Home

On:

One way to determine what the aftermath of radioactive pollution from the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan will be is to look at what happened in Eastern Europe after Chernobyl exploded in 1986. When talking about Chernobyl in the July 12th edition of the New York Times, Joe Nocera notes that, "Oddly enough, the 25th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident in history has been marked by journalism about animals." But he knows someone who was directly exposed to radiation from the power plant meltdown in the Ukraine.
read more

On:

T.S. Eliot’s poem "The Hollow Men" says, "This is the way the world ends, Not with a bang but a whimper." The Japanese nuclear plant meltdowns may end the same way. How will the affected plants finally be closed? A look at what happened at Chernobyl can give us a clue: Several times a month, especially after it rains in that part of the Ukraine, the water that has seeped through the cracks in the reactor is removed so that radiated water does not escape into the atmosphere. The area endangered by the Chernobyl reactor is 15,000 square miles–about the size of Switzerland–and the danger will last for over 300 more years, even though the meltdown occurred 25 years ago.
read more

On:

Drawing on research from the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986, scientists say that for most Japanese, the long term risk may lie in drinking milk and water or eating food, as well as direct exposure to contaminated soil. Environmentalist Donald Milton says, "Even in most of the Ukraine and in larger areas of Europe after Chernobyl, the major routes of exposure were not directly from the air, but rather through food, especially milk, produced from contaminated areas, and from fallout deposited on the ground."
read more

On:

Russian scientists have announced plans to build a nuclear power station on Mars, and should have it up and running by 2030. These are the people who created the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant that blew up in 1986, releasing clouds of radioactive material that exposed Northern Europe to radioactivity 100 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

Artyom Liss writes for BBC News that the power plant is being designed to power a permanent Mars research station, which the Russians plan to build in a mountainous area of the planet. The problem is how to transport the heavy building blocks needed to build the plant. And which space shuttle is going to volunteer to transport the plutonium?
read more