AlisoBob wrote:Naaaa.... Cherynobyl was worse.
The cloud from the burning reactor spread many types of radioactive materials, especially iodine-131 and caesium-137, over much of Europe. Because radioactive iodine disintegrates rapidly, it largely disappeared within the first few weeks of the accident. Radioactive caesium however is still measurable in soils and some foodstuffs in many parts of Europe. The greatest concentrations of contamination occurred over large areas of the Soviet Union surrounding the reactor in what are now the countries of Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
Since the accident, 600 000 people have been involved in emergency, recovery, containment, and cleaning operations although only a small proportion of them have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation. Those who received the highest doses of radiation were the emergency workers and personnel that were on-site during the first days of the accident (approximately 1000 people).
More than five million people live in areas of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine that are significantly 1 contaminated with caesium-137 from the Chernobyl accident. 400 000 of these people lived in very contaminated areas classified as “areas of strict control” by Soviet authorities. Within this region, the area closest to the Chernobyl power plant was most heavily contaminated and has been designated as the “Exclusion Zone”. The 116 000 people who lived there were evacuated in the spring and summer of 1986 to non-contaminated areas, and 220 000 more were relocated in the following years
A week or two ago I watched a program about the Japanese Nuclear crisis. It has the potential to be much worse than even Chernobyl. Both through wind carried contamination, but also sea currents.
They went into details about Chernobyl, and the effects that it has had.
Huge problems of course in Russia, but huge problems through areas of Europe - health / big increases in cancers, child birth defects, and on and on and on. Significant areas of land, in Europe, not just Russia etc, have been contaminated so as to preclude using them for agricultural purposes.
I had No Idea the fall out, Caesium in particular, had reached the south England / Wales, with Many farms / agricultural districts Forever banned from being used to produce food, the ground contamination being so high.
From only the One power plant. I'm not sure just how many Nuke power plants there are, but I think, in France alone, 85% of their electricity is provided by their 80 + Nuclear facilities.
Chernobyl was created by an arrogant fucker wanting to do a shut down / stress test on the system, well past specified limits - he ignored other staffs concerns and so things turned to shit.
Japans problem was caused by the tidal wave knocking out the power / back up generators to the cooling system. Siting a Nuke power plant on the coast of a highly seismically active Island, with a record of tidal waves, doesn't look too bright.
But so many Nuke PPs around the world are situated in highly unstable areas.
Then you can get to thinking about how long it will be before any one of a huge lot of nut-jobs, just think, "hell why bother to try to get Nuke Weapons for attacks, there's hundreds of NPPs just sitting there, ripe for targeting, with shoulder launched weaponry". They don't even have to hit the NPPs themselves, just target on site back up systems for water cooling, take out outside electricity feeds, comprehensively, and the jobs done. Hell has just arrived.
Judging by the massive problems that only 1 NPP can create, in Russia, now Japan, all it would take to make entire countries / continents permanent fall out zones, is a few successful hits on NPPs.
As people are now recalling, that prick Bin Laden, besides succeeding in killing quite a few people, stated his main intention was to bleed the West, and the US specifically, dry, financially. By any analysis, he's succeeding with that goal. It doesn't take much to bring modern society to it's knees, and with the obvious sitting ducks of NPPs all over the world, they must be due for various bastards attention.
In OZ, we have the one, tiny NPP, just south west of Sydney - nowadays it's in the suburbs of a city that rivals LA for it's spread and population. It's a tiny, experimental unit, that produces various nuclear isotopes etc for medical and other uses. But , if that was taken out, (and the authorities have never found the 8 - I think- missing rocket launchers that dissapeared from one of our Army bases, quite near the nuclear facility, a while ago) with the right winds, Sydney could be a ghost town, very quickly.
It's a dangerous old world out there.
