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20yrs since Chernobyl (1 Viewer)

alby

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it was on the news. i saw it at least twice.

i so didnt realise it was only 20 years. the way we hear about it, it sounds like it was closer to hiroshima than the year before i was born..not cool
 

gnrlies

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Im thinking of heading there at the end of the year

Theres a tour where you get to go near the reactor (reasonably close - i.e. you can take photos of it) and go to that town pripyat thats like a ghost town.

Should be interesting.

It will be very cold though
 

Iron

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The Australian exhibition is literally 100m from my house. I'm glowing with exciting.
 

iamsickofyear12

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It's actually 56.

Although the official WHO estimates accepted by the UN are that 9,000 will die from cancer because of it.

But the real truth is:
65 million people recieved varying doses of radiation.

500 farmers who either never left or came to back contaminated areas immediately afterwards died.

Of the 500,000 people took part in the clean up at Chernobyl at least 20,000 are now dead.

There are no official statistics on the other 480,000 that are still alive. Radiation will most likely kill them or their children.

The effect on Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine could have resulted in an estimated 200,000 additional deaths between 1990 and 2004.

And people are still living in contaminated areas.
 

iamsickofyear12

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These 20,000 died as a result of their exposure to radiation. If they just died because they got old I wouldn't have bothered mentioning it.

Most of the people involved in the clean up were young reservists.

When the reactor exploded all this radioactive material was thrown onto the roof of the building. When they tried to use romote controlled robots to remove it they kept breaking down beacause the radiation levels were too high. So they had to use teams of guys in 1 minute shifts to get rid of the stuff. The only people who did that job were healthy young guys between 20 and 30. It took 60 people an hour and I have no idea how many thousands were needed to finish it.

600 pilots who flew over dropping sandbags in the first 2 weeks after the accident died from the exposure.
 

AntiHyper

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iamsickofyear12 said:
600 pilots who flew over dropping sandbags in the first 2 weeks after the accident died from the exposure.
oh lol so it's still not safe even if you're airborne :(

chernobyl site said:
Tour companies say the excursions help people understand the scale of the tragedy. The travellers even get to meet a local.
what they get to meet skeletons lol.
"yeeh he's a local he's been hanging around here for twenty plus years"
 

iamsickofyear12

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AntiHyper said:
oh lol so it's still not safe even if you're airborne :(
Not if you are flying directly above it. It was coming out and going straight up into the clouds and blowing across Europe. Russia didn't know how bad it was until some other country called them to ask what was going on. Only then did they evacuate the people from that closest town.
 

davin

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yeah, the incident itself didnt' kill many, but it did widespread, widespread damage. not to mention it really showcased the potential dangers of nuclear power.
 

Jiga

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it sounds like it was closer to hiroshima than the year before i was born
Nuclear power wasnt around even near then :uhhuh:

yeah, the incident itself didnt' kill many, but it did widespread, widespread damage. not to mention it really showcased the potential dangers of nuclear power.
In the right hands, nuclear power is safe, give it to a crappy country and there are always going to be problems! Didnt the Russians control that reactor as well? Theres another explanation for why is occured.

Of 500,000 people who were alive 20 years ago, at least 20,000 are now dead.
20,000 is only 4% of the people, thats seems to low IMO.... I would have excpected it to be higher considering how close alot fo them worked to the disaster.
 

iamsickofyear12

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All I heard was that 20,000 people that worked to clean up Chernobyl died as a result. Considering what a lot of them did it is certainly more. Probably all of them will die younger than they otherwise would.

There are also a lot who are still alive, in their 40's and 50's now, who are suffering because of it and will die at an early age.

Most of the records have been 'lost' and no comprehensive research has ever been done. There is almost no way of knowing the real numbers.
 

loquasagacious

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Iron said:
The Australian exhibition is literally 100m from my house. I'm glowing with exciting.
Can I justify a 200m walk from my house though? I mean really....

Oh there was a doco on discovery channel about it, the battle of chernobyl or somesuch.
 

Captain Gh3y

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davin said:
yeah, the incident itself didnt' kill many, but it did widespread, widespread damage. not to mention it really showcased the potential dangers of nuclear power.
It more accurately showcased the dangers of nuclear power when one uses a reactor whose design was condemned by the British in the 50's and is so different from the reactors used today that the same thing physically cannot happen.
 

alby

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iamsickofyear12 said:
So they had to use teams of guys in 1 minute shifts to get rid of the stuff.
i thought it was 15 min shifts? one of the news reports (abc maybe?)
Schoolies_2004 said:
Nuclear power wasnt around even near then :uhhuh:
i didnt say anything like that
because of the impact it had, (in my mind) it seems to be comparable/compared to things like hiroshima. nuclear power plant explosions could be the modern-day atom bombs, because of how many people/places they effect.

and they way i remember being taught about it in school was that it was this massive thing that happened ages ago, not the year before i was born.
Schoolies_2004 said:
20,000 is only 4% of the people, thats seems to low IMO.... I would have excpected it to be higher considering how close alot fo them worked to the disaster.
but think of the number of people with really massive effects nowdays. not all of them got killed instantly, and some cancers can stay around for decades and not actually kill you. and also not everyone got affected as much as others - some lived/worked right near the place, others are kids of people who lived in/near chernobyl, and others are eating plants from and living on contaminated soil. the toxins left in the soil from waste lands lasts for at least a couple of decades, can you imagine how long this will be in the soil for? not to mention how far it would have spread!
 
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Serius

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alby please, i know what you are trying to say but one of my pet hates is when someone compares meltdowns to nuclear explosions, the difference is vast.

[and was chenobyl even classed as a meltdown??? i thought it was a partial]
 

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