Is Chernobyl Still Dangerous? Was 60 Minutes Pushing Propaganda?

An anonymous reader writes: This article has an interesting take on how the media is presenting the current Chernobyl situation. Its author, Ron Adams, is a long time nuclear advocate, so read with that in mind. Adams critiques a recent CBS 60 Minutes broadcast that took pains to show how dangerous the area still is. He writes, "The show is full of fascinating contrasts between what the cameras show to the audience and what the narrator tells the audience that they should believe. ... I correspond with a number of experts in fields related to radiation, radioactive waste management, site restoration, and the health effects of low level radiation. There has been quite a bit of discussion about the misinformation propagated by this particular 60 Minutes segment."

Comments

Yes, still dangerous

[stasike]

There are still places in Chernobyl that are way too radioactive. Some radioactive elements have relatively long half-live, so some places in the exclusion zone will not be suitable for long-term occupation for hundreds of years.

Let me quote Wikipedia:

Particularly dangerous are the highly radioactive fission products, those with high nuclear decay rates that accumulate in the food chain, such as some of the isotopes of iodine, caesium and strontium. Iodine-131 and caesium-137 are responsible for most of the radiation exposure received by the general population.

Iodine-131 has a very short half-live, so it almost all decayed by now

20 to 40% of all core caesium-137 was released, 85 PBq in all.[109][115] Caesium was released in aerosol form; caesium-137, along with isotopes of strontium, are the two primary elements preventing the Chernobyl exclusion zone being re-inhabited.[116] The caesium-137 activity represented by 8.5 Ã-- 1016 Bq would be produced by 24 kilograms of caesium-137.[116] Cs-137 has a half life of 30 years.

So, even after 25 years there is more than half of caesium-137 that was present the moment the reactor exploded. It will take 300 years for that caesium-137 to fall under 0.1% of the original level.
There are other elements present that have half-lives long enough to last until now, and short enough that they release dangerous level of alpha / beta / gamma rays. Alpha rays are not dangerous, as such, because your skin can shield you, yet alpha emitters are very dangerous because if you ingest or breath-in a small particle, there is very high probability that you get cancer later - sometimes many years later - on.

Re:What a shock

[Trepidity]

The I-131 is mostly gone by now, but high concentrations of Cs-137 are still there, which is s significant carcinogen.

Re:Yes

[zmooc]

"it appears that humans are worse drain than the radiation"

Only if you look at photogenic large mammals like we always do. But nature is much more than that. Fungi, microbes, spiders and insects are doing very bad, so bad in fact that dead trees are hardly decaying. Birds have very small brains compared to birds from more healthy regions. And trees are not growing as fast as they should.

Bottomline: large parts of the natural cycle are not working and we don't know very well what the long term effects will be. What we DO know, is that abnormal amounts of flammable biomass is accumulating in the area. A forest-fire could cause huge redistribution of radioactive materials.

Re:What a shock

[AmiMoJo]

There is plenty of evidence that what they are doing is dangerous. There have been extensive studies into the effect on humans, and on wildlife in the area. Bio-accumulation is a serious long-term problem that is known to cause cancer and birth defects.

That is why governments test for it, and why farmers and fishermen in the Fukushima region have been going to such lengths to test their produce. As well as meeting their own safety standards, they need to be able to show other countries that their goods are safe. The EU did reject some goods in the years after the disaster, but more recently they have managed to replace the affected soil and introduced improved cleaning methods. Obviously the people living near Chernobyl don't have access to any of that.

Re:What a shock

[Golden_Rider]

In Germany, even this year, 40% of the wild boars which were tested in Saxony (hunters are required to check animals they killed for radioactivity) showed radioactivity higher than the limit of 600 becquerel/kg, which made them officially unsuitable for human consumption. Some animals even showed radioactivity as high as 9800 becquerel/kg. Articles (in German) here: http://www.neues-deutschland.d... and here: http://www.n-tv.de/wissen/Wild...

This radioactivity in the meat is caused by the boars eating mushrooms and other plants in the forest. If plants and animals in eastern Germany are still contaminated after all this time, I'd rather not eat anything from directly next to the chernobyl plant, or live there.

The Poster is an Idiot

[wisnoskij]

Radiation in real life is not like radiation in video games. When you encounter a dangerous irradiated zone you do not start screaming "It Burns, It Burns!", your eyes do not melt, your skin does not peel. You just statistically knock years off your life. Living there probably just cuts your lifespan in half, which in no way prevents a thriving ecosystem. Which is fine for animals and Russians, because Russians are fing crazy, but does not make it safe for general human occupation.