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Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#111

Post by Hnrobert42 »

irrational wrote: post #77
gambiting wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's almost guaranteed that bacteria eating plastics will proliferate globally at some point, we've put so much of this stuff in the environment and it's just free energy ready to be consumed if your digestive system knows how.

Where did the Tupperware go?! Will we have to develop antibacterial plastics to combat this for stuff we don’t want eaten, yet?

Funny. Just the other day I read an article about where Tupperware has gone.

https://text.npr.org/2023/06/01/1178876648/tupperware-busine...

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#112

Post by dEnigma »

godelski wrote: post #51

> including some [wild boar] bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation. This really needs to stop. I remember doing the calculation a few years back due to another HN post (and the German obsession around boar) and you'd need to eat roughly 0.55lbs (0.25kg) of the most radioactive boar you could find every day or 3lbs (1.4kg) of the median. That is to just hit EU radiat…

> you'd need to eat roughly 0.55lbs (0.25kg) of the most radioactive boar you could find every day or 3lbs (1.4kg) of the median.

You'd need to eat that much for what to happen? Radiation sickness (since you mention that afterwards)? I'm pretty sure people are more concerned with increased cancer risk than that. Not saying that this is a valid concern here either, just that radiation sickness is on the far end of a spectrum of dangers.

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#114

Post by lazide »

fallingfrog wrote: post #110
lazide wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely not the first time temperatures have risen due to direct co2 levels. Last time was only about 3 million years ago.

Are you sure? Because my understanding is, in the past what has happened is that some other force causes a bit of warming, and then the oceans heat up, which causes co2 to bubble out, which then causes more warming, which causes more co2 to bubble out, and so on. So co2 is an active part of the picture but it wasn’t the independent variable, so to speak. Whereas now we’re mining fossil carbon and squirting it directl…

It’s very similar. We’re just the ‘other force’ that is kicking it off this time, and we’re a bit more efficient than most.

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#115

Post by DoreenMichele »

I think it would be reasonable to assume the accident killed a lot of stuff at the time and one factor is it's not being reintroduced in part because it is a zone of exclusion.

They should experiment with bringing in decay promoters to try to prevent a devastating fire from making things worse. (Assuming they haven't done so already, which may be wrong given the age of the article.)

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#116

Post by justsomehnguy »

godelski wrote: post #108
mbfg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely the engineers didn't think the plants would be unsafe, right? I'm not sure what's so bad faith about that particular argument.

Because it is a non-argument. The implication is that engineers are incompetent and will never gain competence. There's much more detailed arguments to be made, but I'll give you two things to consider that will give you context and help you track down those arguments if you are interested 1) RBMK reactors (like Chernobyl) have a positive void coefficient, which leads to an increase in radiation as steam pressure inc…

> Concerning Fukushima

Concerning Fukushima the problem would have been averted, if managers actually did what they were told by engineers:

>> All three of the generators added in the late 1990s were fully operational after the tsunami. If the switching stations had been moved to the interior of the reactor buildings or to other flood-proof locations, power would have been provided by these generators to the reactors' cooling systems and thus the catastrophe would have been averted.[59]

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#117

Post by luisfmh »

gambiting wrote: post #72
digging wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, it's mind-blowing to travel back in Earth's history and realize there were tens or hundreds of millions of years where strategies that are commonplace today had never been tried before (or they'd tried too early and failed). It makes one wonder, what will be the strategies of future life which no creature has yet evolved? Can we even imagine it?

I think it's almost guaranteed that bacteria eating plastics will proliferate globally at some point, we've put so much of this stuff in the environment and it's just free energy ready to be consumed if your digestive system knows how.

Check out cronenberg's recent movie, crimes of the future, seems relevant haha

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#118

Post by BurningPenguin »

plugin-baby wrote: post #82
irrational wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did the Tupperware go?! Will we have to develop antibacterial plastics to combat this for stuff we don’t want eaten, yet?

Maybe we can just add some broad-spectrum antibiotics into the standard plastic mix.

And make all bacteria known to men immune?

Re: Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)

#119

Post by samplatt »

ramraj07 wrote: post #88
jvanderbot wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And suddenly plastics won't be the sterile, durable wonders that they are. We are living in The golden age of plastics , folks.

Things degrade wood too, doesn't make it useless.

Wood in today's society needs chemical treatment or physical isolation before we use it a construction material.
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