Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Just a point here: the statement in the original thread was that the risk was vastly higher. I suppose we could argue about the exact meaning of "vast" - does it mean the SF B-movie "mutants everywhere", or something less than the increased cancer risk from smoking?
The point, though, is that whatever those risks may be, they are, judging from the reports of wildlife abundance &c, less damaging than the normal activities of humans were.
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I agree 'vastly' is too subjective.
I'll agree the removal of the normal human activities has seemed to have had a net positive to many things in the area .. despite the negatives of the event itself .. ie (0+6) < (-2+10)
I disagree about 'the point' .. From my PoV .. 'The point' is that the event did harm , and continues to do harm ... and the majority of the evidence supports that ... weather the harm is 'vast' or not is subjective .. but the harm is there anyway .. It shouldn't be either , deamonized into a 'dead-zone' label , and it equally shouldn't be trivialized into a 'not as bad as smoking' either .. both extremes are equally bad in my book.
Of course the increased risk varies greatly depending on numerous factors of the individual and the exposure.
Concise site
Link.
2-3 mSv/Yr is 'natural'... 200-300 over a life time.
1,000 mSv accumulated over a life time attributed to cause lethal effects (cancers etc) for ~5% of those exposed... ~5,000 single event dead within 1 month for 1/2 of those exposed.
In 2009 even years after the 'clean up' .. The event area exposure samples still ranged from as low as natural (good) .. to as high as about ~1,127x 'natural' .. stop by the 'Cafe Pripyat' for a coffee and your ~39x natural exposure rate .. or visit a loved one in the 'Pripyat cemetery' for your ~64x natural exposure rate (you'll be joining them soon) .. I'd call some of those 'vast' , but that's just subjective
If you or anyone was to try and 'live' in the event area today long term .. even decades after the 'clean up' .. because they were under the false idea that the risk was less than smoking .. It is very likely to kill you in just a few years.
On the other hand .. it isn't a 'dead-zone' ... and people can 'visit' most of the area for short periods of time with little to no long term increased risks .. and given the half life of the material it will continue to become less and less risk over time... even justifying shrinking the 'exclusion-zone' over time as the risks continue to reduce... It won't be thousands of years either .. several decades (1/2 life around 30) ... but not thousands of years... not even hundreds of years... As it shrinks it becomes more and more financially viable to spend the resources to go back in and do another more thorough clean up of what's left.