Chernobyl, the forest city

Have a look at what Chernobyl looks like now, nearly 30 years since it went up in smoke.

 

It's amazing how nature heals but how many years will have to pass before the area is safe? Our hill sheep here are still not free from radiation after Chernobyl, but very close.

 

And the sheep in Wales still glow in the dark

I read the article as well in the Daily Wail and they reckon it will be 20,000 years before it is safe.A bit after my lifetime me thinks,although they reckon some of the village folk refused to leave and carried on living there

 

It's scary. I remember seeing an episode of top gear where one of the idiots drove into the restricted zone

 

Cor

Make a great filum set if it didn't mess up the filum and kill you while you were filuming it.

 

Best tell them not to ever point a geiger counter straight up at open sky then. They'd probably have some sort of breakdown if they saw how much radiation we are being naturally bombarded with 24/7.

 

This lass, visits Chernobyl often and does tours on her Motor bike
Some interesting pics, many close up of the dozens of Fire engines all parked neatly in a row, their crews never to return

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/chapter1.html

Jack McH

 

Before Chernobyl Russian Women were dumpy with curlers and headscarfs, now they look like Supermodels

 

Radioactive material has a 'half life', the period of time it takes for the radiation to half its intensity. As the curve is logarithmic (I think that's the word), you can measure what happens over a much shorter interval of time, and then extrapolate that.

Nuclear energy in the way we know how to use it is just heat. The heat generated when atoms are smashed. In order for atoms to smash (at least without consuming more energy than you get back out) you need a very special atomic structure that is all too ready to give up one of the heavier particles of the nucleus, the neutron. In fact the atomic structure has to be such that it is willing to release 2 neutrons per atom. In most materials, that would take enormous amounts of energy, as these are heavy particles. Furthermore, the atomic structure has to be such that having been hit by a heavy particle like a neutron, more must be dislodged from their nuclei. Most materials simply wont allow this. Only two (that I know of) will, and both are heavily processed versions of their natural forms. Without this, you don't get useful heat to power steam turbines. However some materials will still release radiation that is harmful to us, but not the kind that will smash the nucleus of an atom, so it is considered to be waste.

I remember that baffling scientists just a few years after Chernobyl, when they found vegetation to be growing thicker and faster than normal. I guess that's just mother nature attempting to clean up the mess we made.

 

I wonder if the Chlorophyl can use the radiation? It's all part of the spectrum.

 

I wish I could answer that other than to say the waste is 99% low level waste, like worn once only rubber gloves, shoe covers and those white suits, This is compacted and still classed as Nuclear waste, so transported and buried deep in West Scotland Granite
The spent rods, are actually re-processed, stripped of the Uranium, and again the remains are pretty low level, these are compacted within the clothing containers that are buried
Trees and Animals, I have no idea, Just as on the I.O.M, The sheep still can not be eaten, Yet cattle graze on the self same fields ? and people actually live in the Hill foots,
It must be some subsidy scam !

Jack McH

 

I guess the Granite is probably more radioactive than the waste then.

 

I refer you to our Polymath ZIGS Who will report on his nuclear experiments on plants

Jack McH