Shouts From Down Under

I wish I was a punk rocker with a PhD in Nuclear whatsy.

How do we understand the insane excitement of nuclear radiation?

Don't you feel it? Feel the edge of it? The edge of something great, unfathomable, menacing and beyond, way, way, beyond our control.

This site has bulk information on the subject, though somewhat out of date - 1990.

http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter5.html

But for the sake of this blog, I'll try to remember some of the weirder things about nuclear radiation that I read during my research on this subject.
I haven't done near enough, of course. Does every author do enough? I doubt it. Research into perfectly accurate information is endless I think.

And do we really want to become experts at nuclear physics, or building skyscrapers, or repairing Caterpillar diesel earthmoving equipment, just to write an action novel containing these reference areas?

Isn't that a mark of a good writer, who can plausibilise (yes, just made up the word) a raft of reading material, with very minimal idea on the subject.
A few questions here and there, to relevant people who are experts in that field, some first hand viewing of the themes and industries, trades, academia etc, and perhaps some soaking up of the atmosphere, gossip, jargon and such, and the whole written work sounds real.

With a few well chosen words, a non-fiction world can be built to support a fictional plot, fictional characters, fictional action and fictional backstory.
I don't think inherent wisdom that can be built into a story can be fictional. Wisdom is true however it's devised. That's my belief. Otherwise its not wisdom is it?

BACK to the subject at hand.

The strangest things about radiation. I'm talking about extreme radiation here.

To get some idea of the amount of radiation that came out of Chernobyl's Reactor number 4, and still is to this day, and will do for, what is it, an estimated 25k years?

Well, from the embarrassingly small amount of research I've done without actually going there and seeing anyone first hand, the vast majority of people who have worked anywhere near the remaining lava in that reactor, have died or become one of the long term ill. I know this first hand from talking to a few people who were there, who lived there, who saw the explosion, and who were evacuated along with the other 50 thousand from the city, and the many other thousands from the regions around the place.

There is a lot of stuff that went on, that most people don't know about. (Or truthfully, want to know. This is understandable; it's not very cheerful to think about)

Anyway, there are a couple of things that spring to mind, that happened there, near the reactor and in the areas of fallout.

For a few days / nights, the chimney glowed with heat.

Here's segments of the chimney that was removed in the last few months (late last year?) of Reactor #4.
There is a new confinement being built that will roll over the dead reactor, effectively sealing it in for the next 100 years. Doesn't seem anywhere near enough but in that time perhaps they can remove the lava and process it into proper waste areas.



Webcam of New Safe Confinement being built. This is up to the minute viewing.

http://www.chnpp.gov.ua/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=230&Itemid=...

To watch the following clip, please click on where it says to play it on YouTube.



Plants that have forgotten which way is up. They grow sideways and way too big. This article isn't the one that I read about this, but it seems to sum up a lot about that area.

http://badrickunadulterated.com/?p=346

Yes, plants have adapted surprisingly well to radiation.

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/presspacs/2010/acs-presspac-december...

And this from 2014. Gerd Ludwig

http://www.wired.com/2014/04/gerd-ludwig-chernobyl/

“We can never trace back one disease to one single cause,” Ludwig says. “Even the numbers of people who will eventually die of cancer related diseases caused by Chernobyl are disputed–the UN initially put the number at 4,000, then 6,000, then 8,000. Now they’re at 9,000. Greenpeace and other reputable environmental agencies have put the numbers at 100,000 and more. Where the number really is, we will never know, because the 800,000 people that were brought in from all over the Soviet Union are dispersed back all over the former Soviet Republics. There is no record of who was there, who got sick and how. We will never know.”

You know, I'm a humorous bloke, but I just find nothing about this disaster in the least bit funny. Some people do. I guess it is just ignorance of the suffering. So, another strange thing to come out of high levels of radiation, are bad jokes and black humour.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread143347/pg1

There are computer games too with a focus on Chernobyl, Pripyat, zombies, space / time wormholes and deformed beings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:_Shadow_of_Chernobyl

Humour and games may seem so disrespectful of the suffering and death, but I take a different view of this.

How else will young people get to know about it, to learn about what happened, to have their curiosity stirred? Really. Think about the reality. We'd like to imagine it to be some other way.
But games and story telling have always been the only reliable way to hand down stories for generations to come. It doesn't have to be organised. It just happens.
And these stories will have plenty of back up. These computer games theme won't go away any time soon...

When the explosion happened, the concrete walls of the reactor structure were seen to become viscous, like jelly, walls bulging inwards, all to reset again afterwards.

The Army were brought in to "control" the disaster with their tanks and APC's. They were told to camp on the ground in front of the Reactor, and to use a pile of straw for their bedding that was nearby. All of this was highly contaminated.

Rumours of grotesque mutations persist, with some photos but not much documentation. However, this doesn't mean it's not the reality. This is a hostile area, environmentally and, particularly lately, potentially politically dangerous as well.
Somehow I doubt that any invader will find it any easier to cross the Pripyat marshes than Hitler or any other aggressor in the past. Especially in winter...

So; thousands of years for Chernobyl. Eternity for Fukishima.

But luckily for us, nature is fighting our battles for us, and seems to rather like the fact that mankind isn't there, except a few old people (Babushkas) still squatting in the Zone of Alienation around Chernobyl. These old people are perhaps made extra healthy by the process of Hormeosis. This is a theory that some exposure to radiation is good for your health, basically from my understanding, "encouraging" your body to produce new cells to replace what you've got (damaged by radiation).

Maybe that's teaching us something?

There's the thing about lessons though, eh? The learners have to want to learn, have to want to be taught.


Sparky