Chernobyl: The end of a three-decade experiment

[hunter]

Since the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986, an area of more than 4,000 square kilometres has been abandoned. That could be about to change, as Victoria Gill discovered during a week-long trip to the exclusion zone.

"This place is more than half of my life," says Gennady Laptev. The broad-shouldered Ukrainian scientist is smiling wistfully as we stand on the now dry ground of what was Chernobyl nuclear power plant's cooling pond.

"I was only 25 when I started my work here as a liquidator. Now, I'm almost 60."

There were thousands of liquidators - workers who came here as part of the mammoth, dangerous clean-up operation following the 1986 explosion. The worst nuclear accident in history.

--more--

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767

This accident demonstrated how humans going about their ordinary business are worse for the natural environment than fallout from a nuclear power plant accident.

And now humans are returning...



I'm quite serious.

If anyone here wants to save the world, there are a few ways to go about it, mostly involving human rights especially for women, realistic sex education, universal access to birth control, and a broad scientific education emphasizing literacy, numeracy, and respect for the natural environment.

The ordinary activities of ordinary humans are more damaging to the natural environment than, say, tritium from the accident at Fukushima.

As Pogo says, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

[enough]

1. The end? NT

[sinkingfeeling]

2. I was one of the 60,000 people to visit Pripyat last year.

[Eko]

3. You do realize

This accident was from humans going about their ordinary business, right?

[hunter]

4. I think you missed my point.

What's yours?

I think we can all agree RBMK reactors were a bad idea.

Their primary attraction was they were cheap, simple, and used unenriched uranium fuel. They were also somewhat attractive to the military as they had the capability of breeding plutonium, although it was generally cheaper to use specialized reactors and refining complexes for that, as the U.S.A. did, especially at Hanford.

Heavy water reactors, similar to Canada's CANDU, would have cost four times as much.

I don't romanticize modern agrarian lifestyles.

Many rural people are the sorts of assholes who recklessly shoot wolves and other wildlife and drench their land in toxic chemicals hardly any better than nuclear fallout. The natural environment is better off without them.

Germany's wolves are on the rise thanks to a surprising ally: the military.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127123863

I'm never going to cry for people forced out of environmentally destructive lifestyles.

If some pig or dairy farmers' kids in Iowa, Germany, or the Ukraine move away to the big city, for whatever reason, including nuclear accidents, I don't care if the farm is lost, I only hope there is a comfortable social safety net for those whose livelihoods have become obsolete.

My own great grandparents were all ranchers, pig farmers, and dairy people in the U.S.A. Wild West. They were all hunters. I've hunted and killed meat I've eaten, and yes, that's my actual name.

If meat and dairy products all went away tomorrow I wouldn't really miss it.

I'd rather feel some kinship with the wolves of Chernobyl.

[Eko]

5. Im still not sure what your point was.

Mine was "You do realize This accident was from humans going about their ordinary business, right?"