Chornobyl remains Ukraine's Soviet-era nightmare, 20 years after explosion

myTELUS ^ | Apr 23, 2006

[lizol]

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[Brilliant]

Here's hoping that they are using the same technology in Iran.

[BeHoldAPaleHorse]

Last thing heard in the control room before the event:

"Hold muh vodka and Y'ALL WATCH THIS!"

[1rudeboy]

daily drop of iodine on a sugar

Open question to the forum: would that make a difference?

[2banana]

We reached the old control room, long and poorly lighted, with its damaged machinery, the place where the Soviet engineers threw a power switch for a routine test at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, 1986, and two explosions followed one after another immediately.

Hardly - the test was complicated and the soviet engineers actually had to over ride many safety fail safes to get it to "work.". But this was the USSR where you could not "This is crazy and we need to stop"

[Mount Athos]

Radioactive iodine gloms onto your thyroid and fries it.

If you satiate your thyroid with regular iodine then the radioactive iodine isotope won't be taken up. Radioactive isotopes that mimick minerals taken up by the body are especially dangerous.

Would definitely be useful right after a nuclear explosion but I really doubt it this long after. I guess it couldn't hurt but it's easy to overdose on iodine too if you don't know what you're doing.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

No, but they thought it did. The government pushed the "cure" for it's placebo effect on the public.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Have to correct that. There are some slight positive effects but it's not a cure. It has no effect on some people. At best it will get rid of some of the isotopes in a few.

Back in the 1980s, our intel was abuzz with stories that the Russian military had a pill to cure radiation. We later learned it was only iodine.

[Spirochete]

Would definitely be useful right after a nuclear explosion but I really doubt it this long after.

Iodine-131 has a half life of around eight days. Twenty years on, its been over 900 half-lives.

[Thom Pain]

I've read somewhere that the hastily-built sarcophagus is crumbling and that when it collapses it will expel huge clouds of radioactive dust the consistency of talcum powder up into the air creating another disaster.

[Reeses]

Here's hoping that they are using the same technology in Iran.

It's nice to think it couldn't happen here but we have a different problem. There is no law that forbids extremist Muslims, Iranians, or foreign born workers from working in an American nuclear reactor, or in security guarding control rod cooling ponds.

[yankeedame]

daily drop of iodine on a sugar
Open question to the forum: would that make a difference?

================

IMHO the open question should be "Why on sugar?"

Iodine inhanced salt has been the way to go just about forever. The reason being that while the human body can do without (refinded) sugar(s) it must have salt to survive.

[overdog2]

http://www.nukepills.com/

Potassium Iodide...

[polymuser]

Here's an interesting site from a woman that toured the place on a motorcycle and took pictures. Ghostly. Lots of pictures so dial-uppers be warned: it'll be slow.

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/

[ops33]

We were stationed in West Berlin at the time and the explosion occurred 2 weeks after my son was born. Scared the crap out of us.

[ops33]

We were stationed in West Berlin at the time and the explosion occurred 2 weeks after my son was born. Scared the crap out of us.

[Sender]

Iodine (and likely other nuke meds) must be handy and taken before a lot of exposure or else it's too late. Internet orders after the flash will be too slow.

[wolfcreek]

I read an article in the Sunday paper stating that the death toll and aftereffects were not anywhere near the official estimates. Maybe, after all the nuke tests in the past, We have built some natural immunity to radiation. Or perhaps, they are the reason for so many cancers.

[Mazepa]

I was too young to remember Chornobyl.
But I do remember how in my city Chernivtsi, around 1988, young children started losing their hair. There were multiple rumours flying around. One of them, that the military spilled something. My parents didn't think long and sent me to live with my grandmother in the village for something like 6 months.