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Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

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Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#101

Post by freeflight »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #88
freeflight wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps we'll find a mass grave somewhere full of radioactive bodies of dead workers but barring that, most data based consensus puts the total death toll from all radiation effects at less than 1,000 and usually less than 100. The problem is that to this day we struggle to fully understand the effects of long-term low-level radiation exposure because figuring those out usually requires long-term epidemiological st…

Okay. I'm trying to understand the "low level radiation" part though. What is disappointing about the study you reference is that they don't characterize what the level of radiation is compared to normal background radiation, they don't account for changes in population or diet, and they don't account for changes in industry. As the study itself states: "These conclusions are regrettable because low statistical signi…

It's a commentary on the study, it also states:

"Whatever the final explanation for the increases, the KiKK study and its implications raise many questions, including whether vulnerable people, such as pregnant women and women of child-bearing age, should be advised on possible risks of living near nuclear power stations."

and:

"It is recommended that US regulatory agencies should establish a KiKK-style epidemiological study of cancer incidences near all US nuclear power stations with precise distances being measured between cancer cases and nuclear reactors."

The point here is that our understanding of these impacts is obviously not as complete as many people like to pretend.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#102

Post by amatecha »

keldaris wrote: post #94
amatecha wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"all of them survived just fine and at least two were still alive as recently as a few years ago." People keep saying this... any citation or link you happen to know of offhand? I've heard only exactly the opposite in various articles, that the three guys died within weeks.

Certainly. The most accessible source in the popular English press is an article in Business Insider [1] (probably reprinted elsewhere, I didn't check). It accurately refers to claims made in a very well researched book by Leatherbarrow [2]. If you read Russian, I've also seen several interviews with one of the survivors, but couldn't quickly find a link for you. I can look for it later if you're interested. [1] http…

Ah that's great, thanks. I can't read Russian so not a big deal (though Google Translate exists, of course! haha) . Cheers! :)

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#103

Post by lqet »

jahewson wrote: post #81
dmix wrote: post #79

> Standing in the bleachers, listening to the Pripyat municipal overture of resounding bird song, the only thing we could do was stare out at the trees and wonder "how long until New York looks like this?" I'm curious what the author meant by this. Does he mean how long would it take NYC to look like Chernobyl after a similar nuclear/natural accident happened? Or do they have a fatalistic outlook on the future due to…

> fatalistic I do not think it means what you think it means.

As a non-native speaker: do you care to elaborate why you think this word is incorrect here?

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#104

Post by aquamo »

Loved this story! Also good timing as a lot of us are watching the HBO mini-series now. I especially liked this quote: "The reason it's so beautiful and so peaceful is precisely because we can't consume it. Like, perhaps, all real paradises everywhere."

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#106

Post by atombender »

jahewson wrote: post #81
dmix wrote: post #79

> Standing in the bleachers, listening to the Pripyat municipal overture of resounding bird song, the only thing we could do was stare out at the trees and wonder "how long until New York looks like this?" I'm curious what the author meant by this. Does he mean how long would it take NYC to look like Chernobyl after a similar nuclear/natural accident happened? Or do they have a fatalistic outlook on the future due to…

> fatalistic I do not think it means what you think it means.

Looks like a perfectly apt use of the word. A fatalistic worldview can mean, for example, that they expect humankind's destructive impulses will always lead to its own destruction.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#107

Post by arcticbull »

zaroth wrote: post #97
arcticbull wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One thing I've found interesting in talking about Chernobyl is that advocates of nuclear power are often willing to accept the Soviet numbers as fact, since they confirm the idea that nuclear power is still relatively "safe" even in case of disaster. I believe the IAEA report (which you can read yourself) put together by the United Nations and relevant affected governments in the mid-2000s. It shows that over the e…

The 7.3 million figure is like the “12 years left” figure, that is to say it requires a little work to understand where it came from and what it means. “Ambient air pollution was responsible for 4.3 million deaths” and “3.8 million deaths every year as a result of household exposure to smoke from dirty cookstoves and fuels”. I haven’t dug into the indoor figures but a quick reading suggests that attributing the death…

> If you are going to publish a number of the harm of PM by extrapolating from an IER and PM levels, it should be a net effect, which would be staggeringly positive in terms of lives saved and lengthened not shortened.

Respectfully I disagree. You've conflated the primary effect and the side-effect. The primary effect is energy is generated and energy is what has improved our lives. The side-effect is PM exposure which is killing us. Burning fossil fuels isn't extending anyone's lives. Generating energy is. If we can trade it out for a better method the same extension of life persists, and the premature deaths drop. Thus, we can factor it out. The truth is, it does both things, and we need to switch it out for an energy source which only does the former without doing the latter.

Imagine for a second a power plant that generates electricity but once in a while it murders a random passer-by. It think it's fair to say the power plant is responsible for those murders, and we can talk about replacing it without having to talk about all the good it's doing.

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#108

Post by robocat »

dalore wrote: post #60
HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #55

On that score- the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki did less overall damage than the Allied's firebombings in other cities- and, IIRC, there were less casualties in the nuked cities as well- the damage was just different.

Well yes, some consider that the atomic bombs saved lives by ending the war. If the bombs weren't dropped and the ware continued then those fire bombings would have killed even more.

Your comment is based on the myth that the atomic bombs ended the war.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-stone-kuznick-hi...

""" The atomic bombings, terrible and inhumane as they were, played little role in Japanese leaders' calculations to quickly surrender. After all, the U.S. had firebombed more than 100 Japanese cities. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two more cities destroyed; whether the attack required one bomb or thousands didn't much matter. As Gen. Torashirō Kawabe, the deputy chief of staff, later told U.S. interrogators, the depth of devastation wrought in Hiroshima and Nagasaki only became known "in a gradual manner." But "in comparison, the Soviet entry into the war was a great shock." """

""" Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan. This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today. """

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#109

Post by trhway »

tptacek wrote: post #99
trhway wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * Rates of smoking in Belarus are also high. Russia and Poland have higher rates of smoking. Anyway, it would be mostly about lung cancer which isn't the main component here. > * The indirect impact of Chernobyl includes a lack of health care facilities in the (rural) regions most impacted. Lack of healthcare facilities doesn't really impact cancer incidence rate. >If the stat you're working from was breast cancer…

Smoking is closely linked to some forms of breast cancer. I'm not trying to push hard on a particular argument here.

>Smoking is closely linked to some forms of breast cancer.

the smoking rates among women in Belarus is ~10%. To account for the breast cancer rate increase in the Gomel and Mogilev regions all the women smokers there would have to get the breast cancer. Add to that that women smoking rate for example in Russia is close to 20% and the breast cancer rates there are relatively normal. Given all that it is pretty obvious that smoking has nothing to do with that cancer rate increase in Gomel and Mogilev regions .

Re: Scene report from the Chernobyl Zone

#110

Post by dragonwriter »

brianpgordon wrote: post #33
joshuamorton wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion To be clear, this didn't happen. No one said it did. There was a chance something like this could have happened (the Chernobyl miniseries does a great job of showing this). The issue was that there were large water tanks under the reactor, and that the reactor material would eventually melt into those tanks, superheat the water and cause an enormous steam explosion, further sca…

To be even more clear, a steam explosion cannot by any stretch of the imagination "level" a city fully two hours away. And the phrase "equivalent of a 5 megaton explosion" has no possible interpretation that squares with reality. The idea of a megaton-sized steam explosion is ludicrous, so I assume he means to imply some connection to radioactive fallout - but the amount of fallout isn't really correlated with the st…

> but the amount of fallout isn't really correlated with the strength of the explosion.

It absolutely is for a similar burst condition and similar weapon technology, so it's absolutely credible that one would use, say, groundburst yield with a technology then dominant for large weapons as a reference for fallout. (And, IIRC, groundburst yield is both much greater and much less variable by nuclear bomb technology than airburst since most of the fallout is ground material with induced radioactivity while with an airburst most of the fallout is bomb material, so that technology might not even need to be significant variable using groundburst yield as a reference scale.)

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