excellent photography and very thought provoking

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/02/gerd_ludwigs_long_shadow_of_ch.html

Same subject, different photographer http://www.urbanxphotography.co.uk/portfolio162692.html Still moving to look at

How is the wildlife that lives there?

That second pic…. like something from a James Bond film. Unreal.

SB

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

This is a good read too

1986 !!!!!!! That long since?????!!!!!

sobering and somewhat depressing…..

Don’t worry, someone will be along soon to explain how nuclear power is completely safe and we’re all a bunch of stone age pessimists for doubting how wonderful it is.

Superb programme about Fukushima on Radio 4 last week, well worth a listen.

More here

some good stuff in here as well…

zippykona – Member

How is the wildlife that lives there?

Bit terrifying tbh

Wildlife is thriving…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4923342.stm

“Nothing with two heads,” he says.

Radiation wasn’t kind to the elephants of Chernobyl

and before that we had the windscale fire, and recently Fukishima.

and yet theyre still going to build more of the damm things, what we need is a reduction in usage of power,and more recycling and natural energy,from the wind sun and waves, along with hydro.

The man that came up with the Gaia idea supports Nuclear Power. Lots of high up Greenpeace types eventually become supporters.

Objective, rational risk assessment instead of scaremongering generally accepts it is a solution to our carbon fuel addiction.

STW editorial policy on this topic is not objective.

good link from 28dayslater

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=54544

Recommend the 28days later site in general- some amazing pics in general never mind pipryat.
Scary how reslistic COD got it all a few years ago.

Ukraine still suffers from the economic drag of Chernobyl. Will prevent its entry into the EU.

My wife brought back some glass mosaic thing from 1 of her trips out there and I made her Geiger counter it before she brought it in the house. (really was pretty hideous and was looking for excuse to get rid of it!)

You could shoot lots of urban decay in Ukraine but there are beautiful bits like the Lavara as well.

Haven’t clicked all the links but Northwind- wtf was that from??

Recommend the 28days later site in general

+1 for that.. I can spend hours looking at some of the stuff on there. Fantastic site.

althepal, it’s a snork, from the PC game Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. Orrible.

There’s an awful lot of bollocks spouted on this subject.

There’s a massive difference in nuclear safety tech between Calder Hall in 1958 and today…for example, Chernobyl had no roof or containment over the reactor that western plants have. Moreover, Fukushima’s accident was the result of coolant pumps being overrun with tsunami flood water. Not quite the same level of risk in the North Sea.

FWIW, I’d rather we discovered and implemented fusion power tomorrow and got the heck on with it. There have been more deaths from the pursuit of oil energy than there have been because of the nuclear industry.

A joke from that time.

Q. Why do Russians have extra strong zips on their flys?
A. Because if they don’t, Chernobyl fallout.

I’ll get my coat

Twenty six years after the Chernobyl accident, and am I the only one that’s disappointed? Still no superheros.

Moreover, Fukushima’s accident was the result of coolant pumps being overrun with tsunami flood water. Not quite the same level of risk in the North Sea.

No, not if you feel confident enough to totally dismiss any possible risk of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma causing a mega-tsunami which batters southern England.

From all the evidence I’ve seen it had very little effect in people or wildlife, though plenty do try to attribute all sorts of things to it without any real evidence or scientific proof.

what we need is a reduction in usage of power,and more recycling and natural energy,from the wind sun and waves, along with hydro.

So, are you going to help by turning off all unnecessary items such as your laptop? The amount of electricity that needs to be saved to avoid needing to build new nuclear (or worse, coal*) power stations is far in excess of what can be saved by non-invasive energy efficiency measures.

As for renewables, yes, great, pepper the landscape with windmills, but they still won’t reliably generate more than a couple of coal or nuclear power stations. Solar has promise, and payback times in terms of embedded energy are surprisingly low even in the UK, but payback times in terms of money are lacking, making it very expensive indeed. Wave power is as yet unproven on any remotely large scale, and finally, we’ve already dammed just about any suitable valley for hydro, so no room to expand there.

*nuclear is infinitely safer than coal or oil in terms of deaths per TWh, and that’s before you count effects of fossil fuel driven climate change

No, not if you feel confident enough to totally dismiss any possible risk of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma causing a mega-tsunami which batters southern England.

If this happens, I think we’ll have bigger worries, TBH

Slightly near sighted view of renewables there zokes, like saying to people in 1900 that cars would never replace horses because there aren’t many petrol stations. More than enough tech on the way to make renewables both viable and reliable. you just have to know where to look rather than looking at the current scene. this is where politicians regularly fall down too. hence poor fundingfunding for them overall

plenty of proof of many ten of thousands of deaths from Chernobyl at a bare minimum

No need at all for nuclear from any rational analysis. It can never be anything other than a very small part of energy usage worldwide

What scares me is that people can’t see that climate change isn’t an equal or greater threat (in economic or human terms) than nuclear power.

It’s like the middle ages, people afraid of what they don’t understand.

As it is, cut consumption or build nuclear. Or find a new technology.

Turn your pc off now.

Slightly near sighted view of renewables there zokes, like saying to people in 1900 that cars would never replace horses because there aren’t many petrol stations. More than enough tech on the way to make renewables both viable and reliable. you just have to know where to look rather than looking at the current scene. this is where politicians regularly fall down too. hence poor fundingfunding for them overall

Perhaps, and I am aware that off-shore wind farms have the potential to generate huge amounts of electricity, but to replace a modern nuclear or coal-fired power station that puts out 2 GWe, you’d need a wind farm of about 1000 turbines all outputting their maximum power. The oft-discussed ‘perfect storm’ that makes such a shift problematic is the typical still, cold winter’s day, where there is no wind but it’s cold and dark, so everyone needs heat and light. But nonetheless, I would never advocate not building renewables, I simply state, as ever, that unless we cut our energy usage drastically, and by that I mean to a point that would seriously impact on our current lifestyles, we need more power than can be generated by renewables alone. And that’s before we start having to use electricity for a greater proportion of our transport and heating requirements as gas and oil become more scarce.

I honestly think that solar power has a surprisingly large part to play in the UK, and may well generate more than most people imagine. I have a friend in Sheffield who has fitted solar panels to his house and has seen a huge reduction in his bills. But not many are far-sighted enough to wait 10-15 years for that reduction to become a profit.

Wave power is the one that TJ and others throw about the most, along with tidal turbines. Both do look promising, and I agree that in 10 years time they may well have a big part to play. But they are not ready yet, and may not be ready by then.

Finally, there really isn’t anywhere else for more large-scale hydro, and on the smaller scale, the question of damage to local ecosystem vs superficial power generation does need to be looked at. Tidal barrages such as the Severn do have potential to reliably generate huge amounts of power, but they come at a huge natural cost. As Chernobyl has proved, worst-case nuclear does at least for the most part not affect nature.

I knew it wouldn’t be long:

plenty of proof of many ten of thousands of deaths from Chernobyl at a bare minimum

C’mon then, lets see it. We both know that scientific proof does not exist, yet you trot this out every time. The fact that radioactivity takes so long to affect human health unless exposure is massive and acute makes any positive statement about this impossible to make. Any study will have qualifiers such as ‘may’ and ‘could possibly be implicated in increased xyz’ – as such, it’s not incontrovertible fact.

No need at all for nuclear from any rational analysis.

We go through this every time. It is rational to assume that people will vote out a government forcing upon them drastic energy efficiency measures. It is rational to state that we cannot generate enough electricity to replace the need for fossil and nuclear energy from renewables, and it is rational to state that the localised risk posed by a very rare nuclear catastrophe is much lower than the very real global risk posed by climate change.

What is irrational is the discounting of one option because of a deep psychological fear a lot of people have over the very word ‘nuclear’. If you go to hospital for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan, the technique is actually Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), but they had to change it because of peoples’ fear of the word ‘nuclear’.

“Moreover, Fukushima’s accident was the result of coolant pumps being overrun with tsunami flood water. Not quite the same level of risk in the North Sea.”
No, not if you feel confident enough to totally dismiss any possible risk of the Cumbre Vieja volcano in La Palma causing a mega-tsunami which batters southern England.

Well the experts appear to dismiss such a risk
http://itic.ioc-unesco.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1203%3Awhat-is-a-mega-tsunami-and-can-it-happen-today&catid=1340&Itemid=2021&lang=en

…and fortunately we don’t appear to have any current or future nuclear power stations in the areas which would be hit by that anyway (no risk to the North Sea).

Of course in reality, Fukushima resulted from an earthquake followed by a tsunami – how likely do you think that is in the UK?

plenty of proof of many ten of thousands of deaths from Chernobyl at a bare minimum
sources* please.

* credible

sources* please.

* credible

There aren’t any.

Fascinating. Assume it’s a bit more real than the “famous on the Internet back in 2002” Kidofspeed stuff.

TBH I’m not going there to find out!

Well the experts appear to dismiss such a risk

Well it was an “expert” who came up with the idea and still maintains the hypotheses. It seems that experts aren’t always right eh ?

BTW this sentence in the link : “No such event – a mega tsunami – has occurred in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in recorded history. NONE.” completely undermined the creditability of the article for me. A slack and lazy comment imo.

The claim that they have never occurred in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans in recorded history is hardly concrete proof that they haven’t or can’t occur in the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. It merely suggests that if such a thing has occurred then they are extremely rare in human terms.

plenty of proof of many ten of thousands of deaths from Chernobyl at a bare minimum?

is one of those vacuous statements that beg to be challenged. in this case by the iaea and the who (not the band) claim 47 directly attributable and a further 4000 predicted. world health organisation or tj? a hint, it’s not you tj.

but seeing as i’m not tj, it’s only right to point out the criticism of both the iaea (not objective) and the who (insufficiently separate from the iaea) in terms of their report and the fact that it concentrates on data (or what data they could gather) from within ukraine, belarus and ukraine. comparison beyond this can be gathered from the likes of unscear (see their 2011 report) but again, clear data given the time is difficult to ascertain.

so, plenty of proof? i think not. in fact, quite the opposite and within that an interesting interplay between various vested interests which obscures the human cost in terms of displaced persons etc almost completely

It merely suggests that if such a thing has occurred then they are extremely rare in human terms.

And as such, should we really base our energy policy around this unquantifiably rare possibility?

Ukraine still suffers from the economic drag of Chernobyl. Will prevent its entry into the EU.

How? Would have thought the ongoing economic effect of Chernobyl was practically meaningless in comparison to the tsunami of alcoholism, corruption, dodgy privatisations, political instability, organised crime and the long, slow path out of hell that the last 25 years has seen in Ukraine.