Inside The Polygon - Still The World's Most Radioactive Test Site - Independent

[hatrack]

Walking through the flat and endless Kazakh steppe, Nemytov Oleg suddenly stops, fumbles in his desert camouflage trousers and pulls out a Geiger counter. The device bleeps into life. He peers pensively at the reading. When we got out of the car it read 3. Now, within a couple of hundred yards, it has jumped to 10. He unwraps breathing masks and two pairs of disposable shoe coverings. "If we want to go any further we will have to wear these," he says. Further along the dusty road he checks his device once more. "You see, the meter is now reading 21," he says. "If we were in a city far away from here it would read about 0.1. The radiation increases very quickly."

The reason Mr Oleg is keeping such a close eye on background radiation is because we are standing on the very spot where, 60 years ago, the Soviet Union launched the Cold War, with the detonation of its first nuclear bomb. Watched from a lead-lined bunker by Stalin's feared secret police chief Lavrenti Beria, First Lightning exploded at exactly 7am on 29 August 1949, throwing up an enormous mushroom cloud which billowed over the steppe and, unbeknownst to people nearby, dumping huge quantities of radioactive material on them, their houses and their fields.

EDIT

Most of those who worked on the test site have long since died, but the radiation levels continue to poison new generations of Kazakhs. In an anonymous-looking block of Soviet- era flats is Semei's only facility for disabled children. According to the centre's director Tylysova Toleakarovna, of the 346 children they regularly treat, 45 have illnesses which result directly from radiological contamination. Baurzhanaly Kuanysh is one of them. Now 16 years old, he was born in Abay district, one of the areas closest to the Polygon. He suffers from microcephaly, a common illness among radiation victims where the victim's head is abnormally small. "We can provide for some of the victims who live near the city but we need to get out to the villages," explains Mrs Toleakarovna. "That is my dream." Some 160km west of Semei lies Kurchatov, a meticulously planned settlement that was once the most secretive town in the Soviet Union. Here scientists work to map and contain the nuclear contamination inside the Polygon.

What is already clear is that the three sites where the explosions were regularly conducted will be uninhabitable for thousands of years, and a river that flows through the site into the Irtysh is contaminated. Yet that has not deterred new arrivals: government and private investors are keen to open up some areas of the test site because it is littered with deposits of coal, copper and silver. There are already 400 miners digging for coal close to where some of the later and most powerful tests were carried out in the 1960s and 1970s. But the rush to extract minerals from this poisoned land has set alarm bells ringing among medical experts. Boris Gallich, a specialist in the effects of radiation, said: "My biggest fear is that these people could become contaminated and pass it on to their children and families. That may be a matter of indifference for the company directors, but not for the people on the ground."

EDIT

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-worlds-worst-radiation-hotspot-1784502.html

[enlightenment]

1. The Soviets launched the Cold War?

Wow. News to me. So those six tests we conducted, starting with Trinity and not including the two we dropped on Japan, BEFORE they tested their first one had nothing to do with precipitating the Cold War.

Silly me - I thought it was mutually assured global annihilation . . .

[marybourg]

2. Well I guess it wasn't a "war", until .

the opposing party had a similar weapon
:hide:

[enlightenment]

4. True!

But you have to admit that 'launch' makes it sound like some sort of deliberate Soviet offensive!

[madokie]

3. And some think we should use nuclear power to generate our electricity

I can just see a whole section of the US uninhabitable for a thousand plus years.

[Massacure]

5. Apples and Oranges.

There is a huge difference between the military's open air nuclear testing and civilian power plants.

[madokie]

8. Radiation poisoning is radiation poisoning no matter where it comes from

What about TMI or Chernobyl, did they not release any radiation into the environment? Sure they both did and lots of it too

[Massacure]

10. Yes, radiation poisoning is radiation poisoning. But no one was poisoned at TMI.

Lots is a relative term by the way. Chernobyl released a lot more radiation than Three Mile Island. But Three Mile Island had a containment dome and Chernobyl did not. There is a reason why cancer rates are through the roof at Chernobyl and are relatively unchanged at Three Mile Island.

[NNadir]

6. How come you don't give a shit about dangerous fossil fuel waste....

and do not give a shit about people killed by dangerous fossil fuel war, dangerous fossil fuel terrorism, or your dangerous fossil fueled bourgeois lifestyle?

You have never, not once, ever, been able to establish EVEN ONE case of a person injured by commercial nuclear power, and have NOT ONCE called for banning the dangerous fossil fuel refineries that support your bourgeois life style because of napalm attacks on Hamburg, Tokyo, Hanoi, Hue, Haiphong...etc...etc.

Since you are entirely ignorant of nuclear technology, and know zero about the subject, never mind things that matter, like say, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V1R-4JRVDB7-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1007817810&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6fe3697f69810141e616401fbe0b748e">the general solutions to the Bateman equations, which involve equilibrium, and since your entire approach to science is to remain ignorant of it, you feel justified in engaging in useless scaremongering in service of your arbitrary and toxic faith based ideology.

Nuclear energy need not be perfect to be vastly superior to all the stuff you don't give a shit about. It merely needs to be vastly superior, which it is.

[madokie]

7. Who said I didn't?

You maybe. As I've said before and as I'll say again all I need to know is if the nuclear power industry feels it has to lie to me, or anyone else for that matter, to get their way as they have then I know all I need to know about them. The nuclear industry has always lied to us about where and what they plan to do with that highly radioactive waste. Even today after 60 plus some odd years there is still no viable plan for what to do with that waste. Early on here you tried to slide some bullshit my way saying that there was indeed a solution to that but when I didn't buy your bullshit you started talking your shit.

For your information big guy I don't have a faith based anything and it would do you good to realize that, but of course you won't because it doesn't fit in with your weird ideals. I guess since when the only answer for the waste you have is that jaysus is going to come and take you away anyway, so why worry about the waste now, is why you get totally besides yourself when I don't buy your bullshit.

As it stands today the only use that I've seen for some of that waste is in DU munitions which is killing people left and right and will continue to kill and maim for years and years to come. Which btw is unacceptable to me, me being a person who put my life on the line years ago rather than skirt the duty like so many have and did. I'd be real pissed today if I'd been poisoned by du on top of the other shit they poisoned us Vietnam Vets with, I'll tell you that.

So you see you can stick your high and mighty up you drunken fraudulent ass for all I care because at this point in time I just like poking you a little here and there to get you all riled up if you want to know the truth of the matter.

I worked to help stop pso from building blackfox nuclear power plant near here years ago and I'll do the same again if need be.

Anyways, have a great day today, I know I am.;-)

You appear to be the right age, did you go to Vietnam? If not how did you stay out of harms way, college deferments, conscientious objector, what? Did you shit your pants like the boy ted nugent did and wear it for weeks, what was it?:shrug: Did you go to Canada cause if you did then my hats off to you for having the balls to say hell no I won't go but I doubt that is the case as your trash talking typing here would suggest otherwise. :hi:

[Javaman]

9. pretty typical of nnadir. he usually goes 0 to apeshit in nothing flat.

as you probably know, he's the resident kook.

no one takes him seriously.

It's like his parents are actual nuke plants and anything said against them, he goes all mafia.

he's a nut.

[NNadir]

11. Wow! You are the greatest person in the world!!!!!!

You went to Vietnam, and thus are automatically a hero, sort of like Colin Powell!

Actually I don't give a fuck what you did in your sorry ass little life, except for the part about spouting your abysmal creationist anti-science crapola.

If you think for a New York minute that I have enough respect for you to share happy little tales of my life, think again.

I have been very explicit about how much respect I have for you. Zero.

Lots of people went to Vietnam and used the experience under the GI bill to become educated.

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED344638&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED344638

You, apparently, didn't.

Thus, the fact is that you are completely ignorant of science, deliberately ignorant.

The other fact is that you have arbitrarily decided that dangerous fossil fuel war, which actually exists, is less of a risk than your fantasy about a nuclear war.

Let me guess, you think that napalm is a nuclear material, right?

I have no intention of indulging your abysmal ignorance on the subject of uranium, by the way, although I note that 100% of the dumb fundie anti-nukes are responsible for aerosol uranium that rains right now on much of the United States.

The person who wrote the following article is something called a "scientist." Had you availed yourself of veterans benefits - and clearly you didn't - and gotten an education, you might have a shot at comprending it. But you didn't and thus don't. That's hardly my fault.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

In fact, the physiological chemistry of the actinides is covered all over the scientific literature, and a great review on the subject is found in Chem. Rev. 2003, 103, 4207-4282, but unsurprisingly, having not used the GI bill to get an education, you are unfamiliar with the contents of the scientific paper.

Have a nice, whiny, dumb fundie day.