How is Chernobyl safe for wildlife now, but this book is still dangerous?
Radioactivity
Submitted 5 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/4fd9331f-bdf3-4f54-9ce8-760d670c0350.jpeg
Comments
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 5 months ago
Um, Chernobyl is still extremely radioactive. You probably mean the exclusion zone which is really not that bad, there’s even tourists going there. But it’s still not recommended to live there due to cumulative exposure.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So the site itself is still deadly, but the areas around it are not? Would that be the case for a nuclear attack as well? Like ground zero would stay deadly but the rest of the city would be safe a few decades later? I just realized that I don’t actually know very much about nuclear fallout. How are Hiroshima and Nagasaki safe?
LinusSexTips@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Interesting video on Chernobyl and the people still living in the exclusion zone.
bbc.com/…/20140116-cooking-in-the-danger-zone-che…
I can’t watch the video via the BBC site but it exists elsewhere.
callyral@pawb.social 5 months ago
tehy didn’t say the book is dangerous, they said it’s radioactive
bouh@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Marie Curie studied radioactivity with pure and very active materials with no protection. The radioactivity of the notebook is indirect radioactivity, that is material that becomes radioactive after being exposed to powerful ionizing radiations. It must be noted that the notebook may not be deadly radioactive. And if it will be for 1500 years, it won’t be deadly for 1500 years. For reference, bananas tend to be radioactive too. And you are exposed to ionizing radiations when you take the plane.
Chernobyl had two reactors burn iirc. Most of the radioactive material was in the reactor, but the fire made smoke out of radioactive materials. The quantity of smoke, in kg, that go out was significant, but it got diluted in the atmosphere and spread. Which means there wasn’t so much dust, in mass, that got in any one place. The dust is also not only uranium, but a combination of uranium and materials that were contaminated like the notebook. With the rain, the dust was washed and distributed more, and with the time, materials become less and less radioactive.
Both the book and chernobyl are not dangerously radioactive. But because of the nature of radioactivity, care must always be taken.
roguetrick@lemmy.world 5 months ago
They’re contaminated, not neutron activated. The curies didn’t get to the point of developing an unshielded nuclear reactor that would sufficiently neutron activate their stuff. They just liked to carry around radium and polonium which also have decay products that themselves are radioactive and they contaminated everything.
_bac@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Ionizing radiation can’t produce secondary radioactivity in materials…
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Thanks for the great answer!
Cort@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It isn’t “safe” it’s “safe enough” for limited visits to the exclusion zone and VERY limited visits to the sarcophagus that enclosed the old reactor
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So what about the animals around there? Are they all dying from radiation poisoning, or turning into Godzilla, or something?
FattestMattest@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Chernobyl was made into a TV show while this book appears to be just a book.
Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 months ago
So if we make a movie about this book then it can be handled again? Or does it have to be a full 10 hour show?
EddyBot@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
fun fact: the other three reactors in Chernobyl were put in operation again AFTER reactor 4 blew up
I believe the last one for 14 additional yearshow safe that was is another question though
Cethin@lemmy.zip 5 months ago
I think we can safely say with hindsight, it was very safe. Reactor 4 was caused by a fluke of circumstances and a few mistakes. It was otherwise a very safe reactor. Once they understood the failure they are able to adjust protocol to ensure it doesn’t happen again. It made the other reactors even safer.
The same thing happened with three mile island. Unit 1 safely continued operation until 2019, which only stopped because of financial pressures (competition with Methane), not because anything was wrong.
Holzkohlen@feddit.de 5 months ago
Different radioactive materials have different half-life periods.
GTG3000@programming.dev 5 months ago
Chernobyl isn’t safe safe, it’s just safe enough for wildlife to survive there, possibly with lowered life span and quality of life.
Also, there’s a decent danger of radioactive dust coming off the book if it’s handled. It may not be that radioactive, but if it clings to you, or you breathe it in, it will do considerably more damage than if it was all one solid rock that made geiger counters click.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The wildlife is just left alone, I wouldn’t call it safe from radiation, they still have a higher incidence of mutations than animals outside the contaminated zones. It’s just that some radiation and no humans, happens to be better for wildlife than no radiation and lots of humans.
qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 5 months ago
It looks like they were super lazy and took the half life of the longest lived isotope of radium (226 — approx 1600 years) minus its age (approx 100 years) to get to 1,500 years.
drbluefall@toast.ooo 5 months ago
I’m guessing we don’t know the particulars of what radium isotope Curie was working with?
NutWrench@lemmy.world 5 months ago
There’s a couple of YouTube videos where urban explorers re-visited Chernobyl many years after the accident. They explored the area around the plant and visited the hospital where Russian firefighters were taken after they were exposed to debris from the reactor’s core.
Their clothing was seriously contaminated and was removed and stored in a room in the hospital’s basement. The explorers visited the basement where the clothing is still stored today. They didn’t get close to the clothing because it is still contaminated. As in, “not safe to enter the room” contaminated.
vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
It should be noted that big chunks of radioactive materials are generally safe same with just generally high radiation under a certain threshold, we are illuminated by a big ball of fuck you radiation after all. The problem is radioactive dust and particulates, once its in your body you are fucked and its pretty random on what amount will kill you. This is what happened to those Russian dumbasses who dug trenches around Chernobyl, they breathed in radioactive dust and it wreaked havoc on their bodies. This is also one of the main reasons you wear gas masks around such things.
CommissarVulpin@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If it’s an alpha or beta emitter, sure, you’re probably fine standing near it. But if you find yourself next to a chunk of a gamma emitter, you should probably run away very quickly
Zetta@mander.xyz 5 months ago
This veritasium video on radiation includes going into that clothing room near Chernobyl if anyone has 11 min to spare on a cool video youtu.be/TRL7o2kPqw0?si=QG-YMohKuLvrTCL7
whyNotSquirrel@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
“Just remember, don’t put your tubes in your pantaloon”
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Is there a way to de-radioactivize it faster?
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 5 months ago
Marie Curie’s notebooks are still radioactive due to the presence of radium-226, which has a half-life of about 1,600 years. To make her notebook non-radioactive or significantly reduce its radioactivity, the following methods could theoretically be used:
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Chemical Removal or Neutralization:
- Chemical Extraction: This involves using chemicals to extract the radioactive elements from the paper. This process would be complex and potentially damage the paper.
- Neutralization: This would involve converting the radioactive materials into stable, non-radioactive elements. However, there are no practical methods currently available for neutralizing radium in situ.
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Encapsulation:
- Instead of making the notebook non-radioactive, it could be permanently encapsulated in a material that blocks radiation, such as lead-lined containers or specialized glass. This wouldn’t make the notebook safe to handle without protection, but it would contain the radiation.
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Decay Time:
- Given the long half-life of radium-226, waiting for the radioactivity to decay to safe levels is impractical since it would take thousands of years for the radioactivity to diminish significantly.
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Advanced Radiation Mitigation Techniques:
- There are experimental methods like targeted transmutation, where the radioactive elements are bombarded with particles to induce decay into stable elements. This is highly theoretical and not feasible with current technology for something as delicate as a notebook.
Practically, due to the historical and scientific value of Marie Curie’s notebooks, they are preserved and stored in controlled environments where they can be studied safely using appropriate radiation protection measures. The best approach currently is to handle and store them with care rather than attempting to decontaminate them.
mugthol@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 months ago
You should preface a comment if you used AI to write it
AlexisFR@jlai.lu 5 months ago
Yes, everyone with sense hate LLM genezted texts.
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Hardy@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
🎶Welcome to the new age, to the new age , la la la la🎵🎶
Eheran@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It will be radioactive forever. The question is where you put the threshold, which is fairly arbitrary.
toast@retrolemmy.com 5 months ago
Eh, it could be non-radioactive next week. That’s not very likely, but it could be
FiskFisk33@startrek.website 5 months ago
eh, i could randomly teleport to the moon suddently, but things like theese are unlikely enough to be in effect completely and utterly impossible.
thesporkeffect@lemmy.world 5 months ago
It would imply a significant energy release within a short time in order to become non-radioactive right?
weker01@feddit.de 5 months ago
If you only think about half live then yes it would be radioactive forever but in reality after a long time every atom would’ve decayed into non radioactive elements.
You can even calculate the expected time it would take for the random process of decay to terminate.
Eheran@lemmy.world 5 months ago
“after a long time” - that is exactly my point. Where do you draw the line? It will never be non-radioactive, which the headline suggest would be the case in 1’500 years. As far as we know, everything might decay after some time. It will always have some Radon get trapped in it. Scatter some cosmic rays. Blablabla.
drislands@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I wonder how long it would take for the radioactivity to be indistinguishable from the atmospheric average.