Bikini Atoll bomb craters as seen from Google Earth.

Nuclear Graveyards Abound with Life

Bikini Atoll was the site of 23 massive nuclear blasts in the 1940s-50s. Google Earth shows these colossal bomb craters. Massive fallout levels, thousands of tons of spilled oil from target ships, etc. should have left the atoll and lagoon a dead zone.

Sorry to disappoint; the experts got it wrong again. Life flourishes in the bomb craters and on land.

It is safe to live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No two-headed Japanese. How many died of radiation at Fukushima? One perhaps seven years later. How many died at Chernobyl? 50, according to the UN. Spare me failed computer models about future events. Chernobyl was the result of complete human stupidity.

I'm not playing down the radiation hazard at the reactor site. Note that Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus suffer massive pollution problems to add to possible radiation problems. Healthcare is poor in these countries, in addition to pollution. To attribute every illness or cancer in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus to Chernobyl is nonsense.

To quote News Week March 8, 2022:

Over the years, wildlife has returned to the exclusion zone, which due to a lack of human disturbance, has become a thriving ecosystem. Scientists have observed brown bears, wolves, lynx, bison, moose, foxes, and many more wild animals in the area.

Sorry, no two-headed bison or bears or horses. Nature is resilient and we should strive to live within it. Because we evolved in an environment that is naturally radioactive, including the potassium in our blood, we have immunity from low-level radiation.

To quote:

33 years after the accident, the Chernobyl exclusion zone, which covers an area now in Ukraine and Belarus, is inhabited by brown bears, bison, wolves, lynxes, Przewalski horses, and more than 200 bird species, among other animals.

In March 2019, most of the main research groups working with Chernobyl wildlife met in Portsmouth, England. About 30 researchers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Belgium, Norway, Spain and Ukraine presented the latest results of our work. These studies included work on big mammals, nesting birds, amphibians, fish, bumblebees, earthworms, bacteria and leaf litter decomposition.

These studies showed that at present the area hosts great biodiversity. In addition, they confirmed the general lack of big negative effects of current radiation levels on the animal and plant populations living in Chernobyl. All the studied groups maintain stable and viable populations inside the exclusion zone.

Ref. theconversation.com

They also note, "Tourism has flourished in Chernobyl, with more than 70,000 visitors in 2018."

Chernobyl, like Bikini Atoll, is a thriving nature preserve because of the lack of human activity.

Corals growing in nuclear bomb crater Bikini Atoll.

(Above) Bikini Atoll in the Marshal Islands was the site of more than two-dozen nuclear detonations. This is one bomb crater over one-mile wide. The region have recovered in a few decades - nature is resilient.

The lagoon has a number of ship wrecks used as target ships during the tests. They spilled tons of oil and other pollutants. The lagoon recovered anyway.

23 nuclear weapons were detonated at Bikini Atoll including the 4-6-megaton hydrogen bomb. This left a crater 1 mile wide and 160 feet deep. Recent visitors found:

"something even more astonishing to behold: a reassembling ecosystem, including schools of large fish, reef sharks and robust coral, which may have begun life as little as a decade after the area’s annihilation...not just scattered corals, but very abundant, big healthy coral communities - corals larger than cars scattered about the edges of a hydrogen bomb crater ... You’re kind of looking at that and thinking, 'Well, that’s strange. Frankly, the visual and emotional impact of it is just stunning.'"

For the record, where possible, replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. Please spare me the whining about atomic waste, proliferation, etc. Nuclear waste can be disposed of by solidification-mixed-melted with scrap glass and buried at atomic test sites.

Breeder reactors produce new fuel from spent fuel rods, depleted uranium, thorium, etc. One million tons of potential atomic fuel is in storage—what a waste.

See Green Technology Highly Polluting, Environmentally Destructive.

Uranium mining is destructive to the environment. Reusing already mined material prevents further pollution. Look up breeder reactor. They have been built and work just fine. It is not a matter of engineering. The problem is politics.

To quote Wikipedia:

"Breeder reactors could, in principle, extract almost all of the energy contained in uranium or thorium, decreasing fuel requirements by a factor of 100 compared to widely used once-through light water reactors, which extract less than 1% of the energy in the uranium mined from the earth. The high fuel efficiency of breeder reactors could greatly reduce concerns about fuel supply, energy used in mining, and storage of radioactive waste."

In addition, we have found a way to extract uranium from seawater. The process is non-polluting, and the amount of uranium (estimated at 4.5 billion metric tons) is unlimited.

To quote www.reaserchgate.com,

"Costs of such seawater extraction have been estimated at roughly $1000/kg of uranium-produced when employing current technology, and $300/kg is deemed foreseeable with improvements in adsorbent technology."

One kilogram is about 2.2 pounds and can replace 2,500 tons of coal (when burned 9,200 tons of CO2) after conversion to fissionable material. They refuse to use this because off-shore production, while cheaper to import ($21 per pound?), hides the toxic waste and pollution elsewhere.

Most "green" energy scams simply off-shore pollution to developing countries and China, the king of pollution and toxic waste.

Bristolblog.com is my other website. I'm a conservationist, I consider ecology a pseudo-religion. Some of the subjects covered: