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Forests Around Chernobyl Aren't Decaying Properly
An anonymous reader writes "Smithsonian Magazine has an article about one of the non-obvious effects of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown: dead organisms are not decomposing correctly. 'According to a new study (abstract) published in Oecologia, decomposers—organisms such as microbes, fungi and some types of insects that drive the process of decay—have also suffered from the contamination. These creatures are responsible for an essential component of any ecosystem: recycling organic matter back into the soil. Issues with such a basic-level process, the authors of the study think, could have compounding effects for the entire ecosystem.' The scientists took bags of fallen leaves to various areas around Chernobyl and found that locations with more radiation caused the leaves to retain more than half of their original weight after almost a year. They're now beginning to worry that almost three decades of dead brush buildup is contributing to the area's fire risk, and a large fire could distribute radioactive material beyond Chernobyl's exclusion zone."
I would have thought that the fact that the experiments with leaves brought there from elsewhere decaying slower demonstrate that merely bringing foreign organisms (the collected leaves are not sterile, of course) is not going to help.
Ezekiel 23:20
I think they meant the smoke alone from the fire would cause radiation to spread.
Chernobyl was a fission plant. Mankind has yet to create a viable fusion power plant. And even if we were able to make a fusion plant, it would be impossible for a fusion reactor to "go critical" since "criticality" is not even a concept applicable to fusion reactions.
Because nature has shit loads of fusion reactors all over the planet that go critical all the time.
Actually, that's not all that far off from reality. Except that, in our solar system, nature has only one fusion reactor, which went critical roughly 4.5 billion years ago. Nature has been powered by the output of that one runaway fusion reactors ever since then. And life here has had to handle the fact that our power supply is available only about half of each day, so each species needs to develop ways of surviving a total failure of the power plant every day.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Look, I don't want to ruin your cynical train, but the study looks plausible, as in "common sense" plausible. Even if it, of course, needs to be double-checked, there is no reason to "disbelieve" it without giving it the attention it deserves.
What is triggering your "disbelief" alert here? Radioactive material enter the ecosystem via the trees. Trees die, their leaves fall every autumn. Radioactive material goes back to the ground, causes problem with fauna and fungi. Living organisms are known to be able to cope with radioactivity, but at the price of some energy expense to fight mutations (in higher organisms, tumors), which mean they can't spend as much energy as usual to do what they usually do, that is decompose organic matter and generate nutrients back into the cycle of life.
And of course, if a fire starts, all the radioactive material contained into flammable materials (leaves and tree remnants) will soar into the sky, since the decay of the said flammable materials take longer than usual... This again seems plausible.
When the Soviets contaminated over 800 square kilometers with high levels of Strontium 90 in their first big nuclear disaster, post Lysenko geneticists and biologists studied the effects of this radiation on the entire biocoenosis. Z. A. Medvedev wrote about the results of this work in his book, Nuclear Disaster in the Urals (ch.8):
The given contamination levels (1.8-3.4 millicuries per square meter) were highly destructive for soil animals. Predatory beetles suffered least; their numbers in the contaminated area were reduced to only 66 percent of the figure in the control area. Non-predatory beetles, beetle larvae, and other insects that feed on plants (phytophaga) suffered the most; their numbers fell to 56 percent of those in the control area. Soil animals that feed on organic products in the soil (where the highest level of strontium concentration was found)—the saprophages—died out almost completely; their numbers fell to 1 percent of the control group. Taxonomically, the groups studied were Aranea, Mollusca, Lithoblidae, Geophilidae, Lumbricidae, and Diplopoda.
So small critters in the soil that eat leaves are highly sensitive to radioactive contamination. This has been known for a long time now; at least 40 years. Your skepticism is misplaced; that Chernobyl should have caused a big die-out among the creatures the decompose detritus is entirely predictable. Wait a few years and you'll get to read about the same thing around Fukushima, only there we'll learn about the effects on marine life as well.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
"we're all inundated by radiation from nuclear fusion? How can we stop this atrocity! "
Move to Seattle.
Speaking of "no, idiot", sunlight IS radiation.
As anyone who has ever had a sunburn knows, it's damaging radiation. Quite a bit more damaging than any radiation anyone has ever received from. US nuclear power plant, in fact.