Chernobyl Becomes Tourist Hot Spot 276
prostoalex writes "18 years ago on April 26, the Chernobyl disaster occurred in Central Ukraine. Nowadays, as British Telegraph reports, the radioactive disaster area is becoming a tourist hot-spot with 3000 visitors paying $200 for a guided tour each year."
Re:The motorcycle chick... (Score:5, Informative)
Registration Free Link (Score:3, Informative)
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Just say no to karma whoring!
Re:Illness (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The motorcycle chick... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Radiation (Score:5, Informative)
And comparing the stuff from a power plant to the stuff from a nuke is kind of stupid. Nukes are meant to make the biggest BOOM possible. They try to use the least materials to do it, and the force required tends to break the materials down into fairly non-dangerous stuff.
it's actually huge money there (Score:2, Informative)
Now let's transfer it in american terms:
Average salary (I assume): $30,000
84x that: over $2.5 million per year!!
What kind of security is there? (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, I'm sure there's unscrupulous types who are going there simply to pick up souveniers and sell them to the highest bidder. This to me is no better than the people who where trying to sell steel from the WTC.
I hope the Russian government is controlling these tourist trips to make sure no one is profiting from the ongoing suffering of thousands of people.
What do other Slashdotters think?
After you're done laughing... (Score:5, Informative)
Lone biker woman of Chernobyl (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Look Maw!! (Score:2, Informative)
off-color jokes are not offensive.
off-color jokes are not sexual harassment.
off-color jokes are not an attack on me or "my kind".
your opinion sucks. please kill yourself.
Re:What kind of security is there? (Score:0, Informative)
That would be tough, since Chernobyl is located in Ukraine and Russians would need to take over first to control anything.
Pripyat (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad it's a hoax (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Umm...can we learn about radioisotopes? (Score:3, Informative)
Please don't say something is dangerous because it has a long half life. There is an iron isotope (Fe-60) out there that has a half life of 3x10^5 years, but the only way you are going to get hurt by it is if someone smacks you on the head with it.
In fact, of the two fissile Pu isotopes (Pu-239 and Pu-241), Pu-241 has a half-life of 14.4 years [ieer.org], meaning that it has probably decayed into something else by now (Americium 241?)
Re:What kind of security is there? (Score:2, Informative)
I got it! They can slap an RFID on everything in there!
Re:Radiation (Score:5, Informative)
Quickly paraphrasing this from Walker's Physics, Volume II:
The RAD (radiation absorbed dose) is the amount of energy that is absorbed by an irradiated, regardless of the type of radiation. One rad equals .01 joule per kilogram.
More information is needed to have an indication of the biological effect a certain dosage will produce. This is called the relative biological effectiveness (RBE). Some values:
Heavy ions: 20
Alpha rays: 10-20
Protons: 10
Fast neutrons: 10
Slow neutrons: 4-5
Beta rays: 1.0-1.7
Gamma rays: 1
200-keV X-rays: 1
The biologically equivalent dose for humans, the REM (radiation equivalent in man), is just the dose of radiation times the RBE. So alpha rays have at least ten times the relative biological effectiveness than X-rays.
Another Load of Environmentalist Twaddle (Score:2, Informative)
Depleted uranium (U) has very little radioctivity. That is what "depleted" means. Being in the nuclear industry I know guys who handle natural (non-depleted) U all day. It is much more radioactive, but still trivially so.
U is toxic like lead (also used for ammo) and most other heavy metals. Take my advice and refrain from picking it up and eating it if you see any while walking around the Arabian Deserts.
These people are clutching at straws trying to argue that the combination is worst than the sum of the two effects.
Re:Radiation (Score:5, Informative)
You are both right.
Alpha particles do more damage, but only if produced by ingested substances. From external sources, they won't penetrate the layer of dead skin on the surface of your body.
Heavy ions behave similarly (at least when in the same energy range).
Betas have a penetration distance of at least several millimetres, so they're definitely an external hazard (first poster was hazy on that).
The real danger at sites of nuclear accidents (or bomb tests, etc) is inhaling radioactive dust. That can get close enough to live tissue to give you lung cancer, and anything soluble can pass into the bloodstream and do more damage.
The danger from nuclear reactors and from long-term waste storage is from soluble radioactives getting into the local water supply and being ingested that way. This is why power plants have multi-stage heat exchange systems and why proposed waste storage sites are at the bottom of mines in non-porus rock, or under a few hundred feet of clay at the bottom of the ocean.
Re:Another Load of Environmentalist Twaddle (Score:5, Informative)
The debate over DU is about the dust form it takes after a shell has hit it's target and explodes. That makes it inhalable which is far more problematic than just having chunks of it on the ground that no dumbass would eat anyways.
As long as you stay on the roads... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Umm...can we learn about radioisotopes? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What kind of security is there? (Score:3, Informative)
In any case, some theft will happen, yes, but from the pictures, it does look like the local authorities are taking some precautions (armed guards, chemical showers, geiger counters, etc.).
Also, do note that a lot of our own airports are supposed to be able to detect radioactivity (although that system has been foiled a couple of times by journalists).