Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 52 posts

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#11

Post by hedora »

Probably should link the original article. I wouldn’t have expected incorrect headlines and article summaries from Science, but here we are.

The original title is:

Disproportionately High Contributions of 60 Year Old Weapons-137Cs Explain the Persistence of Radioactive Contamination in Bavarian Wild Boars

The link is: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.3c03565

From the abstract:

> Although Chornobyl has been widely believed to be the prime source of 137Cs in wild boars, we find that “old” 137Cs from weapons fallout significantly contributes to the total level (10–68%) in those specimens that exceeded the regulatory limit. In some cases, weapons-137Cs alone can lead to exceedances of the regulatory limit, especially in samples with a relatively low total 137Cs level. Our findings demonstrate that the superposition of older and newer legacies of 137Cs can vastly surpass the impact of any singular yet dominant source and thus highlight the critical role of historical releases of 137Cs in current environmental pollution challenges.

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#12

Post by fullspectrumdev »

tcfhgj wrote: post #9
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

In case you wonder just what happens to all the dead pigs the hunters shoot each year (about 100k/a): the fat ends up as biodiesel, the carcasses are burnt to power cement plants and waste incinerators [1]. [1] https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/bayern/Augsburg-Entsorg...

so instead of eating them we pump it into the atmosphere? :(

I mean, do you want to eat radioactive meat?

It’s been a while since I spoke with people who hunt in Germany, but there’s a whole fucking system in place for this.

After you shoot them, you have to take them in to be tested. Most people do.

If the meats safe you can keep it, etc, but a lot of the time in certain regions the meats contaminated (too much radiation) so it’s destroyed.

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#13

Post by fullspectrumdev »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3
boxed wrote: post #2

I just by default doubt any anti-nuclear thing that comes out of Germany. We do not need Germanys CO2 emissions. That's the big problem here. And the amount of radioactivity spewed into the atmosphere by German coal plants is way bigger than cold war era weapon testing.

They are definitely not saying it comes from German NPP. Makes me wonder though if wild pigs have the flavor of truffles. (You better believe the taste of chicken eggs depends on what they eat or that the complex flavor of venison has to with the random stuff wild animals eat. Turns out truffles really love Cesium.)

Wild pig has a certainly different taste to even farm pigs given a lot of space.

I wouldn’t say it’s a taste of truffle though, it’s just a different, stronger flavour (that I quite like).

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#14

Post by captainmuon »

boxed wrote: post #2

I just by default doubt any anti-nuclear thing that comes out of Germany. We do not need Germanys CO2 emissions. That's the big problem here. And the amount of radioactivity spewed into the atmosphere by German coal plants is way bigger than cold war era weapon testing.

The trade-off Germany chose is not between using nuclear vs. producing more CO2. It is between using nuclear vs. reducing economic activity (and the latter is IMHO very dubious - despite many warnings, Germany is able to procure enough energy just fine).

It's not like we need a fixed amount of energy X, and have to choose how to get it. Rather, we say we want to discontinue fossil at a certain fixed pace, and say, OK what is the effect of turning off nuclear on the power price? And what is the effect on the economy?

And given that nuclear energy in Germany is not actually that cheap, and hugely unpopular, it was an easy decision.

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#15

Post by mschuster91 »

fullspectrumdev wrote: post #12
tcfhgj wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so instead of eating them we pump it into the atmosphere? :(

I mean, do you want to eat radioactive meat? It’s been a while since I spoke with people who hunt in Germany, but there’s a whole fucking system in place for this. After you shoot them, you have to take them in to be tested. Most people do. If the meats safe you can keep it, etc, but a lot of the time in certain regions the meats contaminated (too much radiation) so it’s destroyed.

Burning it is not problematic in itself, the question is if radioactive particles are scrubbed from the exhaust stream, and what happens to the solid slag.

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#16

Post by hedora »

ceejayoz wrote: post #5
boxed wrote: post #2

I just by default doubt any anti-nuclear thing that comes out of Germany. We do not need Germanys CO2 emissions. That's the big problem here. And the amount of radioactivity spewed into the atmosphere by German coal plants is way bigger than cold war era weapon testing.

Nothing in "be careful eating wild boar" and "don't blow up nuclear bombs in the atmosphere" is going to affect Germany's CO2 emissions.

The original article says that a surprising amount of the radiation comes from WWII munitions.

A better conclusion would be “stabilize your energy production before shortages and rolling environmental catastrophes lead to a rise in fascism and a third world war”.

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#18

Post by akolbe »

hedora wrote: post #11

Probably should link the original article. I wouldn’t have expected incorrect headlines and article summaries from Science, but here we are. The original title is: Disproportionately High Contributions of 60 Year Old Weapons-137Cs Explain the Persistence of Radioactive Contamination in Bavarian Wild Boars The link is: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acs.est.3c03565 From the abstract: > Although Chornobyl has be…

In what sense are the summary and headline incorrect?

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#19

Post by akolbe »

hedora wrote: post #16
ceejayoz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in "be careful eating wild boar" and "don't blow up nuclear bombs in the atmosphere" is going to affect Germany's CO2 emissions.

The original article says that a surprising amount of the radiation comes from WWII munitions. A better conclusion would be “stabilize your energy production before shortages and rolling environmental catastrophes lead to a rise in fascism and a third world war”.

I can't find any reference to WWII munitions in the original article. What they are talking about are atmospheric nuclear tests carried out primarily in the period after WWII:

"For weapons-137Cs, the cessation of atmospheric tests resulted in no noteworthy new weapons-137Cs fallout after the last test in 1980 ... this study illustrates that strategic decisions to conduct atmospheric nuclear tests 60–80 years ago still impact remote natural environments, wildlife, and a human food source today."

Re: Cesium-soaked truffles may keep fallout in an environment’s food web

#20

Post by epistasis »

tcfhgj wrote: post #9
mschuster91 wrote: post #4

In case you wonder just what happens to all the dead pigs the hunters shoot each year (about 100k/a): the fat ends up as biodiesel, the carcasses are burnt to power cement plants and waste incinerators [1]. [1] https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/bayern/Augsburg-Entsorg...

so instead of eating them we pump it into the atmosphere? :(

If we were to eat them, surely some amount might end up as soil, but digestion and respiration means that a fair amount of the pig ends up being pumped into the atmosphere from our lungs.

You can think metabolism as a sort of intricately complex burning ritual.

Post reply on HN