The Most Radioactive Places on Earth

[Irbis]

I'm filming a documentary for TV about how Uranium and radioactivity have shaped the modern world. It will be broadcast in mid-2015, details to come. The filming took me to the most radioactive places on Earth (and some places, which surprisingly aren't as radioactive as you'd think). Chernobyl and Fukushima were incredible to see as they present post-apocalyptic landscapes. I also visited nuclear power plants, research reactors, Marie Curie's institute, Einstein's apartment, nuclear medicine areas of hospitals, uranium mines, nuclear bomb sites, and interviewed numerous experts.

Initial footage/trailer of sorts here:



I must say it's pretty eye opening, even if half of that isn't uncommon knowledge, and it begs the question why the hell companies running nuclear reactors or states with NPPs didn't think of doing documentary like that decades ago. Probably because national companies rarely waste money on top level bullshit massaged PR.

It makes "green" scaremongering, Baltic tsunamis, German policies and the rest of the FUD produced annually in really sad, really uninformed category for me. Maybe someone should show the above to them and ask if they are in favour of banning all the common "radioactive" things first, or just admit how dumb their proposals were.

[Broomstick]

I've heard the "banana equivalent units" comparisons before. It's pretty large, so instead of embedding it I'll link to xkcd radiation chart. It's a great visual, and I wonder if it influenced this guy a bit.

[TOSDOC]

I've heard the "banana equivalent units" comparisons before. It's pretty large, so instead of embedding it I'll link to xkcd radiation chart. It's a great visual, and I wonder if it influenced this guy a bit.

That's a nice chart. It would have been interesting to include the Demon Core criticality accidents in it too, but still very informative.

[Terralthra]

The host of the documentary, Derek Muller, is an excellent scientist YouTuber. His whole channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium) is good viewing.

[Joun_Lord]

That was pretty cool, especially the parts in Japan and Chernobyl. I'd be lying if I said I didn't find something of a haunting beauty of these abandoned radioactive places. Especially Fukushima, its so disquieting seeing those stores still with clothes on the racks, Coke machines, a fully modern city that is empty and falling apart. Pripyat has been abandoned for decades and has a different air about it, perfect for shooting blind dogs and eating Army rations older then you. I never knew about the firefighters clothes being so radioactive but really it seems obvious in hindsight. 30 years since those people charged into the CNPP and still their clothing makes that guys geiger counter go over its limit.

I knew about things like airplanes receiving more radiation and astronauts getting a buttload, didn't know smokers received so much though. Fucking crazy. Is all that shit in tobacco natural or shit the companies added in?

[Broomstick]

I knew about things like airplanes receiving more radiation and astronauts getting a buttload, didn't know smokers received so much though. Fucking crazy. Is all that shit in tobacco natural or shit the companies added in?

Three basic sources:

1) Natural radioactivity in the soil, so where it's grown is important
2) Tobacco apparently "sweats" or secretes some stickiness from its leaves, probably to trap insects. It also traps dust particles and since the sticky gunk isn't water soluble it, and the accumulated dust, are retained through processing. Including any dust that just happens to be radioactive.
3) Trace amounts of radioactive stuff in fertilizer which gets taken up into the plant.

Basically, tobacco leaves are good at accumulating environmental radioactivity. It's not the only plant that does that. Spinach, for example, is also particularly good at that trick, which is why it was one of the first foodstuffs banned after Fukushima. In fact, spinach is used for both monitoring for toxins and for soil remediation. It's so good at sucking up lead, for example, that repeated crops of spinach planted on contaminated soil will over time remove the contamination. Of course, you wouldn't want to eat the resulting spinach and disposing of it is another problem...

In addition, the radionucleotides in tobacco happen to be good alpha emitters. Now, such levels of alpha radiation is easily stopped by a sheet of paper, or the surface of your skin which is a layer of dead and inert stuff, but when you suck them into your lungs (where the dust particles often stay long term) there is no such defense. Your living cells are being directly irradiated. This is, needless to say, bad and all of the above are why tobacco smokers have such high radiation exposure.

By the way - since the leafy part of plants tend to accumulate toxins - marijuana likely poses a similar problem when smoked.

Really, inhaling combustion products of anything is just a bad idea all around.

Also, that's why the use of masks to keep radioactive dust out of your lungs. You're being irradiated while your in the contaminated area either way, but by keeping dust out of your lungs you minimize how much you wind up carrying around with you afterward.

[Sea Skimmer]

. I never knew about the firefighters clothes being so radioactive but really it seems obvious in hindsight. 30 years since those people charged into the CNPP and still their clothing makes that guys geiger counter go over its limit.

Cesium-137 which is the most common gamma emitter you get out of accidents like this has a half life of just about 30 years, so still going to be about 50% of what it was five minutes after the reactor exploded. A number of those fire fighters died within days or weeks, but a good number lived past the average life expectancy of the general population of the former USSR. Radiation effects below immediately lethal thresholds are very erratic to say the least.

Indications exist though that highly contaminated areas around Chernobyle actually have non linear decay rates, suggested by some to be because different elements are irradiating each other and producing decay products at an accelerated rate compared to the measured decay of a specific isotope in isolation. Which means more radiation earlier, less later, but the later part won't matter in human terms for a very long time. Possibly one or two centuries. This is also thought to be linked into why nuclear bombs could produce exceptionally intensive but short lived hot spots of radiation not explainable by any specific known isotope. Stuff is created that just can't exist anywhere else, or for long enough to look at. Or approach.

But because the very nature of this sort of interaction its nearly impossible to study in the lab, and field studies are of limited reliability because the whole situation is so uncontrolled. So we can't prove if this theory is really true or not, but we do know at least in some areas around Chernobyl gross radiation levels do not correspond to predictions based on known half lives. We may have to await a far more advanced generation of supercomputer and greater understanding of physics before we can nail this down. Or else resume atmospheric nuclear testing on Mars or something similar.

[Simon_Jester]

Do you mean that you would observe anomalous, intense radiation because atoms of Element A are, in the process of their normal decays, irradiating Element B, with consequences that increase the release of radiation?

Or do you mean that something about the intense radiation environment around Chernobyl is actually affecting the probability of individual atoms decaying?

The latter would suggest a serious fault in the Standard Model of physics, and would also be something we'd expect to observe in environments that are even more intensely radioactive (like the actual fuel rods of an ongoing nuclear reaction).

[Irbis]

geiger counter go over its limit.

To be fair, I wouldn't expect common hand counter to have high limit - what matters is precision in measuring low doses of radiation, not high doses. Not only because latter are exceptionally rare, but also seeing 'overload' is probably just shorthand for 'get your ass out of there' and actual number instead wouldn't be very useful.

It's a great visual, and I wonder if it influenced this guy a bit.

Oh, right, I dug after his posts a bit and it turns out yes, it did:

I'm filming a documentary for TV about how Uranium and radioactivity have shaped the modern world. It will be broadcast in mid-2015, details to come. The filming took me to the most radioactive places on Earth (and some places, which surprisingly aren't as radioactive as you'd think). Chernobyl and Fukushima were incredible to see as they present post-apocalyptic landscapes. I also visited nuclear power plants, research reactors, Marie Curie's institute, Einstein's apartment, nuclear medicine areas of hospitals, uranium mines, nuclear bomb sites, and interviewed numerous experts.

Notes about measuring radiation:
Sieverts are a measure of 'effective dose' - that means they measure the biological impact of the energy transferred to tissues from radiation.

Obviously I owe a debt to the fantastic chart made by xkcd, which inspired my visual approach to this video.
https://xkcd.com/radiation/

DOSES MAY VARY
The level of radiation varies widely around the world depending mainly on altitude and geology (excluding nuclear accidents).

Estimates of particular doses also vary. All numbers reported in this video should be taken as order of magnitude only.

The most contentious claim may be that smokers receive the highest dose of ionizing radiation. This is not a whole body dose, but a dose to the lungs as specified in the video. References are here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tobacco
http://www.rmeswi.com/36.html

Special thanks to:
Physics Girl: https://www.youtube.com/physicswoman
MinutePhysics: https://www.youtube.com/minutephysics
Natalie Tran: https://www.youtube.com/communitychannel
Bionerd23: https://www.youtube.com/bionerd23
Nigel and Helen for feedback on earlier drafts of this video.

Music is "Stale Mate".