Bishop Hill Wildlife thriving in Chernobyl
Oct 6, 2015 Energy: nuclear Greens ;)
Pic Arctic Woof under CC licence https://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticwoof/7105477111To some extent, concerns over global warming have arisen as a direct result of environmentalists' scaremongering over nuclear energy. How much lower would carbon dioxide emissions have been if the world had gone nuclear in the 1960s?
That environmentalists were scaremongering is confirmed by a new paper in Current Biology, which reports long-term survey data from the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Despite numerous earlier studies reporting that radiation levels in the 1600 square miles zone are above dangerous levels, nobody seems to have passed the news on to the wildlife:
...our long-term empirical data showed no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance. Relative abundances of elk, roe deer, red deer and wild boar within the Chernobyl exclusion zone are similar to those in four (uncontaminated) nature reserves in the region and wolf abundance is more than 7 times higher. Additionally, our earlier helicopter survey data show rising trends in elk, roe deer and wild boar abundances from one to ten years post-accident.
Imagine then a world in which the world had not been set back half a century by a monstrous regiment of hippies.
Bishop Hill
The Conversation has a post about the paper too.
Bishop Hill
It's interesting to ponder what this tells us about the linear no-threshold model for ionising radiation. This is the idea that if lab rats are harmed by high doses of radiation then low doses must harm them too (you can't easily test this proposition in the lab because the effect is too weak).
Some recent research findings suggest that this could well be the case.
The LNT model... is inconsistent with biologic and experimental data, which show the nature and the effectiveness of immediate and delayed defense systems to vary widely with dose and dose rate. No convincing epidemiologic data support the LNT relationship. It has been said that for low doses, epidemiology faces its limits (166).
Reader Comments (58)
Animals don't live as long as humans. They also have way more threats to their lives, and any health issues result in them being killed and eaten by predators before these issues can have clearly recognisable impact. They also breed following food abundance, so any average age decrease caused by increased incidence of health problems (or predating supported by that) is compensated by breeding.
Most of these factors don't apply to most first world humans. Food is abundant beyond being a limiting factor. And most people are not ready to have more children if their older ones died, they prefer keeping themselves and their kids alive and healthy for a long time instead. This preference is one of factors standing behind progress of our civilization, too.
Could people live in the Chernobyl area? No doubts they could. They'd not mutate beyond recognition. They'd probably have increased incidence of cancer and some other health problems and would need to compensate it by increased number of births. Would they want to live that way? Would their babies accept the choice of their parents? Would the rest of the world like that they live that way? That's the question.
Ivan
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23887208
"....The LNT concept became accepted by radiation geneticists and recommended by national/international advisory committees for risk assessment of ionizing radiation-induced mutational damage/cancer from the mid-1950s to the present...."
So no hippies or greens involved and not even in the 60's!
There is no doubt that the ever-increasing safety rules have increased costs. However my own experience is that it is the nuclear regulators doing this with no encouragement from greens or anyone else. On the other hand, when we are lax at regulating then we get indiscriminate undocumented dumping in shallow trenches - such as at Drigg in the 50's or by the Italian mafia* and you also get reactor designs with no containment or with positive void coefficients such as at Chernobyl.
*http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2483484/Toxic-nuclear-waste-dumped-illegally-Mafia-blamed-surge-cancers-southern-Italy.html
The articles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon#Domestic-level_exposure & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation seem not to support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Perhaps Radon is not present at Chernobyl?
One can shut down nuclear fission in a reactor by inserting control rods, and that worked well at Fukushima. Unfortunately, fission byproducts continue to decay after nuclear fission stops, giving off lots of heat. Even with fission shut down, if the supply of coolant to a reactor is halted, the temperature rises rapidly. Eventually the Zirconium cladding on the uranium fuel: 1) melts, releasing uranium and fission byproducts and 2) reacts with water, releasing hydrogen gas. The released hydrogen gas has a nasty tendency to react explosively with oxygen, damaging the containment structure and spreading volatile radioactive iodine. The hot fuel at Fukushima melted through the pressure vessel and 1 m or more into the concrete below. What occurred at Fukushima or worse can easily occur after any loss-of-coolant accident. Whether or not wildlife is thriving around Chernobyl, the radioactive iodine released in nuclear accidents certainly is causing some cases of thyroid cancer.
To my knowledge, we don't have any practical long-term experience generating electricity from reactors that aren't vulnerable to loss-of-coolant accidents. If it took about a decade to construct some reactors without this vulnerability and they were operated safely for another decade, large numbers of safer reactors might begin to become available beginning 30 years from now - if we are lucky. So today's vulnerable technology is the only option for reducing CO2 emissions with nuclear power until about 2050.
Today, 11% of the world's electricity comes from about 450 nuclear reactors (20% of US electricity from 100 reactors). Given the increasing demand for electricity in developing countries and the likelihood of routine use of battery-powered or plug in hybrid vehicles, the demand for electricity will rise, creating a need for perhaps 10,000 reactors. With two major loss-of-coolant accidents (not counting Chernobyl) in about 20,000 reactor-years, applying the historical incident rate to 10,000 reactors would produce a loss-of-coolant accident somewhere in the world about every two years. Experience and new equipment could reduce risks; less competence in developing countries and terrorism could increase risks.
Then there is political risk - Fukushima caused Germany to abandon nuclear power.
Nuclear power may be the cheapest or only practical way meet most future demand for electricity without emitting CO2. If we do so, however, there almost certainly will be more Fukushima's; perhaps too many Fukushima's.
scrmming can be made fool proof of course, fukiushima is 60's technology and passiva shutdown wasnt even comsidered then
these plants are crony capitalism products, whereby all effort is concentrated towards "too big to fail"
i can with a stylo make better designs , having 50y more experience and system design under my belt
via google and wikipedia
for starters we are well capable to make far cheaper far more reloable and smaller steel pots
so instead of. 1 1000 mw pot it is much more sensinle to build 200 10Mw pots in an array , with maintenance equip!ment that can handle any eventuality. pots will crack allthough far less likely if you
buy a good quality on amazon
3 m thick concrete walls? get out of here. 30 cm will do, but i make triple hull of course taking a cue
from bacteria. walls will crack so i will keep a burlap bag of cement and sand handy.
oh and the dirt, no problem we use the many old binders with regulations for that
the forms andcertification for poopaer in the john
Oct 7, 2015 at 10:58 AM | Frank
A somewhat nonsensical statement but assuming you were referring to Chernobyl and Fukushima as Iodine 131 emitting accidents it is hardly likely that cases of thyroid cancer are occurring as a result since in the case of Chernobyl it is 1,341 half-lives since the accident and even in the case of Fukushima 208 half lives have passed. Very, very, very little remains - it is almost all now stable Xenon 131.
As for your risk maths - you should be a climatologist.
Surely there must be some great data coming out of Fukushima either supporting or contradicting today's standards???
Mailman
People will get ill and die in the region from various causes, like in the rest of the world.
the causes fluctuate over the years, so one year , by the odds, you ll have a bit more cancer x and a bit less cancer.
you can be sure that for all cancer x there will ne a turgid leftwing study claiming to have found fukushima KILLED more than .. zero.. people. pays well, little risk, belong to he group engage in group think.
h
it pays better to PLAY being the scientist than BE the scientist, as all warmish research proves, day in day out.
chernobyl, as well as fukushima probably have a positive prophylaxis effect on cancers
no one died of radiation btw in fukushima, 2 people died in the nuclear plant because a box fell on their head.
25000 people died of...water..
nuclear energy is an industry DESTROYED by lefty scum, for no good reason except they HAVE to keep up
the narrative. Lefty scum cannot afford to lose a narrative, people wld start to question all their other lies
the only reason lefty scum chose for being AGAINST nuclear, was that it was an oportunit for them in Germany in the 80s (strutting germanys unionised coal industry)