need particles with mass traveling with speed higher than the speed of light in given medium , and the optical density of air is low (close to vacuum), the particles would have to travel at speeds near to c - which are difficult to obtain because of relativistic effects. (You can get that from accelerators, but not from fission)
You can see Cherenkov typicaly in water - the blue shine around immersed fuel rods or intense radioisotope source.
There is similar-looking bluish shine/flash around extremely strong sources, like criticality accident with Pu, U, or in nuclear explosion (the mushroom has bluish envelope). This shine is caused by intense ionisation of air molecules by radiation, mostly X-ray. The recombination of ions produces excited states whis give away the surpluss of energy by emission in UV/vis , which also appears bluis white.
Re:'Glowing' radiation doesn't exist (Score:3, Informative)
Little FAQ on Cerenkov radiation. Radiation itself doesn't glow, it energizes other particles which do the glowing.
Re:It's a lesson (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link to it from Amazon:
Robert Polidori: Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl [amazon.com]
Mirror Me This (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Gamma World (Score:3, Informative)
Good story.
Three Mile Island (Score:5, Informative)
Paul Fusco (Score:2, Informative)
I recently attended a presentation by Paul, and some people were reduced to tears by the photographs he showed of Chernoybl.
It's a very sad situation.
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.publicshelter.com/main/bofile.html
and here
http://www.angelfire.com/tx/yuccaflat/herb.html
and here
http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_6843.
List of interesting nuclear accidents. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Mayak - another nightmare that lives on... (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1999/so99/so99l
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:1, Informative)
like that is because the blood vessels are actually in front of the
photoreceptors. Light entering the eye passes through a layer of
blood vessels and nerves before it gets to the rods and cones.
Ordinarily, you don't see that because images that are stabilized
with respect to the retina get filtered out by the brain. Sometimes
you can stare at something just right, and then the image begins to
fade. Most of the time you can't, because even when you're staring
at something, your eyes are constantly moving very slightly, so the
image isn't stabilized. I guess that's why cats shake their heads
just before the pounce: so they can get a clearer picture of their
target.
Re:Gamma World (Score:3, Informative)
All of her pictures were from Feb. 21, which is before there are leaves on most of the trees and bushes. The old picture with the two young girls in it looks like it was at least April when it was taken because they're dressed for warm weather and the hybrid tea roses are blooming.
the "REAL" death toll and the real story (Score:5, Informative)
While not wanting to diminish the size of this catastrophie, it is nevertheless very important to actually look at the numbers and to put things into perspective.
Please refer to the papers from the United Nations studies on this. They can be found here: UN website on the Chernobyl Disaster [un.org]
Starting with paragraph 1.26 we find a discussion. In paragraph 1.28 we find that there were some 2000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to the radiation (iodine). However, thyroid cancer can be treated and there is no real death rate associated with the thyroid cancers.
Next we find that the anticipated development of leukimias has not occured. In paragraph 1.36 we find this quote: unexpected appearance of early childhood thyroid cancer, the unexpected absence of leukaemia stemming from the accident.
In paragraph 1.38 we see that there is a iodine deficiency problem in the population and that addressing this problem in a timely fashion would no doubt have made a considerable difference.
Starting with paragraph 2.01 on page 30, we have a history of the event itself. In paragraph 2.03 I131 is discussed. This isotope has a half life of 8.05 days and were the population given an ample supply of non-radioactive iodine - through the use of simple iodized table salt - then the radioactive version would not have been picked up.
It is really unfortunate that iodine pills could not have been distributed faster!
On page 56 we find more telling information. 28 highly exposed individuals died within 4 months of the accident (see box 4.2). In addition to the end of 1998, 11 others died.
in paragraph 4.18 we have more discussion of the thyroid cancers, and the esitmation is made that the total number could be as high as 8,000.
In the end, while this certainly was a major disaster with an impact on innocent people that should not be underestimated, we are still left with the facts that the media overestimated the impact and the death rate by many orders of magnitude.
In fact some of the pictures clearly demonstrate this. If one looks at the flora and the fauna in the pictures we see groups of wild animals happily running along totally oblivious to the radiation.
These animals have a faster metabolic rate than humans and thus are not as radiation hardy as we are. Yet they are clearly thriving and the world they are living in, and rearing their offspring can only be described as very beautiful.
Yes the radiation is there and yes it should not be scoffed at. But the pictures clearly show that animal life is not impacted all that much. Those horses look pretty healthy and pretty happy to me!
Re:angelfire? (Score:5, Informative)
I was close... (Score:5, Informative)
See Also... (Score:2, Informative)
Here [gsc-game.com] is the link to the photos, and here [stalker-game.com] is the game.
Both photos collections are unsettling. Just to think of what it must be like to experience Chernobyl, past or present, gives me chills. But is it not somehow fascinating to see our own technological marvels destroyed and decayed, as a sort of humbling reminder? Or am I the only one?
-K
Re:Gamma World (Score:2, Informative)
i remember (Score:3, Informative)
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah.. Lesson One is don't use an RBMK reactor with no secondary containment. Current (and future) designs have Fail-Safe systems where, should the control system fail, the whole shebang fails into a "safe" mode (control rods are dropped which effectively stops the reaction and free-flowing coolant is delivered to alleviate residual core heat). TMI would have failed safe, except for incorrect operator intervention.
Chernobyl was also utilized to produce weapons-grade plutonium as well as civilian electricity, which is why the graphite moderator was used (instead of water, as in US civilian designs). When the graphite burned, the temperature shot up very quickly and the reactor exploded through the pressure-seal which was the only line of defense (not the reinforced concrete secondary containment vessel in Western designs). TMI showed how well that design could withstand both an incident and poor handling of that incident.
Re:Three Mile Island (Score:5, Informative)
Though the containment building was very helpful the design of the reactor was somewhat more important, Soviet and US nuclear plants use a different substance as a moderator(could have the term wrong, been a while, it's the thing which slows the neutrons so the reaction can take place). In the US reactors use deuterium(heavy water) as a moderator, if the reaction gets out of control and the heat reaches a certain point the heavywater is vaporized and the reaction stops, in the USSR however they used graphite for this purpose, which does not evaporate in the same way. Because of this, not only was the reaction not contained as well at Chernobyl, but the reaction continued for a much longer period of time releasing more radiation.
Of course the way things were handled also didn't help Chernobyl much, I've seen the footage of the people they sent in there afterwards, they had nowhere near sufficient protection and I've also seen footage of the gigantic lump of plutonium sitting underneath where the reactor used to be. Not a good place for inadequately protected people.
Dozimeter == Dosimeter (Score:2, Informative)
A dosimeter is a pen-like device that measures the cumulative dose of radiation received by the device. It is usually clipped to one's clothing to measure one's actual exposure to radiation. Magnifying lenses (a low-power microscope) and an illumination lens allow one to directly read the dose by aiming the illumination lens at a light source and looking into the device.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dosimeter
Re:Like the American southwest (Score:1, Informative)
No, this design is not intuitive. Seems to work though.
Re:Midnight on Elm street (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Three Mile Island (Score:5, Informative)
The Canadians use heavy water in the Candu design.
For the details of what happened at Chernobyl see [gsu.edu]
you missed a page (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Three Mile Island vs Chernobyl (Score:5, Informative)
Unlike TMI, Chernobyl almost seemed to be "how dumb can we be and get away with it [gsu.edu]". (See the quote: "like airplane pilots experimenting with the engines in flight".)
Many Children are ill (Score:3, Informative)
Nuclear power for maximum profit - rubber stamp (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear safety always should be more than just a guy with a rubber stamp - hopefully three mile island and the subsequent court case changed all of that.
Those who think nuclear accidents can never happen in the good old USA should consider superior or more expensive technology is worthless if the lowest bidding contactors don't even do the job, and no-one is there to see that they haven't done the job.
Different situation, different outcome, but we can learn from both, so long as we stick to the technical instead of the emotional, and keep nationalism out of it. The lesson I get from Three Mile Island is to watch your contractors - they may not care if what they do can result in a major catastrophe. The lesson I get from Chernobyl is that a steam explosion is far more catastropic when nuclear material can get scattered around - so the design has to avoid that and try to bring it down to a less major incident.The main problem with nuclear power today is we keep having to subsidise the plants we have - shutting them down is usually a bigger problem than keeping them going. We just have to pour cash in to keep this 1950's white elephant going - at least in the UK where they are not supported by the same weird financial misdirection that makes the US plants appear to make a profit. Maybe when defence in the USA gets pissed off and wants a bit more of their own budget it will also become clear to people in the USA nuclear plants are made up of a lot of expensive parts and require expensive maintainance - it's not a cheap way to boil water.
Who modded this insightful? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Do you have any evidence? (Score:2, Informative)
I've never heard of this, and I doubt that it's true. It would be difficult but not impossible to test. Of course, it is generally true that people eat and drink too much sodium, but AFAIK that is more a question of blood pressure, not cancer
Or perhaps you are thinking of potassium chloride. Naturally occurring potassium is significantly radioactive.
It is true that the biggest cause of cancer due to radiation is sunshine... but this is ultraviolet radiation. When most people talk about radiation they mean ionizing radiation. Naturally occurring radon is the biggest contributor to the average person's dose of ionizing radiation.
Re:there're many 'Chernobyl's in this world... (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Gamma World (Score:5, Informative)
The link between radiation and cancer has much to do with the increased mutation rate of DNA caused by radiation, which is natural since most cancers are caused by changes in the DNA of a cell. I find it difficult to see why you try to deny this?
It is too bad, but I guess because of the Soviet Union and the turmul in the years after the Soviet Union disintegrated, there has not been done real studies on the wildlife of Chernobyl. (There has been done many studies on the radiaton effects on humans in Chernobyl [ratical.org].) But since all life is related to DNA, there is no doubt that the animals and plants in the area has been seriously affected. Can you show any scientific study that has shown no impact on nuclear radiation on wildlife, we would like to hear about it. And remember, radiation is one thing, but plutonium is one of the mosth leathal chemical poisons in its own right, so if the radiations doesn't get you, the radioactiv chemicals is there for you to worry about the. Again, it is quite natural that plutonium and other radioactive isotops made in a nuclear plant are poisonous, since because they don't excist naturally in nature, organisms have not evolved protections against them.
Distributed Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
This way I'm Karma whoring for doing some real work for this wonderful site she made, and oh yeah.
Re:Gamma World (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Three Mile Island (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Distributed Mirror (Score:1, Informative)
A few have page16.html, some do not.
replying to myself, but posting AC.
Kalak
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:5, Informative)
"The disaster began with a routine operation for maintenance and fuel change that commenced a day before the accident. In addition to these procedures, the technical crew wanted to perform a test of the plant's steam turbines. Their goal was to determine if the turbines would continue to provide power for the plant's safety systems after their steam supply was cut off. While attempting to perform this test, they committed a series of errors that culminated in catastrophe. More than simple blunders, the errors stemmed from a reckless disregard for safety procedures. The errors compounded, and the disaster would likely not have occurred if any one error had been avoided.
The crew began by reducing the reactor's power so they could start their experiment. They also switched off the reactor's emergency core cooling system. This meant that in the event of a malfunction the reactor would become dangerously hot, which is exactly what subsequently happened. At 12:28 A.M. the crew made another serious error by putting the reactor's regulator at much too low a setting for the planned experiment. At this point, the reactor should have been shut down and the experiment abandoned, but the crew feared a reprimand for the incorrect regulator setting, so they decided to bring the reactor back up to power. To do this, they removed most of the graphite rods that moderated the fissioning of nuclear materials in the reactor core. By 1:00 A.M., the power output had reached 200 MW, still too low for the experiment. At this point, they switched on two extra pumps for the circulation of more cooling water in the core. This action made the reactor highly unstable, and water and steam levels began to oscillate uncontrollably. The crew then made another major mistake by blocking the automatic shut-down system. At 1:23, they started their experiment, and a few seconds later they switched off the safety apparatus that would have come into operation as soon as the turbines stopped.
In less than a minute, the crew chief realized that he had a serious problem, and he ordered the graphite rods to be reinserted in the core. The rods did not fall home, probably because the rods or the nuclear fuel had been distorted by the heat. The rods were then disconnected so that they could fall into the core, but by this time the situation was hopeless. The reactor's power surged from 7 percent to several hundred times its normal level. An explosion rocked the core, followed by another one 4 seconds later. These explosions blew the roof off of the reactor and caused the collapse of a refueling crane into the core, destroying what was left of the cooling system. A reaction of the steam with the fuel rods' zirconium cladding caused the formation of hydrogen, which then ignited, setting off 30 separate fires through the plant. The graphite in the core also ignited."
http://www.fofweb.com/Subscription/Sci
Chernobyl heart (Score:2, Informative)
The documentary was made in collaboration with Adi Roche and the Chernobyl childrens project [chernobyl-ireland.com], which is worth special mention...
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:5, Informative)
The Chernobyl design had control rods entering the core from top and bottom. This particular design causes the reactor to have, in certain operating regions, a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity (like positive feedback for you non-nukes.) This has the effect of the reactor power level rising in response to a rise in temperature - and in response to the bottom control rods rising into the core.
Western designs are almost all designed to have a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity in operating regions.
What happened was, as the reactor temperature rose, power followed, such that when they finally tried to shutdown the reactor, reactor power level shot way up (basically, the reactor went prompt critical - some experts have said that the reactor went prompt supercritical - I'm not sure myself since I'd have to go back and research the values for beta and beta-bar that Chernobyl was designed to.) As a result, the power level exceeded design values by a couple hundred times, and the resulting step rise in temperature and pressure caused a massive steam void to form in the reactor, which promptly escaped by rupturing the top of the reactor.
Had Chernobyl been built to western designs the disaster wouldn't have happened.
1. Cooling and fuel channels containing thousands of welded joints through which the coolant continually passes vs. a western design consisting of a single pressure vessel that holds the majority of the coolant covering the core with a few loops to circulate water to the steam generators. This makes the design much more prone to a leak in an inaccessible location.
2. Using graphite instead of water. Graphite has its uses - a power reactor is not one of them.
3. A positive temperature coefficient of reactivity. If you do *nothing* else, make sure your design has a negative coefficient in all operating regions.
4. A flimsy steel shed vs. a proper containment. Even when the reactor suffered a steam explosion, a proper containment structure would have caused Chernobyl to be a localized accident resulting in the contamination of the inside of the containment structure, instead of a disaster affecting the entire world.
Re:Much-hyped? I don't think so (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's a lesson (Score:2, Informative)
If you had read her article, you'd know that she wasn't being stupid. The radiation fallout didn't "stick" to the asphault, so it has become quite safe to enter the area as long as you stay outside the buildings and on the asphault/concrete. Why else would the government even allow tour buses, much less folks on motorcycles, to enter the area?
You sound as if you are thinking that any radiation is bad or that radiation itself is bad. The danger from radiation, is mostly a matter of how long you were exposed to it, *not* that you were exposed at all. In extreme cases, of course, like being in the reactor core itself, just being there for a fraction of a second is enough to kill you (later), but for the most part you can enter a radiated area and still be safe as long as you don't stay in the area long enough to accumulate a lethal dose of radiation. Radiation is something that happens every second of every day to every thing on the planet, it is a natural occuring phenomenon, but just like many other things, too much of it can be a bad thing. Note there is a big difference between entering a radiated area, and coming into contact with radioactive fallout, especially if the contact includes inhaling radioatice dust. Its been 18 years since the disaster, the radioactivity is now in the ground and buildings but not in the air (and has also been washed clean from flat hard outside surfaces like concrete and asphault).
Re:Three Mile Island (Score:5, Informative)
The photojournalist should get some kind of reward for an excellent presentation. This is the best coverage I have seen to date on the results of "Chernobyl".
More pics of Pripyat here (Score:1, Informative)
This years documentary short Oscar winner (Score:3, Informative)
This past Sunday, the Oscar for Documentary Short went to a film about Chernobyl:
Re:Gamma World (Score:2, Informative)
The US government is currently, after litigation, paying parts of the medical costs of tens of thousands of "downwinders", of the Hanford WA nuclear site
http://www.usdoj.gov/civil/torts/const/reca
(I was further away, but when I was growing up in Indiana, the government was providing Kodak [which used corn fiber from my area to pack film] test schedules to avoid problems with film clouding).
The amount of radioactive iodine from some famous events:
Hanford (1944-1957): 737,400 curies of Iodine 131
Three Mile Island accident (1979): 15 - 24 curies of Iodine 131
Chernobyl accident (1986) 35 - 49 million curies of Iodine 131
Nevada Test Site (1951-1970): 150 million curies of Iodine 131
If you're considering doing a bravado visit, you might consider taking potassium iodide pills first, and while there, stop at some of the children's clinics in Ukraine and Belarus.
Re:Gamma World (Score:5, Informative)
Your evolution based argument is pure supposition, and is unlikely given that there are natural compounds with similar chemical toxicity (other heavy metals) and plenty of natural alpha-emitting natural compounds (e.g. polonium).
As far as the chemical toxicity, this [isu.edu] says:
In other words, the chemical toxicity is irrelevant.
Overall, ricin, of Al Qaeda fame, is 10-20 times more toxic than plutonium. Botulinum toxins (the reference bacteria strain for which was found in a refrigerator in Iraq by David Kay's team) is 10,000 times more toxic than plutonium.
Furthermore, I do not deny that high levels of radiation cause cancer, not to mention radiation sickness. What is not well known is that people live and prosper in areas of very high natural radiation.
When one looks at low levels of radiation, the sensitivity is undetectable. Low dose radiation level rules are based on an unproven and somewhat implausible theory called Linear, No-threshold Theory (LNT). This theory is used to derive radiation hazard predictions and exposure standards as one of the first uses of the Precautionary Principle. The theory assumes that one can estimate risk at a low level by applying the ratio of that level to a high level where the risk as been established. The risks for low level radiation dosages are hypothetical, having been derived by this ratioing from populations exposed to much higher dosages (uranium miners, Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors).
Furthermore, the risk is presumed to be based on total lifetime dosage independent of the rate of exposure. Again, this has not been established scientifically.
You mention Hiroshima. Because Hiroshima had no local fallout, all excess radiation exposure occurred in an extremely short period of time - most of it in a few seconds. Furthermore, the levels of dosage received by Hiroshima victims had to be estimated, which could not be done accurately.
There are several problems with LNT. First, it is based on a very old, discredited model of carcinogenesis which assumes that a single point mutation in DNA is the cause of cancer. In fact, the process is far more complex, with cells having the ability to repair mutations.
This means that the odds of acquiring non-repairable damage are higher if the radiation is delivered more quickly, because a single cell may sustain multiple hits. There may also be secondary effects, due to the death of an excessive number of cells at the same time.
great radiobiologist, the late Harald Rossi summarized the situation as follows: "It would appear...that radiation carcinogenesis is an intricate intercellular process and that the notion that it is caused by simple mutations in a unicellular response is erroneous. Thus, there is no scientific basis for the "linearity hypothesis" according to which cancer risk is proportional to absorbed dose and independent of dose rate at low doses" .
However, lets just assume that LNT is correct, since it is widely used.
Consider this (April 2000):
The Chernobyl catastrophe resulted in vast quantities of radionuclides being released into the global atmosphere, which were easy to measure even high in the stratosphere, and far away at the South Pole . It was a godsend for anti-nuclear activists. Yet according to estimates of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR),
Re:Three Mile Island (Score:3, Informative)
Unknown to the Operators
They should have known! Specially a group doing "physics testing". Anyone that has ever been anywhere near operating a nuclear power plant knows about Xenon and the key times involved when dealing with Xenon. Reactor power is nothing more then summing the +'s and -'s. Some things add reactivity and some subtract it, when all factors considered equal 0, the reactor is "critical". Of course any factor that changes can easily swing it the other way. Here is a BASIC example scenario with a pressurized water type reactor:
The operator raises the control rods which adds + reactivity (less control rods to absorb neutrons so the U23x can absorb more), that increases power and causes temperature to increase, temperature increasing causes the water density to go down which adds - reactivity (more space between water molecules so more neutrons can escape the core and not be absorbed by the U23x) and the reactor power goes back down. The final result in a minute or so is the same reactor power but the core temperature went up a few degrees. All of this can easily be calculated on paper based on a current plant design.
Of course Chernobyl was not a pressurized water reactor and actually had a positive temperature coefficient (as temperature went up, power went up) so it would act differently but the point is the same, all things need considered.
The effects of poisons, fuel loading, core age, current coolant temperature, and recent previous reactor power history is taught from day 1. For plants operating at consistent power levels, Xenon does stabilize and becomes less of a factor but not something you can forget about by any means. These factors and others are also taken into consideration before starting the reactor, independent parties should calculate at what rod height criticallity should occur (the US Navy requires this on paper by hand using the previous reactor operating logs, design graphs and a calculator). At that point you would realize if you were Xenon precluded (which Chernobyl apparently was). A reactor startup and warmup evolution are the *MOST* demanding for planning and potential for damage. The overall plant is going through many structural stresses due to various rates of temperature and pressure changes and is generally operating further from protective setpoints which means once something gets out of control and fission being momentum based, it takes longer to reach a setpoint before a protective action or operator action can occur, at that point, it may too late.
Anyone got more examples? (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.interlog.com/~grlaird/uraniumcity.ht
Very good documentary on the same subject (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Three Mile Island (Score:3, Informative)
One of the main reasons why Chernobyl happened was that the Chernobyl reactor was built so that it could have a positive temperature coefficient. A reactor with a positive temperature coefficient is a reactor in which the reaction feeds itself - the higher your power, the 'better' the reactor works. This can be due to many reasons, among which perhaps the most prominent is that the reactor can be over-moderated (too much moderator, so that, when temperature rises, moderator expands, its density decreases and less of it interferes with the reaction), which was the case with Chernobyl in the particular experiment. I can't claim to understand fully how the Soviet-design Chernobyl type reactor works, but there was something fishy about it so that it could have both a positive and a negative temperature coefficient, depending on the circumstances, and, in the experiment they were doing, they created a positive one. (There was also a lot of personnell incompetence with switching off safety systems involved).
Now, all US reactors are undermoderated and all have a negative temperature coefficient. Very simply, this means the higher in power you go, the worse the reactor works. Thus, while US reactors can get a fuel meltdown under very, very, VERY specific circumstances (as TMI proved), a more explosive accident is impossible. To a large extent, TMI happened because of personnell incompetence (a hundred safety systems were turned off that should've remained on), but, even with a horde of blunders, the total release of radiation from TMI was comparatively miniscule - studies have shown no effect whatsoever on anyone's health from the incident.
An ironic thing about Chernobyl that is also observed in US reactors was this: when the reactor scrammed and the control rods first dropped into the core, the power, instead of going down, went up. This is not a danger in US reactors because of the above reasons (the power spike is comparatively small and short-lived), but, in Chernobyl, it added to the mess. It happened because of the thing called neutron flux - the distribution of neutrons in the core (neutrons are what cause fission events - control rods are used to absorb them). When the control rods were first dropped, it so happened that part of the control rods went from a part of the core where there were neutrons to a part where there were none - and, as a result, less neutrons were absorbed and the power increased. .
I must note once again: At Chernobyl, they did everything that could be possibly done wrong and the result was a major accident. At TMI, they did everything that could be possibly done wrong (and more, it seemed), and the result was a scare, but no real threat to anyone (only losses to the company running it).
Hailing from Eastern Europe, I enjoyed the photo gallery a lot. I thought some of it was somewhat irresponsible, though - such as claims about hundreds of thousands of people having died. Many studies show that the total number of deaths due to the accident are in the one (!) hundred (not hundred thousand) range, but numbers have been blown up by soviet and post-soviet governments and all kinds of 'helpful' agencies to attract more pity & aid (and to scare people of nuclear power). Approx. 40 people died from the immediate effects of fighting the accident. There was also a notable rise in thyroid cancer in children born after the accident - but only in thyroid cancer; the incidence of no other cancer was observed to increase. Most other deaths and problems attributed by the media to Chernobyl have been shown to be at no higher levels than in 'test populations' elsewhere in the world (it is, after all, estimated that 20% of all Americans will get cancer in their lives
Re:Before anyone starts trolling... (Score:3, Informative)
Don't lecture me about training. One of my best friends is a plant operator on a missile sub, and we've had many discussions about the training he receives. Some years ago I also knew a couple operators at the Prairie Island plant in Minnesota, and they were cool, dedicated customers who knew what they were doing. You're comparing apples and oranges here.
They are all *very* aware of what kinds of mistakes they could make.
As I've said, in the original post and the responses, I consider the training that the Chernobyl people had to be sub-par - not necessarily because they panicked, but because they allowed the situation to develop in the first place - which, in combination with the bad design, and other factors, caused the whole situation. You might want to read this [time.com] where it says To prevent the automatic safety systems from interfering with the experiment, the technicians disconnected them, opening the way for a chain of fatal mishaps..
Well trained? So well trained that you disconnect *all* the safety systems to test the design parameters of the turbines?. Yeah, right. Also the very fact that the design of the plant allowed this to lead to the explosion is very well documented.
So tell me, where, in your 'experience', has this occurred in the US? 3MI? Not hardly. At 3MI the safety systems worked as they were designed to. THE MAIN DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CHERNOBYL AND 3MI WAS THAT THE OPERATORS HADN'T DISCONNECTED THEM. At 3MI, the emergency cooling system was even disconnected, yet the other safety systems kept a major catastrophe from happening.
More modern reactor systems *are* failsafe by design. Yes, there are ways to build them so, that bypass operator error. You need to go do some research.
Ignorant asshole.
I'm done with this conversation.
SB
Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA... (Score:3, Informative)
TMI did fail safe. You had a partial meltdown with only very limited release of short-lived radiactivity (Iodine-131, half-life 8 days). No deaths or injuries.
It woudn't have failed at all if it hadn't been for incorrect operator intervention.