Forests Around Chernobyl Aren't Decaying Properly 167
An anonymous reader writes "Smithsonian Magazine has an article about one of the non-obvious effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown: dead organisms are not decomposing correctly. 'According to a new study (abstract) published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.' The scientists took bags of fallen leaves to various areas around Chernobyl and found that locations with more radiation caused the leaves to retain more than half of their original weight after almost a year. They're now beginning to worry that almost three decades of dead brush buildup is contributing to the area's fire risk, and a large fire could distribute radioactive material beyond Chernobyl's exclusion zone."
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Re:Solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fire = Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Because nature has shit loads of fusion reactors all over the planet that go critical all the time.
Re: I wouldn't worry so much about Chernobyl... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fire = Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Because nature has shit loads of fusion reactors all over the planet that go critical all the time.
Actually, that's not all that far off from reality. Except that, in our solar system, nature has only one fusion reactor, which went critical roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Nature has been powered by the output of that one runaway fusion reactors ever since then. And life here has had to handle the fact that our power supply is available only about half of each day, so each species needs to develop ways of surviving a total failure of the power plant every day.
Probably bad reporting and hyped abstract (Score:2, Insightful)
I won't believe a word about this, unless the full study is available for checking and has been independently reproduced. And when I write "available" I don't mean "you can purchase this paper for the wee lil' sum of 40 Euros".
Sorry, but just about any time I actually read the papers that articles on slashdot or anywhere else are about, the result is typically quite different in the actual paper or the methods employed have obvious holes like insufficient data. The more politically relevant the topic, the worse it gets. Hence, I won't take a word of this seriously.
Re:Fire = Good (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah go right ahead and conflate the most wildly unsafe nuclear power plant in the world with all of the others with a secondary containment building. With proper safe design.
Go ahead and spread all of your anti nuclear paranoia non sense.
While we are at it, why don't we push the disapearance of Air Malasia Flight 370 as an excuse to ground all airliners, eventually leading to shuting down the whole airline industry for good. It's the kind of wisdom the anti nuclear wise man are proposing.
Re:Fire = Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Or how about we get some perspective. Chernobyl nearly bankrupted the USSR, and the cost of Fukushima is looking like it will be in the range of hundreds of billions of Euros/USD. The loss of one airliner doesn't really compare. In fact all their air accidents in the history of the world don't really compare.
no, idiot. sunlight is radiation. Heard of sunburn (Score:5, Insightful)
Speaking of "no, idiot", sunlight IS radiation.
As anyone who has ever had a sunburn knows, it's damaging radiation. Quite a bit more damaging than any radiation anyone has ever received from. US nuclear power plant, in fact.
Re:Solution... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you should reference a map first. Chernobyl is one of the booby prizes the EU gets to keep, along with the Ukraine debt and the tens of thousands of neo-nazis. Of course as an 'applying' member of the EU Ukraine will no longer be able to do a middle man attack on the gas supplies between Russia and the EU when it comes to extorting reduced gas prices (that application might drag on quite a bit, seriously who Europe would want tens of thousands of neo-nazis, just the right mix to set of mass conflict with European Muslims and Jews)
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)