Evidence of Harmful Effects of Chernobyl Event

[IamIan]

Moving discussion here because it was off-topic to continue in it's originating thread.

There is sometimes a label of 'dead-zone' used in relation to this event.

That 'Dead-Zone' label is misleading .. not dead .. but instead the area has a higher risk of harmful effects like cancer , birth defects etc... due to the contamination of the event.

It has been suggested that the claim of higher risk itself is not supported by evidence .. but no evidence of that claim was given either.

To avoid rampant opinions going in circles .. I propose the following.

A zero bias one for one ... 'tit for tat' ... the side that comes up with the most evidence supporting it is the side that has the strongest evidence in favor of it.

Soo those who propose it is not higher risk of these things .. need to find supporting evidence to back up that claim .. just as much as those proposing it does have higher risks.

2nd .. it is important to make the identification that 'dead-zone' is itself a media hype thing .. the official term is 'Exclusion-Zone'.

Chernobyl Exclusion Zone on Wikipedia

Effects of the Chernobyl Disaster Wikipedia


Lastly .. I admit and recognize from the beginning .. that this can be compounded because the area being studied contains both at the same time .. the negatives of the event contamination .. and the positives of reducing other human negative impacts , due to reduced human activity and influence in that area... and thus a potential issue of correlation not = causation .. but , have to start somewhere.

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I'll start it off

From the above Wikipedia entry.. The 4 reference links have been fixed in the quote as well... by my count that is currently 4 pieces of decent evidence in favor of the harmful effects .. I look forward to seeing the equally robust 4+ pieces of evidence showing no harmful effects.

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

A reduction in the density and the abundance of animals in highly radioactively contaminated areas has been demonstrated for several taxa, including birds,[37][38] insects and spiders,[39] and mammals. [40] In birds, which are an efficient bioindicator, species diversity decreases 50 percent in radioactively contaminated areas compared to clean areas, while abundance decreases by two thirds.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

...but instead the area has a higher risk of harmful effects like cancer , birth defects etc... due to the contamination of the event...

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.

[IamIan]

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.

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.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

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.

Except that there are people who've lived there ever since it happened. A link to one article, the first of many that can be found: Opinion: After Chernobyl, they refused to leave - CNN.com

an unlikely community of some 130 people, called "self-settlers" who, today, live inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.
Almost all of them are women, the men having died off due to overuse of alcohol and cigarettes, if not the effects of elevated radiation. About 116,000 people were evacuated from the Zone at the time of the accident. Some 1,200 of them did not accept that fate. Of that group, the remaining women, now in their 70s and 80s, are the last survivors of a group that defied authorities -- and it would seem, common sense -- and illegally returned to their ancestral homes shortly after the accident.
...
They lived through Stalin's Holodomor -- the genocide-by famine of the 1930s that wiped out millions of Ukrainians -- and then the Nazis in the1940s. Some of the women were shipped to Germany as forced labor. When the Chernobyl accident happened a few decades into Soviet rule, they were simply unwilling to flee an enemy that was invisible.
...
Five happy years, the settlers logic went, is better than 15 condemned to a high-rise on the outskirts of Kyiv.
...
Of the old people who relocated, one Chernobyl medical technician, whose job is to give annual radiation exposure tests to zone workers said: "Quite simply, they die of anguish."
...
There aren't studies to refer to (after all, semi-legal marginalized old women living on radioactive land are hardly a civic or research priority) but surprisingly these women who returned home have, according to local officials and journalists who have kept track of them, seem to have outlived their counterparts who accepted relocation -- by some estimates, up to 10 years.

[Piwoslaw]

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.

I would understand "vastly" as anything with influence on the species (shorter life expectancy, lower birth rate, less young reach reproduction age, etc.). An example of "non-vastly" would be effects on a few individuals, but without effect on the whole population.

Of course, if we look at it through the human PoV, then even something which would effect individuals would have an impact on the rest in the form of additional taxes going towards treatment, etc.

We also have to remember that radioactivity and the mutations it causes are both governed by chance - We cannot say for sure that someone will have so-many lethal mutations in such-and-such time frame. Instead, the chances of gamma rays hitting a DNA string are such-and-such, then there is a chance that the DNA will mutate, then there is a chance that this mutation will survive when the cell divides, the chance that the mutation will at some point become lethal, or even noticeable, and so on. This is why a small dose of radiation will eventually kill one individual, while another may not have any noticeable change. Of course, as the radiation's intensity grows, so do the chances of mutations.

[redpoint5]

Even if we arrive at the conclusion that the accident at Chernobyl caused a dangerous zone to live in, what am I to conclude other than that I would rather not live in Chernobyl?

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Except that there are people who've lived there ever since it happened.

No , they do not .. Take off those rosy biased glasses and look closer objectively .. they do not live in the area I was referencing .. The cafe with 39x natural rates .. the Cematery with 64x natural rates .. etc .. They do not live in those types of areas .. they live in other far safer areas with far lower rates.

It is not a black and white same rate for the entire area .. As if it is all equally good or all equally bad .. As I already posted about .. it varies and over time the lowering rate areas can be justified to shrink the old exclusion zone coverage to the areas with remaining high enough rate to still need that designation.

Originally Posted by IamIan

The event area exposure samples still ranged from as low as natural (good)

Originally Posted by IamIan

justifying shrinking the 'exclusion-zone' over time as the risks continue to reduce

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Originally Posted by redpoint5

Even if we arrive at the conclusion that the accident at Chernobyl caused a dangerous zone to live in, what am I to conclude other than that I would rather not live in Chernobyl?

I'd say lots of things these being just a few off the top of my head:

• We don't want to repeat the same mistakes and make more of those types of places... As the saying goes , 'Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it'.
• Lots of progress has been made sense than .. partially a result of the event itself.
• Less likely to happen at all on newer designs ... partially a result of the event itself.
• Less likely to be as bad on newer designs even if it ever did happen .. partially a result of the event itself.
• More able to do a better job on clean up today than they did back then... partially a result of the event itself.
• Even if it did happen , it isn't thousands of years .. at most , it's maybe a few generations .. several decades of remediation.
• It isn't evil or a boogyman... but it does have it's problems
• It isn't a white knight savior solution to all our problems... but it does have it's benefits.
• It's better to be accurate than to be for it or against it.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by IamIan

No , they do not .. Take off those rosy biased glasses and look closer objectively .. they do not live in the area I was referencing...

Chernobyl exclusion zone, no? Or are we shooting at moving targets again?

It's better to be accurate than to be for it or against it.

Certainly. It's also good to know what we're being accurate about. At one obvious extreme, it probably wouldn't be a real good idea to spend much time inside the reactor building. At the other, we have claims made by groups like Greenpeace, yet a set of observations which contradict those claims. So what should a reasonable person do, ignore the evidence, or shift paradigms?

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by IamIan

• We don't want to repeat the same mistakes and make more of those types of places... As the saying goes , 'Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it'.
• Lots of progress has been made sense than .. partially a result of the event itself.
• Less likely to happen at all on newer designs ... partially a result of the event itself.
• Less likely to be as bad on newer designs even if it ever did happen .. partially a result of the event itself.
• More able to do a better job on clean up today than they did back then... partially a result of the event itself.
• Even if it did happen , it isn't thousands of years .. at most , it's maybe a few generations .. several decades of remediation.
• It isn't evil or a boogyman... but it does have it's problems
• It isn't a white knight savior solution to all our problems... but it does have it's benefits.
• It's better to be accurate than to be for it or against it.

Mostly agree with all the above.

With all things, there are always trade-offs. Once the trade-offs are considered, I choose to be for or against something. In the case of nuclear energy, I favor it if the alternative is building another fossil fuel plant.

I'd like to see renewable generation become the economical way to produce energy, with nukes making up for any deficiencies in demand and for peaking.

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Chernobyl exclusion zone, no? Or are we shooting at moving targets again?

Yes the whole macroscopic discussion is about the Chernobyl Exclusion zone .. but that specific reference was a more narrow aspect of that (* see bellow).

I'm sorry if I have not communicated this effectively yet .. The exclusion zone is not one set black or white or thing... as if it were all equally safe or equally harmful .. this is not a pro-people are right or wrong , or Con-people are right or wrong .. both biased sides are flawed , and at best inaccurate .. a middle view that sees both the pros and the cons accurately is better (my 2 bits).

If a Pro/Con advocate claims a single one sided picture of the entire zone .. such as a pro advocate who might claim 'no evidence of any harm' .. that is incorrect or at best inaccurate .. equally so , as a con advocate who might claim it's a 'dead-zone'... Both extremes are at best inaccurate .. if not flat out wrong .. and pointing out things to the pro doesn't make one a con , anymore than pointing things out to the con makes one a pro.

Originally Posted by IamIan

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

(* From above)
The Specific quote of mine you referenced in post #5 was referring to those higher rate (more harm) areas... You referenced that with a link about some of the lowest harm areas of the exclusion zone .. as if the two are equivalent or interchangeable ... Or as if the safety of the lowest harm areas has any effect on how harmful the highest harm areas are .. That doesn't fit with what I was describing at all.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Certainly. It's also good to know what we're being accurate about.

100% agree.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

At one obvious extreme, it probably wouldn't be a real good idea to spend much time inside the reactor building.

Of course .. but .. It's inaccurate to paint the picture of it only being in the reactor building itself that is a high enough risk of harm to be avoided ... There are other places outside of the reactor building that also have rates of exposure soo high as to be significantly harmful for any long term period of time... (Some high enough I would personally call it vast .. but that's of course entirely subjective).

We have devices that can measure this .. and if we choose , those areas can be mapped in far greater resolution , and than as those areas continue to shrink over time .. they can continue to revise the cost effectiveness of doing more advanced/modern additional remediation efforts to those targeted areas of higher risk.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

At the other, we have claims made by groups like Greenpeace, yet a set of observations which contradict those claims. So what should a reasonable person do, ignore the evidence, or shift paradigms?

A reasonable person should not ignore evidence .. All of it Pro and Con .. should be accurately examined.

Those who focus on Pro advocacy very often inaccurately present the cons .. those who focus on the Con advocacy very often inaccurately present the pros.

A Reasonable person (not blinded by bias) can see that there is allot of solid evidence that some parts of the exclusion zone still have very high rates of harm .. and that reasonable person can also see that there are areas in that 'exclusion zone' that are at such low levels to be extremely low risk of harm, even over very long periods of exposure ... The reasonable person sees both pros and cons accurately .. and sees the inaccuracies and flaws of those biased advocates of either side (Pro or Con).