20 years after Chernobyl

[CFLarsen]

So were the twin towers.

Not the type of planes that hit them.

 

[CyCrow]

Back to the original topic, it's certainly moving, but it's got the facts wrong. Unfortunately, most of what you read about Chernobyl in the press is wrong. We are supposed to be sceptics here, and use science to make rational decisions. The UNSCEAR report is science. Disturbing images of unfortunate children isn't.

Low level radiation has not been linked to congenital mutations in humans, despite a lot of research looking for it. Even among Hiroshima victims, no effects have been found in the next generation.

A high sub-lethal dose won't guarantee that you die early from cancer, although the risk is elevated. For that kind of exposure, the Hiroshima data is quite useful. Googled this: http://www.hiroshima-is.ac.jp/Hiroshima/radiation.htm Seems that being 1-1.5 km from the blast increased cancers by about 20% from average incidence. Leukemia increase is higher and faster, but still low total percentage ( < 1% ).

Chaos: Pripyat is about 3km from the plant. I seem to remember the winds weren't blowing that way initially. As for news magazine articles, they are mostly wrong. They tend towards higher bodycount for shock value, citing "potential" deaths (whatever that means?) among huge populations extrapolating from high dose data. Fact: increase in cancer incidence from radiation within at least an order of magnitude of average natural background has not been found. In fact, there is good reason to believe the curve is U-shaped, so a small increase actually reduces cancer. See this site for some articles on this (hormesis) http://www.belleonline.com/newsletters.htm

As for the volunteers, that's the 600000 "liquidators". The UNSCEAR report estimates about an eventual 4000 excess deaths in this group. The reason fo the high numbers is that each worker only did high-radiation work for a short time, distributing the dose to a lot of people. They are being followed up, no mass deaths there.

daenku32: nuclear tests: WRONG. While tests produced more fallout than Chernobly for most countries, the increase over background was still low (a few percent to much less). Radiation doesn't cause most cancers.

Also, see my answers in this thread: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53180

// CyCrow

 

[Rob Lister]

Well said.

 

[geni]

They are being followed up, no mass deaths there.

Doubtful with the colapse of the USSR it appears quite a lot of them have been lost so any follow up is going to be far from complete.

 

[CyCrow]

Doubtful with the colapse of the USSR it appears quite a lot of them have been lost so any follow up is going to be far from complete.

Are you sure? Check this link: http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/radiation/Si2002/Chapter_1.html

Seems to indicate that followup has been pretty good. And that liquidators had about twice the rate of leukemia in 1992-1995, normal before and declining towards normal after 1995. Total numbers are low (leukemia is rare), about 50 are attributed to radiation. So a small leukemia rise has been detected, while other cancers have not seemed to increase. Of particular interest is the graph (figure 5) showing lifetime of russian male population. The breakup of the Soviet Union seemed to cause a massive reduction in lifetime, probably due to alcohol abuse and increase in poverty.

It is true that the disability rate among liquidators is very high, but there is no correlation with radiation dose. This seems to indicate sociological factors, not radiation.

// CyCrow

 

[Rob Lister]

Doubtful with the colapse of the USSR it appears quite a lot of them have been lost so any follow up is going to be far from complete.

I suggest we're getting far, far more 'follow-up' now than we would had the USSR had not collasped

 

[Ziggurat]

I know it was in a bad state and was of an old russian reactor type called RBMK.

Yes, but do you know what that MEANS?

The damned thing had a positive thermal coefficient, AND it had a graphite core. That was a recipe for disaster. Let me explain:

Nuclear fission produces very fast neutrons. These high energy neutrons are very penetrating, which among other things means that they don't get captured by surrounding uranium atoms very easily, and so don't produce a chain reaction with much efficiency. In order to get a nuclear reactor to run, you need to slow down the neutrons, and you do that by using what's termed a moderator. Water (light or heavy) is the common moderator in modern reactors. Chernobyl used graphite, but it also had water flowing through it for cooling. The particulars of this design made it over-moderated: that is, neutrons were slowed down more than they needed to be for optimal efficiency. This meant the reactor had a positive thermal coefficient: as it heated up, the water around it expands, decreasing in density. This lowers the amount of moderating, and since it was over-moderated to begin with, it becomes more efficient. That's a positive feedback mechanism, and it makes runaway reactions easier. Most US reactors, by contrast, have negative thermal coefficients: as they get hotter, they get LESS efficient, and so runaway reactions are less likely.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg. When the reactor DID go supercritical (exacerbated by the positive thermal coefficient), it generated a huge amount of heat, very quickly, which blew the lid off the reactor and broke a hole in the floor. Now you had super-heated graphite suddenly exposed to air. What does super-heated graphite do when exposed to air? The same thing coal does: it burns, and it burns very hot. That fire is what helped spread much of the radioactive cloud, and that's also what you would NOT get any of in a non-graphite reactor design. It also meant that even with the loss of cooling water (which is what lead to the actual melting of the reactor fuel elements), the chain reaction didn't stop immediately, because graphite was still moderating the reaction.

So Chernobyl wasn't just an old design - it was almost the perfect design for maximizing the disaster. And you will find nothing even remotely similar in the west - hell, I don't think even the Russians would build something so dangerous now.

 

[CyCrow]

One more link, this time the 2006 WHO report: http://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/who_chernobyl_report_2006.pdf

From page 86, Birth defects and Down's syndrome: "There has been a slow but steady increase in congenital malformations recorded in both high and low contamination areas, but the increase does not show a dose-response pattern. In the period 1983-1999, there were 12,167 congenital malformations registered among newborns and abortuses. In fact, there were statistically significantly less congenital abnormalities in the high contamination areas compared with low contamination areas, with a RR of 0.88 (95% CI 0.84-0.91)"

It's a 167 page report, but if you really want to argue the issue on a scientific and not media-hype basis, at least skimming it is recommended.

// CyCrow

 

[CyCrow]

Pardon me for replying to myself here, but I couldn't pass up this statement:

"Bebeshko said studies have found increases in not only thyroid cancer, but also breast cancer in the wives of men who cleaned up after the explosion and big increases in leukemia and other blood disorders."

from here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/18/ap/world/mainD8H2NASO0.shtml

What's the supposed mechanism here? Didn't they wash their hands? Greenpeace and their supporters are really clutching at straws here.

// CyCrow

 

[Hamradioguy]

I was tempted to start a new thread, but this one is actually appropriate, particularly given some of the posts of Gargoyle and ongoing claims of groups like Greenpeace.

The latest issue of Health Physics (Vol 93 No. 5), the official journal of the Health Physics Society, is almost entirely dedicated to the 42nd annual meeting of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the topic of which was: "Chernobyl at Twenty". I'll not quote extensively- there's a lot of material, and anyone interested in the latest on radiological effects of the Chernobyl accident should look at the articles in their entirety. But a few of the article abstracts are worth noting:

1. Leukemia Following the Chernobyl Accident: "...possibly apart from
Russian cleanup workers, no meaningful evidence of any statistical
association between exposure and leukeima risk as yet exists."
2. Current Status and Epidemiological Research Needs for Achieving
a Better Understanding of the Conzequences of the Chernobyl
Accident: "...There is no clearly demonstrated increase in the
incidence of cancers in the most affected populations that can be
attributed to radiation from the accident, except for the dramatic
increase in thyroid cancer incidence among those exposed in
childhood and adolescence."
3. And from the Keynote Address- Retrospective Analysis of Impacts
of the Chernobyl Accident: "...The majority of the >600,000 emergency
and recovery operation workers and five million residents of the
contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine received relatively
minor radiation doses which are compatible with the natural background
levels."

The CT crowd and Greenpeace will likely dismiss the findings presented at the NCRP meeting, but for others interested in "Chernobyl at Twenty" there's a lot of good reading. Keep in mind that the Health Physics Journal is a peer reviewed scientific publication. This particular issue is light on math, but it's still heavier reading than Reader's Digest.

 

[Gurdur]

-....What's the supposed mechanism here? Didn't they wash their hands? Greenpeace and their supporters are really clutching at straws here.

*sigh*

Some science and some common-sense for you, once you've finished being silly.

The presumed mechanism is pretty much the same as for wives of asbestos workers (a famous case of carry-on problems). That is, clothing contaminated by the stuff in question. Since wives did the laundry, that resulted in carry-over contamination and resultant problems.

Next time, try actually thinking or even actually researching before simply automatically flaming Greenpeace or whatever.

 

[WildCat]

*sigh*

Some science and some common-sense for you, once you've finished being silly.

The presumed mechanism is pretty much the same as for wives of asbestos workers (a famous case of carry-on problems). That is, clothing contaminated by the stuff in question. Since wives did the laundry, that resulted in carry-over contamination and resultant problems.

Next time, try actually thinking or even actually researching before simply automatically flaming Greenpeace or whatever.

Common sense tells me that the workers didn't go home in their contaminated clothes, unless the Soviets were unbelievably careless.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

Common sense tells me that the workers didn't go home in their contaminated clothes, unless the Soviets were unbelievably careless.

And how far away do you think they went to change into their non-contaminated clothes? How securely were those clothes stored? Given that the reactor core was on fire, is there not a possibility of airborne radioactive particles settling on that clothing?

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I was tempted to start a new thread, but this one is actually appropriate, particularly given some of the posts of Gargoyle and ongoing claims of groups like Greenpeace.

The latest issue of Health Physics (Vol 93 No. 5), the official journal of the Health Physics Society, is almost entirely dedicated to the 42nd annual meeting of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the topic of which was: "Chernobyl at Twenty". I'll not quote extensively- there's a lot of material, and anyone interested in the latest on radiological effects of the Chernobyl accident should look at the articles in their entirety. But a few of the article abstracts are worth noting:

1. Leukemia Following the Chernobyl Accident: "...possibly apart from
Russian cleanup workers, no meaningful evidence of any statistical
association between exposure and leukeima risk as yet exists."
2. Current Status and Epidemiological Research Needs for Achieving
a Better Understanding of the Conzequences of the Chernobyl
Accident: "...There is no clearly demonstrated increase in the
incidence of cancers in the most affected populations that can be
attributed to radiation from the accident, except for the dramatic
increase in thyroid cancer incidence among those exposed in
childhood and adolescence."
3. And from the Keynote Address- Retrospective Analysis of Impacts
of the Chernobyl Accident: "...The majority of the >600,000 emergency
and recovery operation workers and five million residents of the
contaminated areas in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine received relatively
minor radiation doses which are compatible with the natural background
levels."

The CT crowd and Greenpeace will likely dismiss the findings presented at the NCRP meeting, but for others interested in "Chernobyl at Twenty" there's a lot of good reading. Keep in mind that the Health Physics Journal is a peer reviewed scientific publication. This particular issue is light on math, but it's still heavier reading than Reader's Digest.

Why do you hate the people of Chernobyl?

 

[corplinx]

My local power plant released uranium into the air. In fact they do it every day. Its the pollution a coal plant produces and its dirtier than a nuclear plant built to spec.

 

[WildCat]

And how far away do you think they went to change into their non-contaminated clothes? How securely were those clothes stored? Given that the reactor core was on fire, is there not a possibility of airborne radioactive particles settling on that clothing?

As bad as the Soviets were regarding safety, I find it hard to believe the workers were allowed to walk away wearing clothers that sent geiger counters into the red zone.

I once did outside contractor work at Fermilab, and had to wear a radiation badge. Needless to say, I wasn't exposed to anything remotely similar to Chernobyl. I don't think even the Soviets would have been that careless.

And I have to say, there were many unbelievably heroic Soviets who sacraficed themselves to keep that from being even worse.

 

[Darth Rotor]

An photo-narrative about the aftermath of Chernobyl.

Go to: http://www.jp.dk/

Click on "Arven efter Tjernobyl".

Very strong stuff. It's in English.

I was interested in bombshells. I clicked the Miss Mexico wins Miss International in your nice Danish link.



Strong, that's what she is. Danke. Gracias. Arregato. Grazie Mille. Spasiva. Merci.

DR

 

[Chaos]

Common sense tells me that the workers didn't go home in their contaminated clothes, unless the Soviets were unbelievably careless.

The Soviet Union was (in)famous for many things, but being excessively careful was not one of them.

 

[Lonewulf]

The Soviet Union was (in)famous for many things, but being excessively careful was not one of them.

There's a difference between "not being excessively careful" and "outright reckless to the point of stupidity"...

 

[Chaos]

There's a difference between "not being excessively careful" and "outright reckless to the point of stupidity"...

I was being sarcastic there.

From what I remember about the accident itself, it was basically caused by being "outright reckless to the point of stupidity".

The point is, the Soviet Union didn´t give a freakin´ damn about being careful or careless, as long as only the lives of ordinary workers and peasants were concerned.