Slashdot Log In
Latest Chernobyl Motorcycle Photos
Posted by
michael
on Fri Mar 26, 2004 08:20 PM
from the post-post-apocalyptic dept.
from the post-post-apocalyptic dept.
wrx writes "Elena has taken another motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area, and has updated her site with a whole lot of new photos and text. The pictures now show several surrounding towns, the radiation level of the magic wood, and many more details inside buildings. After the dust had settled from the
original slashdot story,
Elena wrote 'who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.'"
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
Then again, I chase storms.
Go with God, girl.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
Also, 300 mR is only enough to increase your risk of cancer by 0.01 %, i.e. it's not going to take any time off your life (unless you happen to be the one in 10,000 who gets cancer as a result of that additional exposure, and even then, your chances of dieing are only 1 in 2).
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
Then there's Granite. Some granites produce 500 to 800 mr/year or so exposure. 'The' UN building in NY, NY is sheathed with a moderately hot granite cladding, resulting in, if I recall correctly, employee exposures of 200-250 mR/year at full time, and some buildings are much worse.
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Insightful)
As a motorcycle rider, I can tell you that the increase in safety margins she enjoys riding on empty roads is probably 1000 times greater than the increased health risk the radiation poses. That's not all that clear. Look at it this way - "cell phone chatting back seat kid swatting speeding paying no attention to anyone else cause I have the biggest SUV in town" type drivers are a much greater risk than elevated radiation levels. On a bike, she's definitely safer in the Dead Zone than in a poplulated zone.
On a side note, women who ride motorcycles (as driver not passenger) are undeniably the most alluring of all. I'm in love!
Parent
OT: Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
But then, if you do exclusively anagama, that's not a problem.
I had a high school physics prof bring in some happy yellow Fiestaware bowls that she bought in New Mexico when she was working on the bomb. That yellow was from the Uranium Oxide in the glaze. Those things got the Geiger counter screaming, I can tell you. "How'd you like to eat your Wheaties from that?" she'd ask.
I often wonder what isotopes my cobalt carbonate or manganese have in 'em...
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
The NRC limit (see 10 C.F.R. [nrc.gov]) is 3 rem per quarter, and 5 rem per year. A rem is a weighted [triumf.ca] roetgen (R). The weighting factors are used because while a roetgen measures the energy deposited, a rem measures the physical damage (exposure versus dose). An example of a weighting factor is a gamma will have a factor of 1, while a fast neutron may have a factor of 20. So a 1 mR/hr exposure rate will give you 1 mrem/hr for gammas, and 20 mrem/hr for fast neutrons.
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, I'm not trying to karma whore, but my day job relates to getting people not to be affraid of radiation, so seing this post have such high mod points is really getting to me.
Parent
She's doing fine. (Score:5, Insightful)
In one transcontinental roundtrip flight, you get 6 millirem, which is equal to 6000 microroentgen. Her little counter is reading microroentgen per hour, so she can go somewhere where her counter is reading 500 and it's just like she's sitting on an airliner at 35000 feet.
Your yearly dose is about 300 millirem, so in order for her to soak that up in hours, as you claim, she'd have to sit somewhere that her counter reads 100000 or more. She's being very smart. If she were walking around without the dosimeter, she could get in trouble.
This is what she means when she says people fear what they don't understand. Once you understand the risks involved, you see her radiation exposure is much less risky than, say, smoking, or even riding motorcycles at all.
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
It comes down to how fast and how completely the exposed tissue is replaced or repaired. In this case she's not spending all her time in the hot zone - her visits are sporadic, unlike say the old guy with the horse-drawn cart (who lives there all the time). So she's probably ok, because she has time to heal in between exposures.
Also, there is a way you can take it out with you - by inhaling radioactive particulate (fallout). This is part of the reason smoking is dangerous - all organic matter has a small percentage of radioactive isotopes, and small particles get lodged in the lungs where they just keep on giving. It's also the only real danger in handling stuff like depleted uranium rounds, if there's an opportunity for them to produce dust. Radiation that can't penetrate the skin can hurt you from within your body. She's specifically staying in the centre of the asphalt and away from the irradiated dirt and dust that's washed off to the side of the road, so again she should be ok.
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
However, rather than simply tripping the turbine and reactor, which would only give them one shot to get the test right, they decided to keep the reactor running at low power level and simply trip the turbine. That would let them repeat the test as many times as they needed to in order to make sure they passed it.
Sure enough, the operators flubbed the test on the first run through, but they also allowed the reactor to sink to an extremely low power level. So low, in fact, that they got into an unstable operating range that they didn't know about. So, when they goosed the reactor to repeat the test, they got a runaway instead.
The resulting pressure excursion and/or steam explosion blew the head off of the reactor and the roof off the building. The reactor, like all Soviet reactors, had no containment structure. This allowed air to enter, which allowed the graphite blocks that served as a moderator to catch fire, creating a radioactive smoke plume blowing downwind. The rest of the world (ie., us) found out about the accident when Swedish scientists reported a radioactive cloud passing overhead.
The graphite in the reactor all burned away eventually, in spite of many days worth of truly heroic (and fatal) efforts to put it out. The fuel all coalesced into a magma and the proceeded to sink down through the building structure where it (fortunately) dispersed into the different basements and sub-structures until it had been dispersed and cooled enough that it stopped. It's all still there and will be continue to be deadly dangerous for thousands of years to come.
So much for safe, clean, and efficient nuclear power.
All this is from memory, so please forgive any errors, which are entirely mine.
Parent
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
Potasium iodide doesn't 'get the radiation out of your system'. Please understand that radiation is the transmittal of energy through EM-wave or various particles (betas, alphas, neutrons). Radiation may pass through your body (perhaps doing harm) but it won't stay. Contamination is some radioactive substance that emits radiation governed by its half-life. If you drive by the a site that has alot of contamination you will get some radiation dose. As long as you don't ingest any of the contamination you will not get a dose when you leave.
The purpose of potassium iodide is to minimize the dose to your thyroid. One characteristic radionuclide from nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons is radioactive iodine (typically I-129 and I-131). Your thyroid can absorb a certain amount of iodine before it become saturated. If you use iodine pills, your thyroid will absorb a non-radioactive nuclide. This means that when you ingest radioactive iodine following a casuality, little of it will be absorbed into the thyroid, reducing the dose to the thyroid. Please note though, that the thyroid isn't the only organ that can kill you if it gets exposed to a significant amount of radiation. Its just the only one that there is an effective preventive measure for. If you are in the area of radioactive fallout, it will increase your chances of survival slightly, but it won't make you a radiation-resistant superman.
Parent
No cell phone coverage either (Score:5, Insightful)
Since Chernobyl was permanently evacuated long before public cellular networks became prevalent in Easter Europe, no cellular towers were ever placed in that area.
The parent has a point: she's alone, quite a distance away from civilization in a desolate region, with no means of communication with the outside world. Comtemplating all of this, it is a bit scary indeed.
It might be a good idea to bring along a satellite phone next time, just in case.
She's a very brave young lady to undertake such an adventure! She sure has my respect.
Parent
Bok bok baaaAAAK! (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think that symbolism will work. People instead will think of Giant Mutant Chickens and run like hell.
Re:Bok bok baaaAAAK! (Score:5, Funny)
I've heard of rumors of the giant, self-cooking Chicken Kiev...
Parent
Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article (Score:5, Insightful)
Being an American kid at the time of the incident, I was fairly well removed, both politically and geographically, from the disaster, but Elena's pictures serve as a reminder of just how terrible and far reaching the effects of the meltdown were. From the initial coverup to the resulting FUD pumped out by the Russian government during the aftermath, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that this event displaced tens of thousands of people, and many more are still dealing with the legacy or horrors the fallout has inflicted.
Kudos to Elena and the editors for a great human interest story.
Re:Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Who are these slashdot people? (Score:5, Insightful)
And so you post her to the front page. Again. That's just spiteful.
You can't buy this kind of publicity, but you are sure going to pay for it. Hopefully the bill falls on anglefire and not our friend on the bike.
Re:Who are these slashdot people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Me too. Its a rather sad state of affairs when someone like Elena takes the time, fuel, and a camera along and lets the rest of the world see what its really like, and then might have to pay for the bandwidth to boot.
For the visual information that came out of her camera, I'll gladly forgive her occasionaly poor command of the english language. The pictures tell the story far better than any amount of words anyway. I followed the whole site, wondering when the server was going to melt down like it did the last time, apparently before I even got there, but this time it held up quite well.
Many thanks to a totally cool lady. And to the hosting site for putting up with the rest of the geek world that represents the average
Cheers and many thanks Elena, Gene
Parent
More Proper. (Score:5, Funny)
The Nazgul.
Is she single? Looking? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is she single? Looking? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Is she single? Looking? (Score:5, Funny)
In Capitalist America, the Russian Babe rides YOU!
Parent
Chernobyl/Springfield (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm, looks like they had a Russian version of Homer Simpson working there. He was probably looking for the "donut button".
Re:Chernobyl/Springfield (Score:5, Funny)
D'ohsky!
Parent
I for one.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Soviet calendar? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Soviet calendar? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's interesting though how the weeks run top to bottom instead of left to right like they do on "our" calendars.
Parent
how ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
"Long live communism - the bright future for the whole mankind!"
Truly, you may never know how the words you say today will be _seen_ tomorrow.
Thank you, Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
I think I'm in love.
Of course, our kids will each have 9 heads.
Exposure levels (Score:5, Informative)
http://ldml.stanford.edu/cisac/pdf/Nuc_terr
20,000 millirem will mutate DNA enough to produce noticeable health effects. Above 100,000 millirem, diseases manifest.
10,000 millirem is enough to increase your cancer risk.
5,000 millirem per year is the maximum allowable annual dosage.
25,000-100.000 mrem - Temporary blood changes
35,000 - Loss of appetite, nausea
50,000 - Temporary sterility in males
100,000 - 2x normal incidence of genetic defects
100,000 - 300,000 - Vomiting, diarrhea
300,000 - 500,000 - 50% chance of death if not treated
300,000+ - Permanent sterility for females
400,000-1,000,000 - Acute illnes, death within days if not treated.
Her meter was showing over 800 millirem per hour, when she was standing a few hundred metres from the reactor.
I am facinated by these pictures, I would love to (briefly) visit these places, but I fear she will do herself serious harm over time. The area is an incredible time capsule.
They should make it a national park or such thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite interesting that the author (the biker girl) confirmed what I thought all along: the place has become a heaven for wildlife. Animals don't care about shorter life expectancy, as long as they are freed from the intimidating human presence.
And so it goes again (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.myownlittleserver.us/chernobyl [myownlittleserver.us]
My bandwidth may not be free, but I have a hell of a lot more of it than she does.
I have mirrored the whole site, as far as I can tell, except for the hit counter. The children among you have shown why its not good to have a public hit counter.
You whould think that a group of people who like to preach "information should be free" would try to have a little more respect. Information may be free, but unlimited bandwidth and server space is not.
thanks! (Score:5, Insightful)
just wanted to say 'thanks elena -- for being our eyes into this fascinating wasteland'.
your photo-journal is one of the most haunting things i've ever seen.
safe speed be with you.
john penner
(toronto)
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Funny)
Huge is bandwidth bill.
Sad am I.
Parent
Re:MOD PARENT +1 INSIGHTFUL (Score:5, Insightful)
>I too agree that the USSR should be ashamed and we should be Proud Americans.
It's not like accidents don't happen in the United States, and I don't quite see where your statement is founded.... simply because another country has a disaster, does not give Americans, nor any other country in the world bragging rights. I think what should be truly done, is that we all learn from examples, so this won't happen to humanity again.
Parent
Re:Not yet. (Score:5, Informative)
TMI was a non-incident. The only reason anyone thinks it was a big deal was because of press coverage, and because of TV personalities arguing about it live on nightly news. The most exposure anyone got was around 100millirems, which is about the same as an x-ray at a doctor's office.
Parent
Re:Not yet. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. This is not true.
You could not do that for a small plant, and TMI-2 (anniversary is on the 28th btw), was a big plant (~3GW thermal). The Atomic Energy Act pretty much makes it impossible for me to give you any real numbers for the radiation levels outside the reactor pressure vessel shutdown or critical (though they may be published somewhere), I can tell you that it is not background. Civil nuclear plants typically start up, operate for 18 months at full power, shutdown to refuel and perform maintenance, and then repeat. Since TMI-2 was in the operating stage when its accident occured, there was a significant amount of fission products in the reactor core at the time of the accident. If you are standing next to the reactor core you do not have the full amount of radiation shielding that the general public has, so the radiation dose will be much higher. Also considering that some fission products escaped from the fuel and circulated through the coolant (of which some was released into the containment structure due to the pressure relief which set of the radiation alarms during the casuality), there will be alot of radiation in the general area not coming from the reactor vessel (which again will be significantly higher than background).
Parent
Re:Question for physics people (Score:5, Informative)
Roentgens measure ionizing radiation in air/free field. Rems (actually REM, an acronym for Roentgen-Equivalent Man) are a measure of how much biological damage a given amount of radiation does. Basically, one roentgen of gamma radiation is appx. equivalent to one rad absorbed is appx. equivalent to one rem. However, other types of radiation have different conversions - for instance, one rad of alpha radiation is appx. equivalent to 20 rems of exposure.
The short version - "In summary, the roentgen is a unit of exposure, the rad is a unit of absorbed dose, and the rem is a unit of biological dose."
(data from http://www.radford.edu/~fac-man/Safety/Radiation/
Parent
Re:Question for physics people (Score:5, Informative)
Rem: absorbed dose of 0.01 joules of energy per kilogram of tissue
One roentgen of gamma radiation exposure results in about one rad of absorbed dose.
Parent
An idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent