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Tesla_WTC_Solution
2nd November 2013, 19:31
http://seattletimes.com/ABPub/2013/11/01/2022174753.gif

photo courtesy of Seattle Times


"Beware the Ides of March"



Caesar:
Who is it in the press that calls on me?
I hear a tongue shriller than all the music
Cry "Caesar!" Speak, Caesar is turn'd to hear.

Soothsayer:
Beware the ides of March.

Caesar:
What man is that?

Brutus:
A soothsayer bids you beware the ides of March.

Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 15–19

On my Nuclearnuttery blog that was removed by ATS/NSA/whoever late last year, there was an article detailing the need for USA to address its spent nuclear fuel storage situation. This was one of my more serious articles, one of those with a real point, and a real deadline.

Seattle Times ran an article yesterday or today detailing the situation in Washington state that has for decades been swept under the rug by experts and the press. A civilian group had to conduct parallel studies in order to release the truth of the matter to the public.

Upon moving to Washington state in 2007, it came to my attention that Yucca Mountain was no longer an option for semi-permanent spent nuclear fuel storage. For some reason Nevada decided not to go forward with the plan to start stockpiling spent fuel within its borders. The project was de-funded. Thanks to this, Washington is starting to have a lot in common with Fukushima. We have far too many spent fuel rods being stored near active fault lines, and nowhere to put it.

On my blog I asked questions, like can CERN find a way to quickly "defuse" such hazardous spent fuel and turn it into something useful. We are going to run out of room by 2015, if the quake doesn't come first.

Yucca Mountain Defunded:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/34/Yucca_Mountain_2.jpg/280px-Yucca_Mountain_2.jpg

Yucca Mountain is a mountain in Nevada, near its border with California, approximately 100 miles (160 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Located in the Great Basin, Yucca Mountain is east of Amargosa Desert, south of the Nevada Test and Training Range and in the Nevada National Security Site. It is the site of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which is currently identified by Congressional law as the nation's spent nuclear waste storage facility. However, while licensure of the site through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is ongoing, political maneuvering led to the site being de-funded in 2010.

Seattle Times article on seismic risk to Hanford Site:


http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022173243_nukequakesxml.html

Originally published November 1, 2013 at 1:19 PM | Page modified November 1, 2013 at 8:29 PM

Hanford nuke plant’s earthquake risk underestimated, group says
A new report by an anti-nuclear organization says earthquake risks were seriously underestimated when the state’s only commercial nuclear-power plant was built almost 30 years ago on the Hanford nuclear reservation.


By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times science reporter

A new analysis by an anti-nuclear organization says earthquake risks were seriously underestimated when the state’s only commercial nuclear-power plant was built almost 30 years ago on the Hanford nuclear reservation.

Seismic studies since then have uncovered more faults, extended the length of previously known faults and challenged the assumption that large quakes are not likely in the area, says the report from the Washington and Oregon chapters of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Geologists now believe one fault passes a scant 2.3 miles from the 1,170-megawatt plant called the Columbia Generating Station (CGS).

The new evidence suggests that the region could be rocked by shaking two to three times stronger than the plant was designed for, said Terry Tolan, the veteran geologist who prepared the report for PSR.

“No seismic structural upgrades have been made at the Columbia Generating Station despite all of the geologic evidence that has been assembled over the past thirty years which has dramatically increased the seismic risk at this site,” Tolan wrote.

The physician’s group submitted the report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Friday, along with a letter calling on NRC Chairwoman Allison Macfarlane to shut down the reactor until it is upgraded to withstand stronger quakes.

Macfarlane defended the power plant in her response to an earlier letter. “The NRC continues to conclude that CGS has been designed, built and operated to safely withstand earthquakes likely to occur in its region,” she wrote in September.

On Friday, NRC spokesman Scott Burnell said the Washington nuclear plant, along with all others in the Western United States, is under orders from NRC to re-evaluate its seismic risk by March 2015. That review, instigated after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that led to meltdowns at Japan’s Fukushima reactor complex, will take into account all the new science, he added.

read more please: http://seattletimes.com/html/localnews/2022173243_nukequakesxml.html

Wikipedia on Spent Fuel Rod Storage:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f3/Carso_Fuel_pool.jpg/220px-Carso_Fuel_pool.jpg

Spent fuel pools (SFP) are storage pools for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet (12 m) deep, with the bottom 14 feet (4.3 m) equipped with storage racks designed to hold fuel assemblies removed from the reactor. A reactor's pool is specially designed for the reactor in which the fuel was used and situated at the reactor site. In many countries, the fuel assemblies, after being in the reactor for 3 to 6 years, are stored underwater for 10 to 20 years before being sent for reprocessing or dry cask storage. The water cools the fuel and provides shielding from radiation.

While only about 8 feet (2.4 m) of water is needed to keep radiation levels below acceptable levels, the extra depth provides a safety margin and allows fuel assemblies to be manipulated without special shielding to protect the operators.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that many of the nuclear power plants in the United States will be out of room in their spent fuel pools by 2015, most likely requiring the use of temporary storage of some kind.[1]

"I felt fear"


http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/28/world/asia/japan-nuclear/

Former Japanese leader: 'I felt fear' during nuclear crisis
By Kyung Lah, CNN
updated 6:45 AM EDT, Mon May 28, 2012

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/120528103758-naoto-kan-story-top.jpg

Tokyo (CNN) -- Former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said he was overwhelmed and afraid during last year's nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, acknowledging that little has been done since then to ensure that another nuclear disaster will not occur.

Sounding like a fiery anti-nuclear activist, Kan Monday testified before a panel appointed by parliament to investigate the nuclear disaster.

"There wasn't much information coming to me" from the government regulatory agency, NISA, or the plant's operator, TEPCO, Kan said. "I thought I couldn't make any countermeasures in this crisis. I felt fear."

My grandfather was a nuclear missile maintenance man -- a real life silo-sitter -- and for some reason I've always taken a dim view of the situation our world has built for itself. Some of the premonitions I've had were in the context of the White Sands Trinity Monument to the first documented nuclear detonation. But it seems as if the truth is far closer to home, and many times more sinister, than something as isolated as a bomb.


We have built our houses upon the sand, like the foolish man in the Bible parable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_(nuclear_test)


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/35/Trinity_Site_Obelisk_National_Historic_Landmark.jpg/600px-Trinity_Site_Obelisk_National_Historic_Landmark.jpg


Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear device, conducted by the United States Army on July 16, 1945, as a result of the Manhattan Project,[5][6][7][8][9] in the Jornada del Muerto desert about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Socorro, New Mexico, at the new White Sands Proving Ground, which incorporated the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. (The site is now the White Sands Missile Range.)[10][11] Trinity used an implosion-design plutonium device, informally nicknamed "The Gadget".[12] Using the same conceptual design, the Fat Man device was detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. The Trinity detonation produced the explosive power of about 20 kilotons of TNT (84 TJ).

Although nuclear chain reactions had been hypothesized in 1933 and the first artificial self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (Chicago Pile-1 or CP-1) had taken place in December 1942,[13] the date of the Trinity test is usually considered to be the beginning of the Atomic Age.[14]

p.s. the author of this thread lives within 100 miles of Handford nuclear reservation.

naste.de.lumina
2nd November 2013, 19:53
According to this video subtitled in Portuguese (I could not find with subtitles in English to compare) in a parliamentary debate in Japan, the minister responsible for the country's reconstruction after the earthquake and tsunami, Mr. Hamada, speaks of the weapons that create earthquakes and machines that climate change.
Maybe some Japanese friends here in PA can confirm that the information in this video is correct.

qmvIuQ_DXCI

Tesla_WTC_Solution
2nd November 2013, 19:56
Thank you for that.

The reasons I am really scared about the Hanford site are:

~water is the only shielding; i.e. if something cracked the pools and made them drain, there would be nothing shielding from radiation and there would be fire/smoke/etc
~many of the pools are run by robotic arms and not manned by human personnel; i.e. a power outage would completely cripple rod transfer capability
~it's very close to the Columbia river; i.e. whatever happens to Hanford might affect the Columbia



What would happen if the pools drained? Not even thinking about the power plant itself, but the storage of spent fuel!

p.s. weather warfare would definitely complicate things. Did you see what happened at the 520 bridge in Seattle this weekend? Freak weather closed the bridge.

People would be, like, totally cut off in this region if we had "the big one".

LOL @ Hanford meltdown while everyone trapped in Seattle :(

Tesla_WTC_Solution
2nd November 2013, 23:16
The comments section of the Times article cited above has some interesting info.
One commenter said a USGS scientist named Brian Sherrod agrees that the site is hazardous and at risk, much as depicted by the civilian investigating agency.


concerned local
Blaine
1 comments


November 1, 2013 at 8:11 PMRating: You must be signed in to rate this post. (6) You must be signed in to rate this post. (4) Log in to
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Scientist Brian Sherrod of the USGS agrees with the “honest , forthright interpretation of what’s out there…”. New information indicates that CGS is 2.3 miles away from an active fault and is surrounded by other significant faults not previously taken into account when it was built. CGS is holding 1.4 million pounds of high level nuclear waste in it’s elevated fuel pool, another 500,000 pounds in the reactor and a million or so pounds in the outdoor parking lot known as dry cask storage. This contains significantly more radioactivity than was released at Fukushima where 290,000 people remain homeless. 30 good years and 1 bad day will contaminate our breadbasket, wineries, river and cities. Insurance does not cover nuclear fallout. Why gamble for only 4% of our electricity coming from CGS. Let’s close this reactor while we check the facts. We will even save some money buying the cheaper power from the spot energy markets.

lol, i need glasses.

it was also in the main part of the article:

The new report doesn’t present new information but summarizes and synthesizes recent discoveries.

“It’s an honest, forthright interpretation of what’s out there and what’s being worked on,” said Brian Sherrod, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist who is involved in much of the new research and has no affiliation with PSR.


______________

"synthesizing" is NOT the right word, Seattle Times... "correlating" data would be correct.

Patrikas
2nd November 2013, 23:24
Hi,
here is an excerpt form the jim stone report called Nuclear Blackmail.... which is very relative to this thread ......interesting reading indeed .......

During my journey of discovery in my investigation into the Fukushima disaster, I interviewed an 85 year old nuclear engineer who worked in the nuclear industry during America's glory days, an engineer who earned GE over 100 patents. He was one of the engineers who designed Fukushima, so naturally when conducting an investigation into such a disaster a journalist would want that type of reference. He was surprised when my prior study of reactor systems was so thorough that he had no information about Fukushima I did not already dig up, and he was very surprised when I told him details about the inner workings of his own reactor design he never expected anyone in the media to know.




When I started to think I was going to walk away with nothing new, he began to talk about an entirely different subject. He began his new direction in the discussion with the phrase "My team succeeded in closing the nuclear loop, and Carter banned our miracle with an executive order

Link to Nuclear Blackmail artcle:

http://jimstonefreelance.com/blackmail.html

Tesla_WTC_Solution
2nd November 2013, 23:29
Hi,
here is an excerpt form the jim stone report called Nuclear Blackmail.... which is very relative to this thread ......interesting reading indeed .......

During my journey of discovery in my investigation into the Fukushima disaster, I interviewed an 85 year old nuclear engineer who worked in the nuclear industry during America's glory days, an engineer who earned GE over 100 patents. He was one of the engineers who designed Fukushima, so naturally when conducting an investigation into such a disaster a journalist would want that type of reference. He was surprised when my prior study of reactor systems was so thorough that he had no information about Fukushima I did not already dig up, and he was very surprised when I told him details about the inner workings of his own reactor design he never expected anyone in the media to know.




When I started to think I was going to walk away with nothing new, he began to talk about an entirely different subject. He began his new direction in the discussion with the phrase "My team succeeded in closing the nuclear loop, and Carter banned our miracle with an executive order

Link to Nuclear Blackmail artcle:

http://jimstonefreelance.com/blackmail.html

thanks for this. Have you read my thread here on avalon about Icecube Neutrino Observatory? Let me find it...

http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?55030-IceCube-Neutrino-Observatory-Deep-Space-Gamma-Detector-or-Nuclear-Blast-Detector-You-choose...


This device is not alone in its generation. I read last year that such a contraption is being built in the Mediterranean sea on behalf of Israel and perhaps some partner nations.

Well, my question is this: if these things were really for what people say they are, detecting gamma from stars and black holes, etc., I don't think Israel would be wasting money on them. I think these things are precise remote nuclear detonation detectors.

Tesla_WTC_Solution
3rd November 2013, 00:30
the morons in the Seattle Times comment section are making fun of the author of the article.
she wrote a great book on the Cascadia faultlines recently, and people think that makes her unreliable as a source of information.


they can't handle hearing the truth if it's negative or suggests personal hardship.

I am grateful to S Doughton for telling the truth when it is hard to hear.

We should thank people who are willing to do that for us.

sirdipswitch
3rd November 2013, 13:44
Somethin to think on...

ETs' have the technology to neutralise radiation!

Yep, and the U.S. has it...

The US also has laboratories at the Nevada bomb test site, that are right out in the middle of radioactive HOT SPOTS. People work out there everyday without harm from radiation. hmm.

tptb can control the dangers from radiation... where they want to... hmm

I really thought y'all knew how to dig up the "good stuff"??!!

william r sanford72
3rd November 2013, 15:35
I just had a neice her young son and boyfriend move to washington state.close to aberdeen.her mother..just moved off a montanna native american res and move to oregon on the border of wash.state.All in the last 2 months.Thanks for info and thread.

Tesla_WTC_Solution
3rd November 2013, 20:06
Somethin to think on...

ETs' have the technology to neutralise radiation!

Yep, and the U.S. has it...

The US also has laboratories at the Nevada bomb test site, that are right out in the middle of radioactive HOT SPOTS. People work out there everyday without harm from radiation. hmm.

tptb can control the dangers from radiation... where they want to... hmm

I really thought y'all knew how to dig up the "good stuff"??!!
Sorry, I was too busy digging up info on what's wrong with my autistic son;
the same people who use technologies as you describe also exempt their kids from opting into brain damage.

:( lol

Bob
3rd November 2013, 22:52
Thank you for that.

The reasons I am really scared about the Hanford site are:

~water is the only shielding; i.e. if something cracked the pools and made them drain, there would be nothing shielding from radiation and there would be fire/smoke/etc
~many of the pools are run by robotic arms and not manned by human personnel; i.e. a power outage would completely cripple rod transfer capability
~it's very close to the Columbia river; i.e. whatever happens to Hanford might affect the Columbia



What would happen if the pools drained? Not even thinking about the power plant itself, but the storage of spent fuel!

p.s. weather warfare would definitely complicate things. Did you see what happened at the 520 bridge in Seattle this weekend? Freak weather closed the bridge.

People would be, like, totally cut off in this region if we had "the big one".

LOL @ Hanford meltdown while everyone trapped in Seattle :(

Hi Tesla (that never stops giving me a warm fuzzy feeling saying that :) )

I have been following General Atomics (the people who gave us the Robotic Hunter Killer Drone, the MQ-9) say they have another great innovation, a reactor that burns up depleted Uranium, burns up the stuff stored in the water pools, and creates energy equivalent cost to burning natural gas without any carbon footprint.. Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor (GT-MHR) concept running in the Energy Multiplier mode.

http://www.ga.com/about is some data about the company.

http://www.ga.com/energy-multiplier-module - this is the "spent fuel" burner.

The claim is NUCLEAR WASTE to ENERGY. They want to stay nuclear, AND burn up ALL the nuclear waste that exists putting it in their reactors. Saying saves money, gets rid of the hazards of the waste.


http://www.ga.com/websites/ga/docs/em2/images/main.jpg

They are saying it is cheaper to setup than other power plants, reduces costs, cleans up waste, has no carbon footprint. They "say" meltdown is nil cause things shut down if there are failures.


http://www.ga.com/websites/ga/docs/em2/pdf/FactSheet-TechnicalFactSheetEM2.pdf

In theory the General Atomics waste spent fuel should work do deal with the water covered spent fuel issue.

I don't think tho people want to go nuclear, even if it will mean diminishing, heck maybe removing the danger of the existing spent fuel stores being uncovered or damaged by water leakage, or the dry cask leakage, or even if it means that electric vehicle charging would be practical from a cost effectiveness, reducing overall electrical production energy costs by 40% (that's the claim). I don't know if adding thorium charges to such an "Energy Multiplier Module" would be useful if their primary goal is to use up as much spent fuel waste on the planet as possible.

I don't think this should be written off or ignored. You've pointed out the dangers of leaky storage pools very clearly.

Tesla_WTC_Solution
3rd November 2013, 23:08
thank you for that, Bobd!

I am trying to load their PDF (lol!) re: the waste to fuel program now (darn connection)

:(

edit: this sounds really awesome if they can do what the brochure claims they can...

40x the energy in the Saudi oil reserves -- @_@

I am seeing why Iran is having trouble with nuclear stuff... their neighbors don't like the competition @_@

Bob
3rd November 2013, 23:18
thank you for that, Bobd!

I am trying to load their PDF (lol!) re: the waste to fuel program now (darn connection)

:(

edit: this sounds really awesome if they can do what the brochure claims they can...

40x the energy in the Saudi oil reserves -- @_@

I am seeing why Iran is having trouble with nuclear stuff... their neighbors don't like the competition @_@

It may be a solution, if it works. Take a look at their claims about how their fuel under "meltdown" conditions doesn't melt down and stays contained.. I think it gets really wacky when folks want to over-do it with massive gigawatt power plants, when mega-watt modules are smaller and safer. As General Atomics points out there is so much fuel sitting around rotting away, potentially a time-bomb with leakage, might as well get OFF oil, switch over to electricity - get into electrically run vehicles powered off the "atomic electric grid"..

Tesla_WTC_Solution
4th November 2013, 00:30
thank you for that, Bobd!

I am trying to load their PDF (lol!) re: the waste to fuel program now (darn connection)

:(

edit: this sounds really awesome if they can do what the brochure claims they can...

40x the energy in the Saudi oil reserves -- @_@

I am seeing why Iran is having trouble with nuclear stuff... their neighbors don't like the competition @_@

It may be a solution, if it works. Take a look at their claims about how their fuel under "meltdown" conditions doesn't melt down and stays contained.. I think it gets really wacky when folks want to over-do it with massive gigawatt power plants, when mega-watt modules are smaller and safer. As General Atomics points out there is so much fuel sitting around rotting away, potentially a time-bomb with leakage, might as well get OFF oil, switch over to electricity - get into electrically run vehicles powered off the "atomic electric grid"..

Thank you for this!

By the way, Bobd, would these modules convert over easily to a spacecraft drive? Would the energy output be practical or sufficient, if something like this were attached to something akin to the VSMPD engine? (I think that stands for "varied specific magneto-plasma-dynamic thrust") :P lol!

"Cradle of Saturn" mentioned a very nifty nuclear spacecraft drive, and I was wondering if these modules in some form or fashion could boost the space race...

:spy:

¤=[Post Update]=¤

p.s. the Seattle Times comments are calling the author of the Hanford article a doomtard, etc. and saying the natives didn't warn us about the risk here lol

Bob
4th November 2013, 00:44
Hi Tesla

"By the way, Bobd, would these modules convert over easily to a spacecraft drive? Would the energy output be practical or sufficient, if something like this were attached to something akin to the VSMPD engine? (I think that stands for "varied specific magneto-plasma-dynamic thrust") lol!"

I would have to look at the weight power ratio, the amount of burn time, the final specific "impulse". They are saying 30 years per fuel charge. One would think a series of modules able to be called up as needed would work, for long duration stuff. I haven't followed ion-drives in years, possibly we have someone on the forum who would like to pipe in on the speed thrust travel potential of such modules. I think the claim to fame is the electric generation based on using garbage "spent" fuels. Especially the depleted Uranium. Wonder if that is the same grade stuff as used for the depleted Uranium projectiles used on some enemies? (or in training like in Puerto Rico)..

Plasma means you have something to plasma-tize like a gas like Xenon or something to "ionize".. I would think maybe a laserized medium putting out photons may be a solution too to use all that electricity coming off those reactor systems. For now, I think let's just get rid of all this waste maybe could be a goal.. Now maybe an innovative way of plasmatizing the fuel or a portion of the fuel, in a super reactor could be interesting..

Tesla_WTC_Solution
4th November 2013, 06:09
Bad news for Japan today, I didn't see this earlier:


5.0-magnitude earthquake strikes near Tokyo
By CNN Staff
November 3, 2013 -- Updated 0604 GMT (1404 HKT)
(CNN) -- A 5.0-magnitude earthquake struck near Tokyo on Sunday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The quake, which was about 66 kilometers (41 miles) deep, occurred about 48 kilometers (30 miles) northeast of Tokyo, the agency said.
There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Tesla_WTC_Solution
10th November 2013, 21:20
Check this out:

http://www.tri-cityherald.com/2013/11/08/2664781/hastings-joins-northwest-lawmakers.html#wgt=rcntnews

Hastings joins Northwest lawmakers in calling for BPA independence
BY ROB HOTAKAINEN
McClatchy NewspapersNovember 8, 2013

Lawmakers in the Pacific Northwest said Friday that they fear the Obama administration will move to take control of the operations of Bonneville Power Administration after the agency was accused of discriminating against veterans in its hiring.

The agency, which sells power from 31 federal dams in the Columbia Basin, has been under fire since a report from the Energy Department’s inspector general earlier this year found that the BPA had discriminated against veterans who wanted jobs and then retaliated against whistleblowers.

In a show of unity, all 23 members of Congress representing Washington state, Idaho and Oregon signed a letter to Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, asking him to make sure the BPA remains independent.

"BPA decisions must be made in the Northwest for the benefit of the Northwest" they said in the letter.

While BPA officials report to the Energy Department, members of Congress noted that the agency has long been given the freedom to run its daily operations. But they worry that the Department of Energy will now be too aggressive in its oversight.

One lawmaker who signed the letter, Republican Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington state, said earlier that that the BPA provides millions of families and small businesses with energy and that it should not be subjected to "an open-ended takeover" by the Department of Energy.

And Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers of Washington state said the unfair hiring practiced must be addressed but added that "this does not necessitate a direct takeover" of the agency.

BPA spokesman Douglas Johnson said the agency is working with the Department of Energy "to fully address all the issues raised" by the inspector general's report.

And as those efforts proceed, he said, "BPA continues developing policies regionally, delivering services reliably to customers and performing its policy and operational functions."

___________________________________________________

Summary: Washington State treats US Veterans like ****.

Tesla_WTC_Solution
11th November 2013, 19:29
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/07/opinion/morris-ted-chernobyl/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

After Chernobyl, they refused to leave
By Holly Morris, Special to CNN
November 8, 2013 -- Updated 0148 GMT (0948 HKT)

Editor's note: Holly Morris is co-producer/director of the forthcoming documentary "The Babushkas of Chernobyl" Follow her on Twitter @Holly Morris. She spoke at TEDGlobal 2013 in June. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to "ideas worth spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its website. For more on the future of nuclear power as a possible solution for global climate change, watch CNN Films' presentation of "Pandora's Promise," airing on CNN on Thursday, November 7, at 9 p.m. ET/PT
(CNN) -- On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant's reactor No. 4 blew up after a cooling capability test, and the resulting nuclear fire lasted 10 days, spewing 400 times as much radiation as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. To date, it's the world's worst nuclear accident. The 2011 Fukushima meltdown, of course, is still playing out -- but actually, so is Chernobyl.
Nearly 28 years after the disaster, Reactor No. 4 simmers under its "sarcophagus," a concrete and metal cover hastily built after the accident. It's now cracked, rusted and leaking radiation. A partial roof collapse last February sent reverberations of fear throughout the world. As well it should have. With 200 tons of lava-like radioactive material still below the reactor, and the "New Safe Confinement" aimed at containing and protecting it not scheduled for completion till 2015 (already 15 years overdue) this story of nuclear disaster is in its early chapters.
Today, Chernobyl's soil, water, and air are among the most highly contaminated on Earth. The reactor sits at the center of a 1,000-square-mile "Exclusion Zone," a quarantined no-man's land complete with border guards, passport control and radiation monitoring. Inside the Zone are hundreds of unmarked (and un-mapped) burial sites where machinery from the cleanup after the 1986 accident was dumped. These days, Ukraine's four other nuclear power plants also dispose of their spent fuel inside the Zone.
It's real, and it's scary.
TED.com: The deadly genius of drug cartels
Why stay in Chernobyl? Because it's home
But amidst the complicated real-life calculations and compromises -- where science and politics meet to duke out the viability of nuclear energy -- the long, deep, human parable of Chernobyl is often lost. That story is partly embodied in 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.
I've been filming and interviewing this unlikely community since 2010.
The Zone's scattered ghost villages are silent and bucolic, eerie and contaminated. Many villages were bulldozed after the accident, others remain -- silent vestiges to the tragedy, and home to the ubiquitous wild boar. Still, other villages have 1 or 2 or 8 or 12 babushkas, or babas -- the Russian and Ukrainian words for "grandmother" -- living in them.
One self-settler, Hanna Zavorotnya, told me how she snuck through the bushes back to her village in the summer of 1986. "Shoot us and dig the grave," she told the soldiers who nabbed her and other family members, "otherwise we're staying." Then she handed me a chunk of warm salo --- raw fat -- from her just-slaughtered pig.
TED.com: What I discovered in New York City's trash
Why would they choose to live on deadly land? Are they unaware of the risks, or crazy enough to ignore them, or both? It's hard for us -- especially Westerners with deeper connections to our laptops than any piece of soil -- to understand. But these women see their lives in a decidedly different way.
When I asked Hanna about radiation, she replied: "Radiation doesn't scare me. Starvation does."
It's all about context.
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.
So long as they were well beyond child bearing, self-settlers were allowed to stay "semi-illegally." Five happy years, the settlers logic went, is better than 15 condemned to a high-rise on the outskirts of Kyiv. The residents of the Chernobyl region are forest-dwelling steppe people of Ukraine's Polesia region and did not adapt well to urban environments. There is a simple defiance common among them: "They told us our legs would hurt, and they do," one 80-year-old woman told me. "So what."
TED.com: Why our universe might exist on a knife edge
What about their health? There are benefits of hardy living from the land -- but also complications from an environment laced with radioactive contaminants, such as cesium, strontium and americium. Health studies vary. The World Health Organization predicts more than 4,000 deaths will eventually be linked to Chernobyl.
Greenpeace and others put that projection into the tens of thousands. All agree thyroid cancers are sky high, and that Chernobyl evacuees have suffered the trauma of relocated peoples everywhere, including anxiety, depression,
Radioactive contamination from the accident has been death-dealing, to be sure, but relocation trauma is another, less-examined fallout of Chernobyl. 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."
Home is the entire cosmos of the rural babushka, and connection to the land is palpable. They told me: "If you leave you die," "Those who left are worse off now. They are all dying of sadness," "Motherland is Motherland. I will never leave."
TED.com: Architecture at home in its community
Curiously, what sounds like faith may actually be fact. 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.
How could this be? Certainly, their exposure at an older age put them at smaller risk. (Young animals -- and I'm including humans here -- are more severely affected by radiation.) But let's consider a less tangible though equally powerful idea. Does happiness affect longevity? Is the power of motherland, so fundamental to that part of the world, palliative? Are home and community forces that can rival even radiation? I believe so. And unfailingly, so do the babushkas of the Zone.
Radiation or not, these women are at the end of their lives. But their existence and spirit will leave us wondering about the relative nature of risk, about transformative connections to home, and about the magnificent tonic of personal agency and self-determination. They are unexpected lessons from a nuclear tragedy.
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