One of the problems with renewables is the enormous amount of space renewable installations require. Gathering low intensity power requires a lot of real-estate. But solar entrepreneurs and the Ukrainian Government think they have a solution – they want to build the world’s largest solar plant on land nobody in their right mind would want; the site of the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster.
Chernobyl could be reinvented as a solar farm, says Ukraine
Ministers create presentation to show how idle land around nuclear disaster site can be used to produce renewable energy.
The contaminated nuclear wasteland around Chernobyl could be turned into one of the world’s largest solar farms, producing nearly a third of the electricity that the stricken plant generated at its height 30 years ago, according to the Ukrainian government.
In a presentation sent to major banks and seen by the Guardian, 6,000 hectares of “idle” land in Chernobyl’s 1,000 square km exclusion zone, which is considered too dangerous for people to live in or farm, could be turned to solar, biogas and heat and power generation.
Pressure has been mounting for years to allow industrial development, but no indication is given of where the solar panels would be located. “There has been a change in the perception of the exclusion zone in Ukraine. Thirty years after the Chernobyl tragedy [it] reveals opportunities for development. A special industrial area is to be created in compliance with all rules and regulations of radiation safety within the exclusion zone,” says the presentation.
…
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) this week indicated it would be prepared to lend money for the renewable energy plan. The EBRD has already provided more than $500m (£379m) to build a large stainless steel “sarcophagus” over the destroyed reactor, which will remain dangerous for thousands of years.
…
The Ukraine is desperately poor, so the Ukrainian government should have no problem finding thousands of workers willing to risk their health, to construct this new green power monstrosity.
And who knows, maybe the idea will catch on – no doubt there are other highly contaminated industrial disaster sites around the world, which could be profitably converted into renewable installations.
Eric Worrel apparently has no clue about “contaminated radioactive sites.” One huge advantage to Chernobl area is that one can know precisely whether there are any dangerous subareas. Radioactivity doesn’t only appear out at night – it will be present at all times and can easily be measured – even a greenie understands what a geiger counter is. Workers in nucear plants are always wearing a radiation detector
that can remember any unsafe levels. Maybe Eric has seen too many 1950’s sci fi movies about the evils of radiation and expects to find giant grasshoppers at Chernobyl.
Authur4563 – I am sure Eric is fully aware of preventive measures and Geiger counters. He is pointing out the extremes to which the radical environmental movement and governments will stoop, especially when other governments are handing out free money. The project would not even be drawn on the back of a napkin if not for the free money. So the sarcasm Eric is known for, while dry, is lost on others who actually find a projects like this defensible, especially when someone else is paying for it. Have you ever invested YOUR money in renewable technology start-ups? I should not be forced to invest MY money. Eric does go onto say, “And who knows, maybe the idea will catch on – no doubt there are other highly contaminated industrial disaster sites around the world, which could be profitably converted into renewable installations.”
So maybe he supports it on good land use alone??
Doesn’t work that way. When an area is contaminated with radioactive dust you can have tiny dust size hotspots blowing around.
Doesn’t work that way. When an area is contaminated with radioactive dust its mainly heavy metals, and they dont blow far and they soon get covered up by natural processes. If its lighter elements like caesium, they soon get incorporated into organic material which itself dies and turns into compost.
Most of what is left in the exclusion zone of any note is caesium. There are the odd lumps of heavy metal, but they aren’t going anywhere.
shows that after 30 years, caesium-137 is peaking and almost everything else has gone, except low level radiation from things like plutonium.
“As of 2005, caesium-137 is the principal source of radiation in the zone of alienation around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Together with caesium-134, iodine-131, and strontium-90, caesium-137 was among the isotopes distributed by the reactor explosion that constitute the greatest risk to health. The mean contamination of caesium-137 in Germany following the Chernobyl disaster was 2000 to 4000 Bq/m2. This corresponds to a contamination of 1 mg/km2 of caesium-137, totalling about 500 grams deposited over all of Germany. In Scandinavia, some reindeer and sheep exceeded the Norwegian legal limit (3000 Bq/kg) 26 years after Chernobyl”
“Caesium-137 reacts with water, producing a water-soluble compound (caesium hydroxide)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137
So no, the chief risk is not from dust blowing around, or plutonium, or americium, it’s from caesium 137 in the water and in the organic tissue.
However the wildlife has been eating it all and is doing just fine.
Wade Allison, in his book ‘Radiation and Reason’ shows strong medical and statistical evidence that the threshold for any detectable increase in cancer is exposure to a single dose in as short period of time that exceeds 100mSv. Such a dose spread over a year has no detectable effect. Only if biological mechanisms concentrate this locally is it significant.
Hence the worry about caesium 137. Wiki again:
“The biological half-life of caesium is rather short, at about 70 days. A 1972 experiment showed that when dogs are subjected to a whole body burden of 3800 μCi/kg (140 MBq/kg, or approximately 44 μg/kg) of caesium-137 (and 950 to 1400 rads), they die within 33 days, while animals with half of that burden all survived for a year.”
950 rads is 9,500 msV!! In a single dose!
So even Caesium 137 is out of the body reasonably quickly.
Look the real and final point is this. ‘Radiation’ is as scary as ‘man made climate change’ when all you have to go on are activists’ sites on the Internet. The real facts are very hard to come by, but are far far less scary than even the most optimistic nuclear protagonists would have believed.
The safety standards for radiation were set in almost total ignorance of the actual effects: Wade Allison points out that the policy for nuclear power was set to ALARA – As Low As Reasonably Achievable.
“Although the public accepts moderate to high doses of radiation when used benignly for their own health, non-medical international safety standards are set extremely low to appease popular concerns – these specify levels found in nature or as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA). Yet modern biology and medicine confirm that no harm comes from radiation levels up to 1000 times higher and realistic safety levels could be set as high as relatively safe (AHARS).
Indeed the local damage to public health and the social economy caused by ALARA regulations imposed at
Chernobyl and Fukushima has been extremely serious and without benefit.”
http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Public_Trust_in_Nuclear_Energy.pdf
Because of this very conservative policy, which also for simplicity relied upon the LNT (Linear, No Threshold) model, that defined harmful effects as linearly related to e.g. total annual dosage, the door was left open for anti-nuclear alarmists to cry ‘ten times the permitted dose…100 times the permitted levels …no such thing as a safe level for radiation…the governments own figures admit it“… and so on.
It has been remarked that “you may believe everything you read in the newspapers except on those subjects where you have deep and expert knowledge” 🙂
Indeed. As I [found] out from early involvement with activist politics – I was there but what the papers reported had no resemblance whatsoever to what happened. The ‘activists’ grabbed the microphones and claimed it for their own. I left politics…
In my personal Odyssey through renewable energy, to the politics of climate change, I discovered that renewable energy, nuclear power and climate change all shared a common feature. In every case what ‘everybody knew’ from casual exposure to the media was in direct contradiction to the best data used by the best scientific and technical studies. In fact the truth appeared to be almost the complete opposite of the public perception.
My conclusions is that certain commercial and political interests have every incentive to spread disinformation. And, of course, the biggest disinformation they spread, was that anyone who disagreed with them was in the business of spreading political and commercial disinformation.
Cute huh?
I wholly concur with Leo. Nice explanation Leo! One correction: Cs-137 has a 30 year half-life. Half of my Health Physics career I was involved in trying to counter the BS the anti-nuclear folks put out. Most times I was spitting in the wind. People love to doom sayers. Don’t get me started on the LNT theory unless Anthony will allow violence on this web site. ; ) I call it the make work theory for health physicists and the EPA.
Biological half life is how long it stays in the body, not how long it stays radioactive.
Perhaps EBRD should consider other nuclear contamination sites like Muslumovo and Semipalatinsk. Even as “renewable” energy schemes are just UN-sponsored and state-sponsored fraud at least a small portion of the vast monies would perhaps leak to the local peoples.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2013/04/nuclear_contamination_in_former_ussr_radioactivity_in_muslomovo_on_techa.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semipalatinsk_Test_Site
‘workers willing to risk their health’
According to Cohen, the most dangerous occupation is being unemployed. My speculation is that a safety culture is an important part of many occupations and something you bring home. Safely dealing with radiation and contaminated is not the difficult.
Eric’s arguments against renewable energy are absurd. Using sarcasm to tell a lie is still lying.
For the record Chernobyl is not an interesting experiment. We learned nothing new about the biological effects of radiation. Do not expose children to I-131.
Unfortunately, the evil empire learned nothing from TMI. A timely evacuation plan would have prevented all but a few deaths.
For the record Chernobyl is not an interesting experiment. We learned nothing new about the biological effects of radiation. Do not expose children to I-131.
Unfortunately, the evil empire learned nothing from TMI. A timely evacuation plan would have prevented all but a few deaths.
Actually we have learnt a hell of a lot. Enormously high levels of background radiation (by accepted industry standards) have resulted in no adverse health effects on the wildlife that stayed.
AS far as the thyroid cancers go that was less the result of not evacuating than the result of not issuing iodine pills
10 weeks on iodine pills and the I-131 has all fizzled out.
What we learnt from TMI is that a contained core meltdown is expensive but utterly harmless.
“I’m not stupid enough to get a construction job …”
Eric is not smart enough to get a construction job period. Eric appears to get all his information from reading the guardian.
As far as being a troll, if posting on subjects that I am knowledgeable is what a troll does than I am guilty. Duncan when the clueless call me a troll, I take as a complement.
Respectfully, classifying others as “clueless” or whatever your slogan happens to be, only relieves you of the courtesy of open-mindedness and consideration. Folks usually find that to be fringe thinking.
So pop how would describe the clueless?
Good comment Pop. Some things are easy to say in a comment. Easy to say does not make the correct or conducive to advancing our knowledge.
Thanks for the post Eric, it caused many to think.
The goal is to educate them, not describe them. Please be positive in your assertions and avoid those kind of “put-downs” which polarize you from them. We are searching for a common truth here.
Don’t see you rushing to get a job in the Chernobyl exclusion zone Retired Kit. Easy to be brave when other people are taking the risks.
I’d have no problem at all with that, Eric. Stick a tonne of plutonium in my garage if you like.
At the time of Chernobyl, I was working at a nuke plant in California. I was a safety system engineer.
Eric why dont you give us the scientific arguments why you are so scared of radiation/hot particles. Where is that graveyard of victims of hot particles?
If you look at the history of radiation protection than the world is now in a comparable situation as it will be when the climate alarmists have their way, immensely expensive super overprotection with no (health) benefits whatsoever.
Again: show me the proof of the dangers of your hot particles.
Dang, the following was a previous post the didn’t go up or disappeared.
Eric: The term “hot spots” also known as “hot particles” is a Health Physics term that we use to help us determine a person’s dose from radiation. For any gamma/X-ray emitter, the term is not really applicable unless the radioactive chemical is exceptionally concentrated in a tissue type. Cs-137 is the primary radioactive left in Chernobyl. It is a gamma emitter. So your concern over hot particle ingestion is not warranted. I would suggest you are misusing or do not fully understand the term. When Health Physicists talk about hot particles, we are talking about alpha and beta emitters.
A hot particle (alpha/beta emitter) may be ingested principally via respiration or oral ingestion. With oral ingestion, the relative risk of the hot particle completely depends on the radioactive material’s chemical form and whether the alimentary canal will absorb the chemical form. In those chemical forms we would expect to have some reasonable likelihood of being transported via a pathway to the alimentary canal, almost all of these have poor uptakes by the alimentary canal. Thus there is a high probability that if you swallow a hot particle, you will poop it out a few days later.
Ingestion via respiration has many complex routes. It must first be noted that very few particles of anything which have greater than 10 AMD size get past our filtration systems e.g. nose and the tracheal cilia. Your dust particle example is unrealistic as most dust consists of relatively large particles. Our filtration systems push these particles into the alimentary canal or trap them in an expectorant. However, if a hot particle gets past the filter systems and into the alveoli, then there a numerous pathways it may take depending on its chemical nature. It can get trapped there, in which case the hot particle will irradiate only a few cell lengths. Three things can happen in this case: nothing, cellular death, or mutation of one or more of the cells. The latter is relatively rare. Cellular death may happen if the hot particle is “hot” enough. In this case the cell(s) die in a small area and the body rids itself of the dead cell(s) taking the hot particle with it. Most times, a hot particle seems to have little to no effect – perhaps not enough radiation and the cell is able to maintain repair of any damage.
Depending on the chemical nature of the radionuclide, the hot particle may be moved out of the lungs quite quickly. We have graphs and tables that will tell us the clearance rate of thousands of different chemical forms of radioactive materials. I inhaled a tiny amount of plutonium when responding to a spill of pure powdered plutonium. I got tested (they measure it in your poop) and retested 6 weeks later. None could be found after six weeks. Whatever I ingested moved from the lungs to my poop – there are a couple different pathways this could have happened. One of the things about plutonium is that our body has no use for it nor is it seen as an analog to necessary chemicals, so the body gets rid of it. There are numerous people who have ingested complexed chemical forms of plutonium which remained in their body, but I have yet to hear of any having problems from it.
So if you are worried about hot particle ingestion, I would be happy to help you get a better understanding of all the factors involved. Be advised it took me a few years to learn what I know as it is a very complex subject.
Kit P – I find this blog refreshing, it supports my view point that we are not all going over a cliff tomorrow. Calling Eric “stupid” is trolling case closed. I welcome and actually desire if more people with opposite view points posted here. Please come back when you can have a respectful and hopefully enlightening conversation or view point. We all might learn something. Good day to you.
Duncan
That is Mr. P to you! You can reply sir, yes sir. If you read Eric’s essay he is not civil.
I am very respectful for those that want to engage in civil discourse. Apparently Duncan does not how to do it.
For those who understand German (but Google translate may help), there is a very good report with lots of details and background about the causes of the Tsjernobyl disaster and the current situation, including comparisons of the background levels at the exclusion zone with other places on earth from Dr. Walter Rüegg, Switzerland, who visited the site in September 2015 with a group of nuclear experts from different countries:
http://kaltduschenmitdoris.ch/images/pdf/Reise%20ins%20Innere.pdf
The main (not too) hot spots are at moss spots: moss does fixate Cs (whatever isotope) from falling dust, which it takes as Na which it needs, including the fallout of the disaster…
I do agree with many here to leave the exclusion zone to what it did become nowadays: a paradise for wildlife…
In contrast, think about all the “green jobs” HRC plans for the U.S. Putting Chinese-made solar panels on millions of homes will create thousands and thousands of jobs for solar panel installers. Think of all the ambitious young people putting their “free” college educations to good use as glorified roofers.
“collects corpses”
Wow! I am trying to figure out how theoretical came up with so much BS from his link.
The reason ‘hot particles’ are not very clear is it is something idiots talk about.
‘uranium, plutonium, americium, and thorium’
These are not hot particles. Long lived isotopes are not radiological hazards but may be a health hazard as heavy metals.
The Manhattan Project and the subsequent US weapons program did an excellent job of handling radioactive material which is why we have so little data. The evil empire not so much. What I learned from those studies is that people in the evil empire smoked too much and drank too much vodka.
Let me put in perspective. Plutonium has the same toxicity as nicotine. The latter is inhaled by school children to be cool.
“probably the most contaminated in the world, there is no proof of extra cancer there”
No, it is everyday folks who have naturally occurring uranium in there water wells. Check out the CDC on this subject. Cancer is not the problem, kidney failure is. Uranium who accidentally ingest stuff have their urine sampled.
According to the CDC, there are no examples of environmental problems with uranium. Mercury, lead, and arsenic do have problems.
Americium isotopes have half lives of 432 and 7370 years. Plutonium 244 is relatively inert, but other isotopes are a lot hotter.
I’m a fan of nuclear power, but sending people into the contamination zone to build a solar plant is just nuts.
Let the applicants choose … forget “Sending-In” anyone’.
Lots of otherwise unemployed young people choose to join the military to a) get a job, b) get to start a c.v., and c) learn a skill.
I’ll leave it to readers to decide which is the riskier ….
My proviso is that the inductees be presented with *all* know facts and an unbiased health-risk-assessment.
If that said, for example, “You are at no more risk working in Radiation Zone ‘Red’ for 2 months than staying at home; Zone ‘Yellow’ for 6 months [ditto] or ‘Blue’ for 2 years, and you will be tested [daily’weekly’monthly] for aggregated irradiation, and the pay is twice/thrice the going-rate, why shdn’t young risk-takers get ahead with their lives?
Living and personal risk are inseparable: just in case a slate may slide off the roof and split your skull, do you, Eric, stay at home 24/7/52 and get yr dole e-credited to yr bank?
‘just nuts’
Again Eric is very wrong. That is why I keep calling him an idiot. He loves to post on things that he is clueless and refuses to learn.
‘Brownfield’ development is an accepted practice. The first step is to perform a survey to establish the level contamination.
The Hanford Reservation is where plutonium was first produced during the Manhattan Project and continued up until the US and USSR agreed to stop producing plutonium. All the liquid waste is stored in tanks waiting to turned into glass. Besides the cold war waste buried here and there, it is also a modern low level waste repository.
It is the mother of all brownfields.
Columbia generating station and a solar PV farm are also located there. I am writing someplace I lived and worked.
Again you seem to have lost the plot. If its persistent, it ain’t very radioactive. Its also likely to be a heavy metal. Heavy metals are…heavy. They stay put. And wont get ingested unless you eat dirt. They are more poisonous than radioactive.
Hand-wavy qualitative statements are not science.
[trimmed. Cut out the personal comments. .mod]
Pointing out the use of straw men and logical fallacies is a ‘personal comment’ huh?
As I said in my last post, ‘hot particles’ are not very clear is it is something idiots talk about. Generally fear mongers try to relate nuclear weapons to using nuclear reactors to produce power.
Nuclear weapons release huge amounts of energy in a short period of time instantly killing most of the victims. Those surviving the blast could be exposed directly radiation and die of radiation poisoning in the next 30 days.
Fallout from particulate fission products could result in contamination. So take a shower.
In the context of commercial nuclear power, the most common particulate is activated corrosion products. Cobalt-60 is an example of something we are concerned about during maintenance.
There are fission products that particulate. Since Chernobyl was a graphite moderated reactor without a containment large amounts of particulate fission products were released. So take a shower.
So what is the bottom line. Idiots like Eric make lists of reasons to be against something. I am not saying that renewable energy at Chernobyl is a good idea.
been a bit so I may be remembering wrong but wasn’t the soil in whole area/surrounding areas heavily coated with caesium?
iirc (again I may be remembering wrong) it had penetrated fairly deep into soil.
And, so! You have to explain the significance. For example, how does it get into the food chain.
isn’t it water soluble and easily absorbed into plants and drinking water?
thought that was one of the major cancer risks but I have not had chance to check and may be thinking of something else.
I feel your pain. Every time Eric talks about something that I actually know a bit about, I end up with a bad headache. He is driven by his ideology, not his knowledge of the subjects.
BZ
@Ross King
Working a hazardous job requires training if for no other reason to keep them from freaking out. In the navy that training was one one of my responsibilities as naval nuke officer. While the nuclear trained workers has extensive training, others who enter ‘radiation area’ had to be trained. This included ‘mess cooks’. The risk was explained.
I have worked in restaurants and did the mess cook thing when I was first enlisted. Everything in a kitchen is more dangerous than radiation.
TVM for yr factual support.
If current Health-and-Safety Regs. were in force in Columbus’s day (or Cook or Magellan — or NASA’s space-riders) we’d still be stuck in the paddy-fields.
“(S)he who dares, Wins!” (isn’t that the motto of the military elite in UK?)
The converse of which is, of course, “(S)he who doesn’t dare, loses!”
In my Albertan/B.C. view, having lived in both for many years, the difference in attitudes is *very* constructive in life. In Alberta, they say (or said, pre-Notley?): “If there’s nothing to say you *can’t* do “it”, then do it!” In B.C.: “If there’s nothing to say you *can* do it, then you *can’t do it”!
Today’s society is dominated by the latter, methinks. The over-reaching tentacles of Big Gov’t and the ever-willing-to-expand bureaucracy, intent on more Rules, more Power, and preservation of Sinecures, will — in my view — lead to the next Dark Age. Long live entrepreneurial freedom! Since when did inventions come out of a Gov’t Dept?
Yours, in exasperation about my grandchildren’s future …
@Ross
I do not have a problem with safety regulations. If you are in a hazardous occupation and can not handle the paperwork, maybe you should find a different line of work.
Codes and standards are just engineering best practices codified. Regulations put the force of law behind them. Utility A operates nuke safer and more economically by using new maintenance strategies. While many voluntary adopt the concept some do not. After following the legal process, the NRC issue the maintenance rule to enforce better methods.
The methodologies for building nuke plants while protecting the neighbors were forced upon the chemical industry only after the worst industrial accident killed 4,000. Process safety is now a regulation.
As far as renewable energy is concerned, power is a public service. If the public wants wind and solar give it to them. It is not about entrepreneurial freedom.
If you are going to do something you have responsibility to your employees and neighbors.
get enough people glowing there and no artificial light needed……
Much as you might think that’s a smart & enlightening remark, it isn’t!
I invite you to visit my 0-20 Scale of Morons, and consider where *I* might place *you*. Think it over and let me know, please?
Or was it just a bad joke?
is u havings a bad day?
get over yourself
learn what tongue in cheek means while doing that too
Let me translate Ian’s BS.
“the use of a volatile coolant under pressure, which must be circulated to avoid boiling”
That would be water for the rest of us. When it boils it produces steam which is a very effective heat transfer mechanism. Steam also drives turbine which turn pumps to pump water back into the reactor vessel.
“the use of zirconium alloys”
Yes, we understand and design for the properties of the material we use.
“safer reactor”
No one has been hurt by LWR designed to standards. Since LWR have a perfect safety record, how are you going to make it safer?
Our operating reactor experience trumps your paper reactor claims.
Power plants of all kinds must be safe. No brownie points for insignificant claims.
No one really want to admit it but the danger time is far lower than any estimates we are given. The high intensity half life elements are spent as they are of short duration and we are now into the moderate level longer half life and low level near harmless thousand year half life ones.
Also semiconductors do not work well in high radiation areas so either the levels are now quite safe or they are in for some efficiency problems.
As for giving people solar and wind if they want it they should be first given the same level of brainwashing about the cost and unreliability they are given about it being “free” energy rather than capital intensive and high maintenance but low fuel running costs that overall costs two to three times the fossil fuel alternatives. More if you count the true infrastructure costs of connection of highly distributed sources.
David: you are correct. There are seven factors that influence the hazard of a radioactive material. Two of those factors are half-life and quantity (# of atoms). Not many understand that there is a relationship with these factors. That a nuclide has a long half-life actually works in our favor if there are only a few atoms. Let’s say five atoms of U-238 gets in our body. The odds are that none of the five atoms will emit their radiation in our lifetime. In this case, there will be no harm – period. However, there is a point where the number of atoms does make a difference and a longer lived nuclide becomes potentially more harmful than a shorter lived nuclide, though this is where to other five factors come into play and must be accounted for. For the shorter lived nuclides, say less than seven year, all of the atoms are guaranteed to emit their radiation during your lifetime.
From everything I have read, there is little to no reason to maintain the exclusion zone around most of Chernobyl. With the exception of a mile or two around the plant itself, most of it is safe.
Prezactly. Likewise Fukushima.
Except that you just KNOW what would happen. Someone moves back on and dies of cancer 5 years later and his /her relatives sue the guv-mint for billions. And some whackjob judge allows it to succeed.
“Someone moves back on and dies of cancer 5 years later and his /her relatives sue the guv-mint for billions.”
Which would seem to be a potential problem with the Chernobyl solar scheme as well?
It has two things going for it, 1) low cost land, and 2) throw away money from the UN and other other agencies. On the down side, I will not employ many after construction.
I’m still waiting for the bio fueled F-35, and by executive order of course.
This idea is rank with problems. Not only is Chernobyl at a high latitude, which limits solar energy intensity as well as causes huge seasonal variation, but solar thermal plants require huge infrastructure for all the mirrors and huge amounts of water. This means bringing water in from elsewhere, unless they are willing to contaminate all their equipment with radioactive local water. So, who is going to suffer from their water being diverted to this plant? And, the worst negative is the fact that solar energy is only available during part of each day. Saying that such a plant would produce a third of what the original nuclear plants produced is to ignore the unstable, variable, and expense of this plant. Systems for storing heat energy to be able to generate electricity at night are also very expensive. All of this includes disturbing the radioactive subsurface layers that probably lurk in the area.
This is a very bad idea and represents throwing money at a non-problem, money stolen from other people for wealth redistribution by the UN.
@Dmacleo
“thought that was one of the major cancer risks”
I would have to see the assumptions in the analysis. For LWRs with contaminants, the risk is insignificant.
I had the opportunity to visit the Nevada test site in the late 1980s. An estimated 650 atomic detonations, all but 2 of them underground. They had pretty white picket fences around the detonations to mark out the collapse areas. We visited one of the at-surface detonations (20 min limit). No photos please. I can see the appeal of visiting Chernobyl especially if they talk about radioactivity and speak about the only scientist to ever win 2 Nobel prizes in science prior to 1950. I quiz the ladies about this – always to blank stares.
As I understand Fukashima the main issue was the water from the tsunami flooding the emergency generators. No power, no water circulation. Heat build-up. Bang.
“I’m retired and haven’t kept up on what radionuclides remain in the Chernobyl countryside”
Why would you keep up with at all?
If I am planning work in an area with the potential for the workers to get contaminated with radioactive material or get radiation from other than a natural source; I would then have a Health Physics technician perform a survey of the area. Identifying general area radiation, ‘hot spots’, and fixed and loose contamination.
My last job in the in the navy included responsibilities ‘Health Physics’ department.
“The whole science of determining dose whether from whole body or localized hot spots is extremely complex. ”
Not really! Out at sea operating a reactor often you do not have time for complex calculations. We would use radcon math to get a ballpark number that was good enough to get the job done. We were not dealing with modes, we were dealing with verifiable results. After the job was done we checked to see that we were conservative.
When my wife was working at Hanford’s N-reactor (shutdown at the end of the cold war), she brought home a publish research paper that one of the phd engineers had published. I read the abstract and said 3. Then I read the paper and found the answer was 3 something. The next night, my wife said the engineer had spent a million dollars of DOE’s money getting the answer.
The models for determining worker and off-site does after an accident are very complex. One of my last task was to come up with an engineering fix for an assumption in the model. They assumed 0%. I found that the as designed number was 10% and the best fix would be 2% at a very high cost of the life of the plant. I looked at the model, and we had a 75% margin.
I convinced people that we should reperform the calculation. This time they assumed my system did not work (or 100% failure to buffer water). The reduced the margin to 74.8%.
In Other words, the safety system did not need to be a safety system.
The real answer is to not expose workers to internal contamination. Put the panels someplace else and avoid the cost of complex caclulations.
@Pop
“The goal is to educate them, not describe them.”
Not my goal. Information is available from many sources. Idiots with an agenda are not interested in education. For many years I was anti-coal. With good reason! However, when information became available that showed me things had changed.
I have two goal. One is too learn. The other is to educate where I can.
“ a common truth ”
Is that code for consensus? Some share my goals. Eric is not one of them.
@ur momisugly theorichel
August 2, 2016 at 10:07 am
“Maybe the book ‘Underexposed’ by Ed Hiserodt is available somewhere. It is a popular remake of a book by prof Don Luckey who started the radiation hormesis thing decades ago. Also you can try http://radiationeffects.org/ where the scientists in the radiation hormesis fields gather.”
Thanks very much. Very promising site. Have saved most of the offerings for later study.
The most frustrating issue I’ve encountered in my several years of trying to measure meaningfully and understand residential radon levels is that I’ve yet to find anywhere a discussion of the issues of reliable measurement. EPA and Health Canada simply point the homeowner to the standard short and long term testing devices, without any attempt to make sense of the issues of documentation.
Even though there are States in the USA which require all homes to be “radon tested” before being sold, I haven’t found an explanation of how such testing can be reliable, given the vendor/occupant’s strong financial interest in “documenting” low readings, never mind the time constraints, which completely conflict with the dictum that three day tests should be conducted during the heating season.
I understand that US realtors may use expensive recorders capable of functioning properly in a high humidity environment, and encased in a cage that can be locked in place. However, I’ve never read anything dealing with the issue of the occupant/owner opening doors and windows in the space to be measured and/or putting a temporary fan to work.
Even with the best of intentions to obtain an accurate and meaningful reading/readings, there is no clearly reliable methodology. In fact, it took me several years to find an official government definition of a level requiring mitigation. It was on a Quebec government site, and defined the Health Canada mitigation level to be the average of one year’s readings. This would seem to make meaningful measurement for the purpose of selling or buying a home, or even for determining the need for mitigation, practically impossible.
My own experience demonstrates this. I started with a properly conducted three day cannister test (ie. in the lowest bedroom, during the heating season, with all doors and windows closed for 72 hours). The result that came back from the lab was 17.7 picoCuries/L, more than three times the Health Canada mitigation threshold.
I immediately searched for radon mitigation “professionals” as advised by both Health Canada and the EPA, and found two, both part-time “professionals”, both located several hours’ drive from my home. Both expressed eagerness to embark on major structural changes to my home without further testing, and both wanted several thousand dollars for this work. They “guaranteed” only that the radon level would be reduced to the Health Canada mitigation threshold level of 5 picoCuries/L. Neither offered an explanation of how this figure was arrived at, nor how it would be measured in case of dispute.
I asked what they used themselves to measure radon, and both name the S3 professional, the least expensive electronic radon detector,. And so I bought the same model myself and also began a one-year cannister test, thus doubly replicating my three day test, but in a normal day-to-day environment
The result of my 365 day cannister test was reported as 2.3 picoCuries/L, and my S3 professional never read higher than 13 (a peak 48 hour average) during the course of the year, and the average of the entire year hovered at the mitigation level of 5. Of course I was using the room normally, airing it when possible (it was my bedroom).
Had I listened to the “professionals” licensed and recommended by the government of Canada, I would have spent thousands of dollars to damage my house when (again, according to the same government) there was no need for any mitigation.
Since then, I have offered the loan of my S3 Professional to a number of neighbours, including my physician, who had just become a new father and moved into a new house. Not one accepted my offer.
And it’s not hard to see why. Since Radon in a home is condemned by the government as a health risk, it must be disclosed when a home is put up for sale. And since any level of Radon is deemed, again by the government, as damaging to health, even a low recorded level will make any home less desirable, possibly entirely undesirable, to potential buyers.
Are Health Canada, EPA, and the WHO, and their political masters too stupid to grasp that their Radon mitigation crusade is actually discouraging homeowners from testing for Radon levels in their homes or is this part of a strategy to eventually require government-controlled Radon testing (for the public good, of course) in every dwelling?