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The Cold War's Legacy of Mutation
fm6 writes: "Not surprising, but still pretty sobering: Russian communities downwind from cold-war-era surface testing sites are experiencing 50% increase in mutation rates. I'm reminded of Terry Tempest William's term: Virtual Uninhabitants."
Is Evolution Over In Humans?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Make anyone else think of the X-Men? Mention of mutation always brings that to mind. [X-men theme plays in head]
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
I imagine the spam "Now you can get a 50% increased chance of having the super powers you always wanted!!!". Coming to you from the same people who brought you "Want to be a SPY!?" and "Spank me HARD, make me wet"
(titles taken from actual spam-messages I've gotten during the last couple of months)
We just bought some rural property in southern Utah. My wife was searching for plant zone information for our area and happened across a link discussing the sterility and cancer rates of people in Cedar City and Parowan. I can't find that link, but a quick search turned up several relavent sites:
http://www.downwinders.org
http://www.eq.state.ut.us/EQRAD/fallout.htm
Method of processing duck feet
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/maps/
t s. html
http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/Fallout/conten
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You do know that was just a movie? Most mutations are quite unphotogenic.
A mutation in an intron isn't going to do much? Or ar they talking about people with extra fingers?
-- SIGFPE
Right, it was just a comic book with lots of fancy spin offs and tie ins. Obviously a comic book is far superior to a movie as a touch point for life and death issues like this one! After all, a comic book is literature!
Nukes are more expensive than just about any fuels.
Right now, world-wide, nukes and solar cost $.10-.20 per KWH. Solar is so expensive because there just hasn't been enough research into it. Nukes are expensive because, again, using subatomic particles to heat water is really quite inefficient. Coal is about $.08-.09 per KWH. It's in pretty good supply, and will last beyond my lifetime.
However, hydro power is only $.03-.05 per KWH. That's cheap. And it's renewable. Wind is also about $.05 per KWH. Geothermal is $.10 per KWH. Those are cheap! However, the US government is not putting any money into these projects, as they suggest a distributed micropower solution instead of the current centralized macropower gig - that won't sit well with the commercial energy industry.
Also, you say 'right now' in your post - it's right now and looking like forever. There haven't been any new nuke plants commissioned since 1979. All orders after 1973 have been cancelled. Nuclear power is on its way out as a consumer power supply.
I lived there from 89 to 2000! Graduated from Southern Utah University in 1993. The local paper sucks. Read the Trib instead.
Best Slashdot Co
Just as a matter of note, the water used to cool (American, commercial) reactors does not mix with the water used to moderate the reaction... eg, the water in the cooling towers never passed through the reactor vessel and is not radioactive, did not absorb neutrons, or anything like that.
The water used in the reactor vessel passes through a heat exchanger and transfers the heat to another cooling system, and that's what ends up in the cooling towers. You'll never touch 'steam heated by uranium', it's 'steam heated by other steam'.
Not all reactor designs are so safe. Be glad you live in the US. In former Soviet states, some reactors use liquid sodium as a moderator (at least, they use it in nuclear subs). I don't know all that much about power plants, but I've been told that this is very scary when it breaks.
So forget the radiation, a more immediate effect than radiation is 'thermal pollution' - eg all that heat has to go somewhere, and in coastal areas, putting it back in the ocean basically kills the ecosystem deader than the radiation ever could.
Hazards of an industrial civilization... but most of us would be dead already without it.
Hey, I'm a fan of Alita and Sexylosers.com myself. I consider the whole literature-versus-junk thing pretty bogus. It's just that mass-market fantasies about radiation turning teenagers into superheroes is not the first thing that comes to mind when I read about A-bomb survivors in Siberia and Utah.
Hey--, I'm a fan of Alita and Sexylosers.com myself. I consider the whole literature-versus-junk thing pretty bogus. It's just that mass-market fantasies about radiation turning teenagers into superheroes is not the first thing that comes to mind when I read about A-bomb survivors in Siberia and Utah.
It appears that a small group of scientists who studied the area found that the ecosystem surrounding the site appears to be better off than when it wasn't radioactive.
r ve .htm
It seems that, at least in the short term, the animals and plants are better off with nuclear waste because humans have moved from these areas...kind of sad knowing your species is worse than cancer causing nuclear radiation isn't it?
http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/chernobyl/wildlifeprese
--"It's Bradford Company, slash your last name, dot your first name"
"Also, you say 'right now' in your post - it's right now and looking like forever. There haven't been any new nuke plants commissioned since 1979. All orders after 1973 have been cancelled. Nuclear power is on its way out as a consumer power supply."
Wrong wrong wrong! No new nuclear plants have been ordered since 1979. There were several plants that completed construction and low power testing and received full power licenses all through the 1980's and even the first part of the 1990's! Look up the Seabrook Station (1990) in NH and check out it's entering commercial service date. Also ANO2 (1980), San Onofre (1984), Diablo Canyon (1985), Commanche Peak (1993), Watts Bar (1996). I could go on and on. But facts aren't going to dissuade you obviously, never mind.
"I agree, that's a big problem. The US spends millions a year trying to contain wastes in temporary storage facilities. But putting it in Yucca Mountain doesn't keep nuclear swimming pools away from population centers; instead, it creates what amounts to a giant nuclear lake just a little ways away from one major population center."
You left out that it's actually 95 miles away, under 1000+ feet of rock, stored inside some of the toughest corrosion resistant metal containers known to our science, those containers inside thick (I mean meters thick) concrete vaults.
"That would be incorrect. It's no safer than the current alternative of temporary storage, but when (not if) the waste gets loose, it only affects Nevada."
May not be safer (it seems much safer to me), but what is harder to watch and keep secure, 50+ sites or 1 site?
"No new nuclear power plants have been commissioned since 1979. All orders for nuclear power plants since 1973 have been cancelled. You're ill informed."
See my previous post in this thread, you are the ill informed person here, so much so that you lose quite a bit a credibility, since the facts are so easily checked.
"Countries around the world are halting the use of nuclear power. France, who gets most of its power from nukes, has cancelled all new projects."
Because they are quite happy with the reserve margins they currently have in their generation, not from some irrational fear of nuclear waste.
"There are several better ways of going about this - I won't go into detail, but they are: shoot it into the sun (bad idea), put it under the ice caps (bad idea), store it in the Pacific muck (good idea), put it in a subduction zone (no one knows if it's a good idea), or store it under the water table of a large city (bad idea) - oh, wait, that last one is already being done."
Yeah, all of these methods of final disposal can be accomplished even if Yucca mountain is filled. Yucca mountain is a storage site fer cripes sake! This stuff isn't going to be "dumped" off the back of a truck and buried. By the very nature of the design of these cannisters, they can be moved again at a later date if a more safe storage idea is agreed upon. Also, you left out our best (from an engineering point of view - never the one chosen of course) and that is MOX fuel reburning and reprocessing fuel. But that is a whole different argument.
"So forget the radiation, a more immediate effect than radiation is 'thermal pollution' - eg all that heat has to go somewhere, and in coastal areas, putting it back in the ocean basically kills the ecosystem deader than the radiation ever could."
Well I know of at least two studies that lasted over a decade and they both show mixed effects to thermal pollution. I.e., some species populations exploded in the 15 - 25F warmer area near the plant outfall pipes, and some species populations fell. As to the effects on marine plants, the noise level in the data was too high to really conclude anything at all (the variations observed were within the parameters of natural variations in plant growth).
There is a definite effect, but is the effect of sufficient widespread damage to warrant shutdowns? I don't think so.