Latest Chernobyl Motorcycle Photos 951
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.'"
Watch the hit counter spin (Score:4, Funny)
We'll show her who "those slashdot people" are.
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Funny)
In the words of Governor Schwarznegger (Score:5, Funny)
"...what is best in life?"
"To slashdot your enemies, see their hit counters roll over before you, and to hear the lamentation of their servers!"
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Informative)
Heh, looks like you made the same mistake that I almost did. The link on that first page just goes right back to angelfire. The -k option in wget is most useful for these situations
True mirror at: http://netfiles.uiuc.edui/benoc/mirrors/www.angelf ire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/ [uiuc.edu]
Visit the oldest running human webcam on the internet:
http://www.mitwebcam.com [mitwebcam.com]
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Informative)
Bittorrent is probably overkill for a 5 meg site, but who cares; it helps spread the bandwidth load around...
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Insightful)
I would hope, however, that the admins at Angelfire would have waived the bandwidth limitations for this particular user. If they have any human decency that is... what she has to say, and what she's doing, should be viewable by everyone, regardless of b/w limitations or not. I'd mirror it myself (have a complete local copy) but I'm out of webspace...
Some things are just too damned important...
SB
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but at great personal cost to her health. Nobody else would go there; she says so herself. These are *one of a kind*.
Fuck just waiving bandwidth restrictions, I'd give her a medal.
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Insightful)
sorry, but those photos gave me the intense creeps for the past 2 hours and has reminded me that things are not bad at all here in the USA.... at least my child's school is not equipped with children's gas masks.
I feel that every american shoudl be required to view that entire website, and high school classes need to take a week to discuss what happened there.
I remember when it happened, and it's unbelieveable how this one person's website has brough back all those fears I had as a kid then returned and compounded with the realization that
Makes Our three mile island look like a simple fart.
Elena has requested that people not duplicate site (Score:5, Informative)
When someone put up a mirror, worried about bandwidth, Elena asked him to take it down because she was concerned that her updates wouldn't get propagated, and that people would only see an old version.
elena
I asked to remove copied site, because need to update and need to make some corrections.
Original Elena post here [sport-touring.net].
While I realize that folks just want to help out, I think that, given that this is Elena's work (and one that she had to venture into hazardous environments to produce and is giving away freely), her wishes should be respected WRT mirrors. (That doesn't mean that I'm not going to make a personal wget -rk --no-parent'ed copy just in case the site ever goes away permanently, though.)
Elena also feeling harassed (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously -- appreciate the work for what it is -- a unique, honest set of images and insights into the most horrific nuclear disaster the world has ever seen. However, please try and avoid creeping the author out. I'd like to continue to see more of this material.
Thanks.
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Funny)
Huge is bandwidth bill.
Sad am I.
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Watch the hit counter spin (Score:5, Funny)
Tank of petrol 190 rupels
Nice digital camera 2500 rupels
having glow in the dark hair - priceless
Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
Then again, I chase storms.
Go with God, girl.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Funny)
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).
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:4, Insightful)
But to continue the relative risk theme: visiting a meltdown dead zone is not they only way to expose yourself to radiation. There's living in a house made of brick. (Not very much, I admit, but some.) There's living in a poorly ventilated house that's over a Uranium deposit. And of course, there's sunbathing or visiting a tanning salon, which Elena's pastime look positively healthy!
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
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.
You people are making me paranoid. (Score:4, Funny)
It's over there..... (Score:5, Funny)
News flash! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!
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...
Safer? That's far from obvious.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The obvious potential hazard of the radiation aside, she has mentioned riding at high speeds as well as animals on the road slowing her down.
One of the mostest important aspects of driving or riding safely is expectations. A bike racer can expect that if he follows the leader at 180mph, and is only separated from his rivals back tire by an inch or two, he is in most regards, safe. You cannot do that while riding in public.
Elena's biggest safety risk may very well be "the unexpected".
Re:Safer? That's far from obvious.... (Score:4, Interesting)
On a bike (hell, anywhere in life, really) that is nearly always the demon factor that gets you... damned near got me once, twelve years ago, going into a series of S-turns that I'd been thru many times, and some dickhead had spilled pea gravel all over the low side of the bank - apparently spillover from shoulder maintenance.
Trashed the bike, but I more or less walked away. I was goddamned fucking lucky, tho.
SB
Re:Safer? That's far from obvious.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although Elena's site focuses more on the result than the process, I get the impression that she is an experienced rider, and thus cannot fail to be aware of that.
There ARE only two kinds of motorcycle riders, after all -- those that have had accidents, and those that will. (And the two are NOT mutually exclusive, what's worse.
But one doesn't ride a motorcycle because one is concerned about one's safety among all else, either....
(I echo an earlier poster's sentiments about the appeal of women who ride!)
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
1. Our bodies: about half of the radioactivity in our bodies comes from Potassium-40 (naturally-occurring radioactive form of potassium.) Potassium is important for the brain and muscles. Most of the rest of our bodies' radioactivity is from Carbon-14 and tritium, a radioactive form of hydrogen. These naturally-occurring radioactive substances expose our bodies to about 25 "millirem" per year, abbreviated as "mrem/yr".)
2. Radioactivity in food and water: for example, the radio- (and non-radio) active forms of iodine and sodium. The food we eat contains radium-226, thorium-232, potassium-40, carbon-14, and hydrogen-3, also known as tritium.
To quote a web page: The U. S. Department of Energy gives the following concentrations as examples:
3. Flying: Flying in an airplane increases our exposure to cosmic radiation. A coast-to-coast round trip gives us a dose of about four millirem.
4. Living at higher altitudes: Generally, for each 100-foot increase in altitude, there is an increased dose of one millirem per year. (So, San Francisco vs. Boulder, for example)...
5. The rocks, soils and beaches around us are radioactive: In Ohio, radiation in soil and rocks contributes about 60 millirem in one year to our exposure. In Colorado, it is about 105 millirem per year. In Kerala, India, this radioactivity from soil and rocks can be 3,000 millirem per year, and at a beach in Guarapari, Brazil, it is over 5 millirem in a single hour -- but only a few residents who use that beach receive doses in excess of 500 millirem per year.
6. Radioactivity in our homes:
A: If you live in a wood house, the natural radioactivity in the building materials gives you a dose of 30 to 50 millirem per year.
B: In a brick house, it is 50 to 100 millirem per year.
C: In a tightly sealed house with little ventilation, natural radioactive gases (radon) can be trapped for a longer period of time and increase your dose.
7. People/coworkers: Each person with whom we spend eight hours a day gives us a dose of about 0.1 millirem in a year.
8. Cooking: Using a gas stove can increase the dose by about two millirem per year because of radioactive materials in the natural gas.
9. Smoking: A person who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day receives a radiation dose of about 1,300 millrem per year. This is because polonium (a radioactive element) is part of the smoke and when inhaled, it gets trapped in the lungs.
10. Misc: There's also the sun, and medical X-rays...
Basically, on the whole we need not fear natural radioactivity, as our bodies evolved to cope with it (cellular repair). What we need to fear/respect is man-made radioactivity and its waste products, because when human error/greed/fallibility get involved, that is when man-made radioactivity bites us in the ass...
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
steekin badgers (Score:5, Funny)
You first.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear power has 3 problems: 1) it generates waste that is toxic for a long period of time, 2) it was over-sold and over-hyped when it was first introduced in the US, which led us to jump into this technology before we were competent with it, and 3) in the minds of average people its hopelessly linked to nuclear weapons, and the fear of mass destruction, even though the technology and goals are completely different between the 2 disciplines.
If you want to bash it on those reasons, especially the waste problem, fine, I can understand that, but I'm tired of hearing people use Chernobyl as the example of why nuclear power is "too dangerous".
There was *never* any such thing as a safe, clean, and efficient *anything* in the old Soviet Union. They routinely built nuclear reactors (and a hell of a lot of other buildings for that matter) that would never have been built in the West because of their atrocious design and lack of safety. Chernobyl isn't proof that nuclear power is too dangerous to use, its just proof that a communistic system of government is a greater threat to its own people than any outside "enemy".
NP can be safely used now, now that we've had 30+ years of experience. Look at France and Japan. Heck, did you read about the experimental mini-reactor being used by a village in Alaska? Totally self-contained and safe, its interior is sealed at the factory and isn't opened again until its decommissioned 15-20 years later when its fuel is exhausted. It can't melt-down or have a run-away reaction because there literally isn't enough fuel in the system to reach critical mass. The thing is about the size of a trailer, transportable, and thus removeable after its core is depleted. The company that makes it just comes back once its core is gone, takes it back to the factory for dismantling and salvaging/reprocessing. The irony may be that NP really is an answer to some of our problems, our mistake was spending 30 years thinking "big", when we should have been thinking *small*.
I can understand the criticism of the 1st and 2nd generation nuclear power plants (NPP), but while the US has virtually stopped development of NPPs, the rest of the world is working on the 4th and 5th generations of NPP design, just when they are starting to get *really* good.
As for NP technology *today*, as opposed to 30 years ago? When the founder of Greenpeace changes his mind and becomes pro-NP after his initial fanatical opposition to it, that should make a lot of people stop and reevaluate it, I think, at least those people still rational and open-minded enough to consider changing their minds on this subject.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Insightful)
And it should be noted that it was actually the staff of the westernmost, northernmost nuclear power plant (Forsmark) that noticed the increased radiation levels. As in: "We have a leak!". The whole emergency plan for evacuation/containment was put into motion before the operators could figure out that something was 'funny'; "If we have a leak, then why is the radiation levels higher outside the plant than inside?"
It was more or less only bad luck that we got any fallout at all. There was a weather system that moved west during the day and settled over the norther parts where it started to precipicate. The prevaling winds are westerly so chances are we otherwise wouldn't have learned about this incident at all save for several days later when the satellite photos could have provided confirmation.
Sweden now has a nation wide radiation detection system integrated with the weather station network. We never thought we'd have to have one before...
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.
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.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
>
>I have never heard of radiation producing visible evidence (immediately, that is), but then again, there was a lot of it. What is this "shinning" all about?
Chernobyl was a graphite fire - the fire is probably what is being described.
There is a visible phenomenon - Cerenkov radiation - a beautiful blue glow produced when fast moving particles strike water (speed of light in a transparent medium is a function of refractive index -- if particles have to "slow down", that energy has to go somewhere - it gets shot out in a cone of radiation).
If you're seeing Cerenkov radiation at the bottom of a reactor pool [umr.edu], it's beautiful. If you're seeing it because the neutron flux through your eyeballs is enough that your vitreous humor is glowing blue, it's probably less than beautiful, given that if you know what you're seeing, you realize that your lifespan is probably best measured in hours/weeks, rather than years.
Given that the only probable reports of seeing Cerenkov radiation from within the eyeball have been criticality incidents at very close range (1946, Tickling the dragon's tail"> and 1999 [cns-snc.ca] Japan, Tokaimura [japantimes.com]), I'm skeptical that the people on top of the building were seeing Cerenkov radiation from within their eyeballs.
Chernobyl wasn't just a graphite fire, however, it was also a steam explosion. It's plausible (I don't have the numbers) that the neutron flux being spewed from the building was high enough to make condensing steam in the nearby air glow blue.
From the account provided, there's insufficient data to sway me one way or the other -- were witnesses seeing light from the burning graphite and related fire, or were they seeing Cerenkov light released when you dump a massive neutron flux into a tower of condensing steam. The simpler hypothesis is that it was merely light from the intense fire.
If I had to choose, I'd go with fire, but a single picture from the rooftop, or an eyewitness reporting blue in the fire would be enough to convince me that the shining was the blue light of Cerenkov radiation brought on by the dumping of insane numbers of neutrons into condensing droplets of water as the steam condensed.
Aside to Elena: Thank you again for documenting this.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:5, Informative)
That picture does not do it justice. While I was somewhat disappointed that the whole nuclear reaction was fairly anticlimatic -- no rumbling, no vibration, no nothing discernable except the blue light -- that blue light at the bottom of the pool was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. There's just no way to describe the color. It's so vivid and so intense.
Re:Soaking up the gamma (Score:4, Informative)
More pictures here [google.com]
Then again, I'm sure these pictures still don't do it justice.
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...
Reminds me of (Score:4, Insightful)
While the evacuated scenes of London in the film don't have the wear and tear of a few decades of desertion like Chernobyl does, it kind of gives you a representation of what it might be like to be there.
Scary stuff...What's our world coming to?
_________________________________________
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)
Re:Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Such an amazing and atypical slashdot article (Score:5, Informative)
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
poor command of the english language? (Score:5, Funny)
Very nice of you. But I figure her English is better than your Russian.
Re:poor command of the english language? (Score:5, Insightful)
The story was in the pictures, which really have no "native" language. Very humbling pictures.
Cheers, Gene
Re:poor command of the english language? (Score:4, Informative)
And her Ukrainian may be even better than her Russian.
They are separate languages. Russian was forced on the Ukrainians by the Soviets, just like in the rest of the USSR. I'm sure she does speak Russian, but you cannot assume which is her "native" language.
More Proper. (Score:5, Funny)
The Nazgul.
Is she single? Looking? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is she single? Looking? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is she single? Looking? (Score:5, Funny)
In Capitalist America, the Russian Babe rides YOU!
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!
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.
Re:Soviet calendar? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Funny)
and the dosimeter confirms it.
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.
Re:Exposure levels - negligible harm from gamma (Score:5, Interesting)
I work at a nuclear power plant, and there are fields in certain places that go upwards to 25 REM/h. So, what do you do? Don't stand near it and get your buddy to (unknowingly) shield you!
Re:Exposure levels - negligible harm from gamma (Score:5, Informative)
those numbers that are being quoted are for a burst dose -- ie you get it all at once. the effects change if you get a continuous, lower dose to the same levels.
I'm currently in the Navy's Nuclear Engineer school (2 more weeks and hopefully I'll be a certified nuclear engineer! hooray!). I don't have the numbers memorized, but this is along the lines of what they tell us (and yes, it's unclassified):
1 Rem = 1 mRem (milliRem)
The following are effects from burst doses
Prognossis: Excellent
Effects: none
Treatment: tell the guys he's a dumbass for thinking there's a problem
Prognossis: Excellent
Effects: none
Treatment: have him see a doctor just to make sure, but there's still really no problem. possible rise in chance to get cancer.
Prognossis: Good
Effects: headache. 5% chance of vomitting within 4 hrs.
Treatment: seek medical attention.
Prognossis: OK
Effects: headache. 50% chance of vomitting within 2 hr. 5% chance of death within 4 months.
Treatment: seek medical attention immediately.
Prognossis: Guarded
Effects: headache. 100% chance of vomiting within 1 hr. 50% chance of death within a short period (can't rememebr the time).
Treatment: better get him to a doctor NOW!
Prognossis: hopeless
Effects: headache. 100% chance vomitting within 30 min. 100% chance of death within 48 hrs.
Treatment: Give him sedatives. Call the morgue.
For those that are curious, the guys on K-19 probably got more than 5000 Rem.
And what do these mean? here are some numbers to compare against:
I work daily 15 feet from an operational reactor (I work on US submarines).
my exposure last month: 4 mrem.
my lifetime exposure:
The radiation levels in the Reactor Compartment 15 minutes after shutting down the reactor: ~50 mRem/hr (avg)
a day at the beach: 10 mRem per day
smoking for a year: 1 Rem
standing next to a bag of fertilizer: 2 mRem / day
eating a banana: 4 mRem each
those numbers are mostly from betas and gammas. alphas only affect you if you get them inside you, which is why smokers get so much radiation, and neutron mostly is (a) really low-level and (b) passes right through you.
so what's my point?
1. I get less radiation from work that I do from living.
2. those numbers that they got from Chyrnobl are HUGE, but they can't happen on US Naval Reactors. Even if we were to completely melt down and spray our stuff all over the place, we would still be relatively clean (we use tiny reactors; we only need to power a 300' boat to 25+ knots, we don;t need to power an entire metropolis). besides, the most likely time that would occur is if we get hit with a depth charge, at which point's we'll sit on the bottom of the ocean and get covered with a whole hell of a lot of water!
weylin
Re:Exposure levels (Score:5, Informative)
No, it wasn't. It was showing 800 microroentgen per hour.
One of the things that confuses people about radioation are the different measurements.
A roentgen is the amount of X or gamma radiation needed to deposit in dry air 2.58E-4 Coulombs per kilogram, or roughly 100 ergs per gram.
Rads are the absorbed dose, the amount of energy actually absorbed in a material. 1 rad is equal to 100 ergs per gram.
Rems are the equivalent dose, a relationship between the absorbed energy and actual biological damage. Take the rads, multiply by a quality factor which is based on the type of radiation under discussion, and you the get rems.
A Curie is the unit of radioactivity, one Curie being equal to 37,000,000,000 radioactive decays per second.
Flip over to SI, and you have Grays as the absorbed dose (1 Gy = 100 rads), Sieverts as the equivalent dose (1 Sv = 100 rem), and Becquerels as the radioactivty (3.7E10 Bq in one Ci).
Her meter was showing 800 microroentgen per hour. That's gammas and x-rays, by the way. Those have a quality factor of 1; they're very penetrating, but also chargeless, massless, and very small, so they have a weak interaction cross-section. 800 microroentgen per hour translates to 800 microrads per hour, which when you multiply by the quality factor of 1 is, surprise, 800 microrem per hour.
So to get "maximum allowable annual doseage" (allowable by whom, exactly?) of 5,000 millirem, she'd have to hang around the reactor for 260 days, which is about 2/3rds of a year to begin with. I don't think she's going to be doing herself serious harm.
And the alphas and the betas? Lousy mean free path through air.
Re:Exposure levels (Score:5, Informative)
(spelling is wrong)
REM is retnogen enhanced modifier or something to that effect -- it's the dose * an absorbtion factor.
not quite the same thing.
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.
This was the best article... (Score:4, Funny)
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)
Worried about surface contamination (Score:4, Interesting)
She was very concerned about monitoring the direct radiation but what she might have stirred up is another issue. I hope she checked.
Here's a neat picture (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
-psy
Thryroid Cancers in exposed residents (Score:5, Informative)
She didn't take THIS picture. (Score:5, Interesting)
Deserted town in the USA (Score:5, Informative)
It is eery to drive down I-44 just outside of St. Louis and see this town that is totally deserted. just sitting there...
I've moved from the area since so have not seen it in a few years so don't know what it looks like today, but it was said that the streets contained 2,000,000 times the amount of dioxin considered to be a dangerous level.
People living there would rake up dead birds and animals died at an alarming rate. over 50 horses died at a single stable from the spraying.
Now it is just a ghost town frozen in time from the early 80's.
A massive cleanup was to be put in place collecting the dirt, processing it and later putting back the cleaned dirt... but it may be a never ending project.
Any locals from St. Louis area care to elaborate further and update what is going on and if the town is still there?
Re:Deserted town in the USA (Score:5, Informative)
Any locals from St. Louis area care to elaborate further and update what is going on and if the town is still there?
Contaminated soil and other debris from Times Beach was completely incinerated by 1997. The buildings and houses were leveled years before that. Know what you mean, though--when I was a kid, I used to hold my breath when we drove by on 44.
Googling for "times beach cleanup" turns up this PDF summary [epa.gov]. A quote:
The Times Beach cleanup has been completed. All residents and businesses were permanently relocated, the purchase of the remaining parcels by FEMA has been completed, and the ownership of the parcels of land has been conveyed to the State of Missouri. The demolition and disposal of the structures at Times Beach has been completed. Excavation of dioxin-contaminated soils, interim placement in temporary on-site storage, and final destruction of site contaminants by incineration has been completed. Thermal treatment of dioxin-contaminated soils from Times Beach and other sites was completed in June 1997, and the site has been restored to a state park.
--Tom
Chernobyl body count (Score:4, Informative)
Some tell that 400.000 dead, soyuzchernobyl report of 300.000 people that died since 1986 and this is not over, in 30 years people will still die
These numbers are WILDLY inflated! The number of deaths from radiation are probably rather in the dozens. Check here [wisc.edu], or here [vanderbilt.edu]
Somebody should make a movie with her (Score:5, Interesting)
Subject says it all, really. She would make a great subject for a short documentary movie, taking a ride through the dead zone and talking about it. I would pay to watch it. I might even invest in it. It wouldn't cost very much to make.
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.
Re:MOD PARENT +1 INSIGHTFUL (Score:4, Insightful)
I too agree that the USSR should be ashamed and we should be Proud Americans.
Yes, when the world comes to an end, I too want everyone to remember the numerous toxic waste sites, polluted rivers, and massive deforestation of United States of America. I too want to stand proud of all the positive things my country has done for our enviroment.
Come on, you can't blame the entire USSR for that accident, though their government did downplay the damage of the event in the typical Russian way. If anyone should be ashamed it's probably the idiots inside the plant that cause the disaster to take place. I'm sure they new full well what could happen if they did what they did, but they went ahead and did it anyway. Now all that's left is an area frozen in time.
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.
Re:Not yet. (Score:5, Informative)
For 11 days, in June-July, 1980, Met Ed illegally vented 43,000 curies of radioactive Krypton-85 (beta and gamma; 10 year half life) and other radioactive gasses into the environment without having scrubbers in place. In November 1980, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that the krypton venting was illegal.
link [tmia.com]
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).
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/
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.
Re:Fitting Reminder (Score:4, Insightful)
Luck? TMI not being a catastrophe wasn't due to luck. It was Due to adequate containment vessel design. Whay do you call adequate engineering "luck"?
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget your multipass (Score:4, Insightful)
And that probably is enough to keep the average people from doing what she is doing. In fact, the checkpoint is probably there exactly to stop average people from doing what she is doing. I won't want anyone going in there that didn't have a professional appreciation of the idea that where you are may be safe but four feet to your right may be death. Plus that keeps the ghost town a ghost town, and not one of those terrible run-down tourist traps.
Besides, the concept of ecological armageddon tourism is just a little... Creepy.
It blew the roof off man! (Score:5, Informative)
White-hot graphite rods were exposed to cold water - these exploded and that was what caused the explosion. The outside world first learned of it when some Norwegian folks at a nuclear plant picked up some off the scale readings.
The majority of the reactor was buried under tons of concrete and steel (which is now in danger of cracking open). Many firefighters died attempting to contain nuclear fire and most of those had no idea what they were dealing with at the time.
More info here:
http://www.uic.com.au/nip22.htm