Chernobyl - 18 years later

[andyg]

I can't comment on this one, let it speak for itself

http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/page2.html

[Pyscrow]

How can she be so good looking , yet so thick - she isn't even blonde!

Stuffed if I'd be going in there for a ride!

[windtrader]

interesting link but WAY OT for this forum. and who would believe that pic of the biker is real. I don't get the road surface is clear but the shoulder are polluted and this stuff doesn't blow around and pollute the air. seems sort of suspect

[Joe999]

Originally posted by windtrader
I don't get the road surface is clear but the shoulder are polluted and this stuff doesn't blow around and pollute the air.

As I understand it, there were a couple unsucessful attempts at creating a bus tour through the area. I'd guess the people who had the idea did a quick cleanup of the roads.

[mf]

Interesting read. I don't really care if it's offtopic or not - after all this is general discussion.

[Tri]

Originally posted by windtrader
and who would believe that pic of the biker is real.
There is another picture of her inside a house on one of the following pages.

[Pyscrow]

Originally posted by windtrader
interesting link but WAY OT for this forum. and who would believe that pic of the biker is real. I don't get the road surface is clear but the shoulder are polluted and this stuff doesn't blow around and pollute the air. seems sort of suspect

Bitumen surfaced roads are waterproof, (mostly!) so the only contaminants on the road would be the on the surface, and due to the crossfall of the road would tend to be washed away to the shoulders when it rained. The shoulders would not be waterproof, and the rain would carry the contaminants into the soil. The shoulders could therefore be expected to be holding a lot more radioactive particles!

[Joe Fenton]

Organic materials generally don't become radioactive. Metals do. The lighter the metal, the more radioactive it'll become. That's why the vehicles were all abandoned and had the highest radiation levels.

If you noticed in one picture and read the captions, she always had a radiation exposure badge and a geiger counter with her. She seemed to take reasonable precautions, talking with locals to determine the safety of areas before entering. Given her planning, what she did is hardly the same danger level as swimming with sharks or running with the bulls.

It was a nice presentation. It was fascinating seeing all the deserted cities. It didn't shock me that looters were trying to steal from the deserted areas and sell the stuff. That's dangerous. As I said earlier, metals are particularly contaminated. Having a TV from the area would be like getting an X-Ray several times a day as you sat in the room with it.

[andyg]

quote:
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Originally posted by Joe999
As I understand it, there were a couple unsucessful attempts at creating a bus tour through the area.
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look here:
http://www.welcometoukraine.com/temp/chernobyl.html

[dimitrius]

I'm Belorussian, thankfully at the time of the disaster I was living in Poland.

While in Belorussia I lived north of Minsk (capital) in Postavi. Though I have not seen any reports of radiation effects in that area, near my house there was an orphanage and alot of children there were from Chernobyl area.

I noticed that those children had their heads shaved and some of them told me that the hair was burned probably because it might be contaminated.

[andyg]

Poland did get the share of radiation rain on the east portion of it, so did Sweden... .

The original site is down, here is why:

"For the record, a free Angelfire site presently gets 1 GB of monthly
bandwidth on which to serve up to 20 MB of content. Which means, when /. finishes off this site's bandwidth allowance, this site's gone for the month."

Someone did mirror the whole think here:

http://markrose.ca/www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/page2.html

[BoNz1]

Originally posted by Joe Fenton
Organic materials generally don't become radioactive. Metals do. The lighter the metal, the more radioactive it'll become. That's why the vehicles were all abandoned and had the highest radiation levels.

No this is not true. If this were true there would be no such thing as carbon dating. Anyway, radioactively labeling organic elements is extremely useful. Such as radioactively labeling protein with S 35. And, usually heavier elements decay radioactively. If you really want to know why this is I will tell you. Radioactive decay occurs when you have a lot of neutrons and protons. The bigger the element is the more easier it will fall apart think of the protons as the glue that holds everything together. If all that "glue" is spread out over a large atom it will fall apart easier ie if you put lots of neutrons in that element with respect to the amount of protons it will fall apart. If you really like to study this sort of thing have a look at a nuclear decay series they are really very interesting. In fact Fe which is what most of the metal in those cars is made of is the most stable element IIRC from my physics courses for some very cool reasons which I won't get into, basically ratio of neutrons to protons especially is the reason though.