10 ms·

Chernobyl wildfires and radiation risk

79 points by vvincendon 7y ago

baldspotslap 7y ago
Approved
vvincendon 7y ago
A short essay on whether the Chernobyl wildfires represent any widespread radiation risk considering the strongest anticyclone ever recorded in Western Europe.
- aktiur 7y ago
  Question regarding Iodine-131: is it still being generated inside the spent fuel / nuclear waste in Chernobyl? From what I could gather, Iodine-131 is mostly a fission byproduct, and is not present in any of the 4 decay chains[1]. If none is still being generated, there should not be any significant quantity left considering it has a half-life of only 8 days. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain
  - egorfine 7y ago
    Iodine is only generated in a working reactor.
  - Mvandenbergh 7y ago
    Yeah there's none left, activity is now dominated by caesium 137 which has a 30 year half life.
- DagAgren 7y ago
  It's an extremely uninformed essay too. It's talking about radioactive iodine, which is long since gone due to its short half-life. There's no point worrying about it, or taking iodine supplements to protect against it.
ConsiderCrying 7y ago
I love looking at that "Radiation Dose Chart", which has been posted quite frequently ever since "Chernobyl" the tv series aired. Shows just how much radiation humans are dealing with on an everyday basis. Regarding the essay, I wouldn't mind seeing what the risk is like for the nearby regions. I've seen reports that the rains might smooth some of the danger but it's still a chilling prospect. Wouldn't contamination of land in the Kiev region and parts of Belarus mean a disruption of some supply chains? I've read that Ukraine delivers vast amounts of salt to the EU, that would likely be hit. (Not to mention the impact on people but that's a different matter altogether.)
- Krasnol 7y ago
  Here is another chart: https://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/s/cc_images/cache_2436040664.jpg?t=1369573955 https://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/s/cc_images/cache_243604066... It shows the raise of thyroid cancer in Belarus. Radiation accidents are quite convenient as those who suffer from them spread over a very long time while you read always that only one person died from Fukushima for example.
  - xorfish 7y ago
    There was also much less radiation that got out in the Fukushima accident. Levels are so low, that you can't make predictions that are bases on real data. You can only extrapolate the cancer risk from higher doses. Every coal and gas plant does around the same harm as a Fukushima accident every year if you look at the deaths they cause. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
  - arcticbull 7y ago
    Just as an FYI, in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is about an order of magnitude safer than the next safest contender, solar, and two orders of magnitude safer than coal. [1, 2] Also consider that the worst ever accident in the history of nuclear power, Chernobyl of course, is expected to in the full course of time, kill 4,000 people (including those who killed themselves because they thought they were "contaminated"). On the other hand, the worst hydro accident, the Bangqiao dam failure, killed 171,000 people in the span of likely about 10 whole minutes. [3, 4] It bears calling out separately for emphasis since you mentioned it, if you're going to get any cancer, just pray it's thyroid cancer -- it has a 98% survival rate [5]. The thyroid is removed and you take thyroxin for the rest of your life, but otherwise, you're good to go. If you're in an affected area adding it to your routine screening should be more than sufficient. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy [2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [5] https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid-cancer/statistics https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid-cancer/statistic...
k_bx 7y ago
> As if covid-19 was not enough already. And war with Russia, yes.
nuccy 7y ago
Spreading of the wildfires in the exclusion zone has been stopped, rainy days helped with their extinguishing. Radiation levels are within safe ranges [2]. The wildfires started from the nearby villages where residents were careless with burning their waste. As a response Ukrainian parliament increased fines for such actions by 18 times [3]. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-wildfires-close-chernobyl-extinguished-rain-falls/story?id=70138987 https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-wildfires-close... [2] http://www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua/MEDO-PS/index.php http://www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua/MEDO-PS/index.php [3] https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/654801.html https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/654801.html
jojo2000 7y ago
In order to assess the danger you need to monitor realtime exposure to radioactive particles. There is no measurements here. It seems the data exists in Europe but not publicly accessible which is a shame. The Tchernobyl accident released a lot of radioactivity in the air. The soil contamination is twofold : - spotty : some rocks that blew thru the explosion highly contaminated some spots. - distributed : the plume contaminated the soil with material of different half-lifes. The problem here is that trees are recycling organic matter that was tainted by radioactivity and so, if they burn they release it in floating materials. We cannot infer something meaningful from the plume's direction as the atmosphere has high-flowing air currents in upper atmosphere that redistribute the pollution. Only a raise of radioactivity in realtime measurements will tell. I'm sure the effect can be seen in Europe currently, yet no one wants to scare people so information is hidden.
- morsch 7y ago
  "The Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission provides qualified information about the level of environmental radioactivity to the public, Member States, European Commission and European Parliament." https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx "We believe in building something that matters. Something that has a positive impact on the lives of many. This is why we have created uRADMonitor, because our bodies are fragile and because pollution is harmful both to us and to the environment. So we have designed a worldwide network of automated monitors, as a first line detection and warning system against the harmful chemical and physical factors around us." https://www.uradmonitor.com/ https://www.uradmonitor.com/
  - jojo2000 7y ago
    yes, great resource. Still, I know there exists and official network of radiation detection in Europe yet data is not accessible (except maybe here [0]) and we would need historical data to see fluctuations over natural threshold (more than 24H) [0] https://era.org.mt/en/Pages/Ionising-Radiation-Monitoring-Stations.aspx https://era.org.mt/en/Pages/Ionising-Radiation-Monitoring-St...
kdmytro 7y ago
It's spelled Chornobyl.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Every year it's something different, it seems. Points towards an impossible translation situation, maybe?
  - konart 7y ago
    Not exactly. Chernobyl is the right way of transliteration from Russian name of the plant (Чернобыль), Chornobyl would be the right way if you are doing the same from Ukrainian (Чорнобиль). Same goes for Kiev\Kyev. These days ukrainians are often pissed if you use the 'wrong' one.
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      Thanks, that clears up a lot, including why Kyiv changes too. I was suspect that it was about political correctness.
    - agapon 7y ago
      Also, the Chernobyl accident happened while the USSR still existed and its dominant / official language was Russian. Now the former Chornobyl power nuclear plant is in Ukraine where Ukrainian is the official language.
      - NovemberWhiskey 7y ago
        So if you've a date in Constantinople She'll be waiting in Istanbul.
    - practice9 7y ago
      I think it's reasonable for a country that wants to break away from its' Soviet past
cyptus 7y ago
would cloud seeding be an option against wildfires?
ISL 7y ago
I don't believe that there are any significant I-131 production mechanisms within the decay chains of the fallout. Iodine 131 has an eight day half life. The accident was 12,409 days ago. There is <2^{-1500} of the iodine remaining. For scale, if the Earth were made entirely, by mass, from I-131 on the day of the accident, there would have been ~10^50 nuclei. All of those nuclei would have decayed into daughters within the first four years. There is certainly plenty of residual radioactivity from Chernobyl, with which one might be concerned regarding forest fires. The specific hazard against which potassium iodide provides protection, however, is no longer present.
Avernar 7y ago
So far in 2020 we have a near-war with Iran, a global pandemic, a locust invasion in Africa, Krakatoa erupting in Indonesia, and now a radioactive wildfire, and it's only April.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
The article says "South West" when it means "South East". On a map or image with North at the top, West is left and East is right. If the author confused West and East, I'm not holding out much hope that any of the rest of the article is accurate.
pvaldes 7y ago
Massive saiga mortality loading?...

79 points by vvincendon 7y ago

Approved

A short essay on whether the Chernobyl wildfires represent any widespread radiation risk considering the strongest anticyclone ever recorded in Western Europe.

aktiur 7y ago
Question regarding Iodine-131: is it still being generated inside the spent fuel / nuclear waste in Chernobyl? From what I could gather, Iodine-131 is mostly a fission byproduct, and is not present in any of the 4 decay chains[1]. If none is still being generated, there should not be any significant quantity left considering it has a half-life of only 8 days. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain
- egorfine 7y ago
  Iodine is only generated in a working reactor.
- Mvandenbergh 7y ago
  Yeah there's none left, activity is now dominated by caesium 137 which has a 30 year half life.
DagAgren 7y ago
It's an extremely uninformed essay too. It's talking about radioactive iodine, which is long since gone due to its short half-life. There's no point worrying about it, or taking iodine supplements to protect against it.

ConsiderCrying 7y ago

I love looking at that "Radiation Dose Chart", which has been posted quite frequently ever since "Chernobyl" the tv series aired. Shows just how much radiation humans are dealing with on an everyday basis. Regarding the essay, I wouldn't mind seeing what the risk is like for the nearby regions. I've seen reports that the rains might smooth some of the danger but it's still a chilling prospect. Wouldn't contamination of land in the Kiev region and parts of Belarus mean a disruption of some supply chains? I've read that Ukraine delivers vast amounts of salt to the EU, that would likely be hit. (Not to mention the impact on people but that's a different matter altogether.)

Krasnol 7y ago
Here is another chart: https://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/s/cc_images/cache_2436040664.jpg?t=1369573955 https://www.hilfe-tschernobyl.de/s/cc_images/cache_243604066... It shows the raise of thyroid cancer in Belarus. Radiation accidents are quite convenient as those who suffer from them spread over a very long time while you read always that only one person died from Fukushima for example.
- xorfish 7y ago
  There was also much less radiation that got out in the Fukushima accident. Levels are so low, that you can't make predictions that are bases on real data. You can only extrapolate the cancer risk from higher doses. Every coal and gas plant does around the same harm as a Fukushima accident every year if you look at the deaths they cause. https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy
- arcticbull 7y ago
  Just as an FYI, in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is about an order of magnitude safer than the next safest contender, solar, and two orders of magnitude safer than coal. [1, 2] Also consider that the worst ever accident in the history of nuclear power, Chernobyl of course, is expected to in the full course of time, kill 4,000 people (including those who killed themselves because they thought they were "contaminated"). On the other hand, the worst hydro accident, the Bangqiao dam failure, killed 171,000 people in the span of likely about 10 whole minutes. [3, 4] It bears calling out separately for emphasis since you mentioned it, if you're going to get any cancer, just pray it's thyroid cancer -- it has a 98% survival rate [5]. The thyroid is removed and you take thyroxin for the rest of your life, but otherwise, you're good to go. If you're in an affected area adding it to your routine screening should be more than sufficient. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy [2] https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-ener... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [5] https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid-cancer/statistics https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid-cancer/statistic...

k_bx 7y ago

> As if covid-19 was not enough already. And war with Russia, yes.

nuccy 7y ago

Spreading of the wildfires in the exclusion zone has been stopped, rainy days helped with their extinguishing. Radiation levels are within safe ranges [2]. The wildfires started from the nearby villages where residents were careless with burning their waste. As a response Ukrainian parliament increased fines for such actions by 18 times [3]. [1] https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-wildfires-close-chernobyl-extinguished-rain-falls/story?id=70138987 https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-wildfires-close... [2] http://www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua/MEDO-PS/index.php http://www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua/MEDO-PS/index.php [3] https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/654801.html https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/654801.html

jojo2000 7y ago

In order to assess the danger you need to monitor realtime exposure to radioactive particles. There is no measurements here. It seems the data exists in Europe but not publicly accessible which is a shame. The Tchernobyl accident released a lot of radioactivity in the air. The soil contamination is twofold : - spotty : some rocks that blew thru the explosion highly contaminated some spots. - distributed : the plume contaminated the soil with material of different half-lifes. The problem here is that trees are recycling organic matter that was tainted by radioactivity and so, if they burn they release it in floating materials. We cannot infer something meaningful from the plume's direction as the atmosphere has high-flowing air currents in upper atmosphere that redistribute the pollution. Only a raise of radioactivity in realtime measurements will tell. I'm sure the effect can be seen in Europe currently, yet no one wants to scare people so information is hidden.

morsch 7y ago
"The Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission provides qualified information about the level of environmental radioactivity to the public, Member States, European Commission and European Parliament." https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx "We believe in building something that matters. Something that has a positive impact on the lives of many. This is why we have created uRADMonitor, because our bodies are fragile and because pollution is harmful both to us and to the environment. So we have designed a worldwide network of automated monitors, as a first line detection and warning system against the harmful chemical and physical factors around us." https://www.uradmonitor.com/ https://www.uradmonitor.com/
- jojo2000 7y ago
  yes, great resource. Still, I know there exists and official network of radiation detection in Europe yet data is not accessible (except maybe here [0]) and we would need historical data to see fluctuations over natural threshold (more than 24H) [0] https://era.org.mt/en/Pages/Ionising-Radiation-Monitoring-Stations.aspx https://era.org.mt/en/Pages/Ionising-Radiation-Monitoring-St...

kdmytro 7y ago

It's spelled Chornobyl.

Waterluvian 7y ago
Every year it's something different, it seems. Points towards an impossible translation situation, maybe?
- konart 7y ago
  Not exactly. Chernobyl is the right way of transliteration from Russian name of the plant (Чернобыль), Chornobyl would be the right way if you are doing the same from Ukrainian (Чорнобиль). Same goes for Kiev\Kyev. These days ukrainians are often pissed if you use the 'wrong' one.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Thanks, that clears up a lot, including why Kyiv changes too. I was suspect that it was about political correctness.
  - agapon 7y ago
    Also, the Chernobyl accident happened while the USSR still existed and its dominant / official language was Russian. Now the former Chornobyl power nuclear plant is in Ukraine where Ukrainian is the official language.
    - NovemberWhiskey 7y ago
      So if you've a date in Constantinople She'll be waiting in Istanbul.
  - practice9 7y ago
    I think it's reasonable for a country that wants to break away from its' Soviet past

cyptus 7y ago

would cloud seeding be an option against wildfires?

ISL 7y ago

I don't believe that there are any significant I-131 production mechanisms within the decay chains of the fallout. Iodine 131 has an eight day half life. The accident was 12,409 days ago. There is <2^{-1500} of the iodine remaining. For scale, if the Earth were made entirely, by mass, from I-131 on the day of the accident, there would have been ~10^50 nuclei. All of those nuclei would have decayed into daughters within the first four years. There is certainly plenty of residual radioactivity from Chernobyl, with which one might be concerned regarding forest fires. The specific hazard against which potassium iodide provides protection, however, is no longer present.

Avernar 7y ago

So far in 2020 we have a near-war with Iran, a global pandemic, a locust invasion in Africa, Krakatoa erupting in Indonesia, and now a radioactive wildfire, and it's only April.

marcus_holmes 7y ago

The article says "South West" when it means "South East". On a map or image with North at the top, West is left and East is right. If the author confused West and East, I'm not holding out much hope that any of the rest of the article is accurate.

pvaldes 7y ago

Massive saiga mortality loading?...