Construction of new shelter for Chernobyl falls 7 years behind

[bananas]

http://www.platts.com/Nuclear/News/7556139.xml

Construction of new shelter for Chernobyl falls 7 years behind

London (Platts)--30Jul2007

Construction of a new shelter for the Chernobyl reactor destroyed in a 1986
accident has fallen about seven years behind schedule, primarily due to the
failure to award a construction contract, the Government Accountability Office
said in a report released July 27.

"The lack of a contract is partly the result of a lengthy disagreement between
the Ukraine and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development," GAO
said. "Technical uncertainties ... have also contributed to schedule slippages
and threaten to further delay the project," GAO said in its report. The
estimated cost to complete the project is currently $1.2 billion, but
"escalating prices for labor and materials" and other factors "could raise
costs further," it said.

The report, GAO-07-923, is available online
(http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07923.pdf).

[NNadir]

1. Oh. Oh.

It looks like everybody in the Ukraine will die this time, just like the last time.

I've heard in some places that the permanent shelter for dangerous fossil fuel waste has been delayed a few years.

True?

Is it that you don't know or just that you couldn't care less?

[Dogmudgeon]

2. The permanent shelter for dangerous fossil fuel waste

It's called The Atmosphere.

--p!
With major secondary storage facilities in The Human Lungs

[Nihil]

5. Right ... so following that thought ...

> With major secondary storage facilities in The Human Lungs

... we should immediately ban all cremations and insist that everyone
is buried in the ground, thus providing the world with its first genuine,
functional and easily-implemented carbon sequestration project!

And the more fossil fuel we pump into the atmosphere, the faster the
people will die and the more carbon is "sequestered". Woo-hoo!

Win-Win solutions R us ... :party: :toast:

[losthills]

3. That's cool...

I heard it's an earthly paradise there!

I heard it from the two guys above, who are never wrong....

[Dogmudgeon]

4. Spoken like a true peace activist

Mahatma Ghandi's Big Book Of Put-Downs, Come-Backs and Snarky Internet Wit.

--p!

[GliderGuider]

6. This line was deliciously ironic

The area was also estimated to be home to 280 species of birds, many of them rare and endangered. Breeding birds include the rare green crane, black stork, white-tailed sea eagle and fish hawk.

Endangered species rebounding in a "radiation-soaked" dead zone! My inner Deep Ecologist rubs his hands and chortles gleefully.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. It was predictable, though

I don't for a moment excuse the negligence or trivialize the accident. Chernobyl was a disastrous, worst-case occurrence, but the science-fiction version of what a radiation accident would be like just didn't happen. Reality happened, not fantasy. And Nature rebounded.

Even a major mercury spill doesn't kill everything off.

We have to stop thinking of nuclear energy, toxic waste, and synthetic chemicals in general, as being the modern versions of demons and evil spirits. They may cause disasters, but imposing our fear-fantasies on them leads to compounding the original mistakes. Nobody even checked up on Chernobyl for much of the 1990s and it became a modern Haunted Forest. Which, judging how the area has "healed" in the absence of human intrusion, was the best outcome possible.

I'm not hopeful. People enjoy their demons. It probably will lead to much more suffering, but fantasy always seems to come first. Happily, the underlying biology is resilient.

--p!

[phantom power]

8. Indeed. We'll be playing whack-a-mole with that biker chick story til the end of time.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. I think seveso did

I haven't done an extensive google so I can't give a link, but I recall the Seveso Zone A was empty for some years after the release: Everything there either died or was slaughtered, and the birds that moved into the area quickly acquired a lethal dose of TCDD, leaving the area "eerily silent".

Interestingly, no people died at Seveso. We're a bit like cockroaches.

[bananas]

9. If you're this gleeful over Chernobyl, you should be overjoyed with global warming

Global warming is a Deep Ecologists dream - a literal heaven on earth!
As people evacuate cities because of flooding and drought, rare species will move in.
Nature is already adapting to global warming - plants, animals, and insects are moving or adapting as the climate changes, as they have during past climate changes. It will be much harder on humans and monoculture crops.
Thousands of humans survived Chernobyl because they evacuated, had their thyroids removed, and were treated for their cancers and leukemia. You won't see any bunnies or deer with a "Chernobyl necklace" scar where their thyroid was removed - they just died. Downwinder human mutants survived because people took care of them. In nature, they just died and were eaten by other animals, not leaving a trace that they ever existed.

[phantom power]

11. Climate change is driving a mass extinction. Chernobyl didn't.

Your failure to grasp distinctions like that is one of those hallmarks of nuclear-phobia that we've remarked about a hundred times.

And BTW... "Downwinder human mutants?" You wonder why you have a hard time being taken seriously?

[bananas]

12. Post-Chernobyl genetic disaster in Belarus

Deep Ecologists rub their hands and chortle gleefully as humans suffer and die off ...

http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=5847

Post-Chernobyl genetic disaster in Belarus

BELARUS: March 1, 2000

MINSK - Post-Soviet Belarus has been plunged into a demographic disaster, with soaring levels of infertility and genetic changes 14 years after the Chernobyl disaster in neighbouring Ukraine, doctors said yesterday.

"Science cannot yet assess the consequences of the Chernobyl accident, but it is plain that a demographic catastrophe has occurred in Belarus," Vladislav Ostapenko, head of Belarus's radiation medicine institute, told a news conference.

"It is clear that we are seeing genetic changes, especially among those who were less than six years of age when subjected to radiation. These people are now starting families."

<snip>

Ostapenko said that within seven years of the accident, mortality rates were outstripping birth rates.

Girls in affected areas had five times the normal rate of deformations in their reproductive systems and boys three times the norm. Each year, 2,500 births were recorded with genetic abnormalities and 500 pregnancies were terminated after testing.

<snip>

[phantom power]

22. I overstepped myself. Chernobyl caused birth defects.

[Greyskye]

24. correction

Chernobyl is still causing birth defects.

Over 500,000 affected children in Belarus.

Thyroid cancer has increased by 2400%.

[losthills]

28. No shit??

[GliderGuider]

35. It's not clear to me whether the major effects were perhaps not mutagenic, or rather teratogenic

Certainly the majority of the early post-accident birth defects would have been from the teratogenic effects of ionizing radiation, as it damaged dividing fetal cells. "Genetic damage" implies mutagenic effects, which affects the DNA. One study that I found a reference to indicated that DNA damage had been found, but the article included the following quote: "Goodhead adds that none of the mutations detected in the study can be directly linked to any health problems." This implies that the children photographed by Fusco were the victims of in-utero teratogenicity, probably caused by internal radiation within the mother's body, but were probably not actual "mutants" in the science fiction sense we have come to think of.

This is not to imply that the nature of the effect lessens the tragedy, obviously this was a terrible catastrophe. However, it's important to understand the actual nature of what we are seeing, and not succumb to a medieval "The mutants are coming!" hysteria.

If the accident had not happened we would be seeing none of this. The question is, what is the probability of a similar accident happening again, especially given changing human circumstances. It's of course non-zero, but if we are about to face a massive change in the global energy supply picture, we need to be making rational cost-benefit anlyses.

[bananas]

13. Maybe you'd like to start atmospheric nuclear testing again

Rare species will move in as humans die off or move underground.
It would be heaven on earth for Deep Ecologists!
And you wonder why I don't take you guys seriously.

[phantom power]

21. I think you know that I disapprove of nuclear weaponry.

[bananas]

15. Bay Area teen now thankful for Chernobyl birth defects

Deep Ecologists don't know if they should chortle with glee or shout "Curses! Foiled again!" ...
she's now living an unsustainable American lifestyle - and her biomed degree will result in even more unsustainable humans!

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060501/ai_n16215625

Bay Area teen now thankful for Chernobyl birth defects
Oakland Tribune, May 1, 2006 by Angela Hill, STAFF WRITER

ALAMEDA -- Three years after the No. 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the former Soviet Union exploded, coughing out a penetrating cloud of radiation in the worst nuclear accident the world has known, Mikhaila Rutherford was born.

The little girl was missing part of her lower right leg, and a couple of fingers and toes -- birth defects directly attributed to the contamination -- so her parents gave her away. She spent her first four years of life in a Russian orphanage.

Not what one would consider a favorable series of events, yet Mikhaila -- now 17, an Alameda High School senior and a world- champion Paralympic swimmer -- thinks it was all one big blessing.

"Because of the disability, my parents gave me up for adoption. Otherwise, I never would have made it to the U.S.," she said Wednesday, on the 20th anniversary of the catastrophe. "And I think about how grateful I am that I'mhere. I'd trade my leg and fingers and toes any day to live here."

<snip>

"Nobody ever evacuated their village. And even before I was born, people there were watching wildlife have birth defects," Mikhaila said. "My mother only left town when there were pregnancy problems with me, and went to Minsk."

<snip>

Mikhaila will be attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, with a major in biomedical engineering. She says she loves science and mathematics, and biomed is the perfect combination of the two.

<snip>

[bananas]

16. Slate Magazine photo essay "Chernobyl Legacy"

It plays a short ad, then six photos with voice-over,
then press "play" for the rest of the photo essay with voice-over,
showing the downwinder human mutants.
"It was like a different race"
http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay_chernobyl/

[Greyskye]

25. thank you for that link

It should be required viewing for anyone who feels that the Chernobyl disaster "isn't as bad" as it is made out to be.

[Nihil]

32. Why?

Most of it is the stark horror of ANY children's asylum with a few
extra photos of horrible cancers thrown in. Very sad but not unique.

I watched it in all its artistic glory and "deep, meaningful" voiceovers.
It doesn't change my view of the Chernobyl disaster nor does it change
my view of nuclear power.

:shrug:

[GliderGuider]

27. That's a very, very powerful photo essay.

I was reminded of James Natchwey's book "Inferno" that haunts my basement. Like Fusco, Natchwey is also a Magnum photojournalist who works in black and white. The black-covered, tombstone-shaped "Inferno" is a soul-tearing collection of some of the most difficult-to-view photo essays I've ever seen, and this one is right up there with them. It drives home the risk of large scale uncontained nuclear accidents with visceral impact.

The thing that hit me as I was watching it is, "This was the result of an accident." When a nuclear power plant is operating correctly it's very easy to overlook or forget about the power of the forces that are being contained. It's when things go wrong that we get devastation. This happens not just with nuclear power, but with more prosaic activities like oil tankers negotiating Prince William Sound, or drilling for oil and gas on a platform called Piper Alpha. Few large-scale human activities are risk-free.

There's one thing even advocates of nuclear power should think about, though. There's an aspect of nuclear power that might become very problematic in the coming decades.

I beat the drum constantly about the brittleness of human civilization due to its size, efficiency, interconnectedness and its dependence on a single resource, oil, for much of its structure. If civilization experiences a catastrophic rupture because of declining oil supplies, one thing that will suffer is our ability to maintain complex technical enterprises. Enterprises like maintaining and operating nuclear reactors. What might happen if we were to build a bunch of them but then lose the ability to keep them operating? Coal plants fail safe. Nukes, I'm not so sure. I do know that in the aftermath of a significant disruption of industrial civilization, I'd rather be living next to a coal plant than a nuke.

[Dead_Parrot]

31. Coal plants fail safe?!

Interesting way of looking at it. How about when they work?. Here, have a lung:



This isn't failing safe - this is very, very, unsafe when it doesn't fail. Here, have someone dying of emphysema:



2,999,999 other people looked as unhealthy last year. a similar number will look like that next year. Have another lung:



Now go to Beijing and take a deep breath.

"Fail Safe" my arse.

[GliderGuider]

33. You mistake my point

I'm perfectly aware of lung damage, what causes it and what it looks like.

My point, which I guess wasn't well made, is that the risks posed by nuclear power could increase significantly after a collapse. Before that the risks can be kept under control by careful engineering, operating and maintenance practices. Afterwards those practices could be at risk.

I don't believe that additional nuclear power will materially reduce the global use of coal between now and then, so the safety of nuclear in that time frame is of less interest to me. What is more interesting is in far end of the reactors' life cycle, where the bathtub curve starts to rise and infrastructure needed for maintenance and decommissioning may not be functional.

Coal will always be Satan's own source of BTUs. But to say that nuclear power will always be as safe as it is now is to ignore or deny a potential of future problems.

[Dead_Parrot]

34. Ahh, wrong end of stick

No, that's my fault - my apologies. I'd be inclined to disagree to a point, though - the absolute worst thing that can happen to a reactor is you take the lid of and spread the contents around, and we know what that looks like. A properly built reactor would scram at some point in a collapse, and then sit there: it would centuries for the containment dome and core to breach, by which time a lot of the high-activity stuff would be pretty harmless: At Oklo, the fission products only migrated a few metres. Long term, I doubt it would be any more harmful than living in a area with natural high background radiation.

Although I say this with the disclaimer that I'm talking off the top of my head, and possibly out of my arse as well (quite the contortionist!).

[bananas]

10. Anyone who "rubs his hands and chortles gleefully" over this is sick.

I'd use harsher language, but the post would get deleted.

[GliderGuider]

18. On subjects like this you'll find me to be a fairly consistent contrarian.

My glee was over the fact that monumental human stupidity had inadvertently given endangered species some of the room they are being consistently denied elsewhere on the planet. That struck me as grimly amusing.

I don't want to see humanity die out. I just want us to give the other species with which we share the planet the same respect. I want us to recognize the responsibility we have for driving other species to extinction through the same short-sighted, monkey-brained self-interest that gave us the Chernobyl accident.

The irony I saw was that while normally our genius endangers animals, this time our stupidity gave them some room. Nothing more than that.

The lesson in there is that if we keep on being stupid in how we deal with our environment (especially in activities that don't even involve uranium), we may end up giving them a whole lot of room. I'd much rather that didn't happen.

[jpak]

14. Rebounding because humans have abandoned the area

The Chernobyl *Disaster* rendered the area around the plant uninhabitable.

repeat: humans would be endangered if they lived and grew crops there.

Abandon Manhattan Island and it will revert to a natural state in short order - wildlife would also "rebound".

There is *no* benefit to wildlife exposed to fission products released from the Chernobly plant.

And the critters that do live there are exposed to high levels of contamination and have incurred genetic damage - not good for "endangered species"...

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Actually, there *are* people still there

Hundreds of them. They're called the "samosely", and either refused to be evacuated or moved straight back: Now, I'm sure a lot of them are suffering, or are going to suffer, ill-effects from radiation (especially if they're in a hot-spot) but that they're still there after 20 years says something about how deadly the area is.



And yes, most of them grow their own food.

[jpak]

20. Perhaps they can export that wholesome food to NZ for school lunches

Oh yeah - that's a three day old kitten in the photo...

[Greyskye]

26. this also shows...

...how deadly the area is. The link that bananas posted above: http://todayspictures.slate.com/inmotion/essay%5Fchernobyl/

Have you watched it?

[Dead_Parrot]

30. Yes.

Imagine a line of dead people stretching from New York to Paris. That's how many people die from fossil fuels every year.

Now tell me how bad Chernobyl was. To the nearest hundred KM of corpses - no need to be exact.

[Greyskye]

36. I see.

Two wrongs make everything OK. Gotcha.

[phantom power]

37. No, you don't see. That isn't it at all.

Here is the crux of the argument:

1) Solar and wind cannot replace coal burning. Not in the time we have available, and the amount of money the world has available. The economics and grid logistics of it don't work out.

2) Nuclear power can replace coal, economically and logistically.

3) Once you put (1) and (2) together, you see that advocating renewables and simultaneously fighting nuclear prolongs the time we spend burning coal. Therefore it costs lives.

The chief difference between you and I? You don't accept (1) and/or (2), and so you clearly don't accept (3). I do, because I've seen the numbers and the arguments and they make sense.

[losthills]

40. That is simply wrong.

On both counts.

Wind and solar can replace oil and coal for generating electricity.

Nuclear power cannot. Cannot and will not. And pretending that it can will produce more tragic environmental consequences than what we have already....

[Dead_Parrot]

42. Yes, dammit!

That's how hard you have to clap!

I Believe! I Believe! I Believe!

[hunter]

29. "Genetic Damage" oh what a crock.

Can't be messing with God's Good design now, can we?

Bah. Damned Creationist misconceptions, stamp 'em out in one place, and they pop up in another guise.

The increased level of radiation surely does damage things, some species will not be able to cope well with it, but in terms of natural ecologies, humans do a whole lot more damage than that.

I think I'd rather be radioactive if my only other choice was to have my home destroyed, and my kids starved out and shot at by humans. Remember, we are talking about a natural environment here, where the vast majority of organisms do not die gently of old age -- mostly they get sick and/or eaten before their clocks run out. Radiation damage is a minor worry. Even in the most awful case, organisms that can cope with the radiation will prosper, and yes, even thrive. Apparantly that's most organisms -- there will be no slow drifting away from fitness, because get this -- what survives is fit.

That's the bloody irony here, human beings are worse for the environment than nuclear waste. We don't like radioactive crap, but the fish in a pond who no longer has to worry about fisherman or pollution may actually be better off for it.

[losthills]

23. Rare birds and brave humans...

We don't know what kind of genetic damage they and will be passing on.

[hunter]

38. Again, how do you define "genetic damage?"

It's really only applicable in the case of human individuals. That's why we care about it. Cancer and birth defects are bad, but there's nothing that's "passing on." Organisms survive and reproduce, or they don't.

In the case of large non-human populations "gentetic damage" can't be defined. Yeah, high levels of radiation will exert some sort of selective pressure, but so do many other things, especially things that have human causes -- chemical pollution, environmental disruption, etc.

[jpak]

39. "Very High Mutation Rate in Offspring of Chernobyl Accident Liquidators"

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0962-8452(20010522)268%3A1471%3C1001%3AVHMRIO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q

Human minisatellite mutation rate after the Chernobyl accident

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v380/n6576/abs/380683a0.html

Abstract

Germline mutation at human minisatellite loci has been studied among children born in heavily polluted areas of the Mogilev district of Belarus after the Chernobyl accident and in a control population. The frequency of mutation was found to be twice as high in the exposed families as in the control group. Mutation rate in the Mogilev families was correlated with the level of caesium-137 surface contamination, consistent with radiation induction of germline mutation.

<more>

Fitness loss and germline mutations in barn swallows breeding in Chernoby

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v389/n6651/abs/389593a0.html

Abstract

The severe nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 resulted in the worst reported accidental exposure of radioactive material to free-living organisms1. Short-term effects on human populations inhabiting polluted areas include increased incidence of thyroid cancer2, infant leukaemia3, and congenital malformations in newborns4. Two recent studies5,6 have reported, although with some controversy7,8, that germline mutation rates were increased in humans and voles living close to Chernobyl, but little is known about the viability of the organisms affected9. Here we report an increased frequency of partial albinism, a morphological aberration associated with a loss of fitness, among barn swallows, Hirundo rustica, breeding close to Chernobyl. Heritability estimates indicate that mutations causing albinism were at least partly of germline origin. Furthermore, evidence for an increased germline mutation rate was obtained from segregation analysis at two hypervariable microsatellite loci, indicating that mutation events in barn swallows from Chernobyl were two- to tenfold higher than in birds from control areas in Ukraine and Italy.

<more>

Elevated Minisatellite Mutation Rate in the Post-Chernobyl Families from Ukraine

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/342729&erFrom=-7149941693229611213Guest

Germline mutation at eight human minisatellite loci has been studied among families from rural areas of the Kiev and Zhitomir regions of Ukraine, which were heavily contaminated by radionuclides after the Chernobyl accident. The control and exposed groups were composed of families containing children conceived before and after the Chernobyl accident, respectively. The groups were matched by ethnicity, maternal age, parental occupation, and smoking habits, and they differed only slightly by paternal age. A statistically significant 1.6-fold increase in mutation rate was found in the germline of exposed fathers, whereas the maternal germline mutation rate in the exposed families was not elevated. These data, together with the results of our previous analysis of the exposed families from Belarus, suggest that the elevated minisatellite mutation rate can be attributed to post-Chernobyl radioactive exposure. The mechanisms of mutation induction at human minisatellite loci are discussed.

<more>

Chernobyl's voles spring a genetic surprise

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14719902.600-chernobyls-voles-spring-a-genetic-surprise.html

MUTATIONS in the DNA of voles found in the "hot zone" around the devastated Chernobyl nuclear plant are cropping up at a far higher rate than expected. Results of research on the voles, presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution in Montreal last month, raises questions about the full effect of radiation on animal populations and on humans.

American researchers led by Ron Chesser of the University of Georgia's Savannah River Ecology Laboratory examined the DNA in mitochondria, the energy-producing bodies in the cell cytoplasm. They found 46 mutations in just one gene, the cytochrome b gene, in nine voles taken from the 30-kilometre restricted zone around Chernobyl. When they examined 10 animals from outside the "hot zone", they found four mutations.

<more>

[hunter]

41. And?

"Two recent studies have reported, although with some controversy, that germline mutation rates were increased in humans and voles living close to Chernobyl, but little is known about the viability of the organisms affected."

Meanwhile, a great deal is known about the effects of other human activities on wildlife.

I'm not saying radioactive pollution is good, only that wildlife is better off now that humans are excluded from this environment.

In comparison to the environmental impacts of high-input industrial scale agriculture or coal mining the impacts of the Chernobyl accident are surprisingly mild, and seem roughly comparable to problems such as agricultural runoff, especially things like selenium concentration:

The National Irrigation Water-Quality Program has Identified Several Areas with Elevated Concentrations of Selenium

Selenium is an element required in trace amounts for human and animal health, but it can cause health problems for livestock, wildlife, and humans when ingested in higher-than-required concentrations. Incidences of mortality, birth defects, and reproductive failure in waterfowl were discovered at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge, San Joaquin Valley, California, by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) in 1983 (Presser, 1994). These problems were attributed to elevated concentrations of selenium in irrigation drainage that discharged to the refuge. Because of concern about possible adverse effects from irrigation drainage on Department of the Interior (DOI) projects elsewhere in the United States, the DOI organized scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), USFWS, Bureau of Reclamation (BOR), and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to form the National Irrigation Water-Quality Program (NIWQP). The objectives of the program are to investigate DOI-managed lands for potential contamination related to irrigation drainage, conduct studies to identify the problems, investigate methodologies to remediate those problems, and implement remediation plans (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2002).

Reconnaissance Studies directed by the NIWQP investigated 26 areas during 1986-95 (Engberg and others, 1998). Nine of these areas were further studied through NIWQP Detailed Studies. The completed Detailed Studies identified five areas with problems of sufficient magnitude to require further study or remediation:

• Middle Green River basin of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming (fig. 1),
• Kendrick Reclamation Project Area near Casper, Wyoming,
• Gunnison River/Grand Valley area of western Colorado,
• Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge near Carson City, Nevada,
• Salton Sea in southern California near the border with Mexico.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-031-03