@OmnipotentNoodle

5 months ago

This is extremely misleading. Uranium-238 is extremely weakly radioactive, and is non-fissile material, meaning it is generally unwanted in nuclear fuel. A subtance's radioactivity is directly an inverse function of its half-life. If you radiate all your energy, you dont have any energy left to radiate. The candle that's twice as bright burns half as long. Even fissile uranium is fairly weakly radioactive, with U-235--the enriched fissile fuel in reactors--having a half-life of over 700 million years. It actually poses a greater danger of chemical toxicity than radiation damage. Most of the concern for radioactive contamination comes from internal exposure to alpha radiation from ingestion of Caesium-137 and Strontium-90. These isotopes have half-lives of ~30 years. The disaster happened in 1986, so 38 years have passed, meaning ~46% of these isotopes remains in the environment. In 100 years, only 4% will remain. There are significant concerns regarding dispersal of particulate and aerosol contaminants, as well as accumulation in the water systems and food chain, but these threats can only last as long as the contaminants. It is also worth noting that there are plans for a cleanup effort, where the remaining reactor corium will be safely stored away in a brand-new long-term nuclear waste storage facility. Low-level radiation poses no discernable health effects below doses of 100 mSv per year. Official estimates regarding the long-term health impacts of remaining radioactive contamination are based on the highly conservative Linear No-Threshold (LNT) model, which supposes that there is no such threshold below which radiation damage is reparable by the body. As a matter of fact, it has been shown that the psychological and psychosomatic effects of fear of radiation are--in many cases that don't involve direct exposure to a catastrophic nuclear event--far more damaging than the radiation itself. The public is literally worrying themselves sick due to anti-nuclear fearmongering. TL;DR - This video sucks ngl lol. Uninformed fearmongering.

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