Is the atom tamed?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The fact that the current ecological crisis is the reverse side of the scientific and technological revolution is confirmed by the fact that precisely those achievements of scientific and technological progress, which served as the starting point for the announcement of the scientific and technological revolution, led to the most powerful environmental disasters on our planet.

In 1945, the atomic bomb was created, testifying to new unprecedented human capabilities. In 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant was built in Obninsk, and many hopes were pinned on the "peaceful atom". And in 1986, the largest man-made disaster in the history of the Earth occurred at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant as a result of an attempt to "tame" the atom and make it work for itself.

As a result of this accident, more radioactive material was released than during the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The "peaceful atom" turned out to be more terrible than the military one. Humanity is faced with such man-made disasters that may well claim the status of super-regional, if not global.

The peculiarity of radioactive damage is that it can kill painlessly. Pain, as you know, is an evolutionarily developed defense mechanism, but the “insidiousness” of the atom lies in the fact that in this case this preventive mechanism is not activated. For example, the water discharged from the Hanford nuclear power plant (USA) was initially considered completely safe.

However, later it turned out that the radioactivity of plankton in neighboring water bodies increased 2000 times, the radioactivity of ducks feeding on plankton increased 40,000 times, and the fish became 150,000 times more radioactive than the waters discharged by the station. Swallows that caught insects whose larvae developed in the water showed radioactivity 500,000 times higher than that of the waters of the station itself. In the yolk of waterfowl eggs, the radioactivity has increased a million times.

The Chernobyl accident affected more than 7 million people and will affect many more, including those who were not born, since radiation contamination affects not only the health of those living today, but also those who are about to be born. The funds for the elimination of the consequences of the disaster may exceed the economic profit from the operation of all nuclear power plants in the territory of the former USSR.

It was in radiation, in various manifestations of radiation sickness, that scientists and the public saw the main danger of the new weapon, but humanity was able to truly appreciate it much later. For many years people saw in an atomic bomb, although very dangerous, but just a weapon capable of ensuring victory in a war.

Therefore, the leading states, intensively improving nuclear weapons, were preparing both for their use and for protection against them. Only in recent decades has the world community begun to realize that a nuclear war will become the suicide of all mankind. Radiation is not the only and perhaps not the most important of the consequences of a large-scale nuclear war.

The magnitude of the temperature drop does not depend too much on the power of the nuclear weapons used, but this power greatly affects the duration of the "nuclear night". The results obtained by scientists from different countries differed in details, but the qualitative effect of "nuclear night" and "nuclear winter" was very clearly indicated in all calculations. Thus, the following can be considered established:

1. As a result of a large-scale nuclear war, a "nuclear night" will be established over the entire planet, and the amount of solar heat entering the earth's surface will be reduced by several tens of times. As a result, a "nuclear winter" will come, that is, there will be a general decrease in temperature, especially strong over the continents.

2. The process of purifying the atmosphere will take many months and even years. But the atmosphere will not return to its original state - its thermohydrodynamic characteristics will become completely different.

A decrease in the temperature of the Earth's surface a month after the formation of soot clouds will on average be significant: 15-20 C, and at points remote from the oceans - up to 35 C. This temperature will last for several months, during which the earth's surface will freeze by several meters, depriving everyone of fresh water, especially since the rains will stop. A "nuclear winter" will also come in the Southern Hemisphere, as soot clouds will envelop the entire planet, all circulation cycles in the atmosphere will change, although in Australia and South America the cooling will be less significant (by 10-12 C).

Until the early 1970s. the problem of the environmental consequences of underground nuclear explosions was reduced only to protective measures against their seismic and radiation effects at the time of the conduct (i.e., the safety of blasting operations was ensured). A detailed study of the dynamics of the processes occurring in the explosion zone was carried out exclusively from the point of view of technical aspects. The small size of nuclear charges (in comparison with chemical ones) and the easily achievable high power of nuclear explosions attracted military and civilian specialists. A false idea has arisen about the high economic efficiency of underground nuclear explosions (a concept that has replaced the less narrow one - the technological efficiency of explosions as a really powerful way of destroying rock masses). And only in the 1970s. it became clear that the negative environmental impact of underground nuclear explosions on the environment and human health negates the economic benefits received from them. In 1972 in the USA the program of using underground explosions for peaceful purposes "Plowcher", adopted in 1963, was terminated. In the USSR, since 1974, they refused to carry out underground nuclear explosions of external action.

Industrial nuclear explosions on the territory of the USSR

At some facilities where underground nuclear explosions were carried out, radioactive contamination was recorded at a considerable distance from the epicenters, both in the depths and on the surface. In the vicinity, dangerous geological phenomena begin - movements of rock mass in the near zone, as well as significant changes in the regime of groundwater and gases and the appearance of induced (provoked by explosions) seismicity in certain areas.

Explosive cavities of explosions turn out to be very unreliable elements of technological schemes of production processes. This violates the reliability of robots of industrial complexes of strategic importance, reduces the resource potential of the subsoil and other natural complexes. Prolonged stay in the explosion zones damages the human immune and hematopoietic systems.