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THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Discussions of conventional and alternative energy production technologies.

Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby kublikhan » Wed 08 May 2019, 18:50:13

The freaking joke here is you dissident. I never even mentioned a meltdown. Anytime you read something you don't like you brain shuts off and you go into 4 year old mode where you just fling insults.

Russians have been dumping nuclear waste for decades. Not just from Beloyarsk but from many other reactors.

The dumping of highly radioactive wastes at sea has been banned worldwide for more than three decades, and the ban has been expanded to other forms of nuclear waste. Now a Russian report has detailed how the Soviet Union repeatedly broke those rules, making it clear that Moscow lied in asserting that it had never dumped radioactive waste into the oceans. The document paints a picture even darker than the rumors and half-truths about oceanic dumping that began to swirl as the Soviet Union collapsed. It turns out that a vast amount of highly radioactive waste was dumped by the Soviet Union: twice the combined total of 12 other nuclear nations.

The team of 46 experts that produced the new report of Soviet violations was headed by Dr. Aleksei V. Yablokov, the top environmental adviser to the Russian President. "It's very significant," said Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who has closely followed the issue. "The report has been motivated by a realization of the scope of the problem and a realization that they're going to have to have international assistance to deal with it. The cost of risk assessment alone could be in the billions." The Yablokov report says the Soviet Union dumped 2.5 million curies of radioactive wastes, including 18 nuclear reactors from submarines and an icebreaker. A big dose by any standard, the 2.5 million curies is almost exactly twice what was previously thought to have been dumped at sea during the whole of the nuclear era. Two of the 18 reactors went into the Sea of Japan. News of the sunken reactors, which are unfueled and less dangerous, nonetheless startled Tokyo and prompted it to petition Moscow for details.


The collapse of the former Soviet Union, with the consequent shift to a market driven economy and demilitarisation, has had a profound effect on the nuclear and associated industries. The introduction of tighter legislation to control the disposal of radioactive wastes has been delayed and the power and willingness of the various governmental bodies responsible for its regulation is in doubt. Previously secret information is becoming more accessible and it is apparent that substantial areas of Russian land and surface waters are contaminated with radioactive material. The Russian navy has traditionally dealt with virtually all of its radioactive wastes by disposal to sea. Many areas of the Barents, Kola and the Sea of Japan are heavily contaminated. Illegal dumps of radioactive waste abound.


When the Soviet Union collapsed a vast store of spent nuclear fuel was abandoned in the Russian Arctic – an environmental disaster waiting to happen. Decades later an international clean-up has finally begun. During the Cold War period, nuclear submarines were refuelled at sea, and the spent nuclear fuel was then shipped to Andreyeva Bay, where it was placed in a special storage facility to cool off before being transported to a reprocessing plant at Mayak, in the Urals. But in the early 1980s, leaks sprung up in the storage system, causing high levels of radioactive contamination.

I’ve been all over the world to pretty much every country that uses nuclear power and I’ve never seen anything so awful before,” said Alexander Nikitin, a former naval officer and environmentalist who has been monitoring the site for years. “With nuclear material, everything should be done very carefully, and here they just took the material and threw it into an even more dangerous situation.”
Russia begins cleaning up the Soviets' top-secret nuclear waste dump

But all of these are just lies from clowns right dissident?
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Wed 08 May 2019, 20:55:33

The freaking joke is people who can't tell the difference between weapon program waste and power generation waste.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby kublikhan » Wed 08 May 2019, 21:35:27

Subjectivist wrote:The freaking joke is people who can't tell the difference between weapon program waste and power generation waste.
I'll use bold for the blind:

Russia's laws prohibit dumping of liquid radioactive waste in the open hydrographic network. Despite this, it takes place at the Beloyarsk NPP over many years.


Sixteen of these power plants were cast into the shallow waters of the Kara Sea, six of them heavy with radioactive fuel, turning this Arctic site near major northern fisheries into the world's largest known nuclear dump.


During the Cold War period, nuclear submarines were refuelled at sea, and the spent nuclear fuel was then shipped to Andreyeva Bay,


The catalogue of waste dumped at sea by the Soviets, according to documents seen by Bellona, and which were today released by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, includes some 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radiactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.


The nuclear waste Russia dumped was not just from their weapons program.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby eclipse » Thu 09 May 2019, 04:30:02

The main problem with nuclear waste going into the ocean is not the radioactivity, but mobility. Is it a largely intact fuel rod that's just going to sit at the bottom and eventually get covered by silt, or is it powdered and moving around in fish? Movement is the issue. Water is a great moderator. If you swim through the middle of a deep spent-nuclear-fuel pond, you would experience less radiation than you do where you live now. Water halves radiation every 12 cms. A fatal does of radiation would be reduced to barely noticeable by a span of water roughly the height of the average person. Tom Blees, author of "Prescription for the planet", says that if the whole world was powered by breeder reactors it would only produce one barge of nuclear waste every 2 years. As long as that waste were vitrified down into ceramic tablets, and the barge had about a meter between the tablet crates and the exterior barge wall, we could drag the barge out to the deepest trenches and sink it. The water between the wall and nuclear waste crate would protect sea life, and 500 years later those fission products have burnt themselves back to safe levels. And the ceramic plates Argonne labs talk about making aren't floating anywhere.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby eclipse » Thu 09 May 2019, 04:44:41

kublikhan wrote:If you want to say fast breeder reactors are the solution to the nuclear waste problem I'm not sure using Russia is a very good example. Not when they've been taking nuclear waste from Beloyarsk and dumping it in a nearby swamp.

Regimes are one thing, but I was discussing technologies.

Nice quote about the BN-600 by the way — objective much?
Vladimir Slivyak – co-chairman of the Ecodefense! group, member of the NIRS Board of Directors (Nuclear Information and Resource Service , the world’s biggest antinuclear activists network); campaigner for environmental rights and nuclear safety in Russia since 1989; author of over 400 publications on energy and the environment.


Let's remember that it was an evolutionary test reactor, not a commercial reactor.
Let's also remember that the capacity factor was still pretty high even despite all these sodium fires.
Let's ALSO remember that it is a very OLD reactor compared to the new designs, building materials, and servicing processes that are available now.

The reactor system is housed in a concrete rectilinear building, and provided with filtration and gas containment features. In the 1st 15 years of operation, there have been 12 incidents involving sodium/water interactions from tube breaks in the steam generators,[2] a sodium-air oxidation/"fire" from a leak in an auxiliary system, and a sodium "fire" from a leak in a secondary coolant loop while shut down. All these incidents were classified at the lowest level on the International Nuclear Event Scale, and none of the events prevented restarting operation of the facility after repairs. As of 1997, there had been 27 sodium leaks, 14 of which resulted in sodium-air oxidations/"fires". The steam generators are separated in modules so they can be repaired without shutting down the reactor.[3] As of 2013, the cumulative "energy Availability factor" recorded by the IAEA was 74.6%.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-600_reactor

YES, there were sodium issues. It is a test reactor! But it is still running! And as well as being a vital evolutionary part of the Russian breeder reactor program, it's earned Russia some serious money. Also from the above wiki:

There is a lot of international interest in the fast-breeder reactor at Beloyarsk. Japan has its own prototype fast-breeder reactors. Japan paid 1 billion[7][clarification needed] for the technical documentation of the BN-600. The operation of the reactor is an international study in progress; Russia, France, Japan, and the United Kingdom currently participate.

The reactor has been licensed to operate up to 2025.[8]
Dr James Hansen recommends breeder reactors that convert nuclear 'waste' into 1000 years of clean energy for America, and can charge all our light vehicles and generate "Blue Crude" for heavy vehicles.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Thu 09 May 2019, 09:34:40

The biggest issue, and I mean this sincerely, is people continue to faithfully believe the propaganda of the anti-nuclear groups founded in the 1960's and pretend that no technology has advanced in the field since then.

Meanwhile out here in the real world we went from wall mounted landline phones with cords to a smart cellphone that sits in your pocket and goes everywhere with you. We went from barley escaping the Earths atmosphere for a few weeks to having satellites in orbit still functioning after 2 decades on the job. We went from organ transplants being cutting edge technology and patients with kidney failure lucky to survive a year to routine kidney transplants with near normal lifespans after kidney failure. Heck we went from computers the size of a warehouse fitting into your pocket on that same smart phone I already mentioned.

Yet while all that technology changed the propagandists like to pretend the only nuclear options are those we had in 1960 and we didn't even improve on those options.

I am also compelled to point out that the former USSR was a horrible environmental steward having dump great gobs of chemical waste of every description in a great many places. Using them as a yardstick for proper waste handling is like saying Ted Bundy really loved women.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby dissident » Thu 09 May 2019, 10:33:34

Tanada wrote:The biggest issue, and I mean this sincerely, is people continue to faithfully believe the propaganda of the anti-nuclear groups founded in the 1960's and pretend that no technology has advanced in the field since then.

Meanwhile out here in the real world we went from wall mounted landline phones with cords to a smart cellphone that sits in your pocket and goes everywhere with you. We went from barley escaping the Earths atmosphere for a few weeks to having satellites in orbit still functioning after 2 decades on the job. We went from organ transplants being cutting edge technology and patients with kidney failure lucky to survive a year to routine kidney transplants with near normal lifespans after kidney failure. Heck we went from computers the size of a warehouse fitting into your pocket on that same smart phone I already mentioned.

Yet while all that technology changed the propagandists like to pretend the only nuclear options are those we had in 1960 and we didn't even improve on those options.

I am also compelled to point out that the former USSR was a horrible environmental steward having dump great gobs of chemical waste of every description in a great many places. Using them as a yardstick for proper waste handling is like saying Ted Bundy really loved women.


The main fact is that the USSR does not exist today and has not for almost 30 years. And the worst spills and waste mismanagement was before the 1960s. So this "Russians are dumping nuclear waste into a swamp" pap is pure racist blood libel. Perhaps we should refer to modern Germany as the Reich and pretend that the death camps are still running. Apparently there is no distinction between events in time....

https://www.eurosafe-forum.org/sites/de ... _Paper.pdf
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby kublikhan » Thu 09 May 2019, 11:47:28

You are ignoring the fact that much of that old soviet era infrastructure is still running today. All of that nuclear waste Russia is importing? That's going to Mayak:

Germany is seeking to export 951 spent nuclear fuel rods, currently held at a temporary storage facility in the country's west, to Russia – but critics have called the plans dangerous and irresponsible.

"Our position is clear," a spokesperson for Saxony's Science Ministry said recently, "as long as international conditions are satisfied, then we want to see the material put back where it belongs." As far as Saxony is concerned, 'where it belongs' is in a Russian nuclear facility at Mayak, some 150 km south-east of Ekaterinburg.

For the opposition Greens, though, Mayak is anything but a safe repository. "We know that Mayak is highly contaminated," said Sylvia Kotting-Uhl, Greens spokesperson for nuclear policy. "We also know that Mayak is not operated with anything like the same philosophy of safety that is considered standard here in Germany. So to move the waste fuel rods there is incredibly negligent." Some experts consider Mayak's environment to be more polluted than that of Chernobyl, the site of the Soviet Union's worst nuclear accident.


You might remember Mayak for that little incident recently as the source of a radioactive cloud spreading over Europe.

After weeks of silence and denials, Russia has confirmed that it too has detected evidence of a mysterious radiation cloud floating above much of Europe, observing a dramatic radiation spike above Russia's Ural Mountains. Russia's meteorological service, Roshydromet, has for the first time corroborated findings made by the French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRNS). They acknowledged "extremely high contamination" above the Ural Mountains, detecting levels of the radioactive isotope ruthenium–106 up to almost 1,000 times the normal amount.

If the accidental release of this much ruthenium–106 had occurred on French soil, evacuations of the immediate area up to a few kilometres around the origin point would have taken place. It's thought that the material may have been released due to an unreported accident at a nuclear fuel treatment site.


And it's not just the current state of Russia's nuclear infrastructure or their safety practices that is a problem either. Their political response to accidents and radiation leaks is troubling as well. And no I am not talking about decades old soviet era responses. I am talking about Russia of today. When that radiation cloud was spreading over Europe Russia's response was to deny it's existence. It was covered up. Environmentalists trying to improve the quality of the Russian environment or report on radiation leaks are labeled "foreign agents" and arrested. Again, all of this is going on in Russia today:

The Russian government is using anti-spying legislation to silence environmental campaigners. Human Rights Watch (HRW) found 29 environmental NGOs had been labelled “foreign agents” under a law brought in five years ago. Of these, at least 14 have shut down, researchers confirmed through interviews with former directors. Only four were still evidently active, with the rest unreachable or unwilling to comment. Efforts to defend forests, educate young people on environmental issues and give voice to victims of radiation accidents have suffered in the crackdown. “Government has put in place an administrative structure for de-legitimising environmental organisations and activists, effectively smearing them as anti-Russian spies.”

Another targeted organisation, Planet of Hopes, took on the more obviously sensitive subject of nuclear waste accidents in Ozersk, in the southern Urals. Its director Nadezhda Kutepova received a death threat. On Tuesday, in an unrelated story, the Russian government was accused of covering up a spill of radioactive material.
Russia brands environmental NGOs ‘foreign agents’

But all of this is just racist blood libel right dissident?
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby StarvingLion » Thu 09 May 2019, 12:10:36

Russia is a world leader in Fast Neutron Reactors that nobody wants because all it offers is much higher CAPEX, operating costs, and MASSIVE risk. Who the hell wants that in a post-peak oil world?

The only thing happening with Russia's Nuclear is that its "pal" China is copying it. I wonder what The Dissident thinks about that.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby Subjectivist » Sat 11 May 2019, 12:42:45

kublikhan wrote:
Subjectivist wrote:The freaking joke is people who can't tell the difference between weapon program waste and power generation waste.
I'll use bold for the blind:

Russia's laws prohibit dumping of liquid radioactive waste in the open hydrographic network. Despite this, it takes place at the Beloyarsk NPP over many years.


Sixteen of these power plants were cast into the shallow waters of the Kara Sea, six of them heavy with radioactive fuel, turning this Arctic site near major northern fisheries into the world's largest known nuclear dump.


During the Cold War period, nuclear submarines were refuelled at sea, and the spent nuclear fuel was then shipped to Andreyeva Bay,


The catalogue of waste dumped at sea by the Soviets, according to documents seen by Bellona, and which were today released by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, includes some 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radiactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.


The nuclear waste Russia dumped was not just from their weapons program.


Clearly we will never agree on this, but in my world discarded submarine reactors are weapon waste, not civilian power waste, and how they are treated has nothing to do with how power reactors are decommissioned. Also just because the government uses an old power production site as a dumping ground for waste doesn't mean everything dumped there is from the power production system.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby dissident » Sat 11 May 2019, 15:58:26

Trying to make post USSR submarine reactors into a "dumping into the swamp issue" is simple lies. These reactors were never a threat to the environment or to humans. Now that Russia has gotten over the worst depression in modern history (60% GDP contraction, the USA lost 25% of its GDP during the Great Depression of the 1930s), it has actually gotten the resources and EU assistance to start properly decommissioning those spent reactors.

https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/3 ... ines-leave

Nice BS in the above article about the "most dangerous place on Earth". BS. The reactors did not get a chance to corrode and experience partial meltdowns. Maybe in 50 years that would have been the case. Only racists would proceed on the assumption that this would was inevitable.

https://bellona.org/news/nuclear-issues ... -next-year

Even nuclear-hating Bellona admits that the submarine reactors are being cleaned up. I guess the end of the world was not nigh after all...
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby eclipse » Sat 11 May 2019, 17:59:54

StarvingLion wrote:Russia is a world leader in Fast Neutron Reactors that nobody wants because all it offers is much higher CAPEX, operating costs, and MASSIVE risk. Who the hell wants that in a post-peak oil world?

The only thing happening with Russia's Nuclear is that its "pal" China is copying it. I wonder what The Dissident thinks about that.

Ha ha ha, sodium reactors operate at near room pressure as compared to the 150 atmospheres of pressurised water reactors, so get a grip on yourself. Also, who wants abundant reliable baseload energy that can produce all the power you want day and night even in the heart of a Russian winter, in a post-peak fossil fuel energy world? Who wants cheap abundant reliable energy? Geeeee, that's a tough one... :lol:
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby kublikhan » Sat 11 May 2019, 19:38:39

The comment about waste being dumped into a swamp was not about the submarine reactor dump. It was about a different dump site the Russians used. This one was the Olkhovsky wetlands. And it was not submarine cores being dumped there. It was waste from the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant.

Russia's laws prohibit dumping of liquid radioactive waste in the open hydrographic network. Despite this, it takes place at the Beloyarsk NPP over many years. During the operation of the plant’s three units, radionuclides have been accumulated in sediments of the Olkhovsky wetland (the BNPP water dump site) and removed by the Pyshma river to 180 km downstream. In fact, the Olkhovsky wetland and the Olkhovka river have turned into an illegal dump-site of radioactive waste and become a secondary source of pollution. More than 100 Ku of long-lived radionuclides have been dumped to the Olkhovsky wetland. According to the Institute of Geophysics, in terms radionuclides content, muddy bottoms of the Olkhovka river are close to the category of radioactive waste - the concentration of radionuclides in them is more than 30 kBq / kg. Increased level of activity has led to the need for closure of the wetland area (about 40 ha).
RUSSIAN PLUTONIUM PROGRAM: NUCLEAR WASTE, ACCIDENTS, AND SENSELESS HUGE COSTS
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby eclipse » Sat 11 May 2019, 19:50:31

kublikhan wrote:The comment about waste being dumped into a swamp was not about the submarine reactor dump. It was about a different dump site the Russians used. This one was the Olkhovsky wetlands. And it was not submarine cores being dumped there. It was waste from the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant.

Ancient history. We know more now. Even dubious regimes know more now. We know there are ways to turn nuclear 'waste' into energy, converting a 100,000 year storage problem into heaps of energy. How much? The UK has enough waste to run her for 500 years, and America 1000. If we took all the world's nuclear waste and bred it up into fissile material to run the whole world of 7 billion in first world lifestyles, it would still last 72 years! That's a whole lifetime of CO2 free energy from today's nuclear waste, burning up the longer lived high energy actinides and leaving us with fission products that are only radioactive for 500 years.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby EdwinSm » Thu 16 May 2019, 05:14:11

Back to school on nuclear waste ???

A US middle school has closed for the remainder of the school year after authorities found it was contaminated with radioactive chemicals.

Officials say a nearby air monitor detected enriched uranium and neptunium-237 at Zahn's Corner Middle School in Piketon, southern Ohio.

There are more than 300 pupils and 25 staff at the school.

A nearby nuclear plant made weapons-grade uranium for the Department of Energy until its closure in 2001.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48292282
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby Tanada » Thu 16 May 2019, 07:47:17

EdwinSm wrote:Back to school on nuclear waste ???

A US middle school has closed for the remainder of the school year after authorities found it was contaminated with radioactive chemicals.

Officials say a nearby air monitor detected enriched uranium and neptunium-237 at Zahn's Corner Middle School in Piketon, southern Ohio.

There are more than 300 pupils and 25 staff at the school.

A nearby nuclear plant made weapons-grade uranium for the Department of Energy until its closure in 2001.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48292282


Nothing like panic to screw everything up. DOE testing has shown levels of contamination to be between 1/1,000 and 1/10,000 of the threshold for injury. But that won't stop the rabid screamers from screaming in fear and panic. Back here in reality you risk from crossing the street to enter the school is SUBSTANTIALLY higher than any radiation risk you might encounter, but don't et that calm you.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby diemos » Fri 17 May 2019, 07:56:03

We keep making better and better instruments that can detect more and more microscopic levels of radiation.

During Fukushima people would always say they wanted undetectable levels of contamination in their food not realizing that that was just as much a statement about their detector as it was a statement about the contamination. So I would hand them a pencil and say, "Here, wave this over your food and I guarantee it will never detect anything and you'll always have undetectable levels in your food."
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby eclipse » Sat 18 May 2019, 03:07:46

EdwinSm wrote:Back to school on nuclear waste ???

A US middle school has closed for the remainder of the school year after authorities found it was contaminated with radioactive chemicals.

Officials say a nearby air monitor detected enriched uranium and neptunium-237 at Zahn's Corner Middle School in Piketon, southern Ohio.

There are more than 300 pupils and 25 staff at the school.

A nearby nuclear plant made weapons-grade uranium for the Department of Energy until its closure in 2001.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48292282


One thing I've found with nuclear scares in the media is they often don't bother with numbers. It's a serious quality of service reporting issue! How radioactive is your backyard? Your kitchen? The bananas you eat? People just don't know about sieverts and what's safe and what's not. Even the shows with the numbers will say "This is 20 times more than safe levels" without realising old governmental limits were just ridiculously low.

A Sievert is dangerous
8 Sieverts will kill you
But milliSieverts are used to measure medical procedures that can save your life, and are also used to describe the natural background radiation in units per annum. The average natural dose is 2.4 mSv per year
MicroSieverts (μSv, or millionths of a Sievert) measure daily exposure levels.
How much radiation is too much? A handy guide.
Charles Sturt University’s “Radiation Safety Committee” says that around the world some rare places have 50 milli-Sieverts (50 mSv) a year of natural radiation, with no discernible health impacts.
50 mSv per year. Remember that number.

So how ‘hot’ is Chernobyl?
But the World Health Organisation (WHO) explains that Chernobyl’s 270,000 residents that stayed within the SCZ (Strictly Controlled Zones) only received 50 mSv over 20 years! That’s only 2.5 mSv a year! In other words, there are places that are naturally 20 times hotter than Chernobyl!

Should they have evacuated the population around Fukushima? Maybe for a few months, but then they should have sent everyone home and rebuilt. Being internally displaced is stressful and leads to depression and suicide, and more people have died from suicide than would have from any radiation exposure even if NO ONE HAD EVACUATED AT ALL! So if they didn't need to evacuate Fukushima, I doubt the school mentioned in the post above had any serious radiation issues. We all need to think long and hard about how abundant nuclear power could solve climate change and give everyone on earth a first-world lifestyle, and how radiation from meltdowns is NOT a show-stopper for this technology. Especially as today's reactors like the AP1000 would have easily survived the Fukushima power outages, and some of tomorrow's reactors CANNOT melt down as they are already a liquid!
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby dissident » Sat 18 May 2019, 10:20:01

The Chernobyl fallout consisted of three modes:

1) the largest particle sizes sedimented out in the vicinity of the reactor giving us the exclusion zone

2) intermediate size particles mostly fell out over southern Belorus and this is where the most health impact has been since it was easy to inhale these particles as they were not sequestered in the soil in one pass but were advected around in the turbulent boundary layer for a non-negligible period of time (a few days). Eventually they got trapped on surfaces and in people's lungs.

3) the smallest size particles were transported similar to a plume of released gas since they sedimentation rate is too small to matter. These would have been particles in the tens to hundreds of nanometers diameter sizes. This is the radiation you heard being transported over Europe and to even more remote locations.

The trick with the exclusion zone is that coarse mode particles have a lot of mass but do not have large number densities and since they do not get re-emitted from the ground easily (of course they will together with dust under the right wind conditions, but that is not ubiquitous) they get trapped in the soil and slowly migrate (diffuse) downward thanks to rain and snow melt. The most radioactive phase would have been right after the meltdown. A year later the think layer of coarse corium particulates was no longer at the surface of the soil. If you go to the exclusion zone today, you can expose the radiation by scraping off the top soil layer.

Southern Belorus, where most of the nasty size distribution that could be inhaled landed, is where the exposure is higher than the 2.5 mSv being quoted. And it is the one-off exposure from corium aerosol inhalation that is critical. Even if area-averaged measurements show little radiation today and over the past 20 years, the damage was done to all the individuals (tens of thousands) that were exposed initially. The aerosol is a radiation vector that deposits corium into the body. This is not the same thing as being exposed to radiation through the skin.

The clowns who conducted the unauthorized experiment leading to the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor should have been shot. There was one manager who committed suicide but I am not sure he was the key culprit. But at the same time, the hysteria being spread about the "millions" of victims is agenda-driven propaganda.
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Re: THE Nuclear Waste Thread (merged)

Unread postby diemos » Sat 18 May 2019, 12:13:52

The data I'd like to have is air sampling measurements through HEPA filters in the Fukushima exclusion zone. Any sort of activity that would kick dust up into the air would seem problematic.
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