The man-made radioactive isotope caesium-137 can be detected in the bodies of all living humans and it was there even before the Chernobyl accident. The first nuclear explosion in 1945 spread, for the first time, the isotope caesium-137 over the whole planet. We have so sensitive methods of detecting caesium-137 that we can use them to check if a bottle of wine was produces before 1945
Of-course there were radionuclides in our bodies even before the first nuclear test in 1945. For example Potassium-40 or Carbon-14. The presence of Carbon-14 in organic matter is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method to date archaeological, geological and hydrogeological samples.
The big question is how much radionuclides is safe and how much radionuclides is a health risk.
The opposite psychological symptom is Radiophobia. The psychological effects of radiation fear after Chernobyl accident were strong:
"As the increase in radiation in Denmark was so low that almost no increased risk of birth defects was expected, the public debate and anxiety among the pregnant women and their husbands "caused" more fetal deaths in Denmark than the accident. This underlines the importance of public debate, the role of the mass media and of the way in which National Health authorities participate in this debate."
Chernobyl exclusion zone is not same as it was 40 years ago. For example in 2019 research was done on growing crop in the exclusion zone. You could even buy Atomik vodka, made with grain and water from the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
In 2022 the German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) in cooperation with State Agency of Ukraine on Exclusion Zone Management has published the initial results of the radiological remapping of the exclusion zone. The data can be used to assess which areas of the exclusion zone could be reopened for use. The start of Russian invasion halted all this activities and research.
Actually some lands were returned back to commercial usage. The land is extremely beautiful and rich. They have even created new resorts on the former land of the Exclusion Zone. [1]
I have been a part of the working group researching possible commercial usage of contaminated land, which should not be returned into agriculture or cannot be made livable BUT is perfectly suitable for things like prison, recycling plant or launch pad for space.
My dream project for the Chernobyl Zone was a Norwegian style prison combined with college and completely and totally isolated from legacy soviet penitentiary system.
So that we can take younger first offenders and rehabilitate them and give them purpose in life.
Unfortunately, no one in the government we did discuss that gave any shit about the future of younger generation of Ukrainians.
(I assume what makes it acceptable for a prison, but not "livable" is that prison inmates do not roam around, but are enclosed in a artificial compound?)
And for whether government is interested, I suppose also depends on how much more expensive it would have been?
> what makes it acceptable for a prison, but not "livable" is that
Much simpler. The main concerns are digging (radioactive fallout is about 30cm deep into the ground at this point) and unmapped hot spots. Basically, there could be a patch of the land with radioactivity high enough that it has to be either deactivated or tagged out.
> government is interested
One of the cultural gaps between us, russian [1] people and western world is the vast depth is misunderstanding of the function of government. Our governments is only interested in personal enrichment and the well being of people is never a factor. Literally.
[1] as in "slavic people", not "citizens of russian federation".
c. 1300, sclave, esclave, "person who is the chattel or property of another," from Old French esclave (13c.) and directly from Medieval Latin Sclavus "slave" (source also of Italian schiavo, French esclave, Spanish esclavo), originally "Slav" (see Slav); so used in this secondary sense because of the many Slavs sold into slavery by conquering peoples.
For a TV series the TV show Chernobyl was pretty accurate. For those who watched the the TV show, I recommend to also see an interview with an actual Ukrainian medical responder and radiation expert who was working in Chernobyl.
Probably the best non-technical book on the Chernobyl disaster is the book "Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe" by Serhii Plokhy. It describes not only the accident, but also the whole soviet system and political, economical decisions which led to the resulting catastrophe.
No, the show is not accurate. The last episode repeats the lies that Legasov told at the IAEA meeting in 1986, that were published as INSAG-1, and the show completely ignores INSAG-7. There was no drama in the control room, no indications that anything was wrong with the reactor, no power spike before AZ-5 was pressed.
The TV show pretends to be historically accurate, and many people believe that it is true. I would suspect that the majority of people have no other sources of information about Chernobyl other than this TV show.
How does it make sense that the show ignores INSAG-7 when the whole plot point about the design of the control rods increasing the reactivity isn't from INSAG-1 but from INSAG-7? The same with the plotline about this defect being known, but kept from the operators. And Legasov lying about all this at the IAEA meeting? All-in-all INSAG-1 paints a picture of operator failure, INSAG-7 paints a picture of systemic failure and the show paints a picture of systemic failure.
And to nitpick: INSAG-7 doesn't disagree with INSAG-1 about the power rising just before AZ-5. From page 8 of INSAG-7: "When the turbine was tripped, the four pumps it was powering began to slow
down as the turbine speed was reduced and the associated generator voltage fell. This
reduced rate of core flow caused the void content of the core to rise and caused an
initial positive feedback of reactivity which was at least in part the cause of the acci-
dent." (page 8) This happens ~30 seconds before AZ-5 is pushed.
The same event described in Table I on page 21-22 of INSAG-1, with the part deprecated by INSAG-7 marked with {}:
01:23:04 {The personnel blocked the two-TG trip signal.} Emergency stop valve to the turbine was closed. The reactor continues operating at a power of 200 MW(th).
01:23:10 One group of automatic control rods start driving out
01:23:21 Two groups of automatic control rods begin reinsertion.
01:23:31 Net reactivity increasing with subsequent slow increase in reactor power.
The textual description on page 25 of INSAG-1 isn't much different: "When the emergency stop valve to the turbine was closed, the steam pressure began to rise. The flow through the core started to drop because four of the main cooling pumps were running down with the generator. Increasing pressure, reduced feedwater flow and reduced flow through the reactor are competing factors which determine the volumetric steam quality and hence the power of the reactor. It should be emphasized that the reactor was then in such a state that small changes in power would have led to much larger changes in steam void, with consequent power increases. The combination of these factors ultimately led to a power increase begninning at about 01:23:30."
> neither the reactor power nor the other parameters (pressure and water level in the steam separator drums, coolant and feedwater flow rates, etc.) required any intervention by the personnel or by the engineered safety features from the beginning of the tests until the EPS-5 button was pressed. The Commission did not detect any events or dynamic processes, such as hidden reactor runaway, which could have been the event which initiated the accident. “
Sure, I'm just saying the power increase did happen, according to both INSAG-1 and INSAG-7. Neither INSAG-1, INSAG-7 nor Legasovs report claims there is a rapid increase in power before AZ-5 is pushed. The claim in INSAG-1 is that this power increase was the start of a positive-feedback loop that caused the explosion. The claim in INSAG-7 was that the power increase was not a safety problem, except to the extent it caused the operator to push AZ-5.
I can't find any description of the test across the three reports mentioning that that emergency stop button is supposed to be pressed as part of the test. AFAICT the test wasn't even completed when the button was pressed as the purpose of the test was to demonstrate that the emergency core cooling system could run for at least 40 s (INSAG-1 page 17) after closing the turbine emergency stop valve. That valve was closed at 01:23:04 and AZ-5 was pressed at 01:23:40.
For the rundown test, after the valve cut-off, it is irrelevant whether the reactor was shut down or not. The working plan for the test only specified that it was supposed to run before a planned maintenance period, so the shutdown was implied. During previous tests, the AZ-5 signal was wired to the valve cut-off signal and was sent automatically at the same moment. It is not clear why this changed in 1986, but the outcome would have been the same if AZ-5 had been pressed 35 seconds earlier.
Adobe Photoshop, the most used tool for professional digital art, especially in raster graphics editing, is was first example of a perfectly fine commercial desktop application converted to cloud application with a single purpose - increased profit for Adobe.
Master Collection CS6 still works excellently, and is now (relatively) small enough to live comfortably in virtuo. Newer file formats can be handled with ffmpeg and a bit of terminal-fu.
Many America's are not rich, so it's understandable that they are sad.
"The costs of inequality: When a fair shake isn’t"
"One measure of American inequality is the percentage of the nation’s overall wealth owned by different parts of the population. The graphic above shows that the richest 20 percent of the country owns 88.9 percent of the nation’s wealth, while the bottom 40 percent owes more than it owns."
I would like to note that the expertise of the main author of the paper, Lingxi Tang from ETH Zürich, is in solar technology, not fusion power or plasma physics. I know people outside of a research field can provide fresh look into a problem, but I think his credentials are insufficient to answer the main question he poses:
“If you’re talking about decarbonization of the energy system, is this really the best use of public money?”
Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance
A talk about constructive mathematics by Andrej Bauer at the Institute for Advanced Study.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21qPOReu4FI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/bull/1556
reply