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Science

Arctic Radiation Levels From Chernobyl Declining 17

Posted by timothy from the remember-that-the-west-is-evil dept.
jangobongo writes "Nearly 20 years after the Chernobyl meltdown and much longer since Soviet nuclear weapons testing, radiation levels in the Arctic landmasses are finally declining. But nuclear disaster is still lurking on the horizon. The Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia is home to Russia's aging, decomissioned (and sinking) nuclear sub fleet as well as a depots of nuclear weapons and an old nuclear power plant. Estimated cost of clean up to prevent further toxic leakage is millions of euros."
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Arctic Radiation Levels From Chernobyl Declining More

Arctic Radiation Levels From Chernobyl Declining

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  • Not exactly much (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, "millions" of euros aren't exactly much, for instance the new train station in Berlin costs 3 billion euros ...

  • Why isn't this being taken care of? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by node 3 ( 115640 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2004 @09:04AM (#10513159)
    Estimated cost of clean up to prevent further toxic leakage is millions of euros.

    While millions of Euros is nothing to scoff at, this is a clear problem and we need to fix it. In proper perspective, millions of euros is a small price to pay (the world can chip in if needed, but even cash-strapped Russia can pay the millions of Euros alone if necessary) to clean this mess up.

    If we can spend hundreds of billions of dollars to "clean up" a country with no pending nuclear disaster, surely we can spend far less than 1 billion dollars on this.
  • IMHO, this indicates that airborne radiation levels only are declining. Data from the artic would not seemingly have anything to say about the contaminated soil and water in the polluted areas of the Ukraine.

    Since the Chernobyl plant exploded and burned for days, large amounts of radioactive material was spread over a broad surrounding area, borne aloft by wind currents. The highly contaminated radioactive smoke that poured out of the plant may have now settled out of the planet-wide atmosphere, but that
    • . I believe the best place for this stuff is probably off-planet, but until we get that capability, let's put it in a well-guarded, well-controlled area.

      Are you serious? So when the next shuttle explodes we can have the radioactive material distrubuted higher in the atmosphere? You have to accept that accidents will always happen. The problem with nuclear accidents is that they kill hundreds of people and cause extreme environmental damage for a hundred years. Nuclear energy isn't worth the risk. Your

      • when the next shuttle explodes we can have the radioactive material distrubuted higher in the atmosphere?

        I AGREE, THE SHUTTLE SUCKS. (go ScaledComposites!) I was speaking of space vehicles availble to my grandchildren (presuming, again God Willing, that the humanity doesn't suffer another dark age from some catastrophe or another).

        Taking a 4 hour automobile trip has a small but finite chance of destroying the car and its contents. As soon as our record for getting things out of Earth's gravity well is

  • Reading comprehension (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alexo ( 9335 ) on Wednesday October 13, 2004 @09:29AM (#10513357) Journal

    Currently the page says:
    > Estimated cost of clean up to prevent further toxic leakage is millions of euros.

    Millions of euros is small change.

    However, the actual article [go.com] says: Strand said it will take billions of dollars (euros) to clean up.
    Since the source is ABC news, I assume that they use the American billion (10^9).

    Now that is a whole different story, considering the fact that the projected revenue [russiajournal.com] for the Russian Y2005 budget is only ~92 billion Euros.

    A conservative assumption of single digit "billions" results in something like 10% of the total budget revenue.

    Just for comparison, this would be akin to [akamaitech.net] the US spending 200 billion dollars on a similar task.

  • aging, decomissioned (and sinking) nuclear sub fleet

    They're designed to do that.

  • I apologize to all who caught the mistake of "millions", when it should have said "billions". I would offer an excuse such as, "It was late at night when I submitted this story, so I was very tired at the time and it slipped through even though I previewed the story three times," but I don't think anyone wants to hear excuses. Again, sorry!

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