Mudkips said:Nuclear is still safer and cleaner than coal, wind, solar, natural gas, etc.
He probably meant far more effective.Lard said:How is nuclear cleaner than solar or wind???
Yeah, it's a textbook example of everything going/done wrong before, during and after an event. They couldn't hide it anymore, specially when it hit Europe, although they sure tried.Dreams-Visions said:the crippled kids living on the floor will fuck with me for the foreseeable future.
I've been reading about Chernobyl since my first post in here and trying to understand a lot of the jargon. Interesting case that seems to have been simply a combination of unlikely circumstances (the delayed shutdown causing an unexpected shift to have to handle it), ignorance (lack of appropriate oversight and lack of training), and technical problems with the reactor design (including the graphite tips on the control rods and the poor handling of steam-formation). And of course, the removal of various layers of safety protocol.
Then the issue of the Soviet Union trying to keep it quiet, allowing thousands...and maybe hundreds of thousands to become exposed to extraordinarily high volumes of radiation. Some of the results of the chromosome mutation won't be seen for generations yet to come.
As if it wasn't enough these children that, outside making them comfortable, there's nothing more that can be done, even with the best medical technology/knowledge available.Dreams-Visions said:Saddest thing I've read is that many of the leukemia-stricken children could be saved with bone marrow transplants but their parents can't afford them because they're only making about $30/month. So they take out ads in the local paper. These ads are an ever-present reminder.
Dark Octave said:Wow...
I watched a thing on youtube with a girl from Chernobyl who rode her motorcycle back into the place. All she had was a device that detects radiation. There was another I saw where they went into the actual room where the meltdown happened.Really interesting stuff. Kind of like the Titanic.
They may have used special, durable film. It would explain why the footage within the vicinity of the plant itself was in black and white.TheSeks said:Well, duh. But camera film generally goes bad due to even X-ray levels of radiation, this is beyond that. How did the film survive is the question.
soultron said:Another great thing to look up is the "Motorcycle Girl" photos. Girl gets pass to go into Chernobyl with a camera, and the results are amazing.
from what I've seen, yes, it's going to collapse sooner or later.Valkyr Junkie said:Isn't the sarcophagus about to collapse? I remember reading there were worries it was weakening a year or two ago.
Dreams-Visions said:the crippled kids living on the floor will fuck with me for the foreseeable future.
Too bad it does. It makes about as much sense as canceling 767 flights because a shitty Tu-154 crashed.Pseudo_Sam said:It was a terrible accident, but it shouldn't deter people from using nuclear power.
MNC said:This thread piqued my interest and I went on to look for more things Chernobyl
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/
It depressed me quite a bit; though I recommend going through it in full. It's a slideshow with commentary about chernobyl and its consequences.
MNC said:This thread piqued my interest and I went on to look for more things Chernobyl
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/
It depressed me quite a bit; though I recommend going through it in full. It's a slideshow with commentary about chernobyl and its consequences.
I enjoyed that lolPseudo_Sam said:It was a terrible accident, but it shouldn't deter people from using nuclear power.
Ah geez I couldnt finish thatMNC said:This thread piqued my interest and I went on to look for more things Chernobyl
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/
It depressed me quite a bit; though I recommend going through it in full. It's a slideshow with commentary about chernobyl and its consequences.
Chumly said:I enjoyed that lol
ethic said:That's actually a ridiculously stupid statement.
//edit
Holy shit, I didn't even notice your DDT comment. Super-ridiculous. Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with the concept of Biomagnification. Rachael Carson. Such a hippie. Same with those UC Irvine researchers who discovered the dangers of CFCs. How dare they care?!
Those poor children. Everyone should watch this.MNC said:This thread piqued my interest and I went on to look for more things Chernobyl
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/
It depressed me quite a bit; though I recommend going through it in full. It's a slideshow with commentary about chernobyl and its consequences.
LaserBuddha said:It's just terrifying that it can wreak so much havoc , you can't see or feel it, and it seeps straight through a lot of solid matter.
Brazil said:Those poor children. Everyone should watch this.
Sorry for the long quote and slightly OT, but am using the mobile webapp.Al-ibn Kermit said:Rachel Carson was right about DDT being persistent and accumulating in the environment but she didn't actually present any data at all that showed it to cause egg shells to thin or people to get cancer.
In one part of the book, Carson references a paper by James DeWitt and she says that it supported her thesis of DDT causing declining bird populations. That was not true. The paper showed the DDT group of quails having 80 percent hatch rate versus 84 percent in the control group and the DDT group of pheasants actually having a higher hatch rate than the control group. These tests were about 3,000 times the dosage that is in normal human diets. On top of that, the bird populations were actually recovering from their low when Silent Spring was published in 1962. Even though DDT usage was at an all time high.
Since then, they have found that in some reptiles, DDT can imitate estrogen and cause them to become more feminine, but of course you can't overlook all the arguments that the book makes and rationalize it by saying that she might have indirectly done some good by getting DDT banned. Since the book was written, they have found out that egg shells were actually becoming thinner due to acid rain and that there is no connection between levels of DDT in tissue samples and cancer rates.
I am willing to believe that she wasn't trying to lie and that her assumptions were just due to the primitive state of environmental science at the time. The thing is that her assumptions lead to a boom in malaria cases due to DDT being banned. For example in Sri Lanka, the number of malaria cases before DDT was introduced was 2.5 million cases and 31 cases after they used DDT. It's totally not necessary to spray it in city streets or on farms but it is a life-saving chemical. There is no reason not to use it as in the context of malaria control today. There are still 300-500 million cases of malaria worldwide with about 2.7 million deaths.
Yeah there are some mosquito that are becoming more resistant to DDT meaning that they can last longer in a sprayed zone before they die. But it is still widely used. In South Africa they stopped using it in 1996 due to environmental pressure, then a malaria epidemic broke out and they went back to using it 4 years later.Keio said:Sorry for the long quote and slightly OT, but am using the mobile webapp.
DDT resistent malaria is actually the main reason why DDT isn't used for malaria control in large amounts.
Bad 50's sci-fi actually turns out to be halfway plausible?MetalAlien said:We still got 20,000 years before they can build on that site again, although the last reactor was only shut down in 2000. Plus they have found a new form of life inside reactor 4, pretty cool.
http://unitedcats.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/major-biological-discoveryinside-the-chernobyl-reactor/
I will admit to not knowing 100% about this subject, but if you're gonna go through the trouble of making a lengthy in-depth post and use "statistics," back them up please. Do you have a link to/written source for these numbers? Who conducted this survey, is the testing entity a credible one? 2.5 million cases over what period before? 31 cases over what period afterward? Did these statistics control for cyclic epidemics, mosquito breeding/migration patterns, mosquito population, weather conditions, other environmental/behavioral contributing factors? And what about anthropological factors/behaviors? Going on these numbers alone it's a classic case of correlation being mistakenly interpreted as causation, and likely out of proportion. Don't take it personally, I just hate when people throw out numbers all willy-nilly without providing some scientific context or background.Al-ibn Kermit said:For example in Sri Lanka, the number of malaria cases before DDT was introduced was 2.5 million cases and 31 cases after they used DDT.
so basically, you're not going on the Chernobyl tour.iamaustrian said:nuclear is safe?
are you fucking kidding me?
I still remember the disaster. My mum slapped my face after I ate cherrys from our tree that summer. Pretty much everything grown was contaminated with radiation. Note that I live in central austria over 1000km away from the incident. In some parts of austria and south germany grown mushrooms and deer are still considered dangerous to eat after 25 years.
also nuclear waste is everything but safe and there is no way to get rid of it other than shooting it into space. Alone that problem should make us abandon nuclear power forever.
thanks for the link, saw this ages ago but couldn't find it again.MNC said:This thread piqued my interest and I went on to look for more things Chernobyl
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/
It depressed me quite a bit; though I recommend going through it in full. It's a slideshow with commentary about chernobyl and its consequences.
No, he's someone whose family nearly stared a nuclear event right in the face. He is well aware of the risks, but quite frankly the facts speak for themselves and you shouldn't have to have a personal connection to a nuclear meltdown to understand the severe risk involved.Dreams-Visions said:so basically, you're not going on the Chernobyl tour.
Tchernobyl happened in soviet Ukraine, just saying.iamaustrian said:nuclear is safe?
are you fucking kidding me?
I still remember the disaster. My mum slapped my face after I ate cherrys from our tree that summer. Pretty much everything grown was contaminated with radiation. Note that I live in central austria over 1000km away from the incident. In some parts of austria and south germany grown mushrooms and deer are still considered dangerous to eat after 25 years.
also nuclear waste is everything but safe and there is no way to get rid of it other than shooting it into space. Alone that problem should make us abandon nuclear power forever.
Duki said:pretty amazing how people who have no idea about how nuclear power works and yet are still terrified of it get to make decisions about whether its used or not
and only because OMG REMEMBER CHERNOBYL is a much more emotive argument to make than to carefully and logically explain why this disaster can pretty much never happen again
not only did those fuck ups in Ukraine ruin the lives of thousands of people, but they succeeded in poisoning the image of what is now literally a very safe source of power with increasingly negligible side products
gj fuckers
Tchernobyl happened in soviet Ukraine, just saying.
Shit like that won't happen with our regulations.iamaustrian said:so what?
soultron said:Another great thing to look up is the "Motorcycle Girl" photos. Girl gets pass to go into Chernobyl with a camera, and the results are amazing.
Kurtofan said:Shit like that won't happen with our regulations.