I saw a documentary about the Chernobyl exclusion zone a couple of years back. One of the more interesting facts was that while the radioation levels on the ground and soil surface have slowly gone down, the radiation levels from the trees are higher.
Explanation for this oddity was also provided, and like most things, makes perfect sense in retrospect. The radioactive particles have been slowly washed downwards in the soil, which explains the soil surface figures. But as the particles get to the depth where trees and saplings have their roots, these suck the particles in and eventually they get distributed in the leaves.
There is evidence some plants are better suited to certain heavy isotopes. Sunflowers, for example, were shown to draw cesium into their stalks [1]. The contaminated stalks would then be gathered and destroyed in a controlled manner to extract the radioactive ash.
However, in the case of Fukushima, the millions of sunflowers grown after the disaster started didn't seem to do much at all. [2]
Plants don't help when we choose to incorporate their radiation into our bodies: Tobacco pulls radioactive polonium-210 from the soil and air[0]. It has been found to accumulate in the lungs and continue to emit alpha-particles.
Just a note, if you've only seen the movie but not read the graphic novel it was based on, try to find a copy! The movie only covers about the first 1/4 of the novel, which is more expansive thematically as well as in plot. In particular, the ending of the novel is much more ambivalent than the mostly simplistic moral of the movie.
Thank you, I'll add that to my list of things-to-read.
I have the movie on DVD and on the bonus material it was said that Miyazaki wanted to make the movie first. At that time anime that wasn't based on a graphic novel (or novels) was practically impossible to get into wide distribution. Hence, no funding was available.
So they started by writing the story in a form of graphic novel and had it published first. After a moderate success in manga form it was easier to get the deals for making the anime too.
The bonus material went far enough to state that without the film there wouldn't be Studio Ghibli. Personally I love the film. Even among the Ghibli productions it stands out as a great work of art.
Bury them deep underground. An deep abandoned mine would be good. They are not so radioactive you need serious security, but they do need to leave the environment for a while.
Burn them in an isolated manner to reduce volume/weight; and bury the ash as (mildly) radioactive waste - thus removing the harmful isotopes from a lifecycle that might end up in humans.
After a decade there's a couple extra inches of wood and leaf matter sitting on the ground. I've always wondered what our planet looked like in the millions of years between the evolution of trees, and the evolution of the first fungus that could break down cellulose. With nowhere to go, those dead forests eventually fossilized and became coal deposits -- but what was it like to actually be there when those forests were growing. How thick did the dead wood stack up? How did anything grow after the first few generations of trees covered the ground in so much dead carbon?
Was there such a time? A quick google gives me, for trees, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_plants#..."The early Devonian landscape was devoid of vegetation taller than waist height." and "The first plants to develop this secondary growth, and a woody habit, were apparently the ferns, and as early as the middle Devonian one species, Wattieza, had already reached heights of 8 m and a tree-like habit.",
Comparing that with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_fungi"A rich diversity of fungi is known from the lower Devonian Rhynie chert", and lower Devonian = early Devonian, I very tentatively conclude fungi precluded trees. Given that, I (not hindered by much specific knowledge of the subject) expect that fungi breaking down cellulose co-evolved with trees.
Actually, the period between the development of woody plants and the development of wood-eating fungi was approximately 60 million years, and is known as the carboniferous because of all of the carbon that got sequestered.
Also, the key chemical wasn't cellulose, but rather lignin. Lignin is an astoundingly complex polymer* that plants use as "concrete" to create their woody cells. As far as I know, white rot fungi is the only group that can break it down.
Decomposition of plant matter in the Carboniferous period wasnt hindered by the lack of microbes of fungi, rather the plant matter was covered by shallow seas and swamps. It was the water that inhibited the breakdown. You can see the same process going on today in peat bogs.
I speak as an expert. I spent one summer between grade school and high school cutting peat in a peat bog. It wasnt wet like the Everglades, but you could squeeze a handful of peat and see the water drip out.
The dead forests you mentioned may have became massive coal beds via the "charcoal route"; i.e. a global firestorm may have incinerated essentially the entire biosphere.
The global debris layer created by the end-Cretaceous
impact at Chicxulub contained enough soot to indicate
that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned.
Source:
K-Pg extinction: Reevaluation of the heat-fire hypothesis;
Robertson, Lewis, Sheehan & Toon, 2013;
Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences
It's like the evolution of lignin-consuming fungi needs to start all over: this time the fungi in question needs to be able to both break down lignin, and be radiation-resistant.
As a potential solution, has anyone considered sprinkling the area with graphite, massive amounts of graphite flakes? It's quite difficult to burn nuclear grade graphite, and it might actually act as a moderator for the fallout and help to control what's happening randomly.
Maybe the solution is to dump a moderator over the area and seed it with organisms and see if something takes hold? Either way, this doesn't seem to be an intractable problem if one is a bit lax in terms of long term uncertainty. (this would throw off the projections of how this is going to play out 500 years from now)
To the best of my understanding, graphite in reactors serves the purpose of moderating nuclear chain reactions. The radioactive materials in the forest are almost certainly not dense enough to undergo a chain reaction, so adding a moderator would be pointless. The issue isn't the environmental radiation (like you might worry about standing next to an exposed nuclear core), it's the prospect that radioactive materials might be absorbed by people (like you might worry about if a nuclear core was on fire in the same city as you). Spreading moderators around would do nothing to help about bioaccumulation.
> The radioactive materials in the forest are almost certainly not dense enough to undergo a chain reaction, so adding a moderator would be pointless. ... Spreading moderators around would do nothing to help about bioaccumulation.
That's basically correct. There won't be a fission chain reaction because essentially no neutrons are released by the radioactive decay of the isotopes in the fallout. Consequently, deploying neutron moderators would have essentially no effect. (It'd be like, say, taking a life jacket with you on a hike through the Sahara.)
The relevant radioactive isotopes are mainly caesium 137, iodine 131, and strontium 90 [1]. When they decay into other elements, they release beta- and gamma radiation, which can damage nearby cells if ingested into the body. But none of them fissions to release neutrons that would be absorbed by graphite or boron.
The danger posed by these isotopes is that if you inhale or swallow them, they can stick around in your body tissues, zapping nearby cells, for a long time. For example, caesium 137 has an estimated biological half life of 70 days [2], while strontium 90, which is taken into bone much like calcium, has an estimated biological half life of 18 years [3].
A major forest fire in the Chernobyl area would turn contaminated trees into contaminated smoke. Who knows where the wind would blow the smoke. The resulting fallout could be inhaled and/or swallowed by people and other animals. It also might fall on farmland, where it could be up-taken by crops that would eventually be swallowed. All in all, not good news.
(Source: I used to be a Navy nuclear engineering officer.)
As dctoedt pointed out it appears that I might be wrong in this case, I had assumed that the fallout was producing significant neutron radiation which interacted with its surroundings to produce greater amounts of radiation. Adding a moderator in that circumstance should have reduced the burden a bit in theory.
Maybe it's more useful to sprinkle massive amounts of bacteria and such... maybe develop some that have some kind of resistance to the radiation. They´ll die eventually but you can keep the planes at it.
From looking at the wiki on neutron moderators[0], it seems like light water is used in more reactors globally, so would that be cheaper to use? And maybe for deployment you'd have quadcopters drop biodegradable ballons filled with it.
Would be really interesting to read a feasibility study around this.
Maybe it can help by being a jobs program to stimulate the global economy through secondary effects and have another place capital can seek returns on besides sexting apps ;)
Sorry for being overly sarcastic, but you could just as well pay people to ride bikes around town and hope that stimulates industry. Still there would be no effect on nature around Chernobyl power plant.
Yup, grey413 pointed that out but thanks for reiterating. I was only looking at the cost when I made my comment since graphite stood out to me as being overly expensive.
How many people die due to pollution related causes again?
How many will be affected due to climate change?
How many birds die because of eolic parks?
How many animals die or lose their habitat when a hydroelectric power plant is built?
"in just 65 years or so since nuclear power is available"
every single time a technology has been introduced this has caused an impact. People still die in plane crashes, car crashes, complications due to surgeries, etc
And of course nobody died in the petrol extraction->refining->distribution->thermal power plants process.
The main techniques we have now will make the planet uninhabitable even if nothing goes "wrong." Pollution is an ongoing disaster.
I think it's clear we should be spending more time, money, and effort on truly renewable and environmentally friendly power sources. People have been turning that discussion into a "nuclear or not" debate for a long time, which has certainly hampered whatever progress we have made in that direction.
If instead of containing Fukushima we bombarded the area with nuclear bombs, it still wouldn't leave the planet uninhabitable.
Even on years with major nuclear disasters, coal energy production kills more people than nuclear plants. Proper nuclear plants are the second safest option after hydro, and we can't get all our energy from hydro unless we start using much, much less energy.
Are you taking into consideration advancements in reactor technology? The state of the art is hardly comparable to Chernobyl. And it's not like we just don't know yet how badly current-gen would fail; we have pretty strong physics and engineering arguments that show it doesn't fail that way.
The State of the Art when Chernobyl was built was far beyond Chernobyl- but corners were cut, just like Fukushima.The question isn't can we build (and maintain) very safe Nuclear reactors, the question is, will we?
Just to be clear, I am of the opinion that modern Nuclear is a great option for our present energy needs.
Chernobyl was a disaster waiting to happen. It had no containment, a design that caused a spike in output when the control rods were driven in to reduce output (the tips on the control rod were the issue), and even then, the accident only happened when the engineers deliberately caused a fault. It's like a car that was designed with no airbags or crumplezones had it's brake lines deliberately cut, and then it was driven into a wall at full speed to see what would happen. No surprise that someone got hurt.
And Fukushima? It had containment, but it was using a design that predated Chernobyl, and sacrificed safety for the ability to produce material that you could use to build bombs.
Nuclear is far from perfect, but compared to the damage we're doing with fossil fuels, I'd welcome a change to the relatively safe and clean nuclear power, especially with modern, safe designs.
The problem with nuclear is not the reactors - they can be reasonably safe with today's technology.
The problem is nuclear waste. No matter what nuclear technology you use, it leaves behind tons of waste that will be hazardous in tens of thousands of years.
The more dangerous nuclear waste is, as a rule, the faster it decays. And the amounts of it that are produced are, by the scale of most industrial processes, tiny.
It's a very difficult problem to deal with -- politically. Technically, it's not a non-issue, but it is easier to deal with than, say, the horribly toxic tailings ponds that you get from most mining processes, or the residues from the tar sands. And those, unlike nuclear waste, are produced in massive quantities, and do not decay naturally.
I think you mean "the more radioactive nuclear waste is, as a rule, the faster it decays". "Danger" is function of half-life, decay mode, and pharmacokinetics, and some longer-lived isotopes are more dangerous than some shorter-lived isotopes.
It's a minor detail which doesn't really distract from your major point.
As I understand it, that's very outdated information. These designs have been passively safe as of twenty years ago when they were pioneered by the integral fast reactor. The plant can lose all power and will not ever melt down; liquid metal reactors just don't work that way.
One of the key advantages that recommends fourth generation nuclear reactor technology is that the design eliminates much of the existing "waste" (it's really just ~$50T worth of unspent fuel we have laying around that could power the entire world for ~1000 years) that's been produced by past and current light water reactors. A better estimate would be in the 200 to 400 year range now. That's right; we're actually capable of getting rid of nuclear waste with nuclear reactors.
Yes that's still a good number of years, but estimates for global deaths per year caused just by particulate pollution from coal power plants range from a conservative 100,000 up to 3,000,000. How many people per year is nuclear currently killing? I was pretty incredulous to find this out, but the answer is zero. And given that they produce negligible CO2 as compared with fossil fuels, they are recommended by the climatologist who is largely responsible for drawing attention to climate change since the 1980s, James Hansen. The conclusion (begins on page 116 of this .rtf file) in his 2009 book is worth reading:
Ironically, traditional environmentalist movements that indiscriminately protested and continue to protest against any nuclear power technologies have effectively greenwashed the "clean coal" (wtf) mantra into existence because fossil fuel plants are the only other alternative for baseload. To me, this seems eerily similar to the protestation of tobacco companies that their products were causing cancer. We're still building coal power plants, but the CO2 sequestration they're currently talking about would require burning ~25% more coal to power the process, making it so uneconomical that it won't ever happen.
And since sodium-cooled fast reactors can also run on decommissioned nuclear weapons, decreasing the risk of nuclear proliferation, we have every reason to be using these technologies for baseload power and zero reasons not to. Given the choice, I'd rather live near a nuclear power plant than any other type. Perhaps I'd finally be able to get an electric car that would then be functionally carbon neutral, though maybe not avoiding the ecological damage externalized in the building such massive batteries. (That's something I still need to look into for myself. Anyone have any academic sources other than the Union of Concerned Scientists/Lobbyists?)
The question isn't can we build (and maintain) very safe Nuclear reactors, the question is, will we?
The answer to that is no. When people believe something to be safe, they cut corners. This continues until it is demonstrated to not be safe by disaster.
A disaster then causes people to be safety conscious until they forget.
Look at planes. Considering the number of planes in the air the fact that we have so few accidents is pretty astounding. We were able to build an entire manufacturing process that very strictly avoids cutting corners.
Then again, maybe we don't really think about planes as being safe.
Aviation has taken the attitude of every plane crash being a major disaster. Hence crashes per mile may be low, but we have enough disasters and near misses to keep attention focused on continuous improvement.
There is no technology that I am aware of which comes with risk of disaster, and does not suffer a major disaster at least once every generation or two.
That's a tough one - and an interesting challenge! Almost everything I could think of either didn't come with a risk of disaster (or at least, no risk of major disaster), or has had major disasters.
The best I came up with was determining longitude based on the lunar distance. It could be disaster for a single ship that got it wrong, but I don't think there were major disasters during the 80 years (2-3 generations) it was in service.
I can think that a fleet might have ended up in the wrong place (like the Scilly naval disaster of 1707), so there could be a major disaster, but a fleet also has enough independent people doing their own reckonings that it would be self-correcting. I looked through the UK and French lists of ship disasters, but found no multi-ship disasters based on location errors during 1767 to ~1850.
(If you want a physical technology, rather than mathematical technique, then Hadley's octant, integrated with Vernier's scale, which made the octant precise enough that sailors could use to judge longitude usefully. In turn, it was effectively replaced in the 1800s by the sextant.)
But I don't know enough about nautical history to know if there were major disasters caused by octant/sextant use which were comparable to pre-lunar distance methods.
> How are renewable and environmentally friendly power sources* MUCH worse?
Because you need enormous quantities of the machinery used to harvest the power. Hundreds if not thousands of times as much as you would need in a nuclear reactor.
I guess it is highly unfriendly to the local environment though (on the other hand, we already did most of the damage in the good spots).
There is also the "high enough" factor. If things got awkward, we could run a civilization on solar PV, and even devote some of the energy production to increasing the total energy production.
(I sort of expect the cost curve on solar to start to bend quite a lot faster in the next few years; it's reached the point where it almost beats the grid without subsidies)
Going to hydro is exactly what the parent poster says - gradual powerdown and/or population reduction. There's just so much hydro potential around, we're already using almost all of the good spots, and there's not nearly enough capacity on this planet for our current use.
I thought they were claiming that EROI makes alternative energy sources intractable. That isn't true. The oil/coal preference is all about cost and convenience.
(The 'hydro wins' was just the sort of fun/obnoxious way to link to the chart showing that lots of systems have a net EROI, which is almost all you need)
EROEI does not take into account time which is where renewables really shine. Renewables are the solution, they are infinite unlike all the others. Reducing our consumption is needed, I can agree with that.
The inputs are infinite. The harvesting equipment has a limited operational lifetime. I'm pro -renewable, but but it's not a silver bullet, which is why I'm also pro nuclear. Renewables are also a long way from taking up the slack of fossil fuels just yet, so you can't just say 'renewables!' and call it done.
I'd be more concerned about old plants being still run than about new plants being built. If you believe the geeks, Fukusima and Chernobyl would've not happened with modern design.
I see your point as philosophical. It's the same old "commercial planes are statistically the safest way of transportation" and yet the whole world immediately knows about each plane catastrophe, rare as they are. Nobody cares about how many people die in car accidents every day just as nobody cares about how many deaths are caused by fossil fuel power plants.
As nknighthb says, it's hard to say without access to the full paper. I googled for it, but couldn't find it.
There are two things I noticed in the web page (not the paper) that triggered questions immediately.
Firstly the claim "Because they had so many bags placed in so many different locations, they were able to statistically control for outside factors such as humidity, temperature and forest and soil type". The map only has 19 or so locations. Seems a bit few to me to control for so many variables. Or am I mistaken?
Secondly, the map has areas colored green, but the legend runs from yellow via orange to red. What does green mean? Radiation at normal levels?
>we deposited 572 bags with uncontaminated dry leaf litter from four species of trees in the leaf litter layer at 20 forest sites around Chernobyl that varied in background radiation by more than a factor 2,600
Depending on how much variation there is in microclimate and soil type within their 20 locations, I could believe that they could get some pretty convincing results from 572 bags. Especially if, as it appears from their claims, the effect of radiation is very large relative to background noise.
On the other hand, the senior author:
* is not an expert in any related field as far as I can tell
* has been known to fabricate his data [2] and engage in borderline misconduct during the data analysis and writing phases as well [3].
Latin square type design I presume. Thanks for posting this and spending the time.
Given the record in your second reference, I'd imagine the lead author would want to have the data out there and eye-balled by as many as possible to improve reputation.
My first thought was local weather -- the exclusion zone is a pretty big place. The two pages of their paper I have access to, however, suggests they were quite conscious of that. If they accounted for it properly, the methodology is probably valid.
I'd very much like to see the raw data, of course.
Huh I'm curious about whether this is really that bad.
Eastern Europe (including and most of all, Russia) have peat lands which are extremely dense decayed plant matter that has, over many many years, compressed to the point where it has more carbon than coal. Russia's forest fires (having killed tens of thousands in 2010 and 2012 each) are the worst because the dense peat in the ground continues to burn through the years and nothing but a huge investment in landscaping will help put it out.
If decomposers are unable to create the peat as fast, it might make controlling the fires far easier in the short term because the peat won't continue burning, thus decreasing the risk of a catastrophic forest fire spreading nuclear ash everywhere.
Edit: That said, peat takes thousands of years to build up so it might not make any difference whatsoever.
Carbon that is not decaying is carbon that is sequestered. If the trees don't decompose, it removes carbon from the biosphere and ultimately from the atmosphere.
Excellent science. Of course, in retrospect, makes complete sense. Radiation is used to sterilize food, so it's not surprising that it is doing the same thing to the forest.
My guess is, for a micro-organism death of a single cell is deadly. So the first photon that comes along kills. ( A bit more formal, irradiation effects are probably proportional to the surface area, while available cells, and thus ratio of destruction, is probably proportional to the volume. So relative damage is proportional to 1/size.)
All light is made of photons. I think you mean "ionizing radiation", which includes gamma rays (photons), as well as alpha particles, beta particles, neutrons, etc.
I concur with Dylan16807; your physical model makes no sense. It means that viruses would be killed if a gamma ray sneezed nearby, and it doesn't explain D. radiodurans survivability.
It's likely going to be a function of DNA size, ability to repair DNA, redundancy in the DNA, and lack of easily induced damaging side effects. None of which are strongly correlated to cell volume.
I am not talking about cell volume, I am talking about number of cells. So if a single celled organism is hit by a gamma ray and a cell dies, it is dead. If a tree looses a single cell, it will probably survive.
But radiation can go through without impacting anything. Absorption should be roughly proportional to total mass/volume. Even if it didn't penetrate then some cells/rocks/dirt would shade others from the danger and the average radiation would still be based on mass/volume. I mean it's not like treating a human body as individual cells, increasing surface area a millionfold, would change the dose.
The issue is most likely that high radiation levels are inhibiting the growth of microorganisms. So new microorganisms would probably just die.
Note that this is not particularly unexpected. We do this on purpose (in a more controlled manner) to prevent spoilage of food and reduce food borne illnesses.
"To confirm their hunch, they created around 600 small mesh bags and stuffed them each with leaves, collected at an uncontaminated site..."
They used uncontaminated samples yet the environment killed the microorganisms and fungi they brought in. I think this doesn't work as long as the radiation level stays this high in the area.
That will be happening every time it rains, wind blows, river flows, something like an animal comes in etc. Repopulating it probably isn't hard and wouldn't take long as it's happening naturally. The tricky part is trying not to have every organism killed after arriving.
Have anyone been to Chernobyl? I find the topic fascinating, and are considering to go there to have a look for my self. Apparently there is possible to have an guided tour into the exclusion zone. For example https://chernobyl-tour.com/english/ .
This is awesome science (I would say a little more worthy of a kickstarter than Another burger joint). Fukushima is the Chernobyl of the sea, hopefully someone will do similar research to study it.
What about the animal population that seems to have adapted enough to resist the current radioactivity levels (source: some BBC documentary IIRC). I found it fascinating.
I take it you didn't read the Smithsonian article? The second paragraph says:
> Birds around Chernobyl have significantly smaller brains that those living in non-radiation poisoned areas; trees there grow slower; and fewer spiders and insects—including bees, butterflies and grasshoppers—live there.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Chernobyl_disast... , which also points out that "[s]ome plants and animals have been able to adapt to the increased radiation levels present in and around Chernobyl", but then only lists the Arabidopsis plant.
There is more animal diversity there now than before, but that can also be attributed to it being more like a wildlife sanctuary.
I read it (without skimming even). But allow me to be surprised that, considering what I remember about human populations impact (heavy and deadly mutations in children), even with reduced organs, there are living animals near the site.
This is likely because your baseline is not a wildlife sanctuary. You are comparing the animal life in populated, pre-accident Chernobyl with farms and agriculture, to depopulated, post-accident Chernobyl with little additional human impact.
> Those studies found mammal diversity and abundance equal to that of a protected nature reserve, with rare species including bears, lynx, river otter, and badger as well as introduced herds of European bison and Przewalski’s horses. Bird diversity is even richer and includes 61 rare species. Whooper swans—never before reported in the region—now appear regularly.
It points out that animal counts isn't the same as animal health, and it suggests that a reason we don't see those animals born with 'heavy and deadly mutations' is because they are quickly eaten by other animals.
I appreciate the care they went to in order to exclude other causes. I am not surprised that microbes are more susceptible to ionizing radiation than larger multi-cellular life given their structure. But I am surprised that they don't make up for that in fecundity.
Basically, radiation is effecting the ability of natural decomposition processes in the exclusion zone. A study was conducted with natural leaves in panty hose bags within the exclusion zone and outside it. 60% percent of the weight of the bags was still retained in the exclusion zone after one year.
This is a major concern because the exclusion zone (particularly the Red Forest) has 27 years of litter (leaves and other plant material) which is a fire hazard. A large fire could redistribute the radioactive material outside of the exclusion zone.
Yeah I can't believe those deceitful bastards at the Smithsonian would dare float the idea of a possible subscription to their magazine before you read their article.
It isn't even that (at least I didn't get that). It's just a standard click through advertisement that 90% of magazine sites seem to use. A lot of interesting and informative articles are hidden away behind these pernicious, easily skippable, advertisements.
While I agree completely that it's a bit outdated(sorry, potentially putting words in your mouth) and has the potential to be pernicious(see the parent of this thread), the easily skippable part is what makes it ok with me.
I found the subscription notice to be incredibly unoffensive given the reputation of the source as well as the high quality of the article.
Explanation for this oddity was also provided, and like most things, makes perfect sense in retrospect. The radioactive particles have been slowly washed downwards in the soil, which explains the soil surface figures. But as the particles get to the depth where trees and saplings have their roots, these suck the particles in and eventually they get distributed in the leaves.
Funky, but oh so natural.