5 ms·

The cavalier dumping of waste into lakes and rivers is wild to think about. I was recently reading about various mid-century plans to dam or widen the Bering st

by cmckn 5y ago

The cavalier dumping of waste into lakes and rivers is wild to think about. I was recently reading about various mid-century plans to dam or widen the Bering strait in order to intentionally melt the Arctic. It’s astonishing how humanity viewed and treated our ecosystem so recently in our history.

ttyprintk 5y ago
Some Russian statesmen propose that Russia stands to gain from global warming. The radiation from the most polluted lake in the world dried up and blew away. I wager that happens again.
- simonh 5y ago
  Where did it blow away to? What you're describing sounds to me like a plume of radioactive dust drifting across and mostly settling on a huge area down wind of the lake. Who lives there, or eats agricultural produce from there?
  - ttyprintk 5y ago
    According to Wikipedia, half a million people irradiated from caesium and strontium isotopes in 1968. Sounds like it happened just as you describe. The headwaters of the Kama, Tobol and Ural rivers run through this part of Russia. We know that caesium from Fukushima was detectable in Canada. That was a #7, this was a #6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay
forgotmyoldname 5y ago
What's truly wild to think about is how eagerly and relatively easily humans completely shaped nature to our desires until recently, and now an uncomfortably large number of people today think any obvious harm being done to the planet is completely natural and humans are too small and insignificant to be a factor. We went from being a few steps away from actively melting the Arctic, to people saying humans couldn't possibly melt ice.
- dkarl 5y ago
  And they segue straight from "humans couldn't possibly influence climate" to "and if there's a problem we can fix it with technology" with a straight face.
code_duck 5y ago
I lived near Los Alamos, NM which was the site of the Manhattan Project. I was looking to rent a building for an art studio and one of the places I looked at was across the street from a large empty lot with a chain link fence, wrapped in green canvas. I looked into this and it had been a primary dump for nuclear weapons development in the 40s - barrels in unlined trenches, buried about 20-40 feet deep. They recently cleaned it up at the cost of a couple billion, if I recall. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21%20Fact%20Sheet_February%202019_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21... Then I looked into what was on the end of that road - a radioactive metal milling facility which discharged waste water containing various toxic radioactive metals directly off a cliff into the desert (it's also a very beautiful area). They recently cleaned that up and the metal plume went down over 500 feet. In fact, all wastewater from the labs went to a central area in town (now an ecological park) and was simply dumped into the stream. The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Then, I realized I was living 3/4 of a mile from the large material disposal area which is currently the lab's main waste dump - TA 54 I believe? https://n3b-la.com/mda/ https://n3b-la.com/mda/ Reading about all the areas there and what is public about what they've stored was somewhat disturbing. Most of it was stored with very little documentation. But, the scientists and employees don't have any problem with living in town. From what I gather they stopped dumping waste carelessly in the 60s. I think they have it under control at this point, but there continues to be debate about long-term storage.
- yodelshady 5y ago
  > The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Radioactivity is, funnily, one of the easier human health hazards to manage for precisely this reason - by definition, it's (generally) detectable. Not as easily as, say, a bear, but easier than a virion or most regular chemical contaminants. Plus, radionuclides don't actively evolve.
  - 5y ago

by cmckn 5y ago

ttyprintk 5y ago

Some Russian statesmen propose that Russia stands to gain from global warming. The radiation from the most polluted lake in the world dried up and blew away. I wager that happens again.

simonh 5y ago
Where did it blow away to? What you're describing sounds to me like a plume of radioactive dust drifting across and mostly settling on a huge area down wind of the lake. Who lives there, or eats agricultural produce from there?
- ttyprintk 5y ago
  According to Wikipedia, half a million people irradiated from caesium and strontium isotopes in 1968. Sounds like it happened just as you describe. The headwaters of the Kama, Tobol and Ural rivers run through this part of Russia. We know that caesium from Fukushima was detectable in Canada. That was a #7, this was a #6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Karachay

forgotmyoldname 5y ago

What's truly wild to think about is how eagerly and relatively easily humans completely shaped nature to our desires until recently, and now an uncomfortably large number of people today think any obvious harm being done to the planet is completely natural and humans are too small and insignificant to be a factor. We went from being a few steps away from actively melting the Arctic, to people saying humans couldn't possibly melt ice.

dkarl 5y ago
And they segue straight from "humans couldn't possibly influence climate" to "and if there's a problem we can fix it with technology" with a straight face.

code_duck 5y ago

I lived near Los Alamos, NM which was the site of the Manhattan Project. I was looking to rent a building for an art studio and one of the places I looked at was across the street from a large empty lot with a chain link fence, wrapped in green canvas. I looked into this and it had been a primary dump for nuclear weapons development in the 40s - barrels in unlined trenches, buried about 20-40 feet deep. They recently cleaned it up at the cost of a couple billion, if I recall. https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21%20Fact%20Sheet_February%202019_FINAL.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2019/03/f61/TA-21... Then I looked into what was on the end of that road - a radioactive metal milling facility which discharged waste water containing various toxic radioactive metals directly off a cliff into the desert (it's also a very beautiful area). They recently cleaned that up and the metal plume went down over 500 feet. In fact, all wastewater from the labs went to a central area in town (now an ecological park) and was simply dumped into the stream. The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Then, I realized I was living 3/4 of a mile from the large material disposal area which is currently the lab's main waste dump - TA 54 I believe? https://n3b-la.com/mda/ https://n3b-la.com/mda/ Reading about all the areas there and what is public about what they've stored was somewhat disturbing. Most of it was stored with very little documentation. But, the scientists and employees don't have any problem with living in town. From what I gather they stopped dumping waste carelessly in the 60s. I think they have it under control at this point, but there continues to be debate about long-term storage.

yodelshady 5y ago
> The old metal mill area is now being redeveloped for housing. I asked a nuclear scientist I knew if he'd feel comfortable living there, and he said "Sure! I mean, you might want to get a geiger counter". Radioactivity is, funnily, one of the easier human health hazards to manage for precisely this reason - by definition, it's (generally) detectable. Not as easily as, say, a bear, but easier than a virion or most regular chemical contaminants. Plus, radionuclides don't actively evolve.
- 5y ago