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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."
No way!
Yes way!
They do get better...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
60 minutes regularly misrepresents facts for the sake of drama or propping up political narratives. I guess even chernobyl wasn't 'scary' enough for them to resist embellishing it.
A popular website now gone showed the readings to the exclusion zone 10 years ago.
While I got modded down for saying it is dangerous here as this is a pro nuclear site there are areas near the plant where the radiation is 100x as high as other parts of the zone. Trees to this day show genetic aberrations in areas near the plant regardless of the thriving ecosystem developing in the nearbye Ukrainian city.
Safe to visit the abandoned city of Prypiat but I would not want to live there and drink the water, get near the plant, or risk having dust on a windy day get near my face or food.
http://saveie6.com/
Fear of the unknown is a huge fear few can overcome.
The difference between fear of the unknown and fear of the known is huge.
I recently watched a much more informative video on youtube of a local hunting radioactive particles. He found some very hot grain of rice size pieces of graphite in an area with only slightly elevated background radiation.
Living there would not be an issue if you were not blind to the danger. A dosimeter won't tell you you picked up a hot particle in your shoe that is killing your foot. Vising the area with proper tools to find and identify the hot particles is essential to working and living there.
Search youtuble videos of tours of the place. Find the ones where people are looking for the hot particles.
Before I take a lunch in the park, I would want to sweep it for any hotspots before reclining on the ground.
Yes I'm sure he would not mind moving his whole family to a remote area in a foreign country, sacrificing his career, relationships with friends and family, just to prove a point. Of course if he doesn't do this, we should definitely assume it's because he is a liar and secretly agrees that Chernobyl is very dangerous.
From TFS: "There has been quite a bit of discussion about the misinformation propagated by this particular 60 Minutes segment."
But somehow... he never actually gets around to telling us what any of those things are. Instead, the bulk of the article is dedicated to snide ad hominem attacks on the reporter. The article headline asks "Is Chernobyl still dangerous or was 60 Minutes pushing propaganda?", but places essentially all of it's effort on the latter portion of the question.
In short, it's a deeply biased article from a deeply biased source.
Look at me! I ride a motorcyle, rented a geiger counter and went around Priyat with a geiger counter, wrote down some readings and took photos of abandoned buildings just like the hundreds of other tourists per year.
The area is well studied by actual scientists who conducted actual research. I'll trust their assessments. I don't need any ignorant opinions by tourists pretending to be scientists. By your standards taking a few photos of the Tower of London and Big Ben while on vacation in England would make you a knowledgeable scholar of English history.
Rod Adams has a hard time attacking what the 60mins guy says so he goes on a long attack against the man himself.
He then implies that being 10,000 times more radioative than normal is no big deal.
He then comes up with an absurd fallacious argument stating that the area is safe because buildings and metals are solid so this somehow makes the area safe, serious WTF here, the guy is an complete idiot if he thinks this is sound reasoning. This didn't stop the mice becoming 10,000x more radioactive did it?
If Chernobyl is so safe then why are they building a new billion dollar sarcophagus around it. If "lumps of metal cannot move or become airborne" then why are they building a new billion dollar sarcophagus around it?
In all, Rod Adams page is full of drivel, no fact is sensibly debated or shown to be wrong, he 'reads into this' new facts that never existed, he attacks 60mins and it's presenter because there is nothing in the video worth attacking.
He concludes with a quote from someone saying they would trusts 60mins facts less in the future. I conclude that Rod Adams is a nuclear zealot who is no good at science and so attacks the people who state anything he doesn't agree with, rather than having the intelligence to deconstruct the message and debate it in any meaningful way.
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