News Chernobyl disaster: Ukraine marks 30th anniversary

[Fabri91]

Knowing nothing about how radiation actually affects the human body or living tissue in general, I suppose food might be more dangerous since it actually is ingested.

 

[Urwumpe]

I read an article a few days ago that linked the high cancer rates in the region to contaminated food grown from the soil.

It was a news article, not a scientific one, so it was pretty much devoid of any useful data explaining the connection. It struck me as a bit odd why it singled out the food... If the soil was still this contaminated, wouldn't that by itself already constitute for a major increase? Or is there groundwater contamination that is not directly dangerous on the surface?
I'm not saying they are wrong, I just don't get where they made the link to the food as major contributor...

Plants concentrate radioactive nucleids in them when they grow, especially in the edible parts.

Also, most radiation is worse, if you ingest it, but I doubt that the article cared about Sieverts.

 

[Ravenous]

Knowing nothing about how radiation actually affects the human body or living tissue in general, I suppose food might be more dangerous since it actually is ingested.

You're right, it's a big risk (I don't know enough to say if it's the biggest, but it's serious.)

Radioactive elements in food might get absorbed and held for long periods in the body, which increases the exposure. (Someone was assassinated in London around ten years ago by putting polonium in his tea...)

Iodine is one of the well known ones - I gather the body uses small amounts and it gathers in an enzyme used in the thyroid gland. This is why thyroid cancer can be a risk. If you give someone a large dose of the clean, non-radioactive isotope of iodine as a precaution, then the thyroid is much less likely to gather any of the nasty radioactive isotope from the environment.

And I heard something recently about wild boar meat in Germany - apparently it's still tested before sale, as the pigs living wild in the forest eat mushrooms which concentrate caesium from a wide area. (Absolutely not a problem provided the meat is tested, the required levels are extremely low apparently.)

 

[Urwumpe]

And I heard something recently about wild boar meat in Germany - apparently it's still tested before sale, as the pigs living wild in the forest eat mushrooms which concentrate caesium from a wide area. (Absolutely not a problem provided the meat is tested, the required levels are extremely low apparently.)

Only few places in Germany had a noteworthy exposure to fall-out anyway, mostly in Northern Bavaria.

But it was better to be safe than sorry, also it makes sense to test for currently unknown sources of radioactive pollution... for example Belgian nuclear power plants.

 

[Lucy]

You're right, it's a big risk (I don't know enough to say if it's the biggest, but it's serious.)

Radioactive elements in food might get absorbed and held for long periods in the body, which increases the exposure. (Someone was assassinated in London around ten years ago by putting polonium in his tea...)

Iodine is one of the well known ones - I gather the body uses small amounts and it gathers in an enzyme used in the thyroid gland. This is why thyroid cancer can be a risk. If you give someone a large dose of the clean, non-radioactive isotope of iodine as a precaution, then the thyroid is much less likely to gather any of the nasty radioactive isotope from the environment.

And I heard something recently about wild boar meat in Germany - apparently it's still tested before sale, as the pigs living wild in the forest eat mushrooms which concentrate caesium from a wide area. (Absolutely not a problem provided the meat is tested, the required levels are extremely low apparently.)

Up until 2012, British sheep were subject to regulation because of Chernobyl too;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-18299228

 

[Notebook]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36158606

Computer viruses have infected PCs used at a German nuclear power plant.

The viruses were found on office computers and in a system used to model the movement of nuclear fuel rods.

Power firm RWE said the infection posed no threat to the plant because its control systems were not linked to the internet, so the viruses could not activate.

German federal cyber investigators are now analysing how the Gundremmingen plant became infected.

And some folk want to cause mischief.

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-36158606



And some folk want to cause mischief.

N.

More likely somebody simply did not know to only open attachments, that you really requested and to use a phone call to verify, if you are not sure.

 

[Notebook]

Yes, probably harmless, but it implies lack of security and poor procedures

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

Yes, probably harmless, but it implies lack of security and poor procedures

N.

Probably, but since currently all German companies are under a heavy virus attack, I doubt it is really that dangerous. My company is also under fire right now, luckily the damage is only on the mental side.

 

[Notebook]

That's bad news, Any reason why this is happening now?

N.

 

[Urwumpe]

That's bad news, Any reason why this is happening now?

N.

No. But most cases are encrypting trojans, so I suspect it is just because we can pay.

 

[Notebook]

Ah, I got a newsletter from Zone Alert telling me the end of the world is to be encrypted, and only they could help.
Thought it was scaremongering, but second thoughts now.

N.

 

[Andy44]

A few decades earlier, exactly that saved the day... during the Windscale pile accident in the UK. The reactor manager climbed on top of the reactor building and watched how things turned out, especially noticing that most ways to stop the graphite fire failed, just like they later failed for Chernobyl.

Yeah, but I think guy only exposed part of his face directly, just enough so he could see the pile for a second or two. There is a good BBC documentary about that on youtube and they interview the guy. I believe he's still alive today, too, which means he couldn't have taken the dose those poor "biorobots" were taking.

 

[Urwumpe]

Yeah, but I think guy only exposed part of his face directly, just enough so he could see the pile for a second or two. There is a good BBC documentary about that on youtube and they interview the guy. I believe he's still alive today, too, which means he couldn't have taken the dose those poor "biorobots" were taking.

Yeah, but then, you really have to say: No robot (or at least very few) available today would have been able to handle this. Just remember that Fukushima is also a robot grave today.

 

[kamaz]

~650km. We recieved Lugol's iodine in kindergarten to prevent absorbtion of I 131 and prevent thyroid cancer. I was 4 at the time.

~730km for me.

Fun fact: application of Lugol's iodine for thyroid blocking was a genuine Polish invention. Civil defense manuals refer to iodine tablets, an that's what the government had stocked -- but as usual, in insufficient amounts and without a distribution network.

Fortunately, someone in the government was smart enough to know that pharmacies are well stocked in both iodide and potassium iodide in solid form and so can prepare large amount of Lugol, which is 97% water...

Iodum 1,0
Kalii iodidum 2,0
Aqua purificata ad 100,0

---------- Post added at 08:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:07 PM ----------

Also on a lighter note. Below is the actual RNAV map for Poland. Note the name of the waypoint in the bottom-right corner of the map, on the Ukrainian border (49.2N 22.7E):

 

[SolarLiner]

I never got to see the documentary he made, though I rememberd reminding myself to turn on my DVR for once to record it on Arte.

 

[kamaz]

I'll just leave this story here: http://www.chernobylinfo.com/voice-chernobyl-1.php

 

[steph]

Was born 4 years after the event , but I remember them ocasionally giving us iodine pills in kindergarten and elementary school.
From what older people say, for the first few days, we didn't know it happened. Then, information started coming in, through Radio Free Europe and through word of mouth, And soon after, they started giving out the iodine pills. Even then, we knew there was an accident, that it was bad, but other than that, details were scarce.

Romania just got lucky, due to the atmospheric circulation. At the expense of other areas, of course. Had the wind been blowing north to south, we'd have taken a nasty dose of the initial fallout. And Kiev would probably have followed the fate of Prypiat . Or that's what they claim in the documentaries, at least...

Edit: the powerplant at Kozlodui, in Bulgaria on the Danube, is supposedly of the same design as Chernobyl. Even our (only) nuclear poweplant, at Cernavoda (on the Danube as well) was supposed to be of Soviet design and was under construction at the time of the accident, but they changed it to a CANDU design afterwards.

 

[Andy44]

Yeah, I read some good articles on the Chernobyl Robots today in connection with this.

http://www.the-scientist.com/?artic...hat-Robots-Couldn-t-Handle-Chernobyl-Cleanup/

That article, from all the way back in 1990 (So just a few years ago, right?) points out the issues they faced; all the robots they used were designed for other purposes and either couldn't cope with the high radiation, or the ones which could got fried when they sprayed water on them trying to decontaminate them (sounds like a winning strategy).

The US had some active, much more advanced and better suited robots at the time cleaning up Three Mile Island, but the relations between the USSR and the USA at the time meant that nobody in power wanted to ask the USA for help; and, potentially, that the USA might not want to effectively donate cutting-edge robotics technology to a country which was, at the time, a potential nuclear threat. The robots that did get used probably saved something like 500 lives, and they're all on display in a museum somewhere in the Exclusion Zone; and, as with everything else there, extremely radioactive.

From the end of that article:

Although no formal collaborations between U.S. and Soviet robotic researchers currently exist, negotiations are under way on an agreement with U.S. researchers to develop robots that will be able to largely replace humans in radioactive disasters such as Chernobyl, Whittaker says.

That was 1990. 2 decades later Fukushima still did not have the proper robots for the task, and that was in a country renowned for its robotics technology (which unfortunately, is focused on sex and loneliness instead of useful things like nuclear safety).

They were using robots successfully at Three Mile Island even in the 80s. I imagine there must exist better tech for this today.

---------- Post added at 09:31 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:29 PM ----------

It has also just occurred to me that the long term ill effects of Chernobyl are worse than the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, which is today a thriving city despite the calamity it suffered. Puts an interesting perspective on things.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Three Mile Island didn't have quite the same radiation threat in the general plant as Chernobyl or Fukushima did. Think about it, we have to specially harden anything going to space and while we don't send Astronauts up unshielded, they aren't exactly encased in lead vehicles either. The radiation levels in a breached reactor are significantly higher than what we have in space. An Astronaut going to Mars and coming back would get about 0.66 Sieverts, that's over the 400+ days to make the trip. The control room at Chernobyl had levels of .05 Sieverts per hour. Or about 13.2 hours to receive the equivalent dose of the 400+ day space trip. Roughly 700 times the radiation in just the control room as in space. The range is up to 6000 times as much when you start talking about the reactor itself. But still, the point remains that if electronics have problems in space, how do we expect them to behave crawling around a reactor core?

Space radiation source: http://www.space.com/21353-space-radiation-mars-mission-threat.html

(apologies if this post is mildly incoherent or I got my math wrong, I'm about to fall over from exhaustion. Feel free to correct any facts I may have gotten wrong)