Now that plans for a national radioactive waste management facility near Kimba in South Australia have been abandoned, what next? Let’s learn from our mistakes.
Should the capsule not be found immediately, we can’t just write it off as lost. A long term system of monitoring is needed to protect humans and the environment.
Damage at the Zaporizhzhya facility.
International Atomic Energy Agency
Artillery shelling, stressed-out technicians and power supply disruptions increase the chances of catastrophe at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest.
Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, points to the training facility hit by Russian artillery at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
AP Photo/Lisa Leutner
The world held its collective breath as Russian troops battled Ukrainian forces at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The battle is over and no radiation escaped, but the danger is far from over.
Much of the region around Chernobyl has been untouched by people since the nuclear disaster in 1986.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
With Russian troops rolling through the Chernobyl exclusion zone in Ukraine, a biologist who studies wildlife in the area describes the risks of disturbing this radioactive landscape.
It turns out that the world is about 4,600,000,000 years old. That’s 4.6 billion years. That’s pretty old!
Marcella Cheng/The Conversation
The world is made of tiny building blocks called ‘elements’. Scientists have worked out how fast some elements change into other elements. That gives us a very big clue about how old the Earth is.
Radiotherapy treats cancer by directing beams of high energy x-rays at the tumour.
from shutterstock.com
Getting the right amount of radiation is a fine balance between therapy and harm. A common way to improve the benefit-to-cure ratio is to fire multiple beams at the tumour from different directions.
Refreshingly radioactive?
Drink image via www.shutterstock.com.
Back in the early 1900s, if you felt a bit sluggish you could reach for a beverage enhanced with radioactive elements to really add some pep to your step. It wouldn’t be a healthy choice, though.
News of the Hiroshima bombing spread quickly to the US public but, thanks to science fiction writers, atomic bombs were discussed more before the war began than during it.
For years, Australia has been looking at remote Indigenous land to store its nuclear waste. But now that Muckaty is off the table, it’s time to consider big city locations.
Caddie Brain/Flickr
Right now, radioactive material is stored at more than 100 locations in cities and suburbs across Australia. Yet after the withdrawal of a proposed remote site for a “nuclear waste dump” at Muckaty Station…