Chernobyl revisited

[dilloduck]

I found this site quite educational.


Chernobyl Revisited - Ghost Town

 

[waltky]

Chernobyl 25 years on...

Chernobyl is still an environmental disaster: scientists
Tue, Apr 19, 2011 - NO BRAINER:A scientific study found that in areas with high radiation levels, birds were likely to have brains 5% smaller than those in low-level areas

Fallout from Chernobyl remains a poorly investigated hazard for the environment a quarter of a century after the disaster, experts say. According to anecdotal evidence, animals such as beavers, deer, wild horses, hawks and eagles have returned in abundance to Chernobyl’s 30km exclusion zone since humans fled and hunting was outlawed. However, this picture is misleading, said University of South Carolina biology professor Tim Mousseau, one of the few scientists to have probed biodiversity around Chernobyl in depth.

“Chernobyl is definitely not a haven for wildlife,” he said in a telephone interview. “When you actually do the hard work, of conducting a scientific study, where you rigorously control for all the variables and you do this repeatedly in many different places, the signal is very strong. There are many fewer animals and many fewer kinds of animals than you would expect.” Last year, Mousseau and colleagues published the biggest-ever census of wildlife in the exclusion zone. It showed that mammals had declined and insect diversity, including bumblebees, grasshoppers, butterflies and dragonflies, had also fallen.

In a study published in February, they netted 550 birds, belonging to 48 species at eight different sites, and measured their heads to determine the volume of their brains. Birds living in “hot spots” had 5 percent smaller brains than those living where radiation was lower — and the difference was especially great among birds less than a year old. Smaller brains are linked to a lower cognitive ability and thus survival. The study suggested many bird embryos probably do not survive at all. “This clearly ties to the level of background contamination,” Mousseau said. “There are bound to be consequences for the ecosystem as a whole.”

Mousseau said it was vital to explore the link, not least because of the relevance for Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, which with Chernobyl is the only nuclear accident to rate a maximum seven on a world ranking of gravity. However, funding for Western research into environmental impacts at Chernobyl has slumped and many Russian-language studies are never translated into English, he said. Radioactive dust and ash spewed over more than 200,000km2 after Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor exploded and caught fire on April 26 1986. Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were most affected, although deposits reached as far north as Scotland and as far west as Ireland, requiring in some places long-term restrictions on cattle grazing.

More Chernobyl is still an environmental disaster: scientists - Taipei Times

 

[waltky]

Just build a big ol' dome over it an' fergit about it...

World Pledges $780 Million for New Shell for Chernobyl Nuclear Plant
April 19, 2011 - The Fukushima factor reaches around the world to help raise funds for a new containment shell for the stricken nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine.

One week before the 25th anniversary of the nuclear power plant explosion at Chernobyl, world leaders pledged Tuesday to provide $780 million for the construction of a shelter designed to house the toxic remains for another century. Rain, rust and snow have weakened the first shelter, built 25 years ago and designed to last 20. Laurin Dodd, an American engineer who is directing the new containment project, described the condition of the existing shelter, often called the sarcophagus. "The sarcophagus itself had very large openings in it the size of picture windows, with small creatures going in and out and birds flying in and out," Dodd noted.

Chernobyl suffered the what was then the world's worst nuclear power accident. The explosion sent a plume of contaminants one kilometer into the air over Ukraine. Winds carried radioactive clouds north over Russia and Belarus. 330,000 people had to be moved from their homes. Today, millions of people live on contaminated land. A central core, is closed forever to human habitation. The governments of Belarus and Ukraine devote 5 percent of their national budgets to treating survivors and patrolling the no go zone. Despite this legacy, there was little optimism back in February when the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) took reporters on a tour of Chernobyl, hoping to raise world interest in paying for the new containment shell.

Then on March 11, a wall of water crashed into the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, on the Pacific Coast of Japan. Balthasar Lindauer, deputy nuclear safety director at the European Bank, described the Fukushima factor. "Today at the pledging conference, Fukushima was mentioned very frequently, and I think it certainly has drawn attention to Chernobyl," said Lindauer. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso told the conference that Chernobyl and recent events in Fukushima, Japan, were a reminder that nuclear risks may not stop at a country's borders.

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[waltky]

Guess who is footin' the bill for sealing Chernobyl reactor?...

30 Years After Chernobyl Disaster, an Arch Rises to Seal Melted Reactor
25 Apr.`16 — Enter the Chernobyl zone, and you might expect the worst: Security guards at a checkpoint 19 miles away from the site of the world’s worst nuclear accident scan departing vehicles for signs of radiation, as wolfish strays linger around the checkpoint.

But pass the derelict villages and collective farms evacuated after the disaster 30 years ago this month, and a new skyline emerges over the ill-fated nuclear plant. A workforce of around 2,500 people is finishing a massive steel enclosure that will cover Chernobyl’s reactor 4, where the radioactive innards of the nuclear plant are encased in a concrete sarcophagus hastily built after the disaster. The zone is now aglow with the reflective safety vests of construction workers. If all goes to plan, the new structure—an arch more than 350 feet high and 500 feet long—will be slid into place late next year over the damaged reactor and its nuclear fuel, creating a leak-tight barrier designed to contain radioactive substances for at least the next 100 years.

The project, known as the New Safe Confinement, is a feat of engineering. It will take two or three days to slide the 36,000-ton structure into place. The arch, which looks something like a dirigible hangar, is large enough to cover a dozen football fields. “You could put Wembley Stadium underneath here, with all the car parks,” said David Driscoll, the chief safety officer for the French consortium running the construction site. Three decades ago, an army of workers scrambled to build a concrete sarcophagus around Chernobyl Reactor 4, which released a radioactive plume after a reactor fire and explosion on April 26, 1986.

Construction workers assist in the assembly of a gigantic steel arch to cover the remnants of the exploded reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine​

At least 30 people died as an immediate result of the accident, which contaminated parts of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and sent radioactive dust and debris over Europe. Pripyat, the company town of 50,000, was completely evacuated. Emergency workers and evacuees received doses of radiation significantly above natural background levels, according to the World Health Organization. Researchers acknowledge high levels of thyroid cancer among people who were children at the time of the accident, from exposure to radioactive iodine. An exclusion zone remains around the Chernobyl plant, keeping it off limits to all but authorized workers, most of whom live in a town just outside the zone.

Today, working at heights, not exposure to radiation, is the main safety concern here, Mr. Driscoll said. Workers on scaffolding or tethered to ropes are installing the layers of steel and insulation that are supposed to keep heat and moisture out—and radiation in. The steady construction is a contrast to the rushed emergency work back in 1986. “It was like mobilization for war,” said Lev Bocharov, one of the lead engineers at the time. “Everyone ran. The slower you ran, the bigger the dose you received.” Building the sarcophagus took seven months. Mr. Bocharov on four occasions was lowered into the blasted reactor inside a lead bathyscaphe-like tank with a window 12 inches thick to survey the damage. The concrete shelter was designed to last at least 30 years, Mr. Bocharov said. “It was done as solidly as possible,” he said. “But the task was not to seal it hermetically.”

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See also:

US Pledges $10 Million to Chernobyl Survivors
April 25, 2016 - The United States pledged $10 million to aid those affected by the fallout of the Chernobyl disaster, as Ukraine marks the 30th anniversary of what is described as the world's worst nuclear accident.

An April 26, 1986, explosion at Chernobyl's No. 4 reactor forced the evacuation 350,000 residents working and living in the surrounding area. State Department spokesperson John Kirby said Monday the funds will "help ensure the safety of future generations who live in the affected area."

The pledge comes on top of more than $400 million the United States has committed to the international effort to help Ukraine restore the site of the accident to an environmentally safe and secure condition. About 40 nations have contributed to the $2.3 billion New Safe Confinement project, which is building a long-term shelter over the building containing Chernobyl's destroyed reactor.

Once the structure is in place, work will begin to remove the reactor and the lava-like radioactive waste. The official short-term death toll from the accident was 31, but thousands more people have died of radiation-related illnesses such as cancer. The total death toll and long-term health effects remain a subject of intense debate.

US Pledges $10 Million to Chernobyl Survivors

Related:

Test finds Chernobyl residue in Belarus milk
Apr 25,`16 -- On the edge of Belarus' Chernobyl exclusion zone, down the road from the signs warning "Stop! Radiation," a dairy farmer offers his visitors a glass of freshly drawn milk. Associated Press reporters politely decline the drink but pass on a bottled sample to a laboratory, which confirms it contains levels of a radioactive isotope at levels 10 times higher than the nation's food safety limits.

That finding on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the world's worst nuclear accident indicates how fallout from the April 26, 1986, explosion at the plant in neighboring Ukraine continues to taint life in Belarus. The authoritarian government of this agriculture-dependent nation appears determined to restore long-idle land to farm use - and in a country where dissent is quashed, any objection to the policy is thin. The farmer, Nikolai Chubenok, proudly says his herd of 50 dairy cows produces up to two tons of milk a day for the local factory of Milkavita, whose brand of Parmesan cheese is sold chiefly in Russia. Milkavita officials called the AP-commissioned lab finding "impossible," insisting their own tests show their milk supply contains traces of radioactive isotopes well below safety limits.

Yet a tour along the edge of the Polesie Radioecological Reserve, a 2,200-square-kilometer (850-square-mile) ghost landscape of 470 evacuated villages and towns, reveals a nation showing little regard for the potentially cancer-causing isotopes still to be found in the soil. Farmers suggest the lack of mutations and other glaring health problems mean Chernobyl's troubles can be consigned to history. "There is no danger. How can you be afraid of radiation?" said Chubenok, who since 2014 has produced milk from his farm just 45 kilometers (28 miles) north of the shuttered Chernobyl site, and two kilometers (a mile) from the boundary of a zone that remains officially off-limits to full-time human habitation. Chubenok says he hopes to double his herd size and start producing farmhouse cheese on site.

His milk is part of the Milkavita supply chain for making Polesskiye brand cheese, about 90 percent of which is sold in Russia, the rest domestically. The World Bank identifies Russia as the major market for Belarusian food exports, which represent 15 percent of the country's export economy. Since rising to power in 1994, President Alexander Lukashenko - the former director of a state-owned farm - has stopped resettlement programs for people living near the mandatory exclusion zone and developed a long-term plan to raze empty villages and reclaim the land for crops and livestock. The Chernobyl explosion meant 138,000 Belarusians closest to the plant had to be resettled, while 200,000 others living nearby left voluntarily.

One of the most prominent medical critics of the government's approach to safeguarding the public from Chernobyl fallout, Dr. Yuri Bandazhevsky, was removed as director of a Belarusian research institute and imprisoned in 2001 on corruption charges that international rights groups branded politically motivated. Since his 2005 parole he has resumed his research into Chernobyl-related cancers with European Union sponsorship. Bandazhevsky, now based in Ukraine, says he has no doubt that Belarus is failing to protect citizens from carcinogens in the food supply. "We have a disaster," he told the AP in the Ukraine capital, Kiev. "In Belarus, there is no protection of the population from radiation exposure. On the contrary, the government is trying to persuade people not to pay attention to radiation, and food is grown in contaminated areas and sent to all points in the country."

The milk sample subjected to an AP-commissioned analysis backs this picture. The state-run Minsk Center of Hygiene and Epidemiology said it found strontium-90, a radioactive isotope linked to cancers and cardiovascular disease, in quantities 10 times higher than Belarusian food safety regulations allow. The test, like others in resource-strapped Belarus, was insufficiently sophisticated to test for heavier radioactive isotopes associated with nuclear fallout, including americium and variants of plutonium. The Belarusian Agriculture Ministry says levels of strontium-90 should not exceed 3.7 becquerels per kilogram in food and drink. Becquerels are a globally recognized unit of measurement for radioactivity.

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[waltky]

Containment facility placed over Chernobyl reactor...

Chernobyl shelter safely placed over exploded reactor
Wednesday 30th November, 2016 - A massive shelter has finally been installed over the exploded reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant, one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the world.

The half-cylinder-shaped shelter began being moved toward the reactor on a system of hydraulic jacks two weeks ago and finally reached its destination on Tuesday, a significant step toward liquidating the remains of the world's worst nuclear accident, 30 years ago in what is now Ukraine.

Workers inspect the New Safe Confinement (NSC) movable enclosure in Chernobyl, Ukraine​

Workers will now begin dismantling unstable parts of the original cover, the so-called sarcophagus, which was built over the reactor shortly after the explosion to contain radiation.

The new shelter is 275 metres wide and 108 metres tall and cost 1.5 billion euro (£1.275bn), according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Chernobyl shelter safely placed over exploded reactor - BelfastTelegraph.co.uk

 

[whitehall]

There is a reality show called "River Monsters" featuring extreme angler Jeremy Wade who fishes sites around the world for dangerous and interesting game. Wade obtained permission to fish in the Chernobyl ponds inside the condemned area and documented the results. The film crew showed the abandoned city and they wore radiation badges. You would have expected Wade's first bite to produce a two headed monster but all the fish he caught appeared to be normal. It should be noted that the incredible intentional destruction of a beautiful tropical wilderness during the Truman administration at Bikini Island resulted in a relatively normal sea life today but some land areas are sill unsafe for human habitation. God knows how many American Servicemen died from the lingering effects when they were used in Atomic tests during the 40's but the media wasn't interested and still isn't.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Chernobyl 25 years on...

Chernobyl is still an environmental disaster: scientists
Tue, Apr 19, 2011 - NO BRAINER:A scientific study found that in areas with high radiation levels, birds were likely to have brains 5% smaller than those in low-level areas

Fallout from Chernobyl remains a poorly investigated hazard for the environment a quarter of a century after the disaster, experts say. According to anecdotal evidence, animals such as beavers, deer, wild horses, hawks and eagles have returned in abundance to Chernobyl’s 30km exclusion zone since humans fled and hunting was outlawed. However, this picture is misleading, said University of South Carolina biology professor Tim Mousseau, one of the few scientists to have probed biodiversity around Chernobyl in depth.

“Chernobyl is definitely not a haven for wildlife,” he said in a telephone interview. “When you actually do the hard work, of conducting a scientific study, where you rigorously control for all the variables and you do this repeatedly in many different places, the signal is very strong. There are many fewer animals and many fewer kinds of animals than you would expect.” Last year, Mousseau and colleagues published the biggest-ever census of wildlife in the exclusion zone. It showed that mammals had declined and insect diversity, including bumblebees, grasshoppers, butterflies and dragonflies, had also fallen.

In a study published in February, they netted 550 birds, belonging to 48 species at eight different sites, and measured their heads to determine the volume of their brains. Birds living in “hot spots” had 5 percent smaller brains than those living where radiation was lower — and the difference was especially great among birds less than a year old. Smaller brains are linked to a lower cognitive ability and thus survival. The study suggested many bird embryos probably do not survive at all. “This clearly ties to the level of background contamination,” Mousseau said. “There are bound to be consequences for the ecosystem as a whole.”

Mousseau said it was vital to explore the link, not least because of the relevance for Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, which with Chernobyl is the only nuclear accident to rate a maximum seven on a world ranking of gravity. However, funding for Western research into environmental impacts at Chernobyl has slumped and many Russian-language studies are never translated into English, he said. Radioactive dust and ash spewed over more than 200,000km2 after Chernobyl’s No. 4 reactor exploded and caught fire on April 26 1986. Ukraine, Belarus and Russia were most affected, although deposits reached as far north as Scotland and as far west as Ireland, requiring in some places long-term restrictions on cattle grazing.

More Chernobyl is still an environmental disaster: scientists - Taipei Times

So, should we be checking the radiation levels of the homes where Hillary voters live?