Can anyone tell me about the Chernobyl Accident, with the deadly radiation? (Or, you could just give me a site
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_accident
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Hope this helps...\n\nhttp://www.959theranch.com/news/?news_id=151
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Because if there was an incredible mutation from the Chernobyl accident then there would have been one caused by the natural background radiation which exists everywhere on the planet (some areas of the planet actually have more radiation than some areas around Chernobyl that were deemed contaminated and yet the people living in them get by just fine).
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You just missed the implosion of the Trojan Nuclear Plant near Portland, Oregon.  You can still access the videos from this implosion if you're interested.\n\nhttp://www.kgw.com/video/trojanimplosion.html
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well depending on how well it's built, the same thing that would happen to any reactor hear in the US if it core was breached. You would have a radiation leak
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Your question is a very good one and everyone here is trying to help. Let me wade in with what I hope is a clear answer or two.\n\nCommercial reactors do not have the configuration to do what a nuclear bomb does: go promptly critical and thus have a large-scale supercritical nuclear explosion. Even Chernobyl (may the 40 or so people who died from it rest in peace) was mostly a steam explosion with a burning of the graphite core. The RBMK reactors like Chernobyl have mostly been shut down now - folks in the former Soviet Union may chime in now as to their status. \n\nModern commercial nuclear reactors (unlike the RBMK design) have large concrete domes called containments over them. The containment structures are designed to hold large amounts of pressure to guard against an accidental release of radiation. Even if the reactor core (part with the nuclear fuel) should become uncovered and thus lose its cooling, the containment will hold most of the radioactive material inside. That is precisely what happened at Three Mile Island. Most of the fuel and fission products were in the containment basement and plated out on the walls.\n\nThe most credible accidents are practiced for often at every power plant. Drills exercise the staff from the control room to the folks who go out into the field to survey for radiation. Those drills are graded not just by the plant, not just by the NRC, but by the county and state. \n\nNuclear reactors do not become nuclear bombs. If you were to take used fuel from nuclear reactors and chemically reprocess it - separating out the plutonium that is made in small amounts in the fuel - you could eventually make a bomb. We do not do reprocessing of commercial nuclear fuel in the US. There is a worry that some countries may do that. Of course, that is precisely what the military does do.\n\nMy job? I am a Health Physicist. I teach radiation protection, nuclear physics, and radiation chemistry. In the event of an accident, I read remote monitors and figure out what the pathway the radionuclides are taking out, how much, and what dose might be delivered to the population downwind. My predictions are used to advise the county about evacuation of persons living in a 20 mile radius of the power plant. I have a Bachelors of Science in biology from Baylor University, Masters in Applied Nuclear Science from Georgia Tech, and my PhD work was in leukemia research at Baylor Col. of Medicine. I was part of the Three Mile Island Recovery Team.
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go here: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/hiroshima/\n\nit should help you find the answers you're looking for!
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heres a show we did on depleated uranium http://www.philipdru.com/rokke_stream.html\n\nwe're tryin to bring things like this to peoples attention. tough going though, nobody wants to listen. weve gotten through to some people, makes it worth it. http://scotthortonshow.com/
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Ural is not a single mountain, but a whole ridge (like Rockies in US). I haven't heard of a major nuclear disaster there, not even sure if there is a reactor there since there are not that many people live there.\n\nThe big nuclear disaster in Soviet Union was Chernobyl, which is in Ukraine and quite far from Urals. In 1986, a negligent experiment resulted in reactor meltdown, resulting in direct irradiation of immediate surroundings and discharge or radioactive dust into atmoshpere, with winds carrying the fallout as far as Scandinavia. Now the plant is shut down, the reactor is encased in conrete 'sarcophagus', and all the settlements for miles around are abandoned.
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(m)\n\nON THE 6th August 1945, exactly 56 years ago, an atom bomb destroyed Hiroshima. Nagasaki faced devastation three days later. The Imperial Headquarters requested Dr. Y.Nishina (famous for Klein-Nishina formula for Compton scattering of photons) to go to Hiroshima. He concluded that the damage was due to an atomic bomb. \n\nWhen the bombs were dropped, these cities had an estimated population of 310,000 and 250,000 respectively. About 90,000- 140,000 in Hiroshima and 60,000- 80,000 people in Nagasaki died immediately or within two to four months after bombing, resulting from collapse of houses caused by the blast and from heat rays and fires and radiation exposure. In the 1950 Japanese national census, nearly 280,000 persons stated that they "had been exposed" in the two cities. \n\nRadiation fogged X-ray films stored at the Hiroshima Red Cross Hospital. Exposed material became radioactive. Kimura and Tajima of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research determined that the Hiroshima bomb exploded at a height of 577 m. They used an electric furnace and a carbon arc furnace to simulate charring observed on the surface of a wooden board of Japanese cypress and estimated that the bomb had a radiant energy of 4.6 million million calories. \n\nScientists could enter the bombed area only after 3 to 4 weeks because of frequent typhoons. They measured higher radiation levels due to induced radioactivity near the epicentre. Additional radiation levels were 10-15 per cent of the natural background. \n\nOn November 18, 1946 Harry Truman authorised the National Research Council to establish an agency "to undertake a long range, continuing study of the biological and medical effects of the atomic bomb on man". This organisation grew into the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC). ABCC continued to work till 1975 when Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) was set up as a bi-national endeavour. \n\nMany believe in the myth that birth defects are more common among the children of the survivors of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In my interaction with general physicians and other professional groups the one topic, which elicits maximum queries, is " genetic effects of radiation". Radiation can cause mutations in genes. Mouse and in fruit flies exposed to radiation suffer genetic mutations. The changes may show up in the offspring as colour of the coat, shape of the wings, etc. But such markers are not available in the human species. We require very sophisticated laboratory methods to demonstrate subtle changes in exposed individuals. \n\n\nPhysicians appointed by ABCC examined 76,626 infants conceived and born in Hiroshima and Nagasaki over a period of six years starting from the late spring of 1948. The researchers did not see statistically demonstrable increase in major birth defects in these infants. While the survey started, certain dietary staples were rationed in Japan. Pregnant women had special provisions. Because of this, the surveyors of new-borns could identify 90 per cent of the pregnancies that persisted for at least 20 weeks of gestation. \n\nPhysical examination of the new born and autopsies on as many stillborn infants revealed that neither the frequency of major birth defects nor the frequency of the most common birth defects differ significantly with radiation exposure of parents. The researchers examined some 21,788 infants shortly after birth and re-examined them eight to ten months later. The study covered 65,431 registered pregnancy terminations and appropriate control populations. \n\nIn a brief review, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation cautioned, "The absence of a statistically significant effect of ionising radiation on the frequency of major birth defects should not be construed as evidence that mutations were not induced by parental exposure to atomic radiation". The researchers saw mutations in every animal and plant species studied. \n
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http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/dir/mstreet/commeet/meet1/brief1/br1j.txt\n\nThe first 3 are covered there.
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http://www.orau.org/ptp/museumdirectory.htm\n\ngo to this link.  it has one of the finest museums on-line dealing with the detection of radiation...and other neat stuff
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http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-bomb.htm
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No more USSR so the near future needs some amending..but how about one of these?\n\nWormwood Dawn (Chernobyl means wormwood)\n\nFinal repast (Last meal)
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Radionucleides.  The only time you might ordinarily be exposed to them is during a medical proceedure wherein the radiation they emit is a desired aspect.  Those proceedures are either for diagnostic purposes or theraputic purposes.  \n\nBad for you?  No, the amount of radiation your body is exposed to during such an exam is quite minimal.  On the other hand, theraputic radiation is very, very carefully controlled and administered.  In the past, folks sometimes experienced quite a bit of discomfort during radiation therapy.  That's much less the case now, and we have medicines to help what discomfort there is - medicines that simply were not avaliable until recently.\n\nThat having been said, there's been a lot of fuss and bother over the possibility of someone "exploding a dirty bomb",  meaning a device that might spread radioactive particles over a wide area.  Despite Homeland Security's attempts to panic us, that is very, very, VERY unlikely.  So is a nuclear accident like Three Mile Island twenty or so years ago - and Three Mile Island, frightening as it was for people living nearby, left nobody outside the plant sick from radiation - nobody.  But a serious accident COULD result in many, many serious injuries and deaths.  The proper response is for surrounding communities to have in place a proper disaster response plan that may include mass evacuation and prophylactic medicines in stock.  Unfortunately, despite all the hype and all the promises, vitually no community has done squat to properly prepare for either a nuclear accident or a deliberate attempt an spreading nuclear-contaminated materal.  Sure as can be, the Federal government has done virtually nothing worthwhile in that respect!   The stinkers...
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The death yesterday of a former Russian secret service agent in London is a matter for the police and related agencies. I would not wish to pre-judge its cause or who was responsible. \n\nThe implications of the availability of poisonous, highly radioactive, materials are frightening. Individual assassinations are only one sort of resulting threat.\n\nWithout going into specifics, the lack of control of radioactive material after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a matter for great worldwide concern. Nuclear proliferation leads to several very serious concerns about the availability of radioactive material to terrorists from sources in more than one country.\n\nBefore people get ideas into their heads about the sale of radioactive materials, can I point out that these are very nasty stuff? Unscrupulous people selling them are unlikely to be fussy about health and safety issues and those buying them are likely to poison themselves, quite apart from receiving large doses of radiation. Not a good idea at all.
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Wow, both of these answerers got it pretty wrong (it wasn't a revolution that ended the USSR for starters).   This is still at tremendous subject however - I couldn't answer it without a few hours of writing I'm not willing to do to help you avoid your homework, so I suggest you start researching.  Even the wikipedia entries on the USSR, Afghanistan and Chernobyl would be good places to start.