
Chernobyl wildfires and radiation risk - vvincendon
https://valentin.vincendon.com/essays/chernobyl-wildfires-radiation-risk
======
ISL
I don't believe that there are any significant I-131 production mechanisms
within the decay chains of the fallout.

Iodine 131 has an eight day half life. The accident was 12,409 days ago. There
is <2^{-1500} of the iodine remaining.

For scale, if the Earth were made entirely, by mass, from I-131 on the day of
the accident, there would have been ~10^50 nuclei. All of those nuclei would
have decayed into daughters within the first four years.

There is certainly plenty of residual radioactivity from Chernobyl, with which
one might be concerned regarding forest fires. The specific hazard against
which potassium iodide provides protection, however, is no longer present.

------
nuccy
Spreading of the wildfires in the exclusion zone has been stopped, rainy days
helped with their extinguishing.

Radiation levels are within safe ranges [2].

The wildfires started from the nearby villages where residents were careless
with burning their waste. As a response Ukrainian parliament increased fines
for such actions by 18 times [3].

[1] [https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-wildfires-
close...](https://abcnews.go.com/International/ukraine-wildfires-close-
chernobyl-extinguished-rain-falls/story?id=70138987)

[2] [http://www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua/MEDO-
PS/index.php](http://www.srp.ecocentre.kiev.ua/MEDO-PS/index.php)

[3]
[https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/654801.html](https://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/654801.html)

------
ConsiderCrying
I love looking at that "Radiation Dose Chart", which has been posted quite
frequently ever since "Chernobyl" the tv series aired. Shows just how much
radiation humans are dealing with on an everyday basis.

Regarding the essay, I wouldn't mind seeing what the risk is like for the
nearby regions. I've seen reports that the rains might smooth some of the
danger but it's still a chilling prospect. Wouldn't contamination of land in
the Kiev region and parts of Belarus mean a disruption of some supply chains?
I've read that Ukraine delivers vast amounts of salt to the EU, that would
likely be hit. (Not to mention the impact on people but that's a different
matter altogether.)

~~~
Krasnol
Here is another chart: [https://www.hilfe-
tschernobyl.de/s/cc_images/cache_243604066...](https://www.hilfe-
tschernobyl.de/s/cc_images/cache_2436040664.jpg?t=1369573955)

It shows the raise of thyroid cancer in Belarus.

Radiation accidents are quite convenient as those who suffer from them spread
over a very long time while you read always that only one person died from
Fukushima for example.

~~~
arcticbull
Just as an FYI, in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour, nuclear is about an
order of magnitude safer than the next safest contender, _solar_ , and two
orders of magnitude safer than coal. [1, 2]

Also consider that the worst ever accident in the history of nuclear power,
Chernobyl of course, is expected to in the full course of time, kill 4,000
people (including those who killed themselves because they thought they were
"contaminated"). On the other hand, the worst hydro accident, the Bangqiao dam
failure, killed 171,000 people in the span of likely about 10 whole minutes.
[3, 4]

It bears calling out separately for emphasis since you mentioned it, if you're
going to get any cancer, just pray it's thyroid cancer -- it has a 98%
survival rate [5]. The thyroid is removed and you take thyroxin for the rest
of your life, but otherwise, you're good to go. If you're in an affected area
adding it to your routine screening should be more than sufficient.

[1] [https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-
energy](https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy)

[2] [https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-
ener...](https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-
source.html)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_disaster)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam)

[5] [https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid-
cancer/statistic...](https://www.cancer.net/cancer-types/thyroid-
cancer/statistics)

~~~
thawaway1837
It killed 4000 people because they basically shut down cities and villages to
allow it to do so.

If they hadn’t obliterated those places the death toll would be a lot higher.

I haven’t heard of entire cities being shutdown due to solar accidents despite
the far greater prevalence of solar farms than nuclear facilities in
existence.

Edit: Also, heroic efforts by ordinary Russians, who almost certainly
compromised their own lives so that people much further away wouldn’t be
affected.

~~~
na85
I don't think anyone claims that nuclear is safer than solar, but of course
solar can't really power everything because half the time it's dark. Also
you'd need a solar farm about the size of Spain just to satisfy demand, to say
nothing of transmission losses getting energy to high latitudes or
mountainous/cloudy regions where the sun doesn't shine all day long.

Imagine trying to power Seattle or Vancouver with solar. It might work until 3
or 4 pm in the summer, but at all other times you'd need to bring power across
the Rockies, taking massive transmission losses all the way due to resistivity
of wire, and then of course when it's the rainy season in the Pacific North
West, it's snowing in the Prairies so now you need to have a means of scraping
snow and ice from your Spain-sized solar farm.

Then scale that difficulty up by an order of magnitude, adding in the cost of
maintaining multi-terawatt transoceanic power cables to import energy from
another continent if you want to run your electrical applicances after the sun
goes down.

It's just not feasible.

~~~
roenxi
> I don't think anyone claims that nuclear is safer than solar

This branch of the comment thread started because arcticbull claimed, with two
separate sources, that nuclear is safer than solar.

The major examples of nuclear being less safe than solar involve invoking
nuclear plants designed in 1967 (Fukushima) and 1972 (Chernobyl). At the dawn
of the nuclear industry [0].

People are claiming that nuclear is safer than solar and they are accompanied
by statistical evidence that nuclear is absurdly safe. The evidence is also
considerable that by 1975 they'd figured out how to design a safe reactor.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuclear_power_history.svg)

~~~
na85
I believe the claim was that it's safer per terawatt-hour, not that it's
absolutely safer.

Those are different metrics.

~~~
roenxi
While technically correct that isn't a useful interpretation of "nuclear power
is safer than solar", because it implies that nuclear is infinitely safer than
using solar energy in a country that doesn't have any nuclear plants but has
some solar panels.

I don't think anyone would care about that fact in practice. Deaths per unit
power is much more important unless you have a thesis that it changes with the
amount of power produced.

------
k_bx
> As if covid-19 was not enough already.

And war with Russia, yes.

------
jojo2000
In order to assess the danger you need to monitor realtime exposure to
radioactive particles. There is no measurements here. It seems the data exists
in Europe but not publicly accessible which is a shame.

The Tchernobyl accident released a lot of radioactivity in the air.

The soil contamination is twofold :

\- spotty : some rocks that blew thru the explosion highly contaminated some
spots.

\- distributed : the plume contaminated the soil with material of different
half-lifes.

The problem here is that trees are recycling organic matter that was tainted
by radioactivity and so, if they burn they release it in floating materials.

We cannot infer something meaningful from the plume's direction as the
atmosphere has high-flowing air currents in upper atmosphere that redistribute
the pollution.

Only a raise of radioactivity in realtime measurements will tell. I'm sure the
effect can be seen in Europe currently, yet no one wants to scare people so
information is hidden.

~~~
morsch
_" The Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring (REM) group of the Joint
Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission provides qualified
information about the level of environmental radioactivity to the public,
Member States, European Commission and European Parliament."_

[https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx](https://remap.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Advanced.aspx)

 _" We believe in building something that matters. Something that has a
positive impact on the lives of many. This is why we have created uRADMonitor,
because our bodies are fragile and because pollution is harmful both to us and
to the environment. So we have designed a worldwide network of automated
monitors, as a first line detection and warning system against the harmful
chemical and physical factors around us."_

[https://www.uradmonitor.com/](https://www.uradmonitor.com/)

~~~
jojo2000
yes, great resource. Still,

I know there exists and official network of radiation detection in Europe yet
data is not accessible (except maybe here [0])

and we would need historical data to see fluctuations over natural threshold
(more than 24H)

[0] [https://era.org.mt/en/Pages/Ionising-Radiation-Monitoring-
St...](https://era.org.mt/en/Pages/Ionising-Radiation-Monitoring-
Stations.aspx)

~~~
morsch
That's the same data I posted (Radioactivity Environmental Monitoring,
EURDEP), in a smaller frame. As for historical data, the REM map easily lets
you go back to March... I'm sure the older data is available, too.

~~~
jojo2000
I couldn't find a single radioactivity sensor in europe urad's network.
regarding the first website, I couldn't find a way to have a range bigger than
24h.

~~~
morsch
_I couldn 't find a single radioactivity sensor in europe urad's network._

[https://snipboard.io/FkpN0c.jpg](https://snipboard.io/FkpN0c.jpg)

 _regarding the first website, I couldn 't find a way to have a range bigger
than 24h._

[https://snipboard.io/fOmbWe.jpg](https://snipboard.io/fOmbWe.jpg)

Maybe I'm missing something...

------
Avernar
So far in 2020 we have a near-war with Iran, a global pandemic, a locust
invasion in Africa, Krakatoa erupting in Indonesia, and now a radioactive
wildfire, and it's only April.

------
vvincendon
A short essay on whether the Chernobyl wildfires represent any widespread
radiation risk considering the strongest anticyclone ever recorded in Western
Europe.

~~~
aktiur
Question regarding Iodine-131: is it still being generated inside the spent
fuel / nuclear waste in Chernobyl? From what I could gather, Iodine-131 is
mostly a fission byproduct, and is not present in any of the 4 decay
chains[1].

If none is still being generated, there should not be any significant quantity
left considering it has a half-life of only 8 days.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain)

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Yeah there's none left, activity is now dominated by caesium 137 which has a
30 year half life.

------
pvaldes
Massive saiga mortality loading?...

------
kdmytro
It's spelled Chornobyl.

~~~
Waterluvian
Every year it's something different, it seems. Points towards an impossible
translation situation, maybe?

~~~
konart
Not exactly. Chernobyl is the right way of transliteration from Russian name
of the plant (Чернобыль), Chornobyl would be the right way if you are doing
the same from Ukrainian (Чорнобиль).

Same goes for Kiev\Kyev.

These days ukrainians are often pissed if you use the 'wrong' one.

~~~
practice9
I think it's reasonable for a country that wants to break away from its'
Soviet past

~~~
catalogia
I sympathize with that, but I'm a bit surprised they'd want to 'claim'
Chernobyl/Chornobyl despite its location. Doesn't the Ukrainian government
still try to persuade the Russian government to pay for the mess?

------
cyptus
would cloud seeding be an option against wildfires?

------
marcus_holmes
The article says "South West" when it means "South East". On a map or image
with North at the top, West is left and East is right.

If the author confused West and East, I'm not holding out much hope that any
of the rest of the article is accurate.

