nuclear redux

Slashdot's carrying a story referencing the debunking of Elena's motorcycle rides through the Chernobyl area. Curiously enough, the thread with the debunking seems to be fixated on the revelation that Elena is married. This prompts the quip on slashdot: So, the lesson to be learned from this is that hot single science chicks with motorcycles and coolness to bike through radioactive deadzones on their own don't really exist except in the dreams of the slashdot collective mind.


The veracity of Elena's story aside, it is interesting to think about the downstream effects of the chernobyl disaster. The Vanderbilt study seems to indicate that the effects of the radiation release have been largely exaggerated. The primary statistically relevant effects over time are an increase in Thyroid cancer in those who were young children at the time of the incident. Children born six months after the incident report no ill effects traced to Chernobyl. Furthermore, it was found that the early high dose fatalities were primary linked to skin lesions covering greater than 50% of the body's surface, and also some quantity due to radiation induced altered functionality of the intestines. This would seem to indicate that some of the most vulnerable cell types are skin tissue and intestinal tissue, understandable due to the large rate of cell division (referred to with the term mitotic index). One possible therapy may be to treat high radiation dose survivors with drugs with strong antimitotic properties, that however do not induce apoptosis or more dangerous mitotic abnormailities, across the board (or more specifically in skin and intestinal tissue). The argument would be that tissue is able to repair damage from radiation, but it must be given time to do so. Rapidly dividing cells may not have the opportunity to do enough repair, and thus have too many unrecoverable errors. A preliminary google and scirus search indicate that much research is being done on such compounds, albeit with strong cytotoxicity. Perhaps drugs that have been abandoned for cancer research because of their low cytotoxicity should also be targeted at radiation exposure survivors.

If indeed, Chernobyl is a worst case scenario of a nuclear accident, from the most dangerous/unstable type of nuclear power plant, then we may have even less to worry about than previously thought. The epidemiological effects are better understood.

This thought comes to mind. If radiation exposure is understood and treatable in a public health context, and systems are in place to deal with such exposure, does that make nuclear theater weapons more humane?

For fun, google the phrases "theatre weapons" and "theater weapons".