Featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, author and environmentalist Andrew Blackwell heralded the beauty of Chernobyl, a man-made disaster, now a wasteland, where he found a shining desolate place that humans had vacated, and now returned to nature.
Part of a ‘love letter to pollution,’ Blackwell discusses his book Visit Sunny Chernobyl, sounding off in poetic language “Paradoxically, perversely, the accident may actually have been good for this environment.”
“Because it’s [a] quarantined, radioactive zone, everyone has left a long time ago, and very few people spend any time there,” he tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “You’ve got to go in spring, obviously, and it’s just full of trees and birds and insects. And it’s sort of become this huge, accidental wilderness preserve.”
In a way, nature has taken over.
“The birds and the bees and the animals and the wolves are not aware, and/or don’t care about radioactive contamination the way we do,” Blackwell says. “There’s nothing like it, and it’s an absolutely unique place, and most of it is just flat-out beautiful.”
Blackwell observes a synergy between nature and the radioactive contamination: “So it’s not just a place that has been contaminated with radiation and radioactive particles. They are sort of in it, which is another thing that makes it so incredibly fascinating … the ecosystem itself has sort of incorporated that pollution.”
Yes, with Fukushima still falling out, we are again witnessing the celebration of harmful and destructive nuclear disasters– now salvaged as an environmentalist’s ironic, symbolic victory-from-disaster. For all hopes of scaling back the scourge of civilization, Nature seems at peace with nuclear dead zones, if this author’s account is any indication.
Like Ann Coulter, Blackwell tries to convince the world that nuclear radiation has actually helped us and the environment. In the immediate aftermath of Fukushima, Coulter claimed that “radiation is good for you,” adding the Orwellian claim that “excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.” Other Fox News contributors have boldly stated that Fukushima has caused zero deaths.
Ann Coulter’s “Glowing” Report on Radiation
Nuclear expert Dr. Christopher Busby accused Guardian columnist George Monbiot of being “criminally irresponsible” for downplaying the effects of Japan’s disaster, in part for his article, “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power,” which cited global warming as a bigger threat than nuclear fallout. The corporate media have similarly tried to convince the mindless public that mercury is good for you! Incredibly, this “news” report claims that mercury based preservatives in vaccines may help not harm neurological behavior.
Silence, cover-ups and lies about the extent of the effects of the radiation have cost untold millions of deaths. The partial meltdown at the Santa Susana Field Laboratory nuclear salt reactors in 1959 went undisclosed to the public for decades, with total effects unknown. A recent survey found 48 of 65 nuclear reactors in the U.S. are leaking, with many of them introducing tritium, the radioactive element of hydrogen, to the environment. Our recent investigation into Austin’s nuclear secrets raises further questions about illegal dumping of waste and the lack of disclosure to the public on nuclear issues.
Of course, Blackwell is NOT overtly saying that radiation is good for living humans or that he’d like to see people die (at least, I presume not; it could be in the book). However, his book’s iconic title Visit Sunny Chernobyl is attempting to create an association of doom with beauty; inverting the darkness of disaster with the image-wording of ‘sunny.’ Thus creating at least a few positive connotations with meltdown and annihilation. The author’s only agenda may well be to use a little irony to cut through the saturated market for book sales and media influence.
But his poetry on the landscape of apocalypse speaks the language of nihilistic technocrats, eugenicist legacy causes, environmentalist-bankers, UN controllers and climate change fanatics alike. When Blackwell finds solace in the pristine remains of an act that drove out humans through immense dark power, he resonates with those pursuing the cause of rewilding and depopulating the earth. Bleak but beautiful. Extreme measures for extreme times. The end justifies the means.
Agenda 21 For Dummies NWO depopulation
This author plays into the imagery of what amounts to the ultimate fantasy of your average upper eschelon eco-terrorist from the ranks of international policy bodies, finance, government or private eugenics sector: rewriting the earth via revolutionary causes (think 12 Monkeys) laced with Agenda 21 undertones. Blaming humanity for ruining the planet, all while hoping to someday toast a scorched earth with scant a person around. A sort of Logan’s Run wash over in balance with humanity’s greatest excesses.
Whether intentional or not, the coined phrase “Visit Sunny Chernobyl” repeats a subtle propaganda meme that joins in concert with a wide campaign working to sell the public on the idea that humanity itself is bad for the planet (see Humanity’s Ultimate Secret below). Therefore, since humans are bad, extermination is necessary, and somehow, even a brilliant control mechanism and balancing act for the earth. Rather than actually recognizing who is repeatedly wrecking things, or addressing why nuclear meltdowns are happening, and stopping them, the population turns its head and creates an internal fiction to train themselves to accept and, finally, love their servitude, even in the depths of austere bleakness of apocalyptic proportions.
Just as Aldous Huxley predicted that the Brave New World would be a future of people who “love their servitude,” there is an attempt going on to persuade the public into “loving their radiation”– by raising the “safe” limits, downplaying effects, by talking little about it, all part of an attempt to create a false memory about all the ‘good’ that nuclear has done for us, now not in spite of, but because of its disasters.
Blackwell’s smug embrace of beauty in all things is signing a willing surrender of mankind’s future, and embracing the post-human world they say is to come. Because a corrupt elite have hijacked the mechanisms of social control, and have given into maniacal urges to implode development, and kill and destroy, many well-meaning people give into a severe Stockholm syndrome and nihilistically cheer on those designing a world without humans.
If we allow ourselves to believe we are trash, we accept a great evil perpetrated upon the planet. Instead, we must create awareness and reset the global course and chart our future to steer away from the rocks of dehumanization, depopulation and death.
Showing posts with label Chernobyl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chernobyl. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Friday, April 27, 2012
Chernobyl 26 Year Anniversay Marks Cleanup Abandonment
April 26 will mark the 26th anniversary of the worst case of nuclear contamination in history: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Since the meltdowns at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant in March last year, the Japanese government has shown interest in decontamination and other projects around Chernobyl as a reference point for efforts to deal with its own nuclear disaster.
However in northern Ukraine, where the radioactive husk of the former Soviet power station lies, large-scale decontamination work has been abandoned as largely ineffective, and disaster refugees are no closer to going home.
I am a little less than 10 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in a warehouse-like building with a long, narrow trough for waste water cut into the floor. This is where workers clad in protective suits scrub down vehicles and heavy machinery that have gone into high-radiation areas. The scrubbing is done by hand, until the radiation emissions from the truck or the bulldozer drops below 0.5 microsieverts per hour.
Just after the 1986 disaster -- in which one of the Chernobyl plant's reactors exploded, blowing off the reactor housing roof and spewing radioactive material into the air -- Soviet authorities swung into a full-scale decontamination effort, including burying contaminated soil, and washing and then melting down contaminated machinery. However, in the 14 years between the disaster and the year 2000 -- when the last operating reactor at the plant was finally shut down -- authorities apparently judged that there had been "little improvement" in soil conditions, and they decided to halt soil decontamination.
The only decontamination operations going on now are for workers doing safety work in and around the dead plant, including decommissioning the reactors and preventing forest fires. There are currently about 3,700 people who work inside the 30-kilometer radius no-go area around the plant -- referred to simply as "the Zone" -- and they must have their clothes decontaminated periodically. During seasons when humidity is low, vehicles are typically washed one or two times a week, and roads near the plant are also scrubbed.
More than 110,000 people once lived in the Zone, all of whom were evacuated right after the accident. The Soviet authorities apparently attempted to decontaminate the town of Prypiat -- where Chernobyl plant workers and their families had lived -- soon after, but with no success.
Mr. Zolotoverkh, 58, who is in charge of managing the Zone, says there is no chance that decontamination will be resumed, adding, "No one will be allowed to return, not after decades, not after centuries."
About 110 kilometers southwest of the plant is the city of Korostyshiv, which the former Soviet government labeled an "evacuation advisory area" -- one of 440 residential communities given the designation. The Soviet Union established four categories for irradiated areas: forced evacuation areas, forced migration areas, evacuation advisory areas, and radiation management areas. Serious decontamination work in the advisory areas such as Korostyshiv did not begin until 1990, four years after the accident.
The municipal government, meanwhile, replaced the local top soil as well as the roof of every home and school in its jurisdiction. The city also paved over land that had been exposed to the Chernobyl fallout, including the front yard of 53-year-old housewife Ms. Valentina.
The municipal official in charge of the project emphasizes that the efforts resulted in a 50 percent drop in radiation in the 20 years after the accident. This has not, however, staunched a steady flow of people out of the city. Since 1990, Korostyshiv's population has dropped from about 80,000 to 67,000, though the city stresses that this is beginning to turn around.
Valentina's husband passed away from cancer in 2000 at just 48-years-old, and she says that many other members of her family have suffered damage to their health.
Regarding decontamination of homes, Ukrainian government radiation expert Mr. Tabachnyi says, "I can't say it's had any effect but to calm the fears of the residents," adding, "About $1 million was thrown into reducing radiation levels in Korostyshiv to 1 sievert or less per year. It was definitely not a cost-effective effort."
In June 1986, the Soviet government decided to allow residents back to parts of the forced migration areas that were relatively uncontaminated on a trial basis. Decontamination work was done, and the project drew up indices that would show whether the efforts could be applied to the clean-up of other areas. However, the authorities recognized that dangerous radioactive materials remained, and revoked permission for residents to return two years later.
Now, with buildings and infrastructure decaying, "there's almost no chance that permission to return will ever be given," says Tabachnyi, meaning the more than 10,000 Ukrainian "forced migrants" will probably never go home again.
On April 18 this year, Japan and the Ukraine finalized an agreement to share information on the countries' respective nuclear disasters, and the Japanese government is looking to learn "the lessons of Chernobyl" as it implements policy to contain the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdowns.
The scale of the two disasters, however, is different. The Chernobyl accident is thought to have released several times the radioactive material of the Fukushima disaster. The decontamination of agricultural lands -- a process that Japan has put so much faith into -- has been essentially abandoned around the Chernobyl plant, and there is increasing criticism that there is "no way Chernobyl can give any insight into the Japanese situation."
However in northern Ukraine, where the radioactive husk of the former Soviet power station lies, large-scale decontamination work has been abandoned as largely ineffective, and disaster refugees are no closer to going home.
I am a little less than 10 kilometers from the Chernobyl nuclear plant, in a warehouse-like building with a long, narrow trough for waste water cut into the floor. This is where workers clad in protective suits scrub down vehicles and heavy machinery that have gone into high-radiation areas. The scrubbing is done by hand, until the radiation emissions from the truck or the bulldozer drops below 0.5 microsieverts per hour.
Just after the 1986 disaster -- in which one of the Chernobyl plant's reactors exploded, blowing off the reactor housing roof and spewing radioactive material into the air -- Soviet authorities swung into a full-scale decontamination effort, including burying contaminated soil, and washing and then melting down contaminated machinery. However, in the 14 years between the disaster and the year 2000 -- when the last operating reactor at the plant was finally shut down -- authorities apparently judged that there had been "little improvement" in soil conditions, and they decided to halt soil decontamination.
The only decontamination operations going on now are for workers doing safety work in and around the dead plant, including decommissioning the reactors and preventing forest fires. There are currently about 3,700 people who work inside the 30-kilometer radius no-go area around the plant -- referred to simply as "the Zone" -- and they must have their clothes decontaminated periodically. During seasons when humidity is low, vehicles are typically washed one or two times a week, and roads near the plant are also scrubbed.
More than 110,000 people once lived in the Zone, all of whom were evacuated right after the accident. The Soviet authorities apparently attempted to decontaminate the town of Prypiat -- where Chernobyl plant workers and their families had lived -- soon after, but with no success.
Mr. Zolotoverkh, 58, who is in charge of managing the Zone, says there is no chance that decontamination will be resumed, adding, "No one will be allowed to return, not after decades, not after centuries."
About 110 kilometers southwest of the plant is the city of Korostyshiv, which the former Soviet government labeled an "evacuation advisory area" -- one of 440 residential communities given the designation. The Soviet Union established four categories for irradiated areas: forced evacuation areas, forced migration areas, evacuation advisory areas, and radiation management areas. Serious decontamination work in the advisory areas such as Korostyshiv did not begin until 1990, four years after the accident.
The municipal government, meanwhile, replaced the local top soil as well as the roof of every home and school in its jurisdiction. The city also paved over land that had been exposed to the Chernobyl fallout, including the front yard of 53-year-old housewife Ms. Valentina.
The municipal official in charge of the project emphasizes that the efforts resulted in a 50 percent drop in radiation in the 20 years after the accident. This has not, however, staunched a steady flow of people out of the city. Since 1990, Korostyshiv's population has dropped from about 80,000 to 67,000, though the city stresses that this is beginning to turn around.
Valentina's husband passed away from cancer in 2000 at just 48-years-old, and she says that many other members of her family have suffered damage to their health.
Regarding decontamination of homes, Ukrainian government radiation expert Mr. Tabachnyi says, "I can't say it's had any effect but to calm the fears of the residents," adding, "About $1 million was thrown into reducing radiation levels in Korostyshiv to 1 sievert or less per year. It was definitely not a cost-effective effort."
In June 1986, the Soviet government decided to allow residents back to parts of the forced migration areas that were relatively uncontaminated on a trial basis. Decontamination work was done, and the project drew up indices that would show whether the efforts could be applied to the clean-up of other areas. However, the authorities recognized that dangerous radioactive materials remained, and revoked permission for residents to return two years later.
Now, with buildings and infrastructure decaying, "there's almost no chance that permission to return will ever be given," says Tabachnyi, meaning the more than 10,000 Ukrainian "forced migrants" will probably never go home again.
On April 18 this year, Japan and the Ukraine finalized an agreement to share information on the countries' respective nuclear disasters, and the Japanese government is looking to learn "the lessons of Chernobyl" as it implements policy to contain the aftermath of the Fukushima meltdowns.
The scale of the two disasters, however, is different. The Chernobyl accident is thought to have released several times the radioactive material of the Fukushima disaster. The decontamination of agricultural lands -- a process that Japan has put so much faith into -- has been essentially abandoned around the Chernobyl plant, and there is increasing criticism that there is "no way Chernobyl can give any insight into the Japanese situation."
Small Scale Chernobyl Legacy Prelude To Fukushima
Warning – Graphic* Photographer's video: “My first reaction was I was looking at a different race of people” — Brain outside of skull, kidneys outside of torso, legs resembling elephant — Some doctors feel strongly there will be no more Belarus people in future
To get a sense of just what those tens of millions live at risk of, take a look at these photographs by award winning photographer Paul Fusco. Earlier this month I had a the honor of participating in the fourth Schuneman Symposium held at the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Among the speakers was Fusco, an extraordinary MAGNUM photographer who traveled to the Ukraine to see the legacy of Chernobyl after twenty years. Fusco expected to stay two weeks. He stayed for two months, following parents, children, nurses and cancer patients.
“It changed my life. I couldn’t leave. It was so immense in its implications. There is so much damage to so many people in so many ways…” says Fusco.
To get a sense of just what those tens of millions live at risk of, take a look at these photographs by award winning photographer Paul Fusco. Earlier this month I had a the honor of participating in the fourth Schuneman Symposium held at the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University. Among the speakers was Fusco, an extraordinary MAGNUM photographer who traveled to the Ukraine to see the legacy of Chernobyl after twenty years. Fusco expected to stay two weeks. He stayed for two months, following parents, children, nurses and cancer patients.
“It changed my life. I couldn’t leave. It was so immense in its implications. There is so much damage to so many people in so many ways…” says Fusco.
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Fukushima Radiation 200 X Higher Than Chernobyl
Japan’s former Ambassador to Switzerland, Mr. Mitsuhei Murata, was invited to speak at the Public Hearing of the Budgetary Committee of the House of Councilors on March 22, 2012, on the Fukushima nuclear power plants accident.
Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air.
This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).
I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.
I received an astounding response from Mr. Alvarez:
It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 4, 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4. Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site spent they contain roughly 982 million curies of intermediate and long-lived radionuclides.
I used a higher estimate that Chernobyl released about 2.5 million curies in my earlier estimate regarding pool No. 4. It appears that there is roughly 393 million curies of Cesium-137 contained in the total spent fuel inventory at the Dai-Ichi site. This is more than 200 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). This is 145% more than the total NCRP estimate of Cs-137 released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants ( ~270 million curies or 1.0E+18 bequerels).
Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 200 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.
There was a Nuclear Security Summit Conference in Seoul on March 26 and 27, and Ambassador Murata and I made a concerted effort to find someone to inform the participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe of reactor unit 4. We asked several participants to share the idea of an Independent Assessment team comprised of a broad group of international experts to deal with this urgent issue.
I would like to introduce Ambassador Murata’s letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convey this urgent message and also his letter to Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda for Japanese readers. He emphasized in the statement that we should bring human wisdom to tackle this unprecedented challenge.
It seems to us that the Nuclear Security Summit was focused on the North Korea nuclear issue and on the issue of common security from a terrorist attack. Our appeal on the need for the independent assessment at Reactor 4 was regarded as less urgent. We predicted this outcome in light of the nature of the Summit. I suppose most participants fully understood the potential disaster which will affect their countries. Nevertheless, they decided not to raise the delicate issue, perhaps in order to not ruffle their diplomatic relationship with Japan.
I was moved by Ambassador Murata’s courage in pressing this issue in Japan. I know how difficult it is for a former career diplomat to do this, especially in my country. Current and former government officials might be similarly restricted in the scope of their actions, as Ambassador Murata is, but it is their responsibility to take a stand for the benefit of our descendants for centuries to come—to pass on a world safer than our ancestors passed us.
If Japanese government leaders do not recognize the risk their nation faces, how could the rest of us be persuaded of the looming disaster? And if the rest of us do not acknowledge the catastrophe we collectively face, who will be the one to act?
Before the Committee, Ambassador Murata strongly stated that if the crippled building of reactor unit 4—with 1,535 fuel rods in the spent fuel pool 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground—collapses, not only will it cause a shutdown of all six reactors but will also affect the common spent fuel pool containing 6,375 fuel rods, located some 50 meters from reactor 4. In both cases the radioactive rods are not protected by a containment vessel; dangerously, they are open to the air.
This would certainly cause a global catastrophe like we have never before experienced. He stressed that the responsibility of Japan to the rest of the world is immeasurable. Such a catastrophe would affect us all for centuries. Ambassador Murata informed us that the total numbers of the spent fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi site excluding the rods in the pressure vessel is 11,421 (396+615+566+1,535+994+940+6375).
I asked top spent-fuel pools expert Mr. Robert Alvarez, former Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary for National Security and the Environment at the U.S. Department of Energy, for an explanation of the potential impact of the 11,421 rods.
I received an astounding response from Mr. Alvarez:
It is my understanding that of the 1,532 spent fuel assemblies in reactor No. 4, 304 assemblies are fresh and unirradiated. This then leaves 1,231 irradiated spent fuel rods in pool No. 4. Based on U.S. Energy Department data, assuming a total of 11,138 spent fuel assemblies are being stored at the Dai-Ichi site spent they contain roughly 982 million curies of intermediate and long-lived radionuclides.
I used a higher estimate that Chernobyl released about 2.5 million curies in my earlier estimate regarding pool No. 4. It appears that there is roughly 393 million curies of Cesium-137 contained in the total spent fuel inventory at the Dai-Ichi site. This is more than 200 times the amount of Cs-137 released at the Chernobyl accident as estimated by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP). This is 145% more than the total NCRP estimate of Cs-137 released by all atmospheric nuclear weapons testing, Chernobyl, and world-wide reprocessing plants ( ~270 million curies or 1.0E+18 bequerels).
Many of our readers might find it difficult to appreciate the actual meaning of the figure, yet we can grasp what 200 times more Cesium-137 than the Chernobyl would mean. It would destroy the world environment and our civilization. This is not rocket science, nor does it connect to the pugilistic debate over nuclear power plants. This is an issue of human survival.
There was a Nuclear Security Summit Conference in Seoul on March 26 and 27, and Ambassador Murata and I made a concerted effort to find someone to inform the participants from 54 nations of the potential global catastrophe of reactor unit 4. We asked several participants to share the idea of an Independent Assessment team comprised of a broad group of international experts to deal with this urgent issue.
I would like to introduce Ambassador Murata’s letter to the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to convey this urgent message and also his letter to Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda for Japanese readers. He emphasized in the statement that we should bring human wisdom to tackle this unprecedented challenge.
It seems to us that the Nuclear Security Summit was focused on the North Korea nuclear issue and on the issue of common security from a terrorist attack. Our appeal on the need for the independent assessment at Reactor 4 was regarded as less urgent. We predicted this outcome in light of the nature of the Summit. I suppose most participants fully understood the potential disaster which will affect their countries. Nevertheless, they decided not to raise the delicate issue, perhaps in order to not ruffle their diplomatic relationship with Japan.
I was moved by Ambassador Murata’s courage in pressing this issue in Japan. I know how difficult it is for a former career diplomat to do this, especially in my country. Current and former government officials might be similarly restricted in the scope of their actions, as Ambassador Murata is, but it is their responsibility to take a stand for the benefit of our descendants for centuries to come—to pass on a world safer than our ancestors passed us.
If Japanese government leaders do not recognize the risk their nation faces, how could the rest of us be persuaded of the looming disaster? And if the rest of us do not acknowledge the catastrophe we collectively face, who will be the one to act?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Continuing Chernobyl Impact 25 Years Later
NOTE: Chernobyl burned only 10 days with one reactor and no stored radionuclides
Monday, September 5, 2011
Haunting Imagines Of Fukushima & Chernobyl
Haunting images taken in a town close to Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant have been released showing a community frozen in time.
The new set of photographs, taken in the town of Futaba 12 miles from the Fukushima plant, bear grim similarities to those taken in Pripyat, two miles from the Chernobyl power plant.
Children's play areas lie deserted, lonely dogs wander through empty streets, shoes and personal keepsakes are left hastily abandoned in the two towns, both the scenes of hasty evacuations after explosions at the nearby nuclear power stations.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033551/Inside-Fukushimas-nuclear-ghost-town-abandoned-people-fleeing-fallout.html#ixzz1X7hk0D00
The new set of photographs, taken in the town of Futaba 12 miles from the Fukushima plant, bear grim similarities to those taken in Pripyat, two miles from the Chernobyl power plant.
Children's play areas lie deserted, lonely dogs wander through empty streets, shoes and personal keepsakes are left hastily abandoned in the two towns, both the scenes of hasty evacuations after explosions at the nearby nuclear power stations.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2033551/Inside-Fukushimas-nuclear-ghost-town-abandoned-people-fleeing-fallout.html#ixzz1X7hk0D00
Monday, August 29, 2011
#Fukushima Is Far Worse Than Chernobyl
Chris Busby, a professor at the University of Ulster known for his alarmist views, generated controversy during a Japan visit last month when he said the disaster would result in more than 1 million deaths. "Fukushima is still boiling its radionuclides all over Japan," he said. "Chernobyl went up in one go. So Fukushima is worse."
Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters. One of the most prominent of them is Dr Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician and long time anti-nuclear activist who warns of "horrors to come" in Fukushima.
On the other side of the nuclear fence are the industry friendly (PAID) scientists who insist that the crisis is under control and radiation levels are mostly safe. "I believe the government and Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco, the plant's operator] are doing their best," said Naoto Sekimura, vice-dean of the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. Mr Sekimura initially advised residents near the plant that a radioactive disaster was "unlikely" and that they should stay "calm", an assessment he has since had to reverse.
NOTE: It doesn't take any serious math to rough guess how much worse:
Chernobyl 3 months old and no fuel rod storage
1 Reactor that burned only 10 days
1 million deaths according to scientists in 25 years
roughly 100,000 deaths, over 25 years, for every day it burned
Fukushima 40 years old & enormous piles of stored reactors
3 Melt through reactors
still burning almost 180 days later
The math is too awful to contemplate, isn't it?
Could it be at least 3 times as bad as Chernobyl or 300,000 deaths per day, over 25 years, for every day it burns?
That would be 54 million, and growing daily.
Yet even Hiroshima had survivors.
Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters. One of the most prominent of them is Dr Helen Caldicott, an Australian physician and long time anti-nuclear activist who warns of "horrors to come" in Fukushima.
On the other side of the nuclear fence are the industry friendly (PAID) scientists who insist that the crisis is under control and radiation levels are mostly safe. "I believe the government and Tokyo Electric Power [Tepco, the plant's operator] are doing their best," said Naoto Sekimura, vice-dean of the Graduate School of Engineering at the University of Tokyo. Mr Sekimura initially advised residents near the plant that a radioactive disaster was "unlikely" and that they should stay "calm", an assessment he has since had to reverse.
NOTE: It doesn't take any serious math to rough guess how much worse:
Chernobyl 3 months old and no fuel rod storage
1 Reactor that burned only 10 days
1 million deaths according to scientists in 25 years
roughly 100,000 deaths, over 25 years, for every day it burned
Fukushima 40 years old & enormous piles of stored reactors
3 Melt through reactors
still burning almost 180 days later
The math is too awful to contemplate, isn't it?
Could it be at least 3 times as bad as Chernobyl or 300,000 deaths per day, over 25 years, for every day it burns?
That would be 54 million, and growing daily.
Yet even Hiroshima had survivors.
Monday, August 22, 2011
#Chernobyl Cesium Half Life Longer Than Predicted
SAN FRANCISCO — Chernobyl, the worst nuclear accident in history, created an inadvertent laboratory to study the impacts of radiation — and more than twenty years later, the site still holds surprises.
Reinhabiting the large exclusion zone around the accident site may have to wait longer than expected. Radioactive cesium isn’t disappearing from the environment as quickly as predicted, according to new research presented here Monday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Cesium 137’s half-life — the time it takes for half of a given amount of material to decay — is 30 years. In addition to that, cesium-137’s total ecological half-life — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment through processes such as migration, weathering, and removal by organisms is also typically 30 years or less, but the amount of cesium in soil near Chernobyl isn’t decreasing nearly that fast. And scientists don’t know why.
Reinhabiting the large exclusion zone around the accident site may have to wait longer than expected. Radioactive cesium isn’t disappearing from the environment as quickly as predicted, according to new research presented here Monday at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Cesium 137’s half-life — the time it takes for half of a given amount of material to decay — is 30 years. In addition to that, cesium-137’s total ecological half-life — the time for half the cesium to disappear from the local environment through processes such as migration, weathering, and removal by organisms is also typically 30 years or less, but the amount of cesium in soil near Chernobyl isn’t decreasing nearly that fast. And scientists don’t know why.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)