higher back ground radiation
In Finland, the average yearly dose for those who don't work with radiation is 3,2 millisieverts. Of that, 0,02 mSv comes from nuclear fallout. That equals 0,064%, and includes both Chernobyl and all nuclear weapon tests done nearby. In the whole world, those numbers are 3,08 mSv, 0,01 mSv and 0,0308%. (source, from 2008)
Chernobyl was a big disaster, but life goes on. It's going to take more than another of those to destroy Europe.
I was just saying what the documentary said.
That's a what? .12 mSv change from a week of smoke plumes?
What would happen if literally tons of uranium magma was just vaporized into the atmosphere instead of contained? A lot more than just a .12mSv difference I'm sure (maybe nuclear waste land is a far stretch but still the effects of Chernobyl are still visible today even with the (relative to the situation) minimal radiation that did spread)
It...umm, wasn't contained, and there were two explosions. That's the reason it was as bad as it was. The reactor casing cap was blown right through the roof of the reactor by the first of two explosions (caused by steam), and the actual second explosion (believed either to have been caused by hydrogen from electrolyzing water or a transient prompt critical event in a small part of the reactor) blew debris right through the pre-created hole.
This is what Reactor 4 looked like after. The thing is, however, the core wasn't vaporized, and even if all four reactors had gone up by some grievous mischance, it still wouldn't have been vaporized, though the Zone clean-up and sarcophagus construction would have taken longer. There just wasn't enough spontaneous release of energy for a supercritical chain reaction to spread through even one core; the difference between a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb goes down to the very basic fundamentals of design. A nuclear bomb is designed to release a whole bunch of energy all at once; a reactor is designed to release it very gradually. The former accomplishes this by very precise and very careful warhead design and a triggering explosive; even denting the core can be enough to turn one from a city-buster into a very expensive dirty bomb. The latter is spread out precisely to avoid a prompt critical event; as impressive as it is to meet your energy production needs for the next Five Year Plan in a fraction of a second, it tends to be difficult to actually capture and use that energy. Indeed, if the second explosion was actually caused by a prompt critical event as some now believe, it demonstrates what happens when a reactor hits that point: the energetic release of concentrated boom scatters itself over a few square kilometers before the reaction spreads too far and gets too big.
Also, fun fact to scale these radiation numbers: one banana contains an average of 0.1 µSv. That puts 0.12 mSv is a wee bit over the typical norm for one thousand banana-equivalent doses. This is also apparently equivalent to about a third of the radiation released by the potassium in your own body in a year (bit under 400 µSv). Go with the numbers IcyTea used, and 0.02 mSv is maybe two hundred bananas.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16182108 times)