Endurunnið en áhugavert
Ég er á haus í vinnu þessa dagana og þó það hafi verið ýmislegt sem mig hefur langað til þess að stinga hingað inn undanfarna daga - þá bara verð ég að fá að sofa líka. Þanni að það er endurnýting á áhugaverðu efni sem ég hef fundið á Netinu - þetta er virkilega góð grein sem ég rakst á.
<strong>Questions from the Chornobyl zone</strong>
Nov 02 2005, 22:47
When the United Nations issued its magisterial report on the long term effects of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster in Vienna last month, I was coincidentally driving from Kyiv to the Ukrainian portion of the 1800-square mile Zone of Alienation that was evacuated in the disaster’s wake. I was going to a training seminar for environmental journalists. But in truth, I go to the zone whenever given the opportunity and never fail to be moved when traveling its crumbling roads and backwoods trails, past abandoned villages and haunting ghost towns slowly succumbing to the radioactive wilderness born of the explosion and fire that released the radiation equivalent of at least 20 Hiroshima bombs.
Traffic gets much lighter as you drive through the populated regions surrounding the zone. In the early post-disaster years, when contamination levels were higher, these were places that people left – if they could. But even 20 years later, when much of the radioactivity has decayed away, you won’t see the dense developments of new, private houses that have been springing up all over rural Ukraine. Most of the dwellings visible from the road are old fashioned cottages of plaster, thatch and corrugated metal. No one wants to build anything new there. Radioactivity decays, but feelings of betrayal haven’t faded and it seems that few believe the official assurances – whether they come from Kyiv, Moscow or Vienna – about what’s safe and what isn’t.
Little wonder, therefore, that the UN’s claims about the disaster’s relatively benign effects have provoked such mistrust. Greenpeace called it a “whitewash,” especially in its prediction that Chornobyl radiation would lead to 4,000 cancer deaths over the long term among the most affected people, which included about 200,000 “liquidators” who took part in the clean-up, and nearly 400,000 people who spent time in the most contaminated areas. That is, indeed, on the low side of the number of fatal cancers – ranging between 4,000 and 75,000 – originally predicted by experts.
Those predictions were highly speculative for a variety of reasons, including the fact that no one knew for certain how much radiation the disaster released, how many people were exposed and what their doses were. To this day, no one knows the answers to those questions. But instead of speculating about what isn’t known, the UN experts based their conclusions on limited studies of what is known – even if that isn’t very much and focusing on it paints a distorted picture.
For example, the total number of liquidators was 600,000. But instead of predicting cancer deaths among all of them, the report did so only for about 200,000. That’s not because the other 400,000 aren’t at higher risk. It’s because researchers didn’t have data – radiation doses, health effects – for them.
Thus, in predicting 4,000 cancer deaths, the report simply ignored two-thirds of the liquidators. That is to say nothing about the tens of millions in the former Soviet Union and worldwide that had higher radiation exposures as a result of Chornobyl. Similarly, the report says that there has been no detectable increase in solid, non-thyroid cancers – but it also points out that there haven’t been any serious studies of the issue.
In other words, the report didn’t find anything because no one looked for it. This can be said for many of its conclusions.
But even if the prediction of 4,000 “extra” cancer deaths proves to be correct (though the cancers will be impossible to detect against the natural background of non-Chornobyl related cancers), we should be careful about taking that to mean that nuclear power carries acceptable risks. Chornobyl was the worst nuclear accident ever, but it wasn’t the worst nuclear accident possible.
The graphite fire that burned in the reactor core for 10 days was very, very hot. It was so hot that it melted the nuclear fuel and, because heat rises, it created a kind of smokestack that lifted the radiation high into the atmosphere. While this helped to spread contamination around the globe, it also spared the local population by diluting their radiation exposure. Without that dilution, local radiation levels would have been higher and the impact on human health may have been more serious.
The environmental impact might have also been worse. But having been to the Ukrainian and Belarusian sectors of the zone nearly 20 times, spending about a month there altogether, I have little doubt that the disaster’s environmental effects have been paradoxically positive – and probably would have been even at higher radiation levels.
By getting rid of people and their activities in the Zone of Alienation, the radioactive contamination has allowed nature to thrive, with rebounding populations of large animals such as moose, wild boar and deer. Predators have also returned in greater numbers than there were before the disaster. I’ve seen wolves in broad daylight and heard the call of an endangered lynx on a winter evening while searching for a herd of rare Przewaski’s horses that were experimentally released into the wild there.
There are no mutants. In the wild, mutants die. And if the animals live long enough to reproduce, they are biologically successful – even if they may be dying earlier because of radiation-related ailments. Since the health of an animal population is measured by its size, not by the health of its individual members, Chornobyl’s animals – which are more plentiful inside the zone than outside it – are healthy indeed.
Which leads to an unexpected conclusion: when it comes to wilderness and wildlife, humans and their activities appear to be more environmentally disastrous than the worst radioactive release in history.
Mary Mycio is the author of “Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl,” published by Joseph Henry Press. Visit the “Wormwood Forest” homepage at <a href="http://www.chernobyl.in.ua">www.chernobyl.in.ua</a>.
Upprunalega <a href="http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/oped/23435/">greinin birtist í Kyiv Post </a>
<strong>Questions from the Chornobyl zone</strong>
Nov 02 2005, 22:47
When the United Nations issued its magisterial report on the long term effects of the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster in Vienna last month, I was coincidentally driving from Kyiv to the Ukrainian portion of the 1800-square mile Zone of Alienation that was evacuated in the disaster’s wake. I was going to a training seminar for environmental journalists. But in truth, I go to the zone whenever given the opportunity and never fail to be moved when traveling its crumbling roads and backwoods trails, past abandoned villages and haunting ghost towns slowly succumbing to the radioactive wilderness born of the explosion and fire that released the radiation equivalent of at least 20 Hiroshima bombs.
Traffic gets much lighter as you drive through the populated regions surrounding the zone. In the early post-disaster years, when contamination levels were higher, these were places that people left – if they could. But even 20 years later, when much of the radioactivity has decayed away, you won’t see the dense developments of new, private houses that have been springing up all over rural Ukraine. Most of the dwellings visible from the road are old fashioned cottages of plaster, thatch and corrugated metal. No one wants to build anything new there. Radioactivity decays, but feelings of betrayal haven’t faded and it seems that few believe the official assurances – whether they come from Kyiv, Moscow or Vienna – about what’s safe and what isn’t.
Little wonder, therefore, that the UN’s claims about the disaster’s relatively benign effects have provoked such mistrust. Greenpeace called it a “whitewash,” especially in its prediction that Chornobyl radiation would lead to 4,000 cancer deaths over the long term among the most affected people, which included about 200,000 “liquidators” who took part in the clean-up, and nearly 400,000 people who spent time in the most contaminated areas. That is, indeed, on the low side of the number of fatal cancers – ranging between 4,000 and 75,000 – originally predicted by experts.
Those predictions were highly speculative for a variety of reasons, including the fact that no one knew for certain how much radiation the disaster released, how many people were exposed and what their doses were. To this day, no one knows the answers to those questions. But instead of speculating about what isn’t known, the UN experts based their conclusions on limited studies of what is known – even if that isn’t very much and focusing on it paints a distorted picture.
For example, the total number of liquidators was 600,000. But instead of predicting cancer deaths among all of them, the report did so only for about 200,000. That’s not because the other 400,000 aren’t at higher risk. It’s because researchers didn’t have data – radiation doses, health effects – for them.
Thus, in predicting 4,000 cancer deaths, the report simply ignored two-thirds of the liquidators. That is to say nothing about the tens of millions in the former Soviet Union and worldwide that had higher radiation exposures as a result of Chornobyl. Similarly, the report says that there has been no detectable increase in solid, non-thyroid cancers – but it also points out that there haven’t been any serious studies of the issue.
In other words, the report didn’t find anything because no one looked for it. This can be said for many of its conclusions.
But even if the prediction of 4,000 “extra” cancer deaths proves to be correct (though the cancers will be impossible to detect against the natural background of non-Chornobyl related cancers), we should be careful about taking that to mean that nuclear power carries acceptable risks. Chornobyl was the worst nuclear accident ever, but it wasn’t the worst nuclear accident possible.
The graphite fire that burned in the reactor core for 10 days was very, very hot. It was so hot that it melted the nuclear fuel and, because heat rises, it created a kind of smokestack that lifted the radiation high into the atmosphere. While this helped to spread contamination around the globe, it also spared the local population by diluting their radiation exposure. Without that dilution, local radiation levels would have been higher and the impact on human health may have been more serious.
The environmental impact might have also been worse. But having been to the Ukrainian and Belarusian sectors of the zone nearly 20 times, spending about a month there altogether, I have little doubt that the disaster’s environmental effects have been paradoxically positive – and probably would have been even at higher radiation levels.
By getting rid of people and their activities in the Zone of Alienation, the radioactive contamination has allowed nature to thrive, with rebounding populations of large animals such as moose, wild boar and deer. Predators have also returned in greater numbers than there were before the disaster. I’ve seen wolves in broad daylight and heard the call of an endangered lynx on a winter evening while searching for a herd of rare Przewaski’s horses that were experimentally released into the wild there.
There are no mutants. In the wild, mutants die. And if the animals live long enough to reproduce, they are biologically successful – even if they may be dying earlier because of radiation-related ailments. Since the health of an animal population is measured by its size, not by the health of its individual members, Chornobyl’s animals – which are more plentiful inside the zone than outside it – are healthy indeed.
Which leads to an unexpected conclusion: when it comes to wilderness and wildlife, humans and their activities appear to be more environmentally disastrous than the worst radioactive release in history.
Mary Mycio is the author of “Wormwood Forest: A Natural History of Chernobyl,” published by Joseph Henry Press. Visit the “Wormwood Forest” homepage at <a href="http://www.chernobyl.in.ua">www.chernobyl.in.ua</a>.
Upprunalega <a href="http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/oped/23435/">greinin birtist í Kyiv Post </a>
Ummæli