Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC

[Eugene]

Source: BBC News

Last Updated: Tuesday, 14 August 2007, 23:38 GMT 00:38 UK

Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven'

By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

The idea that the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear
power plant has created a wildlife haven is not scientifically
justified, a study says.

Recent studies said rare species had thrived despite raised
radiation levels as a result of no human activity.

But scientists who assessed the 1986 disaster's impact on birds
said the ecological effects were "considerably greater than
previously assumed".

-snip-

The paper's authors, Anders Moller of University Pierre and Marie
Curie, France, and Tim Mousseau from the University of South
Carolina, US, said their research did not support the idea that
low-level radiation was not affecting animals.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6946210.stm

---

Earlier stories:
Chernobyl Area Becomes Wildlife Haven - AP
Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation - BBC

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. rare?

how about previously unknown to man. now, that's rare.

i have friends and relative who farm several hundred miles northwest of there. they still keep photos of two headed animals, stunted pigs with no or six legs, and wild veggies and fruit that you really did not want to eat.

[phantom power]

2. links to original papers here:

The particular paper discussed in the article is not on this site, but several related papers are. This is the most annoying web page background I've seen in some time.

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/Chernobyl.htm

[losthills]

3. Another myth

busted...

[hunter]

4. This is a battle of definitions, a straw man.

Claims that there are no adverse environmental effects are, of course, absurd, and always have been.

Some species are not going to fare well in the environment polluted by the Chernobyl accident, especially species sensitive to radiation damage and subject to bio-concentration effects. Swallows who eat radioactive insects are not going to do well. Duh.

But you look at the big picture, and what's going on here is exactly equivalent to what goes on with other sorts of environmental toxins. DDT, anyone? That had, and continues to have, a horrible impact on bird populations.

How about lead? They can hardly keep the California Condor population afloat because of lead poisoning. Or ethylene glycol spilled from car radiators? How about selenium from agricultural drainage? There are many more bird killers. And by far, the biggest killer of birds is going to be climate change.

[phantom power]

5. Environmental damage from radiation is intrinsically the most evil.

And the industrial waste from the wind turbine industry and PV industry won't count, because it is spiritually pure.

Just because, that's why.

[jpak]

6. but....but....but...hobbyists and charlatans say it's wildlife nirvana

and no one got hurt...

and "radiation is good for you"...

:evilgrin:

oh yeah...K&R and bookmarked...

[hunter]

7. Need some more props for that straw man?

Maybe you can find them in the BBC "Wildlife defies Chernobyl radiation" article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4923342.stm

Nope. It says radiation is bad, very bad.

It's very clear that there are two bad things on the scale -- the environmental impacts of human populations in one pan, and the environmental impacts of radioactive toxins in the other pan.

And, troubling for our own self image, ordinary humans going about their ordinary daily business seem to be at least as bad and probably worse for wildlife than certain entirely unacceptable levels of radioactive waste.

[jpak]

8. Unfortunately, straw men are all we get from Chernobyl apologists and deniers

n/t

[phantom power]

9. Nuclear power is the cleanest and safest, *including* Chernobyl. That is our point.

Even including Three Mile Island. Even including Japanese earthquakes. Even including all the other nuclear-related accidents. All of it.

The reason is actually pretty simple: because the only sane way to compare energy sources is to take all that stuff, and then divide by the total amount of energy produced.

If you want to convince me otherwise, I'll tell you how: show me that the environmental impact of the renewables-industry, divided by the total amount of energy produced, is a smaller number than the same number for nuclear.

Do you agree? If not, why not?

[jpak]

23. There is/was no solar/wind Chernobyl and there will never be one

There will be no multi-billion dollar solar/wind accidents that render cities/countryside uninhabitable.

There will be no renewable energy equivalent of the billion+ dollar Radiation Exposure Compensation Act .

There will be no environmental/health/cost issues with spent solar/wind fuel.

What is the environmental impact of 100 GW(t) of solar thermal capacity in the world today????

(clue: net positive)

What is the environmental impact of 74 GW(e) of wind power capacity in the world today????

(clue: net positive)

What is the environmental impact of the 7+ GW(e) of solar PV/thermal electric capacity in the world today.

(clue: net positive)

The snarky answer is that the environmental impact of renewable energy is *zero* and one cannot divide it...

[phantom power]

24. There are lots of ways to die, or acquire birth defects.

Like industrial waste from manufacturing a couple million wind turbines. Or a few nameplate terawatts of PV. Or mining materials for manufacturing same.

I don't know what to say. Maybe those deaths and birth defects won't be as impressive to you, because they weren't accompanied by an impressive explosion, and snazzy radiation, but the end result is the same. But impressive or otherwise, there will be more of them per unit energy than for nuclear power.

So says the data. As I said before, if you have some convincing argument that the data is misleading, let's discuss it.

I think we're going to get more data on environmental impacts of renewables pretty soon, since both wind and solar are now ramping up in production. My prediction: a lot of people are going to be unpleasantly surprised.

[jpak]

25. Pure speculation and (death) wishful thinking

show me the bodies

[phantom power]

27. Well, I agree that one of us is engaged in wishful thinking.

There is an entire legal industry built around litigation related to industrial manufacturing waste. Why? Because it's a health hazard for humans and the rest of the environment.

Solvents. Lubricants. Electroplating compounds. How do you think all that hardware is going to get made? I'd love to see a study on the waste stream from the manufacture of a wind turbine. And not because I want bash renewables, because it's the sane way to compare energy sources.

People get sick and die from places like Love Canal too. And there are a lot more Love Canals out there than there are Chernobyls.

[NNadir]

18. Who exactly is in denial about Chernobyl?

Either it is the worst energy disaster in history or it is not.

Let me guess: You are here to inform us that it absolutely the <em>worst</em> energy disaster of all time, the only one worthy of 20 years of endless discussion and focus.

Two hundred thousand people died in a single night in the world's largest energy disaster, associated with a renewable energy disaster, specifically that at the Banqiao dam. Basically the part of the world that says the only energy disaster ever worthy of consideration is the same part of the world that couldn't care less about Banqiao.

August 13: Two million people across the district are trapped by the water . . . In
Runan, 100,000 who were initially submerged but somehow survived are still floating
in the water. In Shangcai, another 600,000 are surrounded by the flood; 4,000
members of Liudayu Brigade in Huabo Commune have stripped the trees bare and
eaten all the leaves . . .

August 17: There are still 1.1 million people trapped in the water . . . the disease
morbidity rate has soared. According to incomplete statistics, 1.13 million people
have contracted illnesses . . .

August 18: Altogether 880,000 people are surrounded by water in Shangcai and
Xincai. Out of 500,000 people in Runan, 320,000 have now been stricken with
disease, including 33,000 cases of dysentery . . .
Some two weeks after the disaster, when the flood waters finally began to retreat in
certain areas of Zhumadian Prefecture, mounds of corpses lay everywhere in sight,
rotting and decaying under the hot sun...

http://www.irn.org/basics/ard/pdf/srdamsafety.pdf

Suddenly we hear "renewable energy will save us" advocates complaining about birds. Birds appararently killed by wind turbine blades are less dead, just like people killed in damn failures are less dead that Chernobyl victims, all 1000 of them.

Of course calling the Banqiao dead straw men (women and babies) is about par for the course from the "renewables have failed miserably to address climate change" denial set. If you scratch the surface of a "renewables will save us" advocate you will hear them make the same remarks about 2050 as Amory Lovins was muttering in 1976. Not. One. Word. Has. Changed. 500. Billion. Metric. Tons. Of. Dangerous. Fossil. Fuel. Waste. Latter.

Mary Mycio, author of Wormwood Forest, a Ukranian-American, wrote in the excellent Chernobyl book Wormwood Forest about the birds in the Chernobyl preserve noting that one should expect that given the similarity of strontium chemistry to calcium chemistry there would be some effects.

However nuclear energy doesn't have perfect to be vastly better than the only form of renewable energy that functions to produce exajoule scale electricity, hydroelectricity, in terms of safety. It just has to be less dangerous than Banqiao was, and of course, it is.

[losthills]

20. Thanks for this important information.

In the aftermath of this dangerous waterfuel accident was the area rendered uninhabitable for generations? Were the downwind survivors sickened with cancers? Were the wildlife and food crops affected by genetic damage? Before the accident were workers and their families plagued by unexplained cancers, birth defects and lung diseases? Did it require the mining and enrichment of poisonous and radioactive ore to operate this dangerous warefuel plant when it was functional? What were the environmental effects and human health costs of these mining operations? Did this dangerous waterfuel plant ever produce a quantity of weapons grade plutonium that is now unaccounted for? And, lastly, what did they do with all the radioactive waste that this dangerous waterfuel plant produced that is so poisonous it can cause genetic damage to anyone who stumbles upon it thousands of years from now?

Please answer these questions for us, so we can put your information in proper perspective.

Thanks!

[hunter]

22. I wonder how a pound of human compares to a pound of nuclear waste?

If I tossed, say, a 150 pound used fuel rod from a nuclear power plant into a forest somewhere, how would the environmental damage caused by that unattended fuel rod, just sitting on the ground there slowly decomposing over the years, compare to the environmental damage done by 150 pounds of average U.S. citizen?

How much nuclear waste would you have to dump on an unpopulated planet to equal the environmental destruction done by humans to the earth?

:shrug:

In any case, it's probably safer to walk around Chernobyl now than it is to ride in a car in that part of the world. A thousand years from now, assuming this civilization doesn't go entirely to pieces, the area will probably be a tourist destination, complete with fancy hotels and quaint Bed and Breakfast places, and signs along the foot paths telling visitors not to feed (or eat!) the wildlife.

[jpak]

26. LOL!!11

:thumbsup:

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Wildlife = Birds

Moller and Mousseau have done many ornithological surveys, but they are also antis. The work is likely to be valid, but because of the politics involved, will still require independent corroboration. But I have no doubt they will find some damage; and I have never met a pro-nuclearist who denies it.

I think I can hear a new strawman being born. (A strawbaby?)

Birds are good creatures to study because most of them are so sensitive to radiation -- even UV and electromagnetic radiation.

My own instinct would be to study the bugs. I would think that the insects are the primary "carriers" of radioactive material. Birds eat them, and pick up the contamination. If that's an accurate description of how the food chain is working, they should find that insects are a concentrating "reservoir" for radionuclides. M&M made some speculations about insects, but didn't go much further. However, there has been entomological work done at Chernobyl, and it generally shows elevated levels of mutation. It would be valuable if we could figure out the actual mechanisms at work across species.

There are few or no humans in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. That has to be close to paradise for most animals.

Current Ornithology (Dennis Power) -- There is an entire chapter, "Avian Radioecology", by I. Lehr Brisbin, Jr., which contains a discussion of Chernobyl. Recommended for pro and anti alike.

Of course, I realize that I will soon be accused of ignoring all this -- and being a Paid Shill™. It proves that polarizing, ionizing radiation has powerful and deleterious effects on the human mind even several years after initial exposure.

:evilgrin:

--p!

[phantom power]

11. I'm going to get accused of FUD, but this seems at least hypothetically relevant;

It appears to be some kind dust-up regarding an accusation that Moller cooked his data in another ornithological field study (unrelated to his Chernobyl studies, as far as I can tell):

http://www2.biology.ualberta.ca/palmer/pubs/05MollerComm/MollerExchange.htm

[hunter]

13. All sorts of interesting Chernobyl pictures on his co-author Mousseau's site...

Some examples:

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/chernobyl1.html

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/photos/red-forest-03a

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/photos

(Snapshots are always more informative to me than the carefully framed news photos.)

I liked this one:

http://cricket.biol.sc.edu/chernobyl/photos/pages/horses2a.html Przewalski Horses in the Chernobyl Zone

[Dogmudgeon]

19. All the more reason for replication studies

The accusation seems to be weak, made by a former colleague who a) doesn't like Moller, and b) has a history of making spurious accusations of scientific fraud.

It's also a tough one to research. There are no fewer than 4 scientists named "Anders Moller". The one in question is "Anders Pape Moller", but he goes by "Anders Moller" much of the time. There have been petitions in Moller's support. I also was unable to track down the original incident, but I only spent 20 minutes looking (KO will soon be on, my "TV appointment" for the evening).

I did find an interesting article from The Economist which presents the data from the study a little better. It appears that, as with most things evolutionary, the mutations have had a number of differential effects on Chernobyl's fauna as well. It would be a mistake to think nuclear accidents are beneficial although for some birds, this appears to have been the case. High levels of colorful plumage carotenoids, which help during mating, seem to have hurt in long-term subspecies survival, giving the less colorful birds a reproductive advantage. The reasons for this are not necessarily simple nor straighforward; in most research we've seen so far, carotenoids provide some protection against free-radical oxidation that is part of radiation sickness. Moller's work in Chernobyl may have produced text with propaganda value for antis, but it has produced much more benefit for evolutionary science.

This is not really a good area in which to conduct the "DU nuclear war". No one can really "win" an argument over whether some evolutionary adaptation is good or bad, and the anti-nuclear value is pretty limited, in a similar way to much "radiation hormesis" work. But for the science wonks present, there is some "cool science" here, though Moller may or may not have fudged some of his data. I am inclined to say that he did not, but the last word has surely not been spoken in the matter.

--p!

[phantom power]

21. The peer review system seems to back that up.

Their work seems interesting to me. If there is any bright spot to Chernobyl, it did provide a living laboratory for studying what the effects of a worst-case nuclear power accident really are.

[Xithras]

12. Apples and oranges.

This study says that the Chernobyl region is bad for wildlife because common migratory birds are found in lower relative numbers within the zone than elsewhere.

The other study say it's good for wildlife because UNCOMMON and endangered animals have turned it into a refuge, supporting population numbers higher than anywhere else in the region.

So, in effect, it's bad for some species, and good for others. That doesn't discount its benefits, it simply establishes that it's not a wildlife utopia (which I don't think was anyones belief anyway...even the papers lauding the ecological comeback in the area discuss increased mutation levels and cancer rates in the wildlife).

By the way, from a scientific perspective the study is slightly questionable anyway. There are critically endangered rabbits that live in a riparian forest a few miles downriver from my home. The land behind my house is a riparian forest of equal age, the same soil type, and similar canopy cover. Despite that, the rabbits do not, and apparently never have, lived this far upriver. Why not? Nobody knows. The fact that this guy found a lower population density in one area than another doesn't necessarily mean anything. Scientifically, the only way to establish the impact of the disaster on that particular species would be to compare pe-leak population levels with post-leak population levels. Since there are no pre-leak barn swallow population numbers to compare against, the assumption that the population has declined is little more than an educated guess. The natural population of those particular bird species might have been lower to begin with.

In contrast, we KNOW that the pre leak population of lynx, eagle owls, wolves, and bears were zero. We know that the wild boar in that region were nearly extinct. Wild horses, which hadn't existed in the area for centuries, now wander the region in large herds, and elk, who's numbers were dwindling, are on the rebound. Those numbers ARE known, and they support the position that the negative impact of the radiation in the exclusion zone is dramatically offset by the positive impact of the cessation of human activity.

Humans, by our very presence, are more damaging to wildlife than a nuclear meltdown. THAT should be a sobering lesson for us all.

[losthills]

14. No study said Chernobyl was good for animals.

They merely reported that they were present.

It's not surprising that animals would move into an area, years after the disaster, to fill an unoccupied niche. No study ever examined the state of their health, how long they had lived in the area, or how many sickened and died.

Talk about a "straw man" argument....

[hunter]

15. What? It's like a quality of life issue?

Hmmm. Let's say I'm a wild pig. Before the Chernobyl accident I probably get shot and end up on someone's dinner table. So do most of my descendents. The population of wild pigs decreases. After the Chernobyl accident the few people I cross paths with avoid me. More of my descendants survive, and the population of pigs increases.

Same goes if you are a lynx, an eagle owl, wolf, a bear, or a wild horse... before the Chernobyl accident your species is headed for extinction. After the accident your population is increasing and getting healthier as the radioactive toxins decay or become sequestered.

One situation is clearly much better for the animals than the other.

In the case of plants the situation may be even more extreme. Plants can't run away from farmers and foresters and developers. Remove the farmers and foresters and developers and your population can immediately begin to expand back to prehistoric levels. You can grow in an abandoned garden entirely unmolested by humans.

[losthills]

16. Okay!

Nuclear accidents are good for the environment.
Gotcha....
I sure they have one where I live!

[hunter]

17. Nah, it's more like people are bad for the environment.

People are worse than any single thing people do, even nuclear meltdowns of the worst, most astonishingly incompetent sort.

Now, how do we solve that problem?

All plague species such as ourselves must come to some sort of accommodation with the environment, and usually it's not a nice accommodation. Exponentially growing critters such as ourselves usually suffer huge die-offs. Just because we are supposedly intelligent doesn't exempt us, it only increases the possible mechanisms for our die off, nuclear war being the most novel mechanism among these.


(Okay, okay, nuclear bombs bad, and maybe related to civilian power programs? Yet nations that have the technical wherewithal to make nuclear weapons seem to do so if they want to, with or without civilian power programs -- just look at Israel or apartheid South Africa. Bombs, what bombs?)

What do we do?

The anti-nuclear movement that I was once a part of did not solve the problem, in fact they inadvertently contributed greatly to the economic and environmental disaster we now face. If people like Amory Lovins or Helen Caldicott ever got their fair share of fossil fuel industry profits that are direct result of our turning away from nuclear power, especially coal industry profits, they would be billionaires. If there had been no anti-nuclear movement I doubt there would be a single coal fired power plant left running in the United States. We'd look a lot like France. We wouldn't be building new coal plants, we wouldn't be killing any coal miners or leveling any mountains. This would have been a good thing, even if we'd had a few more Three Mile Islands sorts of accidents along the way.

It's a messy world. Personally I turn my environmental anger on automobiles and industrial agriculture. Those two environmental scourges make nuclear power look quite benign in comparison. Cars and high fructose corn syrup kill far, far more people than nuclear waste, and biofuel production destroys more of the landscape. Corn fields and highways are the ultimate dead zones.