Slashdot Mirror
Wildlife Defies Chernobyl Radiation
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that wildlife has reappeared in the Chernobyl region even with high levels of radiation. Populations of animals both common and rare have increased substantially and there are tantalizing reports of bear footprints and confirmed reports of large colonies of wild boars and wolves. These animals are radioactive but otherwise healthy. A large number of animals died initially due to problems like destroyed thyroid glands but their offspring seem to be physically healthy. Experiments have shown the DNA strands have undergone considerable mutation but such mutations have not impacted crucial functions like reproduction. It is remarkable that such a phenomenon has occurred contrary to common assumptions about nuclear waste. The article includes some controversial statements recommending disposal of nuclear waste in tropical forests to keep forest land away from greedy developers and farmers"
We're fine until we have confirmed reports of colonies of large wild boars and wolves
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
I recall a certain knight... a black one... who expressed similar optimism in the face of suffering personal maladies.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
They have only whitnessed this over how many generations? I would imagine with every offspring, you have a handful more mutations. After a while, you have oatmeal.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
He has found ample evidence of DNA mutations, but nothing that affected the animals' physiology or reproductive ability. "Nothing with two heads," he says.
It's as if the positive changes are being selected in favor of the negative changes.
It's not hard to imagine many of the conceptions about radiation exposure may have been a bit over estimated, simply because nobody has really been willing to undergo an experiment of that caliber. I would not believe the animals are enjoying their radiation poisoning however until I was able to ask them.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"Experiments have shown the DNA strands have undergone considerable mutation but such mutations have not impacted crucial functions like reproduction. It is remarkable that such a phenomenon has occurred contrary to common assumptions about nuclear waste."
Ummm... the animals are radioactive and their DNA has undergone considerable mutation. What exactly is contrary here to the common assumptions of radiological contamination? Sure matches my own assumptions.
Sure they can reproduce but I wouldn't exactly be jumping with glee over this "recovery". The damage merely has yet to express itself.
Though if any of the local turtles grow to human size and start dressing like ninjas, I'll take back everything I said.
I took classes from a professor studying worms and spiders in the Chernobyl area, and he found remarkable genetic mutations (e.g., changes in the number and size of chromosomes, large sections of additional DNA, etc.) and behavioral changes (e.g., worms switching to from asexual to sexual reproduction).
Since these organisms have such short lifespans, there have been ample generations since the nuclear accident for the organisms to go locally extinct or mutate into different species. But, that has not been the case. These local populations have continued to survive without deleterious effects on the population level.
Populations of organisms with longer lifespans may take longer to recover to pre-blast levels (although from the sound of the article and my previous knowledge the opposite has occurred) and may experience a genetic bottleneck effect (which may be countered by mutations), but genomes are resiliant and it is unlikely that the populations would never recover.
from a few weeks ago. They didn't breed those in Europe; they just caught a few Chernobyl ones. They would have got a bear too, but those things move amazingly fast on all eights.
So why are we surprised that any of this is happening?
That's the sound of the joke going over your head :)
Dr. Ian Malcolm: I'm simply saying that life, uh... finds a way.
(Can anyone guess the Movie or Book title?)
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
It's not authorative but apparently Elena's story is a hoax. According to the linked posting she was 30, not 26 at the time of writing and cannot ride a motorbike. According to the thread she is actually a tourguide with Chernobylinterinform. Sorry for ruining the fantasy.
But, in any case, dumping all our radioactive waste in the sun would be a horribly short sighted squandering of a potentially precious resource for the future. Heavy metals don't exactly grow on trees you know.
An excellent point, one that I think can't be said enough. While we're burying all this nuclear waste, or tossing it down into the Marianas Trench, or whatever, I think it's important to consider that while the storage method should be able to last as long as the longest-lived dangerous isotopes in the waste (in case we just want to leave it there) it should also have as a design criteria the ability for us to recover it.
I could easily envision a time in the future, a lot sooner than 10,000 years or even a few hundred, when we might want to get at some of that "waste" in order to reprocess it in ways that are not economically viable, or perhaps technologically feasible, right now.
This is hugely the case with the type of nuclear energy we use in the United States, where the majority of the fuel rods are comprised of U-238 and only a small percentage of it is U-235, the latter is the fissionable fuel, the former isn't (although it can be bred into Plutonium) and currently we really just use it as a sort of contaminant in order to make weaponization of the fuel difficult. A change in attitudes regarding breeder reactors would instantly make U-238, particularly the stuff that comes out of reactors (which has greater-than-trace amounts of plutonium in it already) a hot commodity. (No pun intended.)
Frankly given our energy requirements, I think the need to reprocess nuclear fuel waste may occur sooner rather than later, perhaps within a few centuries or even decades, depending on technological developments of other energy sources and the geopolitics of Uranium mining, and thus the solutions for waste storage that are recoverable while also being secure are the best ones.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This woman motorcycled through Chernobyl not to recently. In many parts radiation levels were safe enough for her to travel around. As I recall she carried a geiger counter, but didn't wear a radiation suit. She didn't venture around the epicenter of disaster, but she took a lot of rad photos, and saw wild life.
Those pictures turned out to be a hoax. The story was covered here.
My wife and I recently went on a tour of the Nevada Test Site when we were in Las Vegas several weeks ago. These tours are arranged by the Department of Energy which outsources them to a private firm. Essentially you ride around on a bus in the Nevada Test Site all day and get a really cool tour of the blast sites, the craters, the house, the rails, etc. Unfortunately the tour does not allow cameras. As for us, we figured we have no plans to ever have any kids anyway and so we signed up for the waiting list. We got in on a cancellation and ended up on a bus full of senior citizens with our tour guide, Ernie, with decades of experience in the atomic testing program. Ernie tended to downplay the safety implications of the testing done on the site. Well, he did mention the leaks and accidents but his voice dropped really low whenever he talked about them... he used the phrase "well, I make no bones about it". Whenever Ernie's voice dropped, you could look out the window and the bus would be passing a fenced area along the side of the road with big scary RADIOACTIVE signs at regular intervals fighting to stay visible above the grass. Ernie was a trip. If you are interested in a tour of the Nevada Test Site go soon while Ernie is still alive to be your tour guide.