I don't think of it as a selfie... It looks more like he wanted to take a photograph of the "elephant's foot", and considering that the only available light was his flashlight, had to do a long take while he trained the flashlight onto various parts of the piece, trying to illuminate it evenly. If he'd wanted to pose next to it and be recognizable, he would have shone the light onto his face while standing still for a few seconds too
You could call it a "self-timed photo". But "selfie" is the current slang, and a lot shorter. It's the same concept as taking a family photo including yourself.
Illumination of the "elephant's foot" seems to mainly come from just left of the camera, given its shadow on the background. So he probably stood there for a while, panning over it with his flashlight. And then he walked over, and stood next to it. But he was a little careless with the flashlight, and hit the camera some.
Also, the right side of the "elephant's foot" does seem to be flaming.
> while he trained the flashlight onto various parts of the piece
In photography that's a technique called 'light painting'. Usually done deliberately but I had to resort to it once on a shoot when the flash units wouldn't fire; I borrowed a bicycle headlight.
She goes into Reactor 3, finds a piece of graphite from the reactor core, and generally explores Chernobyl with a Geiger counter that she gleefully points out a few times is absolutely pegged to the maximum reading.
This was a thing on the night of the explosion too. Workers were reporting doses at the maximum their equipment could read. Those figures got passed up the hierarchy and contributed to the downplaying of the event, as doses would be way higher in a meltdown. Serhii Plonkhy has written a really good book about the disaster called ‘Chernobyl’.
A side note - I work with developers in Belarus which borders Ukraine and the Chernobyl to the north.
In that process I’ve met many young people who grew up in neighboring villages and small towns who call themselves Chernobyl-baby. Nothing severe, but they all have various minor health issues, apparently.
There was even a humanitarian program that provided summer getaways to some European countries for kids growing up in that region.
I (we) always hear about the Chernobyl disaster, but to see people born 10 years or so later and in a country that many have never heard of gave it a human face to me.
About 70% of the fallout landed were we were (the winds were blowing north that time, so Ukraine's side was bit more spared).
Most of the time, I do not want to talk about it, though.
Feels like we were cheated out of normal life.
Feels like we were animals to do experiments on.
I hate that time. Even now, place does not feel right.
I do not think health statistics coming out from here,
are right either...
I also do not like videogames about Chernobyl for some reason. But I understand why the story line is attractive.
So I am ok with that at a 'logical' level.
Once I become 'a person of means', I want to help people to get out of there, or, at least, live with proper controls of what we eat, drink, breath, etc.
Here's a fairly unique version of the story from two parents in Gomel with young children at the time of the accident [1]. Quite a story. The dad was a professor and had a Geiger counter and took readings. The mom's story is more emotional. The kid grew up to be a nuclear engineer.
Highly recommend the book "Voices From Chernobyl" by Svetlana Alexievich (she won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature partially for this work), it is an illuminating account of the Belarusian struggle and subsequent cover-up of the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident.
I remember my parents telling me that when the explosion happened, the schools forced all kids to either A). swallow an iodine capsule (if under 8 years old) or B). To drink a tablespoon of iodine.
This was in Poland so close enough to be affected by the fallout.
> Korneyev’s sense of humor remained intact, though. He seemed to have no regrets about his life’s work. “Soviet radiation,” he joked, “is the best radiation in the world.”
Wow.
How does one survive multiple visits to "the Elephant's Foot" long enough to tell these jokes?
How? The answer is "Nohavica's theory of alcoholic mountain". As you drink, you are climbing your alcoholic mountain. While you're climbing, everything is fine. You can even turn around and go back. But when you reach the summit and step over it, you are done. Nobody will help you. No doctors, no therapy, friends or medicine. Nobody. Then you die. Now you say "but my uncle was drinking whole life and he was fine". Sure, because his mountain was very tall. Nobody knows how tall is his mountain.
This Russian scientist had very tall radiation mountain. You try doing the same and you will die.
Do you have any source for that? I have some friends suffering from alcoholism that could probably use hearing something like that, but google isn’t turning up anything.
Humans (and other organisms in general) have a rather wide range of tolerance to such things, and it's the reason why an "LD50" exists. Not everyone who received the same dose will react with the same severity. Hence you will hear about people who have smoked a pack a day yet lived into their 90s without cancer, asbestos workers without lung problems, etc. What is responsible for this "robustness" is an interesting question to research itself.
That said, this guy happened to be particularly well-suited to his job.
>Hence you will hear about people who have smoked a pack a day yet lived into their 90s without cancer
At least for this, it's thought to be specifically linked to cyp p450 polymorphism. As the enzyme breaks down the carbon molecules from smoking, it creates free radicals which can cause cancer. People who express less of the enzyme experience a lower frequency of cancer from smoking, hypothetically.
I'd say the author's writing is entirely consistent with him knowing full well what corium is. This passage in particular shows he doesn't think it's an element (emphasis mine):
Of the five corium creations, only Cherobyl’s has escaped its containment. With no water to cool the mass, the radioactive sludge moved through the unit over the course a week following the meltdown, taking on molten concrete and sand to go along with the uranium (fuel) and zirconium (cladding) molecules.
> Chornobyl Center for Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Radioecology (spelling often gets changed as words go from Russian to English).
The differing spelling is because "Chornobyl" (Чорнобиль) is what it's called in Ukrainian, whereas "Chernobyl" (Чернобыль) is a transcription of the same name in Russian.
The first-responders received severe and lethal doses. The surrounding population was exposed to large amounts of I-131, this resulted in an increase in thyroid cancer.
Estimates vary widely and are controversial but somewhere in the range of 4k deaths are believed to be a result of the disaster. That estimate is from esteemed professionals in the respective sciences of Radiobiology and Biostatistics. Other estimates from Green Peace, etc range from 25-250k for the most serious nuclear disaster, ever. Contrast this to WHO estimates of 3M deaths per year due to fossil fuels, seriously bananas.
The relatively low number of casualties owes a lot to sacrifices made in a cleanup operation which also abandoned an area of land the size of Luxembourg and resettled all the people who lived there. And the casualty numbers rise if you start using the noisier estimates used to estimate fuel fossil deaths.
Of course, fossil fuels have killed more people, but if we used nuclear power with the same ubiquitousness and slapdash approach we've used fossil fuels, I'm not sure any of us would be alive today....
One thing I always wondered about is that the other reactor at Chernobyl was kept in operation for quite some time after this accident. How much radiation exposure did the operators and workers of that reactor receive?
Only 3rd and 5th (5 and 6 were at the last stage of construction but were cancelled) reactors had increased levels of radiation after the disaster. After contamination, 3rd was reactivated in 1987.
2nd block was stopped in 1991 after a case of fire, 1st block was stopped in 1996, 3rd was stopped in 2000.
They totally stripped the topsoil in areas where workers for the other reactors would be. They certainly still got irradiated, but considering the nature of the circumstances it was pretty safe.
The real hotspots in the region are the places they dumped that top soil and other debris.
Reminds of a movie from Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker. The guy may be the Stalker, leading people to the center of the Zone - the elephant foot in this case.
"We were shooting near Tallinn in the area around the small river Jägala with a half-functioning hydroelectric station. Up the river was a chemical plant and it poured out poisonous liquids downstream. There is even this shot in Stalker: snow falling in the summer and white foam floating down the river. In fact it was some horrible poison. Many women in our crew got allergic reactions on their faces. Tarkovsky died from cancer of the right bronchial tube. And Tolya Solonitsyn too. That it was all connected to the location shooting for Stalker became clear to me when Larisa Tarkovskaya died from the same illness in Paris."
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Illumination of the "elephant's foot" seems to mainly come from just left of the camera, given its shadow on the background. So he probably stood there for a while, panning over it with his flashlight. And then he walked over, and stood next to it. But he was a little careless with the flashlight, and hit the camera some.
Also, the right side of the "elephant's foot" does seem to be flaming.
Deleted Comment
Using a timer makes it not a selfie in my book.
In photography that's a technique called 'light painting'. Usually done deliberately but I had to resort to it once on a shoot when the flash units wouldn't fire; I borrowed a bicycle headlight.
She goes into Reactor 3, finds a piece of graphite from the reactor core, and generally explores Chernobyl with a Geiger counter that she gleefully points out a few times is absolutely pegged to the maximum reading.
She has a video named "rat taxidermy with LED eyes mod - full video - gore warning!" [0]. What the hell?
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B1pz-V_YGg
As Pioneers, some of us learned taxidermy ;) When we were about 12, as I recall.
In that process I’ve met many young people who grew up in neighboring villages and small towns who call themselves Chernobyl-baby. Nothing severe, but they all have various minor health issues, apparently.
There was even a humanitarian program that provided summer getaways to some European countries for kids growing up in that region.
I (we) always hear about the Chernobyl disaster, but to see people born 10 years or so later and in a country that many have never heard of gave it a human face to me.
About 70% of the fallout landed were we were (the winds were blowing north that time, so Ukraine's side was bit more spared).
Most of the time, I do not want to talk about it, though.
Feels like we were cheated out of normal life. Feels like we were animals to do experiments on.
I hate that time. Even now, place does not feel right.
I do not think health statistics coming out from here, are right either...
I also do not like videogames about Chernobyl for some reason. But I understand why the story line is attractive. So I am ok with that at a 'logical' level.
Once I become 'a person of means', I want to help people to get out of there, or, at least, live with proper controls of what we eat, drink, breath, etc.
[1] https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl-memories.html
Yep, when I was young, various families of kids in my school would host children that were affected by the Chernobyl disaster.
This was in Poland so close enough to be affected by the fallout.
Wow.
How does one survive multiple visits to "the Elephant's Foot" long enough to tell these jokes?
This Russian scientist had very tall radiation mountain. You try doing the same and you will die.
That said, this guy happened to be particularly well-suited to his job.
At least for this, it's thought to be specifically linked to cyp p450 polymorphism. As the enzyme breaks down the carbon molecules from smoking, it creates free radicals which can cause cancer. People who express less of the enzyme experience a lower frequency of cancer from smoking, hypothetically.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chern...
This aspect seems to have escaped the article’s author, who operate with the term as if it’s another new element un the periodic table.
Of the five corium creations, only Cherobyl’s has escaped its containment. With no water to cool the mass, the radioactive sludge moved through the unit over the course a week following the meltdown, taking on molten concrete and sand to go along with the uranium (fuel) and zirconium (cladding) molecules.
> Chornobyl Center for Nuclear Safety, Radioactive Waste and Radioecology (spelling often gets changed as words go from Russian to English).
The differing spelling is because "Chornobyl" (Чорнобиль) is what it's called in Ukrainian, whereas "Chernobyl" (Чернобыль) is a transcription of the same name in Russian.
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/98/7/3039/2537246
Estimates vary widely and are controversial but somewhere in the range of 4k deaths are believed to be a result of the disaster. That estimate is from esteemed professionals in the respective sciences of Radiobiology and Biostatistics. Other estimates from Green Peace, etc range from 25-250k for the most serious nuclear disaster, ever. Contrast this to WHO estimates of 3M deaths per year due to fossil fuels, seriously bananas.
Of course, fossil fuels have killed more people, but if we used nuclear power with the same ubiquitousness and slapdash approach we've used fossil fuels, I'm not sure any of us would be alive today....
From explosions? Drinking? Sitting near it? Got a source?
2nd block was stopped in 1991 after a case of fire, 1st block was stopped in 1996, 3rd was stopped in 2000.
The real hotspots in the region are the places they dumped that top soil and other debris.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film)#Production...