What Chernobyl Looks Like In 2010 413
An anonymous reader writes "The editor of Phoronix.com has toured Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation (the 30km zone surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant) to see what the area looks like 24 years after the world's largest nuclear disaster. Many photographs from Chernobyl in 2010 have now been published, showing off the power plant and its RBMK reactors, the town of Pripyat, the town of Chernobyl, and the Red Forest. The 24th anniversary of this deadly nuclear disaster will be on April 26."
Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Insightful)
...really? Does a disaster have to be an accident to be classed as a disaster?
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Booooooooom!
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as Chernobyl nature has taken back the surrounds of Pripryat, the Chernobyl stories take on mythical proportion.
Unfortunately, most people who go to Chernobyl (TFA author included) - seem to adopt this faux-investigative journalist approach, as if the entire experience is touch and go.
This is entirely not the case - and while there are many interesting elements to Chernobyl, its surrounds, and its history, the above really just isn't one of them.
For those of you who are interested - I've been. It's interesting enough. You pay 40 - 80USD, hop in a bus, drive 2 hours, and you're there. There's a quick paper check on the edge of the exclusion zone. You drive to a small village that has more kittens than people, and you're told a little about the history. You drive a little further into a larger town, and buy some Kvass and sausages, and keep going.
From there, you're back in the bus - you see a memorial on the eastern side of Reactor 4, drive to the western side, at another memorial. This is as close as you can get to the reactor (and it's where the author shot his photos from)
From here, it's a crapshoot depending who you went with. Normally, you'll get a speed-tour of Pripryat. They used to do the helicopter / heavy equipment graveyard, but that's no longer done.
Pripryat is quite interesting, but the tours are always superficial. You follow a set path, and everyone sees the same thing: The ferris wheel, the school, the swimming pool. The buildings are decayed - not due to radiation, but simple weather exposure, yet peeling-paint photos somehow always manifest into drama-heavy recants.
On my trip, I was lucky enough to slip away from the group, and get some more interesting perspectives:
http://ninjito.com/2009-09-12-PANO/qx-pano-pripyat-1.jpg [ninjito.com]
The hotel Polissia. It was quiet a pleasant day.
http://ninjito.com/2009-09-12-PANO/qx-pano-pripyat-2.jpg [ninjito.com]
Roof of said building, you can see reactor 4 in the distance to the right.
http://ninjito.com/2008-08-16/qx-pripyat-1.jpg [ninjito.com]
Rarely seen fresque honouring the cosmonauts.
Interesting things to take away from the trip are:
- There's a lot less 'fuss' than most people imagine
- There are active buildings, people in the region
- The unchecked nature growth has resulted in truly beautiful surrounds - the forests and plant life are stunning.
- Radiation is pervasive and scary. While it's obvious that you can't see, touch, or smell it, it's truly startling to stand somewhere that has slightly-higher than background radiation, take two steps to the right, and suddenly be exposed to several-hundred times background radiation.
Summary: Go and see it for yourself, but don't buy into the mythology.
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
This fresque honours the USSR Post Service and says "The post service for all time and all peoples".
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
--The town is not completely closed. Lots of people still work there to decommission the other reactors.
--The plant continued to run until 2000.
--They only take you around certain places because they have been tested to be relatively safe. There are still parts in buildings where highly radioactive dust has settled, so even with a good G-M meter, you might stumble upon way too much radiation. A G-M meter will tell when you have found it, but it's not going to tell you where it is.
--The "kidofspeed" site about her Chornobyl/Pripyat tour is probably a hoax
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Informative)
My understanding about the kidofspeed site is that she was not being honest when she said she rode her motorcycle there (she was in buses/tour cars with other people), but that the pictures are all actually taken there. Though apparently, I just found a site mentioning that some were staged or set up here [racingsouthwest.com] which seems to be a credible source.
Just to clarify. And you can take the same tour she took yourself [ukrcam.com] for a few hundred bucks (and the time/cost of getting there).
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Funny)
Me too! Almost got killed trying to save my team leader from a bunch of Russian mercenaries while we waited for the chopper evac, but it was still pretty cool.
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Funny)
There's even a mobile phone network there nowadays.
Aren't they worried about the radiation from the phones?
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Funny)
Can I ask you a question?
Listen, just between you and me, did you happen to find any glowing artifacts? I pay top dollar.
Meet me at the bar 3 klicks south of the downed helicopter. You'll know me by my tattoo and the badly damaged assault rifle I'm carrying.
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Funny)
What does "dA3TO7" mean?
It means "letoH" :-)
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Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Funny)
Right! If you can't kill a guy by blowing his entire arm off at the shoulder...
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
It's also a complete hoax [museumofhoaxes.com]
Pity - it was / is well written.
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Insightful)
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You may not consider it a disaster but many Japanese likely do....affects are still felt to the present day.
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That's generally the sentiment of most people on the receiving side of wartime attacks. Many Germans are still pretty upset about the "Dresden disaster".
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Many Germans are still pretty upset about the "Dresden disaster".
That wasn't just a disaster, it was a war crime [wikipedia.org].
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The bombing of Dresden has never been legally classified as a war crime. There are plenty of people who believe it is, plenty of people who believe it isn't and even more people who have no opinion either way. Whether it would be classified as a war crime if it were "on trial" is a matter for discussion :)
The link to Wikipedia merely explains some of the discussions around whether is may or may not be a war crime, a disaster or merely a nasty thing (tm) but it is technically NOT a war crime as it has not be
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
The bombing of Dresden has never been legally classified as a war crime. There are plenty of people who believe it is, plenty of people who believe it isn't and even more people who have no opinion either way. Whether it would be classified as a war crime if it were "on trial" is a matter for discussion :)
It wasn't classified as a war crime simply because the perpetrators of said attack were on the winning side.
A prime example of that is some of the charges that Admiral Donitz faced regarding the sinking of neutral and unarmed shipping even though both the British and the Americans waged a similar campaign tactic against both Germany and Japan.
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It wasn't classified as a war crime simply because the perpetrators of said attack were on the winning side.
This has tended to be the way it worked out over the centuries...
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, WWII is generally considered to have been a great example of "total war", meaning that there really was no such thing as a civilian, which is also how many political and military leaders, regardless of country, viewed it. After all, how do you determine if someone is a civilian when practically everyone is involved in the war effort in one way or another?
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Informative)
About a dozen Americans were killed by the Hiroshima atomic bombing. They were PoWs (airmen captured when they were shot down in raids on Japan).
When Americans are taught about the bombing, is that ever mentioned, that they nuked their own soldiers? I'm not taking a position that it is right or wrong to drop bombs that kill your own soldiers in the pursuit of the greater goal, but it would seem appropriate to recognize the sacrifice that was made and honor the dead.
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When Americans are taught about the bombing, is that ever mentioned, that they nuked their own soldiers?
It was mentioned in some of my military training. More as a foot note, really. You had to pay attention to the extended casualty figures.
Far more POWs were also killed during the more conventional attacks. We were trying to bomb Japan's war industry, and they were trying to use our POWs to work it.
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Warning, a rant born of frustration with the perceived world-wide view of Americans.
Yeah, we Americans are so ignorant we've never heard of "friendly fire" deaths during war time. We're shocked, I tell you, shocked, that there were American POW's on Japan's main islands and that some of them were killed. About a dozen GI's died in Japan from a US bomb? Oh, no. We didn't know any of the POW's in Japan ever from any kind weaponry. We thought all POW deaths in Japan were due to starvation. Learning this is enough to make us want to start a full-scale revolution as the US government has taught us that only the bad guys ever kill any of the good guys in any war we've ever been in. The US government is far too secretive to actually publish any facts.
And as far as Americans learning about WWII, well, yeah, all any of us know about that war is what the US government teaches us in its news bulletins. We don't have libraries, a free press, historians, access to WWII government records, curiosity to learn anything on our own, or anything like that. Even if we did none of us would ever use any of those tools as we know the government will tell us everything it wants us to know. It's only foreigners that know anything about American casualties. Here? We're just stupid, ignorant, non-curious rednecks that wait for the government to tell us what we need to know.
Hell, we don't even know that the US military estimated that there would be at least a million American casualties, and up to 10 million Japanese civilian casualties, if we invaded the Japanese homeland using conventional warfare. We've never figured out on our own that, even as horrific as the numbers are from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a lot fewer people, both Japanese and American, died than would have died if a conventional invasion had taken place. But, that's because we Americans are just so stupid and ignorant of any and all facts.
None of us learn on our own, or tell any of our fellow Americans what we've figured out. We all just sit in front of the TV breathing through our mouths while we wait for the next government news bulletin.
OK. End of rant.
What is such big news to you is well-known by many Americans. I knew these things before I graduated from high-school, and my parents knew it decades before I did. I learned about in the late 60's. Lest you think we knew something only those in academia or government knew, my old man was a timber faller most of his life, with no formal schooling beyond the 8th grade, and my mother was a housewife with a couple of years of college education. I say my old man had no formal schooling beyond the 8th grade, but he read voraciously. He educated himself. We, the family as whole, used the public libraries regularly and had a library of a few hundred books at home.
Those approximately dozen GI's killed by an atomic bomb? They are a drop in the bucket to the total number of POW's killed through starvation while held on the Japanese homeland. The number is even insignificant when compared to the number of POW's in Japan who died of starvation on a daily basis. A sad event that they died? Yes, but when considered in the big picture, only a single, very small event, when we will most likely never know the total number of American POW's that died in Japan.
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You're welcome.
I just couldn't keep quiet any longer. I almost didn't post it though as I wasn't sure how sarcasm that strong would be perceived. I was just sick of the same old crap about Americans being stupid, ignorant of our own history, and that all we know is what we're "taught", when there are most likely more self-taught Americans than there are self-taught people in any country in the world. It's in our history, and thus our genes, to educate ourselves.
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Unconditional surrender isn't the worst thing a victorious nation can impose upon a losing nation. All that means is that the losing nation says "we quit and acknowledge we are completely beaten".
We could have added any kind of post-surrender conditions, as in oppressive reparations, we could have imagined, and gotten them. We could have easily done to the Japanese what the Brits and French did to the Germans after WWI, but we didn't. We retained the same language and conditions even though we had demons
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true of the Dresden firebombing also. Actually, it was true of most large-scale WW2 bombings, which were inaccurate and indiscriminate, mostly killing civilians and destroying residential homes. If you want to focus on an atrocity committed against Japan, the Tokyo firebombings were actually considerably worse than the atomic bombings.
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Your still forgetting the long terms after affects of nuclear when compared to regular bombs
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While you are doing your rapid research into the matter in order to reply with more alarmist stuff, I think that you are going to find that you were terribly mistaken about the "long term" effects of those two bombs.
You can find that with airplanes (Score:3, Interesting)
Longtime? Like people still dying years later?
You can get that with normal bombs, in fact you are likely to find those in almost any bombed area just waiting for something to trigger them. Just this month a WWII bomb had to be diffused in munich.
We had a couple of those here in the UK over the past year as well (though thankfully, no one died).
You get the same effect with airplanes. People are still dying (years later) from illness and other health-related problems directly attributable to the 9/11 atrocit
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Insightful)
Massive civilian casualties are unavoidable in any war that involves halfway equal opponents fighting for real. And while atomic bombing of cities might have been going too far, it should be noted that the Japanese had earned it many times over - the Rape of Nanking [wikipedia.org], the sexual slavery [wikipedia.org] practiced by Japanese military on occupied territories, the human experiments [wikipedia.org], and oh heck, just read the page [wikipedia.org].
When debating the justness of atomic bombing Japan, this context should be remembered. They were not innocent victims, but fanatical supporters of a regime every bit as bad as the Nazis - in fact, they were staunch allies of the Nazis. And while it's true that innocents were also harmed in the bombings, it's also true that it was Japan that began the war and refused to surrender despite being beaten beyond any hope of victory, so it can be argued that their blood is on Hirohito's hands.
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I do. YMMV.
Wow, that's pretty ignorant (Score:3, Interesting)
That the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were dropped in order to end the second world war, doesn't mean they didn't had disastrous results. In fact, that was the whole point of the operation, to force Japan into surrender by causing extreme devastation. I think it is a valid question to ask if the millions of innocent citizens spanning multiple generations who lost their lives or were severly harmed by these actions justify the ending of a war.
And of course, there is the question of necessity. It's plausi
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"Repo Man" quote:
Leila: What if he's innocent?
Agent Rogersz: No one is innocent.
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so surely the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki was gratuitous at best.
No, it served a purpose. Just not one that fits neatly into the Good vs Evil narrative, so often attributed to World War II.
Both bombs were dropped on Japan, in order to show Russia exactly what sort of weapons the US now possessed. The military leaders of the day were already mentally moving past the Nazi/Japanese, and were then looking to Stalin.
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No, because dropping one could have been hand-waved as "We didn't know how devastating it would be" or "It's so horrible, we don't like to use it" or "It's a weapon of last resort".
Dropping one, then dropping another a few days later, gives the impression of "We can keep this up until you're all dead. Surrender or else."
That's the sort of message they were going for.
Re:Wow, that's pretty ignorant (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow, that's pretty ignorant (Score:5, Insightful)
During World War II, nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. To the present date, all the American military casualties of the sixty-five years following the end of World War II — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock. There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan and United States are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers on the field.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_heart [wikipedia.org]
Maybe this means nothing, but I'm guessing the estimated number of casualties from invading the old-fashioned way were what motivated the use of atomic bombs. The Japanese fought tooth and nail even when they were defending a speck of land in the Pacific. How much more so their homeland?
Re:Wow, that's pretty ignorant (Score:5, Insightful)
The Japanese fought tooth and nail even when they were defending a speck of land in the Pacific. How much more so their homeland?
Going back, there were huge numbers of reports of Japanese fanatism.
Off the top of my head:
Kamikaze bombers, Japanese civilians commiting suicide rather than face occupation, suicide attacks by ground forces AND civilians. Reports of civilians being provided arms to resist occupation. Traps and bombs being set up. It was promised to be ugly.
Remember, it was less than a decade ago that they finally convinced the last Japanese soldier to come out of the jungle.
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http://www.doug-long.com/hiroshim.htm [doug-long.com]
GP is entirely correct, though I'm shocked that (s)he hasn't been modded to hell because of it. Well, to be technical, nobody can claim to know the true motive for dropping The Bomb, only that the stated reason was without a doubt bullshit. That the motive to to keep away/send a message to the Soviet Union is the only reasonable explanation anyone's come up with but, as far as I know, there's no hard evidence for it.
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Either way, the loss of life is regrettable, tragic. You will note that there has been no detonation of nuclear weapons in war in the 65 years since.
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it could be called necessary
You could call the first bomb on Hiroshima that. But the second one, on Nagasaki? Why?
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As much as I would like to agree with you, Japan didn't surrender after a first explosion on one of their cities, do you seriously think it would have surrendered after a show off over the ocean ?
(disclaimer, I am not american, I am not japanese)
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As much as I would like to agree with you, Japan didn't surrender after a first explosion on one of their cities
They didn't surrender within 3 days. There's no way of telling if they wouldn't have surrendered if they had been given a longer period to respond.
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Japan didn't surrender after the second one, either. Only when the Soviet Union invaded Japan from the north (Russia is still occupying, and the countries are technically still at war), did Japan surrender -- conditionally! On their part the Americans had refused conditional surrender propositions for months but now quickly accepted. The U.S. also didn't want the Soviet Union to get a foothold in Japan. Besides, the U.S. had already demonstrated the effectiveness of the new awesome weapon so dragging out th
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Bear in mind a few things from 65 years ago...
First, nukes were generally not thought of the same way they are now. Essentially, they were just really big bombs, and did not have the reputation they do today.
Second, the bombs were actually targeted on military targets. Hiroshima and Nagasaki both had large military and/or industrial facilities, and the bombs were intended for those. That a bunch of civilians lived within the lethal radius didn't really matter, and was seen as just bad luck for them at be
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Well consider that earthquakes that kill maybe 1-300 people and leveled a 30 mile square area are commonly classed as disasters, then consider that chernobyl killed untold thousands (it's lucky it wasn't millions in Kiev or various other nearby european cities), and rather than leveling the area, rendered it completely uninhabitable for a long time.
I certainly count that as a disaster.
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Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Informative)
Chernobyl caused 56 direct deaths. It may have contributed up to an estimated 4,000 cancer deaths. It didn't kill "untold thousands" and had no possible way of killing "millions" - you'd have to nuke a city to get that many, and even then use a huge device aimed at Manhattan or similar region.
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:4, Informative)
From the article
"
the Chernobyl nuclear accident led to more than one hundred times the nuclear fallout of what was experienced during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
"
Fucking retards
Re:Largest Nuclear Disaster? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it caused a larger zone of serious radiation spread than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. Some of the tests in the pacific, Australia, and continental US contaminated very large areas but like the nuclear bombings it is mostly light isotopes that decayed very quickly. The nuclear bombings of Japan, or some other incident, might have been a more serious nuclear disaster (at least for the Japanese) but I would give Chernobyl the credit as largest.
Largest Active Nuclear Disaster (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it caused a larger zone of serious radiation spread than the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. Some of the tests in the pacific, Australia, and continental US contaminated very large areas but like the nuclear bombings it is mostly light isotopes that decayed very quickly. The nuclear bombings of Japan, or some other incident, might have been a more serious nuclear disaster (at least for the Japanese) but I would give Chernobyl the credit as largest.
Nagasaki+Hiroshima get a lot of press because they were intentional and we learned much of what we known of the harmful effects of radiation from it. That was not understood at the time, that's something we have in hindsight. For example, there was a lot of direct viewing of tests for many years.
Another big disaster is the collective effect of all the cores the Brits and others have dumped in the ocean just upstream from Norway. The gulf stream takes the radioisotopes, like Technium, up to Norway for it to enter the food chain and concentrate in birds which then squirt it out over the land by the metric tonne during nesting season. That latter disaster is still ongoing and growing as the cores fall apart.
It looks like the article is downplaying the extent of the Chernobyl disaster. Don't forget that it was radiation detectors at nuclear plants in Sweden, four or five countries away [google.com], that sounded the alarm. Levels there were high enough to trigger a response to a possible leak. The puzzle started when it was found that it was the workers coming into the plant on a shift change that were hot, but the ones leaving were not.
Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Finland and Norway were some of the countries in the fallout zone. People traveling or otherwise active out of doors on those days were heavily exposed to the fallout. The isotopes and amount are known and enough time has passed that there should be indications of the effect on the population. All livestock and the fodder upon which they graze got it too, so that the meat from at least some of those regions was banned in other regions for years.
Right now the core is still smoldering hot and needs constant maintenance to prevent picking up where it left off. The core is so hot that RPV's die in a matter of minutes and the pictures they send are grainy. It's rather disturbing to see frozen waterfalls of slag and rock that where molten and flowing at the peak.
So yeah, Chernobyl is not just the largest nuclear disaster, it's still an active disaster.
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Well, the iPad isn't nuclear powered, but I guess if it was...
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If you're going to debate semantics.... (Score:2)
...really? Does a disaster have to be an accident to be classed as a disaster?
Do as the automotive industry does. Call it a Nuclear incident.
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It depends on which definition you use:
*
A disaster is a very bad accident such as an earthquake or a plane crash, especially one in which a lot of people are killed.
o
It was the second air disaster in the region in less than two months.
*
There are more animals there now (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:There are more animals there now (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes I am ironic. I heard that in Chernobyl, while one can see wild horses, no bird can be heard as they are very sensitive to radiation. Walking into a silent birdless forest is said to be a very strange feeling.
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TFA actually states that in pripyat birds were heard, although not spotted
not to say birds are thriving, but they arent extinct in the exclusion zone (and keep in mind pripyat is very close to the reactor)
There's plenty of birds there... (Score:4, Informative)
not to say birds are thriving, but they arent extinct in the exclusion zone (and keep in mind pripyat is very close to the reactor)
Not only are they not extinct in the zone, they are relatively thriving. Enough that there's a bunch of studies on them, at least.
I didn't find the study I was looking for, but I did find this one mentioned.
Brightly colored birds most affected by Chernobyl radiation [physorg.com]
The study I remember reading was a simpler radiation level and nesting success. Basically, on average birds nesting in the sarcophagus had almost the same success rate as birds not, despite there being double the birth defect rate. Remember, many of these species normally lay 4-6 eggs to get ONE adult bird at the end - the chicks pushing each other out of the nest when they're growing.
Other studies show that migrant birds have more troubles, like the brightly colored ones. Big eggs are also a problem. Still, we're looking at nests in the worst of the contaminated areas.
Deer and such that live further away do fine. Not that I'd recommend humans necessarily live that close, despite me not holding to the linear harm theory(the idea that if Radiation in amount X casues Y cancers, that X/2 will cause Y/2 cancers - I'm more like X/2 is more likely to cause Y/4 cancers).
Chernobyl (Score:5, Informative)
Dude, your dose must be through the roof ... no?! (Score:2)
Dude, those pictures you took from the bumpercars at the amusement park and the stacked radiators and stuff tell me that you where a tad close to those kind of things, if I may put it that way. I remember pretty clearly others describing their dosimeter going wild when closing in on metal objects and walls facing the reactor.
Did you have a dosimeter or szintomat on you when walking about and taking those pictures?
I'd suggest you switch to an organic diet with lots of iodine and vitamin D for the next year o
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When I was in Pripryat (and yes, we had the dosimeters as well) the readings were perfectly fine if you stepped on concrete, tarmac, or in some of the buildings. But if you stepped onto grass, soil, vegetation or anything which was connected to the water table, the dosimeter shot WAY up WAY fast.
Our guide made a point of showing this to us, when we were taking photos of the bumper cars in the amusement park.
I'm considering going back again this year.
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Did you use a tour agency to get from Kiev to Pripyat? If so what one, if you would recommend them.
Thanks.
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I would definitely recommend going to see it, and Kiev is a cool city to see for a day as well
Not to mention that on average, Ukrainian women are freakin' HOT!
... and sterile!
And it continued operating for 14 years, it seems. (Score:5, Insightful)
The interesting detail I picked up from this was that Chernobyl continued operation (on other reactors) for 14 years after this disaster.
The popular view of the accident would be that the area was unusable, and most probably lethal - it would seem not.
Of course, the wildlife in the area also shows this, however it is interesting how reality gets buried in popular belief.
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:4, Informative)
What's even more interesting, as wildlife flourishes, random private individuals introduce new animals on their own.
Someone brought and released a pair of Przewalski's Horses and now they form quite a big herd. There are some other species not native to the area and never observed there before. They were brought there by humans - unsanctioned, unregulated activity funded entirely by enthusiasts from their own money.
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:4, Informative)
Wikipedia says a few dozen were introduced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Przewalski%27s_Horse#Preservation_efforts
Interest fact, nevertheless. Cheers.
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:4, Funny)
Drunk people do stuff like that.
Russians like to drink.
You do the math.
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:5, Interesting)
Chernobyl type reactors, despite being absolutely obsolete and horribly dangerous by 1980s nuclear standards (even if they are far more stringent than other energy standards), have been operating right up until the end of last year. (With some updated safety features learned from Chernobyl of course)
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:4, Informative)
Remaining RBMK reactors were modified to make them safer, but I suppose you can consider them unsafe just like a car that kills its passengers if the driver accelerates to 200km/h and aims at a concrete wall or a tree.
And Ignalina power plant was shut down mainly because our politicians, fresh out of one Union, wanted to get into another so badly they signed whatever they were told to sign by said Union. Now most of the electricity comes from an old ~1.5GW oil and gas power plant which has ~25% efficiency (which I'm told is pretty low for these power plants).
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:4, Informative)
RBMK is safe now, with a few modifications they added. There are still ~10 RBMK running inside Russia, and I don't think they have plans to shut them down early. (I think they'll gradually be taken off line between now and 2030, depending condition and how old).
From what I remember:
Added more control rods, faster application, removed graphite tips.
Added more base neutron absorber (not sure how to call it, like control rod that is always in), so that reactor is unable to run at low power level (where it was unstable).
To compensate for the above it needs to run more enriched uranium though, I think ~2.5%. I suppose this makes it less cost effective than old, but safety is worthwhile exchange...
I think most new reactors will be VVER type (PWR, with containment, safe, and exported to many places). There is also new MKER under development, it's the same theory as RBMK, with hotswap fuel rods and such, and will be used to replace old RBMK. - I think it is to be full containment, though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The popular view of the accident would be that the area was unusable, and most probably lethal - it would seem not. Of course, the wildlife in the area also shows this, however it is interesting how reality gets buried in popular belief.
Depends on your definition of "lethal". It is not lethal as in "breath there and suffocate, die within 5 minutes". It is lethal as in "die of a cancer within the year if you eat food and drink water from here" or in "live there several years and lose 10 years of life expectancy". Not a barren land, but not exactly hospitable either.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
[citation needed]
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some of the big health problem isotopes released had short half-lives, so staying there a year now is probably not much more of a dose than staying only a few days right after the incident, too.
Re:And it continued operating for 14 years, it see (Score:5, Informative)
You probably wouldn't want to eat too much of the locally grown crops or drink too much of the local water but people do live there and seem to do ok despite eating local food.
Slightly raised background radiation is not as bad as people think.
The heavy metals in the soil are a bit nasty though.
what surprises me is how little we hear about the other places that have been damaged by radioactive material.
The soviet weapons program was a disgrace.
Chernobyl pales in comparison to this:
http://www.damninteresting.com/in-soviet-russia-lake-contaminates-you [damninteresting.com]
"Rather than the typical "background" gamma radiation of about 0.21 Röntgens per year, the edge of the Techa River was emanating 5 Röntgens per hour."
"Thirty-nine years of effluent had saturated the lake with nasty isotopes, including an estimated 120 megacuries of long-lived radiation. In contrast, the Chernobyl incident released roughly 100 megacuries of radiation into the environment, but only about 3 megacuries of Strontium-90 and Cesium-137. A delegation who visited Lake Karachay in 1990 measured the radiation at the point where the effluent entered the water, and the needles of their Geiger counters danced at about 600 Röntgens per hour-enough to provide a lethal dose in one hour. They did not linger long."
the nuclear energy industry isn't too bad.
Its the nuclear weapons industry that people should worry about.
Of course if you listen to greanpeace types everything within a 100 miles of Chernobyl is a desolate wasteland peopled with ghosts and it will remain that way for 50,000 years.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to drink their coolaid, feel free, but the fact remains that the local ecologies are much better off on average than without the accident.
Of course the gains are because people on the whole are removed, which massively outweighs the small reductions from the remaining radiation.
What they are doing is claiming that is prople were removed, AND there had been no accident, the ecology would be (slightly) even better off, well duh!.
Pictures are nice, but ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pictures are nice, but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the best parts of going to Pripryat was seeing one of the Woodpeckers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Woodpecker [wikipedia.org] looming in the distance.
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Just don't remember the indoor pool in the game, maybe I missed it.
documentarys (Score:2, Insightful)
This Guy's Server cannot handle the traffic (Score:2)
Getting slashdotted. Can someone throw this up on Flickr or something?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Coral cache [nyud.net].
Apparently his server got nuked in the blast too. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Re:Apparently his server got nuked in the blast to (Score:4, Funny)
Another perspective (Score:2)
Was there on a lovely day and managed to slip off from the group at Pripryat to see some unique perspectives.
http://ninjito.com/2009-09-12-PANO/qx-pano-pripyat-1.jpg [ninjito.com]
The hotel Polissia.
http://ninjito.com/2009-09-12-PANO/qx-pano-pripyat-2.jpg [ninjito.com]
Roof of said building, you can see reactor 4 in the distance to the right.
http://ninjito.com/2008-08-16/qx-pripyat-1.jpg [ninjito.com]
Rarely seen fresque honouring the cosmonauts.
Getting to Chernobyl isn't the overwhelming task of mental fortitude and endurance most of these 'reporters
Start Wearing Purple (Score:2)
Getting to Chernobyl isn't the overwhelming task of mental fortitude and endurance most of these 'reporters' want you to think it is. You go to Kiev, you spend 40 - 80USD, and you get taken there. It's very official, it's very routine, and you get an interesting experience from it. And a delicious meal at the end of it..
Never been to the Ukraine, but according to what I saw in Everything Is Illuminated [imdb.com], hiring a driver for a sight-seeing excursion to Trochenbrod is ineed an interesting experience. ;-) I'd
Re: (Score:2)
Hard to say. The Ukraine is a very interesting place.
There is an omnipresent sensation of being crushed - and it's something that manifests in the culture and personalities of everyone.
With that said, there is some amazing history there, and very generous locals.
We saw some stuff that's not even on a map (hidden water supply tunnels of Stalin's era, heavy chemical laboratories, abandoned sovietic computer bases (from the day where 1 computer == 5 buildings)) - without any dramas. I guess it's truly who you
Clearly fake pictures (Score:5, Funny)
There are no zombies on any of them!
Beautiful but haunting area (Score:3, Funny)
I visited Pripyat, the reactor, and the surrounding countryside a couple years ago. The radiation is a major presence, and as Archon-X pointed out, it's common to hear nothing from your Geiger counter in one location and then take a couple steps and suddenly be exposed to 100x background levels.
I think that must have happened to me while I first approached the reactor, but I don't actually remember it. I only remember waking up on a truck bed and being dropped off at the edge of the Zone with instructions to hunt down a man named Strelok. Long story short, eventually I remembered that my name is Strelok and the guys asking me to hunt him down hadn't realized this when they left me with my instructions. I managed to get back through Pripyat to the reactor, where I uncovered a bizarre group trying to trick visitors with a religious hoax. Not falling for it and not liking the looks of the people involved, I shut down their organization and escaped. It was the best ending I could hope for.
Highly recommended.
nuclear 100 times safer than coal (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny how everybody has heard of Chernobyl, the place where a nuclear meltdown directly killed around 59 people. How many people have heard of Benxihu? A coal dust explosion killed 1549 in one day. People probably don't know much about any single coal mining accident because they happen all the time. Even now, coal accidents kill thousands a year. The most recent deadly nuclear accident was about 11 years ago in a Japanese plant, where two workers died.
Now, I'm talking nuclear power, not weapons.
Now factoring the relative danger of radiation versus pollution and global warming is pretty difficult. But radiation probably killed a few thousand, whereas coal pollution probably killed millions. Both radiation and carbon will be around for a long time.
Re: (Score:2)
that's 30km * 30km * 3.14 of land free from human intervention for another 100K yrs. that's still a day in the life of our planet; but not in the life of our species.
Re:Kidd Of Speed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
That doesnt detract any value from the photos though
i remember reading that story a few years ago, and while the solitary bike-ride sounded cool and all, general facts (radiation being least while on concrete etc..) and the photos are real.
i agree lying about the bike thing was stupid, but the photos alone make it worth a look
Her stories have been debunked as yarn. (Score:2)
While the pictures are real, the stories of her riding around alone on her bike in the disaster zone where debunked as fake and made-up. There are pictures she took showing others standing next to her indicating that the took one of the officical bus trips into the zone, since no one was allowed in alone at the time. There may be a little yarn spun into her descriptions, so take them with a grain of salt.