Chernobyl (HBO Mini Series)

[sgtBerbatov]

Biker 1 said:

SeanyD said:

"...If the other three reactors of the Chernobyl power plant had been damaged by the explosion of the first, then hardly any living and breathing organisms would have remained on the planet..."

Properly scary!!!
I watched the whole series on a couple of long haul BA flights recently - riveting!

I did the same recently. It's a tough watch really especially the episode with the dogs in it.

[pidsy]

raceboy said:

Kiev booked for later in the year, so a visit to Pripyat is on the cards, another watch is on the cards before then, along with looking for lead pants on Amazon

Make sure you go with a decent operator. The quality varies hugely.

[FourWheelDrift]

raceboy said:

looking for lead pants on Amazon

You can get full outfits - http://www.asomerville.ltd.uk/radiation-protection...

[raceboy]

pidsy said:

Make sure you go with a decent operator. The quality varies hugely.

Mrs Race is always in charge of logistics and is yet to balls up, not booked the excursion yet, but been 'googling' a few, found one that looks legit with decent reviews for about £100 each but she'll be sorting it.

[llewop]

FourWheelDrift said:

raceboy said:

looking for lead pants on Amazon

You can get full outfits - http://www.asomerville.ltd.uk/radiation-protection...

don't bother, even (especially) if you encountered enough radiation to worry about; you'd probably increase your exposure by trying to wear protective clothing in the area.



[to save a second reply explaining myself: the shielding provided by lead aprons/shields is generally designed for medical scenarios (so often low energy X-rays) where it will probably be sufficient to mitigate a good percentage of the radiation. The most likely gamma emitter you'd be exposed to is Cs-137 with a fairly punchy gamma energy, so the shields would be worse than useless, virtually no shielding effect, but slow you down.....]

[raceboy]

My comment about lead pants was purely in jest the tour group websites rightly or wrongly state the radiation level is considerably less than an x-ray or even the flight there.

[Clockwork Cupcake]

So long as it's less than 3.6 roentgens then it'll be fine.

[pidsy]

raceboy said:

pidsy said:

Make sure you go with a decent operator. The quality varies hugely.

Mrs Race is always in charge of logistics and is yet to balls up, not booked the excursion yet, but been 'googling' a few, found one that looks legit with decent reviews for about £100 each but she'll be sorting it.

Done the zone twice now. Once with Tourkiev and once with some very dubious polish urbexers.

Tourkiev (the ones who took top gear) are represented by Lupine travel in the UK are very good. Even coming down to the minibus fleet they have. Some of the outfits we saw looked like they’d be lucky to make it - think 20 year old converted transits. TK are top notch if you’re going to do the standard day trip. Well worth an overnighter in Chernobyl if you can.

There are a couple of extensive threads on here as well as some very very knowledgeable members when it comes to being there.

[llewop]

raceboy said:

My comment about lead pants was purely in jest the tour group websites rightly or wrongly state the radiation level is considerably less than an x-ray or even the flight there.

I did realise that - I was reacting more to the link!

But it is true that the radiation levels in the areas they'll take you are mostly low; probably the highest readings will either be by one of their showpiece items/location 'look at this.....' or one or two of the roads have surprisingly high ambient levels due to material in the land around, so enough to get an electronic monitor clicking and bleeping at you as you drive by.

[raceboy]

This lot seem to have very glowing pun intended reviews....

http://chernobyl-tour.com/about_us.html

But only had a very brief look into it, and we aren’t going till May anyway.

[ruggedscotty]

Am I the only one that thinks visiting the Chernobyl site is a little bit offensive ?

How much are you spending on visiting the place ? Would it not be better to donate that money to some of the charities that are trying to help those affected by this industrial tragedy ?

Should have a read up on the area and about the issues that still exist and are very real. This isn't a low hazard disaster. And it is going to continue to affect the earth for many thousands of years. get that. thousands..... of..... years.....

there are people dying due to this accident, there are people still to discover that they are dying due to this disaster, people that have not been born yet, people whos great great grandparents have not yet been born yet.

its horrendous.

And we have people that want to visit here as a tourist, that want to go see the worlds worst nuclear disaster.. please people...

[pidsy]

ruggedscotty said:

Am I the only one that thinks visiting the Chernobyl site is a little bit offensive ?

How much are you spending on visiting the place ? Would it not be better to donate that money to some of the charities that are trying to help those affected by this industrial tragedy ?

Should have a read up on the area and about the issues that still exist and are very real. This isn't a low hazard disaster. And it is going to continue to affect the earth for many thousands of years. get that. thousands..... of..... years.....

there are people dying due to this accident, there are people still to discover that they are dying due to this disaster, people that have not been born yet, people whos great great grandparents have not yet been born yet.

its horrendous.

And we have people that want to visit here as a tourist, that want to go see the worlds worst nuclear disaster.. please people...

Think you might have missed the boat a bit there. The government in Ukraine only allow so many official visitors per year (there are other ways in but that’s a different story).
A great deal of care is taken by the responsible tours to educate and show the effects of the disaster both immediate and ongoing.

Unfortunately for some, the idea of so called “dark” tourism is unpleasant. It is however, a fast growing market. Traditionally DT was going to concentration camps or perhaps the killing fields in Cambodia, it now encompasses places like Chernobyl, Fukushima and more modern sites.

People want to see these things - perhaps to gawp or get some Instagram pics but in my time there, people wanted to learn.

[Sway]

I'm fairly sure someone like Ilewop will also take issue with the hyperbole...

It's really not as bad as has often been presented. That's not to say there's no problems, etc.

[ruggedscotty]

Last year on a charity visit to Belarus, people are hard at work trying to help those affected by this incident...

so don't say its not as bad as its made out, actually its worse. there is so much that we don't hear in the west.

do some reading on the friends of Chernobyl children charity, read up on just how this is still affecting people,...

[Sway]

There are people on here who've held senior radiation safety roles specifically relating to containment at Chernobyl...

Anecdote, does not equal data...

Oh, and I've just looked up that charity - absolutely nothing mentioned in "the children" section about radiation at all. Poverty, yes.

https://www.focc.org.uk/the-children.html

Looking through the site, I can see nothing at all about any actual effects or issues caused directly by radiation. The poverty and previously productive land being off limits, yes. Little anecdotes about eating contaminated food - yet nothing on increases in illnesses, etc.

So it would seem you're conflating two very different things.

Yes, it was st. Yes, it's left a lasting impact on the area. No, it is not the end of the world - if you looked at kids in hundreds of parts of the globe, you'd find worse conditions/lifestyles/illnesses caused by environment/etc.

Anything to even begin to back up this claim?

"
there are people dying due to this accident, there are people still to discover that they are dying due to this disaster, people that have not been born yet, people whos great great grandparents have not yet been born yet"

Edited by Sway on Friday 3rd January 19:50

[ruggedscotty]

https://www.focc.org.uk/the-chernobyl-disaster.htm...

More than seven million of our fellow human beings are still suffering, every day,
as a result of what happened ....years ago.
​The legacy of Chernobyl will be with us,and our descendants, for generations to come.
- Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General - April 2000

Whole swathes of land were deemed unsafe to live or farm upon. These Restricted Zones are part of the countryside in today’s Belarus, and are often bordered by villages and active farms. Some have been re-opened to allow settlement and farming while others remain strictly controlled, often requiring permission to even be allowed to travel through them. Once known as the breadbasket of Europe, these contaminated lands are no longer commercially viable, and what little agriculture remains is used to feed the local population.
In places cattle still graze the land providing milk and meat, and poverty ensures that the local people continue to be exposed to the radiation through the local food chain.

Through the charity I know of children that have contracted cancer through this, the rates of cancer before the accident compared to post accident rates speak volumes...

https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgronlund/how-many-ca...

https://www.livescience.com/65673-is-visiting-cher...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Che...

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high...

==> there is plenty of information out there but you should do your own homework, Some know the risks of smoking but still do, some know the risks but will quite happily do 155 down the M6.

I think any visit to these areas should be though through and considered very carefully, as I said the money for a trip there may in fact be better received through donation to a charity that is helping people cope with the left over from the disaster. the poverty in the area can be linked to the fallout from the disaster. so much links back to this incident.

[Sway]

From one of your links on cancers...

"among the 5 million persons residing in other “contaminated” areas, the doses are much lower and any projected increases are more speculative, but are expected to make a difference of less than one per cent in cancer mortality."

[ruggedscotty]

Geiger counters still go wild in hotspots in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a 19-mile security area around the plant that has become an overgrown forest full of thriving wildlife. A short stay is relatively safe, but the area won't be fit for human habitation for at least 10,000 years.

https://www.who.int/ionizing_radiation/chernobyl/b...

https://academic.oup.com/epirev/article/27/1/56/52...

https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005...

there is a lot of material out there and understanding of the risks presented by the disaster vary..

[llewop]

ruggedscotty said:

https://www.focc.org.uk/the-chernobyl-disaster.htm...

More than seven million of our fellow human beings are still suffering, every day,
as a result of what happened ....years ago.
?The legacy of Chernobyl will be with us,and our descendants, for generations to come.
- Kofi Annan, the United Nations Secretary General - April 2000

Whole swathes of land were deemed unsafe to live or farm upon. These Restricted Zones are part of the countryside in today’s Belarus, and are often bordered by villages and active farms. Some have been re-opened to allow settlement and farming while others remain strictly controlled, often requiring permission to even be allowed to travel through them. Once known as the breadbasket of Europe, these contaminated lands are no longer commercially viable, and what little agriculture remains is used to feed the local population.
In places cattle still graze the land providing milk and meat, and poverty ensures that the local people continue to be exposed to the radiation through the local food chain.

Through the charity I know of children that have contracted cancer through this, the rates of cancer before the accident compared to post accident rates speak volumes...

https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgronlund/how-many-ca...

https://www.livescience.com/65673-is-visiting-cher...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Che...

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/high...

==> there is plenty of information out there but you should do your own homework, Some know the risks of smoking but still do, some know the risks but will quite happily do 155 down the M6.

I think any visit to these areas should be though through and considered very carefully, as I said the money for a trip there may in fact be better received through donation to a charity that is helping people cope with the left over from the disaster. the poverty in the area can be linked to the fallout from the disaster. so much links back to this incident.

Totally agree on doing homework, but it shouldn't necessarily be either or; if people are curious and want to visit, fine, if others want to support charities that work in the area, also fine, but not impossible to do both. As has been stated, 'black tourism' or whatever phrase you care to use is widespread, visits to the Normandy beaches or first world war trenches are on the same spectrum. If it improves awareness and perhaps encourages 'lets not do this again....' can be a good thing.

I did have a look at the charity website last night and have looked at your links this morning - the first is the only really interesting one to me.

Poverty, risks etc are interesting; the number of smokers and heavy drinkers out there is beyond belief; helped no doubt by cigarettes being about 1/10th of the price in UK (or they were when I was there), Ukraine and Belarus were poor countries before the accident and obviously it won't have helped things, but there are many other factors that make it difficult to impossible to actually link them.

I'm going to quote directly from a paper that was in my bin having nearly thrown the journal out (I won't now!)
The challenge for radiation epidemiology is evaluating the effects at low doses, below 100 mGy of low-linear energy transfer radiation, and assessing the risks following low dose-rate exposures over years. The weakness of radiation epidemiology in directly studying low dose and low dose-rate exposures is that the signal 'i.e. the excess number of cancers associated with low-level radiation exposure, is so very small that it cannot be seen against a lifetime risk of incidence reaching up to about 38% (i.e. 1 on 3 persons will develop a cancer in their lifetime).
So going back to the first link: population 92 million in the 'wider Ukraine/Belarus', 9,000 predicted excess cancers; ambient cancers expected; 34 million. In the 'contaminated areas of Belarus, Ukraine and Russian', population 6.4 million, 6,000 excess cancers predicted, ambient cancers expected 2.4 million.

But having said that, the models being used to predict those excess cancers are not necessarily correct; the article at the link talks about the LNT 'Linear non-threshold' model and collective dose, which whilst an interesting number isn't very helpful in determining individual risk [tangent - when I used to get involved in nuclear accident exercises, you could often 'forecast' more fatalities in London than wherever the accident was being played as large population x not much dose = big number]. LNT is currently being challenged as not being technically accurate, but is generally accepted as 'the best we can do until we can get the analysis to work better'.

whilst looking for a clarification on where LNT might be going I found this....
UNSCEAR 2017 Report: Sources, Effects and Risks of Ionising Radiation. report to the general assembly, Annex B included Case controlled study in Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine, whilst there appeared to be a risk identified (particularly in Ukraine) there were large uncertainties in the data and analysis: The general conclusions of the Committee thus remain that there is little convincing evidence to suggest a measurable increase in the risk of leukaemia among those exposed as children to the radiation resulting from the accident at Chernobyl. This conclusion is consistent with the earlier cancer registry studies of childhood cancer risk in Europe following the Chernobyl accident.

I am not belittling the exposures that occurred or even continue to occur, there is mention of contamination in food, I saw that, I measured that, I experienced that: we went down to Kiev periodically and could see very low levels of activity in each of us due to what we'd eaten and could see a correlation with eating habits (those that ate more 'locally' had higher levels than those that mostly ate from supermarkets). But radiation is far from the only health factor in the region - winters of -30C and beyond, summer +40C, drinking, smoking and the roads/driving habits are at times a cause for genuine terror!

that has used up my available brain power this early on a Saturday, I need more coffee! We need to be mindful of radiation and its effects, but not scared of it; trying to keep that somewhere close to balanced is what gets me up in the morning!

footnote for Ruggedscotty, I did see your comment this morning before hitting 'submit', the links are good and for anyone who wants to understand more, good information if somewhat turgid at times. But as for but 'the area won't be fit for human habitation for at least 10,000 years', there are locals, still alive, who moved back home from very soon after the accident (or never left) and the town of Chernobyl is widely used as a 'barracks' for site workers and those employed in the exclusion zone.

[ruggedscotty]

cheers llewop

I too now need some coffee, lot of information in your reply. I believe that there is a lot of terror with nuclear power, being conditioned that the threat of nuclear war was horrific and all that tends to make you think about nuclear disasters and the like.

They had some discussions on the actual explosion at Chernobyl about the ferocity of the fire and the spread of radiation. The scientific establishment are learning a lot from this. they way things went and what went wrong. I found it fascinating reading on the investigations, then they started to think that they did indeed have a partial nuclear explosion. more of a fizzle than a bonafide one but it was the start of one and the forces of the explosion breaking it apart before it took hold. the byproducts indicating the reaction. different spreads of byproducts giving more weight to the thought that there was two unique types of explosion that occurred. from the findings it appears that its the cesium that's giving them the worry. lasts a lot longer I believe.