Area surrounding Ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant will be habitable again in 3,000 years

[link to www.miamiherald.com]

Death toll estimates run from hundreds to millions. The area near the reactor is both a teeming wildlife refuge and an irradiated ghost-scape. Much of eastern and central Europe continues to deal with fallout aftermath. The infamous Reactor Number 4 remains a problem that is neither solved nor solvable


Chernobyl’s irradiated geography
When an explosion destroyed Reactor No. 4 at the Soviet-run Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine on April 26, 1986, an estimated 10 tons of radioactive fuel and debris were thrown into the atmosphere. The most toxic ground is the Exclusion Zone, and the evacuated ghost town of Pripyat.
... Those days became weeks, then months, then, after the studies were complete, the official verdict was that people could return to live in Pripyat in 3,000 years.

Reactor Number 4 today is essentially an unplanned nuclear-waste dump. To serve in that role requires it to last for 3,000 years. That means the area surrounding Chernobyl will be safe to inhabit by people again in the year 4986.

How likely is that? To get an idea of what it means to contain and control a deadly and potentially devastating radioactive pile in Ukraine for 3,000 years, consider what the world looked like 3,000 years ago:

The Iron Age was beginning. The Trojan War was fairly recent news. Egypt had Pharaohs. King David was succeeded by his son, Solomon. Canaanites were the big world traders. Christ was 1,000 years from showing up. Muhammad was 1,500 years away.

The legendary founding of Rome, of Romulus and Remus and the wolf, wouldn’t take place for 300 years.

It’s not simply that a lot has changed in the last 3,000 years, it’s that almost everything has.

And yet, Detlef Appel, a geologist who runs PanGeo, a Hamburg, Germany, company that consults on such nuclear storage issues, notes that 3,000 years probably isn’t long enough. He suggests that truly safe radioactive waste storage needs to extend a million years into the future. Think back to when man’s earliest relative began to walk the Earth.

“We can trust human endeavor, perhaps, for a few hundred years, though that is doubtful,” he said. “Storage implies a way to retrieve the materials. It requires trained personnel, maintenance, updating and security. Clearly, nothing man made is more than temporary, and therefore it isn’t adequate.”

Even the continents will have moved in a million years.

More in link

Last Edited by Uncle Fuck Stick on 04/24/2016 09:20 AM