“300 seconds will produce a relatively quick death, which is better than many alternatives.
After just 30 seconds of exposure, dizziness and fatigue will find you a week later. Two minutes of exposure and your cells will soon begin to hemorrhage; four minutes: vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. 300 seconds and you have two days to live.
By the fall of 1986, the emergency crews fighting to contain the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl made it into a steam corridor beneath failed reactor Number 4. Inside this chamber they found black lava that had oozed straight from the core. The most famous formation was a solid flow that their radiation sensors firmly told them not to approach. With cameras pushed in from around a corner, the workers dubbed the dimly lit mass “the Elephant’s Foot.” According to readings taken at the time, the still hot portion of molten core put out enough radiation to give a lethal dose in 300 seconds.
The Elephant’s Foot could be the most dangerous piece of waste in the world.”
The Elephant’s Foot is reactor core lava that was created when reactor #4 at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant overheated and melted down. “When we say that a nuclear reactor “melts down,” it’s not simply illustrative language. The radioactive materials used as fuel get hotter and hotter, due to their unstinting emission of high-energy particles, until they literally melt, turning into something like lava.”
This seemingly small blob of radioactive material weighs several tons and is not quite so dangerous these days, though 10 years after the disaster it could still give a lethal dose of radiation within an hour. No idea how radioactive it is now, 28 years later.
A similar corium lava exists in the reactor at Fukushima, Japan but is still far too dangerous to have images of. Even aside from radioactivity the corium at Fukushima is likely still extremely hot. There’s a definite media blackout going on where Fukushima is concerned so sadly, it’s hard to know what exactly is going on and what sources have reliable information.
For the full article go here.
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