Wildlife Defies Chernobyl Radiation 612
An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that wildlife has reappeared in the Chernobyl region even with high levels of radiation. Populations of animals both common and rare have increased substantially and there are tantalizing reports of bear footprints and confirmed reports of large colonies of wild boars and wolves. These animals are radioactive but otherwise healthy. A large number of animals died initially due to problems like destroyed thyroid glands but their offspring seem to be physically healthy. Experiments have shown the DNA strands have undergone considerable mutation but such mutations have not impacted crucial functions like reproduction. It is remarkable that such a phenomenon has occurred contrary to common assumptions about nuclear waste. The article includes some controversial statements recommending disposal of nuclear waste in tropical forests to keep forest land away from greedy developers and farmers"
no worries (Score:5, Funny)
We're fine until we have confirmed reports of colonies of large wild boars and wolves
Re:no worries (Score:5, Funny)
Westley: Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist.
While we're doing movie quotes (Score:5, Funny)
(Can anyone guess the Movie or Book title?)
Re:While we're doing movie quotes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:While we're doing movie quotes (Score:5, Insightful)
Uninformed and Inaccurate Alarmism, by Michael Crichton?
Re:While we're doing movie quotes (Score:3, Insightful)
Now it seems like everyone is in need of "suspension of suspension of disbelief." Since when did it become fashonable to read fiction and believe all the hype therein?
If you read Dan Brown and take him as an authority on biblical history and truth and you read Crichton and ridicule him for bending the truth to support his FICTION you might need to take a step back from the novel you are reading and have a healt
Re:While we're doing movie quotes (Score:4, Funny)
That might have been clever if you hadn't included the name of the character.
If the average
Re:While we're doing movie quotes (Score:3, Interesting)
Though it had limited use.
The one place it worked well was on the user home dirs. Quickly got to see who's accounts were bloated well above the average. Seing it as a bunch of 3D objects allows your brain to use the visual centers to perform averaging functions and such, much like the current GPGPU effort now that I think about it
-nB
Monty Pythons Meets News Journalist (Score:5, Funny)
I recall a certain knight... a black one... who expressed similar optimism in the face of suffering personal maladies.
Re:Monty Pythons Meets News Journalist (Score:5, Funny)
But ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But ... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But ... (Score:5, Funny)
Just to be clear, we are talking about the same Japan, right?
Re:But ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But ... (Score:5, Informative)
Moreover let's scrutinize all this Chernobyl 'material' because disinformation rulz.
Sept. 2005: the Chernobyl Forum (IAEA, in fact), during a press conference, publishes an abstract of its draft report stating that 4000 people have and will die. But the name of the authors abstract and report was not known, it did not state that those 4000 people are from a small subset of the human beings concerned, the report did not contain the key sentence of the abstract, the report was presented as an UN report albeit it was not (it is published by agencies, and not published by UN), it was only a draft...
The abstract [iaea.org] (''4,000 people will die from the effects of the 1986 accident at Chernobyl'') was largely propagated (see for example this BBC's account [bbc.co.uk]). It was not definitive nor adopted by the UN, albeit presented as such.
April 2006; the very same Chernobyl Forum discreetly publishes the definitive version of the report [who.int], where this 4000 figure was replaced (see page 106) by ''9000'', which was stated only for a subset of the Soviet population and for solid cancers (numerous other illnesses are radiation-induced). It was then accepted by the UN. See http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060417/full/440982 a.html [nature.com], http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4922508.stm [bbc.co.uk]
Therefore those guys induced the whole media into spreading the ''Chernobyl: 4000 people will die globally'' during 7 months, albeit their ''best'' minimization is ''9000 people will die from from solids cancers amongst the approx 7 million who were in the vicinity''
Lies, damn lies... and the Atomic Guys [makarevitch.org]
Diluting (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Diluting (Score:3, Informative)
Also the contamination now is not the same as the contamination 20 years ago. e.g. the article refers to horses being killed by radioactive iodine. This, along with any other short lived isotopes, is long gone from the environment.
Re:But ... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think they adapted. The ones that didn't survive didn't have the capability.
Re:But ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But ... (Score:3, Insightful)
So.. the grandkids are now immune to nuclear bombs?
Re:But ... (Score:5, Funny)
That is an interesting thought. Survival of the most capable. You should make a theory out of that.
Re:But ... (Score:5, Funny)
You're really stretching your credibility here, pal.
Re:But ... (Score:3, Informative)
No, it wouldn't.
If the exposure was enough to damage the DNA in the Ovum (or sperm in the male, should mating have occured shortly after the bombing), then the offspring could have a genetic anomoly without the mother receiving
Re:But ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider that the average human conception has about three dangerous mutations even without Chernobyl. Why aren't we oatmeal? Because a goodly percentage of conceptions never make it past the blastocyst stage due to excessive nasty chromosomal damage, while we lucky survivors had fewer.
Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)
I know thats what you'd like to think, but its REALLY His Noodly Appendage making the area potentially habitable for Pirates again. There is simply not enough evidence to support any other conclusion.
Re:But ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Since the average human carries 25 to 75 lethal genes (depending on which study you believe), a high level of spontaenous "natural selection at work" should be no surprise.
Re:But ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)
You must be new here. That's supposed to be:
I like oatmeal, you insensitive clod!
Then, depending on the mood of the mods, you get hammered with Offtopic and/or Redundant, or you escape lucky with only some worthless Funny upmods. Nice try, though, for a n00b.
Re:But ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But ... (Score:3, Funny)
Man get with the times. It's the Ukraine now, Ukraine and the Soviet Union split up a couple years ago. Not sure who won in the divorce. Oh yeah I remember now, the lawyers.
No suprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No suprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I would imagine animals and plantlife are not thriving or living as well as they should be. Radiation levels in outlaying areas have probbaly dropped to levels that allow life to screw faster then it is consumed by disease and cancer.
Heck people that lived in the chemical waste dump of Love Canal could still have kids... but in a toxic situation like that you're gon'a have a flipper baby or two, and life expectancy is going to be fairly bad.
This woman motorcycled through Chernobyl not to recently. In many parts radiation levels were safe enough for her to travel around. As I recall she carried a geiger counter, but didn't wear a radiation suit. She didn't venture around the epicenter of disaster, but she took a lot of rad photos, and saw wild life.
http://www.angelfire.com/extreme4/kiddofspeed/jou
But who knows, perhaps radiation has produced a race of super bears which are immune to nuclear weapons. If so, someone should notify Steven Colbert.
Re:No suprise (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No suprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody have any clue as to the authenticity of the photos?
(Particularly, since we're talking about the wildlife in this thread, the ones of the mutant animals [angelfire.com]? Which she admits are not hers.)
Re:No suprise (Score:3, Interesting)
As to the deformed calf, it's possible within the species; genes for similar deformities already exist. Could be whatever was a weak point in the genome that gave rise to similar mutations, is also a weak point that can be assaulted by radiation. (A theory I made up this very instant, but even so seems qu
Re:No suprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Those pictures turned out to be a hoax. The story was covered here.
My wife and I recently went on a tour of the Nevada Test Site [google.com] when we were in Las Vegas several weeks ago. These tours are arranged by the Department of Energy which outsources them to a private firm. Essentially you ride around on a bus in the Nevada Test Site all day and get a really cool tour of the blast sites, the craters, the house, the rails, etc. Unfortunately the tour does not allow cameras. As for us, we figured we have no plans to ever have any kids anyway and so we signed up for the waiting list. We got in on a cancellation and ended up on a bus full of senior citizens with our tour guide, Ernie, with decades of experience in the atomic testing program. Ernie tended to downplay the safety implications of the testing done on the site. Well, he did mention the leaks and accidents but his voice dropped really low whenever he talked about them... he used the phrase "well, I make no bones about it". Whenever Ernie's voice dropped, you could look out the window and the bus would be passing a fenced area along the side of the road with big scary RADIOACTIVE signs at regular intervals fighting to stay visible above the grass. Ernie was a trip. If you are interested in a tour of the Nevada Test Site go soon while Ernie is still alive to be your tour guide.
Re:No suprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, sure, he didn't go into serious detail, but he did state that adaptation occurred.
Most likely, those creatures that did not become sterile from the effect of radiation on their gonads had one or another sort of duplicated gene set (it happens a lot). Their children would then be less suceptible to radiation poisoning and their children less still. Eventually these animals would have a full or more duplicate of their entire DNA.
Those who suffered ill effects from it (ie: the animal equivalent of downs syndrome) would be less likely to survive, and so the ones that didnt - those that have mutated enough genetic machinery to allow such a duplication to exist (probably a small percentage, but a seed nonetheless) - would be more likely to propagate.
So yes, mother nature adapts. Mother nature is a generalized term for things on the cellular level that 'just happen'. It's not retarded, it's shorthand for those who don't feel like thinking too hard about a subject.
I mean, unless you think it was the noodly appendage of Our Lord, the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Is there a name for this? (Score:5, Insightful)
He has found ample evidence of DNA mutations, but nothing that affected the animals' physiology or reproductive ability. "Nothing with two heads," he says.
It's as if the positive changes are being selected in favor of the negative changes.
Re:Is there a name for this? (Score:2, Insightful)
The mutations that were seriously debelitating didn't survive long enough to breed.
Whooosh! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Whooosh! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is there a name for this? (Score:5, Funny)
It's simple really... the creatures that survived were more intelligently designed than those that died.
Re:Is there a name for this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I have another interpretation of this statement: 'the creatures that died were selected to go to heaven before the other animals with the better-designed DNA.' So, which animals have the 'better-designed' DNA? The ones that died first and are now with the creator, or the ones still left foraging in the forest? Something else to think about. One could argue that the animals who went back home
Re:Is there a name for this? (Score:3, Funny)
So that explains why we're so vulnerable to viruses.
Re:Is there a name for this? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Is there a name for this? (Score:5, Funny)
Verily I say unto you, they HAVE been touched by His Noodly Appendage. Ramen.
Re:Its called, not thinking through. (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, except leave out the "could" part.
Lots [ccoc.net] of people refused [digitaljournalist.org] to leave the Black Zone, and the government didn't make them. Lots of the ones left behind died of cancer or thyroid problems. But lots didn't. They farm land that's so radioactive the crops have problems, but some of them are still alive. People have children in the black zone, and only 15-20% [hbo.com]of them DON"T have serious health problems.
Disposal of nuclear waste could be trivial (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Disposal of nuclear waste could be trivial (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Disposal of nuclear waste could be trivial (Score:3, Insightful)
You're calling building a space elevator trivial? Damn, what do you consider hard?
reply:
FTL travel.
Time travel.
Raising of the dead.
Understanding women.
Re:Disposal of nuclear waste could be trivial (Score:3, Insightful)
The earth's ~30km/s velocity in orbit around the sun has no real impact on this scenario. Once you hit earth's escape velocity, you're effecti
Re:Disposal of nuclear waste could be trivial (Score:5, Insightful)
An excellent point, one that I think can't be said enough. While we're burying all this nuclear waste, or tossing it down into the Marianas Trench, or whatever, I think it's important to consider that while the storage method should be able to last as long as the longest-lived dangerous isotopes in the waste (in case we just want to leave it there) it should also have as a design criteria the ability for us to recover it.
I could easily envision a time in the future, a lot sooner than 10,000 years or even a few hundred, when we might want to get at some of that "waste" in order to reprocess it in ways that are not economically viable, or perhaps technologically feasible, right now.
This is hugely the case with the type of nuclear energy we use in the United States, where the majority of the fuel rods are comprised of U-238 and only a small percentage of it is U-235, the latter is the fissionable fuel, the former isn't (although it can be bred into Plutonium) and currently we really just use it as a sort of contaminant in order to make weaponization of the fuel difficult. A change in attitudes regarding breeder reactors would instantly make U-238, particularly the stuff that comes out of reactors (which has greater-than-trace amounts of plutonium in it already) a hot commodity. (No pun intended.)
Frankly given our energy requirements, I think the need to reprocess nuclear fuel waste may occur sooner rather than later, perhaps within a few centuries or even decades, depending on technological developments of other energy sources and the geopolitics of Uranium mining, and thus the solutions for waste storage that are recoverable while also being secure are the best ones.
OMG Bearzilla (Score:4, Funny)
the lead scientist was heard to say.
There are also footprints belonging to a giant, dinosaur-like creature.
Turing Japanese? (Score:2)
scary part is, migratory animals; imagine a goose with bird flu getting a few random extra mutations.
Interesting strategy (Score:2, Insightful)
Hmm.. increasing mutation rates where they are already sky-high, as opposed to the conventional wisdom of minimizing exposure.
It's like adding nature to nature. I like it.
DNA can repair itself, Life will survive! (Score:5, Informative)
Source: http://www.yuccamountain.org/price003.htm [yuccamountain.org]
It's like that at the Hanford Reservation (Score:4, Insightful)
That doesn't sound so good (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we use it for good? (Score:3, Interesting)
But say we take, I dunno, the whole planet...and just douse it in some radiation. Just enough to cause a variety of small, minor mutations in a very large (or the entire) population.
1) Any ones that result in sterility are gone, end of story...
2) Lots of small minor mutations is more like tickling the DNA, whereas massive exposure and major mutations is more like kicking it. This results in a greater survival ratio.
Transiently accelerate evolution, yanno? Maybe the dinosau
Re:Can we use it for good? (Score:3, Informative)
Grow a colony in a petri dish. Nuke it until only 10% remain. Let it repopulate back to the original population, repeat ad infinitium.
The bacteria you get at the end are frighteningly hard to kill.
(That said, there is very limited data on the health effects of living in an environment with higher-than-normal (but not lethal) background radiation. Many of the people who survived chernobyl with n
Cancer = good? (Score:4, Informative)
>
> Transiently accelerate evolution, yanno?
If by "transiently accelerate evolution" you mean "give lots of people cancer", then that'd probably work quite well. If you're looking for something more beneficial to humanity than millions of people dying in agony, well, I think you'd best keep looking.
Don't think that because animals can survive in the region it's somehow beneficial to them. They'd still survive and populate the region if you took a machete and hacked pieces off of each animal, but they wouldn't be "improved" by the process. "Crippled but alive" is an improvement over dead, but it's a far cry from "whole and healthy".
Don't mistake "not dead" for "new and improved".
Re:Can we use it for good? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Can we use it for good? (Score:3, Informative)
It has, in fact, been going on since.... (checks watch)
But if you brought some alien
But currently the radiation level is small (Score:4, Informative)
It is known (although ignored in strict radiation regulations) that the same dose received in short time is much more harmful than the dose received during longer times. It is probably because the cells have repair mechanism that can cope with small damage over long time while cannot efectively repair large damage in short time. There are even indications that small doses can be beneficial [wikipedia.org] by "training" the repair mechanism.
Re:But currently the radiation level is small (Score:4, Informative)
Please dont falsely publish what your opinion as facts.
Re:But currently the radiation level is small (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, pictures of deformed babies don't really support your argument either way except to include emotional aspect to this argument. Deformed babies are born everyday. What I think would be important is the number of deformed babies and type of deformalities compared to "normal" population.
Re:But currently the radiation level is small (Score:3, Informative)
Another story is ho
Re:But currently the radiation level is small (Score:3, Informative)
Well, I'm not an expert in radiation medicine but it seems that they are indeed less susceptible to radiation. I found an article where they radiated lymphocytes from the blood of Ramsar's inhabitants and observed [health-physics.com] that "inhabitants of high background radiation areas had about 56% the average number of induced chromosomal abnormalities of normal background radiation area inhabitants follow
Re:But currently the radiation level is small (Score:3, Informative)
The disagreement is about the estimated additional deaths due to long term effects. WHO expects 4000 death among liquidators and the most exposed civilians with reasonable confidence and around 5000 more among the rest of the worlds population, but that number is so badly supported, it could be completely wrong. Eco-Wackos "expect" anyt
Re:That doesn't sound so good (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the understanding of just how freakishly robust nature can be in coming back from devastating damage is where the misunderstanding comes in.
In the first generation, massive radiation exposure deaths did destroy the population and had a massive effect on birth rates for that generation.
However, in nature, ecosystems are just that - systems. With most predators dead and most of the same speci
Contrary to Common Assumptions? (Score:5, Funny)
"Experiments have shown the DNA strands have undergone considerable mutation but such mutations have not impacted crucial functions like reproduction. It is remarkable that such a phenomenon has occurred contrary to common assumptions about nuclear waste."
Ummm... the animals are radioactive and their DNA has undergone considerable mutation. What exactly is contrary here to the common assumptions of radiological contamination? Sure matches my own assumptions.
Sure they can reproduce but I wouldn't exactly be jumping with glee over this "recovery". The damage merely has yet to express itself.
Though if any of the local turtles grow to human size and start dressing like ninjas, I'll take back everything I said.
Re:Contrary to Common Assumptions? (Score:4, Insightful)
So what you're saying is, regardless of the lack of evidence for harmful mutation that should be evident, there MUST be harm becase you KNOW that radiation causes it?
Way to be scientific about this.
Re:Contrary to Common Assumptions? (Score:4, Insightful)
The offspring you find in the wild is pretty normal. Of course, just about all offspring that does exhibit deleterious phenotypic expression die very quickly, and is in most cases spontaneously aborted long before birth. Most species can produce a lot more offspring than actually survive to adulthood (and most species do usually produce slightly more, as a hedge), so dramatically higher infant mortality or aborted pregnancies would just be compensated for by having more pregnancies and larger klutches in the first place. Of course, to some extent the mortality is lowered by the lack of human activities. You could hypothesize a donut-shaped overall mortality graph with the senter around the reactor and the outer edge at the edge of normal human habitation. Near the center you'd have high mortality from the radiation effects, and high mortality in human-habitated areas, but in between there'd be a sweet spot, with just a small increase in radiation mortality completely swamped by the lack of humans.
In fact, it would be really interesting to see a study of klutch size among birds nesting at the plant compared to the same species at various distances away from the area.
Radioactive Bears? (Score:5, Funny)
Someone get Stephen Colbert on the phone right away! The world must be warned!
Just goes to show (Score:2, Insightful)
Time for 3-eyed bears? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, wait.
Short-term evolution in action? (Score:2)
One could test this by seeing if "control" animals from o
Radio Acive Pollin (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Radio Acive Pollin (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that surprising (Score:5, Informative)
It reminds me of the large scale experiments done on plant breeding [1] where radioactive material was placed in the centre of a field of crops, and favourable mutants were selected. I love telling this story to anti-GE people, who probably eat plant products produced as a result of these experiments done predominantly in the 1970's. At least with GE only a single well studied change is being made.
[1] http://www.nias.affrc.go.jp/eng/gfs/index.html [affrc.go.jp]
Any iguanas? (Score:2, Funny)
If you want a bit more depth (Score:5, Informative)
Controversial? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd say less controversial and more hysterical. Of course, were I one of the animals being exposed to that "developer repellent" I'd might feel a bit differently.
Larry Niven [geocities.com] had some similar ideas, once upon a time.
long-term effect (Score:5, Insightful)
So, not everyone living in an irradiated area will have their flesh falling off, but for us long-lifed humans, the life would be filled with more misery and an early ending. Maybe cancer at 20. And for normal human socities, "old farts" (those over 30) are really what drive the society.
long-term effect (Score:5, Interesting)
Since these organisms have such short lifespans, there have been ample generations since the nuclear accident for the organisms to go locally extinct or mutate into different species. But, that has not been the case. These local populations have continued to survive without deleterious effects on the population level.
Populations of organisms with longer lifespans may take longer to recover to pre-blast levels (although from the sound of the article and my previous knowledge the opposite has occurred) and may experience a genetic bottleneck effect (which may be countered by mutations), but genomes are resiliant and it is unlikely that the populations would never recover.
Remember that glowing pig story... (Score:5, Funny)
A bunch of thoughts (Score:5, Insightful)
So why are we surprised that any of this is happening?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
More interesting than you might think? (Score:4, Interesting)
Animal Mortality (Score:4, Interesting)
Chernobyl as environmental protection (Score:3, Interesting)
Let me assure you, this is no protection against greedy developers. In our own city (Chesapeake), there is a section called Deep Creek that had a dump. Said greedy developers wanted to develop said dump; local residents fought it on the basis of contamination and danger to homeowners. Said developer waited twenty years until said homeowners no longer had the strength or will to say said statements before the zoning board. Then the City Council quietly gave permission, after which a housing development was built upon said dump, and after that homeowners discovered trash and contamination under their houses. Said houses had to be destroyed, said developer profited and moved on, said city council bided their time, and in the end only the purchasers were hurt, as far as I know. Said greedy developers will not be stopped by so minor a thing as radiation in the way of their profit.
Enough said.
Some will always survive a nuke (Score:4, Insightful)
Some die instantly at the blast.
Some die within the next hours.
Some die within the next days/weeks/months.
Fertility goes DOWN, but those THAT have offspring will have a higher chance to raise them to maturity (less competition).
Again, of those some will die due to mutation.
Some will have a shorter life expectance. As long as they mature and can raise at least one generation of offspring, it's not so important.
Also keep in mind that quite a few animals CAN only raise one generation of offspring, they die after giving birth/laying eggs.
Bottom line, of course animals will survive, as a group. Humans would too, the body count would be incredibly high and the chance that YOU, as an individual, survive, is incredibly small. But as a species, you can fairly reliably survive a nuking.
Re:Shame about the humans (Score:3, Insightful)
I for one, disagree, with this simplistic argument. For example, when we use coal or fossil fuels, more damage is done, but it is distributed, and less visible (and easy to take pictures of the victims).
Nonetheless, there is no way in hell the above post is flamebait.
Re:Shame about the humans (Score:3, Insightful)
When scientists and engineers create a cost-effective and safe way to do something, it's not their fault if politicking and societal faults get in the way of its implementation.
Re:This girl has been talking about this for years (Score:3, Informative)
So enjoy the photos as undoctored, but take the entire story line with a large grain of salt.
Re:propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with nuclear energy is not that it can be unsafe. Of course it can
The problem is that society wants an absolute, iron-clad guarantee that a particular technology is safe
You simply cannot have your cake and eat it too, at least not in the context of our current technology.
Sure, you can promote tidal power, wind power, solar power or {insert favorite alternative energy source here}. If such a source is going to generate enough power to significantly offset our use of fossil fuuels it will have economic and environmental impact, probably serious ones. Worse yet, none of them are really energy-dense enough to handle our power needs. Take a typical 2400 megawatt nuclear plant for example. Yes, they are very expensive, but so would be the physical plant required to generate and store enough solar power to provide the same level of service. Regardless, we (for a variety of reasons) may choose to make that investment. But we'd best do it with our eyes open and be willing to accept the downsides of whatever road (or roads) we decide to travel.