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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."
Would sure as hell make survivor more interesting.
"oh, and by the way, anything you eat is likely radioactive"
Maybe make the first episode with reality TV execs on the island....
Queue Gilligan's Island jokes too.
...
now we just have to bomb the shit out of Australia so our scientists can proudly proclaim "these coral reefs are far LESS radioactive than any Australian city!"
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
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.
The full story is that although some of the corals have bounced back remarkably, the nuking has also resulted in the localised extinction of some more sensitive sensitive species However the research has also revealed a disturbingly high level of loss of coral species from the atoll. Compared with a famous study made before the atomic tests were carried out, the team established that 42 species were missing compared to the early 1950s. At least 28 of these species losses appear to be genuine local extinctions probably due to the 23 bombs that were exploded there from 1946-58, or the resulting radioactivity, increased nutrient levels and smothering from fine sediments. Article also has some good stats on the nuking itself: One of the most interesting aspects is that the team dived into the vast Bravo Crater left in 1954 by the most powerful American atom bomb ever exploded (15 megatonnes - a thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb). The Bravo bomb vapourised three islands, raised water temperatures to 55,000 degrees, shook islands 200 kilometers away and left a crater 2km wide and 73m deep.
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...
With the giant mutant anemones and sponges with teeth and the crushing and the laser eyes!
.... and mutant.
To people of Japan, your cities are no longer safe. Run for your lives. The coral is back, and this time it's pissed
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
Look up what's going on around Chernobyl at the moment.
Whilst humans can't go anywhere near it, or the town of Pripyat, many species of plant and animals have flourished in the 30-odd years since the infamous meltdown. These species display no visible deformations, and continue to breed and live undisturbed by humans.
Almost as if they had just... evolved to cope with the massive doses of radiation they cop every day.
I imagine that a pair of swallows, either African or European, could take one of these coconuts quite far.
These species display no visible deformations, and continue to breed and live undisturbed by humans.
Well, to be fair, I'll mention that one study involving birds found that the chicks of birds nesting in the sarcophagus had double the expected deformity rate over birds nesting outside of Chernobyl.
Given that a number of the bird species are the ones where the chicks gradually push out the others such that only one survives out of a laying of 2-6 eggs, the effect of the extra deformities was essentially noise, statistically insignificant to the species.
I don't read AC A human right
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?