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Nuked Coral Reef Bounces Back
sm62704 writes "I found this New Scientist article interesting, as I was actually alive (albeit very small) when Bikini Atoll was H-bombed. The article says that the reason the reefs are now flourishing is because they are mostly undisturbed by humans, who are afraid of the radiation. Background levels there are now 'similar to that at any Australian city,' while nearby islands haven't been so lucky.'When I put the Geiger counter near a coconut, which accumulates radioactive material from the soil, it went berserk,' says Maria Beger of the University of Queensland in Australia."
I was rather stunned when, planning my trip to AU a few years ago, I realized that ONE nuclear sub could take out the whole country!
Or at least send it to Mad Max-land.
Physically AU is huge. Roughly the size of the US. Superimposing a map of one on the other gives fairly accurate driving times and distance calculations.
Demographically it is very very small.
I also figured out the real problem is water. While the US, EU, and CN have large navigable rivers running deep into their continents, AU has nothing to bring water to the center of the country (or more accurately there isn't enough rain in the center to drain and form navigable rivers).
AU could be a super-power if it had enough water to support a population of 300 million. Instead it is so dry they are lucky to have 1/10 of that at about 22 million.
Even without husk-gripping, coconuts move... they're supposed to, thats how they get from island to island...
I think this is a note to self: do NOT eat coconuts that you find on the seashore. I wonder if anyone's realized that little issue...
If anyone wants to know where the #1 source of airborne, man-made radiation is, they need go no further than a lump of coal. Nuclear power plants require employees to wear film strips, much like those we see in cameras. The strips change chemistry and appearance with radiation. Ask a nuke worker how their rad levels are. They know. Oh, and if such a worker ever gets a medical treatment involving radioactive material, be it a barium enema (whee!) or chemotherapy, they would set off all the safety sensors in the facility if they went onsite, and trigger an immediate shutdown (unless you're from Soviet Russia, and you disabled the safety features because you wanted to try an exciting experiment in Chernobyl, which didn't work 4 months ago, because those safety triggers shut you down, but this time, you turned them off!).
Back to the lump of coal. The average coal plant, say 1000 MW, produces 5.2 tons of uranium (6% fissile), and 12.8 tons of thorium. Where does it go? Up into the atmosphere, as soot. Where does it come from? It is a rock. It comes from a dark hole in the ground, maybe W. Virginia. Nuclear power plants are closed systems. They don't combust materials and breathe oxygen. Every once in a while, the control rods need to be replaced, along with some pipes and such. The equivalent nuclear plant to said coal plant produces one standard shipping container full of rad "waste" per year. All reactors designed in N. America and many in Europe and Japan are planned with storage space for the rad waste, on-site.
One thing we could do, is once every 10 years, fill up a small freighter with the rad waste containers of the world's reactors, ship it to the Bikini Atoll, and drop the load 30 feet offshore. The metal will corrode eventually, but before that it will be covered with coral.
You know, I don't care a hoot about carbon dioxide, it has never done me much harm. Ozone is produced en masse by lightning strikes in the troposphere, and nobody can beat the mess made by a single, violent volcanic eruption. I do want to see the end of combustive power systems, because we don't need competition for oxygen. Living where I do, I can vouch for my corner of the planet and say it ain't getting any warmer. I do care about airborne radioactive particulates (aka soot) and rad waste. The coconut trees and oceanic coral have proven their value to society, I think we should reward them with a higher status in our world culture by making them the guardians of rad waste. If a lone coconut should travel thousands of leagues, well, shoot, it's not going to hurt anyone more than a barium enema. At least it isn't in the air.
Why did I put the waste of rad waste in quotes, you wonder? Well, from where do you think the barium and iodine and whatever ungodly stuff is in chemotherapy comes? A hole in the ground? No, that waste serves medical purposes. The rest of it could be put into a different reactor design, in accordance with the reactor families planned out in the 40's and 50's, but nobody has spent the research dollars to go far with them.
Final note: I heard a rumor that the prescription drug "Lunesta" contains a coconut extract. Is that why they have glowing butterflies in their ads?