Three Mile Island Radiation Leak

Almost one month to the day that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)  released a Press release extending Three Mile Island’s license for 20 years, there has been another radiation leak at the facility.  http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/files/2009/11/three-mile-island-renewal.pdf  

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has renewed the operating license for the Three Mile Island Nuclear Station, Unit 1 (TMI-1), in Middletown, Pa., for an additional 20 years. The  new license will expire on April 19, 2034.  Via Associated Press, “A small amount of radiation has been detected in a reactor building at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania. Officials say there is no public health risk.” http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jS9jFy7mB2i2XjBy3BDXHnvJG-7wD9C4M3SG0   

A partial Meltdown of Three Mile Island’s Unit 2 reactor occurred in March 1979.

The NRC http://www.nrc.gov/ must be scratching it’s a$$ this weekend as there is no official press release from the agency.  The Current Power Reactor Status Report for November 20, 2009 shows a big fat zero for producing energy at Three Mile Island at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/reactor-status/ps.html

From the NY Daily News, “Employees at the infamous plant were cutting pipes in a reactor building about 4 p.m. when a radiation alarm sounded, triggering the evacuation of 150 workers. The cause of the leak has not been found.  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/11/22/2009-11-22_three_mile_island.html#ixzz0XcSYPiRL The reactor building has been shut down for weeks while workers from Exelon — an energy company that operates Three Mile Island — overhauled steam generators and other equipment.  Exelon Nuclear says that there was no contamination identified outside the reactor building.  Surveys conducted outside the reactor building indicated a slight increase in radioactivity, but levels have since returned to normal, TMI officials report. Dauphin County and state EMA officials did not learn of the exposure until Middletown Mayor Robert Reid contacted the county’s 911 Center at 9:30pm, 5 1/2 hours after the radiation release. via http://www.nucpros.com/index.php?q=node/7486#comment-672  at member of the Profession Reactor Operator Society. 

Did anyone bother to notify The White House?  Has the news yet to reach Daniel B. Poneman, Deputy Secretary of Energy? http://www.energy.gov/organization/daniel_poneman.htm 

For five and a half hours Exelon Nuclear didn’t tell anyone that there was a potential problem?   While this case seems to indicate containment, what about the what if’s, had it not been contained?  How does Excelon say that there was no contamination outside in one sentence and in the very next say that there was an increase in radioactivity outside, in the next? 

In contrast to The Three Mile Accident on March 28, 1979… when the plant experienced a failure in the secondary, non‑nuclear section of the plant. They did not know that the core had melted, but they immediately took steps to try to gain control of the reactor and ensure adequate cooling to the core. The NRC=s regional office in King of Prussia, Pa., was notified at 7:45 a.m. on March 28. By 8:00, NRC Headquarters in Washington, D.C., was alerted and the NRC Operations Center in Bethesda, Md., was activated. The regional office promptly dispatched the first team of inspectors to the site and other agencies, such as the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, also mobilized their response teams. Helicopters hired by TMI’s owner, General Public Utilities Nuclear, and the Department of Energy were sampling radioactivity in the atmosphere above the plant by midday. A team from the Brookhaven National Laboratory was also sent to assist in radiation monitoring. At 9:15 a.m., the White House was notified and at 11:00 a.m., all non‑essential personnel were ordered off the plant’s premises. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html

A dozen or so reactors are waiting for approval for new and existing Nuclear Energy Producing Facilities,at  http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/new-reactors/new-licensing-files/expected-new-rx-applications.pdf with a hat tip to http://taxdollars.freedomblogging.com/2009/11/11/three-mile-islands-license-renewed-for-20-years/42493/  Incidentally, no new nuclear facilities have been built since the Three Mile Island mishap in the U.S.

Yucca Mountain

After spending billions on Yucca Mountain, President Obama has derailed plans to open the facility to nuclear storage.  http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/repository/index.shtml Yucca sits on the  Nellis Military Operations Area in Nevada approximately 80 miles northwest of the Las Vegas metropolitan area.  Maybe the government made a deal with the aliens of Area 51 for storage instead. 

Whatever the future of the facility, President Obama continues on the global warming train to nowhere, saying in his speech on Nuclear Weapons in Prague:

“To protect our planet, now is the time to change the way that we use energy,” he said to applause. ” Together, we must confront climate change by ending the world’s dependence on fossil fuels, by tapping the power of new sources of energy like the wind and sun, and calling upon all nations to do their part. And I pledge to you that in this global effort, the United States is now ready to lead….“We should build a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation, including an international fuel bank, so that countries can access peaceful power without increasing the risks of proliferation. That must be the right of every nation that renounces nuclear weapons, especially developing countries embarking on peaceful programs…. We must harness the power of nuclear energy on behalf of our efforts to combat climate change, and to advance peace opportunity for all people.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/05/obama-prague-speech-on-nu_n_183219.html  President Obama wants more nuclear plants, less nuclear weapons and offers no place to store the waste. He wants to close Gitmo and offers no place to store that human waste either.  

Arrrghhh.

Three Mile Island wasn’t the only nuclear facility having incidents reports this week.   http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/event/2009/20091120en.html.  November 18, 2009, the RSO (Radiation Safety Officer) of Terracon Consulting Inc. (ARK-0820-03121) reported the theft of a Troxler 3440 Moisture Density gauge (SN#27140) from a construction site at the Two Pines landfill in Jacksonville, Arkansas. The gauge contained an 9 mCi Cesium-137 source and a 44 mCi Americium-241/Beryllium source.  The category 3 radioactive material gauge was found along a roadside. 

Did we learn nothing from Chernobyl?

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Solitamente i titoli e le copertine dei volumi hanno una certa attinenza, nel caso de “Il mondo senza di noi” edito da Einaudi la statua della libertà coperta dalle nevi vale più di mille parole e richiama il cinema in stile R. Hemmerich, una lunga sequela di costose catastrofi da “Indipendence day” al neonato “2012″ ma soprattutto “The day after tomorrow”che con il libro ci si aspetta abbia molta attinenza: ed è qui il problema.

Il libro di Weisman, uno dei più clamorosi successi degli ultimi anni nel settore della saggistica, promette di guidare il lettore in un futuro in cui la natura si riprende ciò ch’è suo e che le è stato espropriato senza mezzi termini da un mammifero troppo intraprendente e superficiale: l’uomo. L’idea di un mondo rinselvatichito, in cui le città, prima agglomerati rumorosi e frenetici, divengono deserti mausolei di un mondo che non c’è più, monumenti fatiscenti alla gloria di passati dominatori del mondo, ha un fortissimo fascino. Si pensi a film come “Io sono leggenda” ad esempio, in cui, soprattutto nel caso della versione Hollywodiana con Will Smith, l’ambientazione da sola vale tutta la pellicola.

Dal libro di Weisman mi aspettavo proprio questo: una minuziosa, certosina, magari anche pedante in alcuni casi, spiegazione, narrazione, della lenta riconquista a partire dall’istante zero attraverso i secoli. Un film mentale permeato solo di silenzio e rumori come il crepitio dell’asfalto che si rompe sotto l’attenzione di radici troppo curiose ed impietose per non ferirlo o il canto degli uccelli che hanno nidificato sugli scheletri dei grattacieli, oramai vuote scatole di metallo e calcestruzzo.

Il libro di Weisman però non è questo, o lo è solo in parte, difatti la narrazione, che è comunque gradevole, ballonzola tra l’ecologia e l’antropologia, in prevalenza, usando solo come intermezzo d’effetto gli scenari di un futuro derelitto, specifico per l’argomento trattato. Ad esempio se la narrazione verte sulle condizione perimetrale di alcune riserve naturali africani, in chiusura o in parallelo, Weisman sfrutta il connubio tra immaginazione e dati scientifici per ipotizzare cosa succedere in quella determinata zona se di colpo scomparisse il genere umano.

Il libro ha quindi una sua ciclicità narrativa fatta di:una determinata sequenza di fasi: introduzione alla zona geografica; impatto antropico su di essa; problematiche attuali; scenario futuro senza il fattore antropico. Questo metodo ha grosso pregio se applicato ad alcuni scenari straordinari come la fascia demilitarizzata tra le due Coree o l’area petrolchimica texana, ma perde molto quando si parla di aree meno interessanti come i bordi delle riserve naturali africane o gli atolli del pacifico.

Fantastica è la parte inerente Varosha, una sorta di Las Vegas cipriota abbonata dai greci e mai colonizzata dai turchi dopo la guerra che tutt’ora separa l’isola. La descrizione di una realtà come quella in cui un solo uomo cammina tra i grandi alberghi vuoti, in cui il manto stradale è andato lentamente coprendosi di fiori ed erbe, il tutto immerso nel silenzio era quello che mi aspettavo permeasse il volume e che solo in parte, memorabile anche il capitolo inerente l’energia nucleare che consiglierei di leggere a chi è a favore del piano energetico dell’attuale governo, con l’immancabile richiamo alla suggestiva vicenda di Chernobyl, purtroppo è stata realizzata. Molto spesso l’autore, al contrario, si abbandona a lunghe digressioni di antropo/ecologia di riconosciuto valore didattico ma che smorzano di molto l’eccitazione di chi legge. In più nel testo edito da Eiunaudi v’è un grossolano errore di traduzione: silicon in inglese è silicio e non silicone. Non si capirebbe altrimenti perché nella silicon valley si trovino moltissimi ingegneri elettronici e pochissime maggiorate.

In conclusione il libro di Weisman è decisamente interessante, scordatevi però l’idea di leggere di ipotetiche Tokyo silenziose, New York rinselvatichite e Venezie sommerse, scenari decisamente fantastici e suggestivi ma forse troppo astratti per un saggio con le aspirazioni, forse, del romanzo di fantascienza, ma che saggio è, e resta comunque.

Banyak orang mengenal Mama Laurent, sebagai paranormal, setidaknya lewat iklan televisi. Tapi hanya sedikit orang yang tahu bahwa ia berdarah Gypsy. Dan, sementara ia bisa hidup layak dan cukup terhormat di Jakarta, saudara-saudara sedarahnya di Rusia hanya menjadi warga kelas dua yang selalu menjadi sasaran perlakuan dikriminatif dari pemerintah dan sesama warga.

Mama Laurent, peramal top (tapi sering salah?) Indonesia berdarah Gypsy.

Wartawan dari FRANCE 24 menemui orang-orang Gypsy yang tinggal di Chudovo, sebuah kota yang letaknya sekitar 100 km dari kota Saint-Petersburg selatan. Komunitas beranggota 2000 orang tinggal di kawasan itu tak lama setelah bencana (ledakan instalasi nuklir) Chernobyl tahun 1986.

Selama 20 tahun, pemerintah setempat tidak memedulikan kehadiran mereka.  Tapi kejatuhan Uni Soviet mengubah segalanya, antara lain tanah jadi harus didaftar dan dibeli. Musim semi tahun 2007, polisi dan tentara menghancurkan perumahan kaum Gypsy. Saat ini agaknya mereka sedang terancam lagi.

Sejak tahun 2005, pemerintah telah memperketat hukum pemilikan tanah. Alhasil, mereka memerintahkan pemusnahan salah satu perkemahan kaum Gypsy yang terletak beberapa meter dekat sebuah pabrik aspal yang telah ditutup lima tahun lalu, demi alasan-alasan kesehatan. Anehnya, rumah-rumah orang Rusia yang letaknya 50 meter dari situ tidak terkena ancaman apa pun.

Musim semi berikutnya, kaum Gypsy harus sudah pindah. Dengan pembayaran 4000 rubel, mereka bisa menempati kawasan berlumpur yang dijepit jalan kendaraan bermotor dan rel kerea api, dan tidak ada gedung sekolah yang dekat dari situ. Di situ pun, mereka disambut dengan sikap agak bermusuhan. “Kami tahu persis perilaku mereka. Mereka mencuri kayu bakar, mereka membuat kekacauan di mana-mana,” kata seorang wanita penduduk desa, yang mengaku hendak mengirim petisi ke Moskow untuk mencegah kaum Gypsy pindah ke tempat tersebut.

Para penguasa lokal juga tak sudi memperlakukan mereka secara lebih baik. Pemerintah setempat tak mau mendafar mereka. Karena itu mereka kehilangan segala hak pelayanan kesehatan, segala bantuan keluarga, dan akhirnya segala hak hidup yang legal.

Apa yang mereka terima di Chudovo bukanlah satu-satunya kasus. Sejak tahun 2006, setengah juta kaum Gypsy Rusia mengalami pengusiran. Walau mendapat kecaman dari lembaga-lembaga HAM dan peringatan dari PBB, pemerintah federasi Rusia tidak pernah melakukan apa pun untuk menyelesaikan masalah kaum Gypsy.

* Untuk mengetahui lebih jauh identitas orang Gypsy, bacalah di Wikipedia.

http://quicksilverscreen.com/watch?video=43086 (if an advertising sign-up block appears, click the ‘back’ arrow for your screen and the movie will play without signing up)

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Forbes included Chernobyl in the World’s Unique Places to Visit.

Che l’Energia Nucleare fosse sicura, intrinsecamente sicura grazie ai moderni sistemi di progettazione, lo abbiamo ripetuto più e più volte.

La frase del Ministro Scajola alla presentazione del Master Universitario di Genova  in Tecnologie Nucleari è alquanto significativa:  “Le centrali nucleari  hanno creato meno disturbo all’ ambiente e procurato meno morti e feriti di tutte le altre aziende, pur comprendendo Chernobyl”.

Sarebbe interessante conoscere la fonte da cui deriva questo studio, ma personalmente la cosa non mi stupisce e credo dovrebbe far riflettere catastrofisti, allarmisti e pseudo-ambientalisti, quelli insomma del “Nucleare No perché Sì“.

 Andrea Macco

Abstract:

Background

Since the Chornobyl accident in 1986, the physical health of exposed children in Ukraine has been monitored, but their perceived health has not been studied. This study examines health perceptions of Ukrainian adolescents exposed to radioactive fallout in utero or as infants, and the epidemiologic and Chornobyl-related influences on self-reported health.

Method

We assessed three groups of 19-year olds in Kyiv: 262 evacuees from contaminated areas near the plant; 261 classmate controls; and 325 population-based controls. The evacuees and classmates were previously assessed at age 11. Structured interviews were conducted with the adolescents and their mothers (N=766), followed by general physical examinations (N=722) and blood tests (N=707). Proportional odds logistic regression and multi-group path analysis were the major statistical tests.

Results

The examination and blood test results were similar across groups except for a significantly elevated rate of thyroid enlargement found by palpation in evacuees (17.8%) compared former classmates (8.7%) and population-based controls (8.0%). In addition, four evacuees and one population control had had a thyroidectomy. Compared to controls, the evacuees rated their health the least positively and reported more medically diagnosed illnesses during the 5 years preceding the interview, particularly thyroid disease, migraine headache, and vascular dystony. The consistent risk factors (p<0.001) for these subjective health reports were evacuee status, female gender, multiple hospitalizations, and health risk perception regarding Chornobyl. All three groups of mothers rated their children’s health more negatively than the adolescents themselves, and maternal ratings were uniquely associated with the adolescents’ health reports in the adjusted models. In the longitudinal evacuee and classmate subsamples, path analysis showed that mothers’ health ratings when the children were age 11 predicted their later evaluations which in turn were associated with the adolescent self-reports.

Conclusion

The more negative self-evaluations of the evacuees were linked to a number of risk factors, including multiple hospitalizations, health risk perceptions, and epidemiologic risk factors. The increased rate of thyroid cancer and other diagnoses no doubt contributed to the evacuees’ less positive subjective health. The strong effect of the mothers’ perceptions argues in favor of developing risk communication programs for families rather than for mothers or adolescents as separate target groups.

You can read the full article here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-9-417.pdf

by Pierpaolo Mittica

from his “Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy” Book

“Chernobyl has demonstrated that the earth is too small a place for a nuclear accident to happen.

Chernobyl is not the past,
Chernobyl is not history,
Chernobyl is the beginning.

With these words, photographer/author Pierpaolo Mittica states the premise of his passionate personal mission to investigate, research, document and expose the catastrophe that remains and continues 21 years after the nuclear explosion at Chernobyl in 1986.

More than one million people have already died from Chernobyl, yet the tragedy continues to take its toll. “At the present time nine million people in Belarus, Ukraine and western Russia continue living in areas with very high levels of radioactivity, consuming contaminated food and water””

- Jim Casper

This week on Sheep Laughs… we do our own take of the hit reality game show The Biggest Loser.  Miso the Pig takes a trip to Pripyat, Ukraine to tour the Chernobyl reactor.  We  meet a bear with eight kids and seven baby mamas.  Plus, there’s a radioactive squirrel!  

Sheep Laughs, the absolutely free webcomic that’s worth every penny! 

On November 9th 1989, an email message arrived at the Tynings primary school in Bristol,UK. It was from a 9 year old  girl living in East Germany who daily had to travel through the checkpoints to get to school in West Berlin. She was complaining to her ‘friends’ in Bristol that it took so long to reach school because of the crowds trying to get through the checkpoints.

Berlin checkpoint

This is how the Bristol children, and their parents, learned about the reality behind the news that would later unfold before their eyes.

Before and after the fall of the wall

During the next few days, the ’spark’ of the email message from their friend in East Berlin set off another ‘chain reaction’ of interest in the news by the children in Bristol. Their teacher , Keith Johnson, did not have to find ways of interesting the children in learning about what is going on in the world,they were ravenous to find out why the news did not provide ‘a child’s view’ of the world. They had some knowledge of European  cities, from curriculum topics, and something about history and Germany (of course an anglo-centric view based on stories of WWII), but these topics never excited them or developed the enthusiasm that was apparent now, and Keith was a great teacher.

What was to unfold during the next few days was even more momentous, to Europe and the World, but it was happening in the classroom in Bristol.

Keith wondered why anyone would want to send the school a piece of drainpipe!

On opening the ‘parcel’, pieces of concrete dropped out of the pipe and with it, a large poster. Of course the concrete was painted and was in fact  a part of the broken Berlin Wall. The poster was a carefully drawn picture of the Brandenburg Gate with comments, ‘graffiti’ , by the children in the school in Berlin.

As the Bristol children saw the pictures on television of people breaking down the wall they could actually handle pieces of the wall and read the comments made by the children in Berlin. A wonderful way to learn about the world, the news , differing perspectives, media bias and history in the making!

More news breaking – Finland and Bristol 1986

On the same theme, children’s understanding and mediation of the news, 3 years earlier in April 1986, I, (as a Bristol primary school teacher!) also received an email message, addressed to the children of my class. It was from a school in Finland with which we had been corresponding, finding out about reindeer and life in the Arctic. This time the message was a bit more serious, but curious. The children were saying that birds had been dropping out of the sky on to their school. They did not know why.

Later we found out about the  tremendous explosion at a huge nuclear power plant, followed by a gradual meltdown of the reactor No. 4. in Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. Of course we were ahead of the news because the explosion was kept a secret for some time.

As was stated in the Times (May3rd 1986) “In matters nuclear, one thing is certain: there is no protection in an iron curtain”.

Aerial view of Reactor no4 ,Chernobyl nuclear power pant,1986

The nuclear fallout which was to cover much of Europe and even effect sheep farming in North Wales, had hit the birds in Finland and this was one of the first signs of the large scale effects of the explosion.

As a teacher,like Keith, I did not have to develop a lesson plan on environmental issues or understanding the media, or geography, or politics or health education…the children were diving in to the atlas, reading ,listening and watching the news  and asking all sorts of questions of their friends in Finland.

remains of Kindergarten in abandoned village,near Chernobyl

My students wanted to design a newspaper of their own so that they could express what they have been finding out and to report on something that was really ‘breaking ‘ news. As a teacher, you can only marvel at the depth of understanding, cooperation and motivation to learn, from children as they find their area of interest.

By the end of the week we had our newspaper, every child had participated, some had been journalists, some designers, some graphic artists, some sub editors and editors (suddenly there was a real reason to look up a dictionary,check spelling and punctuation, and measure distances on a map!). Their enthusiasm was infectious  – the whole school was now interested to follow the news, know about Finland and the Ukraine, about nuclear contamination, about children and cancer and much more. Of course their parents were also ‘educated’ about new aspects of the news.

Monument in Chernobyl to those killed during the ‘close down’ of nuclear reactor No 4 Chernobyl.

after treatment ,Ukraine 1997

I am sure those students from my class, 23 years on , with children of their own, still watch the news of children in the Ukraine suffering from Leukemia and other cancers , and think to themselves that they know the real story behind these devastating stories.

Kesmia and her doll 2005

School Links International was a Bristol based project, started in 1985, linking primary schools in the Avon area and the rest of the world, to counter prejudice, increase international understanding, and to develop environmental awareness and action.

Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states:

1. The child shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.

Eugene Hütz, founder of the acclaimed gypsy rock group, Gogol Bordello, was a teenager when the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986 displaced his family in Kiev, Ukraine. Since then, Hütz seems to have converted that chaotic, atom-splitting energy into “complete orgasmal hysteria” onstage  - which is how Hütz has described the group’s live performances (NPR Interview, 2007).

 (L to R: Gogol Bordello’s Yuri Lemeshev, Sergey Ryabstev and Eugene Hütz)

Here’s what a couple of my Facebook friends told me this week about seeing Gogol Bordello live:

• Dana – I just saw them at Voodoo Fest in New Orleans and at Austin City Limits (ACL) Music Festival last year. I wanted to run away with them. Totally contagious.
• Brian – I “lurves” me some gypsy rock. I saw them at ACL a couple years ago. Very high-energy – the crowd couldn’t help but dance.

Until recently, I had never heard of the band. I’m probably the last person who can claim that in indie listening circles, because Hütz, the group’s leader, knows how to draw attention to himself, thanks to his charisma, philosophical bent and sweaty decadence.

To date, the band has its own documentary, “Gogol Bordello Non-Stop” (Hoptza Films, 2008), has performed with pop powerhouse Madonna and has appeared at countless marquee music festivals across the globe. Hütz also played leading roles in the movies “Everything is Illuminated” (Warner Independent Pictures, 2005) and Madonna’s directorial debut, “Filth and Wisdom” (IFC Films, 2008).

New Album
On Oct. 6, 2009, Gogol Bordello released a CD/DVD set called “Live from Axis Mundi” (SideOneDummy) that includes footage from a concert in New York City as well as a BBC radio session.

The music attacks the senses. Every time I tried to settle into any particular beat or sound, Gogol Bordello pulled me by the ear to witness another jarring style or musical idea. The group smashes dub, gypsy music, punk, caberet and more into loud anthems that make me want to sing and cast my vote for something – with Gogol Bordello, that’s probably something extreme.

My favorite track is “Ultimate,” which was from a 2008 live performance on BBC- Radio 1’s “In The Company Of (with Colin Murray).”

Listen to the song here

Here’s a taste of the lyrics (word order is faithful to the recording):

“An evolution is eternal
An evolution isn’t over
Everybody shows
And everybody knows
That if we are here, not to do
What you and I wanna’ do
And go forever crazy with it
Why the hell we are even here?
Daaaahhhh!!!!”

When Hütz yells at the end of each verse, it’s time to party like a car crash.

Since words really can’t describe Gogol Bordello, here are a couple videos:

• The song, “Ultimate” from the 2008 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGuOypqaYzU
• The song “La Isla Bonita” with Madonna at Live Earth 2007, www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0C9DDle2Cw

Gogol Bordello’s Web sites include www.gogolbordello.com and www.myspace.com/gogolbordello. The group has a fan page on Facebook.

Sources: www.punknews.org (Gogol Bordello Announces “Live from Axis Mundi”), www.npr.org (Gypsy Punk Group Gogol Bordello in Concert, July 18, 2007), www.imdb.com (Eugene Hütz page), www.hoptzafilms.com/gogol.html,

#  #  #

A Fascinating Photo Essay About the Abandoned Chernobyl site.

I look just like my mother in most ways, when she was in her twenties. I look at photos of her then, the different curly black hair, the occasional Soviet female mustache, made infamous in the quality American film Eurotrip. Arched black eyebrows and compelling round eyes. Her body language in her wedding dress– reserved but friendly: pregnant with my sister. We have the same meek doll-smile, except now she has a yellow snaggletooth that she never felt was worth taking care of. This is after generations of surviving with the bare minimum, although my family always had enough money and sense for formalities like a box of chocolates for dinner at a friend’s, or school supplies. There is something to keeping dignity among neighbors when your entire city is poor. My teeth had the whole orthodontic ensemble through junior high school. Of course, by then we had insurance for such a luxury. My mom told me horror stories about the kind of painful metallic retainers Russian doctors tried to keep inside her teenage mouth. I try to be grateful for small mercies.

I was a fragile and coddled child, a product of Chernobyl in-utero. My mother drank bottled mineral water to avoid radiation. Apparently boiling it beforehand did little to protect my fetal kidneys from collecting nitrates or whatever it is that messes with them. When I was born, for weeks they held my miraculous ten fingers and ten toes above a bedpan, praying to collect for urinalysis. This is where something began that Freud would probably want me to talk about. Retentive personality, anyone?

We immigrated to Brooklyn a week after I had turned five. My parents, my older sister Yelena, and my mom’s parents. I have some pre-school photos of me before we left. One as the sole costumed Jewish squirrel among handfuls of blonde curly princesses for a Christmas pageant. I had more psychic attacks on my self esteem and well-being as a child than I can now process. My mom got interviewed by my best friend once for urban studies: “You know, it’s funny. In Russia, everyone called me a Jew. The minute we got to America, everyone called us Russians.” (Only the Orthodox Christians are strictly defined as “Russian”). My dad’s actually Russian Orthodox, and I’ve been baptized, but that doesn’t change the fact that my face attracts unfamiliar Israelis to wax Zionistic.

In our first New York apartment, I remember the bareness– green AstroTurf-upholstered fold-out couch complete with bedbugs; bags of headless dolls and spare legos and crayons; repaired stereos and televisions. The street was our unbridled shopping cart.

There’s me as a manic child running into the other room every 5 minutes for a new toy to hold while grandma Sofa tries to spoon chicken and rice bouillon into my reluctant mouth. To get my parent’s attention, sometimes I’d pull out chunks of my fine hair that gladly fell out from exposure to radiation. They were horrified; I thought it was hilarious.

There were a few times I wasn’t laughing. Like when I first fell in love with Hawaiian Punch and my kidneys couldn’t process it. There was a time we were going on a family trip to Manhattan to a museum when the back pain hit so hard I was stalled cringing and crying softly on a subway platform as my mom fussed and dad cursed. I barely remember now.

I did not feel like a sick child. I was young and usually running around poking my head into everything with quick wit, and I had grown healthy. There was no sign of illness, visibly or medically. But my family constantly worried and fawned over me. Someone once told me that children don’t get hurt until someone tells them they are hurt. Without a mother’s dropped jaw at a fall, the child would not feel any danger and would not find him or herself in pain. But here I was, good and safe, and everyone worrying about the slightest sneeze tickling my nose. This kind of emotional atmosphere pretty much guaranteed that I would find myself in various irritating states of ailment, the crowning glory of which was clinical-strength anxiety.

My family members are materialists in the kindest sense. I have a strong background of survival-fueled rationalism which extends further back into our collective psyche than I could personally recount. My grandfather grew up taking care of his deaf mother. His younger brother ran from an orphanage in Belarus during WWII, never to be found again. He drove himself and my mom crazy during her teenage years being acutely overprotective. My grandmother’s family lost a fortune and a father in World War I, which broke her nerve, I suppose, anointing her with a staunch need to clean house, cook, and collect chatchkas that could understatedly be referred to as obsessive-compulsive. And a similar fate befell my parents post-Communism. They wrestled to keep the material world in their grasp. My parents often retorted to my optimistic muses on life, “You don’t think about philosophy very much when you’re working your body to the bone to feed your family.” My mom evolved into a fiscal nitpicker and my father…well, he gets his own page. So illness and ignorance is fine and expected among adults, as long as you manage to support the family. It is a rite of passage for the elders to deteriorate in body and spirit so that the children may reap all benefits of their labors. I guess I brought them together with a protective purpose. Yay.

Maybe they needed that, my family. I haven’t put all the pieces together. But relationships are binary and one does not exist without the other. What does it say about them that they had a sick child to worry about? That they found a concrete outlet to put their grief? The grief that makes them feel alive, a suffering always working towards seemingly selfless ends? What does it say about me that I was born under such circumstances? What did my soul want to work out with these neurotic people?

It’s always a wonder how we struggle not to become our parents when they were our parents for a reason. We were meant to have an interchange, to challenge and frighten, to nudge and love one another in the way that we do. I like to go the precocious route and think I have something to teach them and they me. That we can be role models. That we don’t have to be sick and sullen any longer.

Then one mustn’t forget the inherent Jewish guilt of trying to rise above the trappings of glorious misery. The martyrs really like to play victim. “What have we ever done that wasn’t done for you?” The care and concern was imposed upon me and I am supposed to be grateful and modest and show them the material successes I was raised to collect. By adolescence, like many of my peers, I had a growing suspicion that I was unique and important in my mediocrity. I would tell my mom about how I worried about being able to inspire and help people. My mom would just say, “Get your degree, get a job and then you can do whatever you want.”

Fast forward a few years later to the self-searching of college psychedelia:

My soul was flying and my mother thought my life was over.

At least it is for the next few days, where S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is on sale through Steam for five bones. I grabbed it last night and have given it a little test spin this afternoon with satisfactory results. Should be good for some hours of fun later on.

Chernigiv, Ukraine is just across a county border from the epicenter of one of the most horrific anthropogenic environmental disasters in history. This flag (obviously created after the nuclear fallout blanketed the Ukraine) incorporates one of the most beautiful new species to inhabit the area – the two headed eagle, burnt black, with an X-ray vision view inside  its regal, golden-boned thorax. The fluorescent green fields represent the fluorescent green fields of Chernigiv. This one was too easy.

As you travel the long winding dirt road you always keep an ear to your Geiger counter, listening intently for its clicking song. It is the herald of an agonizing death by radiation poisoning. You pass by a crumbling factory; its ruined facade makes it look like a building from an ancient past. All is silent except for the occasional gusts of wind sweeping across the barren landscape.

The eerie tranquility is broken by the loud metallic clang of the charging handle of an AK-74 racking a 5.45×39mm full metal jack round into the chamber. It’s a universally understood sound that tells you all you need to know.

They were hiding behind the rubble; red cloths bound around their heads to hide their faces. Their rifles begin to bark and spitfire. Bandits aren’t known for their marksmanship skills, spray’n’pray that’s what they call it, but when there’s a swarm of them bearing down on you it makes even a veteran S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sweat.

You have spent the day risking your life to get your hands on this artifact. An artifact, the rarest of treasures, bending the very laws of physics, born out of this man made hellhole they call the Zone.

You’re not giving it up without a fight. You run to the nearest tree to take cover and return fire with your rifle until suddenly you hear a click. A bullet casing has stove piped in your rifle’s chamber causing a jam. There’s no time to clear it. In desperation you un-holster your handgun, its 9mm bullets don’t have the punch of your rifle. Your shots need to count.

You don’t want to die again, your last save point was so far away……

Welcome to the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. a unique first person shooter that combines elements of a role playing game to create an incredible experience.

Storyline

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mixes real world and fantasy histories that make it a FPS that really feels like the creators were thinking outside of the box. This is not your typical humans vs. aliens, counter-terrorists vs. terrorists, army vs. army, etc style game, it’s something completely new. The storyline takes place in the Ukraine many years after the horrific real world event of the meltdown of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Radiation has contaminated a 30 kilometer area around the power plant. This area has come to be called the ‘Zone.” The Zone is a blighted place where few dare travel. However, strange and almost unexplainable things are being discovered there that are attracting explorers.

The most important of these discoveries are objects known as artifacts. Artifacts are materials which generate or augment certain properties of someone who wears them. An artifact for example could grant a degree of resistance to physical trauma such as a high fall.

Artifacts are created by “anomalies.” Anomalies are dangerous distortions of the physical world which began appearing in the Zone after the Chernobyl incident. They can occur anywhere within the Zone and many are difficult to detect, accidentally stepping into an anomaly is oftentimes fatal. Artifacts are extremely rare and valuable to scientists or on the black market.

The player takes on the role of a “S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” which is an acronym for Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber. It is a broad term for people who try to make a living in the Zone. Some are mercenaries for hirer, and some are average people who were lured to the Zone in the hope of getting rich quick by finding and selling artifacts. Most who have come though have found nothing but misery.

Players will have tons of fun missions to complete. The main story of the game is also very original…..if you can figure it out. There are a number of “bad” endings you can get if you complete the game under the wrong conditions.

Gameplay

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a sandbox style game where the player can move freely across different areas with only a brief loading screen identifying their separation. The landscape was modeled using photos from Chernobyl and the surrounding countryside. You can even explore the real world ghost town of Priypiat, which was evacuated during the reactor meltdown. Comparisons between game locations and photos of their real world counterparts are impressive.

While the Russian military has attempted to prevent any outsiders from entering the Zone, several warring factions have established bases within it. Many of the missions that players receive will come form these factions. There is also an interesting array of enemies for the player to battle which range from bandits, military forces, and mutants.

Despite the game’s outdated graphics, the Zone feels as if it’s truly alive. You might return to an area and find the people you had once spoken to dead or gone. Some areas of the Zone experience almost constant battles as opposing forces vie for control of territory. You can also interact with almost every NPC as long as they are not hostile to you. Interacting with NPCs can help the player gather information on missions or garner more backstory of the Zone. Players can also trade with NPCs for items such as ammunition, medical kits, or food.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. can be one of the hardest FPS games you could ever play. Even on its lower difficulty levels the game can be very challenging. However, I find that over all it enhances the gameplay and makes some of the large scale firefights very intense. Combat in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. can require a fair amount of strategy and planning. Running straight at an enemy will get you very dead, very fast. You have to assess their weapons, armor, numbers, and terrain. You will also need to use cover and flank enemies where you can.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a wide selection of weapons including handguns, shotguns, assault rifles, and grenades. Every weapon has advantages and disadvantages and will also slowly degrade as it’s used, eventually breaking. Weapons also have a chance to jam during use.

The first thing that is recommended after installing the game is to download a patch to fix a long list of major bugs that can randomly crash your game, or render you unable to save your progress. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a dedicated mod community that has created an impressive list of add-on packages such as adding more enemies, missions, and even drivable vehicles. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. also has a multiplayer mode where players can fight online in traditional single or team death matches, or a version of capture the flag using artifacts. The mod community and multiplayer mode gives the game an impressive amount of replayability.

Sound

Sound effects in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. are well done and help create a deep sense of immersion, especially the ambient world sounds. There are few musical tracks in the game though, but what is there is very well done. One of the most noticeable musical tracks can only be heard from radios in scattered locations, making you occasionally search for the mysterious song when you hear it. There are a couple of noticeable audio bugs in the game. For example in a bar the NPC characters around you repeat the same sentences out loud over and over again. Either it will drive you crazy, or you will find it hilarious.

So if you are looking for a fun and unique first person shooter, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  is what you need.

Game Website: www.stalker-game.com

RE: Assistance with experiment – TOP SECRET

During a game of mini cricket today I hit a truly sensational ball for six but unfortunately for us it went on the neighbour’s roof. Game over. However if I were able to vertically scale a building I would’ve saved the day by retrieving the ball and allowing the game to continue. As a result I have a proposition for you: We get one of your spiders in the lab (perhaps a red back for intensity or a daddy long legs if we want to keep it mellow), expose it to radiation for a few days then get it to bite me. I don’t know if that means it simply has to hang out near a microwave, or if it needs to be exposed to higher levels. Say a 4 week stay in Chernobyl. I’m not the scientist so I will leave the logistics to you.

If while you’re at it you could inject aspects of shapeshifting that would be good. Because there’s a place that sells quad bikes and if I looked like one of the sales assistants I’m pretty sure I could take it for a spin. Now I understand if this is not your area, perhaps you have a contact for a Mystique historian?

I just want to clear something up, I’m not just doing this so I can be a ball retriever because that would be silly. The simple solution would be to get a ladder I guess. But along with vertical/horizontal scaling, Spider-Sense will give me agility, speed, the ability to shoot webs from my wrists (I’m pretty excited about this one) and all the media attention. However I’m not sure about this last one because what I am proposing could be borderline illegal and if I went on Oprah you could get fired because of the ethical oath of Hippocratics that you signed.

If you could start on this ASAP that would help me out heaps – we have a rematch this Saturday and I’ll be damned if I’m replacing that ball.

Afterthought: Perhaps while the spider is being exposed we should play the entire discography of James Brown, Regina Spektor and Dr. Dre. We don’t want to fire it up too much and have it come out like Venom in Spiderman 3. I hypothesise the following ‘Chilled tunes = Chilled spider’ – this could be a possible entry into an academic journal. You can take the credit and I promise I won’t sue in 12 years time like that guy tried to do with Alex Lloyd and that s**thouse song ‘Amazing’.

david.gardner@unimelb.edu.au Sent 26/10/09