Latest Chernobyl Motorcycle Photos

wrx writes "Elena has taken another motorcycle ride through the Chernobyl area, and has updated her site with a whole lot of new photos and text. The pictures now show several surrounding towns, the radiation level of the magic wood, and many more details inside buildings. After the dust had settled from the original slashdot story, Elena wrote 'who are those slashdot people? they swept over like Mongol-Tartars.'"

Comments

Soaking up the gamma

[NatlLabGeek]

I can't even imagine the dose she's soaking up. I look at the reading she's showing in pictures and she's taken up my YEARLY dose in HOURS. Is it really exciting enough to give away years of your life for a helluva ride?

Then again, I chase storms.

Go with God, girl.

Re:Soaking up the gamma

[Jeremy Erwin]

At least she's documenting her journeys. IMHO, the most interesting thing about her picture is not the radiation, but that the whole place is preserved from the Soviet era. Sort of like a depopulated Pompeii, without all the digging.

Re:Soaking up the gamma

[Forgotten]

Actually it is all about cumulative damage, so in a sense you are soaking something up. DNA can be repaired, but the more damage there is, the more likely something really catastrophic will happen. A very high flash dose virtually guarantees enough cells have scrambled machinery that you will die, but the same sort of thing can happen with a small dose over time.

It comes down to how fast and how completely the exposed tissue is replaced or repaired. In this case she's not spending all her time in the hot zone - her visits are sporadic, unlike say the old guy with the horse-drawn cart (who lives there all the time). So she's probably ok, because she has time to heal in between exposures.

Also, there is a way you can take it out with you - by inhaling radioactive particulate (fallout). This is part of the reason smoking is dangerous - all organic matter has a small percentage of radioactive isotopes, and small particles get lodged in the lungs where they just keep on giving. It's also the only real danger in handling stuff like depleted uranium rounds, if there's an opportunity for them to produce dust. Radiation that can't penetrate the skin can hurt you from within your body. She's specifically staying in the centre of the asphalt and away from the irradiated dirt and dust that's washed off to the side of the road, so again she should be ok.

Re:Soaking up the gamma

[True Grit]

1. So much for safe, clean, and efficient nuclear power

Nuclear power has 3 problems: 1) it generates waste that is toxic for a long period of time, 2) it was over-sold and over-hyped when it was first introduced in the US, which led us to jump into this technology before we were competent with it, and 3) in the minds of average people its hopelessly linked to nuclear weapons, and the fear of mass destruction, even though the technology and goals are completely different between the 2 disciplines.

If you want to bash it on those reasons, especially the waste problem, fine, I can understand that, but I'm tired of hearing people use Chernobyl as the example of why nuclear power is "too dangerous".

There was *never* any such thing as a safe, clean, and efficient *anything* in the old Soviet Union. They routinely built nuclear reactors (and a hell of a lot of other buildings for that matter) that would never have been built in the West because of their atrocious design and lack of safety. Chernobyl isn't proof that nuclear power is too dangerous to use, its just proof that a communistic system of government is a greater threat to its own people than any outside "enemy".

NP can be safely used now, now that we've had 30+ years of experience. Look at France and Japan. Heck, did you read about the experimental mini-reactor being used by a village in Alaska? Totally self-contained and safe, its interior is sealed at the factory and isn't opened again until its decommissioned 15-20 years later when its fuel is exhausted. It can't melt-down or have a run-away reaction because there literally isn't enough fuel in the system to reach critical mass. The thing is about the size of a trailer, transportable, and thus removeable after its core is depleted. The company that makes it just comes back once its core is gone, takes it back to the factory for dismantling and salvaging/reprocessing. The irony may be that NP really is an answer to some of our problems, our mistake was spending 30 years thinking "big", when we should have been thinking *small*.

I can understand the criticism of the 1st and 2nd generation nuclear power plants (NPP), but while the US has virtually stopped development of NPPs, the rest of the world is working on the 4th and 5th generations of NPP design, just when they are starting to get *really* good.

As for NP technology *today*, as opposed to 30 years ago? When the founder of Greenpeace changes his mind and becomes pro-NP after his initial fanatical opposition to it, that should make a lot of people stop and reevaluate it, I think, at least those people still rational and open-minded enough to consider changing their minds on this subject.

Soviet calendar?

[klui]

Looks like they only show 6 days/week. Why is this?? http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/imag e21.3.JPG

Re:Soviet calendar?

[dead_penguin]

Look at the numbers. Every seventh one is missing. They were probably printed in a different colour which has now faded away -- maybe red for Sundays?

It's interesting though how the weeks run top to bottom instead of left to right like they do on "our" calendars.

how ironic

[boomka]

In the last picture in chapter 9, there is this big slogan across the room. In Ukrainian, it reads:
"Long live communism - the bright future for the whole mankind!"

Truly, you may never know how the words you say today will be _seen_ tomorrow.

An idea

[DigiShaman]

Has anyone thought of an idea to do P2P website hosting? I think it would be an interesting idea to have a slashdot client running on your computer. That way, ever website you visit gets cached to the client. And because it's cached, you also end up hosting the website for other slashdotters happen to have the same client program, yet arn't able to gain access to the original URL.

OT: Re:Soaking up the gamma

[angst_ridden_hipster]

Hey, as a potter, you're probably getting a few handfuls more radiation than the general populace just by virtue of your glaze materials.

But then, if you do exclusively anagama, that's not a problem.

I had a high school physics prof bring in some happy yellow Fiestaware bowls that she bought in New Mexico when she was working on the bomb. That yellow was from the Uranium Oxide in the glaze. Those things got the Geiger counter screaming, I can tell you. "How'd you like to eat your Wheaties from that?" she'd ask.

I often wonder what isotopes my cobalt carbonate or manganese have in 'em...

Re:Not yet.

[Aglassis]

You said: " You do realize that Three Mile Island was the single lamest nuclear "disaster" in history, right? Standing with my hand on the reactor, I would get the same amount of radiation from said reactor in one second as I get from the rest of the environment in one second. Compare to smoking, which (on average) quadrouples your radiation dose."

No. This is not true.

You could not do that for a small plant, and TMI-2 (anniversary is on the 28th btw), was a big plant (~3GW thermal). The Atomic Energy Act pretty much makes it impossible for me to give you any real numbers for the radiation levels outside the reactor pressure vessel shutdown or critical (though they may be published somewhere), I can tell you that it is not background. Civil nuclear plants typically start up, operate for 18 months at full power, shutdown to refuel and perform maintenance, and then repeat. Since TMI-2 was in the operating stage when its accident occured, there was a significant amount of fission products in the reactor core at the time of the accident. If you are standing next to the reactor core you do not have the full amount of radiation shielding that the general public has, so the radiation dose will be much higher. Also considering that some fission products escaped from the fuel and circulated through the coolant (of which some was released into the containment structure due to the pressure relief which set of the radiation alarms during the casuality), there will be alot of radiation in the general area not coming from the reactor vessel (which again will be significantly higher than background).

Re:Exposure levels - negligible harm from gamma

[Faeton]

800 millirem per hour might sound like a lot, but I don't think she's going to hang around there long. What I would be worried about is the radioactive particulate that still might be around. Once it gets into your lungs, that's bad news because both beta and alpha radiation can wreck havoc on your insides. Gamma isn't as big as a deal (since it just usually goes through stuff anyways).

I work at a nuclear power plant, and there are fields in certain places that go upwards to 25 REM/h. So, what do you do? Don't stand near it and get your buddy to (unknowingly) shield you!

Here's a neat picture

[squarooticus]

...of the Elephant's Foot below reactor number four.

Re:Watch the hit counter spin

[Bombcar]

Note that if you look at some of the Images, it seems pretty obvious that she's in the process of registering and moving her site to another location

She didn't take THIS picture.

[RayBender]

I will admit that along with every other geek on /. I'm madly in love with this hot, hot biker chick. I guess I'm glad she didn't take this picture. Yes, that's a chunk of the reactor fuel itself.

Somebody should make a movie with her

[Simon Brooke]

Subject says it all, really. She would make a great subject for a short documentary movie, taking a ride through the dead zone and talking about it. I would pay to watch it. I might even invest in it. It wouldn't cost very much to make.

Elena also feeling harassed

[0x0d0a]

If you read a bit further in the thread I linked to in my parent post, you'll also notice that Elena removed her facial portrait and email address (leaving only the postal address) from her original pages -- the body of her documentary work is still present, without some of the personal information. She originally deliberately took her site down for a short period after it first "hit the Web awareness". As folks have noticed, there has been a lot of online commenting on her sex appeal, etc, and a good guess is that she's been uncomfortable with the email that she's been getting since her original site was put up.

Seriously -- appreciate the work for what it is -- a unique, honest set of images and insights into the most horrific nuclear disaster the world has ever seen. However, please try and avoid creeping the author out. I'd like to continue to see more of this material.

Thanks.