Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[luddite]

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine recommended this site:

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

which details a motorcycle trip through the Chernobyl area, geiger counter in hand. It dispels a number of the ideas presented on this thread. For example, the notion that people live there and are healthy:

This old man lives in the Chernobyl area. He is one of 3.500 people that either refused to leave or returned to their villages after the meltdown in 1986. I admire those people, because each of them is a philosopher in their own way. When you ask if they are afraid, they say that they would rather die at home from radiation, than die in an unfamiliar place of home-sickness. They eat food from their own gardens, drink the milk of their cows and claim that they are healthy.....but the old man is one of only 400 that have survived this long. He may soon join his 3,100 neighbors that rest eternally in the earth of their beloved homes.

Also that it's perfectly safe even right around the reactor itself:

The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment. If I step 10 meters forward, geiger counter will run off the scale. If I walk a few hundred meters towards the reactor, the radiation is 3 roentgens per hour - which is 300,000 times normal.

I believe the number of total fatalities could also be much higher than at least some of those quoted around here. I'm just adding up the firemen, and the construction workers to build the sarcophagus, and the power workers inside, and the 3,000 residents who stayed on and died and then we get into the thyroid cancers attributable to Chernobyl and the leukemias yet to come.

The author considers herself an optimist for hoping the area will be habitable again in 300 years. The pictorial diary is a graphic reminder of the innumerable non-fatal tragedies. People were not allowed to take anything, even their clothes were removed and destroyed during decontamination.

I expect Lonewulf will complain that I'm bringing up Chernobyl, and protest again that it couldn't be repeated. But that's not my point.

My point is that from claims of "in a hundred years, it's no more radioactive than natural uranium" to claims that "the background radiation level at the majority of the Chernobyl site is next to negligable", to "less than 100 people have died--including chernobyl--from nuclear related accidents" to "the people living in that area have no known problems", the pro-nuclear side on this thread has consistently overstated the case for nuclear safety, while at times mocking people who fear radiation. Looking at this site, my fear of radiation is substantially renewed, at least in part because I can't seem to rely on the accuracy of the nuclear advocates, who seem prone to understating the dangers.

If the people building and manning these plants have a similar too-rosy picture, I worry they won't take the necessary precautions. We may not have another Chernobyl, but that's not the only bad thing that can happen at a nuclear plant.

And like I've said before, any mockery or belittling of the tragedy at Chernobyl I find repugnant.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Alright... if I hear one more time that anyone here said that the spent fuel from a nuclear reactor is less radioactive than ore in 100 years, or anything close to that I'm going to have a meltdown followed by a thermal and steam explosion.

The material which was talked about in that context is what is left after reprocessing and seperation of certain reactors, designed to produce less long lived istopes or after the spent fuel is treated in one. Not the initial spent fuel.

But in the case of chernobyl: I would not want to live there. It sounds like the background levels are a bit high and the soil is definately contaminated. I'd still visit there though. But that's getting into the whole theory of radiation tissue damage and time and cumulative dose.

Chernobyl was pretty bad, no doubt. (although so were many horrible industrial accidents).

But sure, chernobyl is a horrible example of what happens in a corrupt system that builds a faulty reactor and operates it outside of safety guidelines.

I also think the hindenburg was an accident waiting to happen and thus I would not recomend flying on a massive rigid airship full of hydrogen. But that has nothing to do with airliners. Just as chernobyl has nothing to do with modern light water reactors. Or heavy water, for that matter.

 

[Lonewulf]

They eat food from their own gardens, drink the milk of their cows and claim that they are healthy.....but the old man is one of only 400 that have survived this long. He may soon join his 3,100 neighbors that rest eternally in the earth of their beloved homes.

That's why. They're eating the food grown in the soil and drinking the milk of nearby animals. The radiation itself isn't the problem, it's the way it's mutated the soil and animals that eat of that soil in the short-term. At least, that's what actual experts tell me... you're free to debunk my "misconceptions", if you wish.

I didn't realize that 3,100 people stayed behind... huh.

The readings on the asphalt paving is 500 -3000 microroentgens, depending upon where you stand. That is 50 to 300 times the radiation of a normal environment.

Scary, I guess.

By the way, don't take a plane flight.

A transatlantic flight is equivalent to having at least one chest X-ray. Passengers flying at 35,000 feet are exposed to between 50 and 100 times more radiation than when they are on earth.

http://menshealth.about.com/cs/lifestyle/a/cosmic_radiatio.htm

Of course, you wouldn't want to live in the stratosphere. However, this backs up my claim that the sun spews out far more radiation than you would run into at Chernobyl. We're just protected from most of it... but a hot sunny day still exposes you to radiation. And you get a relatively more significant dose when flying.

Luddite, you can throw out the "50 to 300 times of background radiation" all you want to. But do you even understand what that means?

 

[DRBUZZ0]

3000 uRem is a bit much for ground level radiation. That's really not the problem though. You would gt a higher dose than normal when there, but that's not really what you have to worry about. The real issue would be living there you're likely to breathe in dust and drink water from the local sources.

If you visited there are drank the water you'd probably not show any signifficant exposure. But living there for years on end, drinking the water and inhaling dust and such. That could be a problem. Although I think if you moved there now you would probably be okay. It would be the ones who stayed there for a long time right afterward who got the biggest dose.


That having been siad, I understand it's considered safe to visit for an unlimited amount of time. But living there for years on end might be iffy.

 

[Schneibster]

So basically, the gnarliest imaginable nuclear accident, full meltdown, a huge fire that burned for days, radioactivity spewed over hundreds of thousands or millions of square miles, people trying to get it clamped down and the fire put out getting exposures that killed them, happened nineteen years ago, and anybody can go to the "contaminated" area and stay an unlimited amount of time and not die of it. So much for the hundreds of thousands of years teh nucular radiation will make everything uninhabitable.

Hysteria, like I said.

 

[luddite]

Thanks all,

Having slept on it and read the comments above, I'm mollified. The author of the link states that she's the daughter of a nuclear scientist whose family lived in the now contaminated zone. She demonstrates a certain reckless confidence, but also a sense of limits. She explains how the asphalt is safer than the soil. She gets only so close to the reactor. I tend to trust her as not being hysterical, and the geiger counter readings do not lie. 50 to 300 times was the reading off the road near the reactor. In the picture where she's holding up the geiger counter, the plant isn't even visible. She states that a hundred metres closer and the readings are 300,000 times normal. You're right, I don't know exactly what it means. My only comment was that it cannot be described as "negligible".

That said, the comment about 3500 people staying behind, while I suspect is likely close to the truth, has no substantiation in literature. The Russians attempted to cover up as much as possible and had no interest in conducting studies in the area. The big WHO/IAEA study pretty much ignored everything but thyroid and leukemia rates in the emergency workers and among the residents of nearby counties. It seems likely to me that they missed a lot, and the WHO has since already revised their estimates and issued a lot of disclaimers about what they don't know. At the same time, I have no idea where the 3500 figure comes from. It's quite likely to be speculative and inflated by local fear. The author of the piece may not be hysterical, but she views this as a great tragedy and isn't about to trim numbers accepted by her peers.

And yes, they're dying because they're eating from the soil. That's foolish of them. But it needs to be recognized that people do foolish things. We design playgrounds to eliminate certain risks because we know foolish children will do stupid things. Similarly, our assessment of the risks of a meltdown need to take into account that people will try to take precious belongings, will return for them later, will get careless about ingesting contaminated things and so on. It needs to be part of the risk calculation.

Schneibster, anybody can't go there. There are checkpoints all over staffed by people in hazmat gear. They routinely stripped and decontaminated the author, and she submitted even in the cases where she felt their motives where dubious. Between checkpoints she describes a freedom but also a very eerie silence. She also expressed fears of having a mechanical breakdown. It's okay on the roads. But you can't eat or drink anything there, you really had better not get off the roads, and there are no working telephones.

And about animals. She says the horses were deliberately introduced, along with North American buffalo, which did not breed successfully. Just an interesting factoid.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

That's why. They're eating the food grown in the soil and drinking the milk of nearby animals. The radiation itself isn't the problem, it's the way it's mutated the soil and animals that eat of that soil in the short-term. At least, that's what actual experts tell me... you're free to debunk my "misconceptions", if you wish.

Radioactive elements are chemically identical to non-radioactive ones, and food gets incorporated into your body. Incorporate radioactive isotopes into your body and you get all the radiation hitting you from the inside, which is much worse for you than standing near radioactive isotopes hitting you from the outside because of the inverse square law and because there's no skin on the inside to stop alpha radiation damaging you.

 

[luddite]

Alright... if I hear one more time that anyone here said that the spent fuel from a nuclear reactor is less radioactive than ore in 100 years, or anything close to that I'm going to have a meltdown followed by a thermal and steam explosion.

Wouldn't want that. We'd have to wait 100 years to get near you.

The material which was talked about in that context is what is left after reprocessing and seperation of certain reactors, designed to produce less long lived istopes or after the spent fuel is treated in one. Not the initial spent fuel.

Well, my point was the carelessness. I wasn't talking about reprocessed fuel. I was talking about civilian waste from current reactors. Now it may be that everyone had it in their heads that reprocessing reduced the risks, but nobody said that, and nobody clarified after the original claim. Instead they supported it. When I asked why they were building architecture for a million years I was told that governments were fearful and ignorant. I was wading through hundred-page documents on Yucca Mountain, tracking down claims of 400,000 year peak doses, and only when I found something that definitively disputed the 100 year claim did I get "Oh, yeah, that's with reprocessed fuel".

Here's my suggestion. I think you are right that people have a fear of radiation that can go beyond the rational. I think it makes a lot of sense to point out what happens at various radiation levels, what kinds of activities are risky, and so on. But you have to be cautious about not overstating the safety. I see no future for nuclear if proponents are perceived to be belittling the concerns.

Just as a personal example, I have a couple of pro-nuclear friends who were foolish enough to propose a small urban reactor in Toronto to an anti-nuclear group as a supply constraint solution. One of the people in the group is a doctor who studies the health effects of tritium releases. She described some of the cancers and other problems she has seen. The response was an angry rebuttal about how the overall cancer rate increases were trivial.

Well, it's pretty hard to trivialize teratogenic effects. People were outraged. But ironically, I thought the nuclear side was correct, not necessarily about a downtown reactor, but certainly about the relative health risks to the population from routine procedures in generation from nuclear versus say, coal.

But in order to address that properly, you need to begin by recognizing that nuclear has some problems. That bad things happen. Then you move on to point out that the other options are also bad, and in many ways worse. We get something like 1900 deaths from respiratory diseases annually in Toronto, and a significant contributing factor is Ontario's coal plants and those in Ohio. And for every death there are thousands of kids on steroids in order to breathe. Our outrage should first be directed towards the coal plants, some of which still operate without scrubbers.

So in the 2 decades since Chernobyl, coal contributed to the early deaths of perhaps 35,000 Torontonians. Relentlessly, even with no accident whatsoever. That's a compelling statistic. But people won't hear it if you belittle the experience of the distraught woman remembering how iodine was forced on her and how her family had no idea what was happening and how they were forced to move away and start from scratch - no home, no belongings, not even photographs, naked as the day they were born.

I do think though, that if you go that route, you need to be prepared for people saying they don't want either. There are a lot of people who don't have time to think about where their energy comes from. If you ask them, they're all for efficiency and smart design, and would rather wind over other alternatives, but they're not going to sweat it. Among the politically engaged, the attitude is very much "none of the above, thanks, get me something that doesn't produce any systemic bad effects". And most of them are willing to put their money where their mouth is, investing in renewable coops or mounting solar panels on their roofs, but above all reducing their demands.

I don't know how this will play out when emissions reduction becomes a policy imperative that affects everyone. But the degree to which people are willing to change their habits thrills me, and I have every hope that it will make the transition to a post-carbon future easier and more healthful.

Chernobyl was pretty bad, no doubt. (although so were many horrible industrial accidents).

But sure, chernobyl is a horrible example of what happens in a corrupt system that builds a faulty reactor and operates it outside of safety guidelines.

I also think the hindenburg was an accident waiting to happen and thus I would not recomend flying on a massive rigid airship full of hydrogen. But that has nothing to do with airliners. Just as chernobyl has nothing to do with modern light water reactors. Or heavy water, for that matter.

Yep.

 

[luddite]

By the way, the hydrogen on the Hindenburg had nothing to do with it:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/moments/s1052864.htm

 

[ellindsey]

The "Chernobyl biker girl" page is apparently a hoax.

And the incendiary paint theory for the Hindenburg appears to be fatally flawed. For one thing, the burn rate of the paint mixture is too slow by a factor of 1000 to explain the observed rate of fire spread. While the skin of the Hindenburg was flammable, only a hydrogen flame could explain the observed spread of the fire across the entire ship in just a few seconds.

 

[luddite]

I'm not sure what to make of the accusation that it's a hoax. One person, Mary Myclo, claims it's a hoax. Who do we believe?

More importantly, what part was hoaxed? She states that Elena went only once. But nothing more was claimed. She states that escorts are required. Well, Elena did say she had to get special papers and that her father helped. But maybe she had escorts. I'm not sure what that disputes. That it's not as easy to get around as the photo-essay implies? Then Mary Myclo reveals the most scathing accusation, that she was in a car and not a motorcycle, and that motorcycles aren't allowed in the zone. I'm not even sure I'd care, but she's also wrong. I read Ukrainian and the picture with the motorcycle on the road next to the sign is in Chernobyl. The pictures with the geiger counters are not disputed.

 

[luddite]

Now I'm even more confused. The woman who claims it's a hoax is Mary Mycio. She is an LA based journalist who periodically visits Kyiv. You can hear an interview with her here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_13_wed.shtml

Funnily enough, a lot of what she says supports motorcycle girl. Two critical things do not. One is that she states that the doses in the red forest only go up to 3-5 milliroentgens. The other is the numbers of returning residents and the reasons for their deaths. She says over 1000 returned, and claims most died of old age. They were overwhelmingly elderly women.

She seems, if anything, more reasonable than the biker girl. The interviewer begins the interview by stating that "135,000 people were evacuated. Many of them died or became seriously ill." This is not disputed in the interview, but seems too high to me. I guess the question is what is "many".

 

[Hindmost]

If you've got a hungry family to feed and a limited budget you buy more rice than caviar. You don't say "cost differences are going to be meaningless because we will be really hungry" or "we are going to need all forms of food to get the job done" and then spend half your food budget on caviar.

OK, I shouldn't have used meaningless, but the caviar thing is a false analogy. Cost projections over a 40 year period are going to be estimates at best...the "too cheap to meter" thing with nuclear is a perfect example. Right now, all over the world, power plants are getting old. New generation must be put together at large capital cost. If nuclear starts construction now in the west, the best that could be achieved is a status quo to slight increase in capacity. So nuclear isn't going to solve any issue. With coal plants supplying the bulk of power in the US, they will need to be replaced as well. Oil and gas are just obvious bad choices as we all have shown here. That doesn't exactly leave a bunch of options. Clean coal would be nice if it was engineered to capture CO2. Renewables are fine, but lack the capcity factor to provide reliable energy and solar just happens to be closer to "caviar" at 20-25 cents (US) than other sources. And that is going to be a problem. At the point where this becomes an issue, a few cents per KW-hr are going to be much less important than supplying electricity for refrigeration and industrial needs. I point out refrigeration because our food supply is sooooooooooooooo very dependent upon refrigeration always being available.

If there is really a crisis, or there is really going to be a crisis, then surely we should be spending the available money on the most efficient forms of power generation?

Of course if there is a crisis we should also put a significant amount of money into research to figure out new and better ways of generating electricity. That is an investment not a luxury. However there's a lot of difference between "we should invest in nuclear because it is efficient!" and "we should invest in research in nuclear because it's conceivable it might turn out to be efficient".

This applies to any energy source...right now, the US is investing in corn based ethanol and that is just the poorest investment we could subsidize. It just doen't make enough energy and may even cost fossil fuel. Right now, solar has a similar issue...the cost of manufacturing and deployment use a lot of energy. Remember, the energy from nuclear fission is millions of times greater than any chemical reaction. That certainly helps with efficiency.

I also guarantee that utilities would abandon nuclear power in a heartbeat if renewables could get the job done at reasonable cost.

They have not been cost effective compared to coal, or oil, or according to some stories fission, so in that sense they are not cost-effective. Then again, that ignores global warming as a cost and assumes oil prices will remain where they are.

The current status of renewables is not going to be able to replace 500,000 MW of electricity in the US. Efficiency increases from this point will be more marginal. This differences in cost are going to be minimal over the long term compared with not having electricity.

I agree with all that. These things are physically possible, and we have a pretty good idea how to make them happen. The question is whether investing in these technologies is a better or worse investment than investing in renewables.

I believe we better invest in a diverse group of energy solutions. severe weather can destroy wind farms, coal strikes have hit US plants, oil and gas prices are going to rise...etc. Diversity would always be better. The US has one million MW of installed capacity. That is just enormous and isn't going to be replaced and increased by renewables anytime soon with the current technology--and as I stated earlier in the post, efficiency increases will most likely be marginal from this point.

Projections--which are always unreliable--are for worldwide electricity to increase by 160% by 2050 according to Sept. 2006 Scientific American.

Right now, the people of cape cod don't want a wind farm off shore because of the view...it has the potential to provide 450 MW of power...it will get defeated most likely and that is just stupid.

glenn

 

[Pidge]

Rough case study for NZ

I started a post yesteday about electricity production in NZ. Then lost it, d'oh...

Summary: NZ has just over 9GW of production capacity, with a total of 42TWh generated last year.
Type Capacity Production
Hydro 58.4% 55.2%
Geothermal 4.8% 7.6%
Wind 2.4% 1.5%
Wood 0.4% 1.2%
other renewables 1% 0.5%

Gas 17% 21.8%
Coal/Gas 10.6% 12.2%
Gas/Oil 5% 0%
(The Capacity and production are from different data sets, and for some reason they don't classify all the plants the same, argh!)

Total Renewables 67.4% 66%
Total Fossil fuels 33.1% 34%

(Data source: http://www.med.govt.nz/templates/ContentTopicSummary____20511.aspx)


Oddities:
The Wood plant is a lumber/paper mill, which burns the waste material - and it runs all year round, powering the mill with its 40MW steam turbines - plus a number of other smaller plants (at least one more) which don't rate on the list of Plants as they generate less than 10MW. I count this as a renewable as the wood has already been transported to site for processes, the wood waste only has to be dryed (using the waste heat from the steam generated by burning the wood) and feed into the furnance - probably a gross simplification. If the Lumber mill / paper plant wasn't there, the wood fired steam turbine woodn't be there.

There is a plan for a new wind farm of upto 650MW, which will cost NZ$2 billion to build, which tallies with the US$2.2 million/MW to build figure that ludite provided, and take 4-5 years. And it's a Big farm - 140 Turbines. There are other windfarms under development, but not as big That farm will basically quadruple the NZ Wind power generate capacity - and assuming it runs as well as the existing wind farms, will increase wind to just shy of 9% of the generating capacity, and wind power production to 5.6%, assuming nothing else changes (The current 217 MW of Wind farms average 70MW of production)

The Geothermal is a single plant, just north of Taupo, which appears to run continuously producing roughly the same amout each year, excluding extending the field and adding turbines. Oh, and it's cooling tower is the single largest structure (by bulk) in NZ, and you'd think we have a nuke plant.

Hydro, although is by far the largest capacity, is limited by the lake storage. There's been a number of dry years recently. In 1995, 77.5% of generated power came from Hydro - 27.3TWh.

Power in NZ is drawn first from Hydro, than gas (from our domestic gas fields - which are due to run out of gas in the next two decade, or earlier, unless new viable fields are found), then coal (not our domestic coal, becuase it's too high-grade to burn for power!), with geothermal and other renewables chipping in to reduce the need for fossil fuels.

The next hurdle in NZ is going to be the move to electric powered cars (whatever the energy storage system)

Total NZ Domestic consumption for Petrol (Gasoline) and Diesel was 221PJ. Assuming ICE average efficency of 30% (useful energy released 75PJ), and electric transmissions and storage losses of 50%, 150PJ or 42TWh of additional electrical production would be required over the time taken to move to Electric cars. On top of that will be additional consumption from population growth and industrial capacity growth (electricity production being a major stumbling block to any significant new industry in NZ...)

We can't dam any more rivers.

The State Owned Electricity producers (>95% of production) have been told to not build and new Fossil-fuel power plants - though private ones may be built, if they can get it past the local communities and the Resource Management Act.

That leaves Wind, Biomass, Solar to provide our additional energy needs to be able to displace the fossil fuel consumption (OK, it won't be totally replaced. And public transport might improve - "Yeah, right" - another huge problem as NZ cities tend to be 90% sub-urban, with little long term planning around growth - but I digress!)

Wind is sort of working, but pushing Wind up to be able to provide twice our hydro capacity will be a Transmission nightmare. And there's the cost. 42TWh is an average production of 4.8GW. Assuming the wind farms can provide an average of 50% of their capacity (current windfarms in NZ are doing around 33%), that's a capcity of 9.6GW - or 15 more of those 140 turbine farms, at a cost of NZ$30 Billion (but that's low-ball), present value. And take 15 years to build, if we can buld 4 or 5 at a time. And a NIMBY nightmare, as well as a nightmare to find a viable locations to stick the farms. It's a definite possiblity, if energy storage systems can be found to smooth out their energy delivery.

Three nuke plants of 3GW capacity would easily provide the additional capacity we need. And replace the fossil fuel plants.

The question is - could the three nuke plants be built, decommisioned, and spent fuel taken care of for less that NZ$30 billion PV, and operated for less than a total of 2100 turbines and associated transmission lines?

However, given the social climate here regarding anything Nuclear, the Windfarms + solar + Biomass will probably be the solutions choosen - at least they have a 0% chance of rendering the immediate (10km) neighbourhood un-inhabitable if somebody screws up. (although unlikely), and not "p*ss off" the populace.

Heck, they might even dam another river or two up. Geothermal is another possiblity, at least we have local expertise on them already. But there's only one or two more locations they could be built without resorting to drilling a load of really deep holes.

*sigh* I was so hoping the numbers would work out for Nuclear

 

[Lonewulf]

Now I'm even more confused. The woman who claims it's a hoax is Mary Mycio. She is an LA based journalist who periodically visits Kyiv. You can hear an interview with her here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_13_wed.shtml

Funnily enough, a lot of what she says supports motorcycle girl. Two critical things do not. One is that she states that the doses in the red forest only go up to 3-5 milliroentgens.

Yeah, I'd call that pretty critical.

The other is the numbers of returning residents and the reasons for their deaths. She says over 1000 returned, and claims most died of old age. They were overwhelmingly elderly women.

That would do it, wouldn't it?

Seems kinda weird to me that elderly women would reappear, without any of their families coming along... unless they were seperated from their families for whatever reason, or had none left?

She seems, if anything, more reasonable than the biker girl. The interviewer begins the interview by stating that "135,000 people were evacuated. Many of them died or became seriously ill." This is not disputed in the interview, but seems too high to me.

I'll have to agree with you.

I guess the question is what is "many".

That would factor into it, wouldn't it?

 

[luddite]

Seems kinda weird to me that elderly women would reappear, without any of their families coming along... unless they were seperated from their families for whatever reason, or had none left?

I believe they tend to be widows. They just couldn't bear to leave their homes, where they had borne and raised children, and where their husbands had died. In some cases their families left, in others they were already living alone. They are not spread out all over. Pripyat, the "Ghost Town" built for the power plant workers, was completely evacuated and no one was allowed to return. Looters have been through, but no one lives there. Many of the more toxic villages were actually buried to prevent former residents from returning.

I've just found that going around with geiger counters is a popular activity near Chernobyl. There are even tours that do it. You get a dose-ometer as well to measure the gamma rays you're hit with, hazmat suits are provided in some areas and you get decontaminated periodically. They'll try to find particular locations for former residents or the curious. The disadvantage of tours is that they take you to places where the levels are known to be safe - they're government operated and they don't want to open up a scandal. There are parts of the evacuated zones with radiation levels below the average ambient levels for Ukraine as a whole. However, there are other parts that are very high, where they go above the levels the little geiger counters measure. Mossy areas are especially bad. Apparently mosses actually preferentially absorb radioactive particles. You can get a patch of moss where the geiger counter goes crazy, and a metre away the levels are fine, just slightly above normal. The red forest is known for being the worst part, but no convincing conclusion about just how bad it is that I can see.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Now I'm even more confused. The woman who claims it's a hoax is Mary Mycio. She is an LA based journalist who periodically visits Kyiv. You can hear an interview with her here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/02/2006_13_wed.shtml

Funnily enough, a lot of what she says supports motorcycle girl. Two critical things do not. One is that she states that the doses in the red forest only go up to 3-5 milliroentgens. The other is the numbers of returning residents and the reasons for their deaths. She says over 1000 returned, and claims most died of old age. They were overwhelmingly elderly women.

Probably accurate. 3-5 milliroentgens I'm not sure if you mean total or per hour, but either way, it's a bit high, relatively speaking, but not *that* high, compared to, for example, flying during a time of high sunspot activity or something similar.


The fact that older people would be less effected is not that surprising. Their cells divide much more slowely, their matabolism is much slower. They already have a relatively short remaining lifetime for problems to manifest.

Old people can sometimes live with a festering tumor for years. Prostate cancer, for example, can lie dormant in the elderly, never spreading and only slowely growing for a decade or more.

It's the same deal with radiation. The chronic health effects are genetic damage which results in problems with cells reproducing, repairing or metabolizing. This is all less pronouncedly in older people for the same reason.

She seems, if anything, more reasonable than the biker girl. The interviewer begins the interview by stating that "135,000 people were evacuated. Many of them died or became seriously ill." This is not disputed in the interview, but seems too high to me. I guess the question is what is "many".

[/quote]

Yes, many were evacuated. I don't know how many died, exactly, but it was really only the first responders or plant workers who had any danger of immediate health effects due to radiation poisoning.

I would not want to be within a mile of the plant on the day it blew, but today is much different. See here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Totalexternaldoseratecher.png


The actual dose now is only less than 1/10,000 of what it would be the day it happened. Most of the radiation comes from short-lived fission products. Those are long gone. Only a few longer lived isotopes remain at all. Those represent less than 10% of the yield by volume and less than .1% of the total radioactivity, due to their long half-lives.

It's safe to visit the area around Chernobyl. I would have no problem doing so. There is very little hazard from proximity to any of the material left.

We have to understand something here:

Proximity hazard is very different from internal toxicity hazards. Plutonium is just about harmless outside the body, as it only emits a few soft gamma rays and mostly alphas. Sr-90, a major fission biproduct, is basically harmless outside the body. At worst, if you came in contact with a large amount, it could burn your skin a little. But if you have it build up in your body, that can be very dangerous.


The problem is not visiting the zone. It's not even living there. It's drinking the water, inhaling the dust, eating the foods, and doing so for long periods of time. You can go there, no problem. You can probably even drink the water or eat the food with little effect. But do it every day for years and it will build up in your body. That is the problem.


But I'd happily go spend a couple of days in the area,

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I believe they tend to be widows. They just couldn't bear to leave their homes, where they had borne and raised children, and where their husbands had died. In some cases their families left, in others they were already living alone. They are not spread out all over. Pripyat, the "Ghost Town" built for the power plant workers, was completely evacuated and no one was allowed to return. Looters have been through, but no one lives there. Many of the more toxic villages were actually buried to prevent former residents from returning.

I've just found that going around with geiger counters is a popular activity near Chernobyl. There are even tours that do it. You get a dose-ometer as well to measure the gamma rays you're hit with, hazmat suits are provided in some areas and you get decontaminated periodically. They'll try to find particular locations for former residents or the curious. The disadvantage of tours is that they take you to places where the levels are known to be safe - they're government operated and they don't want to open up a scandal. There are parts of the evacuated zones with radiation levels below the average ambient levels for Ukraine as a whole. However, there are other parts that are very high, where they go above the levels the little geiger counters measure. Mossy areas are especially bad. Apparently mosses actually preferentially absorb radioactive particles. You can get a patch of moss where the geiger counter goes crazy, and a metre away the levels are fine, just slightly above normal. The red forest is known for being the worst part, but no convincing conclusion about just how bad it is that I can see.

The "tours" take you to areas where are levels are low and they are extremely cautious and conservative with the general public. They keep it way down. Just the same, there aren't any areas which give you a singifficant dose from standing there for a few minutes. The red forest is one of the hotter areas. A geiger counter can detect levels well under what would be considered dangerous.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

I just took this video right now. Too bad I don't live in an area where it's that impressive. The rocks are relatively un exciting. If I lived in colorado, utah, new mexico, parts of australia, then I'd frequently see the geiger counter fly off the charts. They have some sizable uranium deposits with rich uranium ore.

There's an area not far from me where there are some abandoned granite quaries. Those are much more exciting. Also, toward Rhode Island, there's an area very rich in thorium sands. I'll try it in my friend's dirt-floored basement a bit later. I think that will be a lot "hotter"

 

[winnietheblue]

I realize this is from an earlier part of the discussion, but I wasn't paying attention then, so...

I'm convinced that solar energy is not a complete solution to the energy issue(the solar park in Germany pretty much destroyed the last shreds of that fantasy for me), but I was wondering if anyone had info about the environmental impact of building the solar panels? I've seen opinions that it is as bad or worse than coal power plants, but I've never been able to find any solid facts.