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The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

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Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#81

Post by Symmetry »

nnq wrote: post #62
nakedrobot2 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens if you "only" irradiate your hand? Presumably some of the alpha/beta particles can go into your blood and then to the rest of your body? what damage is being done by holding that grain?

Alpha particles (high energy bare Helium nuclei actually) and beta particles (high energy electrons actually) don't "go into your blood", they are just absorbed by atoms in your skin and they break a few molecules those atoms were part of along the way. If they go deep enough they make break up some DNA in you skin cells. If they would get to the blood they would just be absorbed by the blood itself and break some mo…

It's really only neutrons that can transmute other elements into radioactive ones. Charged particle or EM radiation might damage your body's chemicals but they won't harm your atoms.

Generally a whole body dose of 1 sievert will increase your odds of getting cancer by 10% over your life. I don't know how much she's been exposed to but while my guess is that while future cancer is a concern it really isn't a sure thing.

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#82

Post by maxerickson »

antimagic wrote: post #50
precisioncoder wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I'm assuming you're implying that Marie Curie's research shortened her life. Marie Curie lived until age 66 in 1934. Life expectancy according to this ( http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-stati... ) random google search for 1935 in France was 58.09. This means that Marie Curie's life was 113% longer then usual for her time. The current life expectancy in the USA is 78.74 according to the…

Life expectancy is a tricky statistic to use correctly, because it is significantly dragged lower due to the high rate of death in birth / infancy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy ). Once that hurdle is gotten over, your life expectancy increases dramatically, so it's not sure as to whether or not Curie actually lived a long life compared to contemporary adults. Considering that we know that Curie's de…

This pdf has life tables for England (should not be ridiculously different than France, good enough to illustrate the point either way):

http://www.osfi-bsif.gc.ca/Eng/Docs/DEIP_Gallop.pdf

In the 1930s, a 65 year old woman would expect to live an additional 12 or so years.

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#83

Post by Symmetry »

m0skit0 wrote: post #37

I wonder, maybe someone can answer: why is Chernobyl still remembered while nobody talks about Fukushima anymore?

Or its lifetime Fukushima produced 100 Gigawatt-years of electricity and the disaster is expected to end up killing 180 people assuming a linear no-threshold radiation model. A typical coal plant will kill between 280 and 40 people generating that much electricity.

By contrast, Chernobyl killed somewhere around 20,000 people (also assuming linear no-threshold).

http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2013/12/fukushima-vs...

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#84

Post by LordKano »

pizza234 wrote: post #72
personlurking wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understood that the two people ate a sandwich and a little girl. I'm glad that wasn't the case. This part seemed quite crazy, though: "She was buried in a common cemetery in Goiânia, in a special fiberglass coffin lined with lead to prevent the spread of radiation. Despite these measures, there was still a riot in the cemetery where over 2,000 people, fearing that her corpse would poison the surrounding area, tried…

Well, it's not as crazy as it sounds, in a certain perspective. If you guarantee that "hey! nuclear stuff is absolutely safe, there will never be problems whatsoever!", but then incidents happen, it's reasonable that people is skeptical when you say "hey! that coffin is absolutely safe, there will never be problems whatsoever!". This could be extended as a reasonable doubt of nuclear energy in general (I don't claim…

I completely agree.

I understand that radiation isn't magic and things don't become permanently tainted by mere exposure.

Still, this girl ingested cesium and died as a result.

I would be highly uncomfortable with with an unknown quantify of a beta+gamma emitter with a 30 year half life being buried anywhere near where I get my family's drinking water.

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#85

Post by pvaldes »

Joona wrote: post #32
anigbrowl wrote: post #2

This lady reminds me of Tarkovsky's Stalker: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) There was a very interesting documentary on PBS a month or two back about the 'Radioactive Wolves' of Chernobyl. Bottom line: they don't seem any more or less healthy than other wolf populations in the region, but do well because nobody hunts them.

I remember seeing a documentary like that on Finnish TV a couple of years back, but it wasn't just about the wolves - it included other animals too. They seem to be doing very well. Do you happen to remember the name of the documentary? It sounds very interesting.

> Do you happen to remember the name of the documentary? It sounds very interesting.

Radioactive wolves of Chernobyl and yes, is great; you can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTHBfo_A6No

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#87

Post by xigency »

m0skit0 wrote: post #37

I wonder, maybe someone can answer: why is Chernobyl still remembered while nobody talks about Fukushima anymore?

That's a good question. I used to live in Japan around the area of the disaster, so I still have a vested personal interest in the event. It's something I try to keep at the back of my mind thinking about the people living there.

I worry about people who live in Koriyama which is a great city but there is obviously a heightened risk now. For those who can't move their families, the radioactive isotopes of cesium and what was iodine in the initial exposure obviously could cause cancer or other diseases. Especially in children, which makes me sad.

It's not something I talk about because there is little benefit to prevention at this point and really more negativity surrounding those who try to use it in journalism to shock people or create unnecessary panic. In some ways I might not have a scientific view of the disaster, but studying at a university in the region in May of that year, I did have access to regular reports of the radiation level and I did do some amateur investigating.

I don't believe anyone who says California is or was at risk from the radiation has any right saying that.

I also believe that, in the long term, many of the areas surrounding the disaster in northeastern Japan are safe and that tourism in the region has been impacted disproportionately to the risk.

I know that it's a complicated issue and that mistakes have been made, labeling food that's been grown in Fukushima, or failing to set up a proper evacuation zone initially, but all in all it's a real place where people are still living, and most of the attention Fukushima has gotten in the US has been really misplaced, in that there hasn't been sympathy and there's been a fearful response.

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#88

Post by jjoonathan »

allendoerfer wrote: post #66

My problem with nuclear disasters or really any kind of bigger scale environmental damage is, that you have no control over other people's actions and failures. You therefore can not argue, that the technology is fine as long as we all use it securely, because you simply can not ensure that for countries you have no control over. And it is not only the small countries. We trust developed nations with nuclear technolo…

Administrative maturity does not reliably advance over time but technology does and technology can compensate for a lack of administrative maturity. The social challenges may be intractable but the compensating technological challenges are not and reactor technology has come a long way in this regard. If Fukushima had been built in 1971 instead of 1967, it would not have had the flaw that caused the 2011 meltdown. The industry has learned even more in the following 44 years.

Unfortunately, reactor designs are "frozen in" when built so we are in the awkward position of simultaneously knowing how to build safe, robust reactors and knowing that many of the reactors in service are not safe and not robust to administrative incompetence. A timeline:

    date  age
    1956  00: Calder Hall, first commercial nuclear power
    1967  11: Fukushima built
    1971  15: Fukushima flaw discovered
    1990  34: U.S. NRC ranks Fukushima flaw most likely risk
    2004  48: Japanese NISA cites 1990 report
    2011  55: Fukushima meltdown
    2015  59: Today
Nuclear advocates propose closing down the old, dangerous reactors and building new, safe reactors. Nuclear opponents propose shutting down old reactors and not building new reactors -- but they haven't been able to find viable economic alternatives to the old reactors so effectively what happens is they lobby to keep the old, dangerous reactors running while stopping the construction of new, safe reactors that could otherwise have replaced them. This is the worst possible policy outcome and thanks to their efforts it is what has come to pass in the US. Ugh.

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#89

Post by dragonwriter »

jjoonathan wrote: post #88
allendoerfer wrote: post #66

My problem with nuclear disasters or really any kind of bigger scale environmental damage is, that you have no control over other people's actions and failures. You therefore can not argue, that the technology is fine as long as we all use it securely, because you simply can not ensure that for countries you have no control over. And it is not only the small countries. We trust developed nations with nuclear technolo…

Administrative maturity does not reliably advance over time but technology does and technology can compensate for a lack of administrative maturity. The social challenges may be intractable but the compensating technological challenges are not and reactor technology has come a long way in this regard. If Fukushima had been built in 1971 instead of 1967, it would not have had the flaw that caused the 2011 meltdown. Th…

> Nuclear opponents propose shutting down old reactors and not building new reactors -- but they haven't been able to find viable economic alternatives to the old reactors

To the extent this is true, neither have nuclear proponents or the nuclear industry; the reason new nuclear reactors aren't built isn't because of nuclear opponents, its because the nuclear industry won't build them without special liability protections. So, clearly, even new reactors aren't economically viable alternatives, from the perspective of those who would pay for and profit from them, to old reactors without socializing the risk while privatizing the profits.

> so effectively what happens is they lobby to keep the old, dangerous reactors running while stopping the construction of new, safe reactors that could otherwise have replaced them.

Old reactors in the US continue to be decommissioned even though new ones aren't being built. Objectively, the market has found economically viable alternatives to nuclear power.

Re: The Woman Who Ate Chernobyl's Apples

#90

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dragonwriter wrote: post #89
jjoonathan wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Administrative maturity does not reliably advance over time but technology does and technology can compensate for a lack of administrative maturity. The social challenges may be intractable but the compensating technological challenges are not and reactor technology has come a long way in this regard. If Fukushima had been built in 1971 instead of 1967, it would not have had the flaw that caused the 2011 meltdown. Th…

> Nuclear opponents propose shutting down old reactors and not building new reactors -- but they haven't been able to find viable economic alternatives to the old reactors To the extent this is true, neither have nuclear proponents or the nuclear industry; the reason new nuclear reactors aren't built isn't because of nuclear opponents, its because the nuclear industry won't build them without special liability protec…

Those cheaper power sources are coal and oil, right? Doesn't every discussion of nuclear being with the assumption that controlling carbon emissions are the real goal?
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