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Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly (2014)
- jmkni 3y agoFascinating but needs a '2014' marker, I wonder what the situation is nearly another decade on?
- sampo 3y agohttps://nypost.com/2022/04/09/russian-troops-dug-trenches-in-chernobyls-highly-radioactive-red-forest/ https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/russian-troops-dug-trenches-in...
- sapiogram 3y ago> The UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it has been unable to independently verify reporting that suggested Russian forces have received “high doses of radiation.” All you need to know from the article.
- pvaldes 3y agoIf this shows something crystal clear is that if the litter is let alone it doesn't burn necessarily. Just accumulates and made deep soil. The only wildfires in Chernobyl since 2014 were those provoked by soldiers. No men messing around + no cattle or farmers = no big wildfires. Of course we want this litter to remain just where it is as many decades as we can, but under each rock there is always an idiot, so the healing process is never guaranteed.
- sva_ 3y ago> The only wildfires in Chernobyl since 2014 were those provoked by soldiers Not exactly true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone_wildfires https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Chernobyl_Exclusion_Zone_...
- pvaldes 3y agoThanks for the update. This proves my theory > "At least one suspect was arrested for alleged arson". > "the local young man has confessed to starting fires for fun" Ok. Lets change "soldiers" by a more generic "human pieces of s*t". I wonder if any fossil were radioactive before to became a fossil. That would made the process much easier.
- flangola7 3y agoAt one time there were natural nuclear reactors. Veins of uranium rich enough to fission.
- bboygravity 3y agoOne hypothesis is that the moon was basically spat out by a supercritical natural fission reactor inside earth at a time when the earth was still rotating much faster. Basically slinging a part of itself into space to form the moon. I love that hypothesis.
- gus_massa 3y agoSadly the current most popular hypothesis in the scientific community is the collision of a smaller version of the Earth with another planet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_Moon
- NikkiA 3y agoOddly enough, that article doesn't mention the name 'Theia' or even link to the larger page on the collision theory that searching for 'Theia' brings... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(planet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theia_(planet)
- EB-Barrington 3y agoI was living in Kyiv during the last Chernobyl fires (2020) - they were BIG. There have been others - it's a very dry place in summer.
- wongarsu 3y agoIt's also worth noting that Ukraine gets 5-10 days of rain per month year around (or snow or other precipitation), and the driest month is comparable with San Francisco's October in terms of total precipitation. No humans messing around plays a big role, but everything being wet most of the time certainly helps.
- dendrite9 3y agoIt seems the forest conditions/fuel load are very different in Ukraine from places like California, the Rockies, or Turkey. Lightning starts wildfires completely free of human intervention.
- bequanna 3y agoApples and oranges. I believe this area in Ukraine is considerably wetter vs. many Western US forests that typically see large scale wildfires.
- pvaldes 3y agoAll forests in the planet follow basically the same rule. The more time left undisturbed, the more water will fix in the area. Top ecosystems in the chain have typically plenty of water. Lower forms have less and less water and are more unstable. "There are huge wildfires because no water in the area". This is a lie that we tell ourselves. There is not water in the area because wildfires. Many of this fires were deliberated crimes and would have burn with or without water. The lack of water is a scar of a previous attack. Somebody should build a forest Matrioska with a tiny cow cranium in the inner figure. Maybe this way the people would finally understand the obvious rule. After a few thousand years untouched, all forests became "rainforests".
- bequanna 3y ago> After a few thousand years untouched, all forests became "rainforests". Yea… I’m pretty sure this isn’t true. There are many remote forests in Canada for example that haven’t been logged maybe ever and those areas still experience occasional large scale wildfires.
- zdragnar 3y agoThere are a number of species whose seeds don't germinate without wildfire. Not all regional climates are equal.
- pvaldes 3y agoOf course, but they will not appear, or be residual in the climax of the ecosystems. Its strategy is live fast and leave a beautiful charred corpse. The normal trend in this planet is to replace this opportunists by other species when the ecosystems mature. See "theory of stress" in ecology. In short a little stress is good, for both ecosystems and humans, (it develops a better immune system). But too much stress is catastrofic, and this is the current situation with the "clean forest" mantra.
- garganzol 3y agoRadiation has a notable sterilizing effect - this is why the speed of a natural decomposition is diminished. Fewer microbes leads to a slower decomposition.
- whoopdedo 3y agoIt's probably a good thing that the exclusion zone hasn't become a breeding ground for mutant radiation-resistant bacteria.
- meschi 3y agoI was wondering why that would be a bad idea and how much radiation sterilization is used today. Apparently about 40-50% of medical single use products are sterilized beforehand using radiation. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/goronzy2/ http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/goronzy2/
- tharkun__ 3y agoSee if you can find numbers for food irradiation. Depending on country o ly a small number of foods is permitted to get that treatment but they're usually the large volume ones like wheat or flour.
- rtkwe 3y agoMost of the exclusion zone is pretty low levels of radiation so I'm not sure how effective those are other than that they're an elevated background level. The FDA says <2 kGy delays sprouting of vegatables and fruit aging 1-10 kGy decreases the levels of bacteria and >10 kGy is used for actual sterilization. Most of the zone is <1 Sv/h so you need 10k hours or more to get above the 10 kGy used for sterilization. https://www.fda.gov/food/irradiation-food-packaging/overview-irradiation-food-and-packaging#:~:text=Low%20dose%20irradiation%20(%3C%202%20kGy,achieve%20sterility%20of%20the%20product https://www.fda.gov/food/irradiation-food-packaging/overview....
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- FredPret 3y ago...oh boy
- Ekaros 3y agoNow could this be solution for large scale carbon capture? Seed massive amounts of forested areas with radioactive material? So we could prevent large mass of bio material from decomposing and thus releasing carbondioxide?
- anonporridge 3y agoThere's a scifi or apocolyptic story in here. Environmental extremists come to the conclusion that irradiating large patches of Earth to make it unlivable for humans but is a net benefit to the non human ecosystem because the damage from human habitation far exceeds the damage from radiation. And of course, life evolves and adapts to the radiation. Then they start seeding dirty bombs to intentionally create more and more of these no go zones that become nature sanctuaries. I suppose "The 100" is partially playing into this concept.
- BasedAnon 3y ago[flagged]
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- bluGill 3y agoNo, because water in all dead material will dry out and then lightening strikes will start a fire and turn it all into CO2 again. If you want to make a difference make sure that you start a forest and grassland fire every single year - the regular fires ensure the resulting fires are small and leave a lot of carbon behind some of which will get incorporated into the forest floor and forever stored away. Plus forests depend on those fires to clean up all the under brush. Note, the above applies to most forests in North America, but you need to check with a local expert in forests to understand the details and where it doesn't apply. Every location/climate has different forests with different needs. There is no blanket statement that is right for everything.
- hinkley 3y agoSealife sanctuaries are causing commercial fish populations to bounce back. We just need rules that are simple enough that animals understand them, and we can fix a whole shitload of problems.
- karaterobot 3y agoI keep looking at the word "properly" and thinking that is implying some negative judgment. I'm all for using radiation to preserve food from decay — as we do already, and should do more of. But I suppose it may be considered proper to preserve food meant for storage, transfer, and human consumption, while considering leaves in the woods not decaying to be improper.
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- jonplackett 3y agoWeirdly, there was actually a period of history where this was normal. During the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago trees just fell over and lay there because nothing had evolved to decay them yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous
- dekhn 3y agoThat didn't sound too right for me (but my biology knowledge is dated at this point) so I read the relevant section from that page. It concludes wiht: """The delayed fungal evolution hypothesis is controversial, however, and has been challenged by other researchers, who conclude that a combination of vast depositional systems present on the continents during the formation of Pangaea and widespread humid, tropical conditions were responsible for the high rate of coal formation.""" It's interesting to think just how much went on before trees with lignin showed up. Flowers are also relatively recent - 150mya.
- greggsy 3y agoPresumably flowers proliferated due to insect pollinators?
- Timon3 3y agoAnd grass is even younger - just ~100-65mya! (depending on the source - not sure if it's narrowed down in papers)
- digging 3y agoIn general, it's mind-blowing to travel back in Earth's history and realize there were tens or hundreds of millions of years where strategies that are commonplace today had never been tried before (or they'd tried too early and failed). It makes one wonder, what will be the strategies of future life which no creature has yet evolved? Can we even imagine it?
- gambiting 3y agoI think it's almost guaranteed that bacteria eating plastics will proliferate globally at some point, we've put so much of this stuff in the environment and it's just free energy ready to be consumed if your digestive system knows how.
- londons_explore 3y agoPresumably the exclusion zone shrinks a bit each year as previously unsafe areas become safe to live again?
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- ftxbro 3y ago> "Forests around Chernobyl aren’t decaying properly" i hope they can decay so their spirits can finally be laid to rest. the last thing ukraine needs right now is to be flanked by some restless undead radioactive ents
- franky47 3y agoWagner and the Radioactive Ents would be a cool band name.
- tomohawk 3y agoThe Russian takeover of the zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has pushed it to the edge of another catastrophe.
- lamontcg 3y agoAnd they may create another catastrophe in order to try to halt the current Ukrainian offensive.
- throwaway742 3y agoDidn't they safely shut it down?
- aorloff 3y agoIt still needs to be staffed to continue shutting down
- thepostman0 3y agoMy house is full of woodworm and Chernobyl is welcome to take the timbers.
- godelski 3y ago> including some [wild boar] bagged as far away as Germany—continue to show abnormal and dangerous levels of radiation. This really needs to stop. I remember doing the calculation a few years back due to another HN post (and the German obsession around boar) and you'd need to eat roughly 0.55lbs (0.25kg) of the most radioactive boar you could find every day or 3lbs (1.4kg) of the median. That is to just hit EU radiation limits, not to hit a level where you're at risk. This also doesn't include that you'll heal over that period. The problem here is that if you're eating this much pork every day you're going to be at far higher health risks for heart disease than radiation sickness. Recommended is not more than 50g/day or 0.05kg/0.11lbs. For reference, Germans eat about 55kg of meat a year, so you'd be eating 220x the average German if you had a craving for the most radioactive boar and ate it exclusively. Germans used to eat more meat, and especially pork, and these stories have just done wild damage to the population. Especially because farm pigs aren't affected. But a side benefit is that less Germans are dying of heart disease, so I guess that's nice. As for the forest, you may notice if you google it you'll see this story limited to 2014 and maybe a BBC article from 2019 as a result of the HBO series. [0] You may be interested to know that wildlife flourishes in Chernobyl and this is almost an accidental nature preserve. Life is shorter, yes, but life is flourishing and wildlife populations are far higher now than they were prior to the disaster. Population levels are similar to uncontaminated regions. It is really a fascinating area to understand from a biological perspective (same with Fukushima, which has similar results). When you dig into these they really challenge your preconceived notions of radiation damage. There is danger, don't get me wrong, and I don't think people should go inhabit these places just yet. But neither are these places dying. They're more like the post-apocalyptic movie scenes where animals and plants take over. There's far more nuance and interesting things happening in these regions and I wish we'd discuss these from a more holistic perspective. [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190701-why-plants-survived-chernobyls-deadly-radiation https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190701-why-plants-survi...
- maxbond 3y agoThat might be an argument humans aren't endangered by contaminated boar, but is not an argument that the ecosystem isn't threatened. Presumably predators and scavengers are eating a significant amount of boar and other contaminated meat relative to their body weight.
- Sophistifunk 3y agoPripyat seems like an excellent place to look for genes and organisms that will help us grow food (and recycle air) on the moon / mars.
- photochemsyn 3y agoThe Red Forest is highly contaminated, such that surface level microroentgens per hour are at least 10X than what's considered maximum safe level for humans, and likely a good deal higher in the soil. There are other tests that could have been done, such as measuring the ability of soil suspensions taken from the Red Forest to breakdown cellulose in a test tube (studies that would probably require a lot of care in a radiation-safe lab), but the kind of study described in the article (leaving bags of leaves around to see what happens to them) seems to be enough to prove the point; fungal/insect breakdown of plant matter is inhibited in the most severely contaminated areas of the exclusion zone. Looking around, here's a study on the contamination of fish in surrounding lakes (still an issue). Some fish are more genetically sensitive to it than others, but you probably wouldn't want to eat any of them: "Impact of Environmental Radiation on the Health and Reproductive Status of Fish from Chernobyl" (2018) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b02378 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b02378
- aeternum 3y agoI wonder if any studies have looked at potential positives. For example the Red Forest is applying a selection pressure towards radiation-hardened Fungi, insects, and even potentially wildlife. This seems pretty important given the ongoing risk of nuclear war.
- User23 3y agoDoes this mean that a full blown nuclear reset could create conditions that would allow coal to form again?
- dang 3y agoDiscussed at the time (of the article): Forests Around Chernobyl Aren’t Decaying Properly - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404345 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404345 - March 2014 (121 comments)
- pkphilip 3y agoSo you are telling me that I may be able to slow down aging if I receive a huge dose of radiation from time to time? /Just-kidding
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- wkat4242 3y agoAnd still people going on saying Chernobyl only caused a handful of human deaths.. That's not the only problem with nuclear disasters.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI think it would be reasonable to assume the accident killed a lot of stuff at the time and one factor is it's not being reintroduced in part because it is a zone of exclusion. They should experiment with bringing in decay promoters to try to prevent a devastating fire from making things worse. (Assuming they haven't done so already, which may be wrong given the age of the article.)
- toss1 3y agoUnfortunately, Russia is sub-threatening to make an even better "test example" using the the Ukranian Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant which they currently occupy, saying "no threat for now" [0]. They just blew a major dam in Kakhovka, Ukraine, with tens of thousands being evacuated. [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-no-threat-for-now-ukraines-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-after-dam-2023-06-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-no-threat-f... [1] https://www.dw.com/en/live-updates-ukraine-accuses-russia-of-blowing-up-kakhovka-dam/a-65833125 https://www.dw.com/en/live-updates-ukraine-accuses-russia-of...