Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans | Hacker News Reader

Fukushima studies show wildlife is doing nicely without humans

theregister.com

79 pointspseudolus68 comments

Among the lessons I think should be learned from Fukushima is: nuclear power plants should have vents with cesium filters.

Almost all the long term dose from a nuclear accident is from 137Cs. So, if you can vent steam (and hydrogen) and trap the cesium, you can avoid much of that dose. The cost of doing this shouldn't be very high, and it would have helped a lot at Fukushima. It might even enable the other safety systems (like, the containment building) to be made cheaper/smaller.

This idea is somewhat in the spirit of the famous "Cockcroft's Folly" at Windscale.

Is cesium filter something that actually exists?

Also filters iodine.

https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1224/ML12248A021.pdf

It does appear to bind iodine, but no mention of Cs tho?

See page with the title "Experimental data base – Conclusion of the tests (II)"

Indeed; thanks!

I don't believe that would've helped in the case of Fukushima because of the hydrogen explosions that would've expelled radioactive dust.

I'm not a nuclear engineer but it seems to me that we should try to find an alternative material to zirconium. It can decompose water into hydrogen gas. It's why hydrogen built up inside Fukushima Daiichi and it's suspected that's why Chernobyl Reactor 4 had two explosions, one of them being hydrogen. Alternatively, we could try to circulate another liquid through reactors which won't decompose into hydrogen, possibly something with a higher thermal capacity too, but that might be expensive.

I think at Fukushima it would have enabled the hydrogen to be vented to a stack in a controlled manner, not into the buildings where it exploded.

One thing we can learn from Fukushima and Chernobyl: humans are more dangerous to wildlife than nuclear accidents.

Which is why I love Agent Smith's quote from The Matrix:

"Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment; but you humans do not. Instead you multiply, and multiply, until every resource is consumed. The only way for you to survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern... a virus."

Which is exactly why I do not worry about so called "invasive species" (cats, kudzu, english ivy, ...)

Only humans are truly invasive.

We’re just as invasive as the other ones, exploiting our own environment as much as we can.

Which, while making for an excellent bit of dialogue, is unfortunately not the case at all. The idea that natural systems reach an equilibrium is a fiction imposed by humans who invented the concept of “ecology” in the 20th century. Every attempt to measure an equilibrium has revealed that the system being measured is constantly changing and there is no stable configuration.

One of the first tenets of evolutionary ecology we learned in school is that all organisms need to be able to grow exponentially, to fill their niche. That's what everyone does, it grows when it's able. And humans mostly do that too.

The population expansion rate is declining, and we expect to level out around 9 billion people.

> The idea that natural systems reach an equilibrium is a fiction

There's a middle ground.

a) We invented modern medicine and now live 2-3x as long as evolution selects for.

b) We have effectively no predators. Most apex predators are limited in number based on availability of prey. We figured out how to intensively farm our prey. Therefore there's a very high bar that our population has yet to reach, which is unusual.

c) While an equilibrium observable in a short period of time may be rare in nature, over longer periods oscillations in population size correlated with availability of resources are common.

d) Since the entire system of our planet is dynamic and has had parameters changing relatively rapidly over our lifetimes (both directly and indirectly mostly caused by us), it would be unexpected to find a static relationship between species populations. Everything is adapting.

Humans don't actually live any longer. We just have less mortality at the lower end of the age spectrum which brings up the average. And it seems we still have predators if you consider covid maybe? Many countries on earth have a negative birth rate which suggests maybe there is some sort of equilibrium in my opinion. Of course I must point out my bias I am in fact a human being.

I wouldn't say there aren't stable configurations. These systems tend to bounce between strange attractors (which are stable with variance), and the set of possible strange attractors is also probably stable given the life forms that are interacting.

Of course, on geological time scales massive events can disrupt the set of possible strange attractors, but then nothing is stable or permanent as you go out in time scope so I'm not sure that matters.

Not to mention Agent Smith is dead wrong. Want to see biggest polluter/changer in the world. Plants. It's not a virus. It's plants.

Oxygen is a highly toxic compound, that's essentially exhaust gas for photosynthesis.

Plants changed the world way more than humans ever did. They redefined the basic chemistry of all other life on Earth. Because they slaughtered 97% of all life, by accident. What survived had to use/endure oxygen.

Perhaps this is a quibbling point but the Great Oxidation Event happened more than 2 billion years ago, long before plants evolved. Most atmospheric oxygen was "created" by cyanobacteria. In fact, plants - along with all other multicellular organisms - were one of the beneficiaries of the GOE as they would not have been able to evolve without it.

You are right, but cyanobacteria is a plant or plant life predecessor.

Either way. Cyanobacteria isn't a virus, like Agent Smith implied.

I find this story extremely compelling. (Is it True?)

> Because they slaughtered 97% of all life, by accident.

And isn’t this also true of humans? We’re not killing other species (and their “habitats”) on purpose, it’s a side effect of Real Goals (eg, we want fuel to heat our homes so we can survive the winter. Or more cynically, Fuel Source Executives need to sell fuel in order to consume yachts and ski vacations).

See great oxidation event.

Also destroing x% of species isn't same destroying x% of life.

If there are ten species of 2 individuals and 80 individuals of another species, you can kill ~90% species while killing only 20% of all life. If you kill 90% of all life you have to kill 90 individuals.

All equilibrium is temporary and imperfect. In the complete absence of external influences (which in the extreme in practice is impossible) ecosystems do indeed reach something approaching equilibrium, certainly with fluctuations in predators and prey, but no violent, sudden disruptions.

There's a whole genre of YouTube videos made by hobbyists who establish ecosystems in glass jars and seal them for many years.

https://youtu.be/Es6DDuMmhAM

Edit: With (of course) the external influence of light ;)

I remember that quote but it's not backed by reality. Plenty of mammals haven't reached a "natural equilibrium" and are destroying fauana/plantlife unchecked.

Some examples from present time-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbits_in_Australia, http://www.iucngisd.org/gisd/100_worst.php

We live in a finite world. Equilibrium will happen. Given enough time, the rabbits will run out of food and start to die off. Or a predator will be introduced (or evolve) that will feed on the rabbits and flourish.

According to the ideology that nature should be/have become static and that all changes are therefore due to humans, the rabbits are just a symptom of human destruction.

This makes no sense. Humans are nature.

If you went to say Africa and killed all the lions there, the wildlife would “flourish” in the same way, but it wouldn’t be natural because lions killing prey and reducing their numbers is natural.

> Humans are nature.

Yeah but they didn’t say we weren’t. They said we are more dangerous to wildlife than nuclear accidents.

To be fair, a pride of lions is also more dangerous to wildlife than a nuclear accident.

Lions, like humans, have intent and will happily track down and kill the last deer.

A nuclear accident on the other hand will only kill at random and will “let go” of many animals it could kill but didn’t happen to incidentally radiate as it disapated.

Notice that the fauna we see is the surviving one…

Or the descendants. Humans live a long time for our body mass. Fukushima happened 10 years ago. For a human, that's 1/2-1/3 of a generation. For a deer, that is 5 generations. For a mouse, that's potentially 500 generations ago.

Mostly because nuclear accidents are much scarier than they should be.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was safer to live in Fukishima than the average city due to reduced (non-radioactive) pollution and fewer people piloting multi-ton objects at 60mph.

Pretty much the same thing observed in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, except more so as the fallout from Fukushima's disaster was so much smaller (at least overland, no red forest or equivalent).

It shows quite flagrantly how much human activity damages wildlife, that radioactivity-infested nuclear exclusion zones become biodiversity hotspots over just decades.

What both exclusion zones show us is how much nature benefits from small unmanaged areas.

One complaint here in Denmark is that we can't really set aside any meaningful areas to unmanaged nature, because we don't have the space. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima indicates that we might not need as much spaces as we think, but it does need to be one large chunk of land. Sure a Chernobyl size area might be a bit much, but half the size would still go a long way.

It also shows two things things I think most ecologists are well aware of but which are harde to explain to laypeople, under quantity having a quality of its own only going so far when you actually need quality:

1. having 1000 sq km of total reserves but highly fragmented over the territory is better than nothing but almost certainly worse than having only 500 at a single location, because in the fragmented version you'll basically have lots of copies of "edge" ecological niches, but will be missing the "deeper" niches entirely

2. areas being "undeveloped" is not sufficient, and possibly misleading, because it's really the human activity which is disruptive to wildlife, if you decide to have wildlife refuge you need complete removal of humans for it to truly be effective

The same thing happened in Chernobyl:

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/how-chernobyl-ha...

https://theconversation.com/chernobyl-has-become-a-refuge-fo...

And the Demilitarized Zone between the Koreas, although it doesn't belong to the same category as Fukushima and Chernobyl. But it's a biodiversity hotspot.

Lesson for humans: All we need to do is get out of the way.

What is the role of cancer and birth defects in the animal population in these areas? Those are very significant issues for humans that make us very scared of radioactive contamination. Are animals impacted less (maybe due to shorter reproduction cycles or larger litters?)?

I think it's that a 10% chance of dying of cancer before old age is unacceptable to humans but won't have a big effect on population. Similarly, a 10% chance of birth defects isn't relevant to most species as a large proportion (often more than half) of their young die before adulthood anyway.

IIRC animals living in the Chernobyl exclusion zone have a 20-30% lower lifespan on average with a high variance (some animals lives’ might be cut in half while others may be better adapted and live more or less the same amount).

That’s fine when the alternative is extinction but not when one wants to meet their grandkids.

Most people dont seem to get that the only ones were really destroying are ourselves. Another mass estinction wont end life on this planet, its too robust.

In fact, a mass extinction would be beneficial to the ecosystem by wiping out humans and allowing the rest of the planet to recover and thrive.

sad that you had to create an anon account to make this comment, as this sentiment gets downvoted here without fail.

Because it’s not very useful to anyone with an ego larger than a common house ant (e.g. sees a sense of self beyond the greater glory of the hive). A world without humans, without any human legacy, is not a future that any normative human wishes for. Is it even worth discussing something that 99% of people hate because it literally is a self inflicted apocalypse?

It’s just a fact - people are bad for biodiversity. I don’t think anyone can argue against it. What that implies is kind of dependent on your values, like you said, but it doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it and need to erase all such comments.

Ok let's discuss.

If all the humans that want the entire planet wiped of humans could start by setting the example with themselves, the rest of us will take it from here.

Seems to me like one should follow all the way through on those desires or else find some other ways of to live in which one could create value through their existence. To spout off that everyone should all die while not actually following through is one of the most selfish and destructive mind sets outside of murder and suicide.

That's not what I took from that comment, but there's another by the same poster that I can't see so maybe that's what they were suggesting there. Obviously, I'd personally vote against any such plan, but the issue is that there might not be a vote. By the looks of it we are inching towards one and half the world is in denial and the other half is arguing about how much beef we should be eating. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, I have no doubts that life and people will be around for a very long time, it's our current lifestyles that are either going to voluntarily change or be changed for us.

So to offer a solution, I think we need to put a dollar value on biodiversity in addition to carbon tax so that these things start to show up on the spreadsheets of people with the actual power to change things.

I think part of the reason people don’t fight for climate change is that they’d know the planet will recover… if there are few enough people on it.

They assume that they or their defendants will be one of the survivors so there’s nothing to worry about.

It’s the same issue with trying to prevent war when both sides think they can win. Sure there’s hardship but if you win didn’t you come out ahead? No one considers the trauma of the generation that has to actually do the fighting.

> allowing the rest of the planet to recover and thrive.

Are humans extra-terrestrial? How is humans thriving not part of the 'planet thriving'?

In fairness here, the comment said:

allowing THE REST of the planet to recover and thrive.

Which to me meant that humans are a part of the planet, and if you cut them out the other parts of the planet do "better" by the poster's definition of "better".

Humans are the only hope for life on this planet. On a long enough timescale the planet will cease to exist. Humans have (or have the ability to develop) the technology to establish life in other parts of the universe.

It is highly unlikely that life - as on earth - does not exist anywhere in the universe. Where the great filter is is a great question, but I am 99.9999% sure that it is NOT basic life with some intelligence (e.g. animals). - The elements CHNOPS are verywhere - including oldest asteroids - enough habitable zone exoplanets - enough evidence of primitive life forming where energy gradients exist - ...

so humans really are not that important for the universe, just for ourselves. But this should be enough for us not eradicate ourselves for the mid term benefit of a few.

> It is highly unlikely that life - as on earth - does not exist anywhere in the universe.

This is a common senitment, but there is no rational basis for believing it to be true.

> enough evidence of primitive life forming where energy gradients exist

There is no evidence that life has arisen more than once.

> there is no rational basis for believing it to be true.

Denying that humans and their blue little planet are in any way special is such a rational basis.

If origin of life is uncommon, then any place it does arise will necessarily be special. You are simply asserting, as an axiom, that life cannot be uncommon. The core of your erroneous thinking is that you have not taken into account observer selection bias.

https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/W6-Observer-sele...

Your sort of reasoning also led people to think in the 1700s that all the other planets in our solar system had intelligent life on them.

An extinction event that wipes put humans would wipe out every large animal too. Humans are incredibly versatile and adaptable.

Perhaps in the short term, but I don't think it would be beneficial long term. If humans are wiped out, which species would save or relocate planet earth's biosphere from the coming destruction by the sun going red giant in a few billion years? Humans can potentially preserve the biosphere through either stellar husbandry/engineering or travelling to the stars (or both). At a certain point, the solar radiation may get so intense as to boil the ocean and destroy the atmosphere. Then it is predicted to envelop earth which would seal the deal for any potential subterranean life.

[1] comes to mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_gardening

Thanks! I never heard about "Atomic gardening" before and with that I learned one thing and got one idea:

- radiating plants have actually produced a number of useful mutations.

- idea: can this be the inspiration for why a number of superhero stories include a hero or villain or something getting irradiated and get fantastic properties?

> "Studies show that nature is fine"

Must be ghost studies taking in mind that theregister never cite them or shown any in the article. Who says that?

Without any real name or organization and the usual '"scientists" say that' bullshit plus the usual "9 Yo girl cute history" to appeal to feelings... I will assume that this is just either wishful thinking or a PR stunt.

Because the consequences of nuclear accidents have been exaggerated by the anti-Nuclear lobby and hysteria.

> Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start again. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David.

Dr. Stephen Falken

Maybe we should take the hint.

This article buried the real story here: Radioactive Terror Pigs.

These mutant pigs are deadly and dangerous, pigs are already pretty intelligent, these are probably even more so. They could be the first step toward actual Orcish hominids someday. Never fear though, we will be long dead.

Yes, unless you start talking about the article _after_ reading it. As the article is referencing the other, earlier article about the terror pigs in the same publication.

It is similar entertaining btw.

If I was animal, I'd like Japanese people to stay away from me as far as possible, too.

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