Chernobyle today

[mora]

Originally posted by airguard
not even that many died after Hiroshima and Nagasaki all in all.
lots of people died since 1945 too ? (but did they trip over and break their neck or just had a normal death lol )

seems weird to me.

Sure there has been lots of cancer cases, deformed babies, and other diseases. But 300, 000 is way over the top. Of course most of the liquidators died. Then there were 50,000 people living in Pripyat and that was the only place where you could die directly from radiation poisoning, and not nearly all of them died. So it leaves quite a gap as not nearly all the cancer patients die. If there would be million cancer cases I suppose you could find some information about it?

[gofaster]

Originally posted by mora
Sure there has been lots of cancer cases, deformed babies, and other diseases. But 300, 000 is way over the top. Of course most of the liquidators died. Then there were 50,000 people living in Pripyat and that was the only place where you could die directly from radiation poisoning, and not nearly all of them died. So it leaves quite a gap as not nearly all the cancer patients die. If there would be million cancer cases I suppose you could find some information about it?

I'll bet you smoke and use lots of sacharrin in your soft drinks.

Here, have a red M&M.

[Sixpence]

Originally posted by Tuomio
Booooo its mr. radiation flee flee flee!


400 000 people dead, that is utter bull****. From http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07app.htm

"Dr Kreisel said one of the conference's main achievements had been to establish scientific consensus on the known health consequences of the accident. He dismissed as "fiction" claims by Ukrainian officials earlier in 1995 that more than 100,000 people had died as a result of the accident, saying the proven death toll so far was about 40. He said 30 of those deaths were from direct exposure at the time, and there had been some 10 fatal cases to date of radiation-induced thyroid cancer."


Surely there was measurable radiation rise around the world, but that means nothing, absolutely nothing. I get more radiation when i fill my glass with water from my grandparents faucet (because of radon gas) than because of the Chernobyl accident. Nice pics tho, thats how abandonded cities look like, abandonded, rusty and damaged. If you ever been in Russia, you know thats very common scenery in there.

That WNA site has event sequence of chernobyl accident. If you really want to know what happened..

Only 40 dead:confused:  Yeah , sure. I like how that links starts off, world-nuclear. 40 dead instantly maybe.

[Tuomio]

Originally posted by Sixpence
Only 40 dead:confused:  Yeah , sure. I like how that links starts off, world-nuclear. 40 dead instantly maybe.

40 is much more closer to the truth than multi-thousand figures. You guys have been watching too many horror movies about the radiation. Allmost all firemen who were in direct contact with the ruptured reactor died within hours, but others mostly didnt.

In one TV-document for example one of those firemen, who had to crawl under the reactor to visualize if the core was still burning, did not die (as he was telling the story to the cameras), even than he were just few meters away from the pellets. If you dont stay and eat from the highly contaminated grounds for long perioids, you will just shrug the dosages and keep on living.

Thats how our body works, it resists radiation very well. If there were astounding amounts of casualties, you could definetly point it without a shadow of doubt from the statistics at places which were hit worst.

[Charon]

Parnell: Ever been to Utah? Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too. When they canceled the project it almost did me in. One day my mind was full to bursting. The next day - nothing. Swept away. But I'll show them. I had a lobotomy in the end.

Otto: Lobotomy? Isn't that for loonies?

Parnell: Not at all. Friend of mine had one. Designer of the neutron bomb. You ever hear of the neutron bomb? Destroys people - leaves buildings standing. Fits in a suitcase. It's so small, no one knows it's there until - BLAMMO! Eyes melt, skin explodes, everybody dead! So immoral, working on the thing can drive you mad. That's what happened to this friend of mine. So he had a lobotomy. Now he's well again.

 

Charon

[gofaster]

The sooner we discover how to harness the power of dilithium crystals, the better off we'll be.  Just make sure you don't get caught in a vapor cloud of coolant used to control the temperature of the warp core or you'll end up like Captain Pike!

I sent the URL for the website to my wife for her to read and she got chilled by it, too.  All in all I think its a very interesting website.  I wouldn't be surprised if Elena is contacted and a documentary made.  I think it would be a very good episode of "Nova" or a TLC or Discovery Channel special.

[Roscoroo]

I have no problem with nuk (nuk nuk ) power . its the waste and storage of the spent byproducts that needs to be addressed .

as for being clean energy well thats debatable  , hydroelectric ,solar ,and wind generated power are the only true clean energy.

[mora]

I don't see any major problems with nuclear waste. At least we have working solution for this issue. The cleanliness is debatable but the only reliable option is hydropower and that creates enormous enviromental problems, if not actual waste.

[gofaster]

I found this report dated 10 years after the accident that is a basic description of the events.  I found this more dramatic telling from an anti-nuke group, re-printed here with paragraph breaks inserted for easier reading.

From The Truth About Chernobyl, by Grigori Medvedev [translated by Evelyn Rossiter. Copyright 1989, Moscou; 1990 Paris; 1991 by BasicBooks; a division of HarperCollins Publishers:

"... Gregori Medvedev, a nuclear power expert, has provided us with the first complete and objective account of what happened, devoid of the evasiveness or the omissions found in offficial versions. I personally believe that mankind needs nuclear energy. It must be developed, but with absolute guarantees of safety, which means that the reactors must be built underground. International legislation requiring that reactors be built underground must be prepared without delay." -- From the Foreword by Andrei Sakharov (May, 1989)

"The fact is that there was a conspiracy of silence. Mishaps were never publicized; and as nobody knew about them, nobody could learn from them. For thirty-five years people did not notify each other about accidents at nuclear power stations, and nobody applied the experience of such accidents to their work. It was as if no accidents had taken place at all: everything was safe and reliable."

"The Chernobyl nuclear power station is located in the eastern part of a large region known as the Byelorussian-Ukrainian Wo0odlands, on the banks of the Pripyat River, which flows into the Dnieper."

"...the RBMK reactor... has a positive reactivity void coefficient and a positive reactivity temperature coefficient, as well as a defect in the design of the absorber rods of the reactor protection and control system. ...The lower tip of the absorber rod - which, when fully inseted, descended below the core - was filled with graphite. Such a design meant that when the control rods were lowered into the core, the graphite tip entered the core first, followed by the hollow segment 3.28 feet long, and only then by the absorbent part. No. 4 reactor at Chernobyl had a total of 211 control rods. [Between 193 and 205 rods were fully withdrawn before the accident.] ...The simultaneous insertion of so many rods into the core immediately causes a surge of positive reactivity, because before the neutron-absorbing sections of the rods enter the core, they are preceded by the graphite tips and the hollow segments, which displace the water ...while doing nothing themselves to dampen the chain reaction."

"...at 1:23:04 the main circulation pumps began to steam up, and water flow through the core began to decline. The coolant in the fuel channels of the reactor began to boil. Toptunov was the first to notice the power increase and sound the alarm. "We've got to trigger the emergency power reduction system, Aleksandr Fyodorovich, we're having a power surge," he said to Akimov.

At 1:23:40, he pressed the level-5 emergency power reduction button, sending a signal that lowered into the reactor core all the control rods then in the fully withdawn position, as well as the emergency protection rods themselves. However, the first thing to enter the core was those fateful rod tips... And they entered the reactor at the precise moment when a sharp jump in reactivity was being caused by the extensive steam formation which had already begun. ...The rods began to descend, but stopped almost immediately. After that, shocks could be felt coming from the central hall.

...Deep inside the core, the destruction of the reactor had already begun, but the explosion was still to come. ...Strong and frequent shocks began, and the 770-pound cubes ...started to jump up and down on top of the channels as if one thousand seven hundred people were tossing their hats in the air. ...During the massive increase in pressure within the reactor, the feedback valves of the main circulation pumps burst, and the flow of water through the core stopped altogether. Steam formation increased. Pressure jumped 15 atmospheres per second.

...At 1:23:58, the concentration of hydrogen in the explosive mixture in the various compartments reached the stage of detonation; and, according to several eyewitnesses, two explosions occurred one after the other, while other witnesses said there were three or more. What it really amounted to was that the reactor and the reactor building of unit No. 4 were destroyed by a series of powerful explosions of the detonationg gas.

...Flames, sparks, and chunks of burning material went flying into the air above No. 4 unit. These were red-hot pieces of nuclear fuel and graphite, some of which fell onto the roof of the turbine hall where they started fires, as the roof was coated with tar. ... about 50 tons of nuclear fuel evaporated and were released by the explosion into the atmosphere as finely dispersed particles of uranium dioxide, highly radioactive radionuclides of iodine-131, plutonium-239, neptunium-139, cesium-137, strontium-90, and many other radioactive isotopes with a variety of half-lives. In addition, about 70 tons were ejected sideways from the periphery of the core... I must emphasize that the radioactivity of the ejected fuel reached 15,000 - 20,000 roentgens per hour; and that a powerful radiation field, practically equal to the radioactivity of the ejected fuel was immediately formed around the damaged reactor unit."

"...a gigantic shock wave carrying a white milklike dust, with the overwhelming pressure of the superheated radioactive steam, burst into the control room of what used to be No. 4 unit. The walls and floor crumbled as if hit by an earthquake; debris came crashing down from the ceiling."

[gofaster]

Testimony of [dosimetrist] Nikolai Gorbachenko: "I tried to check the radiation levels in the room where I was and in the corridor, the other side of the door. All I had with me was a radiometer capable of handling up to 1,000 microroentgens-per-second. It showed a reading off the scale. I also had another instrument with a scale up to 1,000 roentgens per hour, but as soon as I switched it on, it burned out on me, just like that. That's all I had. ...Everywhere the readings on the 1,000 microroentgens-per-second instrument were off the scale. That meant that in some places the dose was around 4 roentgens per hour [actually it was many times that amount.] ...We did have a 1,000-roentgen instrument, but it burned out. The second one is locked up in the safe, and Krasnozhon has the key. The only thing is, that safe is in the huge pile of debris out there. There's no way you can get to it."

"At the same time in the turbine hall, at level zero, fires were burning in a number of places. The ceiling had fallen in, chunks of red-hot fuel and graphite had fallen onto the floor and all over the machinery, and oil from a pipe smashed by a piece of concrete from the ceiling was on fire. Even the gate valve on the intake line of the feed pump was smashed, squirting radioactive boiling water toward the condensation compartment. The turbine oil tank and the hydrogen in the generator could explode at any minute. Something had to be done. ...the operational staff, at tremendous risk to their own lives, performed miracles of bravery and prevented the fire from spreading to other reactor units."

At 2:30 a.m., Bryukhanov, the director of the Chernobyl plant arrived at the control room of No. 4 unit [No one in the control room was willing to admit that the reactor had been destroyed].

"You're saying that there was a serious radiation accident but that the reactor is still intact. What's the radioactivity in the unit now?"

"Gorbachenko's radiometer is showing 1,000 microroentgens per second."

"Well, that's not much," said Bryukhanov, ..."Can I go ahead and tell Moscow that the reactor is intact?"

"Yes, go ahead," was Akimov's confident reply.

...[After Bryukhanov called the nuclear power director in Moscow] the civil defense chief of the Chernobyl plant, S.S. Vorobyov arrived at the damaged unit with a radiometer capable of measuring up to 250 roentgens - a distinct improvement. ... the needle went off the scale in several places. Vorobyov passed on his findings ot Bryukhanov. "There's something wrong with your instrument," said Bryukhanov. "Fieods that high are just impossible. Do you realize what that means? Get that thing out of here, or toss it in the garbage!"

"When Dyatlov was sent to the medical center, Fomin sent for Anatoly Sitnikov, the deputy chief operational engineer of construction phase 1, and said, "You're an experienced physicist. See if you can tell what state the reactor is in. ...Please, go up onto the roof of V block and look down into the central hall, OK?"

Sitnikiov...toured the entire reactor unit and went into the central hall, where he realized that the reactor had, in fact, been destroyed. However, feeling that this was insufficient, he climbed up to the roof of V bloc, ...to get a better view of the reactor. The devastation below him was unspeakable.The massive reactor lid... had been blasted off... Sitnikov carefully surveyed what was left of the central hall. The reactor had clearly been blown up... he could see the blaze raging... the whole of Sitnikov's body, and particularly his head was being riddled with neutrons and gamma rays... His head alone received as much as 1,500 roentgens... At the Moscow clinic... despite all measures taken to help him, he died.

At 10 a.m., Sitnikov notified Fomin and Bryukhanov that the reactor had, in his opinion been destroyed. His report was angrily rejected and totally ignored; they went on pumping water into the 'reactor'."

[gofaster]

[regarding fireman Vladimir Pravik:] "Eventually the day come when it was clear that everything of which modern radiation medicine was capable had already been done. All the methods of standard or more risky therapy had been used against acute radiation syndrome, but to no avail. Even the latest "growth factors," stimulating th multiplication of blood cells, did not work, because living skin was still necessary. Pravik had no skin at all, having lost it to radiation, which also destroyed his salivary glands and left him with a mouth as dry as soil in the midst of a drought. That was why he still could not talk. He just looked and blinked with his eyelids, which no longer had any eyelashes; he looked through his expressive eyes, in which a refusal to die was clearly discernible. Therafter his innner strength began to ebb and eventually faded altogether. He began to wither and dry up with the approach of death, as the skin and body tissues of radiation victims do in fact become mummified. In this nuclear age, even death is transformed and made somehow less human, as the dead are blackened, shrivelled mummies, as light as a child."

Testimony of Lyubov Akimova, the wife of the shift foreman of No. 4 unit: "I was with my husband a day before his death. He was already unable to say a word, but you saw the pain in his eyes. I know he was thinking about that damned fateful night, playing the whole scenario over and over again in his mind, and he was unable to accept that he was to blame. He had received a dose of 1,500 roentgens, perhaps more, and was doomed. His skin turned darker and darker, and on the day of his death he was as black as a Negro. His body was really charred. He died with his eyes open. He and all his staff were tormented by the same thought: Why?"

Testimony of V. A. Kazarov, deputy director of Soyuzatomenergo: On 4 May 1986, I visited Slava Brazhnik [senior turbine engineer], thirty years of age. I tried to question him about what had happened, as nobody in Moscow knew very much at all. Brazhnik lay naked on a slanting bed, all puffed up and dark brown, with a swollen mouth. With a great effort he managed to say that he was in terrible pain all over his body. He said that, to start with, the roof fell in, and part of a reinforced concrete slab fell onto the floor of the turbine hall, smashing an oil pipeline. The oil caught fire. While he was putting out the fire, another chunk of concrete came crashing down and wrecked a feedwater pump. They turned that pump off and disconnected the loop. Black ash came flying through the hole in the roof. He found it painful to talk, so I asked no more questions. He repeatedly asked for a drink. I gave him some Borzhom mineral water. He told me that every part of his body was hurting him, and that the pain was terrible. He said he never realized that such terrible pain was possible.

Slava Brazhnik: "I made the acquaintance of Viktor Petrovich Bryukhanov [director of the Chernobyl plant] in the winter of 1971 when I went to the construction site for the nuclear power station, to the village of Pripyat, straight from the Moscow clinic where I had been receiving treatment for radiation sickness.... When we approached Pripyat, I had already noticed the sandy soil of the hills, covered with low trees, with frequent flashes of clean yellow sand against a background of dark green moss. There was no snow. In some places, the warmth of the sun had brought forth green grass. All about there was a feeling of peace and pristine purity.... I have often remembered it like that in later years."

"Who programmed the possibility of nuclear disaster into the destiny of the Byelorussian-Ukranian Woodlands? Why was a uranium-graphite reactor chosen for installation 80 miles from Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine?"

[In a 1972 discussion with A.N. Makukhin, Ukrainian Minister of Energy, regarding the plan to build RBMK reactors at Chernobyl, the following was revealed:] "And what about the design-basis discharges from the Chernobyl reactor? Kakukhin asked. "Up to four thousand curies per twenty-four hours." "And Novo-Voronezh [a VVER pressurized water reactor]?" "Up to one hundred curies per twenty-four hours." ..."The truth is that even in 1972 it would have still been possible to switch to a VVER pressurized water reactor at Chernobyl, thereby making the events of April 1986 much less likely. And the word of the Ukrainian minister of energy would have carried considerable weight."

"At 1 p.m. on the afternoon of 25 April 1986, ...power was being reduced on orders from Dyatlov, the deputy chief engineer in charge of operations for No. 3 and No. 4 reactors (phase 2 of the Chernobyl plant), who had prepared No. 4 reactor for the imlementation of the program approved by Fomin.

...At 2 P.M., in keeping with the experimental program, the emergency core cooling system was disconnected from the multiple forced circulation loop. This was one of Fomin's most severe and fatal mistakes. ...12,360 cubic feet of emergency water from the ECCS tanks might just have saved th day, by suppressing the reactivity void coefficient. This, the most damaging factor of all, refers to the extent to which steam influences the nuclear reaction:in the RBMK, as in other graphite-moderated reactors, the formation of steam tends to enhance the chain reaction.

...No one shouted out, and no one came to their senses. The ECCS was calmly turned off; the gate valves on the line feeding water to the reactor were de-energized beforehand and put under lock and key, so that if the need arose they could not be opened even by hand. .. I think that the ten years of relatively successful operations at the Chernobyl plant had also induced a less vigilant state of mind. And even the ominous warning of September 1982, when a partial core melt occurred in No. 1 reactor of the Chernobyl plant, failed to teach them a lesson. In actual fact, it could not have taught them anything. For many years, accidents at nuclear power stations had been kept secret, although the operators themselves occasionally heard about them from each other. However, they did not take them seriously enough, doubtless feeling that if their superiors were keeping quiet about such things, that was good enouth for them. Moreover, accidents were already being viewed as unpleasant, but inevitable, corollaries of nuclear technology. The start of the experiment was, however, postponed. At the request of the load dispatcher in Kiev at 2 p.m. on 25 April 1986, the removal of the unit from the grid was delayed. In a clear breach of the safety rules, No. 4 reactor was kept operationg while the emergency core cooling system was switched off.

... At midnight, Yuri Tregub was relieved by Aleksandr Akimov, and his senior reactor control engineer was relieved by Leonid Toptunov. In keeping with the test program, the inertial rundown of the rotor blades of the generator, which was to supply its own needs, was supposed to occur at a power level of 700-1,000 megawatts (thermal). Such a rundown should really have taken place when the reactor was being shut down...yet a different, disastrously hazardous course was followed: the generator was allowed to run down while the reactor was still functioning. Why such a dangerous regime was chosen remains a mystery.

...It is possible to move all the absorber rods simultaneously or in groups. With one of these local systems disconnected, as provided for in the operational rules for nuclear reactors at low power, ... Toptunov was unable to eliminate the imbalance in the measurement functions of the control system. As a result, the power of the reactor dropped [from 1500] to below 30 megawatts (thermal), and the reactor began to be poisoned by products of radioactive decay. That was the beginning of the end. Dyatlov...lacked two attributes indispensable for a manager of nuclear plant operators: caution and a sense of danger. On the other hand, he had more than enough self-confidence and disregard for both the operators as well as the safety rules. Dyatlov ran around the operators' control panels spewing forth a torrent of curses and foul language. "You g**d**n idiots, you haven't a clue! You're ruining the experiment!"

... He ordered an immediate increase in the power of the reactor. Toptunov and Akimov pondered their next move, and with good reason. ...The safety rules prohibited an increase of power [in these circumstances]... Toptunov made the only correct decision. "I'm not going to raise the power!" he said firmly. Akimov supported him. "You lying idiot! Dyatlov turned on Totunov, shouting... "If you don't increase power, Tregub will."

...Toptunov began to increase power, thereby signing a death sentence for himself and many other comrades.  That symbolic sentence also carried the clearly visible signatures of Dyatlov and Fomin. Other discernible signatures include those of Bryukhanov and many other more highly placed comrades."

[gofaster]

Testimony of V.G. Smagin, shift foreman of the No. 4 unit, who relieved Akimov: "About 2 p.m., after I had started vomiting, with dizziness, headaches and fainting spells, I left the control room, washed and changed in the personnel air lock, and went to the infirmary in No. 1 administrative building...That evening a team of doctors arrived from No. 6 clinic in Moscow and walked around the room examining us. A bearded doctor... chose the first batch of twenty-eight patients to be sent to Moscow immediately. Dispensing with tests, he based his choice on their nuclear tan. Almost all twenty-eight died. We could see the damaged reactor building clearly from the window of the medical center.   At night the graphite flared up violently, wrapping a huge spiral of flames around the ventilation stack."

"By the time of the disaster, 110,000 people were living within an 18.5 mile radius of the plant - almost half of them in the town of Pripyat"

"To grasp the true magnitude of the radioactive release, one should merely remember that the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima weighed almost 4.5 tons; in other words, the mass of the radioactive substances formed when it was detonated amounted to almost 4.5 tons. However, the reactor of No. 4 unit at Chernobyl spewed into the atmosphere almost 50 tons of evaporated fuel, thus creating a colossal atmospheric reservoir of long-lived radionuclides; in other words, ten Hiroshima bombs, without the initial blast and firestorm effects, plus almost 70 tons of fuel and some 700 tons of radioactive reactor graphite which settled in the vicinity of the damaged unit. Some 50 tons of nuclear fuel and 800 tons of reactor graphite (from a graphite stack weighing a total of nearly 1,700 tons) remained in the reactor... (the graphite still in the reactor burned up completely in the next few days.)"

In Pripyat: "By midday on 27 April, the radiation being emitted by the thyroid gland of many people was as much as 50 roentgens per hour. The total dose received by each resident of Pripyat and each member of the government commission by 2 p.m. on 27 April was, on average, in the range of 40 to 50 rads. Radioactivity at ground level on the streets was as much as 50 roentgens per hour, and 6.5 ft. above the ground about 1 roentgen per hour."

[Regarding the helicopter pilots dumping sand, lead, & boron:] "...over the crater of the nuclear reactor at 360 ft... the radiometer read 500 roentgens per hour. ...radioactivity rose to 1,800 roentgens per hour after the bags had been dropped."

"On April 27, 150 tons of sand was dumped into the mouth of the reactor. On 28 April, 300 tons were droped. On 29 April, 750 tons. On 30 April, 1,500 tons; and on 1 May, 1,900 tons... All in all... [by May 2] around 5,000 tons of friable materials had been dropped into the reactor."

"On May 7th, 1986 the radiation situation was as follows: In and around the power station: graphite - 2,000 roentgens per hour; fuel - up to 15,000 roentgens per hour; general background levels around the unit - 1,200 roentgens per hour. Pripyat (2 mi. W. of the reactor) - 0.5 to 1.0 roentgens per hour; roads - 10 to 60 roentgens per hour. Chernobyl (11 mi. S.E. of the reactor) - 15 milliroentgens per hour; ground - up to 20 roentgens per hour. Ivankov (37 mi. from the reactor) - 5 milliroentgens per hour. Kiev & Vyshgorod - Air - .5 milliroentgens per hour; road - 15 to 20 roentgens per hour."

"...at that fateful moment before the explosion, the professional sense and the experience of Akimov and Toptunov [the operators] deserted them. Both of them proved to be mere agents, although they did try - not very vigorously, it is true - to stand up to [deputy chief engineer] Dyatlov's bullying. That was the moment when the operator's professional sense came into play, but was overcome by their fear of being reprimanded. No professional sense was shown by the experienced and cautious Dyatlov; by Rogozhkin, the plant shift foreman; by the chief engineer, Fomin; or by the director, Bryukhanov."

"What then, in my opinion, is the main lesson to be learned from Chernobyl? Above all else, it is that this horrible tragedy summons us forcefully to the Truth - to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That's the first thing. My second conclusion derives from the truth. Regardless of any measures that may be taken, a shutdown due to a positive excess of reactivity - in other words, an explosion - continues to be a possibility because of inherent flaws in the design of the RBMK reactor. This is because the reactor continues, as in the past, to have positive temperature and void coefficients, as well as the positive reactivity built into the ends of the absorber rods.

... Accordingly, the main lesson of Chernobyl is to sharpen our sense of the fragility and vulnerability of human life. Chernobyl demonstrated both man's immense power and his impotence. And it served as a warning to man not to become intoxicated with his own power, not to take that power lightly, and not to seek in it ephemeral gains and pleasures and the glitter of prestige. Since man is both the cause and the effect, he must be more responsible and scrutinize himself as well as the things he has made. When we remember that man's works carry over into the future, with all its joyus and hardships, we realize with horror that those shattered chromosome strands and those genes, either lost or distorted as a result of radiation, are already part of our future. We will be seeing them again and again in the years ahead. That is the most horrible lesson of Chernobyl."

-- Grigori Medvedev is a senior Soviet nuclear engineer who lives in Moscow, was the chief engineer at the time of the Chernobyl power station's construction in 1970.  
 
 
info@capedownwinders.com  Guard your gourd.

[Suave]

Those photos remind me of an old russian movie "The Stalker" .

[gofaster]

Depiction of the clouds of fallout from Chernobyl.  Or at least what was measured.  I believe the whole world was/is polluted with radiation from it.

[WilldCrd]

thanks fer the info gofaster good post