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Chernobyl Becomes Tourist Hot Spot

Posted by michael on from the we're-not-above-puns dept.

prostoalex writes "18 years ago on April 26, the Chernobyl disaster occurred in Central Ukraine. Nowadays, as British Telegraph reports, the radioactive disaster area is becoming a tourist hot-spot with 3000 visitors paying $200 for a guided tour each year."

3 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The motorcycle chick... by the+MaD+HuNGaRIaN · · Score: 5, Informative

    ooopps....a link would have helped...sorry.

  2. After you're done laughing... by gkuz · · Score: 5, Informative

    at all the mutation jokes and all the stupid "in Soviet Russia" jokes (even though Chornobyl is not in Russia), take a look at the site of an organization that's actually doing something to help. Maybe even donate some money. This remains a human tragedy of massive proportions.

  3. Re:Radiation by NeoRete · · Score: 5, Informative
    The poster has the relative values of radiation values way off; for example alpha rays are far more harmful than x-rays (Health Physics Society)

    Quickly paraphrasing this from Walker's Physics, Volume II:

    The RAD (radiation absorbed dose) is the amount of energy that is absorbed by an irradiated, regardless of the type of radiation. One rad equals .01 joule per kilogram.

    More information is needed to have an indication of the biological effect a certain dosage will produce. This is called the relative biological effectiveness (RBE). Some values:

    Heavy ions: 20
    Alpha rays: 10-20
    Protons: 10
    Fast neutrons: 10
    Slow neutrons: 4-5
    Beta rays: 1.0-1.7
    Gamma rays: 1
    200-keV X-rays: 1

    The biologically equivalent dose for humans, the REM (radiation equivalent in man), is just the dose of radiation times the RBE. So alpha rays have at least ten times the relative biological effectiveness than X-rays.

    --
    30 characters are fine for a s