Chernobyl (HBO mini-series)

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MrEd

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Feb 18, 2010
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As a matter of interest, what type of radiation was there?
Theres huge differences in the relative biological effectiveness between gamma rays (RBE of 1) and alpha particles with an RBE of 20.
Alpha particles can be stopped by a bit of paper but you don't want them in your body.

IIRC beta particles have an RBE of 1 and neutrons RBE is 10.

It was a long time ago that I worked as an industrial radiographer so I may have remembered it wrong.

There was all I would have thought, although I only had a gamma detector. Sensitive from 65KeV to 1.3MeV so soft x-ray to gamma only.

I would like to go back and either take an alpha/beta end window or pancake probe or a scintillator (I have both) and investigate it more.

I only really took a dosimeter to track my dose and to gauge where I did or didn’t go, rather than to try and find bits of the core. Which I am sure you could do with a dual channel scintillator


But yeah - gamma and X-ray pass through you and can damage your dna at high doses, beta is stopped by your skin, alpha only travels a few CM in air. Alpha is high energy.
 

Janne

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The Beta and Gamma I believe? All of them?

The residual problem in Sweden is that the fallout is being concentrated in Funghi, which the animals ( Reindeer, deer, moose and now boar) eat and concentrate.

Leukemia is up in Sweden north of Uppsala, other cancers too. By a statistical significant amount.
Difficult to get official figures, but I got this info from a friend that is very close to the top of the medical foodchain in Sweden.

Horrible disaster.

I am unsure if I would like to collect pieces from that area.
 

Trig

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Jun 1, 2013
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But many sources say they died within weeks?

Weird that there is info out there that differs so radically, but that is the nature of those countries, then and now, I guess....

Even the numbers of who died of the initial team are unsure.

I had no clue that Stakka Bo, who directs it, is so good!!!


Found this from an interview with the writer of the show.


"What’s an example of a time when you chose the less dramatic story, even if the more dramatic one might have been more superficially exciting?

The best example I can think of is the three divers that go into the water [to drain a flooded basement so nuclear material does not make contact with the water and create a massive explosion] at the end of episode two. Up until six months before shooting, the story that I had seen everywhere, and which was repeated not only in news articles but in many reputable books, was that those three men went into the water, they were completely submerged, so they were scuba diving through total water, and they died two weeks later. And that is a hell of a story. It certainly makes that moment and that sacrifice just all the more gut-wrenching.

But about six months before shooting, as I was still working on the scripts and researching, I read a book called 01:23:40 by a guy named Andrew Leatherbarrow; he’s sort of an amateur Chernobylologist, and he wrote a terrific book [that contained the same story as it had previously been told]. Then he changed it because he had done further research, and according to his research, he had discovered that, in fact, those guys didn’t die. And they weren’t submerged completely in water, and two of them are still alive today.

And I read that and I thought, “Oh, no!” I mean, “Hooray!” but “Oh, no!” And look, I could have made an incredibly good case to just leave it as it was. I had 99 sources saying they were dead and one saying they were alive. I went with the alive one, which by the way is correct, and I’m actually happy to help set the record straight about that, and that they weren’t completely submerged.

Johan Renck, the director and I, had to rethink that. How does that scene work? What do we show? When do we tell people that they lived? That’s the best example I can think of."

https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/6/4/18647339/chernobyl-finale-hbo-truth-how-accurate
 
Jul 30, 2012
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The Beta and Gamma I believe? All of them?

The residual problem in Sweden is that the fallout is being concentrated in Funghi, which the animals ( Reindeer, deer, moose and now boar) eat and concentrate.

Leukemia is up in Sweden north of Uppsala, other cancers too. By a statistical significant amount.
Difficult to get official figures, but I got this info from a friend that is very close to the top of the medical foodchain in Sweden.

Horrible disaster.

I am unsure if I would like to collect pieces from that area.
We had the radiation in the Welsh hills, the sheep had to be taken off the hills to be decontaminated before they could be sold for meat. You can go amongst the radiation but once it's inside you your knackered, that's why they wash people down, to get rid if the dust. 1 atom of plutonium can kill you if it guts into your system by continually releasing radiation.
 
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Janne

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Feb 10, 2016
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I think the problem is that the Soviet Union, before, during Perestrojka and after the breakup, is a very controlled and secretive state.
All through the history of that country/countries, they have sown huge amounts of disinformation, including 'no information'.

To get any truthful info today is virtually impossible.
People in western Europe do not understand, and will never understand, how it was living during that time, the fear if you said or disclosed anything that went against the 'official line', or even a 'possible official line'. You could not even say anything that could remotely be seen as a criticism of the ' perfect Socialist State".

Sweden has had a state of art treatment for Leukemia, specially juvenile Leukemia. Still has today.
Between 1989 and early 1990' Sweden offered free treatment for children affected by Chernobyl, children that had badly affected health. Once in Sweden, many were diagnosed with a kind of 'pre Leukemia', most had changes to the Thyroid gland. most had problems with the digestion, many adolescent boys had changes to the hormonal levels.

Sweden took in somewhere between 500 and 1000 children and teenagers.
My business partner is very active in a specific Protestant church in Sweden, and this church organization asked their members if they could help these patients with everything they could. During and after the medical treatments in the major hospitals, that church organized a kind of camps all around Sweden, to give them better nutrition, love and care.
At the same time, the church organized that the kids received Dental care, psychiatric, psychologic, anything you can think of.


As my business partner took care of the group spending time in our area, 100 children about and 8 helpers, I of course 'did my bit' too. We saw all of them, and did everything we could to help them.
Apart from the dental and oral bit, we and our families joined them in the weekends. Most involved did.


Apart from the medical problems treated in hospitals, we saw precancerous changes on the facial skins, radiation derived light burn scars, malformed teeth, erupted and non erupted, horrifying stuff.
Several children, born just before the catastrophy, were really, really ill and were wheelchair bound.
I now what we saw. I know what the helpers old us.
It is fantastic series. But it does not show the truth. The truth is far more horrific than people think.
Many, if not the majority, of those children are dead.
Doing quite a lot of surgery on them, I had to speak to the other medical specialist, and liaison treatment. In many cases I was old to do as little as possible, basically no surgery, as the prognosis ofthese children was very bad, they had uncurable problems,

I am certain somebody will think I am making this up. Think what you want.

Since 1995 they organize yearly summercamps for children from affected areas in todays Ukraine in the same area where I used to live.
Good food, less radiation, medical and dental care.
 
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Janne

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The problem is that the widespread ’****’ ( pardon my french) accumulates and concentrates in higher animals.
They shot an old boar in Sweden recently with an incredibly high Becquerel count.
Not sure how they destroyed it, or neutralised it.
Had the boar died in the forest, and been eaten by other animals - even more concentration.

The scary bit is that the same tech is still used innseversl powerplants.

Not likely to happen though, they all have additional safety measures.
 

Bishop

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Jan 25, 2014
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Unfortunately additional safety measures mean little if the plant operators are skipping over the existing ones.
Fast forward to 2002 and the Davis-Besse reactor in Ohio where during a "routine" check were surprised to find this mess under the floor plates of the reactor cap.
d1.jpg

The cause was traced to a leaky pipe fitting in the lid of the pressure vessel itself where boric acid in the coolant had gone onto corrode its way through 150mm of carbon steel.
d2.png
According to reports had the problem continued for another 10mm then the coolant pipe would have come adrift completely.
 
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demographic

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 15, 2005
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We had the radiation in the Welsh hills, the sheep had to be taken off the hills to be decontaminated before they could be sold for meat. You can go amongst the radiation but once it's inside you your knackered, that's why they wash people down, to get rid if the dust. 1 atom of plutonium can kill you if it guts into your system by continually releasing radiation.

Well, yeahbutnobutyeah.

1 atom of Plutonium 239 has a decay chain so it decays to another isotope.

This is an example of that decay chain which shows it changing into another element at each stage of decay, with many of those other elements isotopes also being radioactive and decaying in different ways.

Other isotopes of plutonium have a different decay chain though, 239 was just an example I found on the net.

Plutonium-239 → Uranium-235 → Thorium-231 → Protactinium-231 → Actinium-227 → Thorium-227 → Radium-233 → Radon-219 → Polonium-215 → Lead-211 → Bismuth-211 → Thallium-207 → Lead-207.

I'll be honest though here I only know the very basics of this so had to google to find that decay chain, it sure wasn't just lurking in my head waiting for a Chernobyl thread to come up.
Was wracking my brain to even remember the phrase "Decay Chain"
 

Janne

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Depleted uranium is very useful. Lots of it in former Yugoslavia and Iraq.
Very little radiation it is said.
The increased cancer rate must caused by something else.

Just read that a trip to Mars is difficult. Radiation.
 
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demographic

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Apr 15, 2005
4,694
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Depleted uranium is very useful. Lots of it in former Yugoslavia and Iraq.
Very little radiation it is said.
The increased cancer rate must caused by something else.

Just read that a trip to Mars is difficult. Radiation.

Aye, the Iridium 192 we used to radiograph pipes when I trained was contained within a depleted uranium storage pig (storage pig is just a fancy word for a container where the little pill of Ir192 could be pushed out through a pipe to wherever it was to emit for a few seconds then pulled back into the storage pig and shielded by the depleted uranium) to shield it.

That was a fair time ago and to be honest I've forgotten more than I can remember which is why its a good thing that the qualifications I had only last five years.
Nowadays I work as a carpenter. The job is nicer as its got more variety but hearing how much the industrial radiographers make now the money would be nice.
 

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